 Translators and Authors' Prefaces and Introduction to the Essay on the Creative Imagination by Thea Dool Rebo, translated from the French by Albert H. N. Barron. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Translators' Prefaces. The name of Thea Dool Rebo 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 his true nature. It is quite generally recognized that psychology has remained in the semi-mythological, semi-scholastic period longer than most attempts at scientific formalization. For a long time it has been the spook science, per se, and the imagination now analyzed by Monsieur Rebo 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 Monsieur Rebo 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 encourage 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 25 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 cold, 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 principle source in the natural tendency of images to become objectified, or, more simply, in the motor elements inherent in the image, and then following 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 aesthetic 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 raciocination, 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. Introduction The motor nature of the constructive imagination. 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 the 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, hiccups, mixturation, 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, that is, by means of an intense and persistent representation. The renowned physiologist E. F. Weber possessed this power and has described the mechanism of this 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 13th 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. Let us add the profound changes of the organism, results of the suggested therapeutics of contemporaries, the wonderful effects of the faith cure, that is, 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 than 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 effective 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 imagination creation we have several cooperating images with combinations, coordination, arrangement, grouping. But it must not be forgotten that our present aim is simply to find a transition stage 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. Two. 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. One. 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. Two. 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, that is, the intellect in the restricted sense, has opposite characteristics. It is objective, impersonal, received from the 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 will. Three. Both imagination and will will have a teleological character, an 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 fronti in attracting movement. Four. 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 aesthetic or practical invention. Reverie is the equivalent of weak desires, dreamers of 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 to the analysis of the creative imagination in order to understand its nature insofar 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, namely the intellectual factor, the effective 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. End of introduction. End of prefaces and introduction. First part, Chapter 1 of the Essay on the Creative Imagination. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Essay on the Creative Imagination by Thea Dool Rubau, translated from the French by Albert H. N. Baron. Part 1. Analysis of the Imagination. Chapter 1. The Intellectual Factor. 1. Considered under its intellectual aspect, that is, insofar 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 psychologist, 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 and 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. 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 ink stand, the sound of a church bell or of a neighbouring 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 from Anten, 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 it is changed in becoming the property of my memory and the more valuable it is 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. 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 Tain. Aman 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 cancelling 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. This group leads us to that of schematic images, or those entirely without mark, the indefinite image of a rose-bush, 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 upon 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 theoretical position. Images are not solitary in actual life. They form part of a chain, or rather of a wolf 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 read integration, 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 cannot hear attempts 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 govern in the attention oriented 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 lightning 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. In order to thoroughly comprehend the absolute necessity for dissociation, let us note that total reintegration is per se a hindrance to creation. Examples are given of people who can easily remember 20 or 30 pages of a book, and 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. Mines of this kind are inapt at invention. In short, we may say that there are two kinds of memory. One is completely systematized. For example, 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. Two, 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? In all other forms of association, those that are only repetitions should be eliminated. Consequently, this subject cannot 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. 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 which 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 Vund 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 Vund 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 capital A is given in perception or association by contiguity and forms the starting point. B. That of the work of assimilation. Capital A is recognized as more or less like a state lowercase A previously experienced. C. As a consequence of the coexistence of capital A and lowercase A in consciousness, they can later be recalled reciprocally, although the two original occurrences capital A and lowercase 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 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. Association by resemblance presupposes a joint labor of association and disassociation. 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 muscle, merely because it opens and shuts like the valves of a shellfish. Note here a characteristically naive working of the primitive intellect in explaining the unknown in terms of the known. 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 cetaceans 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 effective states, transfers of this sort are not at all rare. Analogy, an unstable process, undulating in multi-form, 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 and 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 in a permanent disposition and one that is always active. This process of personification is the perennial font whence have gushed the greater number of myths, an enormous mass of superstitions, and a large number of aesthetic productions. To sum up in a word, all things that have been invented ex analogia hominus. Transformation or metamorphosis is a general permanent process under many forms, proceeding not from the thinking subject toward 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 in 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. 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 cannot 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. As regards the relative value or rank of the two bends 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. End of Chapter 1 First Part Chapter 2 of Essay on the Creative Imagination This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Essay on the Creative Imagination by Thea Dool Rebo. Part 1 Analysis of the Imagination Chapter 2 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 criticized 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 are the most important factors in the world of emotional fathoms, which is an indisputable fact, but why and how they arise. For the Emotional Factor yields an 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. 1. It is necessary to show at the outset that the influence of the emotional life is unlimited, 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 aesthetic 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-aesthetic creation, the role of the emotional life is simple. In aesthetic 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 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 exultation and depression, may feel in turn the dejection of repulse and the joy of success, and probably 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 aesthetic 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, effective 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 feelings of their characters, become identified with them. There are then in this second instance two currents of feeling, the one constituting emotion the other drawing out creative activity and developing along with it. The difference between the two cases that we have distinguished consist in this and nothing more than this. The existence of an emotion content belonging to aesthetic production changes in no way the psychological mechanism of invention generally. Its absence in other forms of imagination does not at all prevent the necessary existence of effective elements everywhere and always. Two, all emotional dispositions whatever may influence the creative imagination. Here again I find opponents, notably Ulzelt Neumann in his short and substantial monograph on the imagination. Adopting the two-fold division of emotions as thenic 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 aesthetic 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, inventions of all kinds? To keep even to aesthetic creation is it necessary to recall the saying facet 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 in 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 aesthetic creation. Dare we hold that hypercondria and insanity following upon the delirium of persecution are devoid of imagination? Their morbid character is, on the contrary, the well when strange inventions incessantly bubble. Lastly, that complex emotion termed self-feeling, which reduces itself finally to the pleasure of asserting our power and a 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, that is, 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 surfered with the repeated statement that the characteristic mark of aesthetic creation is being disinterested, it must be recognized as grooves has so truly remarked 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. Production is the natural extension of self-feeling, and the accompanying pleasure is the pleasure of conquest. Thus unconditioned that we extend imagination to its full sense, without limiting it unduly to aesthetics, 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. Two. We have said above that the ideal and theoretical law of the recurrence of images is that of total reintegration, as, for example, 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 effective 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. 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, that is, 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 anesthemosies 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 effective 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 an 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 taste, 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 a very few people. Certain artists and some eccentric or unbalanced minds scarcely ever found outside the aesthetic 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, Bouldelaire, Goya, Wirtz, etc., or surprising extraordinary thoughts known of no other men. The symbolists and decadence that flourish at the present time in various countries of Europe and America who believe, rightly or wrongly, that they are preparing the aesthetics of the future. It must be here admitted that there exists an altogether special manner of feeling dependent on temperament at first which may cultivate and refine as though it were a precious rarity. There lies the true source of their invention. That list, 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 contrarity, 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, but by 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 Flint remarks, a wedding may be compared to a burial, the union in 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 Huffdig observes the special property of the emotional life is moving along contraries. It is altogether determined by the great opposition between pleasure and pain. Thus the effects of contrast are much stronger than in the realm of sensation. This form of association predominates in aesthetic 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. 3. 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, that is 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 which 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 a strict meaning compared to animal instinct is a mere figure of speech, an entity regarded as a reality and abstraction. There are needs, appetites, tendencies, desires common to all men which in a given individual at a certain 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 and beaver consist of a group of movements adapted for a determined 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, disassociating 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 appetite's 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 chimeric productions. So that we may answer the question asked above, the non-imaginative person is such from a 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, aesthetic inventions and practical inventions. On the one hand, what man has brought to pass in the domain of art, and on the other, all else. Though this division may appear strange and unjustifiable, it has reason as being, as we shall see hereafter. Let us consider first the class of non-aesthetic 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 and 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 19th 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, interested. 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 aesthetic creations, according to the generally accepted theory that 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 proceeding 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. Gruse, in his two excellent works on the subject, 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 exists a great number of instincts that are not yet developed at birth. An incomplete being, he must have an 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 aesthetic 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 determinant 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. Once 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, 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 de Dufont on Walkinsen, 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 born 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. End of first part chapter 2. First part chapter 3 of Essay on the Creative Imagination this LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Essay on the Creative Imagination by Thea Dool Rebo. First Part Analysis of the Imagination Chapter 3 The Unconscious Factor 1. 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, that is 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 analogs among other well-known psychic states, for 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 your son, 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. Unless 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 ceasing 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 Dubois Ramon, 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 proceeding. 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. 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 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 state 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 seribration. For others it is a gradual diminution of consciousness which exists without being bound to me, that is to the principal consciousness. But these are full of difficulties and present almost insurmountable objections. 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. One, hypermnesia or exultation 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 vendor 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 reintegration 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 proceeding 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 the Quincy, Maraud de Tour, Théophile 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 principle 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. Three. 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. It would thus be the modified form of a state that is the culmination of subconscious activity in 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 close 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 and 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 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 and process existing in men in sum 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 overvalue 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 invention 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. Two, what has been set 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. One 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. Locke Lohman 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 laterally it has been attacked by Munsterburg and others. People have had recourse through experimentation given results only in slight agreement. 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 more over 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 for example 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 more over 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 now 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, Zeichen 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 add another. There are some associations based on continuity 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. A few examples will make planar this phenomenon of reinforcement in consequence of which an association prevails. Wall reports that the Gothic Hotel de Ville near his house had never suggested to him the idea of the doge's 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 started as a creative element in studying the formation and development of myths. Everywhere and always man has had for material scarcely anything saved 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, a 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. End of First Part Chapter 3 First Part Chapter 4 of Essay on the Creative Imagination This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Essay on the Creative Imagination by Thea Dool Rebo First Part Analysis of the Imagination Chapter 4 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 hypothesis that it is permissible to express concerning the organic basis of the imagination. What we may regard as positive or even as probable is very little. 1. First the anatomical conditions Is there a seat of the imagination? Such is the form of the question asked for the last 20 years. In that period of extreme and closely bounded localization men strain 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 towards 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 of 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, one, that the elements constituting imagination be determined in a rigorous manner but the foregoing analysis makes no pretense of being definitive. Two, that each of these constitutive elements may be strictly related to its anatomical 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 19th century consisted of weighing carefully a large number of brains and drawing various conclusions as to the 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 Fleischig, 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 Fleischig 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 motory, 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 the 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 definitive 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 proceeds that of the outside world. In what concerns the associational centers, Fleschig supposes three regions, the great posterior center, parietal occipital temporal, another much smaller anterior or frontal and a middle center, the smallest of all, the island of real. 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 sensation that he possesses. In the newborn 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 Fleschig 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 the notion 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 contrary wise that there are other regions principally a center located under the protuberance at the top 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. There would be then according to our author a preponderance of the frontal and parietal regions the former obtained especially among artists the latter among scientists. Already 20 years before Fleischig Rudinier had noted the extraordinary development of the parietal convolutions in eminent men after a study of 18 brains. All the convolutions and fissures were so developed said he that the parietal 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. Two, 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 be the result of the improvement 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 temporary anemic state. Hyperemia seems rather the rule, but we also know that slight anemia increases cortical excitability, weak contracted pulse, pale chili 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 into motor form through movements analogous to reflexes without special end, mechanically repeated and always the same in the same man. For example, 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 research on physiological researches, especially those of Masso, 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. Laterally 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 physiological 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 ipsofacto-vitiated or at least unconvincing? There still remains a mass of facts deserving some re-notice, the oddities of inventors. Were we to collect only those that may be regarded as authentic, we might 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 bareheaded in full sunshine. Boussouet would work in a cold room with his head wrapped in furs. Others would immerse their feet in ice-cold water. Gretre, 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 dressed in magnificent style. His pupils crowded about him and attending to his wands in respectful silence. On the opposite side are those requiring retouching of the body. The rest of the work would be done in the same manner as the rest of the work. The rest of the work would be done in the same manner as the rest of the work. The rest of the work would be done in the same manner as the rest of the work. Everyone knows what they are. 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 there too, touching upon it in another part of this essay. 3. 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, established 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 their reactions following it. Organic memory is the basis and the obliterated form of conscious memory. Reflexes introduce voluntary activity. Consciousness 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 antecedence, a physiological equivalent? One metaphysician, Froschhammer, 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. 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 agamist 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 daydreams and aspirations toward an unattainable ideal 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 Ibafrinia. 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 moralist 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-Sacard, 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 Cavani, Morodetour, and various alienists. They would seem to be in favour of the affirmative. But some seem to be 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. Chapter 4