T.S. Eliot: Emotions for thoughts

From T. S. Eliot, “The Perfect Critic,” in The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920):

When we do not know, or when we do not know enough, we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts.

Alan Jacobs, in How to Think, comments on Eliot’s text:

Note that the problem, for Eliot, is not that emotions are involved, but that they substitute for thought, that they replace thinking.