 An apparent further defect in Collingwood’s case in particular is his account of language. It is full of admirable insights, but it is probably misconceived from back to front. The insistence that language is always expressive is dogmatic, and leads Collingwood to deny that there is any categorical distinction between poetry and scientific writing, which many may take as a reductio ad absurdum (298). And more seriously so far as his philosophy of art is concerned, one might wonder about his account of consciousness as tied to language. According to it—the theory of imagination—merely to attend to something is thereby to express it, and furthermore is to do something linguistic. Even if we allow Collingwood his generalised notion of language as appertaining to gesture and so on, surely there has to be a separation between consciousness or attention and expression. As C. J. Ducasse pointed out, it seems that when we look at a vase full of flowers, do we not create a “work of art” unless we draw or paint it (Ducasse 1929, 52–54).