To conclude: At this period the imagination is the master-faculty and the highest form of intellectual development. It works in two directions, one principal—it creates plays, invents romances, and extends language; the other secondary—it contains a germ of thought and ventures a fanciful explanation of the world which can not yet be conceived according to abstract notions and laws.

FOOTNOTES:

[40] One will find a large number of examples in Sully's work, Studies of Childhood, Chapter ii, entitled "The Age of Imagination." Most of the observations given in the present chapter have been borrowed from this author.

[41] Apropos of this subject compare especially the recent studies by William James, Varieties of Religious Experience. (Tr.)

[42] Spinoza, Ethics, II, 49, Scholium; Hume, Human Understanding, Part III, Section VII ff.; Dugald Stewart, Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Vol. I, Ch. III; Taine, On Intelligence, Part II.

[43] James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays, p. 10.

[44] Payot, De la croyance, 139 ff.

[45] B. Perez, Les trois premieres annees de l'enfant, p. 323.

[46] Sully, op. cit., pp. 59-61. Compayre, L'evolution intellectuelle et morale de l'enfant, p. 145.

(Some time ago the writer was riding on a train, when the engine, for some reason or other, began to slow up, jerking, puffing, almost groaning, until it finally came to a full stop. The groaning continued. A little girl of about three called to her mother, "Too-too sick, too-too sick," and when finally the train started on again, the child was overjoyed that "too-too" was well again. (Tr.))

[47] Sully, op. cit., p. 164.



CHAPTER III

PRIMITIVE MAN AND THE CREATION OF MYTHS

We come now to a unique period in the history of the development of the imagination—its golden age. In primitive man, still confined in savagery or just starting toward civilization, it reaches its full bloom in the creation of myths; and we are rightly astonished that psychologists, obstinately attached to esthetics, have neglected such an important form of activity, one so rich in information concerning the creative imagination. Where, indeed, find more favorable conditions for knowing it?

Man, prior to civilization, is a purely imaginative being; that is, the imagination marks the summit of his intellectual development. He does not go beyond this stage, but it is no longer an enigma as in animals, nor a transitory phase as in the civilized child who rapidly advances to the age of reason; it is a fixed state, permanent and lasting throughout life.[48] It is there revealed to us in its entire spontaneity: it has free rein; it can create without imitation or tradition; it is not imprisoned in any conventional form; it is sovereign. As primitive man has knowledge neither of nature nor of its laws, he does not hesitate to embody the most senseless imaginings flitting through his brain. The world is not, for him, a totality of phenomena subject to laws, and nothing limits or hinders him.

This working of the pure imagination, left to itself and unadulterated by the intrusion and tyranny of rational elements, becomes translated into one form—the creation of myths; an anonymous, unconscious work, which, as long as its rule lasts, is sufficient in every way, comprehends everything—religion, poetry, history, science, philosophy, law.

Myths have the advantage of being the incarnation of pure imagination, and, moreover, they permit psychologists to study them objectively. Thanks to the labors of the nineteenth century, they offer an almost inexhaustible content. While past ages forgot, misunderstood, disfigured, and often despised myths as aberrations of the human mind, as unworthy of an hour's attention, it is no longer necessary in our time to show their interest and importance, even for psychology, which, however, has not as yet drawn all the benefit possible from them.

But before commencing the psychological study of the genesis and formation of myths considered as an objective emanation of the creative imagination, we must briefly summarize the hypotheses at present offered for their origin. We find two principal ones—the one, etymological, genealogical, or linguistic; the other, ethno-psychological, or anthropological.[49]

The first, whose principal though not sole champion is Max Mueller, holds that myths are the result of a disease of language—words become things, "nomina numina." This transformation is the effect of two principal linguistic causes—(a) Polynomy; several words for one thing. Thus the sun is designated by more than twenty names in the Vedas; Apollo, Phaethon, Hercules are three personifications of the sun; Varouna (night) and Yama (death) express at first the same conception, and have become two distinct deities. In short, every word tends to become an entity having its attributes and its legends. (b) Homonomy, a single word for several things. The same adjective, "shining," refers to the sun, a fountain, spring, etc. This is another source of confusion. Let us also add metaphors taken literally, plays upon words, wrong construction, etc.

The opponents of this doctrine maintain that in the formation of myths, words represent scarcely five per cent. Whatever may be the worth of this assertion, the purely philological explanation remains without value for psychology: it is neither true nor false—it does not solve the question; it merely avoids it. The word is only an occasion, a vehicle; without the working of the mind exciting it, nothing would change. Moreover, Max Mueller himself has recently recognized this.[50]

The anthropological theory, much more general than the foregoing, penetrates further to psychological origins—it leads us to the first advances of the human mind. It regards the myth not as an accident of primitive life, but as a natural function, a mode of activity proper to man during a certain period of his development. Later, the mythic creations seem absurd, often immoral, because they are survivals of a distant epoch, cherished and consecrated through tradition, habits, and respect for antiquity. According to the definition that seems to me best adapted for psychology, the myth is "the psychological objectification of man in all the phenomena that he can perceive."[51] It is a humanization of nature according to processes peculiar to the imagination.

Are these two views irreconcilable? It does not seem so to me, provided we accept the first as only a partial explanation. In any event, both schools agree on one point important for us—that the material for myths is furnished by the observation of natural phenomena, including the great events of human life: birth, sickness, death, etc. This is the objective factor. The creation of myths has its explanation in the nature of human imagination—this is the subjective factor. We can not deny that most works on mythology have a very decided tendency to give the greater importance to the first factor; in which respect they need a little psychology. The periodic returns of the dawn, the sun, the moon and stars, winds and storms, have their effect also, we may suppose, on monkeys, elephants, and other animals supposedly the most intelligent. Have they inspired myths? Just the opposite: "the surprising monotony of the ideas that the various races have made final causes of phenomena, of the origin and destiny of man, whence it results that the numberless myths are reduced to a very small number of types,"[52] shows that it is the human imagination that takes the principal part and that it is on the whole perhaps not so rich as we are pleased to say—that it is even very poor, compared to the fecundity of nature.

Let us now study the psychology of this creative activity, reducing it to these two questions: How are myths formed? What line does their evolution follow?

I

The psychology of the origin of the myth, of the work that causes its rise, may theoretically, and for the sake of facilitating analysis, be regarded as two principal moments—that of creation proper, and that of romantic invention.

a. The moment of creation presupposes two inseparable operations which, however, we have to describe separately. The first consists of attributing life to all things, the second of assigning qualities to all things.

Animating everything, that is attributing life and action to everything, representing everything to one's self as living and acting—even mountains, rocks, and other objects (seemingly) incapable of movement. Of this inborn and irresistible tendency there are so many facts in proof that an enumeration is needless: it is the rule. The evidence gathered by ethnologists, mythologists, and travelers fills large volumes. This state of mind does not particularly belong to long-past ages. It is still in existence, it is contemporary, and if we would see it with our own eyes it is not at all necessary to plunge into virgin countries, for there are frequent reversions even in civilized lands. On the whole, says Tylor, it must be regarded as conceded that to the lower races of humanity the sun and stars, the trees and rivers, the winds and clouds, become animated creatures living like men and beasts, fulfilling their special function in creation—or rather that what the human eye can reach is only the instrument or the matter of which some gigantic being, like a man, hidden behind the visible things, makes use. The grounds on which such ideas are based cannot be regarded as less than a poetic fancy or an ill-understood metaphor; they depend on a vast philosophy of nature, certainly rude and primitive, but coherent and serious.

The second operation of the mind, inseparable, as we have said, from the first, attributes to these imaginary beings various qualities, but all important to man. They are good or bad, useful or hurtful, weak or powerful, kind or cruel. One remains stupefied before the swarming of these numberless genii whom no natural phenomenon, no act of life, no form of sickness escapes, and these beliefs remain unbroken even among the tribes that are in contact with old civilizations.[53] Primitive man lives and moves among the ceaseless phantoms of his own imagination.[54]

Lastly, the psychological mechanism of the creative moment is very simple. It depends on a single factor previously studied—thinking by analogy. It is a matter first of all—and this is important—of conceiving beings analogous to ourselves, cast in our mould, cut after our pattern; that is, feeling and acting; then qualifying them and determining them according to the attributes of our own nature. But the logic of images, very different from that of reason, concludes an objective resemblance; it regards as alike, what seem alike; it attributes to an internal linking of images, the validity of an objective connection between things. Whence arises the discord between the imagined world and the world of reality. "Analogies that for us are only fancies were for the man of past ages real" (Tylor).

b. In the genesis of myths, the second moment is that of fanciful invention. Entities take form; they have a history and adventures: they become the stuff for a romance. People of poor and dry imagination do not reach the second period. Thus, the religion of the Romans peopled the universe with an innumerable quantity of genii. No object, no act, no detail, but had its own presiding genius. There was one for germinating grain, for sprouting grain, for grain in flower, for blighted grain; for the door, its hinges, its lock, etc. There was a myriad of misty, formless entities. This is animism arrested at its first stage; abstraction has killed imagination.

Who created those legends and tales of adventure constituting the subject-matter of mythology? Probably inspired individuals, priests or prophets. They came perhaps from dreams, hallucinations, insane attacks—they are derived from several sources. Whatever their origin, they are the work of imaginative minds par excellence (we shall study them later) who, confronted with any event whatever, must, because of their nature, construct a romance.

Besides analogy, this imaginative creation has as its principal source the associational form already described under the name "constellation." We know that it is based on the fact that, in certain cases, the arousing of an image-group is the result of a tendency prevailing at a given instant over several that are possible. This operation has already been expounded theoretically with individual examples in support.[55] But in order to gauge its importance, we must see it act in large masses. Myths allow us to do this. Ordinarily they have been studied in their historical development according to their geographical distribution or ethnic character. If we proceed otherwise, if we consider only their content—i.e., the very few themes upon which the human imagination has labored, such as celestial phenomena, terrestrial disturbances, floods, the origin of the universe, of man, etc.—we are surprised at the wonderful richness of variety. What diversity in the solar myths, or those of creation, of fire, of water! These variations are due to multiple causes, which have orientated the imagination now in one direction, now in another. Let us mention the principal ones: Racial characteristics—whether the imagination is clear or mobile, poor or exuberant; the manner of living—totally savage, or on a level of civilization; the physical environment—external nature cannot be reflected in the brain of a Hindoo in the same way as in that of a Scandinavian; and lastly, that assemblage of considerable and unexpected causes grouped under the term "chance."

The variable combinations of these different factors, with the predominance of one or the other, explain the multiplicity of the imaginative conceptions of the world, in contrast to the unity and simplicity of scientific conceptions.

II

The form of imagination now occupying our attention by reason of its non-individual, anonymous, collective character, attains a long development that we may follow in its successive phases of ascent, climax, and decline. To begin with, is it necessarily inherent in the human mind? Are there races or groups of men totally devoid of myths? which is a slightly different question from that usually asked, "Are there tribes totally devoid of religious thoughts?" Although it is very doubtful that there are such now, it is probable that there were in the beginning, when man had scarcely left the brute level—at least if we agree with Vignoli[56] that we already find in the higher animals embryonic forms of animism.

In any event, mythic creation appears early. We can infer this from the signs of puerility of certain legends. Savages who could not know themselves—the Iroquois, the Australian aborigines, the natives of the Andaman Islands—believed that the earth was at first sterile and dry, all the water having been swallowed by a gigantic frog or toad which was compelled, by queer stratagems, to regurgitate it. These are little children's imaginings. Among the Hindoos the same myth takes the form of an alluring epic—the dragon watching over the celestial waters, of which he has taken possession, is wounded by Indra after a heroic battle, and restores them to the earth.

Cosmogonies, Lang remarks, furnish a good example of the development of myths; it is possible to mark out stages and rounds according to the degree of culture and intelligence. The natives of Oceania believe that the world was created and organized by spiders, grasshoppers, and various birds. More advanced peoples regard powerful animals as gods in disguise (such are certain Mexican divinities). Later, all trace of animal worship disappears, and the character of the myth is purely anthropomorphic.[57] Kuehn, in a special work, has shown how the successive stages of social evolution express themselves in the successive stages of mythology—myths of cannibals, of hunters, of herders, land-tillers, sailors. Speaking of pure savagery, Max Mueller[58] admits at least two periods—pan-Aryan and Indo-Iranian—prior to the Vedic period. In the course of this slow evolution the work of the imagination passes little by little from infancy, becomes more and more complex, subtle and refined.

In the Aryan race, the Vedic epoch, despite its sacerdotal ritualism, is considered as the period par excellence of mythic efflorescence. "The myth," says Taine, "is not here (in the Vedas) a disguise, but an expression; no language is more true and more supple: it permits a glimpse of, or rather causes us to discern, the forms of mist, the movements of the air, change of seasons, all the accidents of sky, fire, storm: external nature has never found a mode of thought so graceful and flexible for reflecting itself thereby in all the inexhaustible variety of her appearances. However changeable nature may be, the imagination is equally so."[59] It animates everything—not only fire in general, Agni, but also the seven forms of flame, the wood that lights it, the ten fingers of the sacrificing priest, the prayer itself, and even the railing surrounding the altar. This is one example among many others. The partisans of the linguistic theory have been able to maintain that at this moment every word is a myth, because every word is a name designating a quality or an act, transformed by the imagination into substance. Max Mueller has translated a page of Hesiod, substituting the analytic, abstract, rational language of our time for the image-making names. Immediately, all the mythical material vanishes. Thus, "Selene kisses the sleeping Endymion" becomes the dry formula, "It is night." The most skilled linguists often declare themselves unable to change the pliant tongue of the imaginative age into our algebraic idioms.[60] Thought by imagery cannot remain itself and at the same time take on a rational dress.

The mental state that marks the zenith of the free development of the imagination, is at present met with only in mystics and in some poets. Language has, however, preserved numerous vestiges of it in current expressions, the mythic signification of which has been lost—the sun rises, the sea is treacherous, the wind is mad, the earth is thirsty, etc.

To this triumphant period there succeeds among the races that have made progress in evolution, i.e., that have been able to rise above the age of (pure) imagination, the period of waning, of regression, of decline. In order to understand it and perceive the how and why of it, let us first note that myths are reducible to two great categories:

a. The explicative myths, arising from utility, from the necessity of knowing. These undergo a radical transformation.

b. The non-explicative myths, resulting from a need of luxury, from a pure desire to create: these undergo only a partial transformation.

Let us follow them in the accomplishment of their destinies.

a. The myths of the first class, answering the various needs of knowing in order afterwards to act, are much the more numerous.... Is primitive man by nature curious? The question has been variously answered; thus, Tylor says yes; Spencer, no.[61] The affirmative and negative answers are not, perhaps, irreconcilable, if we take account of the differences in races. Taking it generally, it is hard to believe that he is not curious—he holds his life at that price. He is in the presence of the universe just as we are when confronted with an unknown animal or fruit. Is it useful or hurtful? He has all the more need for a conception of the world since he feels himself dependent on everything. While our subordination as regards nature is limited by the knowledge of her laws, he is on account of his animism in a position similar to ours before an assembly of persons whom we have to approach or avoid, conciliate or yield to. It is necessary that he be practically curious—that is indispensable for his preservation. There has been alleged the indifference of primitive man to the complicated engines of civilization (a steamboat, a watch, etc.). This shows, not lack of curiosity, but absence of intelligence or interest for what he does not consider immediately useful for his needs.

His conception of the world is a product of the imagination, because no other is possible for him. The problem is imperatively set, he solves it as best he can; the myth is a response to a host of theoretical and practical needs. For him, the imaginative explanation takes the place of the rational explanation which is yet unborn, and which for great reasons can not arise—first, because the poverty of his experience, limited to a small circle, engenders a multitude of erroneous associations, which remain unbroken in the absence of other experiences to contradict and shatter them; secondly, because of the extreme weakness of his logic and especially of his conception of causality, which most often reduces itself to a post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Whence we have the thorough subjectivity of his interpretation of the world.[62] In short, primitive man makes without exception or reserve, and in terms of images, what science makes provisionally, with reserves, and by means of concepts—namely, hypotheses.

Thus, the explicative myths are as we see, an epitome of a practical philosophy, proportioned to the requirements of the man of the earliest, or slightly-cultured ages. Then comes the period of critical transformation: a slow, progressive substitution of a rational conception of the world for the imaginative conception. It results from a work of depersonification of the myth, which little by little loses its subjective, anthropomorphic character in order to become all the more objective, without ever succeeding therein completely.

This transformation occurs thanks to two principal supports: methodical and prolonged observation of phenomena, which suggests the objective notion of stability and law, opposed to the caprices of animism (example: the work of the ancient astronomers of the Orient); the growing power of reflection and of logical rigor, at least in well-endowed races.

It does not concern the subject in hand to trace here the fortunes of the old battle whereby the imagination, assailed by a rival power, loses little by little its position and preponderance in the interpretation of the world. A few remarks will suffice.

To begin with, the myth is transformed into philosophic speculation, but without total disappearance, as is seen in the mystic speculations of the Pythagoreans, in the cosmology of Empedocles, ruled by two human-like antitheses, Love and Hate. Even to Thales, an observing, positive spirit that calculates eclipses, the world is full of daemons, remains of primitive animism.[63] In Plato, even leaving out his theory of Ideas, the employment of myth is not merely a playful mannerism, but a real survival.

This work of elimination, begun by the philosophers, is more firmly established in the first attempts of pure science (the Alexandrian mathematicians; naturalists like Aristotle; certain Greek physicians). Nevertheless, we know how imaginary concepts remained alive in physics, chemistry, biology, down to the sixteenth century; we know the bitter struggle that the two following centuries witnessed against occult qualities and loose methods. Even in our day, Stallo has been able to propose to write a treatise "On Myth in Science." Without speaking at this time of the hypotheses admitted as such and on account of their usefulness, there yet remain in the sciences many latent signs of primitive anthropomorphism. At the beginning of the nineteenth century people believed in several "properties of matter" that we now regard as merely modes of energy. But this latter notion, an expression of permanence underneath the various manifestations of nature, is for science only an abstract, symbolical formula: if we attempt to embody it, to make it concrete and representable, then, whether we will or no, it resolves itself into the feeling of muscular effort, that is, takes on a human character. To produce no other examples, we see that so far as concerns the last term of this slow regression, the imagination is not yet completely annulled, although it may have had to recede incessantly before a more solid and better armed rival.

b. In addition to the explanatory myths, there are those having no claim to be in this class, although they have perhaps been originally suggested by some phenomenon of animate or inanimate nature. They are much less numerous than the others, since they do not answer multiple necessities of life. Such are the epic or heroic stories, popular tales, romances (which are found as early as ancient Egypt): it is the first appearance of that form of esthetic activity destined later to become literature. Here, the mythic activity suffers only a superficial metamorphosis—the essence is not changed. Literature is mythology transformed and adapted to the variable conditions of civilization. If this statement appear doubtful or disrespectful, we should note the following.

Historically, from myths wherein there figure at first only divine personages, there arise the epics of the Hindoos, Greeks, Scandinavians, etc., in which the gods and heroes are confounded, live in the same world, on a level. Little by little the divine character is rubbed out; the myth approaches the ordinary conditions of human life, until it becomes the romantic novel, and finally the realistic story.

Psychologically, the imaginative work that has at first created the gods and superior beings before whom man bows because he has unconsciously produced them, becomes more and more humanized as it becomes conscious; but it cannot cease being a projection of the feelings, ideas, and nature of man into the fictitious beings upon whom the belief of their creator and of his hearers confers an illusory and fleeting existence. The gods have become puppets whose master man feels himself, and whom he treats as he likes. Throughout the manifold techniques, esthetics, documentary collections, reproductions of the social life, the creative activity of the earliest time remains at bottom unchanged. Literature is a decadent and rationalized mythology.

III

Does the mythic activity of ancient times still exist among civilized peoples, unmodified as in literary creation, but in its pure form, as a non-individual, collective, anonymous, unconscious, work? Yes; as the popular imagination, when creating legends. In passing from natural phenomena to historic events and persons, the constructive imagination takes a slightly different position which we may characterize thus: legend is to myth what illusion is to hallucination.

The psychological mechanism is the same in both cases. Illusion and legend are partial imaginations, hallucination and myth are total imaginations. Illusion may vary in all shades between exact perception and hallucination; legend can run all the way from exact history to pure myth. The difference between illusion and hallucination is sometimes imperceptible; the same is sometimes true of legend and myth. Sensory illusion is produced by an addition of images changing perception; legend is also produced by an addition of images changing the historic personage or event. The only difference, then, is in the material used; in one case, a datum of sense, a natural phenomenon; in the other, a fact of history, a human event.

The psychological genesis of legends being thus established in general, what, according to the facts, are the unconscious processes that the imagination employs for creating them? We may distinguish two principal ones.

The first process is a fusion or combination. The myth precedes the fact; the historical personage or event enters into the mould of a pre-existing myth. "It is necessary that the mythic form be fashioned before one may pour into it, in a more or less fluid state, the historic metal." Imagination had created a solar mythology long before it could be incarnated by the Greeks in Hercules and his exploits. "There was historically a Roland, perhaps even an Arthur, but the greater part of the great deeds that the poetry of the Middle Ages attributes to them had been accomplished long before by mythological heroes whose very names had been forgotten."[64] At one time the man is completely hidden by the myth and becomes absolutely legendary; again, he assumes only an aureole that transfigures him. This is exactly what occurs in the simpler phenomenon of sensory illusion: now the real (the perception) is swamped by the images, is transformed, and the objective element reduced to almost nothing; at another time, the objective element remains master, but with numerous deformations.

The second process is idealization, which can act conjointly with the other. Popular imagination incarnates in a real man its ideal of heroism, of loyalty, of love, of piety, or of cowardice, cruelty, wickedness, and other abnormalities. The process is more complex. It presupposes in addition to mythic creation a labor of abstraction, through which a dominating characteristic of the historic personage is chosen and everything else is suppressed, cast into oblivion: the ideal becomes a center of attraction about which is formed the legend, the romantic tale. Compare the Alexander, the Charlemagne, the Cid of the Middle Age traditions to the character of history.

Even much nearer to us, this process of extreme simplification—which the law of mental inertia or of least effort is sufficient to explain—always persists: Lucretia Borgia remains the type of debauchery, Henry IV of good fellowship, etc. The protests of historians and the documentary evidence that they produce avail nothing: the work of the imagination resists everything.

To conclude: We have just passed over a period of mental evolution wherein the creative imagination reigns exclusively, explains everything, is sufficient for everything. It has been said that the imagination is "a temporary derangement." It seems so to us, although it is often an effort toward wisdom, i.e., toward the comprehension of things. It would be more correct to say, with Tylor, that it represents a state intermediate between that of a man of our time, prosaic and well-to-do, and that of a furious madman, or of a man in the delirium of fever.

FOOTNOTES:

[48] Primitive man has been defined as "he for whom sensuous data and images surpass in importance rational concepts." From this standpoint, many contemporary poets, novelists, and artists would be primitive. The mental state of the human individual is not enough for such a determination; we must also take account of the (comparative) simplicity of the social environment.

[49] Let us mention the euhemeristic theory of Herbert Spencer, taken up recently by Grant Allen (The Evolution of the Idea of God, 1897), who brings down all religious and mythic concepts from a single origin—the worship of the dead.

[50] "When I tried to briefly characterize mythology in its inner nature, I called it a disease of language rather than a disease of thought. The expression was strange but intentionally so, meant to arouse attention and to provoke opposition. For me, language and thought are inseparable." Nouvelles etudes de Mythologie, p. 51.

[51] Vignoli, Mito e Scienza, p. 27.

[52] Marillier, Preface to the French translation of Andrew Lang's Myth, Ritual, and Religion.

[53] On this point consult a work very rich in information, W. Crooke's book, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India, 1897.

[54] "The Indian traversing the Montana never feels himself alone. Legions of beings accompany him. All of the nature to whom he owes his soul speaks to him through the noise of the wind, in the roaring of the waterfall. The insect like the bird—everything, even to the bending twig wet with dew—for him has language, distinct personality. The forest is alive in its depths, has caprices, periods of anger; it avoids the thicket under the tread of the huntsman, or again presses him more closely, drags him into infected swamps, into closed bogs, where miserable goblins exhaust all their witchcraft upon him, drink his blood by attaching their lips to the wounds made by briers. The Indian knows all that; he knows those dread genii by name." Monnier, Des Andes au Para, p. 300.

[55] See Part I, Chapter IV.

[56] Op. cit., pp. 23-24.

[57] Lang, op. cit., I, 162, and passim.

[58] Max Mueller, op cit., p. 12.

[59] Nouveaux Essais, p. 320.

[60] See Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion, I, p. 234, a passage from the Rig-Veda, with four very different translations by Max Mueller, Wilson, Benfrey, and Langlois.

[61] On curiosity as the beginning of knowledge, compare the position held by Plato. (Tr.)

[62] On this general subject consult the interesting though somewhat general article by Professor John Dewey, "The Interpretation of the Savage Mind," in the Psychological Review, May, 1903. The author justly criticises the current description of savages in negative terms, and contends that there is general misunderstanding of the true nature of the savage and of his activities. (Tr.)

[63] It is now well accepted that Thales cannot be regarded as propounding a materialistic theory when he declares that everything is derived from water; for with him, "water" stands not merely for the substance that we call chemically "H2O," but for the "spirit that is in water" as well—the water-spirit is the Grundprincip. (Tr.)

[64] Max Mueller, op. cit., 39, 47-48, 59-60.



CHAPTER IV

THE HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION

We now pass from primitive to civilized man, from collective to individual creation, the characters of which it remains for us to study as we find them in great inventors who exhibit them on a large scale. Fortunately, we may dismiss the treatment of the oft-discussed, never-solved problem of the psychological nature of genius. As we have already noted, there enter into its composition factors other than the creative imagination, although the latter is not the least among them. Besides, great men being exceptions, anomalies, or as the current expression has it, "spontaneous variations," we may ask in limine whether their psychology is explicable by means of simple formulae, as with the average man, or whether even monographs teach us no more concerning their nature than general theories that are never applicable to all cases. Taking genius, then, as synonymous with great inventor, accepting it de facto historically and psychologically, our task is limited to the attempt to separate characters that seem, from observation and experiment, to belong to it as peculiarly its own.

Putting aside vague dissertations and dithyrambics in favor of theories with a scientific tendency as to the nature of genius, we meet first the one attributing to it a pathological origin. Hinted at in antiquity (Aristotle, Seneca, etc.), suggested in the oft-expressed comparison between inspiration and insanity, it has reached, as we know—through timid, reserved, and partial statements (Lelut)—its complete expression in the famous formula of Moreau de Tours, "Genius is a neurosis."

Neuropathy was for him the exaggeration of vital properties and consequently the most favorable condition for the hatching of works of genius. Later, Lombroso, in a book teeming with doubtful or manifestly false evidence, finding his predecessor's theory too vague, attempts to give it more precision by substituting for neurosis in general a specific neurosis—larvated epilepsy. Alienists, far from eagerly accepting this view, have set themselves to combat it and to maintain that Lombroso has compromised everything in wanting to make the term too precise. There are several possible hypotheses, they say: either the neuropathic state is the direct, immediate cause of which the higher faculties of genius are effects; or, the intellectual superiority, through the excessive labor and excitation it involves, causes neuropathic disturbances; or, there is no relation of cause and effect between genius and neurosis, but mere coexistence, since there are found very mediocre neuropaths, and men above the average without a neurotic blemish; or, the two states—the one psychic, the other physiological—are both effects, resulting from organic conditions that produce according to circumstances genius, insanity, and divers nervous troubles. Every one of these hypotheses can allege facts in its favor. We must, however, recognize that in most men of genius are found so many peculiarities, physical eccentricities and disorders of all kinds that the pathologic theory retains much probability.

There remain for consideration the sane geniuses who, despite many efforts and subtleties, have not yet been successfully brought under the foregoing formula, and who have made possible the enunciation of another theory. Recently, Nordau, rejecting the theory of his master Lombroso, has maintained that it is just as reasonable to say that "genius is a neurosis" as that "athleticism is a cardiopathy" because many athletes are affected with heart disease. For him, "the essential elements of genius are judgment and will." Following this definition, he establishes the following hierarchy of men of genius: At the highest rung of the ladder are those in whom judgment and will are equally powerful; men of action who make world-history (Alexander, Cromwell, Napoleon)—these are masters of men. On the second level are found the geniuses of judgment, with no hyper-development of will—these are masters of matter (Pasteur, Helmholtz, Roentgen). On the third step are geniuses of judgment without energetic will—thinkers and philosophers. What then shall we do with the emotional geniuses—the poets and artists? Theirs is not genius in the strict sense, "because it creates nothing new and exercises no influence on phenomena." Without discussing the value of this classification, without examining whether it is even possible,—since there is no common measure between Alexander, Pasteur, Shakespeare, and Spinoza,—and whether, on the other hand, common opinion is not right in putting on the same level the great creators, whoever they be, solely because they are far above the average, this remark is absolutely necessary: In the definition above cited the creative faculty par excellence—imagination—necessary to all inventors, is entirely left out.

We can, however, derive some benefit from this arbitrary division. Although it is impossible to admit that "emotional geniuses" create nothing new and have no influence on society, they do form a special group. Creative work requires of them a nervous excitability and a predominance of affective states that rapidly become morbid. In this way they have provided the pathological theory with most of its facts. It would perhaps be necessary to recognize distinctions between the various forms of invention. They require very different organic and psychic conditions in order that some may profit by morbid dispositions that are far from useful to others. This point should deserve a special study never made hitherto.

I

We shall reduce to three the characters ordinarily met in most great inventors. No one of them is without exception.

1. Precocity, which is reducible to innateness. The natural bent becomes manifest as soon as circumstances allow—it is the sign of the true vocation. The story is the same in all cases: at one moment the flash occurs; but this is not as frequent as is supposed. False vocations abound. If we deduct those attracted through imitation, environmental influence, exhortations and advice, chance, the attraction of immediate gain, aversion to a career imposed from without which they shun and adoption of an opposite one, will there remain many natural and irresistible vocations?

We have seen above that[65] the passage from reproductive to constructive imagination takes place toward the end of the third year. According to some authors, this initial period should be followed by a depression about the fifth year; thenceforward the upward progress is continuous. But the creative faculty, from its nature and content, develops in a very clear, chronological order. Music, plastic arts, poetry, mechanical invention, scientific imagination—such is the usual order of appearance.

In music, with the exception of a few child-prodigies, we hardly find personal creation before the age of twelve or thirteen. As examples of precocity may be cited: Mozart, at the age of three; Mendelssohn, five; Haydn, four; Handel, twelve; Weber, twelve; Schubert, eleven; Cherubini, thirteen; and many others. Those late in developing—Beethoven, Wagner, etc.—are fewer by far.[66]

In the plastic arts, vocation and creative aptitude are shown perceptibly later, on the average about the fourteenth year: Giotto, at ten; Van Dyck, ten; Raphael, eight; Guerchin, eight; Greuze, eight; Michaelangelo, thirteen; Albrecht Duerer, fifteen; Bernini, twelve; Rubens and Jordaens being also precocious.

In poetry we find no work having any individual character before sixteen. Chatterton died at that age, perhaps the only example of so young a poet leaving any reputation. Schiller and Byron also began at sixteen. Besides this, we know that the talent for versification, at least as imitation, is very early in developing.

In mechanical arts children have early a remarkable capacity for understanding and imitating. At nine, Poncelet bought a watch that was out of order in order to study it, then took it apart and put it together correctly. Arago tells that at the same age Fresnel was called by his comrades a "man of genius," because he had determined by correct experiments "the length and caliber of children's elder-wood toy cannon giving the longest range; also, which green or dry woods used in the manufacture of bows have most strength and lasting power." In general, the average of mechanical invention is later, and scarcely comes earlier than that of scientific discovery.

The form of abstract imagination requisite for invention in the sciences has no great personal value before the twentieth year: there are a goodly number, however, who have given proof of it before that age—Pascal, Newton, Leibniz, Gauss, Auguste Comte, etc. Almost all are mathematicians.

These chronological variations result not from chance, but from psychological conditions necessary for the development of each form of imagination. We know that the acquisition of musical sounds is prior to speech: many children can repeat a scale correctly before they are able to talk. On the other hand, as dissolution follows evolution in inverse order,[67] aphasic patients lacking the most common words, can nevertheless sing. Sound-images are thus organized before all others, and the creative power when acting in this direction finds very early material for its use. For the plastic arts a longer apprenticeship is necessary for the education of the senses and movements. To acquire manual dexterity one must become skilled in observing form, combinations of lines and colors, and apt at reproducing them. Poetry and first attempts at novel-writing presuppose some experience of the passions of human life and a certain reflection of which the child is incapable. Invention in the mechanic arts, as in the plastic arts, requires the education of the senses and movements; and, further, calculation, rational combination of means, rigorous adaptation to practical necessities. Lastly, scientific imagination is nothing without a high development of the capacity for abstraction, which is a matter of slow growth. Mathematicians are the most precocious because their material is the most simple; they have no need, as in the case of the experimental sciences, of an extended knowledge of facts, which is acquired only with time.

At this period of its development the imagination is in large part imitation. We must explain this paradox. The creator begins by imitating: this is such a well-known fact that it is needless to give proof of it, and it is subject to few exceptions. The most original mind is, at first, consciously or unconsciously somebody's disciple. It is necessarily so. Nature gives only one thing, "the creative instinct;" that is, the need of producing in a determined line. This internal factor alone is insufficient. Aside from the fact that the imagination at first has at its disposal only a very limited material, it lacks technique, the processes indispensable for realizing itself. As long as the creator has not found the suitable form into which to cast his creation he must indeed borrow it from another; his ideas must suffer the necessity of a provisional shelter. This explains how it is that later the inventor, reaching full consciousness of himself, in order to complete mastery of his methods, often breaks with his models, and burns what he at first adorned.

II

A second character consists of the necessity, the fatality of creation. Great inventors feel that they have a task to accomplish; they feel that they are charged with a mission. On this point we have a large number of testimonials and avowals. In the darkest days of his life Beethoven, haunted by the thought of suicide, wrote, "Art alone has kept me back. It seemed to me that I could not leave the world before producing all that I felt within me." Ordinarily, inventors are apt in only one line; even when they have a certain versatility, they remain bound to their own peculiar manner—they have their mark—like Michaelangelo; or, if they attempt to change it, if they try to be unfaithful as respects their vocation, they fall much below themselves.

This characteristic of irresistible impulsion which makes the genius create not because he wants to, but because he must do it, has often been likened to instinct. This very widespread view has been examined before (Part I, Chapter ii).

We have seen that there is no creative instinct in general, but particular tendencies, orientated in a definite direction, which in most respects resemble instinct. It is contrary to experience and logic to admit that the creative genius follows any path whatever at his choice—a proposition that Weismann, in his horror of inheritance of acquired characters (which are a kind of innateness) is not afraid to support. That is true only of the man of talent, a matter of education and circumstances. The distinction between these two orders of creators—the great and the ordinary—has been made too often to need repetition, although it is proper to recognize that it is not always easy in practice, that there are names that cause us to hesitate, which we class somewhat at hazard. Yet genius remains, as Schopenhauer used to say, monstrum per excessum; excessive development in one direction. Hypertrophy of a special aptitude often makes genius fall, as far as the others are concerned, below the average level. Even those exceptional men who have given proof of multiple aptitudes, such as Vinci, Michaelangelo, Goethe, etc., always have a predominating tendency which, in common opinion, sums them up.

III

A third characteristic is the clearly defined individuality of the great creator. He is the man of his work; he has done this or that: that is his mark. He is "representative." There is no other opinion as to this; what is a subject of discussion is the origin, not the nature of this individuality. The Darwinian theory as to the all-powerful action of environment has led to the question whether the representative character of great inventors comes from themselves, and from them alone, or must not rather be sought in the unconscious influence of the race and epoch of which they are at a given instant only brighter sparks. This debate goes beyond the bounds of our subject. To decide whether social changes are due mostly to the accumulated influences of some individuals and their initiative, or to the environment, to circumstances, to hereditary transmission, is not a problem for psychology to solve. We can not, however, totally avoid this discussion, for it touches the very springs of creation.

Is the inventive genius the highest degree of personality or a synthesis of masses?—the result of himself or of others?—the expression of an individual activity or of a collective activity? In short, should we look for his representative character within him or without? Both these alternatives have authoritative supporters.

For Schopenhauer, Carlyle (Hero-worship), Nietzsche, et al., the great man is an autonomous product, a being without a peer, a demigod, "Uebermensch." He can be explained neither by heredity, nor by environment.

For others (Taine, Spencer, Grant, Allen, et al.), the important factor is seen in the race and external conditions. Goethe held that a whole family line is summarized some day in a single one of its members, and a whole people in one or several men. For him, Louis XIV and Voltaire are respectively the French king and writer par excellence. "The alleged great men," says Tolstoi, "are only the labels of history, they give their names to events."[68]

Each party explains the same facts according to its own principle and in its own peculiar way. The great historic epochs are rich in great men (the Greek republics of the fourth century B. C., the Roman Republic, the Renaissance, French Revolution, etc.). Why? Because, say some, periods put into ferment by the deep working of the masses make this blossoming possible. Because, say the others, this flowering modifies profoundly the social and intellectual condition of the masses and raises their level. For the former the ferment is deep down; for the latter it is on top.

Without presuming to solve this vexed question, I lean toward the view of individualism pure and simple. It seems to me very difficult to admit that the great creator is only the result of his environment. Since this influence acts on many others, it is very necessary that, in great men, there should be in addition a personal factor. Besides, in opposition to the exclusively environmental theory we may bring the well-known fact that most innovators and inventors at first arouse opposition. We know the invariable sentence on everything novel—it is "false" or "bad;" then it is adopted with the statement that it had been known for a long time. In the hypothesis of collective invention, it seems that the mass of people should applaud inventors, recognizing itself in them, seeing its confused thought take form and body: but most often the contrary happens. The misoneism of crowds seems to me one of the strongest arguments in favor of the individual character of invention.

We can doubtless distinguish two cases—in the first, the creator sums up and clearly translates the aspirations of his milieu; in the second, he is in opposition to it because he goes beyond it. How many innovators have been disappointed because they came before their time! But this distinction does not reach to the bottom of the question, and is not at all sufficient as an answer.

Let us leave this problem, which, on account of its complexity, we can hardly solve through peremptory reasoning, and let us try to examine objectively the relation between creation and environment in order that we may see to what extent the creative imagination, without losing its individual character—which is impossible—depends on the intellectual and social surrounding.

If, with the American psychologists,[69] we term the disposition for innovating a "spontaneous variation"—a Darwinian term explaining nothing, but convenient—we may enunciate the following law:

The tendency toward spontaneous variation (invention) is always in inverse ratio to the simplicity of the environment.

The savage environment is in its nature very simple, consequently homogeneous. The lower races show a much smaller degree of differentiation than the higher; in them, as Jastrow says, physical and psychic maturity is more precocious, and as the period just before the adult age is the plastic period per se, this diminishes the chances of a departure from the common type. Thus comparison between whites and blacks, between primitive and civilized peoples, shows that, for equal populations, there is an enormous disproportion as to the number of innovators.

The barbarian environment is much more complex and heterogeneous: it contains all the rudiments of civilized life. Consequently, it favors more individual variations and is richer in superior men. But these variations are rarely produced outside of a very restricted field—political, military, religious. So it seems impossible to agree with Joly[70] that neither primitive nor barbarian peoples produce superior minds, "unless," as he says, "by this name we mean those that simply surpass their congeners." But is there a criterion other than that? I see none. Greatness is altogether a relative idea; and would not our great creators seem, to beings better endowed than we, very small?

The civilized environment, requiring division of labor and consequently a constantly growing complexity of heterogeneous elements, is an open door for all vocations. Doubtless, the social spirit always retains something of that tendency toward stagnation that is the rule in lower social orders; it is more favorable to tradition than to innovation. But the inevitable necessity of a warm competition between individuals and peoples is a natural antidote for that natural inertia; it favors useful variations. Moreover, civilization means evolution; consequently the conditions under which the imagination is active change with the times. Let us suppose, Weismann justly says, that in the Samoan Islands there were born a child having the singular and extraordinary genius of Mozart. What could he accomplish? At the most, extend the gamut of three or four tones to seven, and create a few more complex melodies; but he would be as unable to compose symphonies as Archimedes would have been to invent an electric dynamo. How many creators have been wrecked because the conditions necessary for their inventions were lacking? Roger Bacon foresaw several of our great discoveries; Cardan, the differential calculus; Van Helmont, chemistry; and it has been possible to write a book on the forerunners of Darwin.[71] We talk so much of the free flight of imagination, of the all-comprehensive power of the creator, that we forget the sociological conditions—not to mention others—on which they are every moment dependent. In this respect, no invention is personal in the strict sense; there always remains in it a little of that anonymous collaboration the highest expression of which, as we have seen, is the mythic activity.

By way of summary, and whatever be the causes, we may say that there is a universal tendency in all living matter toward variation, whether we consider vegetables, animals, or the physical and mental man. The need of innovating is only a special case, rare in the lower races, frequent in the higher. This tendency toward variation is fundamental or superficial: As fundamental, it corresponds to genius, and survives through processes analogous to natural selection, i.e., by its own power. As superficial, it corresponds to talent, survives and prospers chiefly through the help of circumstances and environment. Here, the orientation comes from without, not from within. According as the spirit of the time inclines rather to poetry or painting, or music, or scientific research, or industry, or military art, minds of the second order are dragged into the current—showing that a goodly part of their power is in the aptness, not for invention, but for imitation.

IV

The determination of the characters belonging to the inventive genius has necessitated some seemingly irrelevant remarks on the action of the environment. Let us return to invention, strictly so-called.

For inventing there is always required a natural aptitude, sometimes, a happy chance.

The natural disposition should be accepted as a fact. Why does a man create? Because he is capable of forming new combinations of ideas. However naive this answer may be, there is no other. The only thing possible, is the determination of the conditions necessary and sufficient for producing novel combinations: this has been done in the first part of this book, and there is no occasion for going over it again. But there is another aspect in creative work to be considered—its psychological mechanism, and the form of its development.

Every normal person creates little or much. He may, in his ignorance, invent what has been already done a thousand times. Even if this is not a creation as regards the species, it is none the less such for the individual. It is wrong to say, as has been said, that an invention "is a new and important idea." Novelty only is essential—that is the psychological mark: importance and utility are accessory, merely social marks. Invention is thus unduly limited when we attribute it to great inventors only. At this moment, however, we are concerned only with these, and in them the mechanism of invention is easier to study.

We have already seen how false is the theory that holds that there is always a sudden stroke of inspiration, followed by a period of rapid or slow execution. On the contrary, observation reveals many processes that apparently differ less in the content of invention than according to individual temperament. I distinguish two general processes of which the rest are variations. In all creation, great or small, there is a directing idea, an "ideal"—understanding the word not in its transcendental sense, but merely as synonymous with end or goal—or more simply, a problem to solve. The locus of the idea, of the given problem, is not the same in the two processes. In the one I term "complete" the ideal is at the beginning: in the "abridged" it is in the middle. There are also other differences which the following tables will make more clear:

First Process (complete).

1st phase 2nd phase 3d phase IDEA INVENTION, VERIFICATION, (commencement) or or Special incubation DISCOVERY APPLICATION of more or less (end) duration

The idea excites attention and takes a fixed character. The period of brooding begins. For Newton it lasted seventeen years, and at the time of definitely establishing his discovery by calculation he was so overcome with emotion that he had to assign to another the task of completing it. The mathematician Hamilton tells us that his method of quaternians burst upon him one day, completely finished, while he was near a bridge in Dublin. "In that moment I had the result of fifteen years' labor." Darwin gathers material during his voyages, spends a long time observing plants and animals, then through the chance reading of Malthus' book, hits upon and formulates his theory. In literary and artistic creation similar examples are frequent.[72]

The second phase is only an instant, but essential—the moment of discovery, when the creator exclaims his "Eureka!"[73] With it, the work is virtually or really ended.

Second Process (abridged).

1st phase 2nd phase 3rd phase General preparation IDEA (commencement) CONSTRUCTIVE (unconscious) INSPIRATION and ERUPTION DEVELOPING period.

This is the process in intuitive minds. Such seems to have been the case of Mozart, Poe, etc. Without attempting what would be a tedious enumeration of examples, we may say that this form of creation comprises two classes—those coming to maturity through an internal impulse, a sudden stroke of inspiration, and those who are suddenly illumined by chance. The two processes differ superficially rather than essentially. Let us briefly compare them.

With some, the first phase is long and fully conscious; in others it seems negligible, equal to zero—there is nothing of it because there exists a natural or acquired tendency toward equilibrium. "For a long time," says Schumann, "I had the habit of racking my brain, and now I scarcely need to scratch my forehead. Everything runs naturally."[74]

The second phase is almost the same in both cases: it is only an instant, but it is essential—it is the moment of imaginative synthesis.

Lastly, the third phase is very short for some, because the main labor is already done, and there remains only the finishing touch or the verification. It is long for others, because they must pass from the perceived idea to complete realization, and because the preparatory work is faulty; so that for these the second creative process is shortened in appearance only.

Such seem to me the two principal forms of the mechanism of creation. These are genera; they include species and varieties that a patient and minute study of the processes peculiar to various inventors would reveal to us. We must bear in mind that this work makes no claim of being a monograph on invention, but merely a sketch.[75]

The two processes above described seem to correspond on the whole to the oft-made distinction between the intuitive or spontaneous, and the combining or reflective imagination.

The intuitive, essentially synthetic form, is found principally in the purely imaginative types, children and savages. The mind proceeds from the whole to details. The generative idea resembles those concepts which, in the sciences, are of wide range because they condense a generalization rich in consequences. The subject is at first comprehended as a whole; development is organic, and we may compare it to the embryological process that causes a living being to arise from the fertilized ovum, analogous to an immanent logic. As a type of this creative form there has often been given a letter wherein Mozart explains his mode of conception. Recently (and that is why I do not reprint it here) it has been suspected of being apocryphal. I regret this—it was worthy of being authentic. According to Goethe, Shakespeare's Hamlet could have been created only through an intuitive process, etc.

The combining, discursive imagination proceeds from details to the vaguely-perceived unity. It starts from a fragment that serves as a matrix, and becomes completed little by little. An adventure, an anecdote, a scene, a rapid glance, a detail, suggests a literary or artistic creation; but the organic form does not appear in a trice. In science, Kepler furnishes a good example of this combining imagination. It is known that he devoted a part of his life trying strange hypotheses, until the day when, having discovered the elliptical orbit of Mars, all his former work took shape and became an organized system. Did we want to make use once more of an embryological comparison, it would be necessary to look for it in the strange conceptions of ancient cosmogonies: they believed that from an earthly slime arose parts of bodies and separate organs which through a mysterious attraction and happy chance ended by sticking together, and forming living bodies.[76]

It is an accepted view that of these two modes, one, the abridged or intuitive process, is superior to the other. I confess to having held this prejudice. On examination, I find it doubtful, even false. There is a difference, not any "higher" and "lower."

First of all, both these forms of creation are necessary. The intuitive process can suffice for an invention of short duration: a rhyme, a story, a profile, a motif, an ornamental stroke, a little mechanical contrivance, etc. But as soon as the work requires time and development the discursive process becomes absolutely necessary: with many inventors one easily perceives the change from one form to the other. We have seen that in the case of Chopin, "creation was spontaneous, miraculous," coming complete and sudden. But George Sand adds: "The crisis over, then commenced the most heartrending labor at which I have ever been present," and she pictures him to us agonized, for days and weeks, running after the bits of lost inspiration. Goethe, likewise, in a letter to Humboldt regarding his Faust, which occupied him for sixty years, full of interruptions and gaps: "The difficulty has been to get through strength of will what is really to be gotten only by a spontaneous act of nature." Zola, according to his biographer, Toulouse, "imagines a novel, always starting out with a general idea that dominates the work; then, from induction to induction, he draws out of it the characters and all the story."

To sum up: Pure intuition and pure combination are exceptional; ordinarily, it is a mixed process in which one of the two elements prevails and permits its qualification. If we note, in addition, that it would be easy to group under these two headings names of the first rank, we shall conclude that the difference is altogether in the mechanism, not in the nature of creation, and is consequently accessory; and that this difference is reducible to natural dispositions, which we may contrast as follows:

Ready-witted minds, Logically-developing excelling in conception, minds, excelling in making the whole almost elaboration. out of one piece.

Work primarily unconscious. Patience the preponderating role.

Work primarily conscious.

Actions quick. Actions slow.

V

"Were we to raise monuments to inventors in the arts and sciences, there would be fewer statues to men than to children, animals, and especially fortune." In this wise expressed himself one of the sage thinkers of the eighteenth century, Turgot. The importance of the last factor has been much exaggerated. Chance may be taken in two senses—one general, the other narrow.

(1) In its broad meaning, chance depends on entirely internal, purely psychic circumstances. We know that one of the best conditions for inventing is abundance of material, accumulated experience, knowledge—which augment the chances of original association of ideas. It has even been possible to maintain that the nature of memory implies the capacity of creating in a special direction. The revelations of inventors or of their biographers leave no doubt as to the necessity of a large number of sketches, trials, preliminary drawings, no matter whether it is a matter of industry, commerce, a machine, a poem, an opera, a picture, a building, a plan of campaign, etc. "Genius for discovery," says Jevons, depends on the number of notions and chance thoughts coming to the inventor's mind. To be fertile in hypotheses—that is the first requirement for finding something new. The inventor's brain must be full of forms, of melodies, of mechanical agents, of commercial combinations, of figures, etc., according to the nature of his work. "But it is very rare that the ideas we find are exactly those we were seeking. In order to find, we must think along other lines."[77] Nothing is more true.

So much for chance within: it is indisputable, whatever may have been said of it, but it depends finally on individuality—from it arises the non-anticipated synthesis of ideas. The abundance of memory-ideas, we know, is not a sufficient condition for creation; it is not even a necessary condition. It has been remarked that a relative ignorance is sometimes useful for invention: it favors assurance. There are inventions, especially scientific and industrial, that could not have been made had the inventors been arrested by the ruling and presumably invincible dogmas. The inventor was all the more free the more he was unaware of them. Then, as it was quite necessary to bow before the accomplished fact, theory was broadened to include the new discovery and explain it.

(2) Chance, in the narrow sense, is a fortunate occurrence stimulating invention: but to attribute to it the greater part, is a partial, erroneous view. Here, what we call chance, is the meeting and convergence of two factors—one internal (individual genius), the other, external (the fortuitous occurrence).

It is impossible to determine all that invention owes to chance in this sense. In primitive humanity its influence must have been enormous: the use of fire, the manufacture of weapons, of utensils, the casting of metals: all that came about through accidents as simple as, for example, a tree falling across a stream suggesting the first idea of a bridge.

In historic times—and to keep merely to the modern period—the collection of authentic facts would fill a large volume. Who does not know of Newton's apple, Galileo's lamp, Galvani's frog? Huygens declared that, were it not for an unforeseen combination of circumstances, the invention of the telescope would require "a superhuman genius;" it is known that we owe it to children who were playing with pieces of glass in an optician's shop. Schoenbein discovered ozone, thanks to the phosphorous odor of air traversed by electric sparks. The discoveries of Grimaldi and of Fresnel in regard to interferences, those of Faraday, of Arago, of Foucault, of Fraunhofer, of Kirchoff, and of hundreds of others owed something to "fortune." It is said that the sight of a crab suggested to Watt the idea of an ingenious machine. To chance, also, many poets, novelists, dramatists, and artists have owed the best part of their inspirations: literature and the arts abound in fictitious characters whose real originals are known.

So much for the external, fortuitous factor; its role is clear. That of the internal factor is less so. It is not at all apparent to the ordinary mind, escaping the unreflecting. Yet it is extremely important. The same fortuitous event passes by millions of men without exciting anything. How many of Pisa's inhabitants had seen the lamp of their cathedral before Galileo! He does not necessarily find who wants to find. The happy chance comes only to those worthy of it. In order to profit thereby, one must first possess the spirit of observation, wide-awake attention, that isolates and fixates the accident; then, if it is a matter of scientific or practical inventions, the penetration that seizes upon relations and finds unforeseen resemblances; if it concerns esthetic productions, the imagination that constructs, organizes, gives life.

Without repeating an evident truism, although it is often misunderstood, we ought to end by remarking that chance is an occasion for, not an agent of, creation.

FOOTNOTES:

[65] See above, Chapter II.

[66] Some of these and the following figures are borrowed from Oelzelt-Newin, op. cit., pp. 70 ff.

[67] Compare the well-known theory of Dr. Hughlings-Jackson. (Tr.)

[68] For an elaborate and interesting discussion of this subject, see Tolstoi's Physiology of War. As showing the later trend of thought on this general theme, see the excellent summary by Professor Seligman, The Economic Interpretation of History. (Tr.)

[69] William James, The Will to Believe and other Essays, pp. 218 ff.; Jastrow, Psych. Rev., May, 1898, p. 307; J. Royce, ibid., March, 1898; Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpretations, etc.

[70] Joly, Psychologie des grands hommes.

[71] Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin.

[72] Such, according to Binet and Passy, seem to be the cases of the Goncourts, Pailleron, etc. See "Psychologie des auteurs dramatiques," in L'annee psychologique, I, 96.

[73] Compare the striking instance of this moment as given by Froebel, in his Autobiography, in connection with his idea of the Kindergarten. (Tr.)

[74] Quoted by Arreat, Memoire et Imagination, p. 118. (Paris, F. Alcan.)

[75] Paulhan ("De l'invention," Rev. Philos., December, 1898, pp. 590 ff.) distinguishes three kinds of development in invention: (1) Spontaneous or reasoned—the directing idea persists to the end; (2) transformation, which comprises several contradictory evolutions succeeding and replacing one another in consequence of impressions and feelings; (3) deviation, which is a composite of the two preceding forms.

[76] Cf. the well-known doctrine of Empedocles. (Tr.)

[77] P. Souriau, Theorie de l'invention, pp. 6-7.



CHAPTER V

LAW OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IMAGINATION

Is imagination, so often called "a capricious faculty," subject to some law? The question thus asked is too simple, and we must make it more precise.

As the direct cause of invention, great or small, the imagination acts without assignable determination; in this sense it is what is known as "spontaneity"—a vague term, which we have attempted to make clear. Its appearance is irreducible to any law; it results from the often fortuitous convergence of various factors previously studied.

Leaving aside the moment of origin, does the inventive power, considered in its individual and specific development, seem to follow any law, or, if this term appear too ambitious, does it present, in the course of its evolution, any perceptible regularity? Observation separates out an empirical law; that is, extracts directly an abridged formula that is only a condensation of facts. We may enunciate it thus: The creative imagination in its complete development passes through two periods separated by a critical phase: a period of autonomy or efflorescence, a critical moment, a period of definitive constitution presenting several aspects.

This formula, being only a summary of experience, should be justified and explained by the latter. For this purpose we can borrow facts from two distinct sources: (a) individual development, which is the safest, clearest, and easiest to observe; (b) the development of the species, or historical development, according to the accepted principle that phylogenesis and ontogenesis follow the same general line.

I

First Period. We are already acquainted with it: it is the imaginative age. In normal man, it begins at about the age of three, and embraces infancy, adolescence, youth: sometimes a longer, sometimes a shorter period. Play, romantic invention, mythic and fantastic conceptions of the world sum it up first; after that, in most, imagination is dependent on the influence of the passions, and especially sexual love. For a long time it remains without any rational element.

Nevertheless, little by little, the latter wins a place. Reflection—including under the term the working of the intelligence—begins very late, grows slowly, and the proportion as it asserts itself, gains an influence over the imaginative activity and tends to reduce it. This growing antagonism is represented in the following figure.

The curve IM is that of the imagination during this first period. It rises at first very slowly, then attains a rapid ascent and keeps at a height that marks its greatest attainment in this earliest form. The dotted line RX represents the rational development that begins later, advances much more slowly, but progressively, and reaches at X the level of the imaginative curve. The two intellectual forms are present like two rivals. The position MX on the ordinate marks the beginning of the second period.



Second Period. This is a critical period of indeterminate length, in any case, always much briefer than the other two. This critical moment can be characterized only by its causes and results. Its causes are, in the physiological sphere, the formation of an organism and a fully developed brain; in the psychologic order, the antagonism between the pure subjectivity of the imagination and the objectivity of ratiocinative processes; in other words, between mental instability and stability. As for the results, they appear only in the third period, the resultant of this obscure, metamorphic stage.

Third Period. It is definite: in some way or another and in some degree the imagination has become rationalized, but this change is not reducible to a single formula.

(1) The creative imagination falls, as is indicated in the figure, where the imagination curve MN' descends rapidly toward the line of abcissas without ever reaching it. This is the most general case; only truly imaginative minds are exceptions. One falls little by little into the prose of practical life—such is the downfall of love which is treated as a phantom, the burial of the dreams of youth, etc. This is a regression, not an end; for the creative imagination disappears completely in no man; it only becomes accessory.

(2) It keeps up but becomes transformed; it adapts itself to the conditions of rational thought; it is no longer pure imagination, but becomes a mixed form—the fact is indicated in the diagram by the union of the two lines, MN, the imagination, and XO, the rational. This is the case with truly imaginative beings, in whom inventive power long remains young and fresh.

This period of preservation, of definitive constitution with rational transformation, presents several varieties. First, and simplest, transformation into logical form. The creative power manifested in the first stage remains true to itself, and always follows the same trend. Such are the precocious inventors, those whose vocation appeared early and never changed direction. Invention loses its childish or juvenile character in becoming virile; there are no other changes. Compare Schiller's Robbers, written in his teens, with his Wallenstein, dating from his fortieth year; or the vague sketches of the adolescent James Watt with his inventions as a man.

Another case is the metamorphosis or deviation of creative power. We know what numbers of men who have left a great name in science, politics, mechanical or industrial invention started out with mediocre efforts in music, painting, and especially poetry, the drama, and fiction. The imaginative impulse did not discover its true direction at the outset; it imitated while trying to invent. What has been said above concerning the chronological development of the imagination would be tiresome repetition. The need of creating followed from the first the line of least resistance, where it found certain materials ready to hand. But in order to arrive to full consciousness of itself it needed more time, more knowledge, more accumulated experience.

We might here ask whether the contrary case is also met with; i.e., where the imagination, in this third period, would return to the inclinations of the first period. This regressive metamorphosis—for I cannot style it otherwise—is rare but not without examples. Ordinarily the creative imagination, when it has passed its adult stage, becomes attenuated by slow atrophy without undergoing serious change of form. Nevertheless, I am able to cite the case of a well-known scholar who began with a taste for art, especially plastic art, went over rapidly to literature, devoted his life to biologic studies, in which he gained a very deserved reputation; then, in turn, became totally disgusted with scientific research, came back to literature and finally to the arts, which have entirely monopolized him.

Finally—for there are very many forms—in some the imagination, though strong, scarcely passes beyond the first stage, always retains its youthful, almost childish form, hardly modified by a minimum of rationality. Let us note that it is not a question here of the characteristic ingenuousness of some inventors, which has caused them to be called "grown-up children," but of the candor and inherent simplicity of the imagination itself. This exceptional form is hardly reconcilable except with esthetic creation. Let us add the mystic imagination. It could furnish examples, less in its religious conceptions, which are without control, than in its reveries of a scientific turn. Contemporary mystics have invented adaptations of the world that take us back to the mythology of early times. This prolonged childhood of the imagination, which is, in a word, an anomaly, produces curiosities rather than lasting works.

At this third period in the development of the imagination appears a second, subsidiary law, that of increasing complexity; it follows a progressive line from the simple to the complex. Indeed, it is not, strictly speaking, a law of the imagination but of the rational development exerting an influence on it by a counter-action. It is a law of the mind that knows, not of one that imagines.

It is needless to show that theoretical and practical intelligence develops as an increasing complex. But from the time that the mind distinguishes clearly between the possible and the impossible, between the fancied and the real—which is a capacity wanting in primitive man—as soon as man has formed rational habits and has undergone experience the impress of which is ineffaceable, the creative imagination is subject, nolens volens, to new conditions; it is no longer absolute mistress of itself, it has lost the assurance of its infancy, and is under the rules of logical thought, which draws it along in its train. Aside from the exceptions given above—and even they are partial exceptions only—creative power depends on the ability to understand, which imposes upon it its form and developmental law. In literature and in the arts comparison between the simplicity of primitive creations and the complexity of advanced civilizations has become commonplace. In the practical, technical, scientific and social worlds the higher up we go the more we have to know in order to create, and in default of this condition we merely repeat when we think we are inventing.

II

Historically considered, in the species, the development of the imagination follows the same line of progress as in the individual. We will not repeat it; it would be mere reiteration in a vaguer form of what we have just said. A few brief notes will suffice.

Vico—whose name deserves to be mentioned here because he was the first to see the good that we can get from myths for the study of the imagination—divided the course of humanity into three successive ages: divine or theocratic, heroic or fabulous, human or historic, after which the cycle begins over again. Although this too hypothetic conception is now forgotten, it is sufficient for our purposes. What, indeed, are those first two stages that have everywhere and always been the harbingers and preparers of civilization, if not the triumphant period of the imagination? It has produced myths, religions, legends, epics and martial narratives, and imposing monuments erected in honor of gods and heroes. Many nations whose evolution has been incomplete have not gone beyond this stage.

Let us now consider this question under a more definite, more limited, better known form—the history of intellectual development in Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire. It shows very distinctly our three periods.

No one will question the preponderance of the imagination during the middle Ages: intensity of religious feeling, ceaselessly repeated epidemics of superstition; the institution of chivalry, with all its accessories; heroic poetry, chivalric romances; courts of love, efflorescence of Gothic art, the beginning of modern music, etc. On the other hand, the quantity of imagination applied during this epoch to practical, industrial, commercial invention is very small. Their scientific culture, buried in Latin jargon, is made up partly of antique traditions, partly of fancies; what the ten centuries added to positive science is almost nil. Our figure, with its two curves, one imaginative, the other rational, thus applies just as well to historical development as to individual development during this first period.

No more will anyone question that the Renaissance is a critical moment, a transition period, and a transformation analogous to that which we have noted in the individual, when there rises, opposed to imagination, a rival power.

Finally, it will be admitted without dissent that during the modern period social imagination has become partly decayed, partly rationalized, under the influence of two principal factors—one scientific, the other economic. On the one hand the development of science, on the other hand the great maritime discoveries, by stimulating industrial and commercial inventions, have given the imagination a new field of activity. There have arisen points of attraction that have drawn it into other paths, have imposed upon it other forms of creation that have often been neglected or misunderstood and that we shall study in the Third Part.



THIRD PART

THE PRINCIPAL TYPES OF IMAGINATION



PRELIMINARY

After having studied the creative imagination in its constitutive elements and in its development we purpose, in this last part, describing its principal forms. This will be neither analytic nor genetic but concrete. The reader need not fear wearisome repetition; our subject is sufficiently complex to permit a third treatment without reiteration.

The expression "creative imagination," like all general terms, is an abbreviation and an abstraction. There is no "imagination in general," but only men who imagine, and who do so in different ways; the reality is in them. The diversities in creation, however numerous, should be reducible to types that are varieties of imagination, and the determination of these varieties is analogous to that of character as related to will. Indeed, when we have settled upon the physiological and psychological conditions of voluntary activity we have only done a work in general psychology. Men being variously constituted, their modes of action bear the stamp of their individuality; in each one there is a personal factor that, whatever its ultimate nature, puts its mark on the will and makes it energetic or weak, rapid or slow, stable or unstable, continuous or intermittent. The same is true of the creative imagination. We cannot know it completely without a study of its varieties, without a special psychology, toward which the following chapters are an attempt.

How are we to determine these varieties? Many will be inclined to think that the method is indicated in advance. Have not psychologists distinguished, according as one or another of image-groups preponderates, visual, auditory, motor and mixed types? Is not the way clear and is it not well enough to go in this direction? However natural this solution may appear, it is illusory and can lead to naught. It rests on the equivocal use of the word "imagination," which at one time means mere reproduction of images, and at another time creative activity, and which, consequently, keeps up the erroneous notion that in the creative imagination images, the raw materials, are the essential part. The materials, no doubt, are not a negligible element, but by themselves they cannot reveal to us the species and varieties that have their origin in an anterior and superior tendency of mind. We shall see in the sequel that the very nature of constructive imagination may express itself indifferently in sounds, words, colors, lines, and even numbers. The method that should allege to settle the various orientations of creative activity according to the nature of images would no more go to the bottom of the matter than would a classification of architecture according to the materials employed (as rock, brick, iron, wood, etc.) with no regard for differences of style.

This method aside, since the determination must be made according to the individuality of the architect, what method shall we follow? The matter is even more perplexing than the study of character. Although various authors have treated the latter subject (we have attempted it elsewhere), no one of the proposed classifications has been universally accepted. Nevertheless, despite their differences, they coincide in several points, because these have the advantage of resting on a common basis—the large manifestations of human nature, feeling, doing, thinking. In our subject I find nothing like this and I seek in vain for a point of support. Classifications are made according to the essential dominating attributes; but, as regards the varieties of the creative imagination, what are they?

We may, indeed, as was said above, distinguish two great classes—the intuitive and the combining. From another point of view we may distinguish invention of free range (esthetic, religious, mystic) from invention more or less restricted (mechanical, scientific, commercial, military, political, social). But these two divisions are too general, leading to nothing. A true classification should be in touch with facts, and this one soars too high.

Leaving, then, to others, more skilled or more fortunate, the task of a rational and systematic determination, if it be possible, we shall try merely to distinguish and describe the principal forms, such as experience gives them to us, emphasizing those that have been neglected or misinterpreted. What follows is thus neither a classification nor even a complete enumeration.

We shall study at first two general forms of the creative imagination—the plastic and the diffluent—and later, special forms, determined by their content and subject.

* * * * *

Wundt, in a little-noticed passage of his Physiological Psychology, has undertaken to determine the composition of the "principal forms of talent," which he reduces to four:

The first element is imagination. It may be intuitive, "that is, conferring on representations a clearness of sense-perception," or combining; "then it operates on multiple combinations of images." A very marked development in both directions at the same time is uncommon; the author assigns reasons for this.

The second element is understanding (Verstand). It may be inductive—i.e., inclining toward the collection of facts in order to draw generalizations from them—or deductive, taking general concepts and laws to trace their consequences.

If the intuitive imagination is joined to the inductive spirit we have the talent for observation of the naturalist, the psychologist, the pedagogue, the man of affairs.

If the intuitive imagination is combined with the deductive spirit we have the analytical talent of the systematic naturalist, of the geometrician. In Linnaeus and Cuvier the intuitive element predominates; in Gauss, the analytical element.

The combining imagination joined to the inductive spirit constitutes "the talent for invention strictly so-called," in industry, in the technique of science; it gives the artist and the poet the power of composing their works.

The combining imagination plus the deductive spirit gives the speculative talent of the mathematician and philosopher; deduction predominates in the former, imagination in the latter.[78]

FOOTNOTES:

[78] Wundt, Physiologische Psychologie, 4th German edition, Vol. II, pp. 490-95.



CHAPTER I

THE PLASTIC IMAGINATION

I

By "plastic imagination" I understand that which has for its special characters clearness and precision of form; more explicitly those forms whose materials are clear images (whatever be their nature), approaching perception, giving the impression of reality; in which, too, there predominate associations with objective relations, determinable with precision. The plastic mark, therefore, is in the images, and in the modes of association of images. In somewhat rough terms, requiring modifications which the reader himself can make, it is the imagination that materializes.

Between perception—a very complex synthesis of qualities, attributes and relations—and conception—which is only the consciousness of a quality, quantity, or relation, often of only a single word accompanied by vague outlines and a latent, potential knowledge; between concrete and abstract, the image occupies an intermediate position and can run from one pole to another, now full of reality, now almost as poor and pale as a concept. The representation here styled plastic descends towards its point of origin; it is an external imagination, arising from sensation rather than from feeling and needing to become objective.

Thus its general characters are easy of determination. First and foremost, it makes use of visual images; then of motor images; lastly, in practical invention, of tactile images. In a word, the three groups of images present to a great extent the character of externality and objectivity. The clearness of form of these three groups proceeds from their origin, because they arise from sensation well determined in space—sight, movement, touch. Plastic imagination depends most on spatial conditions. We shall see that its opposite, diffluent imagination, is that which depends least upon that factor, or is most free from it. Among these naturally objective elements the plastic imagination chooses the most objective, which fact gives its creations an air of reality and life.