Essay on the Creative Imagination
by Th. Ribot · English · Gutenberg #26430 · 556,360 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Essay on the Creative Imagination
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Essay on the Creative Imagination
Author: Th. Ribot
Translator: Albert Heyem Nachmen Baron
Release date: August 25, 2008 [eBook #26430]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26430
Credits: Produced by Clare Boothby and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAY ON THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION ***
Produced by Clare Boothby and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+------------------------------------------------------------+
| Transcriber's Note: |
| |
| Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in |
| this text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of |
| this document. |
| |
| The children's letters on page 108 have been reproduced in |
| this text as diagrams. |
+------------------------------------------------------------+
ESSAY ON THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION
BY
TH. RIBOT
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
BY
ALBERT H. N. BARON
FELLOW IN CLARK UNIVERSITY
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD.
1906
COPYRIGHT BY
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO.
CHICAGO, U. S. A.
1906
_All rights reserved._
TO THE MEMORY OF MY TEACHER
AND FRIEND,
Arthur Allin, Ph. D.,
PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION,
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO,
WHO FIRST INTERESTED ME IN THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHOLOGY,
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED, WITH REVERENCE
AND GRATITUDE, BY
THE TRANSLATOR.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
The name of Th. Ribot has been for many years well known in America, and
his works have gained wide popularity. The present translation of one of
his more recent works is an attempt to render available in English what
has been received as a classic exposition of a subject that is often
discussed, but rarely with any attempt to understand its true nature.
It is quite generally recognized that psychology has remained in the
semi-mythological, semi-scholastic period longer than most attempts at
scientific formulization. For a long time it has been the "spook
science" _per se_, and the imagination, now analyzed by M. Ribot in such
a masterly manner, has been one of the most persistent, apparently real,
though very indefinite, of psychological spooks. Whereas people have
been accustomed to speak of the imagination as an entity _sui generis_,
as a lofty something found only in long-haired, wild-eyed "geniuses,"
constituting indeed the center of a cult, our author, Prometheus-like,
has brought it down from the heavens, and has clearly shown that
_imagination is a function of mind common to all men in some degree_,
and that it is shown in as highly developed form in commercial leaders
and practical inventors as in the most bizarre of romantic idealists.
The only difference is that the manifestation is not the same.
That this view is not entirely original with M. Ribot is not to his
discredit--indeed, he does not claim any originality. We find the view
clearly expressed elsewhere, certainly as early as Aristotle, that the
greatest artist is he who actually embodies his vision and will in
permanent form, preferably in social institutions. This idea is so
clearly enunciated in the present monograph, which the author modestly
styles an essay, that when the end of the book is reached but little
remains of the great imagination-ghost, save the one great mystery
underlying all facts of mind.
That the present rendering falls far below the lucid French of the
original, the translator is well aware; he trusts, however, that the
indulgent reader will take into account the good intent as offsetting in
part, at least, the numerous shortcomings of this version.
I wish here to express my obligation to those friends who encouraged me
in the congenial task of translation.
A. H. N. B.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
Contemporary psychology has studied the purely reproductive imagination
with great eagerness and success. The works on the different
image-groups--visual, auditory, tactile, motor--are known to everyone,
and form a collection of inquiries solidly based on subjective and
objective observation, on pathological facts and laboratory experiments.
The study of the creative or constructive imagination, on the other
hand, has been almost entirely neglected. It would be easy to show that
the best, most complete, and most recent treatises on psychology devote
to it scarcely a page or two; often, indeed, do not even mention it. A
few articles, a few brief, scarce monographs, make up the sum of the
past twenty-five years' work on the subject. The subject does not,
however, at all deserve this indifferent or contemptuous attitude. Its
importance is unquestionable, and even though the study of the creative
imagination has hitherto remained almost inaccessible to experimentation
strictly so-called, there are yet other objective processes that permit
of our approaching it with some likelihood of success, and of continuing
the work of former psychologists, but with methods better adapted to
the requirements of contemporary thought.
The present work is offered to the reader as an essay or first attempt
only. It is not our intention here to undertake a complete monograph
that would require a thick volume, but only to seek the underlying
conditions of the creative imagination, showing that it has its
beginning and principal source in the natural tendency of images to
become objectified (or, more simply, in the motor elements inherent in
the image), and then following it in its development under its manifold
forms, whatever they may be. For I cannot but maintain that, at present,
the psychology of the imagination is concerned almost wholly with its
part in esthetic creation and in the sciences. We scarcely get beyond
that; its other manifestations have been occasionally mentioned--never
investigated. Yet invention in the fine arts and in the sciences is only
a special case, and possibly not the principal one. We hope to show that
in practical life, in mechanical, military, industrial, and commercial
inventions, in religious, social, and political institutions, the human
mind has expended and made permanent as much imagination as in all other
fields.
The constructive imagination is a faculty that in the course of ages has
undergone a reduction--or at least, some profound changes. So, for
reasons indicated later on, the mythic activity has been taken in this
work as the central point of our topic, as the primitive and typical
form out of which the greater number of the others have arisen. The
creative power is there shown entirely unconfined, freed from all
hindrance, careless of the possible and the impossible; in a pure state,
unadulterated by the opposing influence of imitation, of ratiocination,
of the knowledge of natural laws and their uniformity.
In the first or analytical part, we shall try to resolve the
constructive imagination into its constitutive factors, and study each
of them singly.
The second or genetic part will follow the imagination in its
development as a whole from the dimmest to the most complex forms.
Finally, the third or concrete part, will be no longer devoted to the
imagination, but to imaginative beings, to the principal types of
imagination that observation shows us.
May, 1900.
ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
Translator's Preface v
Author's Preface vii
INTRODUCTION.
THE MOTOR NATURE OF THE CONSTRUCTIVE IMAGINATION.
Transition from the reproductive to the creative
imagination.--Do all representations contain motor
elements?--Unusual effects produced by images: vesication,
stigmata; their conditions; their meaning for our
subject.--The imagination is, on the intellectual side,
equivalent to will. Proof: Identity of development;
subjective, personal character of both; teleologic
character; analogy between the abortive forms of the
imagination and abulias. 3
FIRST PART.
ANALYSIS OF THE IMAGINATION.
CHAPTER I.
THE INTELLECTUAL FACTOR.
Dissociation, preparatory work.--Dissociation in complete,
incomplete and schematic images.--Dissociation in series.
Its principal causes: internal or subjective, external or
objective.--Association: its role reduced to a single
question, the formation of new combinations.--The principal
intellectual factor is thinking by analogy. Why it is an
almost inexhaustible source of creation. Its mechanism. Its
processes reducible to two, viz.: personification,
transformation. 15
CHAPTER II.
THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR.
The great importance of this element.--All forms of the
creative imagination imply affective elements. Proofs: All
affective conditions may influence the imagination. Proofs:
Association of ideas on an emotional basis; new combinations
under ordinary and extraordinary forms.--Association by
contrast.--The motor element in tendencies.--There is no
creative instinct; invention has not _a_ source, but
_sources_, and always arises from a need.--The work of the
imagination reduced to two great classes, themselves
reducible to special needs.--Reasons for the prejudice in
favor of a creative instinct. 31
CHAPTER III.
THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR.
Various views of the "inspired state." Its essential
characteristics; suddenness, impersonality.--Its relations
to unconscious activity.--Resemblances to hypermnesia, the
initial state of alcoholic intoxication and somnambulism on
waking.--Disagreements concerning the ultimate nature of
unconsciousness: two hypotheses.--The "inspired state" is
not a cause, but an index.--Associations in unconscious
form.--Mediate or latent association: recent experiments and
discussions on this subject.--"Constellation" the result of
a summation of predominant tendencies. Its mechanism. 50
CHAPTER IV.
THE ORGANIC CONDITIONS OF THE IMAGINATION.
Anatomical conditions: various hypotheses. Obscurity of the
question. Flechsig's theory.--Physiological conditions: are
they cause, effect, or accompaniment? Chief factor: change
in cerebral and local circulation.--Attempts at
experimentation.--The oddities of inventors brought under
two heads: the explicable and inexplicable. They are helpers
of inspiration.--Is there any analogy between physical and
psychic creation? A philosophical hypothesis on the
subject.--Limitation of the question. Impossibility of an
exact answer. 65
CHAPTER V.
THE PRINCIPLE OF UNITY.
Importance of the unifying principle. It is a fixed idea or
a fixed emotion.--Their equivalence.--Distinction between
the synthetic principle and the ideal, which is the
principle of unity in motion: the ideal is a construction in
images, merely outlined.--The principal forms of the
unifying principles: unstable, organic or middle, extreme or
semi-morbid.--Obsession of the inventor and the sick:
insufficiency of a purely psychological criterion. 79
SECOND PART.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IMAGINATION.
CHAPTER I.
IMAGINATION IN ANIMALS.
Difficulties of the subject.--The degree of imagination in
animals.--Does creative synthesis exist in them? Affirmation
and denials.--The special form of animal imagination is
motor, and shows itself through play: its numerous
varieties.--Why the animal imagination must be above all
motor: lack of intellectual development.--Comparison with
young children, in whom the motor system predominates: the
roles of movements in infantile insanity. 93
CHAPTER II.
IMAGINATION IN THE CHILD.
Division of its development into four principal
periods.--Transition from passive to creative imagination:
perception and illusion.--Animating everything: analysis of
the elements constituting this moment: the role of
belief.--Creation in play: period of imitation, attempts at
invention.--Fanciful invention. 103
CHAPTER III.
PRIMITIVE MAN AND THE CREATION OF MYTHS.
The golden age of the creative imagination.--Myths:
hypotheses as to the origin: the myth is the psycho-physical
objectification of man in the phenomena that he perceives.
The role of imagination.--How myths are formed. The moment
of creation: two operations--animating everything,
qualifying everything. Romantic invention lacking in peoples
without imagination. The role of analogy and of association
through "constellation."--The evolution of myths: ascension,
acme, decline.--The explanatory myths undergo a radical
transformation: the work of depersonification of the myth.
Survivals.--The non-explanatory myths suffer a partial
transformation: Literature is a fallen and rationalized
mythology.--Popular imagination and legends: the legend is
to the myth what illusion is to hallucination.--Unconscious
processes that the imagination employs in order to create
legends: fusion, idealization. 118
CHAPTER IV.
THE HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION.
Is a psychology of great inventors possible? Pathological
and physiological theories of genius.--General characters of
great inventors. Precocity: chronological order of the
development of the creative power. Psychological reasons
for this order. Why the creator commences by
imitating.--Necessity or fatalism of vocation.--The
representative character of great creators. Discussion as to
the origin of this character--is it in the individual or in
the environment?--Mechanism of creation. Two principal
processes--complete, abridged. Their three phases; their
resemblances and differences.--The role of chance in
invention: it supposes the meeting of two factors--one
internal, the other external.--Chance is an occasion for,
not an agent of, creation. 140
CHAPTER V.
LAW OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IMAGINATION.
Is the creative imagination, in its evolution, subject to
any law?--It passes through two stages separated by a
critical phase.--Period of autonomy; critical period; period
of definite constitution. Two cases: decay or transformation
through logical form, through deviation.--Subsidiary law of
increasing complexity.--Historical verification. 167
THIRD PART.
THE PRINCIPAL TYPES OF IMAGINATION.
PRELIMINARY.
The need of a concrete study.--The varieties of the creative
imagination, analogous to the varieties of character. 179
CHAPTER I.
THE PLASTIC IMAGINATION.
It makes use of clear images, well determined in space, and
of associations of objective relations.--Its external
character.--Inferiority of the affective element.--Its
principal manifestations: in the arts dealing with form; in
poetry (transformation of sonorous into visual images); in
myths with clear outline; in mechanical invention.--The dry
and rational imagination its elements. 184
CHAPTER II.
THE DIFFLUENT IMAGINATION.
It makes use of vague images linked according to the least
rigorous modes of association. Emotional abstractions; their
nature.--Its characteristic of inwardness.--Its principal
manifestations: revery, the romantic spirit, the chimerical
spirit; myths and religious conceptions, literature and the
fine arts (the symbolists), the class of the marvelous and
fantastic.--Varieties of the diffluent imagination: first,
numerical imagination; its nature; two principal forms,
cosmogonic and scientific conceptions; second, musical
imagination, the type of the affective imagination. Its
characteristics; it does not develop save after an interval
of time.--Natural transposition of events in
musicians.--Antagonism between true musical imagination and
plastic imagination. Inquiry and facts on the subject.--Two
great types of imagination. 195
CHAPTER III.
MYSTIC IMAGINATION.
Its elements; its special characteristics.--Thinking
symbolically.--Nature of this symbolism.--The mystic changes
concrete images into symbolic images.--Their obscurity;
whence it arises.--Extraordinary abuse of analogy.--Mystic
labor on letters, numbers, etc.--Nature and extent of the
belief accompanying this form of imagination: it is
unconditional and permanent.--The mystic conception of the
world a general symbolism.--Mystic imagination in religion
and in metaphysics. 221
CHAPTER IV.
THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION.
It is distinguishable into genera and species.--The need for
monographs that have not yet appeared.--The imagination in
growing sciences--belief is at its maximum; in the organized
sciences--the negative role of method.--The conjectural
phase; proof of its importance.--Abortive and dethroned
hypotheses.--The imagination in the processes of
verification.--The metaphysician's imagination arises from
the same need as the scientist's.--Metaphysics is a
rationalized myth.--Three moments.--Imaginative and
rationalist. 236
CHAPTER V.
THE PRACTICAL AND MECHANICAL IMAGINATION.
Indetermination of this imaginative form.--Inferior forms:
the industrious, the unstable, the eccentric. Why people of
lively imagination are changeable.--Superstitious beliefs.
Origin of this form of imagination--its mental mechanism and
its elements.--The higher form--mechanical imagination.--Man
has expended at least as much imagination there as in
esthetic creation.--Why the contrary view
prevails.--Resemblances between these two forms of
imagination.--Identity of development. Detail
observation--four phases.--General characters. This form, at
its best, supposes inspiration; periods of preparation, of
maturity, and of decline.--Special characters: invention
occurs in layers. Principal steps of its development.--It
depends strictly on physical conditions.--A phase of pure
imagination--mechanical romances. Examples.--Identical
nature of the imagination of the mechanic and that of the
artist. 256
CHAPTER VI.
THE COMMERCIAL IMAGINATION.
Its internal and external conditions.--Two classes of
creators--the cautious, the daring.--The initial moment of
invention.--The importance of the intuitive
mind.--Hypotheses in regard to its psychologic nature.--Its
development: the creation of increasingly more simple
processes of substitution.--Characters in common with the
forms of creation already studied.--Characters peculiar to
it--the combining imagination of the tactician; it is a form
of war.--Creative intoxication.--Exclusive use of schematic
representations.--Remarks on the various types of
images.--The creators of great financial systems.--Brief
remarks on the military imagination. 281
CHAPTER VII.
THE UTOPIAN IMAGINATION.
Successive appearances of ideal conceptions.--Creators in
ethics and in the social realm.--Chimerical forms. Social
novelists.--Ch. Fourrier, type of the great
imaginer.--Practical invention--the collective
ideal.--Imaginative regression. 299
CONCLUSION.
I. _The foundations of the creative imagination._
Why man is able to create: two principal
conditions.--"Creative spontaneity," which resolves itself
into needs, tendencies, desires.--Every imaginative creation
has a motor origin.--The spontaneous revival of images.--The
creative imagination reduced to three forms: outlined,
fixed, objectified. Their peculiar characteristics. 313
II. _The imaginative type._
A view of the imaginative life in all its stages.--Reduction
to a psychologic law.--Four stages characterized: 1, by the
_quantity_ of images; 2, by their _quantity and intensity_;
3, by quantity, intensity and duration; 4, by the complete
and permanent systematization of the imaginary
life.--Summary. 320
APPENDICES.
OBSERVATIONS AND DOCUMENTS.
A. The various forms of inspiration. 335
B. On the nature of the unconscious factor. Two
categories--static unconscious, dynamic
unconscious.--Theories as to the nature of the
unconscious.--Objections, criticisms. 338
C. Cosmic and human imagination. 346
D. Evidence in regard to musical imagination. 350
E. The imaginative type and association of ideas. 353
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
THE MOTOR NATURE OF THE CONSTRUCTIVE IMAGINATION
I
It has been often repeated that one of the principal conquests of
contemporary psychology is the fact that it has firmly established the
place and importance of movements; that it has especially through
observation and experiment shown the representation of a movement to be
a movement begun, a movement in the nascent state. Yet those who have
most strenuously insisted on this proposition have hardly gone beyond
the realm of the passive imagination; they have clung to facts of pure
reproduction. My aim is to extend their formula, and to show that it
explains, in large measure at least, the origin of the creative
imagination.
Let us follow step by step the passage from reproduction pure and simple
to the creative stage, showing therein the persistence and preponderance
of the motor element in proportion as we rise from mere repetition to
invention.
First of all, do all representations include motor elements? Yes, I
say, because every perception presupposes movements to some extent, and
representations are the remnants of past perceptions. Certain it is
that, without our examining the question in detail, this statement holds
good for the great majority of cases. So far as visual and tactile
images are concerned there is no possible doubt as to the importance of
the motor elements that enter into their composition. The eye is very
poorly endowed with movements for its office as a higher sense-organ;
but if we take into account its intimate connection with the vocal
organs, so rich in capacity for motor combinations, we note a kind of
compensation. Smell and taste, secondary in human psychology, rise to a
very high rank indeed among many animals, and the olfactory apparatus
thus obtains with them a complexity of movements proportionate to its
importance, and one that at times approaches that of sight. There yet
remains the group of internal sensations that might cause discussion.
Setting aside the fact that the vague impressions bound up with chemical
changes within the tissues are scarcely factors in representation, we
find that the sensations resulting from changes in respiration,
circulation, and digestion are not lacking in motor elements. The mere
fact that, in some persons, vomiting, hiccoughs, micturition, etc., can
be caused by perceptions of sight or of hearing proves that
representations of this character have a tendency to become translated
into acts.
Without emphasizing the matter we may, then, say that this thesis rests
on a weighty mass of facts; that the motor element of the image tends to
cause it to lose its purely "inner" character, to objectify it, to
externalize it, to project it outside of ourselves.
It should, however, be noted that what has just been said does not take
us beyond the reproductive imagination--beyond memory. All these revived
images are _repetitions_; but the creative imagination requires
something _new_--this is its peculiar and essential mark. In order to
grasp the transition from reproduction to production, from repetition to
creation, it is necessary to consider other, more rare, and more
extraordinary facts, found only among some favored beings. These facts,
known for a long time, surrounded with some mystery, and attributed in a
vague manner "to the power of the imagination," have been studied in our
own day with much more system and exactness. For our purpose we need to
recall only a few of them.
Many instances have been reported of tingling or of pains that may
appear in different parts of the body solely through the effect of the
imagination. Certain people can increase or inhibit the beating of their
hearts at will, i.e., by means of an intense and persistent
representation. The renowned physiologist, E. F. Weber, possessed this
power, and has described the mechanism of the phenomenon. Still more
remarkable are the cases of vesication produced in hypnotized subjects
by means of suggestion. Finally, let us recall the persistent story of
the stigmatized individuals, who, from the thirteenth century down to
our own day, have been quite numerous and present some interesting
varieties--some having only the mark of the crucifix, others of the
scourging, or of the crown of thorns.[1] Let us add the profound changes
of the organism, results of the suggestive therapeutics of
contemporaries; the wonderful effects of the "faith cure," i.e., the
miracles of all religions in all times and in all places; and this brief
list will suffice to recall certain creative activities of the human
imagination that we have a tendency to forget.
It is proper to add that the image acts not altogether in a positive
manner. Sometimes it has an inhibitory power. A vivid representation of
a movement arrested is the beginning of the stoppage of that movement;
it may even end in complete arrest of the movement. Such are the cases
of "paralysis by ideas" first described by Reynolds, and later by
Charcot and his school under the name of "psychic paralysis." The
patient's inward conviction that he cannot move a limb renders him
powerless for any movement, and he recovers his motor power only when
the morbid representation has disappeared.
These and similar facts suggest a few remarks.
First, that we have here creation in the strict sense of the word,
though it be limited to the organism. What appears is _new_. Though one
may strictly maintain that from our own experience we have a knowledge
of formication, rapid and slow beating of the heart, even though we may
not be able ordinarily to produce them at will, this position is
absolutely untenable when we consider cases of vesication, stigmata, and
other alleged miraculous phenomena: _these are without precedent in the
life of the individual_.
Second, in order that these unusual states may occur, there are required
additional elements in the producing mechanism. At bottom this mechanism
is very obscure. To invoke "the power of the imagination" is merely to
substitute a word where an explanation is needed. Fortunately, we do not
need to penetrate into the inmost part of this mystery. It is enough for
us to make sure of the facts, to prove that they have a representation
as the starting point, and to show that the representation by itself is
not enough. What more then is needed? Let us note first of all that
these occurrences are rare. It is not within the power of everybody to
acquire stigmata or to become cured of a paralysis pronounced incurable.
This happens only to those having an ardent faith, a strong desire _that
it shall come to pass_. This is an indispensable psychic condition. What
is concerned in such a case is not a single state, but a double one: an
image followed by a particular emotional state (desire, aversion, etc.).
In other words, there are two conditions: In the first are concerned the
motor elements included in the image, the remains of previous
perceptions; in the second, there are concerned the foregoing, _plus_
affective states, tendencies that sum up the individual's energy. It is
the latter fact that explains their power.
To conclude: This group of facts shows us the existence, beyond images,
of another factor, instinctive or emotional in form, which we shall have
to study later and which will lead us to the ultimate source of the
creative imagination.
I fear that the distance between the facts here given and the creative
imagination proper will seem to the reader very great indeed. And why
so? First, because the creative activity here has as its only material
the organism, and is not separated from the creator. Then, too, because
these facts are extremely simple, and the creative imagination, in the
ordinary sense, is extremely complex; here there is one operating cause,
a single representation more or less complex, while in imaginative
creation we have several co-operating images with combinations,
coordination, arrangement, grouping. But it must not be forgotten that
our present aim is simply to find _a transition stage_[2] between
reproduction and production; to show the common origin of the two forms
of imagination--the purely representative faculty and the faculty of
creating by means of the intermediation of images;--and to show at the
same time the work of separation, of severance between the two.
II
Since the chief aim of this study is to prove that the basis of
invention must be sought in motor manifestations, I shall not hesitate
to dwell on it, and I take the subject up again under another, clearer,
more precise, and more psychological form, in putting the following
question: Which one among the various modes of mind-activity offers the
closest analogy to the creative imagination? I unhesitatingly answer,
_voluntary activity_: Imagination, in the intellectual order, is the
equivalent of will in the realm of movements. Let us justify this
comparison by some proof.
1. Likeness of development in the two instances. Growth of voluntary
control is progressive, slow, crossed and checked. The individual has to
become master of his muscles and by their agency extend his sway over
other things. Reflexes, instinctive movements, and movements expressive
of emotion constitute the primary material of voluntary movements. The
will has no movements of its own as an inheritance: it must coordinate
and associate, since it separates in order to form new associations. It
reigns by right of conquest, not by right of birth. In like manner, the
creative imagination does not rise completely armed. Its raw materials
are images, which here correspond to muscular movements. It goes through
a period of trial. It always is, at the start (for reasons indicated
later on), an imitation; it attains its complex forms only through a
process of growth.
2. But this first comparison does not go to the bottom of the matter;
there are yet deeper analogies. First, the completely subjective
character of both instances. The imagination is subjective, personal,
anthropocentric; its movement is from within outwards toward an
objectification. The understanding, i.e., the intellect in the
restricted sense, has opposite characteristics--it is objective,
impersonal, receives from outside. For the creative imagination the
inner world is the regulator; there is a preponderance of the inner over
the outer. For the understanding, the outside world is the regulator;
there is a preponderance of the outer over the inner. The world of my
imagination is _my_ world as opposed to the world of my understanding,
which is the world of all my fellow creatures. On the other hand, as
regards the will, we might repeat exactly, word for word, what we have
just said of the imagination. This is unnecessary. Back of both, then,
we have our true cause, whatever may be our opinion concerning the
ultimate nature of causation and of will.
3. Both imagination and will have a teleological character, and act only
with a view toward an end, being thus the opposite of the understanding,
which, as such, limits itself to proof. We are always wanting something,
be it worthless or important. We are always inventing for an
end--whether in the case of a Napoleon imagining a plan of campaign, or
a cook making up a new dish. In both instances there is now a simple end
attained by immediate means, now a complex and distant goal
presupposing subordinate ends which are means in relation to the final
end. In both cases there is a _vis a tergo_ designated by the vague term
"spontaneity," which we shall attempt to make clear later, and a _vis a
fronte_, an attracting movement.
4. Added to this analogy as regards their nature, there are other,
secondary likenesses between the abortive forms of the creative
imagination and the impotent forms of the will. In its normal and
complete form will culminates in an act; but with wavering characters
and sufferers from abulia deliberation never ends, or the resolution
remains inert, incapable of realization, of asserting itself in
practice. The creative imagination also, in its complete form, has a
tendency to become objectified, to assert itself in a work that shall
exist not only for the creator but for everybody. On the contrary, with
dreamers pure and simple, the imagination remains a vaguely sketched
inner affair; it is not embodied in any esthetic or practical invention.
Revery is the equivalent of weak desires; dreamers are the abulics of
the creative imagination.
It is unnecessary to add that the similarity established here between
the will and the imagination is only partial and has as its aim only to
bring to light the role of the motor elements. Surely no one will
confuse two aspects of our psychic life that are so distinct, and it
would be foolish to delay in order to enumerate the differences. The
characteristic of novelty should by itself suffice, since it is the
special and indispensable mark of invention, and for volition is only
accessory: The extraction of a tooth requires of the patient as much
effort the second time as the first, although it is no longer a novelty.
After these preliminary remarks we must go on to the analysis of the
creative imagination, in order to understand its nature in so far as
that is accessible with our existing means. It is, indeed, a tertiary
formation in mental life, if we assume a primary layer (sensations and
simple emotions), and a secondary (images and their associations,
certain elementary logical operations, etc.). Being composite, it may be
decomposed into its constituent elements, which we shall study under
these three headings, viz., the intellectual factor, the affective or
emotional factor, and the unconscious factor. But that is not enough;
the analysis should be completed by a synthesis. All imaginative
creation, great or small, is organic, requires a unifying principle:
there is then also a synthetic factor, which it will be necessary to
determine.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A. Maury, in his book _L'Astronomie et la Magie_, enumerates
fifty cases.
[2] There are still others, as we shall see later on.
PART ONE
ANALYSIS OF THE IMAGINATION
CHAPTER I
THE INTELLECTUAL FACTOR.
I
Considered under its intellectual aspect, that is, in so far as it
borrows its elements from the understanding, the imagination presupposes
two fundamental operations--the one, negative and preparatory,
dissociation; the other, positive and constitutive, association.
Dissociation is the "abstraction" of the older psychologists, who well
understood its importance for the subject with which we are now
concerned. Nevertheless, the term "dissociation" seems to me preferable,
because it is more comprehensive. It designates a genus of which the
other is a species. It is a spontaneous operation and of a more radical
nature than the other. Abstraction, strictly so-called, acts only on
isolated states of consciousness; dissociation acts, further, on series
of states of consciousness, which it sorts out, breaks up, dissolves,
and through this preparatory work makes suitable for entering into new
combinations.
Perception is a synthetic process, but dissociation (or abstraction) is
already present in embryo in perception, just because the latter is a
complex state. Everyone perceives after an individual fashion, according
to his constitution and the impression of the moment. A painter, a
sportsman, a dealer, and an uninterested spectator do not see a given
horse in the same manner: the qualities that interest one are unnoticed
by another.[3]
The image being a simplification of sensory data, and its nature
dependent on that of previous perceptions, it is inevitable that the
work of dissociation should go on in it. But this is far too mild a
statement. Observation and experiment show us that in the majority of
cases the process grows wonderfully. In order to follow the progressive
development of this dissolution, we may roughly differentiate images
into three categories--complete, incomplete, and schematic--and study
them in order.
The group of images here termed _complete_ comprises first, objects
repeatedly presented in daily experience--my wife's face, my inkstand,
the sound of a church bell or of a neighboring clock, etc. In this class
are also included the images of things that we have perceived but a few
times, but which, for additional reasons, have remained clean-cut in our
memory. Are these images complete, in the strict sense of the word? They
cannot be; and the contrary belief is a delusion of consciousness that,
however, disappears when one confronts it with the reality. The mental
image can contain all the qualities of an object in even less degree
than the perception; the image is the result of selection, varying with
every case. The painter Fromentin, who was proud that he found after two
or three years "an exact recollection" of things he had barely noticed
on a journey, makes elsewhere, however, the following confession: "My
memory of things, although very faithful, has never the certainty
admissible as documentary evidence. The weaker it grows, the more is it
changed in becoming the property of my memory and the more valuable is
it for the work that I intend for it. In proportion as the exact form
becomes altered, another form, partly real, partly imaginary, which I
believe preferable, takes its place." Note that the person speaking thus
is a painter endowed with an unusual visual memory; but recent
investigations have shown that among men generally the so-called
complete and exact images undergo change and warping. One sees the truth
of this statement when, after a lapse of some time, one is placed in the
presence of the original object, so that comparison between the real
object and its image becomes possible.[4] Let us note that in this group
_the image always corresponds to certain individual objects_; it is not
the same with the other two groups.
The group of _incomplete_ images, according to the testimony of
consciousness itself, comes from two distinct sources--first, from
perceptions insufficiently or ill-fixed; and again, from impressions of
like objects which, when too often repeated, end by becoming confused.
The latter case has been well described by Taine. A man, says he, who,
having gone through an avenue of poplars wants to picture a poplar; or,
having looked into a poultry-yard, wishes to call up a picture of a hen,
experiences a difficulty--his different memories rise up. The experiment
becomes a cause of effacement; the images canceling one another decline
to a state of imperceptible tendencies which their likeness and
unlikeness prevent from predominating. Images become blunted by their
collision just as do bodies by friction.[5]
This group leads us to that of _schematic_ images, or those entirely
without mark--the indefinite image of a rosebush, of a pin, of a
cigarette, etc. This is the greatest degree of impoverishment; the
image, deprived little by little of its own characteristics, is nothing
more than a shadow. It has become that transitional form between image
and pure concept that we now term "generic image," or one that at least
resembles the latter.
The image, then, is subject to an unending process of change, of
suppression and addition, of dissociation and corrosion. This means
that it is not a dead thing; it is not at all like a photographic plate
with which one may reproduce copies indefinitely. Being dependent on the
state of the brain, the image undergoes change like all living
substance,--it is subject to gains and losses, especially losses. But
each of the foregoing three classes has its use for the inventor. They
serve as material for different kinds of imagination--in their concrete
form, for the mechanic and the artist; in their schematic form, for the
scientist and for others.
Thus far we have seen only a part of the work of dissociation and,
taking it all in all, the smallest part. We have, seemingly, considered
images as isolated facts, as psychic atoms; but that is a purely
theoretic position. Images are not solitary in actual life; they form
part of a chain, or rather of a woof or net, since, by reason of their
manifold relations they may radiate in all directions, through all the
senses. Dissociation, then, works also upon _series_, cuts them up,
mangles them, breaks them, and reduces them to ruins.
The ideal law of the recurrence of images is that known since Hamilton's
time under the name of "law of redintegration,"[6] which consists in the
passing from a part to the whole, each element tending to reproduce the
complete state, each member of a series the whole of that series. If
this law existed alone, invention would be forever forbidden to us; we
could not emerge from repetition; we should be condemned to monotony.
But there is an opposite power that frees us--it is dissociation.
It is very strange that, while psychologists have for so long a time
studied the laws of association, no one has investigated whether the
inverse process, dissociation, also has not laws of its own. We can not
here attempt such a task, which would be outside of our province; it
will suffice to indicate in passing two general conditions determining
the association of series.
First, there are the internal or subjective causes. The revived image of
a face, a monument, a landscape, an occurrence, is, most often, only
partial. It depends on various conditions that revive the essential part
and drop the minor details, and this "essential" which survives
dissociation depends on subjective causes, the principal ones of which
are at first practical, utilitarian reasons. It is the tendency already
mentioned to ignore what is of no value, to exclude that from
consciousness. Helmholtz has shown that in the act of seeing, various
details remain unnoticed because they are immaterial in the concerns of
life; and there are many other like instances. Then, too, emotional
reasons governing the attention orientate it exclusively in one
direction--these will be studied in the course of this work. Lastly,
there are logical or intellectual reasons, if we understand by this term
the law of mental inertia or the law of least resistance by means of
which the mind tends toward the simplification and lightening of its
labor.
Secondly, there are external or objective causes which are variations in
experience. When two or more qualities or events are given as constantly
associated in experience we do not dissociate them. The uniformity of
nature's laws is the great opponent of dissociation. Many truths (for
example, the existence of the antipodes) are established with
difficulty, because it is necessary to break up closely knit
associations. The oriental king whom Sully mentions, who had never seen
ice, refused to credit the existence of solid water. A total impression,
the elements of which had never been given us separately in experience,
would be unanalyzable. If all cold objects were moist, and all moist
objects cold; if all liquids were transparent and all non-liquids
opaque, we should find it difficult to distinguish cold from moisture
and liquidity from transparency. On his part, James adds further that
what has been associated sometimes with one thing and sometimes with
another tends to become dissociated from both. This might be called a
law of association by concomitant variations.[7]
In order to thoroughly comprehend the absolute necessity for
dissociation, let us note that total redintegration is _per se_ a
hindrance to creation. Examples are given of people who can easily
remember twenty or thirty pages of a book, but if they want a particular
passage they are unable to pick it out--they must begin at the beginning
and continue down to the required place. Excessive ease of retention
thus becomes a serious inconvenience. Besides these rare cases, we know
that ignorant people, those intellectually limited, give the same
invariable story of every occurrence, in which all the parts--the
important and the accessory, the useful and the useless--are on a dead
level. They omit no detail, they cannot select. Minds of this kind are
inapt at invention. In short, we may say that there are two kinds of
memory: one is completely systematized, e.g., habits, routine, poetry
or prose learned by heart, faultless musical rendering, etc. The
acquisition forms a compact whole and cannot enter into new
combinations. The other is not systematized; it is composed of small,
more or less coherent groups. This kind of memory is plastic and capable
of becoming combined in new ways.
We have enumerated the spontaneous, natural causes of association,
omitting the voluntary and artificial causes, which are but their
imitations. As a result of these various causes, images are taken to
pieces, shattered, broken up, but made all the readier as materials for
the inventor. This is a process analogous to that which, in geologic
time, produces new strata through the wearing away of old rocks.
II
Association is one of the big questions of psychology; but as it does
not especially concern our subject, it will be discussed in strict
proportion to its use here. Nothing is easier than limiting ourselves.
Our task is reducible to a very clear and very brief question: What are
the forms of association that give rise to new combinations and under
what influences do they arise? All other forms of association, those
that are only repetitions, should be eliminated. Consequently, this
subject can not be treated in one single effort; it must be studied, in
turn, in its relations to our three factors--intellectual, emotional,
unconscious.
It is generally admitted that the expression "association of ideas" is
faulty.[8] It is not comprehensive enough, association being active also
in psychic states other than ideas. It seems indicative rather of mere
juxtaposition, whereas associated states modify one another by the very
fact of their being connected. But, as it has been confirmed by long
usage, it would be difficult to eliminate the phrase.
On the other hand, psychologists are not at all agreed as regards the
determination of the principal laws or forms of association. Without
taking sides in the debate, I adopt the most generally accepted
classification, the one most suitable for our subject--the one that
reduces everything to the two fundamental laws of contiguity and
resemblance. In recent years various attempts have been made to reduce
these two laws to one, some reducing resemblance to contiguity; others,
contiguity to resemblance. Putting aside the ground of this discussion,
which seems to me very useless, and which perhaps is due to excessive
zeal for unity, we must nevertheless recognize that this discussion is
not without interest for the study of the creative imagination, because
it has well shown that each of the two fundamental laws has a
characteristic mechanism.
Association by contiguity (or continuity), which Wundt calls external,
is simple and homogeneous. It reproduces the order and connection of
things; it reduces itself to habits contracted by our nervous system.
Is association by resemblance, which Wundt calls internal, strictly
speaking, an elementary law? Many doubt it. Without entering into the
long and frequently confused discussions to which this subject has given
rise, we may sum up their results as follows: In so-called association
by resemblance it is necessary to distinguish three moments--(a) That of
the presentation; a state _A_ is given in perception or
association-by-contiguity, and forms the starting point. (b) That of the
work of assimilation; _A_ is recognized as more or less like a state _a_
previously experienced. (c) As a consequence of the coexistence of _A_
and _a_ in consciousness, they can later be recalled reciprocally,
although the two original occurrences _A_ and _a_ have previously never
existed together, and sometimes, indeed, may not possibly have existed
together. It is evident that the crucial moment is the second, and that
it consists of an act of active assimilation. Thus James maintains that
"it is a relation that the mind perceives after the fact, just as it may
perceive the relations of superiority, of distance, of causality, of
container and content, of substance and accident, or of contrast between
an object, and some second object which the associative machinery calls
up."[9]
Association by resemblance presupposes a joint labor of association and
dissociation--it is an active form. Consequently it is the principal
source of the material of the creative imagination, as the sequel of
this work will sufficiently show.
After this rather long but necessary preface, we come to the
intellectual factor rightly so termed, which we have been little by
little approaching. The essential, fundamental element of the creative
imagination in the intellectual sphere is the capacity of thinking by
analogy; that is, by partial and often accidental resemblance. By
analogy we mean an imperfect kind of resemblance: like is a genus of
which analogue is a species.
Let us examine in some detail the mechanism of this mode of thought in
order that we may understand how analogy is, by its very nature, an
almost inexhaustible instrument of creation.
1. Analogy may be based solely on the _number of attributes compared_.
Let _a b c d e f_ and _r s t u d v_ be two beings or objects, each
letter representing symbolically one of the constitutive attributes. It
is evident that the analogy between the two is very weak, since there is
only one common element, _d_. If the number of the elements common to
both increases, the analogy will grow in the same proportion. But the
agreement represented above is not infrequent among minds unused to a
somewhat severe discipline. A child sees in the moon and stars a mother
surrounded by her daughters. The aborigines of Australia called a book
"mussel," merely because it opens and shuts like the valves of a
shellfish.[10]
2. Analogy may have for its basis the _quality_ or _value_ of the
compound attributes. It rests on a variable element, which oscillates
from the essential to the accidental, from the reality to the
appearance. To the layman, the likeness between cetacians and fishes are
great; to the scientist, slight. Here, again, numerous agreements are
possible, provided one take no account either of their solidity or their
frailty.
3. Lastly, in minds without power, there occurs a semi-unconscious
operation that we may call a transfer through the omission of the middle
term. There is analogy between _a b c d e_ and _g h a i f_ through the
common letter _a_; between _g h a i f_ and _x y f z q_ through the
common letter _f_; and finally an analogy becomes established between _a
b c d e_ and _x y f z q_ for no other reason than that of their common
analogy with _g h a i f_. In the realm of the affective states,
transfers of this sort are not at all rare.
Analogy, an unstable process, undulating and multiform, gives rise to
the most unforeseen and novel groupings. Through its pliability, which
is almost unlimited, it produces in equal measure absurd comparisons and
very original inventions.
After these remarks on the mechanism of thinking by analogy, let us
glance at the processes it employs in its creative work. The problem is,
apparently, inextricable. Analogies are so numerous, so various, so
arbitrary, that we may despair of finding any regularity whatever in
creative work. Despite this it seems, however, reducible to two
principal types or processes, which are personification, and
transformation or metamorphosis.
Personification is the earlier process. It is radical, always identical
with itself, but transitory. It goes out from ourselves toward other
things. It consists in attributing life to everything, in supposing in
everything that shows signs of life--and even in inanimate
objects--desires, passions, and acts of will analogous to ours, acting
like ourselves in view of definite ends. This state of mind is
incomprehensible to an adult civilized man; but it must be admitted,
since there are facts without number that show its existence. We do not
need to cite them--they are too well known. They fill the works of
ethnologists, of travelers in savage lands, of books of mythology.
Besides, all of us, at the commencement of our lives, during our
earliest childhood, have passed through this inevitable stage of
universal animism. Works on child-psychology abound in observations that
leave no possible room for doubt on this point. The child endows
everything with life, and he does so the more in proportion as he is
more imaginative. But this stage, which among civilized people lasts
only a brief period, remains in the primitive man a permanent
disposition and one that is always active. This process of
personification is the perennial fount whence have gushed the greater
number of myths, an enormous mass of superstitions, and a large number
of esthetic productions. To sum up in a word, all things that have been
invented _ex analogia hominis_.
Transformation or metamorphosis is a general, permanent process under
many forms, proceeding not from the thinking subject towards objects,
but from one object to another, from one thing to another. It consists
of a transfer through partial resemblance. This operation rests on two
fundamental bases--depending at one time on vague resemblances (a cloud
becomes a mountain, or a mountain a fantastic animal; the sound of the
wind a plaintive cry, etc.), or again, on a resemblance with a
predominating emotional element: A perception provokes a feeling, and
becomes the mark, sign, or plastic form thereof (the lion represents
courage; the cat, artifice; the cypress, sorrow; and so on). All this,
doubtless, is erroneous or arbitrary; but the function of the
imagination is to invent, not to perceive. All know that this process
creates metaphors, allegories, symbols; it should not, however, be
believed on that account that it remains restricted to the realm of art
or of the development of language. We meet it every moment in practical
life, in mechanical, industrial, commercial, and scientific invention,
and we shall, later, give a large number of examples in support of this
statement.
Let us note, briefly, that analogy, as an imperfect form of
resemblance--as was said above, if we assume among the objects compared a
totality of likenesses and differences in varying proportions--necessarily
allows all degrees. At one end of the scale, the comparison is made
between valueless or exaggerated likenesses. At the other end, analogy is
restricted to exact resemblance; it approaches cognition, strictly so
called; for example, in mechanical and scientific invention. Hence it is
not at all surprising that the imagination is often a substitute for, and
as Goethe expressed it, "a forerunner of," reason. Between the creative
imagination and rational investigation there is a community of
nature--both presuppose the ability of seizing upon likenesses. On the
other hand, the predominance of the exact process establishes from the
outset a difference between "thinkers" and imaginative dreamers
("visionaries").[11]
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Cf. the well-known aphorism, "_Apperception ist alles_." (Tr.)
[4] See especially J. Philippe, "La deformation et les
transformations des images" in _Revue Philosophique_, May and
November, 1897. Although these investigations had in view only
visual representations, it is not at all doubtful that the results
hold good for others, especially those of hearing (voice, song,
harmony).
[5] _On Intelligence_, Vol. I, Bk. ii, Chap. 2.
[6] In his recent history of the theories of the imagination, _La
psicologia dell' immaginazione, nella storia filosofia_ (Rome, 1898)
Ambrosi shows that this law is found already formulated in the
_Psychologia Empirica_ of Christian Wolff [d. 1754]: "_Perceptio
praeterita integra recurrit cujus praesens continet partem._"
[7] Sully, _Human Mind_, I, p. 365; James, _Psychology_, I, p. 502.
[8] For a good criticism of the term, consult Titchener, _Outlines
of Psychology_ (New York, 1896), p. 190.
[9] For the discussions on the reduction to a unity, a detailed
bibliography will be found in Jodl, _Lehrbuch der Psychologie_
(Stuttgart, 1896), p. 490. On the comparison of the two laws, James,
_op. cit._, I, 590; Sully, _op. cit._, I, 331 ff; Hoeffding,
_Psychologie_, 213 ff. (Eng. ed. _Outlines of Psychology_, pp. 152
ff.).
[10] Note here a characteristically naive working of the primitive
intellect in explaining the unknown in terms of the known. Cf. Part
II, Chap. iii, below. (Tr.)
[11] It is yet, and will probably long remain, an open question
whether we can draw any clear distinction between the two kinds of
mind here discussed. The author is careful to base his distinction
on the "predominance" of the "rational" or of the "imaginative"
process. So-called "thinkers," who _do_ nothing, can not, certainly,
be ranked with the persons of great intellectual attainment through
whose efforts the progress of the world is made; on the other hand,
the author seeks to make _results_ or accomplishments the crucial
test of true imagination (see Introduction).
As regards the relative value or rank of the two bents of mind there
has ever been, and probably forever will be, great difference of
opinion. Even in this intensely "practical" age there is an
undercurrent of feeling that the narrowly "practical" individual is
not the final ideal, and the innermost conviction of many is the
same as that of the poet who declares that "a dreamer lives forever,
but a thinker dies in a day." (Tr.)
CHAPTER II
THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR.
The influence of emotional states on the working of the imagination is a
matter of current observation. But it has been studied chiefly by
moralists, who most often have criticised or condemned it as an endless
cause of mistakes. The point of view of the psychologist is altogether
different. He does not need at all to investigate whether emotions and
passions give rise to mental phantoms--which is an indisputable
fact--but _why_ and _how_ they arise. For, the emotional factor yields
in importance to no other; it is the ferment without which no creation
is possible. Let us study it in its principal forms, although we may not
be able at this moment to exhaust the topic.
I
It is necessary to show at the outset that the influence of the
emotional life is unlimited, that it penetrates the entire field of
invention with no restriction whatever; that this is not a gratuitous
assertion, but is, on the contrary, strictly justified by facts, and
that we are right in maintaining the following two propositions:
1. _All forms of the creative imagination imply elements of feeling._
This statement has been challenged by authoritative psychologists, who
hold that "emotion is added to imagination in its esthetic aspect, not
in its mechanical and intellectual form." This is an error of fact
resulting from the confusion, or from the imperfect analysis, of two
distinct cases. In the case of non-esthetic creation, the role of the
emotional life is simple; in esthetic creation, the role of emotional
element is double.
Let us consider invention, first, in its most general form. The
emotional element is the primal, original factor; for all invention
presupposes a want, a craving, a tendency, an unsatisfied impulse, often
even a state of gestation full of discomfort. Moreover, it is
concomitant, that is, under its form of pleasure or of pain, of hope, of
spite, of anger, etc., it accompanies all the phases or turns of
creation. The creator may, haphazard, go through the most diverse forms
of exaltation and depression; may feel in turn the dejection of repulse
and the joy of success; finally the satisfaction of being freed from a
heavy burden. I challenge anyone to produce a solitary example of
invention wrought out _in abstracto_, and free from any factors of
feeling. Human nature does not allow such a miracle.
Now, let us take up the special case of esthetic creation, and of forms
approaching thereto. Here again we find the original emotional element
as at first motor, then attached to various aspects of creation, as an
accompaniment. But, _in addition, affective states become material for
the creative activity_. It is a well-known fact, almost a rule, that the
poet, the novelist, the dramatist, and the musician--often, indeed, even
the sculptor and the painter--experience the thoughts and feeling of
their characters, become identified with them. There are, then, in this
second instance, two currents of feeling--the one, constituting emotion
as material for art, the other, drawing out creative activity and
developing along with it.
The difference between the two cases that we have distinguished consists
in this and nothing more than this. The existence of an emotion-content
belonging to esthetic production changes in no way the psychologic
mechanism of invention generally. Its absence in other forms of
imagination does not at all prevent the necessary existence of affective
elements everywhere and always.
2. _All emotional dispositions whatever may influence the creative
imagination._
Here, again, I find opponents, notably Oelzelt-Newin, in his short and
substantial monograph on the imagination.[12] Adopting the twofold
division of emotions as sthenic and asthenic, or exciting and
depressing, he attributes to the first the exclusive privilege of
influencing creative activity; but though the author limits his study
exclusively to the esthetic imagination, his thesis, even understood
thus, is untenable. The facts contradict it completely, and it is easy
to demonstrate that all forms of emotion, without exception, act as
leaven for imagination.
No one will deny that fear is the type of asthenic manifestations. Yet
is it not the mother of phantoms, of numberless superstitions, of
altogether irrational and chimerical religious practices?
Anger, in its exalted, violent form, is rather an agent of destruction,
which seems to contradict my thesis; but let us pass over the storm,
which is always of short duration, and we find in its place milder
intellectualized forms, which are various modifications of primitive
fury, passing from the acute to the chronic state: envy, jealousy,
enmity, premeditated vengeance, and so forth. Are not these dispositions
of the mind fertile in artifices, stratagems, inventions of all kinds?
To keep even to esthetic creation, is it necessary to recall the saying
_facit indignatio versum_?
It is not necessary to demonstrate the fecundity of joy. As for love,
everyone knows that its work consists of creating an imaginary being,
which is substituted for the beloved object; then, when the passion has
vanished, the disenchanted lover finds himself face to face with the
bare reality.
Sorrow rightly belongs in the category of depressing emotions, and yet,
it has as great influence on invention as any other emotion. Do we not
know that melancholy and even profound sorrow has furnished poets,
musicians, painters, and sculptors with their most beautiful
inspirations? Is there not an art frankly and deliberately pessimistic?
And this influence is not at all limited to esthetic creation. Dare we
hold that hypochondria and insanity following upon the delirium of
persecution are devoid of imagination? Their morbid character is, on the
contrary, the well whence strange inventions incessantly bubble.
Lastly, that complex emotion termed "self-feeling," which reduces itself
finally to the pleasure of asserting our power and of feeling its
expansion, or to the pitiable feeling of our shackled, enfeebled power,
leads us directly to the motor elements that are the fundamental
conditions of invention. Above all, in this personal feeling, there is
the satisfaction of being a causal factor, i.e., a creator, and every
creator has a consciousness of his superiority over non-creators.
However petty his invention, it confers upon him a superiority over
those who have invented nothing. Although we have been surfeited with
the repeated statement that the characteristic mark of esthetic creation
is "being disinterested," it must be recognized, as Groos has so truly
remarked,[13] that the artist does not create out of the simple pleasure
of creating, but in order that he may behold a mastery over other
minds.[14] Production is the natural extension of "self-feeling," and
the accompanying pleasure is the pleasure of conquest.
Thus, on condition that we extend "imagination" to its full sense,
without limiting it unduly to esthetics, there is, among the many forms
of the emotional life, not one that may not stimulate invention. It
remains to see this emotional factor at work,--to note how it can give
rise to new combinations; and this brings us to the association of
ideas.
II
We have said above that the ideal and theoretic law of the recurrence of
images is that of "total redintegration," as e.g., recalling all the
incidents of a long voyage in chronological order, with neither
additions nor omissions. But this formula expresses what ought to be,
not what actually occurs. It supposes man reduced to a state of pure
intelligence, and sheltered from all disturbing influences. It suits the
completely systematized forms of memory, hardened into routine and
habit; but, outside of these cases, it remains an abstract concept.
To this law of ideal value, there is opposed the real and practical law
that actually obtains in the revival of images. It is rightly styled the
"law of interest" or the affective law, and may be stated thus: In every
past event the interesting parts alone revive, or with more intensity
than the others. "Interesting" here means _what affects us in some way
under a pleasing or painful form_. Let us note that the importance of
this fact has been pointed out not by the associationists (a fact
especially worth remembering) but by less systematic writers, strangers
to that school,--Coleridge, Shadworth Hodgson, and before them,
Schopenhauer. William James calls it the "ordinary or mixed
association."[15] The "law of interest" doubtless is less exact than the
intellectual laws of contiguity and resemblance. Nevertheless, it seems
to penetrate all the more in later reasoning. If, indeed, in the problem
of association we distinguish these three things--facts, laws,
causes--the practical law brings us near to causes.
Whatever the truth may be in this matter, the emotional factor brings
about new combinations by several processes.
There are the ordinary, simple cases, with a natural, emotional
foundation, depending on momentary dispositions. They exist because of
the fact that representations that have been accompanied by the same
emotional state tend later to become associated: the emotional
resemblance reunites and links disparate images. This differs from
association by contiguity, which is a repetition of experience, and from
association by resemblance in the intellectual sense. The states of
consciousness become combined, not because they have been previously
given together, not because we perceive the agreement of resemblance
between them, but because they have a common _emotional_ note. Joy,
sorrow, love, hatred, admiration, ennui, pride, fatigue, etc., may
become a center of attraction that groups images or events having
otherwise no rational relations between them, but having the same
emotional stamp,--joyous, melancholy, erotic, etc. This form of
association is very frequent in dreams and reveries, i.e., in a state
of mind in which the imagination enjoys complete freedom and works
haphazard. We easily see that this influence, active or latent, of the
emotional factor, must cause entirely unexpected grouping to arise, and
offers an almost unlimited field for novel combinations, the number of
images having a common emotional factor being very great.
There are unusual and remarkable cases with an exceptional emotional
base. Of such is "colored hearing." We know that several hypotheses have
been offered in regard to the origin of this phenomenon.
Embryologically, it would seem to be the result of an incomplete
separation between the sense of sight and that of hearing, and the
survival, it is said, from a distant period of humanity, when this state
must have been the rule; anatomically, the result of supposed
anastamoses between the cerebral centers for visual and auditory
sensations; physiologically, the result of nervous irradiation;
psychologically, the result of association. This latter hypothesis seems
to account for the greater number of instances, if not for all; but, as
Flournoy has observed, it is a matter of "affective" imagination. Two
sensations absolutely unlike (for instance, the color blue and the
sound _i_) may resemble one another through the equal retentive quality
that they possess in the organism of some favored individuals, and this
emotional factor becomes a bond of association. Observe that this
hypothesis explains also the much more unusual cases of "colored" smell,
taste, and pain; that is, an abnormal association between given colors
and tastes, smells, or pains.
Although we meet them only as exceptional cases, these modes of
association are susceptible to analysis, and seem clear, almost
self-evident, if we compare them with other, subtle, refined, barely
perceptible cases, the origin of which is a subject for supposition, for
guessing rather than for clear comprehension. It is, moreover, a sort of
imagination belonging to very few people: certain artists and some
eccentric or unbalanced minds, scarcely ever found outside the esthetic
or practical life. I wish to speak of the forms of invention that permit
only fantastic conceptions, of a strangeness pushed to the extreme
(Hoffman, Poe, Baudelaire, Goya, Wiertz, etc.), or surprising,
extraordinary thoughts, known of no other men (the symbolists and
decadents that flourish at the present time in various countries of
Europe and America, who believe, rightly or wrongly, that they are
preparing the esthetics of the future). It must be here admitted that
there exists an altogether special manner of _feeling_, dependent on
temperament at first, which many cultivate and refine as though it were
a precious rarity. There lies the true source of their invention.
Doubtless, to assert this pertinently, it would be necessary to
establish the direct relations between their physical and psychical
constitution and that of their work; to note even the particular states
at the moment of the creative act. To me at least, it seems evident that
the novelty, the strangeness of combinations, through its deep
subjective character, indicates an emotional rather than an intellectual
origin. Let us merely add that these abnormal manifestations of the
creative imagination belong to the province of pathology rather than to
that of psychology.
Association by contrast is, from its very nature, vague, arbitrary,
indeterminate. It rests, in truth, on an essentially subjective and
fleeting conception, that of contrariety, which it is almost impossible
to delimit scientifically; for, most often, contraries exist only by and
for us. We know that this form of association is not primary and
irreducible. It is brought down by some to contiguity, by most others to
resemblance. These two views do not seem to me irreconcilable. In
association by contrast we may distinguish two layers,--the one,
superficial, consists of contiguity: all of us have in memory associated
couples, such as large-small, rich-poor, high-low, right-left, etc.,
which result from repetition and habit; the other, deep, is resemblance;
_contrast exists only where a common measure between two terms is
possible_. As Wundt remarks, a wedding may be compared to a burial (the
union and separation of a couple), but not to a toothache. There is
contrast between two colors, contrast between sounds, but not between a
sound and a color, at least in that there may not be a common basis to
which we may relate them, as in the previously given instances of
"colored" sound. In association by contrast, there are conscious
elements opposed to one another, and below, an unconscious element,
resemblance,--not clearly and logically perceived, but felt--that evokes
and relates the conscious elements.
Whether this explanation be right or not, let us remark that association
by contrast could not be left out, because its mechanism, full of
unforeseen possibilities, lends itself easily to novel relations.
Otherwise, I do not at all claim that it is entirely dependent upon the
emotional factor. But, as Hoeffding observes,[16] the special property of
the emotional life is moving among contraries; it is altogether
determined by the great opposition between pleasure and pain. Thus, the
effects of contrasts are much stronger than in the realm of sensation.
This form of association predominates in esthetic and mythic creation,
that is to say, in creation of the free fancy; it becomes dimmed in the
precise forms of practical, mechanical, and scientific invention.
III
Hitherto we have considered the emotional factor under a single aspect
only--the purely emotional--that which is manifested in consciousness
under an agreeable or disagreeable or mixed form. But thoughts,
feelings, and emotions include elements that are deeper--motor, i.e.,
impulsive or inhibitory--which we may neglect the less since it is in
movements that we seek the origin of the creative imagination. This
motor element is what current speech and often even psychological
treatises designate under the terms "creative instinct," "inventive
instinct;" what we express in another form when we say that creators are
guided by instinct and "are pushed like animals toward the
accomplishment of certain acts."
If I mistake not, this indicates that the "creative instinct" exists in
all men to some extent--feeble in some, perceptible in others, brilliant
in the great inventors.
For I do not hesitate to maintain that the creative instinct, taken in
this strict meaning, compared to animal instinct, is a mere figure of
speech, an "entity" regarded as a reality, an abstraction. There are
needs, appetites, tendencies, desires, common to all men, which, in a
given individual at a given moment can result in a creative act; but
there is no special psychic manifestation that may be the "creative
instinct." What, indeed, could it be? Every instinct has its own
particular end:--hunger, thirst, sex, the specific instincts of the bee,
ant, beaver, consist of a group of movements adapted for a determinate
end that is always the same. Now, what would be a creative instinct _in
general_ which, by hypothesis, could produce in turn an opera, a
machine, a metaphysical theory, a system of finance, a plan of military
campaign, and so forth? It is a pure fancy. Inventive genius has not _a_
source, but _sources_.
Let us consider from our present viewpoint the human duality, the _homo
duplex_:
Suppose man reduced to a state of pure intelligence, that is, capable of
perceiving, remembering, associating, dissociating, reasoning, and
nothing else. All creative activity is then impossible, because there is
nothing to solicit it.
Suppose, again, man reduced to organic manifestations; he is then no
more than a bundle of wants, appetites, instincts,--that is, of motor
activities, blind forces that, lacking a sufficient cerebral organ, will
produce nothing.
The cooperation of both these factors is indispensable: without the
first, nothing begins; without the second, nothing results. I hold that
it is in needs that we must seek for the primary cause of all
inventions; it is evident that the motor element alone is insufficient.
If the needs are strong, energetic, they may determine a production, or,
if the intellectual factor is insufficient, may spoil it. Many want to
make discoveries but discover nothing. A want so common as hunger or
thirst suggests to one some ingenious method of satisfying it; another
remains entirely destitute.
In short, in order that a creative act occur, there is required, first,
a need; then, that it arouse a combination of images; and lastly, that
it objectify and _realize_ itself in an appropriate form.
We shall try later (in the Conclusion) to answer the question, _Why_ is
one imaginative? In passing, let us put the opposite question, Why is
one _not_ imaginative? One may possess in the mind an inexhaustible
treasure of facts and images and yet produce nothing: great travelers,
for example, who have seen and heard much, and who draw from their
experiences only a few colorless anecdotes; men who were partakers in
great political events or military movements, who leave behind only a
few dry and chilly memoirs; prodigies of reading, living encyclopedias,
who remain crushed under the load of their erudition. On the other hand,
there are people who easily move and act, but are limited, lacking
images and ideas. Their intellectual poverty condemns them to
unproductiveness; nevertheless, being nearer than the others to the
imaginative type, they bring forth childish or chimerical productions.
So that we may answer the question asked above: The non-imaginative
person is such from lack of materials or through the absence of
resourcefulness.
Without contenting ourselves with these theoretical remarks, let us
rapidly show that it is thus that these things actually happen. All the
work of the creative imagination may be classed under two great
heads--esthetic inventions and practical inventions; on the one hand,
what man has brought to pass in the domain of art, and on the other
hand, all else. Though this division may appear strange, and
unjustifiable, it has reason for its being, as we shall see hereafter.
Let us consider first the class of non-esthetic creations. Very
different in nature, all the products of this group coincide at one
point:--they are of practical utility, they are born of a vital need, of
one of the conditions of man's existence. There are first the inventions
"practical" in the narrow sense--all that pertains to food, clothing,
defense, housing, etc. Every one of these special needs has stimulated
inventions adapted to a special end. Inventions in the social and
political order answer to the conditions of collective existence; they
arise from the necessity of maintaining the coherence of the social
aggregate and of defending it against inimical groups. The work of the
imagination whence have arisen the myths, religious conceptions, and the
first attempts at a scientific explanation may seem at first
disinterested and foreign to practical life. This is an erroneous
supposition. Man, face to face with the higher powers of nature, the
mystery of which he does not penetrate, has a _need_ of acting upon it;
he tries to conciliate them, even to turn them to his service by magic
rites and operations. _His_ curiosity is not at all theoretic; he does
not aim to know for the sake of knowing, but in order to act upon the
outside world and to draw profit therefrom. To the numerous questions
that necessity puts to him his imagination alone responds, because his
reason is shifting and his scientific knowledge _nil_. Here, then,
invention again results from urgent needs.
Indeed, in the course of the nineteenth century and on account of
growing civilization all these creations reach a second moment when
their origin is hidden. Most of our mechanical, industrial and
commercial inventions are not stimulated by the immediate necessity of
living, by an urgent need; it is not a question of existence but of
better existence. The same holds true of social and political inventions
which arise from the increasing complexity and the new requirements of
the aggregates forming great states. Lastly, it is certain that
primitive curiosity has partially lost its utilitarian character in
order to become, in some men at least, the taste for pure
research--theoretical, speculative, disinterested. But all this in no
way affects our thesis, for it is a well-known elementary psychological
law that upon primitive wants are grafted acquired wants fully as
imperative. The primitive need is modified, metamorphosed, adapted;
there remains of it, nonetheless, the fundamental activity toward
creation.
Let us now consider the class of esthetic creations. According to the
generally accepted theory which is too well known for me to stop to
explain it, art has its beginning in a superfluous, bounding activity,
useless as regards the preservation of the individual, which is shown
first in the form of play. Then, through transformation and
complication, play becomes primitive art, dancing, music, and poetry at
the same time, closely united in an apparently indissoluble unity.
Although the theory of the absolute inutility of art has met some strong
criticism, let us accept it for the present. Aside from the true or
false character of inutility, the psychological mechanism remains the
same here as in the preceding cases; we shall only say that in place of
a vital need it is a need of _luxury_ acting, but it acts only because
it is in man.
Nevertheless, the inutility of play is far from proven biologically.
Groos, in his two excellent works on the subject,[17] has maintained
with much power the opposite view. According to him the theory of
Schiller and Spencer, based on the expenditure of superfluous activity
and the opposite theory of Lazarus, who reduces play to a
relaxation--that is, a recuperation of strength--are but partial
explanations. Play has a positive use. In man there exist a great number
of instincts that are not yet developed at birth. An incomplete being,
he must have education of his capacities, and this is obtained through
play, _which is the exercise of the natural tendencies of human
activities_. In man and in the higher animals plays are a preparation, a
prelude to the active functions of life. _There is no instinct of play
in general, but there are special instincts that are manifested under
the forms of play._ If we admit this explanation, which does not lack
potency, the work of the esthetic imagination itself would be reduced
to a biological necessity, and there would be no reason for making a
separate category of it. Whichever view we may adopt, it still remains
established that any invention is reducible, directly or indirectly, to
a particular, determinate need, and that to allow man a special
instinct, the definite specific character of which should be stimulation
to creative activity, is a fantastic notion.
Whence, then, comes this persistent and in some respects seductive idea
that creation is an instinctive result? Because a happy invention has
characteristics that evidently relate it to instinctive activity in the
strict sense of the word. First, precocity, of which we shall later give
numerous examples, and which resembles the innateness of instinct.
Again, orientation in a single direction: the inventor is, so to speak,
polarized; he is the slave of music, of mechanics, of mathematics; often
inapt at everything outside his own particular sphere. We know the
witticism of Madame du Deffant on Vaucanson, who was so awkward, so
insignificant when he ventured outside of mechanics. "One should say
that this man had manufactured himself." Finally, the ease with which
invention often (not always) manifests itself makes it resemble the work
of a pre-established mechanism.
But these and similar characteristics may be lacking. They are necessary
for instinct, not for invention. There are great creators who have been
neither precocious nor confined in a narrow field, and who have given
birth to their inventions painfully, laboriously. Between the mechanism
of instinct and that of imaginative creation there are frequently great
analogies but not identity of nature. Every tendency of our
organization, useful or hurtful, may become the beginning of a creative
act. Every invention arises from a particular need of human nature,
acting within its own sphere and for its own special end.
If now it should be asked why the creative imagination directs itself
preferably in one line rather than in another--toward poetry or physics,
trade or mechanics, geometry or painting, strategy or music, etc.--we
have nothing in answer. It is a result of the individual organization,
the secret of which we do not possess. In ordinary life we meet people
visibly borne along toward love or good cheer, toward ambition, riches
or good works; we say that they are "so built," that such is their
character. At bottom the two questions are identical, and current
psychology is not in a position to solve them.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] _Ueber Phantasievorstellungen_, Graz, 1889, p. 48.
[13] _Die Spiele der Thiere_, Jena, 1896. The subject has been very
well treated by this author, pp. 294-301.
[14] The "disinterested" view is found widely advocated or hinted at
in literature. Cf. Goethe's "Der Saenger" (Tr.).
[15] _Psychology_, I, 571 ff.
[16] Hoeffding, _Psychologie_, p. 219; _Eng. trans._, p. 161.
[17] Groos, _Die Spiele der Thiere_, 1896, and _Die Spiele der
Menschen_, 1899 (Eng. trans., Appletons, New York, 1898, 1901).
CHAPTER III
THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR
I
By this term I designate principally, not exclusively, what ordinary
speech calls "inspiration." In spite of its mysterious and
semi-mythological appearance, the term indicates a positive fact, one
that is ill-understood in a deep sense, like all that is near the roots
of creation. This concept has its history, and if it is permissible to
apply a very general formula to a particular case we may say that it has
developed according to the law of the three states assumed by the
positivists.
In the beginning, inspiration is literally ascribed to the
gods--among the Greeks to Apollo and the Muses, and in like manner
under various polytheistic religions. Later, the gods become
supernatural spirits, angels, saints, etc. In one way or another it
is always regarded as external and superior to man. In the
beginnings of all inventions--agriculture, navigation, medicine,
commerce, legislation, fine arts--there is a belief in revelation;
the human mind considers itself incapable of having discovered all
that. Creation has arisen, we do not know how, in a total ignorance
of the processes.
Later on these higher beings become empty formulas, mere survivals;
there remain only the poets to invoke their aid, through the force of
tradition, without believing in them. But side by side with these formal
survivals there remains a mysterious ground which is translated by vague
expressions and metaphors, such as "enthusiasm," "poetic frenzy,"
"possession by a spirit," "being overcome," "having the devil inside
one," "the spirit whispers as it lists," etc. Here we have come out of
the supernatural without, however, attempting a positive (i.e., a
scientific) explanation.
Lastly, in the third stage, we try to sound this unknown. Psychology
sees in it a special manifestation of the mind, a particular,
semi-conscious, semi-unconscious state which we must now study.
At first sight, and considered in its negative aspect, inspiration
presents a very definite character. It does not depend on the individual
will. As in the case of sleep or digestion, we may try to call it forth,
encourage it, maintain it; but not always with success. Inventors, great
and small, never cease to complain over the periods of unproductiveness
which they undergo in spite of themselves. The wiser among them watch
for the moment; the others attempt to fight against their evil fate and
to create despite nature.
Considered in its positive aspect, inspiration has two essential
marks--suddenness and impersonality.
(a) It makes a sudden eruption into consciousness, but one presupposing
a latent, frequently long, labor. It has its analogues among other
well-known psychic states; for example, a passion that is forgotten,
which, after a long period of incubation, reveals itself through an act;
or, better, a sudden resolve after endless deliberation which did not
seem able to come to a head. Again, there may be absence of effort and
of appearance of preparation. Beethoven would strike haphazard the keys
of a piano or would listen to the songs of birds. "With Chopin," says
George Sand, "creation was spontaneous, miraculous; he wrought without
foreseeing. It would come complete, sudden, sublime." One might pile up
like facts in abundance. Sometimes, indeed, inspiration bursts forth in
deep sleep and awakens the sleeper, and lest we may suppose this
suddenness to be especially characteristic of artists we see it in all
forms of invention. "You feel a little electric shock striking you in
the head, seizing your heart at the same time--that is the moment of
genius" (Buffon). "In the course of my life I have had some happy
thoughts," says Du Bois Reymond, "and I have often noted that they would
come to me involuntarily, and when I was not thinking of the subject."
Claude Bernard has voiced the same thought more than once.
(b) Impersonality is a deeper character than the preceding. It reveals a
power superior to the conscious individual, strange to him although
acting through him: a state which many inventors have expressed in the
words, "I counted for nothing in that." The best means of recognizing it
would be to write down some observations taken from the inspired
individuals themselves. We do not lack them, and some have the virtue of
good observation.[18] But that would lead us too far afield. Let us only
remark that this unconscious impulse acts variously according to the
individual. Some submit to it painfully, striving against it just like
the ancient pythoness at the time of giving her oracle. Others,
especially in religious inspiration, submit themselves entirely with
pleasure or else sustain it passively. Still others of a more analytic
turn have noted the concentration of all their faculties and capacities
on a single point. But whatever characteristics it takes on, remaining
impersonal at bottom and unable to appear in a fully conscious
individual, we must admit, unless we wish to give it a supernatural
origin, that inspiration is derived from the unconscious activity of the
mind. In order to make sure of its nature it would then be necessary to
make sure first of the nature of the unconscious, which is one of the
enigmas of psychology.
I put aside all the discussions on the subject as tiresome and useless
for our present aim. Indeed, they reduce themselves to these two
principal propositions: for some the unconscious is a purely
physiological activity, a "cerebration"; for others it is a gradual
diminution of consciousness which exists without being bound to me--i.e.,
to the principal consciousness. Both these are full of difficulties
and present almost insurmountable objections.[19]
Let us take the "unconscious" as a fact and let us limit ourselves to
clearing it up, relating inspiration to mental states that have been
judged worthy of explaining it.
1. Hypermnesia, or exaltation of memory, in spite of what has been said
about it, teaches us nothing in regard to the nature of inspiration or
of invention in general. It is produced in hypnotism, mania, the excited
period of "circular insanity," at the beginning of general paralysis,
and especially under the form known as "the gift of tongues" in
religious epidemics. We find, it is true, some observations (among
others one by Regis of an illiterate newspaper vender composing pieces
of poetry of his own), indicating that a heightened memory sometimes
accompanies a certain tendency toward invention. But hypermnesia, pure
and simple, consists of an extraordinary flood of memories totally
lacking that essential mark of creation--new combinations. It even
appears that in the two instances there is rather an antagonism since
heightened memory comes near to the ideal law of total redintegration,
which is, as we know, a hindrance to invention. They are alike only with
respect to the great mass of separable materials, but where the
principle of unity is wanting there can be no creation.
2. Inspiration has often been likened to the state of excitement
preceding intoxication. It is a well-known fact that many inventors have
sought it in wine, alcoholic liquors, toxic substances like hashish,
opium, ether, etc. It is unnecessary to mention names. The abundance of
ideas, the rapidity of their flow, the eccentric spurts and caprices,
novel ideas, strengthening of the vital and emotional tone, that brief
state of bounding fancy of which novelists have given such good
descriptions, make evident to the least observing that under the
influence of intoxication the imagination works to a much greater extent
than ordinarily. Yet how pale that is compared to the action of the
intellectual poisons above mentioned, especially hashish. The
"artificial paradise" of DeQuincy, Moreau de Tours, Theophile Gautier,
Baudelaire and others have made known to all an enormous expansion of
the imagination launched into a giddy course without limits of time and
space.
Strictly, these are facts representing only a stimulated, artificial,
temporary inspiration. They do not take us into its true nature; at the
most they may teach us concerning some of their physiological
conditions. It is not even an inspiration in the strict sense, but
rather a beginning, an embryo, an outline, analogous to the creations
produced in dreams which are found very incoherent when we awake. One of
the essential conditions of creation, a principal element--the directing
principle that organizes and unifies--is lacking. Under the influence
of alcoholic drinks and of poisonous intoxicants attention and will
always fall into exhaustion.
3. With greater reason it has been sought to explain inspiration by
comparison with certain forms of somnambulism, and it has been said that
"it is only the lowest degree of the latter state, somnambulism in a
waking state. In inspiration it is as though a strange personality were
speaking to the author; in somnambulism it is the stranger himself who
talks or holds the pen, who speaks or writes--in a word, does the
work."[20] It would thus be the modified form of a state that is the
culmination of subconscious activity and a state of double personality.
As this last explanatory expression is wonderfully abused, and is called
upon to serve in all conditions, preciseness is indispensable.
The inspired individual is like an awakened dreamer--he lives in his
dream. (Of this we might cite seemingly authentic examples: Shelly,
Alfieri, etc.) Psychologically, this means that there is in him a double
inversion of the normal state.
To begin with, consciousness monopolized by the number and intensity of
its images is closed to the influences of the outside world, or else
receives them only to make them enter the web of its dream. The internal
life annihilates the external, which is just the opposite of ordinary
life.
Further, the unconscious or subconscious activity passes to the first
plane, plays the first part, while preserving its impersonal character.
This much allowed, if we would go further, we are thrown into increasing
difficulties. The existence of an unconscious working is beyond doubt;
facts in profusion could be given in support of this obscure elaboration
which enters consciousness only when all is done. But what is the nature
of this work? Is it purely physiological? Is it psychological? We come
to two opposing theses. Theoretically, we may say that everything goes
on in the realm of the unconscious just as in consciousness, _only
without a message to me_; that in clear consciousness the work may be
followed up step by step, while in unconsciousness it proceeds likewise,
but unknown to us. It is evident that all this is purely hypothetical.
Inspiration resembles a cipher dispatch which the unconscious activity
transmits to the conscious process, which translates it. Must we admit
that in the deep levels of the unconscious there are formed only
fragmentary combinations and that they reach complete systematization
only in clear consciousness, or, rather, is the creative labor identical
in both cases? It is difficult to decide. It seems to be accepted that
genius, or at least richness, in invention depends on the subliminal
imagination,[21] not on the other, which is superficial in nature and
soon exhausted. The one is spontaneous, true; the other, artificial,
feigned. "Inspiration" signifies unconscious imagination, and is only a
special case of it. Conscious imagination is a kind of perfected state.
To sum up, inspiration is the result of an underhand process existing in
men, in some to a very great degree. The nature of this work being
unknown, we can conclude nothing as to the ultimate nature of
inspiration. On the other hand, we may in a positive manner fix the
value of the phenomenon in invention, all the more as we are inclined to
over-value it. We should, indeed, note that inspiration is not a cause
but an effect--more exactly, a moment, a crisis, a critical stage; it is
an _index_. It marks either the end of an unconscious elaboration which
may have been very short or very long, or else the beginning of a
conscious elaboration which will be very short or very long (this is
seen especially in cases of creation suggested by chance). On the one
hand, it never has an absolute beginning; on the other hand, it never
delivers a finished work; the history of inventions sufficiently proves
this. Furthermore, one may pass beyond it; many creations long in
preparation seem without a crisis, strictly so called; such as Newton's
law of attraction, Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper," and the "Mona
Lisa." Finally, many have felt themselves really inspired without
producing anything of value.[22]
II
What has been said up to this point does not exhaust the study of the
unconscious factor as a source of new combinations. Its role can be
studied under a simpler and more limited form. For this purpose we need
to return for the last time to association of ideas. The final reason
for association (outside of contiguity, in part at least) must be sought
in the temperament, character, individuality of the subject, often even
in the _moment_; that is, in a passing influence, hardly perceptible
because it is unconscious or subconscious. These momentary dispositions
in latent form can excite novel relations in two ways--through mediate
association and through a special mode of grouping which has recently
received the name "constellation."
1. Mediate association has been well known since the time of Hamilton,
who was the first to determine its nature and to give a personal example
that has become classic. Loch Lomond recalled to him the Prussian system
of education because, when visiting the lake, he had met a Prussian
officer who conversed with him on the subject. His general formula is
this: _A_ recalls _C_, although there is between them neither contiguity
nor resemblance, but because a middle term, _B_, which does not enter
consciousness, serves as a transition between _A_ and _C_. This mode of
association seemed universally accepted when, latterly, it has been
attacked by Muensterberg and others. People have had recourse to
experimentation, which has given results only in slight agreement.[23]
For my own part, I count myself among those contemporaries who admit
mediate association, and they are the greater number. Scripture, who has
made a special study of the subject, and who has been able to note all
the intermediate conditions between almost clear consciousness and the
unconscious, considers the existence of mediate association as proven.
In order to pronounce as an illusion a fact that is met with so often in
daily experience, and one that has been studied by so many excellent
observers, there is required more than experimental investigations (the
conditions of which are often artificial and unnatural), some of which,
moreover, conclude for the affirmative.
This form of association is produced, like the others, now by
contiguity, now by resemblance. The example given by Hamilton belongs to
the first type. In the experiments by Scripture are found some of the
second type--e.g., a red light recalled, through the vague memory of a
flash of strontium light, a scene of an opera.
It is clear that by its very nature mediate association can give rise to
novel combinations. Contiguity itself, which is usually only repetition,
becomes the source of unforeseen relations, thanks to the elimination of
the middle term. Nothing, moreover, proves that there may not sometimes
be several latent intermediate terms. It is possible that _A_ should
call up _D_ through the medium of _b_ and _c_, which remain below the
threshold of consciousness. It seems even impossible not to admit this
in the hypothesis of the subconscious, where we see only the two end
links of the chain, without being able to allow a break of continuity
between them.
2. In his determination of the regulating causes of association of
ideas, Ziehen designates one of these under the name of "constellation,"
which has been adopted by some writers. This may be enunciated thus: The
recall of an image, or of a group of images, is in some cases the result
of a sum of predominant tendencies.
An idea may become the starting point of a host of associations. The
word "Rome" can call up a hundred. Why is one called up rather than
another, and at such a moment rather than at another? There are some
associations based on contiguity and on resemblance which one may
foresee, but how about the rest? Here is an idea _A_; it is the center
of a network; it can radiate in all directions--_B, C, D, E, F, etc._
Why does it call up now _B_, later _F_?
It is because every image is comparable to a force, which may pass from
the latent to the active condition, and in this process may be
reinforced or checked by other images. There are simultaneous and
inhibitory tendencies. _B_ is in a state of tension and _C_ is not; or
it may be that _D_ exerts an arresting influence on _C_. Consequently
_C_ cannot prevail. But an hour later conditions have changed and
victory rests with _C_. This phenomenon rests on a physiological basis:
the existence of several currents diffusing themselves through the brain
and the possibility of receiving simultaneous excitations.[24]
A few examples will make plainer this phenomenon of reinforcement, in
consequence of which an association prevails. Wahle reports that the
Gothic _Hotel de Ville_, near his house, had never suggested to him the
idea of the Doges' Palace at Venice, in spite of certain architectural
likenesses, until a certain day when this idea broke upon him with much
clearness. He then recalled that two hours before he had observed a lady
wearing a beautiful brooch in the form of a gondola. Sully rightly
remarks that it is much easier to recall the words of a foreign language
when we return from the country where it is spoken than when we have
lived a long time in our own, because the tendency toward recollection
is reinforced by the recent experience of the words heard, spoken,
read, and a whole array of latent dispositions that work in the same
direction.
In my opinion we would find the finest examples of "constellation,"
regarded as a creative element, in studying the formation and
development of myths. Everywhere and always man has had for material
scarcely anything save natural phenomena--the sky, land, water, stars,
storms, wind, seasons, life, death, etc. On each of these themes he
builds thousands of explanatory stories, which vary from the grandly
imposing to the laughably childish. Every myth is the work of a human
group which has worked according to the tendencies of its special genius
under the influence of various stages of intellectual culture. No
process is richer in resources, of freer turn, or more apt to give what
every inventor promises--the novel and unexpected.
To sum up: The initial element, external or internal, excites
associations that one cannot always foresee, because of the numerous
orientations possible; an analogous case to that which occurs in the
realm of the will when there are present reasons for and against, acting
and not acting, one direction or another, now or later--when the final
resolution cannot be predicted, and often depends on imperceptible
causes.
In conclusion, I anticipate a possible question: "Does the unconscious
factor differ in nature from the two others (intellectual and
emotional)?" The answer depends on the hypothesis that one holds as to
the nature of the unconscious itself. According to one view it would be
especially physiological, consequently different; according to another,
the difference can exist only _in the processes_: unconscious
elaboration is reducible to intellectual or emotional processes the
preparatory work of which is slighted, and which enters consciousness
ready made. Consequently, the unconscious factor would be a special form
of the other two rather than a distinct element in invention.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] Several of them will be found in Appendix A at the end of this
work.
[19] On this subject see Appendix B.
[20] Dr. Chabaneix, _Le subconscient sur les artistes, les savants,
et les ecrivains_, Paris, 1897, p. 87.
[21] The recent case, studied with so much ability by M. Flournoy in
his book, "_Des Indes a la planete Mars_" (1900), is an example of
the subliminal creative imagination, and of the work it is capable
of doing by itself.
[22] We shall return to this point in another part of this work. See
Part II, chapter iv.
[23] Thus Howe (_American Journal of Psychology_, vi, 239 ff.), has
published some investigations in the negative. One series of 557
experiments gave him eight apparently mediate associations; after
examination, he reduced them to a single one, which seemed to him
doubtful. Another series of 961 experiments gives 72 cases, for
which he offers an explanation other than mediate association. On
the other hand, Aschaffenburg admits them to the extent of four per
cent.; the association-time is longer than for average associations
(_Psychologische Arbeiten_, I and II). Consult especially Scripture,
_The New Psychology_, chapter xiii, with experiments in support of
his conclusion.
[24] Ziehen, _Leitfaden der physiologischen Psychologie_, 4th
edition, 1898, pp. 164, 174. Also, Sully, _Human Mind_, I, 343.
CHAPTER IV
THE ORGANIC CONDITIONS OF THE IMAGINATION
Whatever opinion we may hold concerning the nature of the unconscious,
since that form of activity is related more than any other to the
physiological conditions of the mental life, the present time is
suitable for an exposition of the hypotheses that it is permissible to
express concerning the organic bases of the imagination. What we may
regard as positive, or even as probable, is very little.
I
First, the anatomical conditions. Is there a "seat" of the imagination?
Such is the form of the question asked for the last twenty years. In
that period of extreme and closely bounded localization men strained
themselves to bind down every psychic manifestation to a strictly
determined point of the brain. Today the problem presents itself no
longer in this simple way. As at present we incline toward scattered
localization, functional rather than properly anatomical, and as we
often understand by "center" the synergic action of several centers
differently grouped according to the individual case, our question
becomes equivalent to: "Are there certain portions of the brain having
an exclusive or preponderating part in the working of the creative
imagination?" Even in this form the question is hardly acceptable.
Indeed, the imagination is not a primary and relatively simple function
like that of visual, auditory and other sensations. We have seen that it
is a state of tertiary formation and very complex. There is required,
then, (1) that the elements constituting imagination be determined in a
rigorous manner, but the foregoing analysis makes no pretense of being
definitive; (2) that each of these constitutive elements may be strictly
related to its anatomic conditions. It is evident that we are far from
possessing the secret of such a mechanism.
An attempt has been made to put the question in a more precise and
limited form by studying the brains of men distinguished in different
lines. But this method, in avoiding the difficulty, answers our question
indirectly only. Most often great inventors possess qualities besides
imagination indispensable for success (Napoleon, James Watt, etc.). How
draw a dividing line so as to assign to the imagination only its
rightful share? In addition, the anatomical determination is beset with
difficulties.
A method flourishing very greatly about the middle of the nineteenth
century consisted of weighing carefully a large number of brains and
drawing various conclusions as to intellectual superiority or
inferiority from a comparison of the weights. We find on this point
numerous documents in the special works published during the period
mentioned. But this method of weights has given rise to so many
surprises and difficulties in the way of explanation that it has been
quite necessary to give it up, since we see in it only another element
of the problem.
Nowadays we attribute the greatest importance to the morphology of the
brain, to its histological structure, the marked development of certain
regions, the determination not only of centers but of connections and
associations between centers. On this last point contemporary anatomists
have given themselves up to eager researches, and, although the cerebral
architecture is not conceived by all in the same way, it is proper for
psychology to note that all with their "centers" or "associational
system" try to translate into their own language the complex conditions
of mental life. Since we must choose from among these various anatomical
views let us accept that of Flechsig, one of the most renowned and one
having also the advantage of putting directly the problem of the organic
conditions of the imagination.
We know that Flechsig relies on the embryological method--that is, on
the development--in the order of time, of nerves and centers. For him
there exist on the one hand sensitive regions (sensory-motor), occupying
about a third of the cortical surface; on the other hand,
association-centers, occupying the remaining part.
So far as the sensory centers are concerned, development occurs in the
following order: Organic sensations (middle of cerebral cortex), smell
(base of the brain and part of the frontal lobes), sight (occipital
lobe), hearing (first temporal). Whence it results that in a definite
part of the brain the body comes to proper consciousness of its
impulses, wants, appetites, pains, movements, etc., and that this part
develops first--"knowledge of the body precedes that of the outside
world."
In what concerns the associational centers, Flechsig supposes three
regions: The great posterior center (parieto-occipito-temporal);
another, much smaller, anterior or frontal; and a middle center, the
smallest of all (the Island of Reil). Comparative anatomy proves that
the associational centers are more important than those of sensation.
Among the lower mammals they develop as we go up the scale: "That which
makes the psychic man may be said to be the centers of association that
he possesses." In the new-born child the sensitive centers are isolated,
and, in the absence of connections between them, the unity of the self
cannot be manifested; there is a plurality of consciousness.
This much admitted, let us return to our special question, which
Flechsig asks in these words: "On what does genius rest? Is it based on
a special structure in the brain, or rather on special irritability?
that is, according to our present notions, on chemical factors? We may
hold the first opinion with all possible force. Genius is always united
to a special structure, to a particular organization of the brain." All
parts of this organ do not have the same value. It has been long
admitted that the frontal part may serve as a measure of intellectual
capacity; but we must allow, contrariwise, that there are other regions,
"principally a center located under the protuberance at the top of the
head, which is very much developed in all men of genius whose brains
have been studied down to our day. In Beethoven, and probably also in
Bach, the enormous development of this part of the brain is striking. In
great scientists like Gauss the centers of the posterior region of the
brain and those of the frontal region are strongly developed. The
scientific genius thus shows proportions of brain-structure other than
the artistic genius."[25] There would then be, according to our author,
a preponderance of the frontal and parietal regions--the former obtain
especially among artists; the latter among scientists. Already, twenty
years before Flechsig, Ruedinger had noted the extraordinary development
of the parietal convolutions in eminent men after a study of eighteen
brains. All the convolutions and fissures were so developed, said he,
that the parieto-occipital region had an altogether peculiar character.
By way of summary we must bear in mind that, as regards anatomical
conditions, even when depending on the best of sources, we can at
present give only fragmentary, incomplete, hypothetical views.
Let us now go on to the physiology.
II
We might have rightly asked whether the physiological states existing
along with the working of the creative imagination are the cause,
effect, or merely the accompaniment of this activity. Probably all the
three conditions are met with. First, concomitance is an accomplished
fact, and we may consider it as an organic manifestation parallel to
that of the mind. Again, the employment of artificial means to excite
and maintain the effervescence of the imagination assigns a causal or
antecedent position to the physiologic conditions. Lastly, the psychic
activity may be initial and productive of changes in the organism, or,
if these already exist, may augment and prolong them.
The most instructive instances are those indicated by very clear
manifestations and profound modifications of the bodily condition. Such
are the moments of inspiration or simply those of warmth from work which
arise in the form of sudden impulses.
The general fact of most importance consists of changes in the blood
circulation. Increase of intellectual activity means an increase of work
in the cortical cells, dependent on a congested, sometimes a temporarily
anaemic state. Hyperaemia seems rather the rule, but we also know that
slight anaemia increases cortical excitability. "Weak, contracted pulse;
pale, chilly skin; overheated head; brilliant, sunken, roving eyes,"
such is the classic, frequently quoted description of the physiological
state during creative labor. There are numerous inventors who, of their
own accord, have noted these changes--irregular pulse, in the case of
Lagrange; congestion of the head, in Beethoven, who made use of cold
douches to relieve it, etc. This elevation of the vital tone, this
nervous tension, translates itself also into motor form through
movements analogous to reflexes, without special end, mechanically
repeated and always the same in the same man--e.g., movement of the
feet, hands, fingers; whittling the table or the arms of a chair (as in
the case of Napoleon when he was elaborating a plan of campaign), etc.
It is a safety-valve for the excessive flow of nervous impulse, and it
is admitted that this method of expenditure is not useless for
preserving the understanding in all its clearness. In a word, increase
of the cerebral circulation is the formula covering the majority of
observations on this subject.
Does experimentation, strictly so called, teach us anything on this
point? Numerous and well-known physiological researches, especially
those of Mosso, show that all intellectual, and, most of all, emotional,
work, produces cerebral congestion; that the brain-volume increases, and
the volume of the peripheral organs diminishes. But that tells us
nothing particularly about the imagination, which is but a special case
under the rule. Latterly, indeed, it has been proposed to study
inventors by an objective method through the examination of their
several circulatory, respiratory, digestive apparatus; their general
and special sensibility; the modes of their memory and forms of
association, their intellectual processes, etc. But up to this time no
conclusion has been drawn from these individual descriptions that would
allow any generalization. Besides, has an experiment, in the strict
sense of the word, ever been made at the "psychological moment"? I know
of none. Would it be possible? Let us admit that by some happy chance
the experimenter, using all his means of investigation, can have the
subject under his hand at the exact moment of inspiration--of the
sudden, fertile, brief creative impulse--would not the experiment itself
be a disturbing cause, so that the result would be _ipso facto_
vitiated, or at least unconvincing?
There still remains a mass of facts deserving summary notice--the
oddities of inventors. Were we to collect only those that may be
regarded as authentic we could make a thick volume. Despite their
anecdotal character these evidences do not seem to be unworthy of some
regard.
It is impossible to enter here upon an enumeration that would be
endless. After having collected for my own information a large number of
these strange peculiarities, it seems to me that they are reducible to
two categories:
(1) Those inexplicable freaks dependent on the individual constitution,
and more often probably also on experiences in life the memory of which
has been lost. Schiller, for example, kept rotten apples in his work
desk.
(2) The others, more numerous, are easy to explain. They are
physiological means consciously or unconsciously chosen to aid creative
work; they are auxiliary helpers of the imagination.
The most frequent method consists of artificially increasing the flow of
blood to the brain. Rousseau would think bare-headed in full sunshine;
Bossuet would work in a cold room with his head wrapped in furs; others
would immerse their feet in ice-cold water (Gretry, Schiller). Very
numerous are those who think "horizontally"--that is, lying stretched
out and often flattened under their blankets (Milton, Descartes,
Leibniz, Rossini, etc.)
Some require motor excitation; they work only when walking,[26] or else
prepare for work by physical exercise (Mozart). For variety's sake, let
us note those who must have the noise of the streets, crowds, talk,
festivities, in order to invent. For others there must be external pomp
and a personal part in the scene (Machiavelli, Buffon). Guido Reni would
paint only when dressed in magnificent style, his pupils crowded about
him and attending to his wants in respectful silence.
On the opposite side are those requiring retirement, silence,
contemplation, even shadowy darkness, like Lamennais. In this class we
find especially scientists and thinkers--Tycho-Brahe, who for twenty-one
years scarcely left his observatory; Leibniz, who could remain for
three days almost motionless in an armchair.
But most methods are too artificial or too strong not to become quickly
noxious. Every one knows what they are--abuse of wine, alcoholic
liquors, narcotics, tobacco, coffee, etc., prolonged periods of
wakefulness, less for increasing the time for work than to cause a state
of hyperesthesia and a morbid sensibility (Goncourt).
Summing up: The organic bases of the creative imagination, if there are
any specially its own, remain to be determined. For in all that has been
said we have been concerned only with some conditions of the general
working of the mind--assimilation as well as invention. The
eccentricities of inventors studied carefully and in a detailed manner
would finally, perhaps, be most instructive material, because it would
allow us to penetrate into their inmost individuality. Thus, the
physiology of the imagination quickly becomes pathology. I shall not
dwell on this, having purposely eliminated the morbid side of our
subject. It will, however, be necessary to return thereto, touching upon
it in another part of this essay.
III
There remains a problem, so obscure and enigmatic that I scarcely
venture to approach it, in the analogy that most languages--the
spontaneous expression of a common thought--establish between
physiologic and psychic creation. Is it only a superficial likeness, a
hasty judgment, a metaphor, or does it rest on some positive basis?
Generally, the various manifestations of mental activity have as their
precursor an unconscious form from which they arise. The sensitiveness
belonging to living substance, known by the names heliotropism,
chemotropism, etc., is like a sketch of sensation and of the reactions
following it; organic memory is the basis and the obliterated form of
conscious memory. Reflexes introduce voluntary activity; appetitions and
hidden tendencies are the forerunners of effective psychology. Instinct,
on several sides, is like an unconscious and specific trial of reason.
Has the creative power of the human mind also analogous antecedents, a
physiological equivalent?
One metaphysician, Froschammer, who has elevated the creative
imagination to the rank of primary world-principle, asserts this
positively. For him there is an objective or cosmic imagination working
in nature, producing the innumerable varieties of vegetable and animal
forms; transformed into subjective imagination it becomes in the human
brain the source of a new form of creation. "The very same principle
causes the living forms to appear--a sort of objective image--and the
subjective images, a kind of living form."[27] However ingenious and
attractive this philosophical theory may be, it is evidently of no
positive value for psychology.
Let us stick to experience. Physiology teaches that generation is a
"prolonged nutrition," a surplus, as we see so plainly in the lower
forms of agamous generation (budding, division). The creative
imagination likewise presupposes a superabundance of psychic life that
might otherwise spend itself in another way. Generation in the physical
order is a spontaneous, natural tendency, although it may be stimulated,
successfully or otherwise, by artificial means. We can say as much of
the other. This list of resemblances it would be easy to prolong. But
all this is insufficient for the establishment of a thorough identity
between the two cases and the solution of the question.
It is possible to limit it, to put it into more precise language. Is
there a connection between the development of the generative function
and that of the imagination? Even in this form the question scarcely
permits any but vague answers. In favor of a connection we may allege:
(1) The well-known influence of puberty on the imagination of both
sexes, expressing itself in day-dreams, in aspirations toward an
unattainable ideal,[28] in the genius for invention that love bestows
upon the least favored. Let us recall also the mental troubles, the
psychoses designated by the name hebephrenia. With adolescence coincides
the first flowering of the fancy which, having emerged from its
swaddling-clothes of childhood, is not yet sophisticated and
rationalized.
It is not a matter of indifference for the general thesis of the present
work to note that this development of the imagination depends wholly on
the first effervescence of the emotional life. That "influence of the
feelings on the imagination" and of "the imagination on the feelings" of
which the moralists and the older psychologists speak so often is a
vague formula for expressing this fact--that the motor element included
in the images is reinforced.
(2) _Per contra_, the weakening of the generative power and of the
constructive imagination coincide in old age, which is, in a word, a
decay of nutrition, a progressive atrophy. It is proper not to omit the
influence of castration. According to the theory of Brown-Sequard, it
produces an abatement of the nutritive functions through the suppression
of an internal stimulus; and, although its relations to the imagination
have not been especially studied, it is not rash to admit that it is an
arresting cause.
However, the foregoing merely establishes, between the functions
compared, a concomitance in the general course of their evolution and in
their critical periods; it is insufficient for a conclusion. There
would be needed clear, authentic and sufficiently numerous observations
proving that individuals bereft of imagination of the creative type have
acquired it suddenly through the sole fact of their sexual influences,
and, inversely, that brilliant imaginations have faded under the
contrary conditions. We find some of these evidences in Cabanis,[29]
Moreau de Tours and various alienists; they would seem to be in favor of
the affirmative, but some seem to me not sure enough, others not
explicit enough. Despite my investigations on this point, and inquiry of
competent persons, I do not venture to draw a definite conclusion. I
leave the question open; it will perhaps tempt another more fortunate
investigator.
FOOTNOTES:
[25] Flechsig, _Gehirn und Seele_, 1896.
[26] Is it possible that this would explain the fact of Aristotle
lecturing to his pupils while walking about, thus giving the name
"peripatetic" to his school and system? (Tr.)
[27] _Die Phantasie als Grundprincip der Weltprocesses_, Muenchen,
1877. For other details on the subject, see Appendix C.
[28] A passage from Chateaubriand (cited by Paulhan, _Rev. Philos._,
March, 1898, p. 237) is a typical description of the situation: "The
warmth of my (adolescent) imagination, my shyness, and solitude,
caused me, instead of casting myself on something without, to fall
back upon myself. Wanting a real object, I evoked through the power
of my desires, a phantom, which thenceforth never left me; I made a
woman, composed of all the women that I had already seen. That
charming idea followed me everywhere, though invisible; I conversed
with her as with a real being; she would change according to my
frenzy. Pygmalion was less enamored of his statue."
[29] Cabanis, _Rapports du Physique et du Moral_, edition Peisse,
pp. 248-249, an anecdote that he relates after Buffon. Analogous,
but less clear, facts may also be found in Moreau de Tours'
_Psychologie morbide_.
CHAPTER V
THE PRINCIPLE OF UNITY
The psychological nature of the imagination would be very imperfectly
known were we limited to the foregoing analytical study. Indeed, all
creation whatever, great or small, shows an organic character; it
implies a unifying, synthetic principle. Every one of the three
factors--intellectual, emotional, unconscious--works not as an isolated
fact on its own account; they have no worth save through their union,
and no signification save through their common bearing. This principle
of unity, which all invention demands and requires, is at one time
intellectual in nature, i.e., as a fixed idea; at another time
emotional, i.e., as a fixed emotion or passion. These terms--fixed
idea, fixed emotion--are somewhat absolute and require restrictions and
reservations, which will be made in what follows.
The distinction between the two is not at all absolute. Every fixed idea
is supported and maintained by a need, a tendency, a desire; i.e., by
an affective element. For it is idle fancy to believe in the
_persistence_ of an idea which, by hypothesis, would be a purely
intellectual state, cold and dry. The principle of unity in this form
naturally predominates in certain kinds of creation: in the practical
imagination wherein the end is clear, where images are direct
substitutes for things, where invention is subjected to strict
conditions under penalty of visible and palpable check; in the
scientific and metaphysical imagination, which works with concepts and
is subject to the laws of rational logic.
Every fixed emotion should realize itself in an idea or image that gives
it body and systematizes it, without which it remains diffuse; and all
affective states can take on this permanent form which makes a unified
principle of them. The simple emotions (fear, love, joy, sorrow, etc.),
the complex or derived emotions (religious, esthetic, intellectual
ideas) may equally monopolize consciousness in their own interests.
We thus see that these two terms--fixed idea, fixed emotion--are almost
equivalent, for they both imply inseparable elements, and serve only to
indicate the preponderance of one or the other element.
This principle of unity, center of attraction and support of all the
working of the creative imagination--that is, a subjective principle
tending to become objectified--is the ideal. In the complete sense of
the word--not restrained merely to esthetic creation or made synonymous
with perfection as in ethics--the ideal is a construction in images that
should become a reality. If we liken imaginative creation to
physiological generation, the ideal is the ovum awaiting fertilization
in order to begin its development.
We could, to be more exact, make a distinction between the synthetic
principle and the ideal conception which is a higher form of it. The
fixation of an end and the discovery of appropriate means are the
necessary and sufficient conditions for all invention. A creation,
whatever it be, that looks only to present success, can satisfy itself
with a unifying principle that renders it viable and organized, but we
can look higher than the merely necessary and sufficient.
The ideal is the principle of unity in motion in its historic evolution;
like all development, it advances or recedes according to the times.
Nothing is less justified than the conception of a fixed archetype (an
undisguised survival of the Platonic Ideas), illuminating the inventor,
who reproduces it as best he can. The ideal is a nonentity; it arises in
the inventor and through him; its life is a _becoming_.
Psychologically, it is a construction in images belonging to the merely
sketched or outlined type.[30] It results from a double activity,
negative and positive, or dissociation and association, the first cause
and origin of which is found in a _will that it shall be so_; it is the
motor tendency of images in the nascent state engendering the ideal.
The inventor cuts out, suppresses, sifts, according to his temperament,
character, taste, prejudices, sympathies and antipathies--in short, his
_interest_. In this separation, already studied, let us note one
important particular. "We know nothing of the complex psychic production
that may simply be the sum of component elements and in which they would
remain with their own characters, with no modification. The nature of
the components disappears in order to give birth to a novel phenomenon
that has its own and particular features. The construction of the ideal
is not a mere grouping of past experiences; in its totality it has its
own individual characteristics, among which we no more see the composing
lines than we see the components, oxygen and hydrogen, in water. In no
scientific or artistic production, says Wundt, does the whole appear as
made up of its parts, like a mosaic."[31] In other words, it is a case
of mental chemistry. The exactness of this expression, which is due, I
believe, to J. Stuart Mill, has been questioned. Still it answers to
positive facts; for example, in perception, to the phenomena of contrast
and their analogues; juxtaposition or rapid succession of two different
colors, two different sounds, of tactile, olfactory, gustatory
impressions different in quality, produces a particular state of
consciousness, similar to a combination. Harmony or discord does not,
indeed, exist in each separate sound, but only in the relations and
sequence of sounds--it is a _tertium quid_. We have heretofore, in the
discussion of association of ideas, very frequently represented the
states of consciousness as fixed elements that approach one another,
cohere, separate, come together anew, but always unalterable, like
atoms. It is not so at all. Consciousness, says Titchener, resembles a
fresco in which the transition between colors is made through all kinds
of intermediate stages of light and shade.... The idea of a pen or of an
inkwell is not a stable thing clearly pictured like the pen or inkwell
itself. More than any one else, William James has insisted on this point
in his theory of "fringes" of states of consciousness. Outside of the
given instances we could find many others among the various
manifestations of the mental life. It is not, then, at all chimerical to
assume in psychology an equivalent of chemical combination. In a complex
state there is, in addition to the component elements, the result of
their reciprocal influences, of their varying relations. Too often we
forget this resultant.
At bottom the ideal is an individual concept. If objection is offered
that an ideal common to a large mass of men is a fact of common
experience (e.g., idealists and realists in the fine arts, and even
more so religious, moral, social and political concepts, etc.), the
answer is easy: There are families of minds. They have a common ideal
because, in certain matters, they have the same way of feeling and
thinking. It is not a transcendental idea that unites them; but this
result occurs because from their common aspirations the collective ideal
becomes disengaged; it is, in scholastic terminology, a _universale post
rem_.
The ideal conception is the first moment of the creative act, which is
not yet battling with the conditions of the actual. It is only the
internal vision of an individual mind that has not yet been projected
externally with a form and body. We know how the passage from the
internal to the external life has given rise among inventors to
deceptions and complaints. Such was the imaginative construction that
could not, unchanged, enter into its mould and become a reality.
Let us now examine the various forms of this coagulating[32] principle
in advancing from the lowest to the highest, from the unity vaguely
anticipated to the absolute and tyrannical masterful unity. Following a
method that seems to me best adapted for these ill-explained questions I
shall single out only the principal forms, which I have reduced to
three--the unstable, the organic or middle, and the extreme or
semi-morbid unity.
(1) The unstable form has its starting point directly and immediately in
the reproductive imagination without creation. It assembles its
elements somewhat by chance and stitches together the bits of our life;
it ends only in beginnings, in attempts. The unity-principle is a
momentary disposition, vacillating and changing without cessation
according to the external impressions or modifications of our vital
conditions and of our humor. By way of example let us recall the state
of the day-dreamer building castles in the air; the delirious
constructions of the insane, the inventions of the child following all
the fluctuations of chance, of its caprice; the half-coherent dreams
that seem to the dreamer to contain a creative germ. In consequence of
the extreme frailty of the synthetic principle the creative imagination
does not succeed in accomplishing its task and remains in a condition
intermediate between simple association of ideas and creation proper.
(2) The organic or middle form may be given as the type of the unifying
power. Ultimately it reduces itself to attention and presupposes nothing
more, because, thanks to the process of "localization," which is the
essential mark of attention, it makes itself a center of attraction,
grouping about the leading idea the images, associations, judgments,
tendencies and voluntary efforts. "Inspiration," the poet Grillparzer
used to say, "is a concentration of all the forces and capacities upon a
single point which, for the time being, should represent the world
rather than enclose it. The reinforcement of the state of the mind comes
from the fact that its several powers, instead of spreading themselves
over the whole world, are contained within the bounds of a single
object, touch one another, reciprocally help and reinforce each
other."[33] What the poet here maintains as regards esthetics only is
applicable to all the _organic_ forms of creation--that is to those
ruled by an immanent logic, and, like them, resembling works of Nature.
In order to leave no doubt as to the identity of attention and
imaginative synthesis, and in order to show that it is normally the true
unifying principle, we offer the following remarks:
Attention is at times spontaneous, natural, without effort, simply
dependent on the interest that a thing excites in us--lasting as long as
it holds us in subjection, then ceasing entirely. Again, it is
voluntary, artificial, an imitation of the other, precarious and
intermittent, maintained with effort--in a word, laborious. The same is
true of the imagination. The moment of inspiration is ruled by a perfect
and spontaneous unity; its impersonality approaches that of the forces
of Nature. Then appears the personal moment, the detailed working and
long, painful, intermittent resumptions, the miserable turns of which so
many inventors have described. The analogy between the two cases seems
to me incontestable.
Next let us note that psychologists always adduce the same examples when
they wish to illustrate on the one hand, the processes of the
persistent, tenacious attention, and, on the other hand, the
developmental labor without which creative work does not come to pass:
"Genius is only long patience," the saying of Newton; "always thinking
of it," and like expressions of d'Alembert, Helmholtz and others,
because in the one case as in the other the fundamental condition is the
existence of a fixed, ever-active idea, notwithstanding its relaxations
and its incessant disappearances into the unconscious with return to
consciousness.
(3) The extreme form, which from its nature is semi-morbid, becomes in
its highest degree plainly pathological; the unifying principle changes
to a condition of obsession.
The normal state of our mind is a plurality of states of consciousness
(polyideism). Through association there is a radiation in every
direction. In this totality of coexisting images no one long occupies
first place; it is driven away by others, which are displaced in turn by
still others emerging from the penumbra. On the contrary, in attention
(relative monoideism) a single image retains first place for a long time
and tends to have the same importance again. Finally, in a condition of
obsession (absolute monoideism) the fixed idea defies all rivalry and
rules despotically. Many inventors have suffered painfully this tyranny
and have vainly struggled to break it. The fixed idea, once settled,
does not permit anything to dislodge it save for the moment and with
much pain. Even then it is displaced only apparently, for it persists in
the unconscious life where it has thrust its deep roots.
At this stage the unifying principle, although it can act as a stimulus
for creation, is no longer normal. Consequently, a natural question
arises: Wherein is there a difference between the obsession of the
inventor and the obsession of the insane, who most generally destroys in
place of creating?
The nature of fixed ideas has greatly occupied contemporary alienists.
For other reasons and in their own way they, too, have been led to
divide obsession into two classes, the intellectual and emotional,
according as the idea or the affective state predominates. Then they
have been led to ask: Which of these two elements is the primitive one?
For some it is the idea. For others, and it seems that these are the
more numerous, the affective state is in general the primary fact; the
obsession always rests on a basis of morbid emotion and in a retention
of impressions.[34]
But whatever opinion we may hold on this point, the difficulty of
establishing a dividing line between the two forms of obsession above
mentioned remains the same. Are there characters peculiar to each one?
It has been said: "The physiologically fixed idea is normally longed
for, often sought, in all cases accepted, and it does not break the
unity of the self." It does not impose itself fatally on consciousness;
the individual knows the value thereof, knows where it leads him, and
adapts his conduct to its requirements. For example, Christopher
Columbus.
The pathological fixed idea is "parasitic," automatic, discordant,
irresistible. Obsession is only a special case of psychic
disintegration, a kind of doubling of consciousness. The individual
becomes a person "possessed," whose self has been confiscated for the
sake of the fixed idea, and whose submission to his situation is wrought
with pain.
In spite of this parallel the distinguishing criterion between the two
is very vague, because from the sane to the delirious idea the
transitions are very numerous. We are obliged to recognize "that with
certain workers--who are rather taken up with the elaboration of their
work, and not masters directing it, quitting it, and resuming it at
their pleasure--an artistic, scientific, or mechanical conception
succeeds in haunting the mind, imposing itself upon it even to the
extent of causing suffering." In reality, pure psychology is unable to
discover a positive difference between obsession leading to creative
work and the other forms, because in both cases the mental mechanism is,
at bottom, the same. The criterion must be sought elsewhere. For that we
must go out of the internal world and proceed objectively. We must judge
the fixed idea not in itself but by its effects. What does it produce in
the practical, esthetic, scientific, moral, social, religious field? It
is of value according to its fruits. If objection be made to this change
of front we may, in order to stick to a strictly psychological point of
view, state that it is certain that as soon as it passes beyond a middle
point, which it is difficult to determine, the fixed idea profoundly
troubles the mechanism of the mind. In imaginative persons this is not
rare, which partly explains why the pathological theory of genius (of
which we shall speak later) has been able to rally so many to its
support and to allege so many facts in its favor.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] For the distinction between this form of imagination and the
two others (fixed, objectified), I refer the reader to the
Conclusion of this work, where the subject will be treated in
detail.
[31] Colozza, _L'immaginazione nella Scienza_, Rome, 1900, pp. 111
ff.
[32] This unifying, organizing, creative principle is so active in
certain minds that, placed face to face with any work whatever--novel,
picture, monument, scientific or philosophic theory, financial or
political institution--while believing that they are merely
considering it, they spontaneously remake it. This characteristic of
their psychology distinguishes them from mere critics.
[33] Oelzelt-Newin, _op. cit._, p. 49.
[34] Pitres et Regis, _Semeiologie des obsessions et des idees
fixes_, 1878. Seglas, _Lecons cliniques sur les maladies mentales_,
1895. Raymond et Janet, _Nevroses et idees fixes_, 1898.
SECOND PART
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IMAGINATION.
CHAPTER I
IMAGINATION IN ANIMALS
Up to this point the imagination has been treated analytically only.
This process alone would give us but a very imperfect idea of its
essentially concrete and lively nature were we to stop here. So this
part continues the subject in another shape. I shall attempt to follow
the imagination in its ascending development from the lowest to the most
complex forms, from the animal to the human infant, to primitive man,
thence to the highest modes of invention. It will thus be exhibited in
the inexhaustible variety of its manifestations which the abstract and
simplifying process of analysis does not permit us to suspect.
I
I shall not dwell at length on the imagination of animals, not only
because the question is much involved but also because it is hardly
liable to a positive solution. Even eliminating mere anecdotes and
doubtful observations, there is no lack of verified and authentic
material, but it still remains to interpret them. As soon as we begin to
conjecture we know how difficult it is to divest ourselves of all
anthropomorphism.
The question has been formulated, even if not treated, with much system
by Romanes in his _Mental Evolution in Animals_.[35] Taking
"imagination" in its broadest sense, he recognizes four stages:
1. Provoked revival of images. For example, the sight of an orange
reminds one of its taste. This is a low form of memory, resting on
association by contiguity. It is met with very far down in the animal
scale, and the author furnishes abundant proof of it.
2. Spontaneous revival. An object present calls up an absent object.
This is a higher form of memory, frequent in ants, bees, wasps, etc.,
which fact explains the mistrustful sagacity of wild animals. At night,
the distant baying of a hound stops the fox in his course, because all
the dangers he has undergone are represented in his mind.
These two stages do not go beyond memory pure and simple, i.e.,
reproductive imagination. The other two constitute the higher
imagination.
3. The capacity of associating absent images, without suggestion derived
from without, through an internal working of the mind. It is the lower
and primitive form of the creative imagination, which may be called a
passive synthesis. In order to establish its existence, Romanes reminds
us that dreams have been proven in dogs, horses, and a large number of
birds; that certain animals, especially in anger, seem to be subject to
delusions and pursued by phantoms; and lastly, that in some there is
produced a condition resembling nostalgia, expressing itself in a
violent desire to return to former haunts, or in a wasting away
resulting from the absence of accustomed persons and things. All these
facts, especially the latter, can hardly be explained without a vivid
recollection of the images of previous life.
4. The highest stage consists of intentionally reuniting images in order
to make novel combinations from them. This may be called an active
synthesis, and is the true creative imagination. Is this sometimes found
in the animal kingdom? Romanes very clearly replies, no; and not without
offering a plausible reason. For creation, says he, there must first be
capacity for abstraction, and, without speech, abstraction is very weak.
One of the conditions for creative imagination is thus wanting in the
higher animals.
We here come to one of those critical moments, so frequent in animal
psychology, when one asks, Is this character exclusively human, or is it
found in embryo in lower forms? Thus it has been possible to support a
theory opposing that of Romanes. Certain animals, says Oelzelt-Newin,
fulfill all the conditions necessary for creative imagination--subtle
senses, good memory, and appropriate emotional states.[36] This
assertion is perhaps true, but it is purely dialectic. It is equivalent
to saying that the thing is possible; it does not establish it as a
fact. Besides, is it very certain that all the conditions for creative
imagination are present here, since we have just shown that there is
lack of abstraction? The author, who voluntarily limits his study to
birds and the construction of their nests, maintains, against Wallace
and others, that nest-building requires "the mysterious synthesis of
representations." We might with equal reason bring the instances of
other building animals (bees, wasps, white ants, the common ants,
beavers, etc.). It is not unreasonable to attribute to them an
anticipated representation of their architecture. Shall we say that it
is "instinctive," consequently unconscious? At least, may we not group
under this head, changes and adaptations to new conditions which these
animals succeed in applying to the typical plans of their construction?
Observations and even systematic experiments (like those of Huber,
Forel, _et al._) show that, reduced to the alternative of the
impossibility of building or the modification of their habits, certain
animals modify them. Judging from this, how refuse them invention
altogether? This contradicts in no way the very just reservation of
Romanes. It is sufficient to remark that abstraction or dissociation has
stages, that the simplest are accessible to the animal intelligence. If,
in the absence of words, the logic of concepts is forbidden it, there
yet remains the logic of images,[37] which is sufficient for slight
innovations. In a word, animals can invent according to the extent that
they can dissociate.
In our opinion, if we may with any truthfulness attribute a creative
power to animals, we must seek it elsewhere. Generally speaking, we
attribute only a mediocre importance to a manifestation that might very
well be the proper form of animal fancy. It is purely motor, and
expresses itself through the various kinds of play.
Although play may be as old as mankind, its psychology dates only from
the nineteenth century. We have already seen that there are three
theories concerning its nature--it is "expenditure of superfluous
activity," "a mending, restoring of strength, a recuperation," "an
apprenticeship, a preliminary exercise for the active functions of life
and for the development of our natural gifts."[38] The last position,
due to Groos, does not rule out the other two; it holds the first valid
for the young, the second for adults; but it comprehends both in a more
general explanation.
Let us leave this doctrinal question in order to call attention to the
variety and richness of form of play in the animal world. In this
respect the aforementioned book of Groos is a rich mine of evidence to
which I would refer the reader. I limit myself to summing up his
classification. He distinguishes nine classes of play, viz.: (1) Those
that are at bottom experimental, consisting of trials at hazard without
immediate end, often giving the animal a certain knowledge of the
properties of the external world. This is the introduction to an
experimental physics, optics, and mechanics for the brood of animals.
(2) Movements or changes of place executed of their own accord--a very
general fact as is proven by the incessant movements of butterflies,
flies, birds, and even fishes, which often appear to play in the water
rather than to seek prey; the mad running of horses, dogs, etc., in free
space. (3) Mimicry of hunting, i.e., playing with a living or dead
prey: the dog and cat following moving objects, a ball, feather, etc.
(4) Mimic battles, teasing and fighting without anger. (5) Architectural
art, revealing itself especially in the building of nests: certain birds
ornament them with shining objects (stones, bits of glass), by a kind of
anticipation of the esthetic feeling. (6) Doll-play is universal in
mankind, whether civilized or savage. Groos believes he has found its
equivalent in certain animals. (7) Imitation through pleasure, so
familiar in monkeys (grimaces); singing-birds which counterfeit the
voices of a large number of beasts. (8) Curiosity, which is the only
mental play one meets in animals--the dog watching, from a wall or
window, what is going on in the street. (9) Love-plays, "which differ
from the others in that they are not mere exercises, but have in view a
real object." They have been well-known since Darwin's time, he
attributing to them an esthetic value which has been denied by Wallace,
Tylor, Lloyd Morgan, Wallaschek, and Groos.
Let us recapitulate in thought the immense quantity of motor expressions
included in these nine categories and let us note that they have the
following characters in common: They are grouped in combinations that
are often new and unforeseen; they are not a repetition of daily life,
acts necessary for self-preservation. At one time the movements are
combined simultaneously (exhibition of beautiful colors), again (and
most often) successively (amorous parades, fights, flight, dancing,
emission of noises, sounds or songs); but, under one form or another,
there is _creation_, _invention_. Here, the imagination acts in its
purely motor character; it consists of a small number of images that
become translated into actions, and serve as a center for their
grouping; perhaps even the image itself is hardly conscious, so that all
is limited to a spontaneous production and a collection of motor
phenomena.
It will doubtless be said that this form of imagination belongs to a
very shallow, poor psychology. It cannot be otherwise. It is necessary
that imaginative production be found reduced to its simplest expression
in animals, and the motor form must be its special characteristic mark.
It cannot have any others for the following reasons: incapacity for the
work that necessarily precedes abstraction or dissociation, breaking
into bits the data of experience, making them raw material for the
future construction; lack of images, and especially fewness of possible
combinations of images. This last point is proven alike from the data of
animal psychology and of comparative anatomy. We know that the nervous
elements in the brain serving as connections between sensory
regions--whether one conceive of them as centers (Flechsig), or as
bundles of commisural fibers (Meynert, Wernicke)--are hardly outlined in
the lower mammalia and attain only a mediocre development in the higher
forms.
By way of corroboration of the foregoing, let us compare the higher
animals with young children: this comparison is not based on a few
far-fetched analogies, but in a thorough resemblance in nature. Man,
during the first years of his life, has a brain but slightly
differentiated, especially as regards connections, a very poor supply of
images, a very weak capacity for abstraction. His intellectual
development is much inferior to that of reflex, instinctive, impulsive,
and imitative movements. In consequence of this predominance of the
motor system, the simple and imperfect images, in children as in
animals, tend to be immediately changed into movements. Even most of
their inventions in play are greatly inferior to those enumerated above
under nine distinct heads.
A serious argument in favor of the prevalence of imagination of the
motor type in the child is furnished by the principal part taken by
movements in infantile insanity: a remark made by many alienists. The
first stage of this madness, they say, is found in the convulsions that
are not merely a physical ailment, but "a muscular delirium." The
disturbance of the automatic and instinctive functions of the child is
so often associated with muscular disturbances that at this age the
mental disorders correspond to the motor ganglionic centers situated
below those parts that later assume the labor of analysis and of
imagination. The disturbances are in the primary centers of organization
and according to the symptoms lack those analytic or constructive
qualities, those ideal forms, that we find in adult insanity. If we
descend to the lowest stage of human life--to the baby--we see that
insanity consists almost entirely of the activity of a muscular group
acting on external objects. The insane baby bites, kicks, and these
symptoms are the external measure of the degree of its madness.[39] Has
not chorea itself been called a muscular insanity?
Doubtless, there likewise exists in the child a sensorial madness
(illusions, hallucinations); but by reason of its feeble intellectual
development the delirium causes a disorder of movements rather than of
images; its insane imagination is above all a motor insanity.
To hold that the creative imagination belonging to animals consists of
new combinations of movements is certainly an hypothesis. Nevertheless,
I do not believe that it is merely a mental form without foundation, if
we take into account the foregoing facts. I consider it rather as a
point in favor of the motor theory of invention. It is a singular
instance in which the original form of creation is shown bare. If we
wanted to discover it, it would be necessary to seek it where it is
reduced to the greatest simplicity--in the animal world.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] Chapter X.
[36] _Op. cit._, Appendix.
[37] For a more detailed study of this subject, the reader is
referred to the author's _Evolution of General Ideas_ (English
trans., Open Court Publishing Co., Chicago), chapter I, section I.
[38] A rather extended study of the subject by H. A. Carr will be
found in the _Investigations of the Department of Psychology and
Education of the University of Colorado_, vol. I, Number 2, 1902.
The late Professor Arthur Allin devoted much time to the
investigation of play. See his brief article entitled "Play" in the
_University of Colorado Studies_, vol. I, 1902, pp. 58-73. (Tr.)
[39] Hack Tuke, "Insanity of Children," in _Dictionary of
Psychological Medicine_.
CHAPTER II
THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION IN THE CHILD
At what age, in what form, under what conditions does the creative
imagination make its appearance? It is impossible to answer this
question, which, moreover, has no justification. For the creative
imagination develops little by little out of pure reproduction by an
evolutionary process, not by sudden eruption. Nevertheless, its
evolution is very slow on account of causes both organic and
psychological.
We could not dwell long on the organic causes without falling into
tiresome repetitions. The new-born infant is a spinal being, with an
unformed diffluent brain, composed largely of water. Reflex life itself
is not complete in him, and the cortico-motor system only hinted at; the
sensory centers are undifferentiated, the associational systems remain
isolated for a long time after birth. We have given above Flechsig's
observation on this point.
The psychological causes reduce themselves to the necessity for a
consolidation of the primary and secondary operations of the mind,
without which the creative imagination cannot take form. To be precise,
we might distinguish, as does Baldwin, four epochs in the mental
development of the child: (1) affective (rudimentary sensory processes,
pleasures and pains, simple motor adaptations); (2) and (3) objective,
in which the author establishes two grades, (a) appearance of special
senses, of memory, instincts primarily defensive, and imitation; (b)
complex memory, complicated movements, offensive activities, rudimentary
will; (4) subjective or final (conscious thought, constitutive will,
ideal emotions). If we accept this scheme as approximately correct, the
_moment_ of imagination must be assigned to the third period (the second
stage of the objective epoch) which fulfills all the sufficient and
necessary conditions for its origination and for its rise above pure
reproduction.
Whatever the propitious age may be, the study of the child-imagination
is not without difficulties. In order to enter into the child-mind, we
must become like a child; as it is, we are limited to an interpretation
of it in terms of the adult, with much false interpretation possible,
agreeing too much or too little with the facts. Furthermore, the
children studied live and grow up in a civilized environment. The result
is that the development of their imagination is rarely unhampered and
complete; for as soon as their fancy passes the middle level, the
rationalizing education of parents and teachers is eager to master and
control it. In truth it gives its full measure and reveals itself in
the fulness of growth only among primitive peoples. With us it is
checked in its flight by an antagonistic power, which treats it as a
harbinger of insanity. Finally, children are not equally well-suited for
this study; we must make a distinction between the imaginative and
non-imaginative, and the latter should be eliminated.
When we have thus chosen suitable subjects, observation shows from the
start sufficiently distinct varieties, different orientations of the
imagination depending on intellectual causes, such as the predominance
of visual or acoustic or tactile-motor images making for mechanical
invention; or dependent on emotional causes, that is, of character,
according as the latter is timid, joyous, exuberant, retired, healthy,
sickly, etc.
If we now attempt to follow the development of the child-imagination, we
may distinguish four principal stages, without assigning them,
otherwise, a rigorous chronological order.
1. The first stage consists of the passage from passive to creative
imagination. Its history would be long were we to include all the hybrid
forms that are made up partly of memories, partly of new groupings,
being at the same time repetition and construction. Even in the adult,
they are very frequent. I know a person who is always afraid of being
smothered, and for this reason urgently asks that in his coffin his
shirt be not tight at the neck: this odd prepossession of the mind
belongs neither to memory nor to imagination. This particular case
illustrates in a very clear form the nature of the first flights of the
mind attempting to exercise its imaginative powers. Without enumerating
other facts of this kind, it is more desirable to follow the
imagination's development, limiting ourselves to two forms of the
psychic life--perception and illusion. The necessary presence of the
image in these two forms has been so often proven by contemporary
psychology that a few words to recall this to mind will be sufficient.
There seems to be a radical difference between perception, which seizes
reality, and imagination. Nevertheless, it is generally admitted that in
order to rise above sensation to perception, there must be a synthesis
of images. To put it more simply, two elements are required--one, coming
from without, the physiological stimulus acting on the nerves and the
sensory centers, which becomes translated in consciousness through the
vague state that goes by the name "sensation"; the other, coming from
within, adds to the sensations present appropriate images, remnants of
former experiences. So that perception requires an apprenticeship; we
must feel, then imperfectly perceive, in order to finally perceive well.
The sensory datum is only a fraction of the total fact; and in the
operation we call "perceiving," that is, apprehending an object
directly, a part only of the object is represented.
This, however, does not go beyond reproductive imagination. The decisive
step is taken in illusion. We know that illusion has as a basis and
support a modification of the external senses which are metamorphosed,
amplified by an immediate construction of the mind: a branch of a tree
becomes a serpent, a distant noise seems the music of an orchestra.
Illusion has as broad a field as perception, since there is no
perception but may undergo this erroneous transformation, and it is
produced by the same mechanism, but with interchange of the two terms.
In perception, the chief element is the sensory, and the representative
element is secondary; in illusion, we have just the opposite condition:
what one takes as perceived is merely imagined--the imagination assumes
the principal role. Illusion is the type of the transitional forms, of
the mixed cases, that consist of constructions made up of memories,
without being, in the strict sense, creations.
2. The creative imagination asserts itself with its peculiar
characteristics only in the second stage, in the form of animism or the
attributing of life to everything. This turn of the mind is already
known to us, though mentioned only incidentally. As the state of the
child's mind at that period resembles that which in primitive man
creates myths, we shall return to it in the next chapter. Works on
psychology abound in facts demonstrating that this primitive tendency to
attribute life and even personality to everything is a necessary phase
that the mind must undergo--long or short in duration, rich or poor in
inventions, according to the level of the child's imagination. His
attitude towards his dolls is the common example of this state, and
also the best example, because it is universal, being found in all
countries without exception, among all races of men. It is needless to
pile up facts on an uncontroverted point.[40] Two will suffice; I choose
them on account of their extravagance, which shows that at this
particular moment animism, in certain minds, can dare anything. "One
little fellow, aged one year eight months, conceived a special fondness
for the letter W, addressing it thus: 'Dear old boy W.' Another little
boy well on in his fourth year, when tracing a letter L, happened to
slip, so that the horizontal limb formed an angle, thus:
|
|
+---+
|
He instantly saw the resemblance to the sedentary human form, and said:
'Oh, he's sitting down.' Similarly, when he made an F turn the wrong way
and then put the correct form to the left, thus,
+--- ---+
| |
+-- --+
| |
he exclaimed, 'They're talking together!'" One of Sully's correspondents
says: "I had the habit of attributing intelligence not only to all
living creatures ... but even to stones and manufactured articles. I
used to feel how dull it must be for the pebbles in the causeway to lie
still and only see what was round about. When I walked out with a basket
for putting flowers in, I used sometimes to pick up a pebble or two and
carry them out to have a change."
Let us stop a moment in order to try to determine the nature of this
strange mental state, all the more as we shall meet it again in
primitive man, and since it presents the creative imagination at its
beginning.
a. The first element is a fixed idea, or rather, an image, or group of
images, that takes possession of consciousness to the exclusion of
everything else:--it is the analogue of the state of suggestion in the
hypnotized subject, with this sole difference--that the suggestion does
not come from without, from another, but from the child itself--it is
auto-suggestion. The stick that the child holds between his legs becomes
for him an imaginary steed. The poverty of his mental development makes
all the easier this contraction of the field of his consciousness, which
assures the supremacy of the image.
b. This has as its basis a reality that it includes. This is an
important detail to note, because this reality, however tiny, gives
objectivity to the imaginary creation and incorporates it with the
external world. The mechanism is like that which produces illusion, but
with a stable character excluding correction. The child transforms a bit
of wood or paper into another self, because he perceives only the
phantom he has created; that is, the images, not the material exciting
them, haunt his brain.
c. Lastly, this creative power investing the image with all its
attributes of real existence is derived from a fundamental fact--the
state of belief, i.e., adherence of the mind founded on purely
subjective conditions. It does not come within my province to treat
incidentally such a large question. Neglected by the older physiology,
whose faculty-method inclined it toward this omission, belief or faith
has recently become the object of numerous studies.[41] I necessarily
limit myself to remarking that but for this psychic state, the nature of
the imagination is totally incomprehensible. The peculiarity of the
imagination is the production of a reality of human origin, and it
succeeds therein only because of the faith accompanying the image.
Representation and belief are not completely separated; it is the nature
of the image to appear at first as a real object. This psychological
truth, though proven through observation, has made itself acceptable
only with great difficulty. It has had to struggle on the one hand
against the prejudices of common-sense for which imagination is
synonymous with sham and vain appearance and opposed to the real as
non-being to being; on the other hand, against a doctrine of the
logicians who maintain that the idea is at first merely conceived with
no affirmation of existence or non-existence (_apprehensio simplex_).
This position, legitimate in logic, which is an abstract science, is
altogether unacceptable in psychology, a concrete science. The
psychological viewpoint giving the true nature of the image has
prevailed little by little. Spinoza already asserts "that
representations considered by themselves contain no errors," and he
"denies that it is possible to perceive [represent] without affirming."
More explicitly, Hume assigns belief to our subjective dispositions:
Belief does not depend on the nature of the idea, but on the manner in
which we conceive it. Existence is not a quality added to it by us; it
is founded on habit and is irresistible. The difference between fiction
and belief consists of a feeling added to the latter but not to the
former. Dugald Stewart treats the question purely as a psychologist
following the experimental method. He enumerates very many facts whence
he concludes that imagination is always accompanied by an act of belief,
but for which fact the more vivid the image, the less one would believe
it; but just the contrary happens--the strong representation commands
persuasion like sensation itself. Finally, Taine treats the subject
methodically, by studying the nature of the image and its primitive
character of hallucination.[42] At present, I think, there is no
psychologist who does not regard as proven that the image, when it
enters consciousness, has two moments. During the first, it is
objective, appearing as a full and complete reality; during the second,
which is definitive, it is deprived of its objectivity, reduced to a
completely internal event, through the effect of other states of
consciousness which oppose and finally annihilate its objective
character. There is an affirmation, then negation; impulse, then
inhibition.
Faith, being only a mode of existence, an attitude of the mind, owes its
creative and vivifying power to general dispositions of our
constitution. Besides the intellectual element which is its content, its
material--the thing affirmed or denied--there are tendencies and other
affective factors (desire, fear, love, etc.) giving the image its
intensity, and assuring it success in the struggle against other states
of consciousness. There are active faculties that we sometimes designate
by the name "will," understanding by the term, as James says, not only
deliberate volition, but all the factors of belief (hope, fear,
passions, prejudices, sectarian feeling, and so forth),[43] and this has
justly given rise to the truthful saying that the test of belief is
action.[44] This explains how in love, religion, in the moral life, in
politics, and elsewhere, belief can withstand the logical assaults of
the rationalizing intelligence--its power is found everywhere. It lasts
as long as the mind waits and consents; but, as soon as these affective
and active dispositions disappear in life's experience, faith falls with
them, leaving in its place a formless content, an empty and dead
representation.
After this, is it necessary to remark that belief depends peculiarly on
the motor elements of our organization and not on the intellectual? As
there is no imagination without belief, nor belief without imagination,
we return by another route to the thesis supported in the first part of
this essay, that creative activity depends on the motor nature of
images.
Insofar as concerns the special case of the child, the first of the two
moments (the affirming) that the image undergoes in consciousness is all
in all for him, the second (the rectifying) is nothing: there is
hypertrophy of one, atrophy of the other. For the adult the contrary is
true--in many cases, indeed, in consequence of experience and habit, the
first moment, wherein the image should be affirmed as a reality, is only
virtual, is literally atrophied. We must, however, remark that this
applies only partially to the ignorant and even less to the savage.
We might, nevertheless, ask ourselves if the child's belief in his
phantoms is complete, entire, absolute, unreserved. Is the stick that he
bestrides perfectly identified with a horse? Was Sully's child, that
showed its doll a series of engravings to choose from, completely
deceived? It seems that we must rather admit an intermittence, an
alteration between affirmation and negation. On the one hand, the
skeptical attitude of those who laugh at it displeases the child, who is
like a devout believer whose faith is being broken down. On the other
hand, doubt must indeed arise in him from time to time, for without
this, rectification could never occur--one belief opposes the other or
drives it away. This second work proceeds little by little, but then,
under this form, imagination retreats.
3. The third stage is that of play, which, in chronological order,
coincides with the one just preceding. As a form of creation it is
already known to us, but in passing from animals to children, it grows
in complexity and becomes intellectualized. It is no longer a simple
combination of images.
Play serves two ends--for experimenting: as such it is an introduction
to knowledge, gives certain vague notions concerning the nature of
things; for creating: this is its principal function.
The human child, like the animal, expends itself in movements, forms
associations new to it, simulates defence, flight, attack; but the child
soon passes beyond this lower stage, in order to construct by means of
images (ideally). He begins by imitating: this is a physiological
necessity, reasons for which we shall give later (see chapter iv.
_infra_). He constructs houses, boats, gives himself up to large plans;
but he imitates most in his own person and acts, making himself in turn
soldier, sailor, robber, merchant, coachman, etc.
To the period of imitation succeed more serious attempts--he acts with a
"spirit of mastery," he is possessed by his idea which he tends to
realize. The personal character of creation is shown in that he is
really interested only in a work that emanates from himself and of
which he feels himself the cause. B. Perez relates that he wanted to
give a lesson to his nephew, aged three and a half years, whose
inventions seemed to him very poor. Perez scratched in the sand a trench
resembling a river, planted little branches on both banks, and had water
flow through it; put a bridge across, and launched boats. At each new
act the child would remain cool, his admiration would always have to be
waited for. Out of patience, he remarked shortly that "this isn't at all
entertaining." The author adds: "I believed it useless to persist, and I
trampled under foot, laughing at myself, my awkward attempt at a
childish construction."[45] "I had already read it in many a book, but
this time I had learned from experience that the free initiative of
children is always superior to the imitations we pretend to make for
them. In addition, this experience and others like it have taught me
that their creative force is much weaker than has been said."
4. At the fourth stage appears romantic invention, which requires a more
refined culture, being a purely internal, wholly imaginative (i.e.,
cast in images) creation. It begins at about three or four years of age.
We know the taste of imaginative children for stories and legends, which
they have repeated to them until surfeited: in this respect they
resemble semi-civilized people, who listen greedily to rhapsodies for
hours at a time, experiencing all the emotions appropriate to the
incidents of the tale. This is the prelude to creation, a semi-passive,
semi-active state, an apprentice period, which will permit them to
create in their own turn. Thus the first attempts are made with
reminiscences, and imitated rather than created.
Of this we find numerous examples in the special works. A child of three
and a half saw a lame man going along a road, and exclaimed: "Look at
that poor ole man, mamma, he has dot [got] a bad leg." Then the romance
begins: He was on a high horse; he fell on a rock, struck his poor leg;
he will have to get some powder to heal it, etc. Sometimes the invention
is less realistic. A child of three often longed to live like a fish in
the water, or like a star in the sky. Another, aged five years nine
months, having found a hollow rock, invented a fairy story: the hole was
a beautiful hall inhabited by brilliant mysterious personages, etc.[46]
This form of imagination is not as common as the others. It belongs to
those whom nature has well endowed. It forecasts a development of mind
above the average. It may even be the sign of an inborn vocation and
indicate in what direction the creative activity will be orientated.
Let us briefly recall the creative role of the imagination in language,
through the intervening of a factor already studied--thinking by
analogy, an abundant source of often picturesque metaphors. A child
called the cork of a bottle "door;" a small coin was called by a little
American a "baby dollar;" another, seeing the dew on the grass, said,
"The grass is crying."
The extension of the meaning of words has been studied by Taine, Darwin,
Preyer, and others. They have shown that its psychological mechanism
depends sometimes on the perception of resemblance, again on association
by contiguity, processes that appear and intermingle in an unforeseen
manner. Thus, a child applies the word "mambro" at first to his nurse,
then to a sewing machine that she uses, then by analogy to an organ that
he sees on the street adorned with a monkey, then to his toys
representing animals.[47] We have elsewhere given more similar cases,
where we perceive the fundamental difference between thought by imagery
and rational thought.
To conclude: At this period the imagination is the master-faculty and
the highest form of intellectual development. It works in two
directions, one principal--it creates plays, invents romances, and
extends language; the other secondary--it contains a germ of thought and
ventures a fanciful explanation of the world which can not yet be
conceived according to abstract notions and laws.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] One will find a large number of examples in Sully's work,
_Studies of Childhood_, Chapter ii, entitled "The Age of
Imagination." Most of the observations given in the present chapter
have been borrowed from this author.
[41] Apropos of this subject compare especially the recent studies
by William James, _Varieties of Religious Experience_. (Tr.)
[42] Spinoza, _Ethics_, II, 49, _Scholium_; Hume, _Human
Understanding_, Part III, Section VII ff.; Dugald Stewart, _Elements
of the Philosophy of the Human Mind_, Vol. I, Ch. III; Taine, _On
Intelligence_, Part II.
[43] James, _The Will to Believe and Other Essays_, p. 10.
[44] Payot, _De la croyance_, 139 ff.
[45] B. Perez, _Les trois premieres annees de l'enfant_, p. 323.
[46] Sully, _op. cit._, pp. 59-61. Compayre, _L'evolution
intellectuelle et morale de l'enfant_, p. 145.
(Some time ago the writer was riding on a train, when the engine,
for some reason or other, began to slow up, jerking, puffing, almost
groaning, until it finally came to a full stop. The groaning
continued. A little girl of about three called to her mother,
"Too-too sick, too-too sick," and when finally the train started on
again, the child was overjoyed that "too-too" was well again. (Tr.))
[47] Sully, _op. cit._, p. 164.
CHAPTER III
PRIMITIVE MAN AND THE CREATION OF MYTHS
We come now to a unique period in the history of the development of the
imagination--its golden age. In primitive man, still confined in
savagery or just starting toward civilization, it reaches its full bloom
in the creation of myths; and we are rightly astonished that
psychologists, obstinately attached to esthetics, have neglected such an
important form of activity, one so rich in information concerning the
creative imagination. Where, indeed, find more favorable conditions for
knowing it?
Man, prior to civilization, is a purely imaginative being; that is, the
imagination marks the summit of his intellectual development. He does
not go beyond this stage, but it is no longer an enigma as in animals,
nor a transitory phase as in the civilized child who rapidly advances to
the age of reason; it is a fixed state, permanent and lasting throughout
life.[48] It is there revealed to us in its entire spontaneity: it has
free rein; it can create without imitation or tradition; it is not
imprisoned in any conventional form; it is sovereign. As primitive man
has knowledge neither of nature nor of its laws, he does not hesitate to
embody the most senseless imaginings flitting through his brain. The
world is not, for him, a totality of phenomena subject to laws, and
nothing limits or hinders him.
This working of the pure imagination, left to itself and unadulterated
by the intrusion and tyranny of rational elements, becomes translated
into one form--the creation of myths; an anonymous, unconscious work,
which, as long as its rule lasts, is sufficient in every way,
comprehends everything--religion, poetry, history, science, philosophy,
law.
Myths have the advantage of being the incarnation of pure imagination,
and, moreover, they permit psychologists to study them objectively.
Thanks to the labors of the nineteenth century, they offer an almost
inexhaustible content. While past ages forgot, misunderstood,
disfigured, and often despised myths as aberrations of the human mind,
as unworthy of an hour's attention, it is no longer necessary in our
time to show their interest and importance, even for psychology, which,
however, has not as yet drawn all the benefit possible from them.
But before commencing the psychological study of the genesis and
formation of myths considered as an objective emanation of the creative
imagination, we must briefly summarize the hypotheses at present offered
for their origin. We find two principal ones--the one, etymological,
genealogical, or linguistic; the other, ethno-psychological, or
anthropological.[49]
The first, whose principal though not sole champion is Max Mueller, holds
that myths are the result of a disease of language--words become things,
"nomina numina." This transformation is the effect of two principal
linguistic causes--(a) Polynomy; several words for one thing. Thus the
sun is designated by more than twenty names in the Vedas; Apollo,
Phaethon, Hercules are three personifications of the sun; _Varouna_
(night) and _Yama_ (death) express at first the same conception, and
have become two distinct deities. In short, every word tends to become
an entity having its attributes and its legends. (b) Homonomy, a single
word for several things. The same adjective, "shining," refers to the
sun, a fountain, spring, etc. This is another source of confusion. Let
us also add metaphors taken literally, plays upon words, wrong
construction, etc.
The opponents of this doctrine maintain that in the formation of myths,
words represent scarcely five per cent. Whatever may be the worth of
this assertion, the purely philological explanation remains without
value for psychology: it is neither true nor false--it does not solve
the question; it merely avoids it. The word is only an occasion, a
vehicle; without the working of the mind exciting it, nothing would
change. Moreover, Max Mueller himself has recently recognized this.[50]
The anthropological theory, much more general than the foregoing,
penetrates further to psychological origins--it leads us to the first
advances of the human mind. It regards the myth not as an accident of
primitive life, but as a natural function, a mode of activity proper to
man during a certain period of his development. Later, the mythic
creations seem absurd, often immoral, because they are survivals of a
distant epoch, cherished and consecrated through tradition, habits, and
respect for antiquity. According to the definition that seems to me best
adapted for psychology, the myth is "the psychological objectification
of man in all the phenomena that he can perceive."[51] It is a
humanization of nature according to processes peculiar to the
imagination.
Are these two views irreconcilable? It does not seem so to me, provided
we accept the first as only a partial explanation. In any event, both
schools agree on one point important for us--that the material for myths
is furnished by the observation of natural phenomena, including the
great events of human life: birth, sickness, death, etc. This is the
objective factor. The creation of myths has its explanation in the
nature of human imagination--this is the subjective factor. We can not
deny that most works on mythology have a very decided tendency to give
the greater importance to the first factor; in which respect they need a
little psychology. The periodic returns of the dawn, the sun, the moon
and stars, winds and storms, have their effect also, we may suppose, on
monkeys, elephants, and other animals supposedly the most intelligent.
Have they inspired myths? Just the opposite: "the surprising monotony of
the ideas that the various races have made final causes of phenomena, of
the origin and destiny of man, whence it results that the numberless
myths are reduced to a very small number of types,"[52] shows that it is
the human imagination that takes the principal part and that it is on
the whole perhaps not so rich as we are pleased to say--that it is even
very poor, compared to the fecundity of nature.
Let us now study the psychology of this creative activity, reducing it
to these two questions: How are myths formed? What line does their
evolution follow?
I
The psychology of the origin of the myth, of the work that causes its
rise, may theoretically, and for the sake of facilitating analysis, be
regarded as two principal moments--that of creation proper, and that of
romantic invention.
a. The moment of creation presupposes two inseparable operations which,
however, we have to describe separately. The first consists of
attributing life to all things, the second of assigning qualities to all
things.
Animating everything, that is attributing life and action to everything,
representing everything to one's self as living and acting--even
mountains, rocks, and other objects (seemingly) incapable of movement.
Of this inborn and irresistible tendency there are so many facts in
proof that an enumeration is needless: it is the rule. The evidence
gathered by ethnologists, mythologists, and travelers fills large
volumes. This state of mind does not particularly belong to long-past
ages. It is still in existence, it is contemporary, and if we would see
it with our own eyes it is not at all necessary to plunge into virgin
countries, for there are frequent reversions even in civilized lands. On
the whole, says Tylor, it must be regarded as conceded that to the lower
races of humanity the sun and stars, the trees and rivers, the winds and
clouds, become animated creatures living like men and beasts,
fulfilling their special function in creation--or rather that what the
human eye can reach is only the instrument or the matter of which some
gigantic being, like a man, hidden behind the visible things, makes use.
The grounds on which such ideas are based cannot be regarded as less
than a poetic fancy or an ill-understood metaphor; they depend on a vast
philosophy of nature, certainly rude and primitive, but coherent and
serious.
The second operation of the mind, inseparable, as we have said, from the
first, attributes to these imaginary beings various qualities, but all
important to man. They are good or bad, useful or hurtful, weak or
powerful, kind or cruel. One remains stupefied before the swarming of
these numberless genii whom no natural phenomenon, no act of life, no
form of sickness escapes, and these beliefs remain unbroken even among
the tribes that are in contact with old civilizations.[53] Primitive man
lives and moves among the ceaseless phantoms of his own imagination.[54]
Lastly, the psychological mechanism of the creative moment is very
simple. It depends on a single factor previously studied--thinking by
analogy. It is a matter first of all--and this is important--of
conceiving beings analogous to ourselves, cast in our mould, cut after
our pattern; that is, feeling and acting; then qualifying them and
determining them according to the attributes of our own nature. But the
logic of images, very different from that of reason, concludes an
objective resemblance; it regards as alike, what seem alike; it
attributes to an internal linking of images, the validity of an
objective connection between things. Whence arises the discord between
the imagined world and the world of reality. "Analogies that for us are
only fancies were for the man of past ages real" (Tylor).
b. In the genesis of myths, the second moment is that of fanciful
invention. Entities take form; they have a history and adventures: they
become the stuff for a romance. People of poor and dry imagination do
not reach the second period. Thus, the religion of the Romans peopled
the universe with an innumerable quantity of genii. No object, no act,
no detail, but had its own presiding genius. There was one for
germinating grain, for sprouting grain, for grain in flower, for
blighted grain; for the door, its hinges, its lock, etc. There was a
myriad of misty, formless entities. This is animism arrested at its
first stage; abstraction has killed imagination.
Who created those legends and tales of adventure constituting the
subject-matter of mythology? Probably inspired individuals, priests or
prophets. They came perhaps from dreams, hallucinations, insane
attacks--they are derived from several sources. Whatever their origin,
they are the work of imaginative minds _par excellence_ (we shall study
them later) who, confronted with any event whatever, must, because of
their nature, construct a romance.
Besides analogy, this imaginative creation has as its principal source
the associational form already described under the name "constellation."
We know that it is based on the fact that, in certain cases, the
arousing of an image-group is the result of a tendency prevailing at a
given instant over several that are possible. This operation has already
been expounded theoretically with individual examples in support.[55]
But in order to gauge its importance, we must see it act in large
masses. Myths allow us to do this. Ordinarily they have been studied in
their historical development according to their geographical
distribution or ethnic character. If we proceed otherwise, if we
consider only their content--i.e., the very few themes upon which the
human imagination has labored, such as celestial phenomena, terrestrial
disturbances, floods, the origin of the universe, of man, etc.--we are
surprised at the wonderful richness of variety. What diversity in the
solar myths, or those of creation, of fire, of water! These variations
are due to multiple causes, which have orientated the imagination now in
one direction, now in another. Let us mention the principal ones: Racial
characteristics--whether the imagination is clear or mobile, poor or
exuberant; the manner of living--totally savage, or on a level of
civilization; the physical environment--external nature cannot be
reflected in the brain of a Hindoo in the same way as in that of a
Scandinavian; and lastly, that assemblage of considerable and unexpected
causes grouped under the term "chance."
The variable combinations of these different factors, with the
predominance of one or the other, explain the multiplicity of the
imaginative conceptions of the world, in contrast to the unity and
simplicity of scientific conceptions.
II
The form of imagination now occupying our attention by reason of its
non-individual, anonymous, collective character, attains a long
development that we may follow in its successive phases of ascent,
climax, and decline. To begin with, is it necessarily inherent in the
human mind? Are there races or groups of men totally devoid of myths?
which is a slightly different question from that usually asked, "Are
there tribes totally devoid of religious thoughts?" Although it is very
doubtful that there are such now, it is probable that there were in the
beginning, when man had scarcely left the brute level--at least if we
agree with Vignoli[56] that we already find in the higher animals
embryonic forms of animism.
In any event, mythic creation appears early. We can infer this from the
signs of puerility of certain legends. Savages who could not know
themselves--the Iroquois, the Australian aborigines, the natives of the
Andaman Islands--believed that the earth was at first sterile and dry,
all the water having been swallowed by a gigantic frog or toad which was
compelled, by queer stratagems, to regurgitate it. These are little
children's imaginings. Among the Hindoos the same myth takes the form of
an alluring epic--the dragon watching over the celestial waters, of
which he has taken possession, is wounded by Indra after a heroic
battle, and restores them to the earth.
Cosmogonies, Lang remarks, furnish a good example of the development of
myths; it is possible to mark out stages and rounds according to the
degree of culture and intelligence. The natives of Oceania believe that
the world was created and organized by spiders, grasshoppers, and various
birds. More advanced peoples regard powerful animals as gods in disguise
(such are certain Mexican divinities). Later, all trace of animal worship
disappears, and the character of the myth is purely anthropomorphic.[57]
Kuehn, in a special work, has shown how the successive stages of social
evolution express themselves in the successive stages of mythology--myths
of cannibals, of hunters, of herders, land-tillers, sailors. Speaking of
pure savagery, Max Mueller[58] admits at least two periods--pan-Aryan and
Indo-Iranian--prior to the Vedic period. In the course of this slow
evolution the work of the imagination passes little by little from
infancy, becomes more and more complex, subtle and refined.
In the Aryan race, the Vedic epoch, despite its sacerdotal ritualism, is
considered as the period _par excellence_ of mythic efflorescence. "The
myth," says Taine, "is not here (in the Vedas) a disguise, but an
expression; no language is more true and more supple: it permits a
glimpse of, or rather causes us to discern, the forms of mist, the
movements of the air, change of seasons, all the accidents of sky, fire,
storm: external nature has never found a mode of thought so graceful and
flexible for reflecting itself thereby in all the inexhaustible variety
of her appearances. However changeable nature may be, the imagination is
equally so."[59] It animates everything--not only fire in general,
_Agni_, but also the seven forms of flame, the wood that lights it, the
ten fingers of the sacrificing priest, the prayer itself, and even the
railing surrounding the altar. This is one example among many others.
The partisans of the linguistic theory have been able to maintain that
at this moment every word is a myth, because every word is a name
designating a quality or an act, transformed by the imagination into
substance. Max Mueller has translated a page of Hesiod, substituting the
analytic, abstract, rational language of our time for the image-making
names. Immediately, all the mythical material vanishes. Thus, "Selene
kisses the sleeping Endymion" becomes the dry formula, "It is night."
The most skilled linguists often declare themselves unable to change the
pliant tongue of the imaginative age into our algebraic idioms.[60]
Thought by imagery cannot remain itself and at the same time take on a
rational dress.
The mental state that marks the zenith of the free development of the
imagination, is at present met with only in mystics and in some poets.
Language has, however, preserved numerous vestiges of it in current
expressions, the mythic signification of which has been lost--the sun
rises, the sea is treacherous, the wind is mad, the earth is thirsty,
etc.
To this triumphant period there succeeds among the races that have made
progress in evolution, i.e., that have been able to rise above the age
of (pure) imagination, the period of waning, of regression, of decline.
In order to understand it and perceive the how and why of it, let us
first note that myths are reducible to two great categories:
a. The explicative myths, arising from utility, from the necessity of
knowing. _These undergo a radical transformation._
b. The non-explicative myths, resulting from a need of luxury, from a
pure desire to create: these undergo only a _partial_ transformation.
Let us follow them in the accomplishment of their destinies.
a. The myths of the first class, answering the various needs of knowing
in order afterwards to act, are much the more numerous.... Is primitive
man by nature curious? The question has been variously answered; thus,
Tylor says yes; Spencer, no.[61] The affirmative and negative answers
are not, perhaps, irreconcilable, if we take account of the differences
in races. Taking it generally, it is hard to believe that he is not
curious--he holds his life at that price. He is in the presence of the
universe just as we are when confronted with an unknown animal or fruit.
Is it useful or hurtful? He has all the more need for a conception of
the world since he feels himself dependent on everything. While our
subordination as regards nature is limited by the knowledge of her laws,
he is on account of his animism in a position similar to ours before an
assembly of persons whom we have to approach or avoid, conciliate or
yield to. It is necessary that he be _practically_ curious--that is
indispensable for his preservation. There has been alleged the
indifference of primitive man to the complicated engines of civilization
(a steamboat, a watch, etc.). Thi
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/26430