(b) Impersonality is a deeper character than the preceding. It reveals a power superior to the conscious individual, strange to him although acting through him: a state which many inventors have expressed in the words, "I counted for nothing in that." The best means of recognizing it would be to write down some observations taken from the inspired individuals themselves. We do not lack them, and some have the virtue of good observation.[18] But that would lead us too far afield. Let us only remark that this unconscious impulse acts variously according to the individual. Some submit to it painfully, striving against it just like the ancient pythoness at the time of giving her oracle. Others, especially in religious inspiration, submit themselves entirely with pleasure or else sustain it passively. Still others of a more analytic turn have noted the concentration of all their faculties and capacities on a single point. But whatever characteristics it takes on, remaining impersonal at bottom and unable to appear in a fully conscious individual, we must admit, unless we wish to give it a supernatural origin, that inspiration is derived from the unconscious activity of the mind. In order to make sure of its nature it would then be necessary to make sure first of the nature of the unconscious, which is one of the enigmas of psychology.

I put aside all the discussions on the subject as tiresome and useless for our present aim. Indeed, they reduce themselves to these two principal propositions: for some the unconscious is a purely physiological activity, a "cerebration"; for others it is a gradual diminution of consciousness which exists without being bound to me—i.e., to the principal consciousness. Both these are full of difficulties and present almost insurmountable objections.[19]

Let us take the "unconscious" as a fact and let us limit ourselves to clearing it up, relating inspiration to mental states that have been judged worthy of explaining it.

1. Hypermnesia, or exaltation of memory, in spite of what has been said about it, teaches us nothing in regard to the nature of inspiration or of invention in general. It is produced in hypnotism, mania, the excited period of "circular insanity," at the beginning of general paralysis, and especially under the form known as "the gift of tongues" in religious epidemics. We find, it is true, some observations (among others one by Regis of an illiterate newspaper vender composing pieces of poetry of his own), indicating that a heightened memory sometimes accompanies a certain tendency toward invention. But hypermnesia, pure and simple, consists of an extraordinary flood of memories totally lacking that essential mark of creation—new combinations. It even appears that in the two instances there is rather an antagonism since heightened memory comes near to the ideal law of total redintegration, which is, as we know, a hindrance to invention. They are alike only with respect to the great mass of separable materials, but where the principle of unity is wanting there can be no creation.

2. Inspiration has often been likened to the state of excitement preceding intoxication. It is a well-known fact that many inventors have sought it in wine, alcoholic liquors, toxic substances like hashish, opium, ether, etc. It is unnecessary to mention names. The abundance of ideas, the rapidity of their flow, the eccentric spurts and caprices, novel ideas, strengthening of the vital and emotional tone, that brief state of bounding fancy of which novelists have given such good descriptions, make evident to the least observing that under the influence of intoxication the imagination works to a much greater extent than ordinarily. Yet how pale that is compared to the action of the intellectual poisons above mentioned, especially hashish. The "artificial paradise" of DeQuincy, Moreau de Tours, Theophile Gautier, Baudelaire and others have made known to all an enormous expansion of the imagination launched into a giddy course without limits of time and space.

Strictly, these are facts representing only a stimulated, artificial, temporary inspiration. They do not take us into its true nature; at the most they may teach us concerning some of their physiological conditions. It is not even an inspiration in the strict sense, but rather a beginning, an embryo, an outline, analogous to the creations produced in dreams which are found very incoherent when we awake. One of the essential conditions of creation, a principal element—the directing principle that organizes and unifies—is lacking. Under the influence of alcoholic drinks and of poisonous intoxicants attention and will always fall into exhaustion.

3. With greater reason it has been sought to explain inspiration by comparison with certain forms of somnambulism, and it has been said that "it is only the lowest degree of the latter state, somnambulism in a waking state. In inspiration it is as though a strange personality were speaking to the author; in somnambulism it is the stranger himself who talks or holds the pen, who speaks or writes—in a word, does the work."[20] It would thus be the modified form of a state that is the culmination of subconscious activity and a state of double personality. As this last explanatory expression is wonderfully abused, and is called upon to serve in all conditions, preciseness is indispensable.

The inspired individual is like an awakened dreamer—he lives in his dream. (Of this we might cite seemingly authentic examples: Shelly, Alfieri, etc.) Psychologically, this means that there is in him a double inversion of the normal state.

To begin with, consciousness monopolized by the number and intensity of its images is closed to the influences of the outside world, or else receives them only to make them enter the web of its dream. The internal life annihilates the external, which is just the opposite of ordinary life.

Further, the unconscious or subconscious activity passes to the first plane, plays the first part, while preserving its impersonal character.

This much allowed, if we would go further, we are thrown into increasing difficulties. The existence of an unconscious working is beyond doubt; facts in profusion could be given in support of this obscure elaboration which enters consciousness only when all is done. But what is the nature of this work? Is it purely physiological? Is it psychological? We come to two opposing theses. Theoretically, we may say that everything goes on in the realm of the unconscious just as in consciousness, only without a message to me; that in clear consciousness the work may be followed up step by step, while in unconsciousness it proceeds likewise, but unknown to us. It is evident that all this is purely hypothetical.

Inspiration resembles a cipher dispatch which the unconscious activity transmits to the conscious process, which translates it. Must we admit that in the deep levels of the unconscious there are formed only fragmentary combinations and that they reach complete systematization only in clear consciousness, or, rather, is the creative labor identical in both cases? It is difficult to decide. It seems to be accepted that genius, or at least richness, in invention depends on the subliminal imagination,[21] not on the other, which is superficial in nature and soon exhausted. The one is spontaneous, true; the other, artificial, feigned. "Inspiration" signifies unconscious imagination, and is only a special case of it. Conscious imagination is a kind of perfected state.

To sum up, inspiration is the result of an underhand process existing in men, in some to a very great degree. The nature of this work being unknown, we can conclude nothing as to the ultimate nature of inspiration. On the other hand, we may in a positive manner fix the value of the phenomenon in invention, all the more as we are inclined to over-value it. We should, indeed, note that inspiration is not a cause but an effect—more exactly, a moment, a crisis, a critical stage; it is an index. It marks either the end of an unconscious elaboration which may have been very short or very long, or else the beginning of a conscious elaboration which will be very short or very long (this is seen especially in cases of creation suggested by chance). On the one hand, it never has an absolute beginning; on the other hand, it never delivers a finished work; the history of inventions sufficiently proves this. Furthermore, one may pass beyond it; many creations long in preparation seem without a crisis, strictly so called; such as Newton's law of attraction, Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper," and the "Mona Lisa." Finally, many have felt themselves really inspired without producing anything of value.[22]

II

What has been said up to this point does not exhaust the study of the unconscious factor as a source of new combinations. Its role can be studied under a simpler and more limited form. For this purpose we need to return for the last time to association of ideas. The final reason for association (outside of contiguity, in part at least) must be sought in the temperament, character, individuality of the subject, often even in the moment; that is, in a passing influence, hardly perceptible because it is unconscious or subconscious. These momentary dispositions in latent form can excite novel relations in two ways—through mediate association and through a special mode of grouping which has recently received the name "constellation."

1. Mediate association has been well known since the time of Hamilton, who was the first to determine its nature and to give a personal example that has become classic. Loch Lomond recalled to him the Prussian system of education because, when visiting the lake, he had met a Prussian officer who conversed with him on the subject. His general formula is this: A recalls C, although there is between them neither contiguity nor resemblance, but because a middle term, B, which does not enter consciousness, serves as a transition between A and C. This mode of association seemed universally accepted when, latterly, it has been attacked by Muensterberg and others. People have had recourse to experimentation, which has given results only in slight agreement.[23] For my own part, I count myself among those contemporaries who admit mediate association, and they are the greater number. Scripture, who has made a special study of the subject, and who has been able to note all the intermediate conditions between almost clear consciousness and the unconscious, considers the existence of mediate association as proven. In order to pronounce as an illusion a fact that is met with so often in daily experience, and one that has been studied by so many excellent observers, there is required more than experimental investigations (the conditions of which are often artificial and unnatural), some of which, moreover, conclude for the affirmative.

This form of association is produced, like the others, now by contiguity, now by resemblance. The example given by Hamilton belongs to the first type. In the experiments by Scripture are found some of the second type—e.g., a red light recalled, through the vague memory of a flash of strontium light, a scene of an opera.

It is clear that by its very nature mediate association can give rise to novel combinations. Contiguity itself, which is usually only repetition, becomes the source of unforeseen relations, thanks to the elimination of the middle term. Nothing, moreover, proves that there may not sometimes be several latent intermediate terms. It is possible that A should call up D through the medium of b and c, which remain below the threshold of consciousness. It seems even impossible not to admit this in the hypothesis of the subconscious, where we see only the two end links of the chain, without being able to allow a break of continuity between them.

2. In his determination of the regulating causes of association of ideas, Ziehen designates one of these under the name of "constellation," which has been adopted by some writers. This may be enunciated thus: The recall of an image, or of a group of images, is in some cases the result of a sum of predominant tendencies.

An idea may become the starting point of a host of associations. The word "Rome" can call up a hundred. Why is one called up rather than another, and at such a moment rather than at another? There are some associations based on contiguity and on resemblance which one may foresee, but how about the rest? Here is an idea A; it is the center of a network; it can radiate in all directions—B, C, D, E, F, etc. Why does it call up now B, later F?

It is because every image is comparable to a force, which may pass from the latent to the active condition, and in this process may be reinforced or checked by other images. There are simultaneous and inhibitory tendencies. B is in a state of tension and C is not; or it may be that D exerts an arresting influence on C. Consequently C cannot prevail. But an hour later conditions have changed and victory rests with C. This phenomenon rests on a physiological basis: the existence of several currents diffusing themselves through the brain and the possibility of receiving simultaneous excitations.[24]

A few examples will make plainer this phenomenon of reinforcement, in consequence of which an association prevails. Wahle reports that the Gothic Hotel de Ville, near his house, had never suggested to him the idea of the Doges' Palace at Venice, in spite of certain architectural likenesses, until a certain day when this idea broke upon him with much clearness. He then recalled that two hours before he had observed a lady wearing a beautiful brooch in the form of a gondola. Sully rightly remarks that it is much easier to recall the words of a foreign language when we return from the country where it is spoken than when we have lived a long time in our own, because the tendency toward recollection is reinforced by the recent experience of the words heard, spoken, read, and a whole array of latent dispositions that work in the same direction.

In my opinion we would find the finest examples of "constellation," regarded as a creative element, in studying the formation and development of myths. Everywhere and always man has had for material scarcely anything save natural phenomena—the sky, land, water, stars, storms, wind, seasons, life, death, etc. On each of these themes he builds thousands of explanatory stories, which vary from the grandly imposing to the laughably childish. Every myth is the work of a human group which has worked according to the tendencies of its special genius under the influence of various stages of intellectual culture. No process is richer in resources, of freer turn, or more apt to give what every inventor promises—the novel and unexpected.

To sum up: The initial element, external or internal, excites associations that one cannot always foresee, because of the numerous orientations possible; an analogous case to that which occurs in the realm of the will when there are present reasons for and against, acting and not acting, one direction or another, now or later—when the final resolution cannot be predicted, and often depends on imperceptible causes.

In conclusion, I anticipate a possible question: "Does the unconscious factor differ in nature from the two others (intellectual and emotional)?" The answer depends on the hypothesis that one holds as to the nature of the unconscious itself. According to one view it would be especially physiological, consequently different; according to another, the difference can exist only in the processes: unconscious elaboration is reducible to intellectual or emotional processes the preparatory work of which is slighted, and which enters consciousness ready made. Consequently, the unconscious factor would be a special form of the other two rather than a distinct element in invention.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Several of them will be found in Appendix A at the end of this work.

[19] On this subject see Appendix B.

[20] Dr. Chabaneix, Le subconscient sur les artistes, les savants, et les ecrivains, Paris, 1897, p. 87.

[21] The recent case, studied with so much ability by M. Flournoy in his book, "Des Indes a la planete Mars" (1900), is an example of the subliminal creative imagination, and of the work it is capable of doing by itself.

[22] We shall return to this point in another part of this work. See Part II, chapter iv.

[23] Thus Howe (American Journal of Psychology, vi, 239 ff.), has published some investigations in the negative. One series of 557 experiments gave him eight apparently mediate associations; after examination, he reduced them to a single one, which seemed to him doubtful. Another series of 961 experiments gives 72 cases, for which he offers an explanation other than mediate association. On the other hand, Aschaffenburg admits them to the extent of four per cent.; the association-time is longer than for average associations (Psychologische Arbeiten, I and II). Consult especially Scripture, The New Psychology, chapter xiii, with experiments in support of his conclusion.

[24] Ziehen, Leitfaden der physiologischen Psychologie, 4th edition, 1898, pp. 164, 174. Also, Sully, Human Mind, I, 343.



CHAPTER IV

THE ORGANIC CONDITIONS OF THE IMAGINATION

Whatever opinion we may hold concerning the nature of the unconscious, since that form of activity is related more than any other to the physiological conditions of the mental life, the present time is suitable for an exposition of the hypotheses that it is permissible to express concerning the organic bases of the imagination. What we may regard as positive, or even as probable, is very little.

I

First, the anatomical conditions. Is there a "seat" of the imagination? Such is the form of the question asked for the last twenty years. In that period of extreme and closely bounded localization men strained themselves to bind down every psychic manifestation to a strictly determined point of the brain. Today the problem presents itself no longer in this simple way. As at present we incline toward scattered localization, functional rather than properly anatomical, and as we often understand by "center" the synergic action of several centers differently grouped according to the individual case, our question becomes equivalent to: "Are there certain portions of the brain having an exclusive or preponderating part in the working of the creative imagination?" Even in this form the question is hardly acceptable. Indeed, the imagination is not a primary and relatively simple function like that of visual, auditory and other sensations. We have seen that it is a state of tertiary formation and very complex. There is required, then, (1) that the elements constituting imagination be determined in a rigorous manner, but the foregoing analysis makes no pretense of being definitive; (2) that each of these constitutive elements may be strictly related to its anatomic conditions. It is evident that we are far from possessing the secret of such a mechanism.

An attempt has been made to put the question in a more precise and limited form by studying the brains of men distinguished in different lines. But this method, in avoiding the difficulty, answers our question indirectly only. Most often great inventors possess qualities besides imagination indispensable for success (Napoleon, James Watt, etc.). How draw a dividing line so as to assign to the imagination only its rightful share? In addition, the anatomical determination is beset with difficulties.

A method flourishing very greatly about the middle of the nineteenth century consisted of weighing carefully a large number of brains and drawing various conclusions as to intellectual superiority or inferiority from a comparison of the weights. We find on this point numerous documents in the special works published during the period mentioned. But this method of weights has given rise to so many surprises and difficulties in the way of explanation that it has been quite necessary to give it up, since we see in it only another element of the problem.

Nowadays we attribute the greatest importance to the morphology of the brain, to its histological structure, the marked development of certain regions, the determination not only of centers but of connections and associations between centers. On this last point contemporary anatomists have given themselves up to eager researches, and, although the cerebral architecture is not conceived by all in the same way, it is proper for psychology to note that all with their "centers" or "associational system" try to translate into their own language the complex conditions of mental life. Since we must choose from among these various anatomical views let us accept that of Flechsig, one of the most renowned and one having also the advantage of putting directly the problem of the organic conditions of the imagination.

We know that Flechsig relies on the embryological method—that is, on the development—in the order of time, of nerves and centers. For him there exist on the one hand sensitive regions (sensory-motor), occupying about a third of the cortical surface; on the other hand, association-centers, occupying the remaining part.

So far as the sensory centers are concerned, development occurs in the following order: Organic sensations (middle of cerebral cortex), smell (base of the brain and part of the frontal lobes), sight (occipital lobe), hearing (first temporal). Whence it results that in a definite part of the brain the body comes to proper consciousness of its impulses, wants, appetites, pains, movements, etc., and that this part develops first—"knowledge of the body precedes that of the outside world."

In what concerns the associational centers, Flechsig supposes three regions: The great posterior center (parieto-occipito-temporal); another, much smaller, anterior or frontal; and a middle center, the smallest of all (the Island of Reil). Comparative anatomy proves that the associational centers are more important than those of sensation. Among the lower mammals they develop as we go up the scale: "That which makes the psychic man may be said to be the centers of association that he possesses." In the new-born child the sensitive centers are isolated, and, in the absence of connections between them, the unity of the self cannot be manifested; there is a plurality of consciousness.

This much admitted, let us return to our special question, which Flechsig asks in these words: "On what does genius rest? Is it based on a special structure in the brain, or rather on special irritability? that is, according to our present notions, on chemical factors? We may hold the first opinion with all possible force. Genius is always united to a special structure, to a particular organization of the brain." All parts of this organ do not have the same value. It has been long admitted that the frontal part may serve as a measure of intellectual capacity; but we must allow, contrariwise, that there are other regions, "principally a center located under the protuberance at the top of the head, which is very much developed in all men of genius whose brains have been studied down to our day. In Beethoven, and probably also in Bach, the enormous development of this part of the brain is striking. In great scientists like Gauss the centers of the posterior region of the brain and those of the frontal region are strongly developed. The scientific genius thus shows proportions of brain-structure other than the artistic genius."[25] There would then be, according to our author, a preponderance of the frontal and parietal regions—the former obtain especially among artists; the latter among scientists. Already, twenty years before Flechsig, Ruedinger had noted the extraordinary development of the parietal convolutions in eminent men after a study of eighteen brains. All the convolutions and fissures were so developed, said he, that the parieto-occipital region had an altogether peculiar character.

By way of summary we must bear in mind that, as regards anatomical conditions, even when depending on the best of sources, we can at present give only fragmentary, incomplete, hypothetical views.

Let us now go on to the physiology.

II

We might have rightly asked whether the physiological states existing along with the working of the creative imagination are the cause, effect, or merely the accompaniment of this activity. Probably all the three conditions are met with. First, concomitance is an accomplished fact, and we may consider it as an organic manifestation parallel to that of the mind. Again, the employment of artificial means to excite and maintain the effervescence of the imagination assigns a causal or antecedent position to the physiologic conditions. Lastly, the psychic activity may be initial and productive of changes in the organism, or, if these already exist, may augment and prolong them.

The most instructive instances are those indicated by very clear manifestations and profound modifications of the bodily condition. Such are the moments of inspiration or simply those of warmth from work which arise in the form of sudden impulses.

The general fact of most importance consists of changes in the blood circulation. Increase of intellectual activity means an increase of work in the cortical cells, dependent on a congested, sometimes a temporarily anaemic state. Hyperaemia seems rather the rule, but we also know that slight anaemia increases cortical excitability. "Weak, contracted pulse; pale, chilly skin; overheated head; brilliant, sunken, roving eyes," such is the classic, frequently quoted description of the physiological state during creative labor. There are numerous inventors who, of their own accord, have noted these changes—irregular pulse, in the case of Lagrange; congestion of the head, in Beethoven, who made use of cold douches to relieve it, etc. This elevation of the vital tone, this nervous tension, translates itself also into motor form through movements analogous to reflexes, without special end, mechanically repeated and always the same in the same man—e.g., movement of the feet, hands, fingers; whittling the table or the arms of a chair (as in the case of Napoleon when he was elaborating a plan of campaign), etc. It is a safety-valve for the excessive flow of nervous impulse, and it is admitted that this method of expenditure is not useless for preserving the understanding in all its clearness. In a word, increase of the cerebral circulation is the formula covering the majority of observations on this subject.

Does experimentation, strictly so called, teach us anything on this point? Numerous and well-known physiological researches, especially those of Mosso, show that all intellectual, and, most of all, emotional, work, produces cerebral congestion; that the brain-volume increases, and the volume of the peripheral organs diminishes. But that tells us nothing particularly about the imagination, which is but a special case under the rule. Latterly, indeed, it has been proposed to study inventors by an objective method through the examination of their several circulatory, respiratory, digestive apparatus; their general and special sensibility; the modes of their memory and forms of association, their intellectual processes, etc. But up to this time no conclusion has been drawn from these individual descriptions that would allow any generalization. Besides, has an experiment, in the strict sense of the word, ever been made at the "psychological moment"? I know of none. Would it be possible? Let us admit that by some happy chance the experimenter, using all his means of investigation, can have the subject under his hand at the exact moment of inspiration—of the sudden, fertile, brief creative impulse—would not the experiment itself be a disturbing cause, so that the result would be ipso facto vitiated, or at least unconvincing?

There still remains a mass of facts deserving summary notice—the oddities of inventors. Were we to collect only those that may be regarded as authentic we could make a thick volume. Despite their anecdotal character these evidences do not seem to be unworthy of some regard.

It is impossible to enter here upon an enumeration that would be endless. After having collected for my own information a large number of these strange peculiarities, it seems to me that they are reducible to two categories:

(1) Those inexplicable freaks dependent on the individual constitution, and more often probably also on experiences in life the memory of which has been lost. Schiller, for example, kept rotten apples in his work desk.

(2) The others, more numerous, are easy to explain. They are physiological means consciously or unconsciously chosen to aid creative work; they are auxiliary helpers of the imagination.

The most frequent method consists of artificially increasing the flow of blood to the brain. Rousseau would think bare-headed in full sunshine; Bossuet would work in a cold room with his head wrapped in furs; others would immerse their feet in ice-cold water (Gretry, Schiller). Very numerous are those who think "horizontally"—that is, lying stretched out and often flattened under their blankets (Milton, Descartes, Leibniz, Rossini, etc.)

Some require motor excitation; they work only when walking,[26] or else prepare for work by physical exercise (Mozart). For variety's sake, let us note those who must have the noise of the streets, crowds, talk, festivities, in order to invent. For others there must be external pomp and a personal part in the scene (Machiavelli, Buffon). Guido Reni would paint only when dressed in magnificent style, his pupils crowded about him and attending to his wants in respectful silence.

On the opposite side are those requiring retirement, silence, contemplation, even shadowy darkness, like Lamennais. In this class we find especially scientists and thinkers—Tycho-Brahe, who for twenty-one years scarcely left his observatory; Leibniz, who could remain for three days almost motionless in an armchair.

But most methods are too artificial or too strong not to become quickly noxious. Every one knows what they are—abuse of wine, alcoholic liquors, narcotics, tobacco, coffee, etc., prolonged periods of wakefulness, less for increasing the time for work than to cause a state of hyperesthesia and a morbid sensibility (Goncourt).

Summing up: The organic bases of the creative imagination, if there are any specially its own, remain to be determined. For in all that has been said we have been concerned only with some conditions of the general working of the mind—assimilation as well as invention. The eccentricities of inventors studied carefully and in a detailed manner would finally, perhaps, be most instructive material, because it would allow us to penetrate into their inmost individuality. Thus, the physiology of the imagination quickly becomes pathology. I shall not dwell on this, having purposely eliminated the morbid side of our subject. It will, however, be necessary to return thereto, touching upon it in another part of this essay.

III

There remains a problem, so obscure and enigmatic that I scarcely venture to approach it, in the analogy that most languages—the spontaneous expression of a common thought—establish between physiologic and psychic creation. Is it only a superficial likeness, a hasty judgment, a metaphor, or does it rest on some positive basis? Generally, the various manifestations of mental activity have as their precursor an unconscious form from which they arise. The sensitiveness belonging to living substance, known by the names heliotropism, chemotropism, etc., is like a sketch of sensation and of the reactions following it; organic memory is the basis and the obliterated form of conscious memory. Reflexes introduce voluntary activity; appetitions and hidden tendencies are the forerunners of effective psychology. Instinct, on several sides, is like an unconscious and specific trial of reason. Has the creative power of the human mind also analogous antecedents, a physiological equivalent?

One metaphysician, Froschammer, who has elevated the creative imagination to the rank of primary world-principle, asserts this positively. For him there is an objective or cosmic imagination working in nature, producing the innumerable varieties of vegetable and animal forms; transformed into subjective imagination it becomes in the human brain the source of a new form of creation. "The very same principle causes the living forms to appear—a sort of objective image—and the subjective images, a kind of living form."[27] However ingenious and attractive this philosophical theory may be, it is evidently of no positive value for psychology.

Let us stick to experience. Physiology teaches that generation is a "prolonged nutrition," a surplus, as we see so plainly in the lower forms of agamous generation (budding, division). The creative imagination likewise presupposes a superabundance of psychic life that might otherwise spend itself in another way. Generation in the physical order is a spontaneous, natural tendency, although it may be stimulated, successfully or otherwise, by artificial means. We can say as much of the other. This list of resemblances it would be easy to prolong. But all this is insufficient for the establishment of a thorough identity between the two cases and the solution of the question.

It is possible to limit it, to put it into more precise language. Is there a connection between the development of the generative function and that of the imagination? Even in this form the question scarcely permits any but vague answers. In favor of a connection we may allege:

(1) The well-known influence of puberty on the imagination of both sexes, expressing itself in day-dreams, in aspirations toward an unattainable ideal,[28] in the genius for invention that love bestows upon the least favored. Let us recall also the mental troubles, the psychoses designated by the name hebephrenia. With adolescence coincides the first flowering of the fancy which, having emerged from its swaddling-clothes of childhood, is not yet sophisticated and rationalized.

It is not a matter of indifference for the general thesis of the present work to note that this development of the imagination depends wholly on the first effervescence of the emotional life. That "influence of the feelings on the imagination" and of "the imagination on the feelings" of which the moralists and the older psychologists speak so often is a vague formula for expressing this fact—that the motor element included in the images is reinforced.

(2) Per contra, the weakening of the generative power and of the constructive imagination coincide in old age, which is, in a word, a decay of nutrition, a progressive atrophy. It is proper not to omit the influence of castration. According to the theory of Brown-Sequard, it produces an abatement of the nutritive functions through the suppression of an internal stimulus; and, although its relations to the imagination have not been especially studied, it is not rash to admit that it is an arresting cause.

However, the foregoing merely establishes, between the functions compared, a concomitance in the general course of their evolution and in their critical periods; it is insufficient for a conclusion. There would be needed clear, authentic and sufficiently numerous observations proving that individuals bereft of imagination of the creative type have acquired it suddenly through the sole fact of their sexual influences, and, inversely, that brilliant imaginations have faded under the contrary conditions. We find some of these evidences in Cabanis,[29] Moreau de Tours and various alienists; they would seem to be in favor of the affirmative, but some seem to me not sure enough, others not explicit enough. Despite my investigations on this point, and inquiry of competent persons, I do not venture to draw a definite conclusion. I leave the question open; it will perhaps tempt another more fortunate investigator.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] Flechsig, Gehirn und Seele, 1896.

[26] Is it possible that this would explain the fact of Aristotle lecturing to his pupils while walking about, thus giving the name "peripatetic" to his school and system? (Tr.)

[27] Die Phantasie als Grundprincip der Weltprocesses, Muenchen, 1877. For other details on the subject, see Appendix C.

[28] A passage from Chateaubriand (cited by Paulhan, Rev. Philos., March, 1898, p. 237) is a typical description of the situation: "The warmth of my (adolescent) imagination, my shyness, and solitude, caused me, instead of casting myself on something without, to fall back upon myself. Wanting a real object, I evoked through the power of my desires, a phantom, which thenceforth never left me; I made a woman, composed of all the women that I had already seen. That charming idea followed me everywhere, though invisible; I conversed with her as with a real being; she would change according to my frenzy. Pygmalion was less enamored of his statue."

[29] Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et du Moral, edition Peisse, pp. 248-249, an anecdote that he relates after Buffon. Analogous, but less clear, facts may also be found in Moreau de Tours' Psychologie morbide.



CHAPTER V

THE PRINCIPLE OF UNITY

The psychological nature of the imagination would be very imperfectly known were we limited to the foregoing analytical study. Indeed, all creation whatever, great or small, shows an organic character; it implies a unifying, synthetic principle. Every one of the three factors—intellectual, emotional, unconscious—works not as an isolated fact on its own account; they have no worth save through their union, and no signification save through their common bearing. This principle of unity, which all invention demands and requires, is at one time intellectual in nature, i.e., as a fixed idea; at another time emotional, i.e., as a fixed emotion or passion. These terms—fixed idea, fixed emotion—are somewhat absolute and require restrictions and reservations, which will be made in what follows.

The distinction between the two is not at all absolute. Every fixed idea is supported and maintained by a need, a tendency, a desire; i.e., by an affective element. For it is idle fancy to believe in the persistence of an idea which, by hypothesis, would be a purely intellectual state, cold and dry. The principle of unity in this form naturally predominates in certain kinds of creation: in the practical imagination wherein the end is clear, where images are direct substitutes for things, where invention is subjected to strict conditions under penalty of visible and palpable check; in the scientific and metaphysical imagination, which works with concepts and is subject to the laws of rational logic.

Every fixed emotion should realize itself in an idea or image that gives it body and systematizes it, without which it remains diffuse; and all affective states can take on this permanent form which makes a unified principle of them. The simple emotions (fear, love, joy, sorrow, etc.), the complex or derived emotions (religious, esthetic, intellectual ideas) may equally monopolize consciousness in their own interests.

We thus see that these two terms—fixed idea, fixed emotion—are almost equivalent, for they both imply inseparable elements, and serve only to indicate the preponderance of one or the other element.

This principle of unity, center of attraction and support of all the working of the creative imagination—that is, a subjective principle tending to become objectified—is the ideal. In the complete sense of the word—not restrained merely to esthetic creation or made synonymous with perfection as in ethics—the ideal is a construction in images that should become a reality. If we liken imaginative creation to physiological generation, the ideal is the ovum awaiting fertilization in order to begin its development.

We could, to be more exact, make a distinction between the synthetic principle and the ideal conception which is a higher form of it. The fixation of an end and the discovery of appropriate means are the necessary and sufficient conditions for all invention. A creation, whatever it be, that looks only to present success, can satisfy itself with a unifying principle that renders it viable and organized, but we can look higher than the merely necessary and sufficient.

The ideal is the principle of unity in motion in its historic evolution; like all development, it advances or recedes according to the times. Nothing is less justified than the conception of a fixed archetype (an undisguised survival of the Platonic Ideas), illuminating the inventor, who reproduces it as best he can. The ideal is a nonentity; it arises in the inventor and through him; its life is a becoming.

Psychologically, it is a construction in images belonging to the merely sketched or outlined type.[30] It results from a double activity, negative and positive, or dissociation and association, the first cause and origin of which is found in a will that it shall be so; it is the motor tendency of images in the nascent state engendering the ideal. The inventor cuts out, suppresses, sifts, according to his temperament, character, taste, prejudices, sympathies and antipathies—in short, his interest. In this separation, already studied, let us note one important particular. "We know nothing of the complex psychic production that may simply be the sum of component elements and in which they would remain with their own characters, with no modification. The nature of the components disappears in order to give birth to a novel phenomenon that has its own and particular features. The construction of the ideal is not a mere grouping of past experiences; in its totality it has its own individual characteristics, among which we no more see the composing lines than we see the components, oxygen and hydrogen, in water. In no scientific or artistic production, says Wundt, does the whole appear as made up of its parts, like a mosaic."[31] In other words, it is a case of mental chemistry. The exactness of this expression, which is due, I believe, to J. Stuart Mill, has been questioned. Still it answers to positive facts; for example, in perception, to the phenomena of contrast and their analogues; juxtaposition or rapid succession of two different colors, two different sounds, of tactile, olfactory, gustatory impressions different in quality, produces a particular state of consciousness, similar to a combination. Harmony or discord does not, indeed, exist in each separate sound, but only in the relations and sequence of sounds—it is a tertium quid. We have heretofore, in the discussion of association of ideas, very frequently represented the states of consciousness as fixed elements that approach one another, cohere, separate, come together anew, but always unalterable, like atoms. It is not so at all. Consciousness, says Titchener, resembles a fresco in which the transition between colors is made through all kinds of intermediate stages of light and shade.... The idea of a pen or of an inkwell is not a stable thing clearly pictured like the pen or inkwell itself. More than any one else, William James has insisted on this point in his theory of "fringes" of states of consciousness. Outside of the given instances we could find many others among the various manifestations of the mental life. It is not, then, at all chimerical to assume in psychology an equivalent of chemical combination. In a complex state there is, in addition to the component elements, the result of their reciprocal influences, of their varying relations. Too often we forget this resultant.

At bottom the ideal is an individual concept. If objection is offered that an ideal common to a large mass of men is a fact of common experience (e.g., idealists and realists in the fine arts, and even more so religious, moral, social and political concepts, etc.), the answer is easy: There are families of minds. They have a common ideal because, in certain matters, they have the same way of feeling and thinking. It is not a transcendental idea that unites them; but this result occurs because from their common aspirations the collective ideal becomes disengaged; it is, in scholastic terminology, a universale post rem.

The ideal conception is the first moment of the creative act, which is not yet battling with the conditions of the actual. It is only the internal vision of an individual mind that has not yet been projected externally with a form and body. We know how the passage from the internal to the external life has given rise among inventors to deceptions and complaints. Such was the imaginative construction that could not, unchanged, enter into its mould and become a reality.

Let us now examine the various forms of this coagulating[32] principle in advancing from the lowest to the highest, from the unity vaguely anticipated to the absolute and tyrannical masterful unity. Following a method that seems to me best adapted for these ill-explained questions I shall single out only the principal forms, which I have reduced to three—the unstable, the organic or middle, and the extreme or semi-morbid unity.

(1) The unstable form has its starting point directly and immediately in the reproductive imagination without creation. It assembles its elements somewhat by chance and stitches together the bits of our life; it ends only in beginnings, in attempts. The unity-principle is a momentary disposition, vacillating and changing without cessation according to the external impressions or modifications of our vital conditions and of our humor. By way of example let us recall the state of the day-dreamer building castles in the air; the delirious constructions of the insane, the inventions of the child following all the fluctuations of chance, of its caprice; the half-coherent dreams that seem to the dreamer to contain a creative germ. In consequence of the extreme frailty of the synthetic principle the creative imagination does not succeed in accomplishing its task and remains in a condition intermediate between simple association of ideas and creation proper.

(2) The organic or middle form may be given as the type of the unifying power. Ultimately it reduces itself to attention and presupposes nothing more, because, thanks to the process of "localization," which is the essential mark of attention, it makes itself a center of attraction, grouping about the leading idea the images, associations, judgments, tendencies and voluntary efforts. "Inspiration," the poet Grillparzer used to say, "is a concentration of all the forces and capacities upon a single point which, for the time being, should represent the world rather than enclose it. The reinforcement of the state of the mind comes from the fact that its several powers, instead of spreading themselves over the whole world, are contained within the bounds of a single object, touch one another, reciprocally help and reinforce each other."[33] What the poet here maintains as regards esthetics only is applicable to all the organic forms of creation—that is to those ruled by an immanent logic, and, like them, resembling works of Nature.

In order to leave no doubt as to the identity of attention and imaginative synthesis, and in order to show that it is normally the true unifying principle, we offer the following remarks:

Attention is at times spontaneous, natural, without effort, simply dependent on the interest that a thing excites in us—lasting as long as it holds us in subjection, then ceasing entirely. Again, it is voluntary, artificial, an imitation of the other, precarious and intermittent, maintained with effort—in a word, laborious. The same is true of the imagination. The moment of inspiration is ruled by a perfect and spontaneous unity; its impersonality approaches that of the forces of Nature. Then appears the personal moment, the detailed working and long, painful, intermittent resumptions, the miserable turns of which so many inventors have described. The analogy between the two cases seems to me incontestable.

Next let us note that psychologists always adduce the same examples when they wish to illustrate on the one hand, the processes of the persistent, tenacious attention, and, on the other hand, the developmental labor without which creative work does not come to pass: "Genius is only long patience," the saying of Newton; "always thinking of it," and like expressions of d'Alembert, Helmholtz and others, because in the one case as in the other the fundamental condition is the existence of a fixed, ever-active idea, notwithstanding its relaxations and its incessant disappearances into the unconscious with return to consciousness.

(3) The extreme form, which from its nature is semi-morbid, becomes in its highest degree plainly pathological; the unifying principle changes to a condition of obsession.

The normal state of our mind is a plurality of states of consciousness (polyideism). Through association there is a radiation in every direction. In this totality of coexisting images no one long occupies first place; it is driven away by others, which are displaced in turn by still others emerging from the penumbra. On the contrary, in attention (relative monoideism) a single image retains first place for a long time and tends to have the same importance again. Finally, in a condition of obsession (absolute monoideism) the fixed idea defies all rivalry and rules despotically. Many inventors have suffered painfully this tyranny and have vainly struggled to break it. The fixed idea, once settled, does not permit anything to dislodge it save for the moment and with much pain. Even then it is displaced only apparently, for it persists in the unconscious life where it has thrust its deep roots.

At this stage the unifying principle, although it can act as a stimulus for creation, is no longer normal. Consequently, a natural question arises: Wherein is there a difference between the obsession of the inventor and the obsession of the insane, who most generally destroys in place of creating?

The nature of fixed ideas has greatly occupied contemporary alienists. For other reasons and in their own way they, too, have been led to divide obsession into two classes, the intellectual and emotional, according as the idea or the affective state predominates. Then they have been led to ask: Which of these two elements is the primitive one? For some it is the idea. For others, and it seems that these are the more numerous, the affective state is in general the primary fact; the obsession always rests on a basis of morbid emotion and in a retention of impressions.[34]

But whatever opinion we may hold on this point, the difficulty of establishing a dividing line between the two forms of obsession above mentioned remains the same. Are there characters peculiar to each one?

It has been said: "The physiologically fixed idea is normally longed for, often sought, in all cases accepted, and it does not break the unity of the self." It does not impose itself fatally on consciousness; the individual knows the value thereof, knows where it leads him, and adapts his conduct to its requirements. For example, Christopher Columbus.

The pathological fixed idea is "parasitic," automatic, discordant, irresistible. Obsession is only a special case of psychic disintegration, a kind of doubling of consciousness. The individual becomes a person "possessed," whose self has been confiscated for the sake of the fixed idea, and whose submission to his situation is wrought with pain.

In spite of this parallel the distinguishing criterion between the two is very vague, because from the sane to the delirious idea the transitions are very numerous. We are obliged to recognize "that with certain workers—who are rather taken up with the elaboration of their work, and not masters directing it, quitting it, and resuming it at their pleasure—an artistic, scientific, or mechanical conception succeeds in haunting the mind, imposing itself upon it even to the extent of causing suffering." In reality, pure psychology is unable to discover a positive difference between obsession leading to creative work and the other forms, because in both cases the mental mechanism is, at bottom, the same. The criterion must be sought elsewhere. For that we must go out of the internal world and proceed objectively. We must judge the fixed idea not in itself but by its effects. What does it produce in the practical, esthetic, scientific, moral, social, religious field? It is of value according to its fruits. If objection be made to this change of front we may, in order to stick to a strictly psychological point of view, state that it is certain that as soon as it passes beyond a middle point, which it is difficult to determine, the fixed idea profoundly troubles the mechanism of the mind. In imaginative persons this is not rare, which partly explains why the pathological theory of genius (of which we shall speak later) has been able to rally so many to its support and to allege so many facts in its favor.

FOOTNOTES:

[30] For the distinction between this form of imagination and the two others (fixed, objectified), I refer the reader to the Conclusion of this work, where the subject will be treated in detail.

[31] Colozza, L'immaginazione nella Scienza, Rome, 1900, pp. 111 ff.

[32] This unifying, organizing, creative principle is so active in certain minds that, placed face to face with any work whatever—novel, picture, monument, scientific or philosophic theory, financial or political institution—while believing that they are merely considering it, they spontaneously remake it. This characteristic of their psychology distinguishes them from mere critics.

[33] Oelzelt-Newin, op. cit., p. 49.

[34] Pitres et Regis, Semeiologie des obsessions et des idees fixes, 1878. Seglas, Lecons cliniques sur les maladies mentales, 1895. Raymond et Janet, Nevroses et idees fixes, 1898.



SECOND PART

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IMAGINATION.



CHAPTER I

IMAGINATION IN ANIMALS

Up to this point the imagination has been treated analytically only. This process alone would give us but a very imperfect idea of its essentially concrete and lively nature were we to stop here. So this part continues the subject in another shape. I shall attempt to follow the imagination in its ascending development from the lowest to the most complex forms, from the animal to the human infant, to primitive man, thence to the highest modes of invention. It will thus be exhibited in the inexhaustible variety of its manifestations which the abstract and simplifying process of analysis does not permit us to suspect.

I

I shall not dwell at length on the imagination of animals, not only because the question is much involved but also because it is hardly liable to a positive solution. Even eliminating mere anecdotes and doubtful observations, there is no lack of verified and authentic material, but it still remains to interpret them. As soon as we begin to conjecture we know how difficult it is to divest ourselves of all anthropomorphism.

The question has been formulated, even if not treated, with much system by Romanes in his Mental Evolution in Animals.[35] Taking "imagination" in its broadest sense, he recognizes four stages:

1. Provoked revival of images. For example, the sight of an orange reminds one of its taste. This is a low form of memory, resting on association by contiguity. It is met with very far down in the animal scale, and the author furnishes abundant proof of it.

2. Spontaneous revival. An object present calls up an absent object. This is a higher form of memory, frequent in ants, bees, wasps, etc., which fact explains the mistrustful sagacity of wild animals. At night, the distant baying of a hound stops the fox in his course, because all the dangers he has undergone are represented in his mind.

These two stages do not go beyond memory pure and simple, i.e., reproductive imagination. The other two constitute the higher imagination.

3. The capacity of associating absent images, without suggestion derived from without, through an internal working of the mind. It is the lower and primitive form of the creative imagination, which may be called a passive synthesis. In order to establish its existence, Romanes reminds us that dreams have been proven in dogs, horses, and a large number of birds; that certain animals, especially in anger, seem to be subject to delusions and pursued by phantoms; and lastly, that in some there is produced a condition resembling nostalgia, expressing itself in a violent desire to return to former haunts, or in a wasting away resulting from the absence of accustomed persons and things. All these facts, especially the latter, can hardly be explained without a vivid recollection of the images of previous life.

4. The highest stage consists of intentionally reuniting images in order to make novel combinations from them. This may be called an active synthesis, and is the true creative imagination. Is this sometimes found in the animal kingdom? Romanes very clearly replies, no; and not without offering a plausible reason. For creation, says he, there must first be capacity for abstraction, and, without speech, abstraction is very weak. One of the conditions for creative imagination is thus wanting in the higher animals.

We here come to one of those critical moments, so frequent in animal psychology, when one asks, Is this character exclusively human, or is it found in embryo in lower forms? Thus it has been possible to support a theory opposing that of Romanes. Certain animals, says Oelzelt-Newin, fulfill all the conditions necessary for creative imagination—subtle senses, good memory, and appropriate emotional states.[36] This assertion is perhaps true, but it is purely dialectic. It is equivalent to saying that the thing is possible; it does not establish it as a fact. Besides, is it very certain that all the conditions for creative imagination are present here, since we have just shown that there is lack of abstraction? The author, who voluntarily limits his study to birds and the construction of their nests, maintains, against Wallace and others, that nest-building requires "the mysterious synthesis of representations." We might with equal reason bring the instances of other building animals (bees, wasps, white ants, the common ants, beavers, etc.). It is not unreasonable to attribute to them an anticipated representation of their architecture. Shall we say that it is "instinctive," consequently unconscious? At least, may we not group under this head, changes and adaptations to new conditions which these animals succeed in applying to the typical plans of their construction? Observations and even systematic experiments (like those of Huber, Forel, et al.) show that, reduced to the alternative of the impossibility of building or the modification of their habits, certain animals modify them. Judging from this, how refuse them invention altogether? This contradicts in no way the very just reservation of Romanes. It is sufficient to remark that abstraction or dissociation has stages, that the simplest are accessible to the animal intelligence. If, in the absence of words, the logic of concepts is forbidden it, there yet remains the logic of images,[37] which is sufficient for slight innovations. In a word, animals can invent according to the extent that they can dissociate.

In our opinion, if we may with any truthfulness attribute a creative power to animals, we must seek it elsewhere. Generally speaking, we attribute only a mediocre importance to a manifestation that might very well be the proper form of animal fancy. It is purely motor, and expresses itself through the various kinds of play.

Although play may be as old as mankind, its psychology dates only from the nineteenth century. We have already seen that there are three theories concerning its nature—it is "expenditure of superfluous activity," "a mending, restoring of strength, a recuperation," "an apprenticeship, a preliminary exercise for the active functions of life and for the development of our natural gifts."[38] The last position, due to Groos, does not rule out the other two; it holds the first valid for the young, the second for adults; but it comprehends both in a more general explanation.

Let us leave this doctrinal question in order to call attention to the variety and richness of form of play in the animal world. In this respect the aforementioned book of Groos is a rich mine of evidence to which I would refer the reader. I limit myself to summing up his classification. He distinguishes nine classes of play, viz.: (1) Those that are at bottom experimental, consisting of trials at hazard without immediate end, often giving the animal a certain knowledge of the properties of the external world. This is the introduction to an experimental physics, optics, and mechanics for the brood of animals. (2) Movements or changes of place executed of their own accord—a very general fact as is proven by the incessant movements of butterflies, flies, birds, and even fishes, which often appear to play in the water rather than to seek prey; the mad running of horses, dogs, etc., in free space. (3) Mimicry of hunting, i.e., playing with a living or dead prey: the dog and cat following moving objects, a ball, feather, etc. (4) Mimic battles, teasing and fighting without anger. (5) Architectural art, revealing itself especially in the building of nests: certain birds ornament them with shining objects (stones, bits of glass), by a kind of anticipation of the esthetic feeling. (6) Doll-play is universal in mankind, whether civilized or savage. Groos believes he has found its equivalent in certain animals. (7) Imitation through pleasure, so familiar in monkeys (grimaces); singing-birds which counterfeit the voices of a large number of beasts. (8) Curiosity, which is the only mental play one meets in animals—the dog watching, from a wall or window, what is going on in the street. (9) Love-plays, "which differ from the others in that they are not mere exercises, but have in view a real object." They have been well-known since Darwin's time, he attributing to them an esthetic value which has been denied by Wallace, Tylor, Lloyd Morgan, Wallaschek, and Groos.

Let us recapitulate in thought the immense quantity of motor expressions included in these nine categories and let us note that they have the following characters in common: They are grouped in combinations that are often new and unforeseen; they are not a repetition of daily life, acts necessary for self-preservation. At one time the movements are combined simultaneously (exhibition of beautiful colors), again (and most often) successively (amorous parades, fights, flight, dancing, emission of noises, sounds or songs); but, under one form or another, there is creation, invention. Here, the imagination acts in its purely motor character; it consists of a small number of images that become translated into actions, and serve as a center for their grouping; perhaps even the image itself is hardly conscious, so that all is limited to a spontaneous production and a collection of motor phenomena.

It will doubtless be said that this form of imagination belongs to a very shallow, poor psychology. It cannot be otherwise. It is necessary that imaginative production be found reduced to its simplest expression in animals, and the motor form must be its special characteristic mark. It cannot have any others for the following reasons: incapacity for the work that necessarily precedes abstraction or dissociation, breaking into bits the data of experience, making them raw material for the future construction; lack of images, and especially fewness of possible combinations of images. This last point is proven alike from the data of animal psychology and of comparative anatomy. We know that the nervous elements in the brain serving as connections between sensory regions—whether one conceive of them as centers (Flechsig), or as bundles of commisural fibers (Meynert, Wernicke)—are hardly outlined in the lower mammalia and attain only a mediocre development in the higher forms.

By way of corroboration of the foregoing, let us compare the higher animals with young children: this comparison is not based on a few far-fetched analogies, but in a thorough resemblance in nature. Man, during the first years of his life, has a brain but slightly differentiated, especially as regards connections, a very poor supply of images, a very weak capacity for abstraction. His intellectual development is much inferior to that of reflex, instinctive, impulsive, and imitative movements. In consequence of this predominance of the motor system, the simple and imperfect images, in children as in animals, tend to be immediately changed into movements. Even most of their inventions in play are greatly inferior to those enumerated above under nine distinct heads.

A serious argument in favor of the prevalence of imagination of the motor type in the child is furnished by the principal part taken by movements in infantile insanity: a remark made by many alienists. The first stage of this madness, they say, is found in the convulsions that are not merely a physical ailment, but "a muscular delirium." The disturbance of the automatic and instinctive functions of the child is so often associated with muscular disturbances that at this age the mental disorders correspond to the motor ganglionic centers situated below those parts that later assume the labor of analysis and of imagination. The disturbances are in the primary centers of organization and according to the symptoms lack those analytic or constructive qualities, those ideal forms, that we find in adult insanity. If we descend to the lowest stage of human life—to the baby—we see that insanity consists almost entirely of the activity of a muscular group acting on external objects. The insane baby bites, kicks, and these symptoms are the external measure of the degree of its madness.[39] Has not chorea itself been called a muscular insanity?

Doubtless, there likewise exists in the child a sensorial madness (illusions, hallucinations); but by reason of its feeble intellectual development the delirium causes a disorder of movements rather than of images; its insane imagination is above all a motor insanity.

To hold that the creative imagination belonging to animals consists of new combinations of movements is certainly an hypothesis. Nevertheless, I do not believe that it is merely a mental form without foundation, if we take into account the foregoing facts. I consider it rather as a point in favor of the motor theory of invention. It is a singular instance in which the original form of creation is shown bare. If we wanted to discover it, it would be necessary to seek it where it is reduced to the greatest simplicity—in the animal world.

FOOTNOTES:

[35] Chapter X.

[36] Op. cit., Appendix.

[37] For a more detailed study of this subject, the reader is referred to the author's Evolution of General Ideas (English trans., Open Court Publishing Co., Chicago), chapter I, section I.

[38] A rather extended study of the subject by H. A. Carr will be found in the Investigations of the Department of Psychology and Education of the University of Colorado, vol. I, Number 2, 1902. The late Professor Arthur Allin devoted much time to the investigation of play. See his brief article entitled "Play" in the University of Colorado Studies, vol. I, 1902, pp. 58-73. (Tr.)

[39] Hack Tuke, "Insanity of Children," in Dictionary of Psychological Medicine.



CHAPTER II

THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION IN THE CHILD

At what age, in what form, under what conditions does the creative imagination make its appearance? It is impossible to answer this question, which, moreover, has no justification. For the creative imagination develops little by little out of pure reproduction by an evolutionary process, not by sudden eruption. Nevertheless, its evolution is very slow on account of causes both organic and psychological.

We could not dwell long on the organic causes without falling into tiresome repetitions. The new-born infant is a spinal being, with an unformed diffluent brain, composed largely of water. Reflex life itself is not complete in him, and the cortico-motor system only hinted at; the sensory centers are undifferentiated, the associational systems remain isolated for a long time after birth. We have given above Flechsig's observation on this point.

The psychological causes reduce themselves to the necessity for a consolidation of the primary and secondary operations of the mind, without which the creative imagination cannot take form. To be precise, we might distinguish, as does Baldwin, four epochs in the mental development of the child: (1) affective (rudimentary sensory processes, pleasures and pains, simple motor adaptations); (2) and (3) objective, in which the author establishes two grades, (a) appearance of special senses, of memory, instincts primarily defensive, and imitation; (b) complex memory, complicated movements, offensive activities, rudimentary will; (4) subjective or final (conscious thought, constitutive will, ideal emotions). If we accept this scheme as approximately correct, the moment of imagination must be assigned to the third period (the second stage of the objective epoch) which fulfills all the sufficient and necessary conditions for its origination and for its rise above pure reproduction.

Whatever the propitious age may be, the study of the child-imagination is not without difficulties. In order to enter into the child-mind, we must become like a child; as it is, we are limited to an interpretation of it in terms of the adult, with much false interpretation possible, agreeing too much or too little with the facts. Furthermore, the children studied live and grow up in a civilized environment. The result is that the development of their imagination is rarely unhampered and complete; for as soon as their fancy passes the middle level, the rationalizing education of parents and teachers is eager to master and control it. In truth it gives its full measure and reveals itself in the fulness of growth only among primitive peoples. With us it is checked in its flight by an antagonistic power, which treats it as a harbinger of insanity. Finally, children are not equally well-suited for this study; we must make a distinction between the imaginative and non-imaginative, and the latter should be eliminated.

When we have thus chosen suitable subjects, observation shows from the start sufficiently distinct varieties, different orientations of the imagination depending on intellectual causes, such as the predominance of visual or acoustic or tactile-motor images making for mechanical invention; or dependent on emotional causes, that is, of character, according as the latter is timid, joyous, exuberant, retired, healthy, sickly, etc.

If we now attempt to follow the development of the child-imagination, we may distinguish four principal stages, without assigning them, otherwise, a rigorous chronological order.

1. The first stage consists of the passage from passive to creative imagination. Its history would be long were we to include all the hybrid forms that are made up partly of memories, partly of new groupings, being at the same time repetition and construction. Even in the adult, they are very frequent. I know a person who is always afraid of being smothered, and for this reason urgently asks that in his coffin his shirt be not tight at the neck: this odd prepossession of the mind belongs neither to memory nor to imagination. This particular case illustrates in a very clear form the nature of the first flights of the mind attempting to exercise its imaginative powers. Without enumerating other facts of this kind, it is more desirable to follow the imagination's development, limiting ourselves to two forms of the psychic life—perception and illusion. The necessary presence of the image in these two forms has been so often proven by contemporary psychology that a few words to recall this to mind will be sufficient.

There seems to be a radical difference between perception, which seizes reality, and imagination. Nevertheless, it is generally admitted that in order to rise above sensation to perception, there must be a synthesis of images. To put it more simply, two elements are required—one, coming from without, the physiological stimulus acting on the nerves and the sensory centers, which becomes translated in consciousness through the vague state that goes by the name "sensation"; the other, coming from within, adds to the sensations present appropriate images, remnants of former experiences. So that perception requires an apprenticeship; we must feel, then imperfectly perceive, in order to finally perceive well. The sensory datum is only a fraction of the total fact; and in the operation we call "perceiving," that is, apprehending an object directly, a part only of the object is represented.

This, however, does not go beyond reproductive imagination. The decisive step is taken in illusion. We know that illusion has as a basis and support a modification of the external senses which are metamorphosed, amplified by an immediate construction of the mind: a branch of a tree becomes a serpent, a distant noise seems the music of an orchestra. Illusion has as broad a field as perception, since there is no perception but may undergo this erroneous transformation, and it is produced by the same mechanism, but with interchange of the two terms. In perception, the chief element is the sensory, and the representative element is secondary; in illusion, we have just the opposite condition: what one takes as perceived is merely imagined—the imagination assumes the principal role. Illusion is the type of the transitional forms, of the mixed cases, that consist of constructions made up of memories, without being, in the strict sense, creations.

2. The creative imagination asserts itself with its peculiar characteristics only in the second stage, in the form of animism or the attributing of life to everything. This turn of the mind is already known to us, though mentioned only incidentally. As the state of the child's mind at that period resembles that which in primitive man creates myths, we shall return to it in the next chapter. Works on psychology abound in facts demonstrating that this primitive tendency to attribute life and even personality to everything is a necessary phase that the mind must undergo—long or short in duration, rich or poor in inventions, according to the level of the child's imagination. His attitude towards his dolls is the common example of this state, and also the best example, because it is universal, being found in all countries without exception, among all races of men. It is needless to pile up facts on an uncontroverted point.[40] Two will suffice; I choose them on account of their extravagance, which shows that at this particular moment animism, in certain minds, can dare anything. "One little fellow, aged one year eight months, conceived a special fondness for the letter W, addressing it thus: 'Dear old boy W.' Another little boy well on in his fourth year, when tracing a letter L, happened to slip, so that the horizontal limb formed an angle, thus:

-

He instantly saw the resemblance to the sedentary human form, and said: 'Oh, he's sitting down.' Similarly, when he made an F turn the wrong way and then put the correct form to the left, thus,

- -

he exclaimed, 'They're talking together!'" One of Sully's correspondents says: "I had the habit of attributing intelligence not only to all living creatures ... but even to stones and manufactured articles. I used to feel how dull it must be for the pebbles in the causeway to lie still and only see what was round about. When I walked out with a basket for putting flowers in, I used sometimes to pick up a pebble or two and carry them out to have a change."

Let us stop a moment in order to try to determine the nature of this strange mental state, all the more as we shall meet it again in primitive man, and since it presents the creative imagination at its beginning.

a. The first element is a fixed idea, or rather, an image, or group of images, that takes possession of consciousness to the exclusion of everything else:—it is the analogue of the state of suggestion in the hypnotized subject, with this sole difference—that the suggestion does not come from without, from another, but from the child itself—it is auto-suggestion. The stick that the child holds between his legs becomes for him an imaginary steed. The poverty of his mental development makes all the easier this contraction of the field of his consciousness, which assures the supremacy of the image.

b. This has as its basis a reality that it includes. This is an important detail to note, because this reality, however tiny, gives objectivity to the imaginary creation and incorporates it with the external world. The mechanism is like that which produces illusion, but with a stable character excluding correction. The child transforms a bit of wood or paper into another self, because he perceives only the phantom he has created; that is, the images, not the material exciting them, haunt his brain.

c. Lastly, this creative power investing the image with all its attributes of real existence is derived from a fundamental fact—the state of belief, i.e., adherence of the mind founded on purely subjective conditions. It does not come within my province to treat incidentally such a large question. Neglected by the older physiology, whose faculty-method inclined it toward this omission, belief or faith has recently become the object of numerous studies.[41] I necessarily limit myself to remarking that but for this psychic state, the nature of the imagination is totally incomprehensible. The peculiarity of the imagination is the production of a reality of human origin, and it succeeds therein only because of the faith accompanying the image.

Representation and belief are not completely separated; it is the nature of the image to appear at first as a real object. This psychological truth, though proven through observation, has made itself acceptable only with great difficulty. It has had to struggle on the one hand against the prejudices of common-sense for which imagination is synonymous with sham and vain appearance and opposed to the real as non-being to being; on the other hand, against a doctrine of the logicians who maintain that the idea is at first merely conceived with no affirmation of existence or non-existence (apprehensio simplex). This position, legitimate in logic, which is an abstract science, is altogether unacceptable in psychology, a concrete science. The psychological viewpoint giving the true nature of the image has prevailed little by little. Spinoza already asserts "that representations considered by themselves contain no errors," and he "denies that it is possible to perceive [represent] without affirming." More explicitly, Hume assigns belief to our subjective dispositions: Belief does not depend on the nature of the idea, but on the manner in which we conceive it. Existence is not a quality added to it by us; it is founded on habit and is irresistible. The difference between fiction and belief consists of a feeling added to the latter but not to the former. Dugald Stewart treats the question purely as a psychologist following the experimental method. He enumerates very many facts whence he concludes that imagination is always accompanied by an act of belief, but for which fact the more vivid the image, the less one would believe it; but just the contrary happens—the strong representation commands persuasion like sensation itself. Finally, Taine treats the subject methodically, by studying the nature of the image and its primitive character of hallucination.[42] At present, I think, there is no psychologist who does not regard as proven that the image, when it enters consciousness, has two moments. During the first, it is objective, appearing as a full and complete reality; during the second, which is definitive, it is deprived of its objectivity, reduced to a completely internal event, through the effect of other states of consciousness which oppose and finally annihilate its objective character. There is an affirmation, then negation; impulse, then inhibition.

Faith, being only a mode of existence, an attitude of the mind, owes its creative and vivifying power to general dispositions of our constitution. Besides the intellectual element which is its content, its material—the thing affirmed or denied—there are tendencies and other affective factors (desire, fear, love, etc.) giving the image its intensity, and assuring it success in the struggle against other states of consciousness. There are active faculties that we sometimes designate by the name "will," understanding by the term, as James says, not only deliberate volition, but all the factors of belief (hope, fear, passions, prejudices, sectarian feeling, and so forth),[43] and this has justly given rise to the truthful saying that the test of belief is action.[44] This explains how in love, religion, in the moral life, in politics, and elsewhere, belief can withstand the logical assaults of the rationalizing intelligence—its power is found everywhere. It lasts as long as the mind waits and consents; but, as soon as these affective and active dispositions disappear in life's experience, faith falls with them, leaving in its place a formless content, an empty and dead representation.

After this, is it necessary to remark that belief depends peculiarly on the motor elements of our organization and not on the intellectual? As there is no imagination without belief, nor belief without imagination, we return by another route to the thesis supported in the first part of this essay, that creative activity depends on the motor nature of images.

Insofar as concerns the special case of the child, the first of the two moments (the affirming) that the image undergoes in consciousness is all in all for him, the second (the rectifying) is nothing: there is hypertrophy of one, atrophy of the other. For the adult the contrary is true—in many cases, indeed, in consequence of experience and habit, the first moment, wherein the image should be affirmed as a reality, is only virtual, is literally atrophied. We must, however, remark that this applies only partially to the ignorant and even less to the savage.

We might, nevertheless, ask ourselves if the child's belief in his phantoms is complete, entire, absolute, unreserved. Is the stick that he bestrides perfectly identified with a horse? Was Sully's child, that showed its doll a series of engravings to choose from, completely deceived? It seems that we must rather admit an intermittence, an alteration between affirmation and negation. On the one hand, the skeptical attitude of those who laugh at it displeases the child, who is like a devout believer whose faith is being broken down. On the other hand, doubt must indeed arise in him from time to time, for without this, rectification could never occur—one belief opposes the other or drives it away. This second work proceeds little by little, but then, under this form, imagination retreats.

3. The third stage is that of play, which, in chronological order, coincides with the one just preceding. As a form of creation it is already known to us, but in passing from animals to children, it grows in complexity and becomes intellectualized. It is no longer a simple combination of images.

Play serves two ends—for experimenting: as such it is an introduction to knowledge, gives certain vague notions concerning the nature of things; for creating: this is its principal function.

The human child, like the animal, expends itself in movements, forms associations new to it, simulates defence, flight, attack; but the child soon passes beyond this lower stage, in order to construct by means of images (ideally). He begins by imitating: this is a physiological necessity, reasons for which we shall give later (see chapter iv. infra). He constructs houses, boats, gives himself up to large plans; but he imitates most in his own person and acts, making himself in turn soldier, sailor, robber, merchant, coachman, etc.

To the period of imitation succeed more serious attempts—he acts with a "spirit of mastery," he is possessed by his idea which he tends to realize. The personal character of creation is shown in that he is really interested only in a work that emanates from himself and of which he feels himself the cause. B. Perez relates that he wanted to give a lesson to his nephew, aged three and a half years, whose inventions seemed to him very poor. Perez scratched in the sand a trench resembling a river, planted little branches on both banks, and had water flow through it; put a bridge across, and launched boats. At each new act the child would remain cool, his admiration would always have to be waited for. Out of patience, he remarked shortly that "this isn't at all entertaining." The author adds: "I believed it useless to persist, and I trampled under foot, laughing at myself, my awkward attempt at a childish construction."[45] "I had already read it in many a book, but this time I had learned from experience that the free initiative of children is always superior to the imitations we pretend to make for them. In addition, this experience and others like it have taught me that their creative force is much weaker than has been said."

4. At the fourth stage appears romantic invention, which requires a more refined culture, being a purely internal, wholly imaginative (i.e., cast in images) creation. It begins at about three or four years of age. We know the taste of imaginative children for stories and legends, which they have repeated to them until surfeited: in this respect they resemble semi-civilized people, who listen greedily to rhapsodies for hours at a time, experiencing all the emotions appropriate to the incidents of the tale. This is the prelude to creation, a semi-passive, semi-active state, an apprentice period, which will permit them to create in their own turn. Thus the first attempts are made with reminiscences, and imitated rather than created.

Of this we find numerous examples in the special works. A child of three and a half saw a lame man going along a road, and exclaimed: "Look at that poor ole man, mamma, he has dot [got] a bad leg." Then the romance begins: He was on a high horse; he fell on a rock, struck his poor leg; he will have to get some powder to heal it, etc. Sometimes the invention is less realistic. A child of three often longed to live like a fish in the water, or like a star in the sky. Another, aged five years nine months, having found a hollow rock, invented a fairy story: the hole was a beautiful hall inhabited by brilliant mysterious personages, etc.[46]

This form of imagination is not as common as the others. It belongs to those whom nature has well endowed. It forecasts a development of mind above the average. It may even be the sign of an inborn vocation and indicate in what direction the creative activity will be orientated.

Let us briefly recall the creative role of the imagination in language, through the intervening of a factor already studied—thinking by analogy, an abundant source of often picturesque metaphors. A child called the cork of a bottle "door;" a small coin was called by a little American a "baby dollar;" another, seeing the dew on the grass, said, "The grass is crying."

The extension of the meaning of words has been studied by Taine, Darwin, Preyer, and others. They have shown that its psychological mechanism depends sometimes on the perception of resemblance, again on association by contiguity, processes that appear and intermingle in an unforeseen manner. Thus, a child applies the word "mambro" at first to his nurse, then to a sewing machine that she uses, then by analogy to an organ that he sees on the street adorned with a monkey, then to his toys representing animals.[47] We have elsewhere given more similar cases, where we perceive the fundamental difference between thought by imagery and rational thought.