Let us show by a few examples that conjecture, the work of the combining imagination, is at the root of the most diverse scientific inventions.[112]

Every mathematical invention is at first only an hypothesis that must be demonstrated, i.e., must be brought under previously established general principles: prior to the decisive moment of rational verification it is only a thing imagined. "In a conversation concerning the place of imagination in scientific work," says Liebig, "a great French mathematician expressed the opinion to me that the greater part of mathematical truth is acquired not through deduction, but through the imagination. He might have said 'all the mathematical truths,' without being wrong." We know that Pascal discovered the thirty-second proposition of Euclid all by himself. It is true that it has been concluded, wrongly perhaps, that he had also discovered all the earlier ones, the order followed by the Greek geometrician not being necessary, and not excluding other arrangements. However it be, reasoning alone was not enough for that discovery. "Many people," says Naville, "of whom I am one, might have thought hard all their lives without finding out the thirty-two propositions of Euclid." This fact alone shows clearly the difference between invention and demonstration, imagination and reason.

In the sciences dealing with facts, all the best-established experimental truths have passed through a conjectural stage. History permits no doubt on this point. What makes it appear otherwise is the fact that for centuries there has gradually come to be formed a body of solid belief, making a whole, stored away in classic treatises from which we learn from childhood, and in which they seem to be arranged of themselves. We are not told of the series of checks and failures through which[113] they have passed. Innumerable are the inventions that remained for a long time in a state of conjecture, matters of pure imagination, because various circumstances did not permit them to take shape, to be demonstrated and verified. Thus, in the thirteenth century, Roger Bacon had a very clear idea of a construction on rails similar to our railroads; of optical instruments that would permit, as does the telescope, to see very far, and to discover the invisible. It is even claimed that he must have foreseen the phenomena of interferences, the demonstration of which had to be awaited ten centuries.

On the other hand, there are guesses that have met success without much delay, but in which the imaginative phase—that of the invention preceding all demonstration—is easy to locate. We know that Tycho-Brahe, lacking inventive genius but rich in capacity for exact observation, met Kepler, an adventurous spirit: together, the two made a complete scientist. We have seen how Kepler, guided by a preconceived notion of the "harmony of the spheres," after many trials and corrections, ended by discovering his laws. Copernicus recognized expressly that his theory was suggested to him by an hypothesis of Pythagoras—that of a revolution of the earth about a central fire, assumed to be in a fixed position. Newton imagined his hypothesis of gravitation from the year 1666 on, then abandoned it, the result of his calculations disagreeing with observation; finally he took it up again after a lapse of a few years, having obtained from Paris the new measure of the terrestrial meridian that permitted him to prove his guess. In relating his discoveries, Lavoisier is lavish in expressions that leave no doubt as to their originally conjectural character. "He suspects that the air of the atmosphere is not a simple thing, but is composed of two very different substances." "He presumes that the permanent alkalies (potash, soda) and the earths (lime, magnesia) should not be considered simple substances." And he adds: "What I present here is at the most no more than a mere conjecture." We have mentioned above the case of Darwin. Besides, the history of scientific discoveries is full of facts of this sort.

The passage from the imaginative to the rational phase may be slow or sudden. "For eight months," says Kepler, "I have seen a first glimmer; for three months, daylight; for the last week I see the sunlight of the most wonderful contemplation." On the other hand, Hauey drops a bit of crystallized calcium spar, and, looking at one of the broken prisms, cries out, "All is found!" and immediately verifies his quick intuition in regard to the true nature of crystallization. We have already indicated[114] the psychological reasons for these differences.

Underneath all the reasoning, inductions, deductions, calculations, demonstrations, methods, and logical apparatus of every sort, there is something animating them that is not understood, that is the work of that complex operation—the constructive imagination.

To conclude: The hypothesis is a creation of the mind, invested with a provisional reality that may, after verification, become permanent. False hypotheses are characterized as imaginary, by which designation is meant that they have not become freed from the first state. But for psychology they are different neither in their origin nor in their nature from those scientific hypotheses that, subjected to the power of reason or of experiment, have come out victorious. Besides, in addition to abortive hypotheses, there are dethroned ones. What theory was more clinging, more fascinating in its applications, than that of phlogiston? Kant[115] praised it as one of the greatest discoveries of the eighteenth century. The development of the sciences is replete with these downfalls. They are psychological regressions: the invention, considered for a time as adequate to reality, decays, returns to the imaginative phase whence it seems to have emerged, and remains pure imagination.

IV

Imagination is not absent from the third stage of scientific research, in demonstration and experimentation, but here we must be brief, (1) because it passes to a minor place, yielding its rank to other modes of investigation, and (2) because this study would have to become doubly employed with the practical and mechanical imagination, which will occupy our attention later. The imagination is here only an auxiliary, a useful instrument, serving:

(1) In the sciences of reasoning, to discover ingenious methods of demonstration, stratagems for avoiding or overcoming difficulties.

(2) In the experimental sciences for inventing methods of research or of control—whence its analogy, above mentioned, to the practical imagination. Furthermore, the reciprocal influence of these two forms of imagination is a matter of common observation: a scientific discovery permits the invention of new instruments; the invention of new instruments makes possible experiments that are increasingly more complicated and delicate.

One remark further: This constructive imagination at the third stage is the only one met with in many scientists. They lack genius for invention, but discover details, additions, corrections, improvements. A recent author distinguishes (a) those who have created the hypothesis, prepared the experiments, and imagined the appropriate apparatus; (b) those who have imagined the hypothesis and the experiment, but use means already invented; and (c) those who, having found the hypothesis made and demonstrated, have thought out a new method of verification.[116] The scientific imagination becomes poorer as we follow it down this scale, which, however, bears no relation to exactness of reasoning and firmness of method.

Neglecting species and varieties, we may reduce the fundamental characters of the scientific imagination to the following:

For its material, it has concepts, the degree of abstraction of which varies with the nature of the science.

It employs only those associational forms that have an objective basis, although its mission is to form new combinations, "the discoveries consisting of the relation of ideas, capable of being united, which hitherto have been isolated."[117] (Laplace.) All association with an affective basis is strictly excluded.

It aims toward objectivity: in its conjectural construction it attempts to reproduce the order and connection of things. Whence its natural affinity for realistic art, which is midway between fiction and reality.

It is unifying, and so just the opposite of the esthetic imagination, which is rather developmental. It puts forward the master idea (Claude Bernard's idee directrice), a center of attraction and impulse that enlivens the entire work. The principle of unity, without which no creation succeeds, is nowhere more visible than in the scientific imagination. Even when illusory, it is useful. Pasteur, scrupulous scientist that he was, did not hesitate to say: "The experimenter's illusions are a part of his power: they are the preconceived ideas serving as guides for him."

V

It does not seem to me wrong to regard the imagination of the metaphysician as a variety of the scientific imagination. Both arise from one and the same requirement. Several times before this we have emphasized this point—that the various forms of imagination are not the work of an alleged "creative instinct," but that each particular one has arisen from a special need. The scientific imagination has for its prime motive the need of partial knowledge or explanation; the metaphysical imagination has for its prime motive the need of a total or complete explanation. The latter is no longer an endeavor on a restricted group of phenomena, but a conjecture as to the totality of things, as aspiration toward completely unified knowledge, a need of final explanation that, for certain minds, is just as imperious as any other need.

This necessity is expressed by the creation of a cosmic or human hypothesis constructed after the type and methods of scientific hypotheses, but radically subjective in its origin—only apparently objective. It is a rationalized myth.

The three moments requisite for the constitution of a science are found here, but in a modified form: reflection replaces observation, the choice of the hypothesis becomes all-important, and its application to everything corresponds to scientific proof.

(1) The first moment or preparatory stage, does not belong to our subject. It requires, however, a word in passing. In all science, whether well or ill established, firm or weak, we start from facts derived from observation or experiment. Here, facts are replaced by general ideas. The terminus of every science is, then, the starting-point of philosophical speculation:—metaphysics begins where each separate science ends; and the limits of the latter are theories, hypotheses. These hypotheses become working material for metaphysics which, consequently, is an hypothesis built on hypotheses, a conjecture grafted on conjecture, a work of imagination superimposed on works of imagination. Its principal source, then, is imagination, to which reflection applies itself.

Metaphysicians, indeed, hold that the object of their researches, far from being symbolic and abstract, as in science, or fictitious and imaginary, as in art, is the very essence of things,—absolute reality. Unfortunately, they have never proven that it suffices to seek in order to find, and to wish in order to get.

(2) The second stage is critical. It is concerned with finding the principle that rules and explains everything. In the invention of his theory the metaphysician gives his measure, and permits us to value his imaginative power. But the hypothesis, which in science is always provisional and revocable, is here the supreme reality, the fixed position, the inconcussum quid.

The choice of the principle depends on several causes: The chief of these is the creator's individuality. Every metaphysician has a point of view, a personal way of contemplating and interpreting the totality of things, a belief that tends to recruit adherents.

Secondary causes are: the influence of earlier systems, the sum of acquired knowledge, the social milieu, the variable predominance of religions, sciences, morality, esthetic culture.

Without troubling ourselves with classifications, otherwise very numerous, into which we may group systems (idealism, materialism, monism, etc.) we shall, for our purpose, divide metaphysicians into the imaginative and rational, according as the imagination is superior to the reason or the reason rules the imagination. The differences between these two types of mind, already clearly shown in the choice of the hypothesis, are proven in its development.

(3) The fundamental principle, indeed, must come out of its state of involution and justify its universal validity by explaining everything. This is the third moment, when the scientific process of verification is replaced by a process of construction.

All imaginative metaphysics have a dynamic basis, e.g., the Platonic Ideas, Leibniz' Monadology, the Nature-philosophy of Schelling, Schopenhauer's Will, and Hartmann's Unconscious, the mystics, the systems that assume a world-soul, etc. Semi-abstract, semi-poetic constructions, they are permeated with imagination not only in the general conception, but also in the numberless details of its application. Such are the "fulgurations" of Leibniz, those very rich digressions of Schopenhauer, etc. They have the fascination of a work of art as much as that of science, and this is no longer questioned by metaphysicians themselves;[118] they are living things.

Rational metaphysics, on the other hand, have a chilly aspect, which brings them nearer the abstract sciences. Such are most of the mechanical conceptions, the Hegelian Dialectic, Spinoza's construction more geometrico, the Summa of the Middle Ages. These are buildings of concepts solidly cemented together with logical relations. But art is not wholly absent; it is seen in the systematic concatenation, in the beautiful ordering, in the symmetry of division, in the skill with which the generative principle is constantly brought in, in showing it ever-present, explaining everything. It has been possible to compare these systems with the architecture of the Gothic cathedrals, in which the dominant idea is incessantly repeated in the numberless details of the construction, and in the branching multiplicity of ornamentation.

Further, whatever view we adopt as to its ultimate value, it must be recognized that the imagination of the great metaphysicians, by the originality and fearlessness of its conceptions, by its skill in perfecting all parts of its work, is inferior to no other form. It is equal to the highest, if it does not indeed surpass them.

FOOTNOTES:

[109] See Part I, chapter II.

[110] Cf. the Preface to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. "Our reason ... is always troubled with questions which cannot be ignored, because they spring from the very nature of reason, and which cannot be answered, because they transcend the powers of human reason." (Tr.)

[111] In the rare Notes that he has left, James Watt writes that one afternoon he had gone out for a stroll on the Green at Glasgow, and his thoughts were absorbed with the experiments in which he was busied, trying to prevent the cooling of the cylinder. The thought then came to him that steam, being an elastic fluid, should expand and be precipitated in a space formerly void; and having made a vacuum in a separate vessel and opened communication between the steam of the cylinder and the vacant space, we see what should follow. Thus, having imagined the masterpiece of his discovery, he enumerates the processes that, employed in turn, allowed him to perfect it.

[112] For further information we refer to the Logique de l'hypothese, by E. Naville, from which are borrowed most of the facts here given.

[113] This much-criticised defect has been only partially overcome in our methods of education through "object" lessons, and, if we may call them so, evolutionary methods, showing to the child "wie es eigentlich gewesen." Cf. J. Dewey, "The School and Society." (Tr.)

[114] See above, Part Two, chapter IV.

[115] Preface to the Critique of Pure Reason.

[116] Colozza, L'immaginazione nella Scienza (Paravia, 1900), pp. 89 ff. In this author will be found abundant details respecting famous discoveries or experiments—those of Galileo, Franklin, Grimaldi, etc.

[117] Here is an example in confirmation, taken from Duclaux's book on Pasteur: Herschel established a relation between the crystalline structure of quartz and the rotatory power of the substance; later on, Biot established it for sugar, tartaric acid, etc.—i.e., for substances in solution, whence he concluded that the rotatory power is due to the form of the molecule itself, not to the arrangement of the molecules in relation to one another. Pasteur discovered a relation between molecular dyssymmetry and hemiedry, and the study of hemiedry in crystals led him logically to that of fermentation and spontaneous generation.

[118] On this point cf. Fouillee, L'Avenir de la Metaphysique, pp. 79 ff.



CHAPTER V

THE PRACTICAL AND MECHANICAL IMAGINATION

The study of the practical imagination is not without difficulties. First of all, it has not hitherto attracted psychologists, so that we enter the field at random, and wander unguided in an unexplored region. But the principal obstacle is in the lack of determination of this form of imagination, and in the absence of boundary lines. Where does it begin, and where does it end? Penetrating all our life even in its least details, it is likely to lead us astray through the diversity, often insignificant, of its manifestations. To convince ourselves of this fact, let us take a man regarded as least imaginative:—subtract the moments when his consciousness is busied with perceptions, memories, emotions, logical thought and action—all the rest of his mental life must be put down to the credit of the imagination. Even thus limited, this function is not a negligible quantity:—it includes the plans and constructions for the future, and all the dreams of escaping from the present; and there is no man but makes such. This had to be mentioned on account of its very triteness, because it is often forgotten, and consequently the field of the creative imagination is unduly restricted, being limited little by little to exceptional cases.

It must, however, be recognized that these small facts teach us little. Consequently, following our adopted procedure, dwelling longest on the clearer and more evident cases in which the work of creating appears distinctly, we shall rapidly pass over the lower forms of the practical imagination, in order to dwell on the higher form—technical or mechanical imagination.

I

If we take an ordinary imaginative person,—understanding by this expression, one whom his nature singles out for no special invention—we see that he excels in the small inventions, adapted for a moment, for a detail, for the petty needs constantly arising in human life. It is a fruitful, ingenious, industrious mind, one that knows how to "take hold of things." The active, enterprising American, capable of passing from one occupation to another according to circumstances, opportunity, or imagined profits, furnishes a good example.

If we descend from this form of sane imagination toward the morbid forms, we meet first the unstable—knights of industry, hunters of adventure, inventors frequently of questionable means, people hungry for change, always imagining what they haven't, trying in turn all professions, becoming workmen, soldiers, sailors, merchants, etc., not from expediency, but from natural instability.

Further down are found the acknowledged "freaks" at the brink of insanity, who are but the extreme form of the unstable, and who, after having wasted haphazard much useless imagination, end in an insane asylum or worse still.

Let us consider these three groups together. Let us eliminate the intellectual and moral qualities characteristic of each group, which establish notable differences between them, and let us consider only their inventive capacity as applied to practical life. One character common to all is mobility—the tendency to change. It is a matter of current observation that men of lively imagination are changeable. Common opinion, which is also the opinion of moralists and of most psychologists, attributes this mobility, this instability, to the imagination. This, in my opinion, is just upside down. It is not because they have an active imagination that they are changeable, but it is because they are changeable that their imagination is active. We thus return to the motor basis of all creative work. Each new or merely modified disposition becomes a center of attraction and pull. Doubtless the inner push is a necessary condition, but it is not sufficient. If there were not within them a sufficient number of concrete, abstract, or semi-abstract representations, susceptible of various combinations, nothing would happen; but the origin of invention and of its frequent or constant changes of direction lies in the emotional and motor constitution, not in the quantity or quality of representations. I shall not dwell longer on a subject already treated,[119] but it was proper to show, in passing, that common opinion starts from an erroneous conception of the primary conditions of invention—whether great or small, speculative or practical.

In the immense empire of the practical imagination, superstitious beliefs form a goodly province.

What is superstition? By what positive signs do we recognize it? An exact definition and a sure criterion are impossible. It is a flitting notion that depends on the times, places, and nature of minds. Has it not often been said that the religion of one is superstition to another, and vice versa? This, too, is only a single instance from among many others; for the common opinion that restricts superstition within the bounds of religious faith is an incomplete view. There are peculiar beliefs, foreign to every dogma and every religious feeling, from which the most radical freethinker is not exempt; for example, the superstitions of gamblers. Indeed, at the bottom of all such beliefs, we always find the vague, semi-conscious notion of a mysterious power—destiny, fate, chance.

Without taking the trouble to set arbitrary limits, let us take the facts as they are, without possible question, i.e., imaginary creations, subjective fancies, having reality only for those admitting them. Even a summary collection of past and present superstitions would fill a library. Aside from those having a frankly religious mark, others almost as numerous surround civil life, birth, marriage, death, appearance and healing of diseases, dies fasti atque nefasti, propitious or fateful words, auguries drawn from the meeting or acts of certain animals. The list would be endless.[120]

All that can be attempted here is a determination of the principal condition of that state of mind, the psychology of which is in the last analysis very simple. We shall thus answer in an indirect and incomplete manner the question of criterion.

First, since we hold that the origin of all imaginative creation is a need, a desire, a tendency, where then is the origin of that inexhaustible fount of fancies? In the instinct for individual preservation, orientated in the direction of the future. Man seeks to divine future events, and by various means to act on the order of things to modify it for his own advantage or to appease his evil fate.

As for the mental mechanism that, set in motion by this desire, produces the vain images of the superstitious, it implies:

(1) A deep idea of causality, reduced to a post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Herodotus says of the Egyptian priests: "They have discovered more prodigies and presages than any other people, because, when some extraordinary thing appears, they note it as well as all the events following it, so that if a similar prodigy appears anew, they expect to see the same events reproduced." It is the hypothesis of an indissoluble association between two or more events, assumed without verification, without criticism. This manner of thinking depends on the weakness of the logical faculties or on the excessive influence of the feelings.

(2) The abuse of reasoning by analogy. This great artisan of the imagination is satisfied with likenesses so vague and agreements so strange, that it dares everything. Resemblance is no longer a quality of things imposed on the mind, but an hypothesis of the mind imposed on things. Astrology groups into "constellations" stars that are billions of miles apart, believes that it discovers there an animal shape, human or any other, and deduces therefrom alleged "influences." This star is reddish (Mars), sign of blood; this other is of a pure, brilliant silvery light (Venus) or livid (Saturn), and acts in a different way. We know what clever structures of conjectures and prognoses have been built on these foundations. Need we mention the Middle Age practice of charms, which even in our day still has adherents among cultured people? The physicians of the time of Charles II, says Lang, gave their patients "mummy powder" (pulverized mummies) because the mummies, having lasted a long time, must prolong life.[121] Gold in solution has been esteemed as a medicine—gold, being a perfect substance, should produce perfect health. In order to get rid of a disease nothing is more frequent among primitive men than to picture the sick person on wood or on the ground, and to strike the injured part with an arrow or knife, in order to annihilate the sickening principle.

(3) Finally, there is the magic influence ascribed to certain words. It is the triumph of the theory of nomina numina; we need not return to it. But the working of the mind on words, erecting them into entities, conferring life and power on them—in a word, the activity that creates myths and is the final basis of all constructive imagination—appears also here.[122]

II

Up to this point we have considered the practical imagination only in its somewhat petty aspect in small inventions or as semi-morbid in superstitious fancies. We now come to its higher form, mechanical invention.

This subject has not been studied by psychologists. Not that they have misunderstood its role, which is, after all, very evident; but they limit themselves to speak of it cursorily, without emphasizing it.

In order to appreciate its importance, I see no other way than to put ourselves face to face with the works that it has produced, to question the history of discovery and useful arts, to profit by the disclosures of inventors and their biographers.

Of a work of this kind, which would be very long because the materials are scattered, we can give here only a rough sketch, merely to take therefrom what is of interest for psychology and what teaches us in regard to the characters peculiar to this type of imagination.

The erroneous view that opposes imagination to the useful, and claims that they are mutually exclusive, is so widespread and so persistent, that we shall seem to many to be expressing a paradox when we say that if we could strike the balance of the imagination that man has spent and made permanent in esthetic life on the one hand, and in technical and mechanical invention on the other, the balance would be in favor of the latter. This assertion, however, will not seem paradoxical to those who have considered the question. Why, then, the view above mentioned? Why are people inclined to believe that our present subject, if not entirely foreign to the imagination, is only an impoverished form of it? I account for it by the following reasons:

Esthetic imagination, when fully complete, is simply fixed, i.e., remains a fictitious matter recognized as such. It has a frankly subjective, personal character, arbitrary in its choice of means. A work of art—a poem, a novel, a drama, an opera, a picture, a statue—might have been otherwise than it is. It is possible to modify the general plan, to add or reduce an episode, to change an ending. The novelist who in the course of his work changes his characters; the dramatic author who, in deference to public sentiment, substitutes a happy denouement in place of a catastrophe, furnish naive testimony of this freedom of imagination. Moreover, artistic creation, expressing itself in words, sounds, lines, forms, colors, is cast in a mould that allows it only a feeble "material" reality.

The mechanical imagination is objective—it must be embodied, take on a form that gives it a place side by side with products of nature. It is arbitrary neither in its choice nor in its means; it is not a free creature having its end in itself. In order to succeed, it is subjected to rigorous physical conditions, to a determinism. It is at this cost that it becomes a reality, and as we instinctively establish an antithesis between the imaginary and the real, it seems that mechanical invention is outside the realm of the imagination. Moreover, it requires the constant intervention of calculation, of reasoning, and lastly, of a manual operation of supreme importance. We may say without exaggerating that the success of many mechanical creations depends on the skillful manipulation of materials. But this last moment, because it is decisive, should not make us forget its antecedents, especially the initial moment, which is, for psychology, similar to all other instances of invention, when the idea arises, tending to become objective.

Otherwise, the differences here pointed out between the two forms of imagination—esthetic and mechanical—are but relative. The former is not independent of technical apprenticeship, often of long duration (e.g., in music, sculpture, painting). As for the latter, we should not exaggerate its determinism. Often the same end can be reached by different inventions—by means differently imagined, through different mental constructions; and it follows that, after all allowances are made, these differently realized imaginations are equally useful.

The difference between the two types is found in the nature of the need or desire stimulating the invention, and secondly in the nature of the materials employed. Others have confounded two distinct things—liberty of imagination, which belongs rather to esthetic creation, and quality and power of imagination, which may be identical in both cases.

I have questioned certain inventors very skillful in mechanics, addressing myself to those, preferably, whom I knew to be strangers to any preconceived psychological theory. Their replies agree, and prove that the birth and development of mechanical invention are very strictly like those found in other forms of constructive imagination. As an example, I cite the following statement of an engineer, which I render literally:

"The so-called creative imagination surely proceeds in very different ways, according to temperament, aptitudes, and, in the same individual, following the mental disposition, the milieu.

"We may, however, as far as regards mechanical inventions, distinguish four sufficiently clear phases—the germ, incubation, flowering, and completion.

"By germ I mean the first idea coming to the mind to furnish a solution for a problem that the whole of one's observations, studies, and researches has put before one, or that, put by another, has struck one.

"Then comes incubation, often very long and painful, or, again, even unconscious. Instinctively as well as voluntarily one brings to the solution of the problem all the materials that the eyes and ears can gather.

"When this latent work is sufficiently complete, the idea suddenly bursts forth, it may be at the end of a voluntary tension of mind, or on the occasion of a chance remark, tearing the veil that hides the surmised image.

"But this image always appears simple and clear. In order to get the ideal solution into practice, there is required a struggle against matter, and the bringing to an issue is the most thankless part of the inventor's work.

"In order to give consistence and body to the idea caught sight of enthusiastically in an aureole, one must have patience, a perseverance through all trials. One must view on all sides the mechanical agencies that should serve to set the image together, until the latter has attained the simplicity that alone makes invention viable. In this work of bringing to a head, the same spirit of invention and imagination must be constantly drawn upon for the solution of all the details, and it is against this arduous requirement that the great majority of inventors rebel again and again.

"This is then, I believe, how one may in a general way understand the genesis of an invention. It follows from this that here, as almost everywhere, the imagination acts through association of ideas.

"Thanks to a profound acquaintance with known mechanical methods, the inventor succeeds, through association of ideas, in getting novel combinations producing new effects, towards the realization of which his mind has in advance been bent."

But for a slightly explored subject, the foregoing remarks are not enough. It is necessary to determine more precisely the general and special characters of this form of imagination.

1. General Characters

I term general characters those that the mechanical imagination possesses in common with the best known, least questioned forms of the constructive imagination. In order to be convinced that, so far as concerns these characters it does not differ from the rest, let us take, for the sake of comparison, esthetic imagination, since it is agreed, rightly or wrongly, that this is the model par excellence. We shall see that the essential psychological conditions coincide in the two instances.

The mechanical imagination thus has like the other its ideal, i.e., a perfection conceived and put forward as capable, little by little, of being realized. The idea is at first hidden; it is, to use our correspondent's phrase, "the germ," the principle of unity, center of attraction, that suggests, excites, and groups appropriate associations of images, in which it is enwrapped and organized into a structure, an ensemble of means converging toward a common end. It thus presupposes a dissociation of experience. The inventor undoes, decomposes, breaks up in thought, or makes of experience a tool, an instrument, a machine, an agency for building anew with the debris.

The practical imagination is no more foreign to inspiration than the esthetic imagination. The history of useful inventions is full of men who suffered privations, persecution, ruin; who fought to the bitter end against relatives and friends—drawn by the need of creating, fascinated not by the hope of future gain but by the idea of an imposed mission, of a destiny they had to fulfill. What more have poets and artists done? The fixed and irresistible idea has led more than one to a foreseen death, as in the discovery of explosives, the first attempts at lightning conductors, aeronautics, and many others. Thus, from a true intuition, primitive civilizations have put on a level great poets and great inventors, erected into divinities or demi-gods historical or legendary personages in whom the genius of discovery is personified:—among the Hindoos, Vicavakarma; among the Greeks, Hephaestos, Prometheus, Triptolemus, Daedalus and Icarus. The Chinese, despite their dry imagination, have done the same; and we find the same condition in Egypt, Assyria, and everywhere. Moreover, the practical and mechanical arts have passed through a first period of no-change, during which the artisan, subjected to fixed rules and an undisputed tradition, considers himself an instrument of divine revelation.[123] Little by little he has emerged from that theological age, to enter the humanistic age, when, being fully conscious of being the author of his work, he labors freely, changes and modifies according to his own inspiration.

Mechanical and industrial imagination, like esthetic imagination, has its preparatory period, its zenith and decline: the periods of the precursors, of the great inventors, and of mere perfectors. At first a venture is made, effort is wasted with small result,—the man has come too early or lacks clear vision; then a great imaginative mind arises, blossoms; after him the work passes into the hands of dii minores, pupils or imitators, who add, abridge, modify: such is the order. The many-times written history of the application of steam, from the time of the eolipile of Hero of Alexandria to the heroic period of Newcomen and Watt, and the improvements made since their time, is one proof of the statement. Another example:—the machine for measuring duration is at first a simple clepsydra; then there are added marks indicating the subdivisions of time, then a water gauge causes a hand to move around a dial, then two hands for the hours and minutes; then comes a great moment—by the use of weights the clepsydra becomes a clock, at first massive and cumbersome, later lightened, becoming capable, with Tycho-Brahe, of marking seconds; and then another moment—Huyghens invents the spiral spring to replace the weights, and the clock, simplified and lightened, becomes the watch.

2. Special Characters

The special characteristics of the mechanical imagination being the marks belonging to this type, we shall study them at greater length.

(I) There is first of all, at least in great inventors, an inborn quality,—that is, a natural disposition,—that does not originate in experience and owes the latter only its development. This quality is a bent in a practical, useful direction; a tendency to act, not in the realm of dreams or human feeling, not on individuals or social groups, not toward the attainment of theoretical knowledge of nature, but to become master over natural forces, to transform them and adapt them toward an end.

Every mechanical invention arises from a need: from the strict necessity for individual preservation in the case of primitive man who wages war against the powers of nature; from the desire for well-being and the necessity for luxury in growing civilization; from the need of creating little engines, imitating instruments and machines, in the child. In a word, every particular invention, great or small, arises from a particular need; for, we repeat again, there is no creative instinct in general. A man distinguished for various inventions along practical lines, writes: "As far as my memory allows, I can state that in my case conception always results from a material or mental need.[124] It springs up suddenly. Thus, in 1887, a speech of Bismarck made me so angry that I immediately thought of arming my country with a repeating rifle. I had already made various applications to the ministry of war, when I learned that the Lebel system had just been adopted. My patriotism was fully satisfied, but I still have the design of the gun that I invented." This communication mentions two or three other inventions that arose under analogous circumstances, but have had a chance of being adopted.

Among the requisite qualities I mention the natural and necessary preeminence of certain groups of sensations or images (visual, tactile, motor) that may be decisive in determining the direction of the inventor.

(II) Mechanical invention grows by successive stratifications and additions, as in the sciences, but more completely. It is a fine verification of the "subsidiary law of growing complexity" previously discussed.[125] If we measure the distance traversed since the distant ages when man was naked and unarmed before nature to the present time of the reign of machinery, we are astonished at the amount of imagination produced and expended, often uselessly lavished, and we ask ourselves how such a work could have been misunderstood or so lightly appreciated. It does not pertain to our subject to make even a summary table of this long development. The reader can consult the special works which, unfortunately, are most often fragmentary and lack a general view. So we should feel grateful to a historian of the useful arts, L. Bourdeau, for having attempted to separate out the philosophy of the subject, and for having fastened it down in the following formulas:[126]

(a) The exploitation of the powers of nature is made according to their degree of power.

(b) The extension of working instruments has followed a logical evolution in the direction of growing complexity and perfection.

Man, according to the observations of M. Bourdeau, has applied his creative activity to natural forces and has set them to work according to a regular order, viz.:

(1) Human forces, the only ones available during the "state of nature" and the savage state. Before all else, man created weapons: the most circumscribed primitive races have invented engines for attack and defense—of wood, bone, stone, as they were able. Then the weapon became a tool by special adaptation:—the battle-club serves as a lever, the tomahawk as a hammer, the flint ax as a hatchet, etc. In this manner there is gradually formed an arsenal of instruments. "Inferior to most animals as regards certain work that would have to be done with the aid of our organic resources alone, we are superior to all as soon as we set our tools at work. If the rodents with their sharp teeth cut wood better than we can, we do it still better with the ax, the chisel, the saw. Some birds, with the help of a strong beak, by repeated blows, penetrate the trunk of a tree: but the auger, the gimlet, the wimble do the same work better and more quickly. The knife is superior to the carnivore's teeth for tearing meat; the hoe better than the mole's paw for digging earth, the trowel than the beaver's tail for beating and spreading mortar. The oar permits us to rival the fish's fin; the sail, the wing of the bird. The distaff and spindle allow our imitating the industry of insect spinners; etc. Man thus reproduces and sums up in his technical contrivances the scattered perfections of the animal world. He even succeeds in surpassing them, because, in the form of tools, he uses substances and combinations of effects that cannot figure as part of an organism."[127] It is scarcely likely that most of these inventions arose from a voluntary imitation of animals: but even supposing such an origin, there would still remain a fine place for personal creative work. Man has produced by conscious effort what life realizes by methods that escape us; so that the creative imagination in man is a succedaneum of the generative powers of nature.

(2) During the pastoral stage man brought animals under subjection and discipline. An animal is a machine, ready-made, that needs only to be trained to obedience; but this training has required and stimulated all sorts of inventions, from the harness with which to equip it, to the chariots, wagons, and roads with which and on which it moves.

(3) Later, the natural motors—air and water—have furnished new material for human ingenuity, e.g., in navigation; wind- and water-mills, used at first to grind grain, then for a multitude of uses—sawing, milling, lifting hammers; etc.

(4) Lastly, much later, come products of an already mature civilization, artificial motors, explosives,—powder and all its derivatives and substitutes—steam, which has made such great progress.

If the reader please to represent to himself well the immense number of facts that we have just indicated in a few lines; if he please to note that every invention, great or small, before becoming a fixed and realized thing, was at first an imagination, a mere contrivance of the brain, an assembly of new combinations or new relations, he will be forced to admit that nowhere—not excepting even esthetic production—has man imagined to such a great extent.

One of the reasons—though not the only one—that supports the contrary opinion is, that by the very law of their growing complexity, inventions are grafted one on another. In all the useful arts improvements have been so slow, and so gradually wrought, that each one of them passed unperceived, without leaving its author the credit for its discovery. The immense majority of inventions are anonymous—some great names alone survive. But, whether individual or collective, imagination remains imagination. In order that the plow, at first a simple piece of wood hardened by the fire and pushed along with the human hand, should become what it is to-day, through a long series of modifications described in the special works, who knows how many imaginations have labored! In the same way, the uncertain flame of a resinous branch guiding vaguely in the night leads us, through a long series of inventions, to gas and electric lighting. All objects, even the most ordinary and most common that now serve us in our everyday-life, are condensed imagination.

(III) More than any other form, mechanical imagination depends strictly on physical conditions. It cannot rest content with combining images, it postulates material factors that impose themselves unyieldingly. Compared to it, the scientific imagination has much more freedom in the building of its hypotheses. In general, every great invention has been preceded by a period of abortive attempts. History shows that the so-called "initial moment" of a mechanical discovery, followed by its improvements, is the moment ending a series of unsuccessful trials: we thus skip a phase of pure imagination, of imaginative construction that has not been able to enter into the mold of an appropriate determinism. There must have existed innumerable inventions that we might term mechanical romances, which, however, we cannot refer to because they have left us no trace, not being born viable. Others are known as curiosities because they have blazed the path. We know that Otto de Guericke made four fruitless attempts before discovering his air-pump. The brothers Montgolfier were possessed with the desire to make "imitation clouds," like those they saw moving over the Alps. "In order to imitate nature," they at first enclosed water-vapor in a light, stout case, which fell on cooling. Then they tried hydrogen; then the production of a gas with electrical properties; and so on. Thus, after a succession of hypotheses and failures, they finally succeeded. From the end of the sixteenth century there was offered the possibility of communicating at a distance by means of electricity. "In a work published in 1624 the Jesuit, Father Leurechon, described an imaginary apparatus (by means of which, he said, people could converse at a distance) for the aid of lovers who, by the connection of their movements, would cause a needle to move about a dial on which would be written the letters of the alphabet; and the drawing accompanying the text is almost a picture of Breguet's telegraph." But the author considered it impossible "in the absence of lovers having such ability."[128]

Mechanical inventions that fail correspond to erroneous or unverified scientific hypotheses. They do not emerge from the stage of pure imagination, but they are instructive to the psychologist because they give in bare form the initial work of the constructive imagination in the technical field.

There still remain the requirements of reasoning, of calculation, of adaptation to the properties of matter. But, we repeat, this determinism has several possible forms—one can reach the same goal through different means. Besides, these determining conditions are not lacking in any type of imagination; there is only a difference as between lesser and greater. Every imaginative construction from the moment that it is little more than a group of fancies, a spectral image haunting a dreamer's brain, must take on a body, submit to external conditions on which it depends, and which materialize it somewhat. In this respect, architecture is an excellent example. It is classed among the fine arts; but it is subject to so many limitations that its process of invention strongly resembles technical and mechanical creations. Thus it has been possible to say that "Architecture is the least personal of all the arts." "Before being an art it is an industry in the sense that it has nearly always a useful end that is imposed on it and rules its manifestations. Whatever it builds—a temple, a theater, a palace—it must before all else subordinate its work to the end assigned to it in advance. This is not all:—it must take account of materials, climate, soil, location, habits—of all things that may require much skill, tact, calculation, which, however, do not interest art as such, and do not permit architecture to manifest its purely esthetic qualities."[129]

Thus, at bottom, there is an identity of nature between the constructive imagination of the mechanic and that of the artist: the difference is only in the end, the means, and the conditions. The formula, Ars homo additus naturae, has been too often restricted to esthetics—it should comprehend everything artificial. Esthetes, doubtless, hold that their imagination has for them a loftier quality—a disputed question that psychology need not discuss; for it, the essential mechanism is the same in the two cases: a great mechanic is a poet in his own way, because he makes instruments imitating life. "Those constructions that at other times are the marvel of the ignorant crowd deserve the admiration of the reflecting:—Something of the power that has organized matter seems to have passed into combinations in which nature is imitated or surpassed. Our machines, so varied in form and in function, are the representatives of a new kingdom intermediate between senseless and animate forms, having the passivity of the former and the activity of the latter, and exploiting everything for our sake. They are counterfeits of animate beings, capable of giving inert substances a regular functioning. Their skeleton of iron, organs of steel, muscles of leather, soul of fire, panting or smoking breath, rhythm of movement—sometimes even the shrill or plaintive cries expressing effort or simulating pain:—all that contributes to give them a fantastic likeness to life—a specter and dream of inorganic life."[130]

FOOTNOTES:

[119] See above, Part One, chapter II.

[120] For a complete and recent study of the question, see A. Lehmann, Aberglaube und Zauberei von den aeltesten Zeiten bis in die Gegenwart, 1898.

[121] Lang, op. cit., I, 96. There will be found many other facts of this kind.

[122] If this book were not merely an essay, we should have had to study language as an instrument of the practical life in its relations to the creative imagination, especially the function of analogy, in the extension and transformation of the meanings of words. Works on linguistics are full of evidence on this point. One could do better still by attending exclusively to the vernacular, to slang, which shows us creative force in action. "Slang," says one philologist, "has the property of figuring, expressing, and picturing language.... With it, however low its origin, one could reconstruct a people or a society." Its principal, not only, means, are metaphor and allegory. It lends itself equally to methods that degrade or ennoble existing words, but with a very marked preference for the worse or degrading meanings.

[123] Ample information on this point will be found in the work of Espinas, Les Origines de la Technologie.

[124] The same correspondent, without my having asked him in regard to this, gives me the following details: "When about seven years old I saw a locomotive, its fire and smoke. My father's stove also made fire and smoke, but lacked wheels. If, then, I told my father, we put wheels under the stove, it would move like a locomotive. Later, when about thirteen, the sight of a steam threshing-machine suggested to me the idea of making a horseless wagon. I began a childish construction of one, which my father made me give up," etc. The tendency toward mechanical invention shows itself very early in some children—we gave examples of it before. Our inventor adds: "My imagination was strongest at about the age of 25 to 35 (I am now 45 years old). After that time it seems to me that the remainder of life is good only for producing less important conceptions, forming a natural consequence of the principal conceptions born of the period of youth."

[125] See above, Part Two, chapter V.

[126] L. Bourdeau, Les Forces de l'Industrie, Paris, 1884. This very substantial work, abounding in facts, conceived after a systematic plan, has aided us much in this study.

[127] Op. cit., pp. 45-46.

[128] Quoted by L. Bourdeau (op. cit., p. 354), who also mentions many other attempts: an anonymous Scot in 1753, Lesage of Geneva, 1780, Lhomond (France, 1787), Battencourt (Spain, 1787), Reiser, a German (1794), Salva (Madrid, 1796). The insufficient study of dynamic electricity did not permit them to succeed.

[129] E. Veron, L'Esthetique, p. 315.

[130] L. Bourdeau, op. cit., p. 233.



CHAPTER VI

THE COMMERCIAL IMAGINATION

Taking the word "commercial" in its broadest signification, I understand by this expression all those forms of the constructive imagination that have for their chief aim the production and distribution of wealth, all inventions making for individual or collective enrichment. Even less studied than the form preceding, this imaginative manifestation reveals as much ingenuity as any other. The human mind is largely busied in that way. There are inventors of all kinds—the great among these equal those whom general opinion ranks as highest. Here, as elsewhere, the great body invent nothing, live according to tradition, in routine and imitation.

Invention in the commercial or financial field is subject to various conditions with which we are not concerned:

(1) External conditions:—Geographical, political, economic, social, etc., varying according to time, place, and people. Such is its external determinism—human and social here in place of cosmic, physical, as in mechanical invention.

(2) Internal, psychological conditions, most of which are foreign to the primary and essential inventive act:—on one hand, foresight, calculation, strength of reasoning;—in a word, capacity for reflection; on the other hand, assurance, recklessness, soaring into the unknown—in a word, strong capacity for action. Whence arise, if we leave out the mixed forms, two principal types—the calculating, the venturesome. In the former the rational element is first. They are cautious, calculating, selfish exploiters, with no great moral or social preoccupations. In the latter, the active and emotional element predominates. They have a broader sweep. Of this sort were the merchant-sailors of Tyre, Carthage, and Greece; the merchant-travelers of the Middle Ages, the mercantile and gain-hungry explorers of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries; later, in a changed form, the organizers of great companies, the inventors of monopolies, American "trusts," etc. These are the great imaginative minds.

Eliminating, then, from our subject, what is not the purely imaginative element in order to study it alone, I see only two points for us to treat, if we would avoid repetition—at the initial moment of invention, the intuitive act that is its germ; during the period of development and organization, the necessary and exclusive role of schematic images.

I

By "intuition" we generally understand a practical, immediate judgment that goes straight to the goal. Tact, wisdom, scent, divination, are synonymous or equivalent expressions. First let us note that intuition does not belong exclusively to this part of our subject, for it is found in parvo throughout; but in commercial invention it is preponderating on account of the necessity of perceiving quickly and surely, and of grasping chances. "Genius for business," someone has said, "consists in making exact hypotheses regarding the fluctuations of values." To characterize the mental state is easy, if it is a matter merely of giving examples; very difficult, if one attempts to discover its mechanism.

The physician who in a trice diagnoses a disease, who, on a higher level, groups symptoms in order to deduce a new disease from them, like Duchenne de Boulogne; the politician who knows human nature, the merchant who scents a good venture, etc., furnish examples of intuition. It does not depend on the degree of culture;—not to mention women, whose insight into practical matters is well known, there are ignorant people—peasants, even savages—who, in their limited sphere, are the equals of fine diplomats.

But all these facts teach us nothing concerning its psychological nature. Intuition presupposes acquired experience of a special nature that gives the judgment its validity and turns it in a particular direction. Nevertheless, this accumulated knowledge of itself gives no evidence as to the future. Now, every intuition is an anticipation of the future, resulting from only two processes:—inductive or deductive reasoning, e.g., the chemist foreseeing a reaction; imagination, i.e., a representative construction. Which is the chief process here? Evidently the former, because it is not a matter of fancied hypothesis, but of adaptation of former experience to a new case. Intuition resembles logical operations much more than it does imaginative combinations. We may liken it to unconscious reasoning, if we are not afraid of the seeming contradiction of this expression which supposes a logical operation without consciousness of the middle term. Although questionable, it is perhaps to be preferred to other proposed explanations—such as automatism, habit, "instinct," "nervous connections." Carpenter, who as promoter of "unconscious cerebration," deserves to be consulted, likens this state to reflection. In ending, he reprints a letter that John Stuart Mill wrote to him on the subject, in which he says in substance that this capacity is found in persons who have experience and lean toward practical things, but attach little importance to theory.[131]

Every intuition, then, becomes concrete as a judgment, equivalent to a conclusion. But what seems obscure and even mysterious in it is the fact that, from among many possible solutions, it finds at the first shot the proper one. In my opinion this difficulty arises largely from a partial comprehension of the problem. By "intuition" people mean only cases in which the divination is correct; they forget the other, far more numerous, cases that are failures. The act by which one reaches a conclusion is a special case of it. What constitutes the originality of the operation is not its accuracy, but its rapidity—the latter is the essential character, the former accessory.

Further, it must be acknowledged that the gift of seeing correctly is an inborn quality, vouchsafed to one, denied to another:—people are born with it, just as they are born right-or left-handed: experience does not give it—only permits it to be put to use. As for knowing why the intuitive act now succeeds and at another time fails, that is a question that comes down to the natural distinction between accurate and erroneous minds, which we do not need to examine here.

Without dwelling longer on this initial stage, let us return to the commercial imagination, and follow it in its development.

II

The human race passed through a pre-commercial age. The Australians, Fuegians, and their class seem to have had no idea whatever of exchange. This primitive period, which was long, corresponds to the age of the horde or large clan. Commercial invention, arising like the other forms from needs,—simple and indispensable at first, artificial and superfluous later,—could not arise in that dim period when the groups had almost their sole relations with one another as war. Nothing called it to arise. But at a higher stage the rudimentary form of commerce, exchange in kind or truck, appeared early and almost everywhere. Then this long, cumbersome, inconvenient method gave place to a more ingenious invention—the employment of "standard values," beings or material objects serving as a common measure for all the rest:—their choice varied with the time, place, and people—e.g., certain shells, salt, cocoa-seeds, cloth, straw-matting, cattle, slaves, etc.; but this innovation held all the remainder in the germ, for it was the first attempt at substitution. But during the earliest period of commercial evolution the chief effort at invention consisted of finding increasingly more simple methods in the mechanism of exchange. Thus, there succeeded to these disparate values, the precious metals, in the form of powder and ingots, subject to theft and the inconveniences of weighing. Then, money of fixed denomination, struck under the authority of a chief or of a social group. Finally, gold and silver are replaced by the letter of credit, the bank check, and the numerous forms of fiduciary money.[132]

Every one of these forward steps is due to inventors. I say inventors, in the plural, because it is proven that every change in the means of exchange has been imagined several times, in several ages—though in the same way—on the surface of our earth.

Summing up—the inventive labor of this period is reduced to creating increasingly more simple and more rapid methods of substitution in the commercial mechanism.

The appearance of commerce on a large scale has depended on the state of agriculture, industry, ways of communication, social and economic conditions and political extension. It came into being toward the end of the Roman Republic. After the interruption of the Middle Ages the activity is taken up again by the Italian cities, the Hanseatic League, etc.; in the fifteenth century with the great maritime discoveries; in the sixteenth century by the Conquistadores, hungering for adventure and wealth; later on, by the mixed expeditions, whose expenses are defrayed by merchants in common, and which are often accompanied by armed bands that fight for them; lastly comes the incorporation of great companies that have been wittily dubbed "Conquistadores of the counting-house."

We now come to the moment when commercial invention attains its complex form and must move great masses. Taken as a whole, its psychological mechanism is the same as that of any other creative work. In the first instance, the idea arises, from inspiration, from reflection, or by chance. Then comes a period of fermenting during which the inventor sketches his construction in images, represents to himself the material to be worked upon, the grouping of stockholders, the making up of a capital, the mechanism of buying and selling, etc. All this differs from the genesis of an esthetic or mechanical work only in the end, or in the nature of the images. In the second phase it is necessary to proceed to execution—a castle in the air must be made a solid structure. Then appear a thousand obstructions in the details that must be overcome. As everywhere else, minor inventions become grafted on the principal invention; the author lets us see the poverty or richness in resource of his mind. Finally, the work is triumphant, fails, or is only half-successful.

Did it keep only to these general traits, commercial imagination would be merely the reiteration, with slight changes, of forms already studied; but it has characteristics all its own that must be distinguished.

(1) It is a combining or tactical imagination. Heretofore, we have met nothing like it. This special mark is derived from the very nature of its determinism, which is very different from that limiting the scientific or mechanical imagination. Every commercial project, in order to emerge from the internal, purely imaginative phase, and become a reality, requires "coming to a head," very exact calculation of frequently numerous, divergent, even contrary elements. The American dealer speculating in grain is under the absolute necessity of being quickly and surely informed regarding the agricultural situation in all countries of the world that are rich in grain, that export or import; in regard to the probable chances of rain or drouth; the tariff duties of the various countries, etc. Lacking that, he buys and sells haphazard. Moreover, as he deals in enormous quantities, the least error means great losses, the smallest profit on a unit is of account, and is multiplied and increased into a noticeable gain.

Besides that initial intuition that shows opportune business and moments, commercial imagination presupposes a well-studied, detailed campaign for attack and defense, a rapid and reliable glance at every moment of execution in order to incessantly modify this plan—it is a kind of war. All this totality of special conditions results from a general condition,—namely, competition, strife. We shall come back to this point at the end of the chapter.

Let us follow to the end the working of this creative imagination. Like the other forms, this kind of invention arises from a need, a desire—that of the spreading of "self-feeling," of the expansion of the individual under the form of enrichment. But this tendency, and with it the resulting imaginative creation, can undergo changes.

It is a well-known law of the emotional life that what is at first sought as a means may become an end and be desired for itself. A very sensual passion may at length undergo a sort of idealization; people study a science at first because it is useful, and later because of its fascination; and we may desire money in order to spend it, and later in order to hoard it. Here it is the same: the financial inventor is often possessed with a kind of intoxication—he no longer labors for lucre, but for art; he becomes, in his own way, an author of romance. His imagination, set at the beginning toward gain, now seeks only its complete expansion, the assertion and eruption of its creative power, the pleasure of inventing for invention's sake,[133] daring the extraordinary, the unheard-of—it is the victory of pure construction. The natural equilibrium between the three necessary elements of creation—mobility, combination of images, calculation—is destroyed. The rational element gives way, is obliterated, and the speculator is launched into adventure with the possibility of a dazzling success or astounding catastrophe. But let us note well that the primary and sole cause of this change is in the affective and motor element, in an hypertrophy of the lust for power, in an unmeasured and morbid want of expansion of self. Here, as everywhere, the source of invention is the emotional nature of the inventor.

(2) A second special character of commercial imagination is the exclusive employment of schematic representations. Although this process is also met with in the sciences and especially in social inventions, the imaginative type that we are now considering has the privilege of using them without exception. This, then, is the proper moment for a description.

By "schematic images" I mean those that are, by their very nature, intermediate between the concrete image and the pure concept, but approach more nearly the concept. We have already pointed out very different kinds of representations—concrete images, material pertaining to plastic and mechanical imagination; the emotional abstractions of the diffluent imagination; affective images, the type of which is found in musicians; symbolic images, familiar in mystics. It may seem improper to add another class to this list, but it is not a meaningless subtlety. Indeed, there are no images in general that, according to the ordinary conception, would be copies of reality. Even their separation into visual, auditory, motor, etc., is not sufficient, because it distinguishes them only with regard to their origin. There are other differences. We have seen that the image, like everything living, undergoes corrosions, damages, twisting, and transformation: whence it comes about that this remainder of former impressions varies according to its composition, i.e., in simplicity, complexity, grouping of its constitutive elements, etc., and takes on many aspects. On the other hand, as the difference between the chief types of creative imagination depends in part on the materials employed—on the nature of the images that serve in mental building—a precise determination of the nature of the images belonging to each type is not an idle operation.

In order to clearly explain what we mean by schematic images, let us represent by a line, PC, the scale of images according to the degree of complexity, from the percept, P, to the concept, C.

P——————X——G——S——C

As far as I am aware, this determination of all the degrees has never been made. The work would be delicate; I do not regard it as impossible. I have no intention to undertake it, even as I do not pretend that I have given above the complete list of the various forms of images.

If, then, we consider the foregoing figure merely as a means of representing the gradation to the eye, the image in moving, by hypothesis, from the moment of perception, P, is less and less in contact with reality, becomes simplified, impoverished, and loses some of its constitutive elements. At X it crosses the middle threshold to approach nearer and nearer to the concept. At G let us locate generic images, primitive forms of generalization, whose nature and process of becoming are well-known;[134] we should place farther along, at S, schematic images, which require a higher function of mind. Indeed, the generic image results from a spontaneous fusion of like or very analogous images—such as the vague representation of the oak, the horse, the negro, etc.; it belongs to only one class of objects. The schematic image results from a voluntary act; it is not limited to exact resemblances—it rises into abstraction; so it is scarcely accompanied by a fleeting representation of concrete objects—it is almost reduced to the word. At a higher level, it is freed from all sensuous elements or pictures, and is reduced, in the present instance, to the mere notion of value—it is not different from a pure concept. While the artist and the mechanic build with concrete images, the commercial imagination can act directly neither on things nor on their immediate representations, because from the time that it goes beyond the primitive age it requires a substitution of increasing generality; materials become values that are in turn reducible to symbols. Consequently, it proceeds as in the stating and solving of abstract problems in which, after having substituted for things and their relations figures and letters, calculation works with signs, and indirectly with things.

Aside from the first moment of invention, the finding of the idea—an invariable psychological state—it must be recognized that in its development and detailed construction the commercial imagination is made up chiefly of calculations and combinations that hardly permit concrete images. If we admit, then,—and this is unquestionable—that these are the materials par excellence of the creative imagination, we shall be disposed to hold that the imaginative type we are now studying is a kind of involution, a case of impoverishment—an unacceptable thesis as regards the invention itself, but strictly acceptable as regards the conditions that necessity imposes upon it.

In closing, let us note that financial imagination does not always have as its goal the enriching of an individual or of a closely limited group of associates: it can aim higher, act on greater masses, address itself strenuously to a problem as complex as the reformation of the finances of a powerful state. All the civilized nations count in their history men who imagined a financial system and succeeded, with various fortunes, in making it prevail. The word "system," consecrated by usage, makes unnecessary any comment, and relates this form of imagination to that of scientists and philosophers. Every system rests on a master-conception, on an ideal, a center about which there is assembled the mental construction made up of imagination and calculation which, if circumstances permit, must take shape, must show that it can live.

Let us call to mind the author of the first, or at least, of the most notorious of these "systems." Law claimed that he was applying "the methods of philosophy, the principles of Descartes, to social economy, abandoned hitherto to chance and empiricism." His ideal was the institution of credit by the state. Commerce, said he, was during its first stage the exchange of merchandise in kind; in a second stage, exchange by means of another, more manageable, commodity or universal value, security equivalent to the object it represented; it must enter a third stage when exchange will be made by a purely conventional sign having no value of its own. Paper represents money, just as the latter represents goods, "with the difference that the paper is not security, but a simple promise, constituting credit." The state must do systematically what individuals have done instinctively; but it must also do what individuals cannot do—create currency by printing on the paper of exchange the seal of public authority. We know the history of the downfall of this system, the eulogies and criticisms it has received:—but because of the originality and boldness of his views, the inexhaustible fecundity of his lesser inventions, Law holds an undisputed place among the great imaginative minds.

III

We said above that commerce, in its higher manifestations, is a kind of war.[135] Here, then, would be the place to study the military imagination. The subject cannot be treated save by a man of the profession, so I shall limit myself to a few brief remarks based on personal information, or gleaned from authorities.

Between the various types of imagination hitherto studied we have shown great differences as regards their external conditions. While the so-called forms of pure imagination, whence esthetic, mythic, religious, mystic creations arise, can realize themselves by submitting to material conditions that are simple and not very exacting, the others can become embodied only when they satisfy an ensemble of numerous, inevitable, rigorously determined conditions; the goal is fixed, the materials are rigid, there is little choice of the appropriate means. If there be added to the inflexible laws of nature unforeseen human passions and determinations, as in political or social invention, or the offensive combination of opponents, as in commerce and war; then the imaginative construction is confronted with problems of constantly growing complexity. The most ingenious inventor cannot invent an object as a whole, letting his work develop through an immanent logic:—the early plan must be continually modified and readapted; and the difficulty arises not merely from the multiple elements of the problem to be solved, but from ceaseless changes in their positions. So one can advance only step by step, and go forward by calculations and strict examination of possibilities. Hence it results that underneath this thick covering of material and intellectual conditions (calculation, reasoning), spontaneity (the aptness for finding new combinations, "that art of inventing without which we hardly advance"[136]) reveals itself to few clear-sighted persons; but, in spite of everything, this creative power is everywhere, flowing like subterranean streams, a vivifying agency.

These general remarks, although not applicable exclusively to the military imagination, find their justification in it, because of its extreme complexity. Let us rapidly enumerate, proceeding from without inwards, the enormous mass of representations that it has to move and combine in order to make its construction adequate to reality, able at a precise moment to cease being a dream:—(1) Arms, engines, instruments of destruction and supply, varying according to time, place, richness of the country, etc. (2) The equally variable human element—mercenaries, a national army; strong, tried troops or weak and new. (3) The general principles of war, acquired by the study of the masters. (4) More personal is the power of reflection, the habitual solving of tactical and strategic problems. "Battles," said Napoleon, "are thought out at length, and in order to be successful it is necessary that we think several times in regard to what may happen." All the foregoing should be headed "science." Advancing more and more within the secret psychology of the individual, we come to art, the characteristic work of pure imagination. (5) Let us note the exact, rapid intuition at the commencement of the opportune moments. (6) Lastly, the creative element, the conception, a natural gift bearing the hall-mark of each inventor. Thus "the Napoleonic esthetics was always derived from a single concept, based on a principle that may be summed up thus:—Strict economy wherever it can be done; expenditure without limit on the decisive point. This principle inspires the strategy of the master; it directs everything, especially his battle-tactics, in which it is synthetized and summed up."[137]

Such, in analytical terms, appears the hidden spring that makes everything move, and it is to be attributed neither to experience nor to reasoning, nor to wise combinations, for it arises from the innermost depths of the inventor. "The principle exists in him in a latent state, i.e., in the depths of the unconscious, and unconsciously it is that he applies it, when the shock of the circumstances, of goal and means, causes to flash from his brain the spark stimulating the artistic solution par excellence, one that reaches the limits of human perfection."[138]

FOOTNOTES:

[131] Carpenter, Mental Physiology, chapter XI (end).

[132] Historically, the evolution has not always proceeded strictly in this order, which, however, seems the most logical one. Negotiable drafts were known to the Assyrians and Carthaginians. For thousands of years Egypt used ingots, not real money, but it was acquainted with fiduciary money. In the new world, the Peruvians made use of the scale, the Aztecs were ignorant of its use, etc. For details, see Letourneau, L'Evolution du commerce dans les diverses races humaines, Paris, 1897, especially pp. 264, 330, 354, 384, etc.

[133] This condition has been well-described by various novelists, among them Zola, in Money.

[134] For further details on this point, we refer the reader to our Evolution of General Ideas (chapter I).

[135] A general, a former professor in the War College, told me that when he heard a great merchant tell of the quick and sure service of his commercial information, the conception of the whole, and the care in all the details of his operations, he could not keep from exclaiming, "Why, that is war!"

[136] Leibniz.

[137] General Bonnal, Les Maitres de la Guerre, 1899, p. 137. "In him (Napoleon)," says the writer, "there was something of the poet, and one could explain all his acts by means of this singular complex, a medley of imagination, passion, and calculation. The dreams of an Ossian with the positive cast of mind of a mathematician and the passions of a Corsican—such were the heterogeneous elements that clashed in that powerful organization" (p. 151).

[138] Op. cit., p. 6.



CHAPTER VII

THE UTOPIAN IMAGINATION[139]

When the human mind creates, it can use only two classes of ideas as materials to embody its idea, viz.:

(1) Natural phenomena, the forces of the organic and inorganic worlds. In its scientific form, seeking to explain, to know, it ends in the hypothesis, a disinterested creation. In its industrial aspect, aiming towards application and utilization, it ends in practical, interested inventions.

(2) Human, i.e., psychic elements—instincts, passions, feelings, ideas, and actions. Esthetic creation is the disinterested form, social invention is the utilitarian form.

Consequently, we may say that invention in science resembles invention in the fine arts, both being speculative; and that mechanical and industrial invention approaches social invention through a common tendency toward the practical. I shall not insist on this distinction, which, to be definite, rests only on partial characters; I merely wish to mention that invention, whose role in social, political and moral evolution is large, must, in order to be a success, adopt certain processes while neglecting others. This the Utopians do not do.

The development of human societies depends on a multitude of factors, such as race, geographic and economic conditions, war, etc., which we need neither enumerate nor study. One only belongs to our topic—the successive appearance of idealistic conceptions that, like all other creations of mind, tend to realize themselves, the moral ideal consisting of new combinations arising from the predominance of one feeling, or from an unconscious elaboration (inspiration), or from analogy.

At the beginning of civilizations we meet semi-historic, semi-legendary persons—Manu, Zoroaster, Moses, Confucius, etc., who were inventors or reformers in the social and moral spheres. That a part of the inventions attributed to them must be credited to predecessors or successors is probable; but the invention, no matter who is its author, remains none the less invention. We have said elsewhere, and may repeat, that the expression inventor in morals may seem strange to some, because we are imbued with the notion of a knowledge of good and evil that is innate, universal, bestowed on all men and in all times. If we admit, on the other hand, as observation compels us to do, not a ready-made morality, but a morality in the making, it must be, indeed, the creation of an individual or of a group. Everybody recognizes inventors in geometry, in music, in the plastic and mechanic arts; but there have also been men who, in their moral dispositions, were very superior to their contemporaries, and were promoters, initiators.[140] For reasons of which we are ignorant, analogous to those that produce a great poet or a great painter, there arise moral geniuses who feel strongly what others do not feel at all, just as does a great poet, in comparison with the crowd. But it is not enough that they feel: they must create, they must realize their ideal in a belief and in rules of conduct accepted by other men. All the founders of great religions were inventors of this kind. Whether the invention comes from themselves alone, or from a collectivity of which they are the sum and incarnation, matters little. In them moral invention has found its complete form; like all invention, it is organic. The legend relates that Buddha, possessed with the desire of finding the perfect road of salvation for himself and all other men, gives himself up, at first, to an extravagant asceticism. He perceives the uselessness of this and renounces it. For seven years he meditates, then he beholds the light. He comes into possession of knowledge of the means that give freedom from Karma (the chain of causes and effects), and from the necessity of being born again. Soon he renounces the life of contemplation, and during fifty years of ceaseless wanderings preaches, makes converts, organizes his followers. Whether true or false historically, this tale is psychologically exact. A fixed and besetting idea, trial followed by failure, the decisive moment of Eureka! then the inner revelation manifests itself outwardly, and through the labors of the master and his disciples becomes complete, imposes itself on millions of men. In what respect does this mode of creation differ from others, at least in the practical order?

Thus, from the viewpoint of our present study, we may divide ethics into living and dead. Living ethics arise from needs and desires, stimulate an imaginative construction that becomes fixed in actions, habits and laws; they offer to men a concrete, positive ideal which, under various and often contrary aspects, is always happiness. The lifeless ethics, from which invention has withdrawn, arise from reflection upon, and the rational codification of, living ethics. Stored away in the writings of philosophers, they remain theoretical, speculative, without appreciable influence on the masses, mere material for dissertation and commentary.

In proportion as we recede from distant origins the light grows, and invention in the social and moral order becomes manifest as the work of two principal categories of minds—the fantastic, the positive. The former, purely imaginative beings, visionaries, utopians, are closely related to poets and artists. The latter, practical creators or reformers, capable of organizing, belong to the family of inventors in the industrial-commercial-mechanical order.

I

The chimerical form of imagination, applied to the social sciences, is the one that, taking account neither of the external determinism nor of practical requirements, spreads out freely. Such are the creators of ideal republics, seeking for a lost or to-be-discovered-in-the-future golden age, constructing, as their fancy pleases, human societies in their large outlines and in their details. They are social novelists, who bear the same relation to sociologists that poets do to critics. Their dreams, subjected merely to the conditions of an inner logic, have lived only within themselves, an ideal life, without ever passing through the test of application. It is the creative imagination in its unconscious form, restrained to its first phase.

Nothing is better known than their names and their works: The Republic of Plato, Thomas More's Utopia, Campanella's City of the Sun, Harrington's Oceana, Fenelon's Salente, etc.[141] However idealistic they may be, one could easily show that all the materials of their ideal are taken from the surrounding reality, they bear the stamp of the milieu, be it Greek, English, Christian, etc., in which they lived, and it should not be forgotten that in the Utopians everything is not chimerical—some have been revealers, others have acted as stimuli or ferments. True to its mission, which is to make innovations, the constructive imagination is a spur that arouses; it hinders social routine and prevents stagnation.

Among the creators of ideal societies there is one, almost contemporary, who would deserve a study of individual psychology—Ch. Fourier. If it is a question merely of fertility in pure construction, I doubt whether we could find one superior to him—he is equal to the highest, with the special characteristic of being at the same time exuberant to delirium and exact in details to the least minutiae. He is such a fine type of the imaginative intellect that he deserves that we stop a moment.

His cosmogony seems the work of an omnipotent demiurge fashioning the universe at will. His conception of the future world with its "counter-cast" creations, where the present ugliness and troubles of animal reign become changed into their opposites, where there will be "anti-lions," "anti-crocodiles," "anti-whales," etc., is one example of hundreds showing his inexhaustible richness in fantastic visions: the work of an imagination that is hot and overflowing, with no rational preoccupation.

On the other hand, his psychogony, based on the idea of metempsychosis borrowed from the Orient, gives itself up to numerical vagaries. Assuming for every soul a periodical rebirth, he assigns it first a period of "ascending subversion," the first phase of which lasts five thousand years, the second thirty-six thousand; then comes a period of completion, 9,000 years; and then a period of "descending subversion," whose first stage is 27,000 years, and the second 4,000 years—a total of 81,000 years. This form of imagination is already known to us.[142]

The principal part of his psychology, the theory of the emotions, questionable in many respects, is relatively rational. But in the construction of human society, the duality of his imagination—powerful and minute—reappears. We know his methodical organization: the group, composed of seven to nine persons; the series, comprising twenty-four to thirty-two groups; a phalanx that includes eighteen groups, constituting the phalanstery; the small city, a general center of phalanges; the provincial city, the imperial capital, the universal metropolis. He has a passion for classification and ordering; "his phalanstery works like a clock."

This rare imaginative type well deserved a few remarks, because of its mixture of apparent exactness and a natural, unconscious utopianism and extravagance. For, beneath all these pulsating inventions of precise, petty details, the foundation is none the less a purely speculative construction of the mind. Let us add an incredible abuse of analogy, that chief intellectual instrument of invention, of which only the reading of his books can give an idea.[143] Heinrich Heine said of Michelet, "He has a Hindoo imagination." The term would apply still better to Fourier, in whom coexist unchecked profusion of images and the taste for numerical accumulations. People have tried to explain this abundance of figures and calculation as a professional habit—he was for a long time a bookkeeper or cashier, always an excellent accountant. But this is taking the effect for cause. This dualism existed in the very nature of his mind, and he took advantage of it in his calling. The study of the numerical imagination[144] has shown how it is frequently met with among orientals, whose imaginative development is unquestioned, and we have seen why the idealistic imagination agrees so well with the indefinite series of numbers and makes use of it as a vehicle.

II

With practical inventors and reformers the ideal falls—not that they sacrifice it for their personal interests, but because they have a comprehension of possibilities. The imaginative construction must be corrected, narrowed, mutilated, if it is to enter into the narrow frame of the conditions of existence, until it becomes adapted and determined. This process has been described several times, and it is needless to repeat it here in other terms. Nevertheless, the ideal—understanding by this term the unifying principle that excites creative work and supports it in its development—undergoes metamorphosis and must be not only individual but collective; the creation does not realize itself save through a "communion of minds," by a co-operation of feelings and of wills; the work of one conscious individual must become the work of a social consciousness.

That form of imagination, creating and organizing social groups, manifests itself in various degrees according to the tendency and power of creators.

There are the founders of small societies, religious in form—the Essenes, the earliest Christian communities, the monastic orders of the Orient and Occident, the great Catholic or Mohammedan congregations, the semi-lay, semi-religious sects like the Moravian Brotherhood, the Shakers, Mormons, etc. Less complete because it does not cover the individual altogether in all the acts of life is the creation of secret associations, professional unions, learned societies, etc. The founder conceives an ideal of complete living or one limited to a given end, and puts it into practice, having for material men grouped of their free choice, or by cooptation.

There is invention operating on great masses—social or political invention strictly so called—ordinarily not proposed but imposed, which, however, despite its coercive power, is subject to requirements even more numerous than mechanical, industrial, or commercial invention. It has to struggle against natural forces, but most of all against human forces—inherited habits, customs, traditions. It must make terms with dominant passions and ideas, finding its justification, like all other creation, only in success.

Without entering into the details of this inevitable determination, which would require useless repetition, we may sum up the role of the constructive imagination in social matters by saying that it has undergone a regression—i.e., that its area of development has been little by little narrowed; not that inventive genius, reduced to pure construction in images, has suffered an eclipse, but on its part it has had to make increasingly greater room for experiment, rational elements, calculation, inductions and deductions that permit foresight—for practical necessities.

If we omit the spontaneous, instinctive, semi-conscious invention of the earliest ages, that was sufficient for primitive societies, and keep to creations that were the result of reflection and of great pretension, we can roughly distinguish three successive periods:

(1) A very long idealistic phase (Antiquity, Renaissance) when triumphed the pure imagination, and the play of the free fancy that spends itself in social novels. Between the creation of the mind and the life of contemporary society there was no relation; they were worlds apart, strangers to one another. The true Utopians scarcely troubled themselves to make applications. Plato and More—would they have wished to realize their dreams?

(2) An intermediate phase, when an attempt is made to pass from the ideal to the practical, from pure speculation to social facts. Already, in the eighteenth century, some philosophers (Locke, Rousseau) drew up constitutions, at the request of interested persons. During this period, when the work of the imagination, instead of merely becoming fixed in books, tends to become objectified in acts, we find many failures and some successes. Let us recall the fruitless attempts of the "phalansteries" in France, in Algeria, Brazil, and in the United States. Robert Owen was more fortunate;[145] in four years he reformed New Larnak, after his ideal, and with varying fortune founded short-lived colonies. Saint-Simonism has not entirely died out; the primitive civilization after his ideal rapidly disappeared, but some of his theories have filtered into or have become incorporated with other doctrines.

(3) A phase in which imaginative creation becomes subordinated to practical life: The conception of society ceases to be purely idealistic or constructed a priori by deduction from a single principle; it recognizes the conditions of its environment, adapts itself to the necessities of its development. It is the passage from the absolutely autonomous state of the imagination to a period when it submits to the laws of a rational imperative. In other words, the transition from the esthetic to the scientific, and especially the practical, form. Socialism is a well-known and excellent example of this. Compare its former utopias, down to about the middle of the last century, with its contemporary forms, and without difficulty we can appreciate the amount of imaginative elements lost in favor of an at least equivalent quantity of rational elements and positive calculations.

FOOTNOTES:

[139] This title, as will be seen later, corresponds only in part to the contents of this chapter.

[140] For facts in support, see the Psychology of the Emotions, Second Part, chapter VIII.

[141] Our author does not mention Bacon's New Atlantis, one of the best specimens of its kind. "Wisest Verulam," active and distinguished in so many fields, is not amenable to rules, and is here found among "idealists," as elsewhere among the foremost empiricists and iconoclasts. (Tr.)

[142] See above, Part III, chapter III.

[143] We recommend to the reader the "Epilogue sur l'Analogie," in Le Monde Industriel, pp. 244 ff., where he will learn that the "goldfinch depicts the child born of poor parents; the pheasant represents the jealous husband; the cock is the symbol of the man of the world; the cabbage is the emblem of mysterious love," etc. There are several pages in this tone, with alleged reasons in support of the statements.

[144] See above, chapter II.

[145] For an excellent account of the principles of these movements, see Rae, Contemporary Socialism; for Owen's ideals, his Autobiography; and for an account of some of the trials, Bushee's "Communistic Societies in the United States," Political Science Quarterly, vol. XX, pp. 625 ff. (Tr.)



CONCLUSION.



CONCLUSION

I

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION

Why is the human mind able to create? In a certain sense this question may seem idle, childish, and even worse. We might just as well ask why does man have eyes and not an electric apparatus like the torpedo? Why does he perceive directly sounds but not the ultra-red and ultra-violet rays? Why does he perceive changes of odors but not magnetic changes? And so on ad infinitum. We will put the question in a very different manner: Being given the physical and mental constitution of man such as it is at present, how is the creative imagination a natural product of this constitution?