 CHAPTER V. THE PRINCIPLE OF UNITY The psychological nature of the imagination would be very imperfectly known where we limited to the foregoing analytical study. Indeed, all creation whatever, great or small, shows an organic character. It implies a unifying, synthetic principle. Every one of the three factors, intellectual, emotional, unconscious, works not as an isolated fact on its own account. They have no worth saved through their union, and no signification saved through their common bearing. This principle of unity, which all invention demands and requires, is at one time intellectual in nature, that is, as a fixed idea, at another time emotional, that is, as a fixed emotion or passion. These terms, fixed idea, fixed emotion, are somewhat absolute and require restrictions and reservations, which will be made in what follows. The distinction between the two is not at all absolute. Every fixed idea is supported and maintained by a need, a tendency, a desire, that is, by an effective element. For it is idle fancy to believe in the persistence of an idea which, by hypothesis, would be a purely intellectual state, cold and dry. The principle of unity in this form naturally predominates in certain kinds of creation, in the practical imagination wherein the end is clear, where images are direct substitutes for things, where invention is subjected to strict conditions under penalty of visible and palpable check, in the scientific and metaphysical imagination which works with concepts and is subject to the laws of rational logic. Every fixed emotion should realize itself in an idea or image that gives it body and systematizes it, without which it remains diffuse, and all effective states can take on this permanent form which makes a unified principle of them. The simple emotions, fear, love, joy, sorrow, etc., the complex or derived emotions, religious, aesthetic, intellectual ideas, may equally monopolize consciousness in their own interests. We thus see that these two terms, fixed idea, fixed emotion, are almost equivalent, for they both imply inseparable elements and serve only to indicate the preponderance of one or the other element. This principle of unity, center of attraction and support of all the working of the creative imagination, that is, a subjective principle tending to become objectified, is the ideal. In the complete sense of the word, not restrained merely to aesthetic creation or made synonymous with perfection as in ethics, the ideal is a construction in images that should become a reality. If we liken imaginative creation to physiological generation, the ideal is the ovum awaiting fertilization in order to begin its development. We could, to be more exact, make a distinction between the synthetic principle and the ideal conception which is a higher form of it. The fixation of an end and the discovery of appropriate means are the necessary and sufficient conditions for all invention. A creation, whatever it may be, that looks only to present success, can satisfy itself with a unifying principle that renders it viable and organized, but we can look higher than the merely necessary and sufficient. The ideal is the principle of unity in motion in its historic evolution. Like all development, it advances or recedes according to the times. Nothing is less justified than the conception of a fixed archetype, an undisguised survival of the platonic ideas, illuminating the inventor, who reproduces it as best he can. The ideal is a non-entity. It arises in the inventor and through him. Its life is a becoming. Psychologically, it is a construction in images belonging to the merely sketched or outlined type. It results from a double activity, negative and positive, or dissociation and association. The first cause and origin of which is found in a will that it shall be so. It is the motor tendency of images in the nascent state, engendering the ideal. The inventor cuts out, suppresses, sifts, according to his temperament, character, taste, prejudices, sympathies, and antipathies, in short, his interest. In this separation already studied, let us note one important particular. We know nothing of the complex psychic production that may simply be the sum of component elements and in which they would remain with their own characters with no modification. The nature of the components disappears in order to give birth to a novel phenomenon that has its own and particular features. The construction of the ideal is not a mere grouping of past experiences. In its totality, it has its own individual characteristics, among which we no more see the composing lines than we see the components, oxygen and hydrogen, in water. In no scientific or artistic production, says Vunt, does the whole appear as made up of its parts like a mosaic. In other words, it is a case of mental chemistry. The exactness of this expression, which is due, I believe, to J. Stuart Mill, has been questioned. Still, it answers to positive facts. For example, in perception to the phenomena of contrast and their analogues, juxtaposition or rapid succession of two different colors, two different sounds, of tactile, olfactory, gustatory impressions, different in quality, produces a particular state of consciousness similar to a combination. Harmony or discord does not, indeed, exist in each separate sound, but only in the relations and sequence of sounds. It is a tertium quid. We have here to four, in the discussion of association of ideas, very frequently represented the states of consciousness as fixed elements that approach one another, cohere, separate, come together anew, but always unalterable, like atoms. It is not so at all. Consciousness, says Tichner, resembles a fresco in which the transition between colors is made through all kinds of intermediate stages of light and shade. The idea of a pen or of an inkwell is not a stable thing clearly pictured like the pen or inkwell itself. More than anyone else, William James has insisted on this point in his theory of fringes of states of consciousness. Outside of the given instances, we could find many others among the various manifestations of the mental life. It is not, then, at all chimerical to assume in psychology an equivalent of chemical combination. In a complex state there is, in addition to the component elements, the result of the reciprocal influences of their varying relations, too often we forget this resultant. At bottom, the ideal is an individual concept. If objection is offered that an ideal common to a large mass of men is a fact of common experience, for example, idealist and realist in the fine arts, and even more so religious, moral, social, and political concepts, etc. The answer is easy. There are families of minds. They have a common ideal because, in certain matters, they have the same way of feeling and thinking. It is not a transcendental idea that unites them, but this result occurs because from their common aspirations the collective ideal becomes disengaged. It is, in scholastic terminology, a universe-saly post-rem. The ideal conception is the first moment of the creative act, which is not yet battling with conditions of the actual. It is only the internal vision of an individual mind that has not yet been projected externally with a form and body. We know how the passage from the internal to the external life has given rise among inventors to deceptions and complaints. Such was the imaginative construction that could not, unchanged, enter into its mold and become a reality. Let us now examine the various forms of this coagulating principle in advancing from the lowest to the highest, from the unity vaguely anticipated to the absolute and tyrannical masterful unity. Following a method that seems to me best adapted for these ill-explained questions, I shall single out only the principal forms, which I have reduced to three—the unstable, the organic or middle, and the extreme or semi-morbid unity. 1. The unstable form has its starting point directly and immediately in the reproductive imagination without creation. It assembles its elements somewhat by chance and stitches together the bits of our life. It ends only in beginnings, in attempts. The unity principle is a momentary disposition, vacillating and changing without cessation according to the external impressions or modifications of our vital conditions and of our humor. By way of example, let us recall the state of the daydreamer building castles in the air, the delirious constructions of the insane, the inventions of the child following all the fluctuations of chance, of its caprice, the half-coherent dreams that seem to the dreamer to contain a creative germ. In consequence of the extreme frailty of the synthetic principle, the creative imagination does not succeed in accomplishing its task and remains in a condition intermediate between simple association of ideas and creation proper. 2. The organic or middle form may be given as the type of the unifying power. Ultimately, it reduces itself to attention and presupposes nothing more. Because, thanks to the process of localization, which is the essential mark of attention, it makes itself a center of attraction, grouping about the leading idea, the images, associations, judgments, tendencies, and voluntary efforts. Inspiration, the poet Grillparser used to say, is a concentration of all the forces and capacities upon a single point which, for the time being, should represent the world rather than enclose it. The reinforcement of the state of mind comes from the fact that its several powers, instead of spreading themselves over the whole world, are contained within the bounds of a single object. Touch one another, reciprocally help and reinforce each other. What the poet here maintains as regards aesthetics, only is applicable to all the organic forms of creation. That is, those ruled by an imminent logic and like them, resembling works of nature. In order to leave no doubt as to the identity of attention and imaginative synthesis, and in order to show that it is normally the true unifying principle, we offer the following remarks. Attention is at times spontaneous, natural, without effort, simply dependent on the interest that a thing excites in us, lasting as long as it holds us in subjection, then ceasing entirely. Again it is voluntary, artificial, an imitation of the other, precarious and intermittent, maintained with effort, in a word, laborious. The same is true of the imagination. The moment of inspiration is ruled by a perfect and spontaneous unity. Its impersonality approaches that of the forces of nature. Then appears the personal moment, the detailed working and long, painful, intermittent resumptions, the miserable turns of which so many inventors have described. The analogy between the two cases seems to me incontestable. Next, let us note that psychologists always adduce the same examples when they wish to illustrate, on the one hand, the processes of the persistent tenacious attention, and on the other hand, the developmental labor without which creative work does not come to pass. Genius is only long patience, the saying of Newton. Always thinking of it, and like expressions of Dallenbert, Helmholtz and others. Because in the one case, as in the other, the fundamental condition is the existence of a fixed, ever-active idea, notwithstanding its relaxations and its incessant disappearances into the unconscious with return to the consciousness. 3. The extreme form which from its nature is semi-morbid becomes in its highest degree plainly pathological, the unifying principle changes to a condition of obsession. The normal state of our mind is a plurality of states of consciousness, polyideism. Through association there is a radiation in every direction. In this totality of coexisting images, no one long occupies first place. It is driven away by others, which are displaced in turn by still others, emerging from the penumbra. On the contrary, in attention, relative monoideism, a single image retains first place for a long time and tends to have the same importance again. Finally, in a condition of obsession, absolute monoideism, the fixed idea defies all rivalry and rules despotically. Many inventors have suffered painfully this tyranny and have vainly struggled to break it. The fixed idea, once settled, does not permit anything to dislodge it, save for the moment and with much pain. Even then it is displaced only apparently, for it persists in the unconscious life where it has thrust its deep roots. At this stage, the unifying principle, although it can act as a stimulus for creation, is no longer normal. Consequently, a natural question arises. Wherein is there a difference between the obsession of the inventor and the obsession of the insane, who most generally destroys in place of creating? The nature of fixed ideas has greatly occupied contemporary alienists. For other reasons and in their own way, they too have been led to divide obsession into two classes, the intellectual and emotional, according as the idea or the effective state predominates. Then they have been led to ask, which of these two elements is the primitive one? For some it is the idea, for others, and it seems that these are the more numerous, the effective state is in general the primary fact, the obsession always rests on a basis of morbid emotion and in a retention of impressions. But whatever opinion we may hold on this point, the difficulty of establishing a dividing line between the two forms of obsession above mentioned remains the same. Are there characters peculiar to each one? It has been said, the physiologically fixed idea is normally longed for, often sought, in all cases accepted, and it does not break the unity of the self. It does not impose itself fatally unconsciousness. The individual knows the value thereof, knows where it leads him, and adapts his conduct to his requirements. For example, Christopher Columbus. The pathological fixed idea is parasitic, automatic, discordant, irresistible. Obsession is only a special case of psychic disintegration, a kind of doubling of consciousness. The individual becomes a person possessed, whose self has been confiscated for the sake of the fixed idea, and whose submission to his situation is wrought with pain. In spite of this parallel, the distinguishing criterion between the two is very vague, because from the sane to the delirious idea, the transitions are very numerous. We are obliged to recognize that with certain workers who are rather taken up with the elaboration of their work, and not masters directing it, quitting it, and resuming it at their pleasure, an artistic, scientific, or mechanical conception succeeds in haunting the mind, imposing itself upon it even to the extent of causing suffering. In reality, pure psychology is unable to discover a positive difference between obsession leading to creative work and the other forms, because in both cases, the mental mechanism is, at bottom, the same. The criterion must be sought elsewhere. For that, we must go out of the internal world and proceed objectively. We must judge the fixed idea not in itself, but by its effects. What does it produce in the practical, aesthetic, scientific, moral, social, religious field? It is of value according to its fruits. If objection be made to this change of front, we may, in order to stick to a strictly psychological point of view, state that it is certain that as soon as it passes beyond a middle point, which it is difficult to determine, the fixed idea profoundly troubles the mechanism of the mind. In imaginative persons, this is not rare, which partly explains why the pathological theory of genius, of which we shall speak later, has been able to rally so many to its support, and to allege so many facts in its favor. End of first part, Chapter 5. Second part, Chapter 1 of Essay on the Creative Imagination. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Essay on the Creative Imagination by Thea Deil-Ribo. Second part, the development of the imagination. Chapter 1, Imagination in Animals. Up to this point, the imagination has been treated analytically only. This process alone would give us but a very imperfect idea of its essentially concrete and lively nature, where we to stop here. So this part continues the subject in another shape. I shall attempt to follow the imagination in its ascending development, from the lowest to the most complex forms, from the animal to the human infant, to primitive man, thence to the highest modes of invention. It will thus be exhibited in the inexhaustible variety of its manifestations, which the abstract and simplifying process of analysis does not permit us to suspect. One. I shall not dwell at length on the imagination of animals, not only because the question is much involved, but also because it is hardly liable to be a positive solution. Even eliminating mere anecdotes and doubtful observations, there is no lack of verified and authentic material, but it still remains to interpret them. As soon as we begin to conjecture, we know how difficult it is to divest ourselves of all anthropomorphism. The question has been formulated, even if not treated, with much system by Romains in his mental evolution in animals. Taking imagination in its broadest sense, he recognizes four stages. One. Provoked revival of images. For example, the sight of an orange reminds one of its taste. This is a low form of memory, resting on association by contiguity. It is met with very far down in the animal scale, and the author furnishes abundant proof of it. Two. Spontaneous revival. An object present calls up an absent object. This is a higher form of memory, frequent in ants, bees, wasps, etc., which fact explains the mistrustful sujocity of wild animals. At night, the distant bang of a hound stops the fox in his course, because all the dangers he has undergone are represented in his mind. These two stages do not go beyond memory, pure and simple. That is, reproductive imagination. The other two constitute the higher imagination. Three. The capacity of associating absent images with suggestions derived from without through an internal working of the mind. It is the lower and primitive form of the creative imagination, which may be called a passive synthesis. In order to establish its existence, Romains reminds us that dreams have been proven in dogs, horses, and a large number of birds, that certain animals, especially in anger, seem to be subject to delusions and pursued by phantoms, and lastly, that in some there is produced a condition resembling nostalgia, expressing itself in a violent desire to return to former haunts, or in a wasting away resulting from the absence of accustomed persons and things. All these facts, especially the latter, can hardly be explained without a vivid recollection of the images of previous life. Four. The highest stage consists of intentionally reuniting images in order to make novel combinations from them. This may be called an active synthesis, and is the true creative imagination. Is this sometimes found in the animal kingdom? Romains very clearly replies no, and not without offering a plausible reason. For creation, says he, there must first be capacity for abstraction, and without speech, abstraction is very weak. One of the conditions for creative imagination is thus wanting in the higher animals. We here come to one of those critical moments, so frequent in animal psychology, when one asks, is this character exclusively human, or is it found in embryo in lower forms? Thus it has been possible to support a theory opposing that of romains. Certain animals, says Ulta Nguyen, fulfill all the conditions necessary for creative imagination, subtle senses, good memory, and appropriate emotional states. This assertion is perhaps true, but it is purely dialectic. It is equivalent to saying that the thing is possible. It does not establish it as a fact. Besides, is it very certain that all the conditions for creative imagination are present here, since we have just shown that there is a lack of abstraction? The author, who voluntarily limits his study to birds and the construction of their nests, maintains against Wallace and others that nest building requires the mysterious synthesis of representations. We might with equal reason bring the instances of other building animals, bees, wasps, white ants, the common ants, beavers, etc. It is not unreasonable to attribute to them an anticipated representation of their architecture. Shall we say that it is instinctive, consequently unconscious? At least, may we not group under this head, changes in adaptations to new conditions, which these animals succeed in applying to the typical plans of their construction? Observations and even systematic experiments, like those of Huber, Forel, and others, show that, reduced to the alternative of the impossibility of building or the modification of their habits, certain animals modify them. Judging from this, how refuse them invention altogether? This contradicts, in no way, the very just reservation of remains. It is sufficient to remark that abstraction or dissociation has stages, that the simplest are accessible to the animal intelligence. If, in the absence of words, the logic of concepts is forbidden it, there yet remains the logic of images, which is sufficient for slight innovations. In a word, animals can invent according to the extent that they can dissociate. In our opinion, if we may with any truthfulness attribute a creative power to animals, we must seek it elsewhere. Generally speaking, we attribute only a mediocre importance to a manifestation that might very well be the proper form of animal fancy. It is purely motor, and expresses itself through the various kinds of play. Although play may be as old as mankind, its psychology dates only from the 19th century. We have already seen that there are three theories concerning its nature. It is expenditure of superfluous activity, a mending, restoring of strength, a recuperation, an apprenticeship, a preliminary exercise for the active functions of life, and for the development of our natural gifts. The last position, due to Gruß, does not rule out the other two. It holds the first valid for the young, the second for adults, but it comprehends both in a more general explanation. Let us leave this doctrinal question in order to call attention to the variety and richness of form of play in the animal world. In this respect, the aforementioned book of Gruß is a rich mind of evidence to which I would refer the reader. I limit myself to summing up his classification. He distinguishes nine classes of play, namely, one, those that are at bottom experimental, consisting of trials at hazard without immediate end, often giving the animal a certain knowledge of the properties of the external world. This is the introduction to an experimental physics, optics, and mechanics for the brood of animals. Two. Movements are changes of place executed of their own accord. A very general fact, as is proven, by the incessant movements of butterflies, flies, birds, and even fishes, which often appear to play in the water rather than to seek prey, the mad running of horses, dogs, etc., in free space. Three. Mimicry of hunting, that is, playing with a living or dead prey, the dog and cat following moving objects, a bull, feather, etc. Four. Mimic battles, teasing and fighting without anger. Five. Architectural art, revealing itself especially in the building of nests, certain birds ornament them with shining objects, stones, bits of glass, by a kind of anticipation of the aesthetic feeling. Six. Doll play is universal in mankind, whether civilized or savage. Groose believes he has found its equivalent in certain animals. Seven. Imitation through pleasure, so familiar in monkeys, grimaces, singing birds, which counterfeit the voices of a large number of beasts. Eight. Curiosity, which is the only mental play one meets in animals, the dog watching from a window or wall what is going on in the street. Nine. Love plays, which differ from the others in that they are not mere exercises but have in view a real object. They have been well known since Darwin's time, he attributing them to an aesthetic value which has been denied by Wallace, Tyler, Lord Morgan, Wallace Check, and Groose. Let us recapitulate in thought the immense quantity of motor expressions included in these nine categories and let us note that they have the following characters in common. They are grouped in combinations that are often new and unforeseen. They are not a repetition of daily life, acts necessary for self-preservation. At one time the movements are combined simultaneously, exhibition of beautiful colors, again and most often, successively, amorous parades, fights, flight, dancing, emission of noises, sounds or songs. But under one form or another there is creation, invention. Here the imagination acts in its purely motor character. It consists of a small number of images that become translated into actions and serve as a center for their grouping. Perhaps even the image itself is hardly conscious, so that all is limited to a spontaneous production and a collection of motor phenomena. It will doubtless be said that this form of imagination belongs to a very shallow, poor psychology. It cannot be otherwise. It is necessary that imaginative production be found reduced to its simplest expression in animals and the motor form must be its special characteristic mark. It cannot have any others for the following reasons, incapacity for the work that necessarily precedes abstraction or dissociation, breaking into bits the data of experience, making them raw material for the future construction, lack of images, and especially, fewness of possible combinations of images. This last point is proven alike from the data of animal psychology and of comparative anatomy. We know that the nervous elements in the brain, serving as connections between sensory regions, whether one conceive of them as centers, flicic, or as bundles of commissural fibers, manor, ornate, are hardly outlined in the lower mammalia and attain only a mediocre development in the higher forms. By way of corroboration of the foregoing, let us compare the higher animals with young children. This comparison is not based on a few far-fetched analogies, but in a thorough resemblance in nature. Man, during the first few years of his life, has a brain but slightly differentiated, especially as regards connections, a very poor supply of images, a very weak capacity for abstraction. His intellectual development is much inferior to that of reflex, instinctive, impulsive, and imitative movements. In consequence of this predominance of the motor system, the simple and imperfect images in children as in animals tend to be immediately changed into movements. Even most of their inventions in play are greatly inferior to those enumerated above under nine distinct heads. A serious argument in favor of the prevalence of imagination of the motor type in the child is furnished by the principal part taken by movements in infantile insanity, a remark made by many alienists. The first stage of this madness, they say, is found in the convulsions that are not merely a physical ailment, but a muscular delirium. The disturbance of the automatic and instinctive functions of the child is so often associated with muscular disturbances that at this age the mental disorders correspond to the motor ganglionic centers situated below those parts that later assume the labor of analysis and of imagination. The disturbances are in the primary centers of organization, and according to the symptoms lack those analytic or constructive qualities, those ideal forms that we find in adult insanity. If we descend to the lowest stage of human life to the baby, we see that insanity consists almost entirely of the activity of a muscular group acting on external objects. The insane baby bites, kicks, and these symptoms are the external measure of the degree of its madness. Has not Korea itself been called a muscular insanity? Doubtless, there likewise exists in the child a sensorial madness, illusions, hallucinations, but by reason of its feeble intellectual development the delirium causes a disorder of movements rather than of images. Its insane imagination is above all a motor insanity. To hold that the creative imagination belonging to animals consists of new combinations of movements is certainly an hypothesis. Nevertheless, I do not believe that it is merely a mental form without foundation if we take into account the foregoing facts. I consider it rather as a point in favor of the motor theory of invention. It is a singular instance in which the original form of creation is shown bare. If we wanted to discover it, it would be necessary to seek it where it is reduced to the greatest simplicity in the animal world. What conditions does the creative imagination make its appearance? It is impossible to answer this question, which moreover has no justification, for the creative imagination develops little by little out of pure reproduction by an evolutionary process, not by sudden eruption. Nevertheless, its evolution is very slow on account of causes both organic and psychological. We could not dwell long on the organic causes without falling into tiresome repetitions. The newborn infant is a spinal being with an unformed, defluent brain composed largely of water. Reflex life itself is not complete in him and the corticomotor system only hinted at. The sensory centers are undifferentiated, the associational systems remain isolated for a long time after birth. We have given observations on this point. The psychological causes reduce themselves to the necessity for consolidation of the primary and secondary operations of the mind, without which the creative imagination cannot take form. To be precise, we must distinguish, as does Baldwin, four epics in the mental development of the child. One, effective, rudimentary sensory processes, pleasures and pains, simple motor adaptations. Two and three, objective, in which the author establishes two grades. A, appearance of special senses, of memory, instincts primarily defensive and imitation. B, complex memory, complicated movements, offensive activities, rudimentary will. Four, subjective or final, conscious thought, constitutive will, ideal emotions. If we accept this scheme as approximately correct, the moment of imagination must be assigned to the third period, the second stage of the objective epic, which fulfills all the sufficient and necessary conditions for its origination and for its rise above pure reproduction. Whatever the propitious age may be, the study of the child imagination is not without difficulties. In order to enter into the child mind, we must become like a child, as it is, we are limited to an interpretation of it in terms of the adult, with much false interpretation possible, agreeing too much or too little with the facts. Furthermore, the children studied live and grow up in a civilized environment. The result is that the development of their imagination is rarely unhampered and complete, for as soon as their fancy passes the middle level, the rationalizing education of parents and teachers is eager to master and control it. In truth, it gives its full measure and reveals itself in the fullness of growth only among primitive peoples. With us, it is checked in its flight by an antagonistic power, which treats it as a harbinger of insanity. Finally, children are not equally well-suited for this study. We must make a distinction between the imaginative and non-imaginative, and the latter should be eliminated. When we have thus chosen suitable subjects, observation shows from the start sufficiently distinct varieties, different orientations of the imagination depending on intellectual causes, such as the predominance of visual or acoustic or tactile motor images making for mechanical invention, or dependent on emotional causes, that is, of character, according as the latter is timid, joyous, exuberant, retired, healthy, sickly, etc. If we now attempt to follow the development of the child imagination, we may distinguish four principal stages, without assigning them otherwise a rigorous chronological order. 1. The first stage consists of the passage from passive to creative imagination. Its history would be long were we to include all the hybrid forms that are made up partly of memories, partly of new groupings, being at the same time repetition and construction. Even in the adult, they are very frequent. I know a person who is always afraid of being smothered, and for this reason, urgently ask that in his coffin his shirt be not tight at the neck. This odd prepossession of the mind belongs neither to memory nor to imagination. This particular case illustrates in a very clear form the nature of the first flights of the mind attempting to exercise its imaginative powers. Without enumerating other facts of this kind, it is more desirable to follow the imagination's development, limiting ourselves to two forms of the psychic life, perception and illusion. The necessary presence of the image in these two forms has been so often proven by contemporary psychology that a few words to recall this to mind will be sufficient. There seems to be a radical difference between perception which seizes reality and imagination. Nevertheless, it is generally admitted that in order to rise above sensation to perception there must be a synthesis of images. To put it more simply, two elements are required. One, coming from without, the physiological stimulus acting on the nerves and the sensory centers, which becomes translated in consciousness through the vague state that goes by the name sensation. The other, coming from within, adds to the sensation's present appropriate images, remnants of former experiences, so that perception requires an apprenticeship. We must feel, then imperfectly perceive, in order to finally perceive well. The sensory datum is only a fraction of the total fact, and in the operation we call perceiving, that is, apprehending an object directly, a part only of the object is represented. This, however, does not go beyond reproductive imagination. The decisive step is taken in illusion. We know that illusion has as a basis and support a modification of the external senses which are metamorphosed, amplified by an immediate construction of the mind. A branch of a tree becomes a serpent. A distant noise seems the music of an orchestra. Illusion has as broad a field as perception, since there is no perception but may undergo this erroneous transformation, and it is produced by the same mechanism, but with interchange of the two terms. In perception, the chief element is the sensory, and the representative element is secondary. In illusion, we have just the opposite condition. What one takes as perceived is merely imagined. The imagination assumes the principal role. Illusion is the type of the transitional forms, of the mixed cases that consist of constructions made up of memories, without being, in the strict sense, creations. 2. The creative imagination asserts itself with its peculiar characteristics only in the second stage, in the form of animism or the attributing of life to everything. This turn of the mind is already known to us, though mentioned only incidentally. As the state of the child's mind at that period resembles that which imprimitive man creates myths, we shall return to it in the next chapter. Works on psychology abound in facts demonstrating that this primitive tendency to attribute life and even personality to everything is a necessary phase that the mind must undergo, long or short in duration, rich or poor in inventions, according to the level of the child's imagination. His attitude toward his dolls is the common example of this state, and also the best example, because it is universal, being found in all countries without exception, among all races of men. It is needless to pile up facts on an uncontroverted point. Two will suffice. I choose them on account of their extravagance, which shows that at this particular moment animism in certain minds can dare anything. One little fellow, aged one year eight months, conceived a special fondness for the letter W, addressing it thus, D-R-O-B-W. Another little boy well on in his fourth year, when tracing a letter L, happened to slip, so that the horizontal limb formed an angle, thus. He instantly saw the resemblance to the sedentary human form and said, oh, he's sitting down. Similarly, when he made an F turn the wrong way and then put the correct form to the left, thus, he exclaimed, they are talking together. One of Sully's correspondents says, I had the habit of attributing intelligence, not only to all living creatures, but even to stones and manufactured articles. I used to feel how dull it must be for the pebbles in the causeway to lie still and only see what was round about. When I walked out with a basket for putting flowers in, I used sometimes to pick up a pebble or two and carry them out to have a change. Let us stop a moment in order to try to determine the nature of this strange mental state, all the more as we shall meet it again in primitive man and since it presents the creative imagination at its beginning. A. The first element is a fixed idea or rather an image, or group of images, that takes possession of consciousness to the exclusion of everything else. It is the analog of the state of suggestion in the hypnotized subject, with this sole difference, that the suggestion does not come from without, from another, but from the child itself, it is autosuggestion. The stick that the child holds between his legs becomes for him an imaginary steed. The poverty of his mental development makes all the easier this contraction of the field of his consciousness, which assures the supremacy of the image. B. This has at its basis a reality that it includes. This is an important detail to note, because this reality, however tiny, gives objectivity to the imaginary creation and incorporates it with the external world. The mechanism is like that which produces illusion, but with a stable character excluding correction. The child transforms a bit of wood or paper into another self, because he perceives only the phantom he has created, that is the images, not the material exciting them, haunt his brain. C. Lastly, this creative power investing the image with all its attributes of real existence is derived from a fundamental fact, the state of belief, that is, adherence of the mind founded on purely subjective conditions. It does not come within my province to treat incidentally such a large question. Neglected by the older physiology, whose faculty method inclined it toward this omission, belief or faith has recently become the object of numerous studies. I necessarily limit myself to remarking that but for this psychic state, the nature of the imagination is totally incomprehensible. The peculiarity of the imagination is the production of a reality of human origin and it succeeds therein only because of the faith accompanying the image. Representation and belief are not completely separated, it is the nature of the image to appear at first as a real object. This psychological truth, though proven through observation, has made itself acceptable only with great difficulty. It has had to struggle on the one hand against the prejudices of common sense, for which imagination is synonymous with sham and vain appearance and opposed to the real as non-being to being. On the other hand, against a doctrine of the logicians who maintain that the idea is at first merely conceived with no affirmation of existence or non-existence, apprehensio simplex. This position, legitimate in logic, which is an abstract science, is altogether unacceptable in psychology a concrete science, the psychological viewpoint giving the true nature of the image has prevailed little by little. Spinoza already asserts that representations considered by themselves contain no errors, and he denies that it is possible to perceive, represent, without affirming. More explicitly, Hume assigns belief to our subjective dispositions. Belief does not depend on the nature of the idea but on the manner in which we conceive Existence is not a quality added to it by us, it is founded on habit and is irresistible. The difference between fiction and belief consists of a feeling added to the latter but not to the former. Dugald Stewart treats the question purely as a psychologist following the experimental method. He enumerates very many facts once he concludes that imagination is always accompanied by an act of belief, but for which fact the more vivid the image the less one would believe it, but just the contrary happens. The strong representation commands persuasion, like sensation itself. Finally, Tain treats the subject methodically by studying the nature of the image and its primitive character of hallucination. At present I think there is no psychologist who does not regard as proven that the image when it enters consciousness has two moments. During the first it is objective, appearing as a full and complete reality. During the second which is definitive, it is deprived of its objectivity, reduced to a completely internal event, through the effect of other states of consciousness which oppose and finally annihilate its objective character. There is an affirmation, then negation, impulse, then inhibition. Faith, being only a mode of existence, an attitude of the mind, owes its creative and vivifying power to general dispositions of our constitution. Besides the intellectual element which is its content, its material, the thing affirmed or denied, there are tendencies and other effective factors, desire, fear, love, etc., giving the image its intensity and assuring its success in the struggle against other states of consciousness. There are active faculties that we sometimes designate by the name will, understanding by the term, as James says, not only deliberate volition, but all the factors of belief, hope, fear, passions, prejudices, sectarian feeling, and so forth. And this has justly given rise to the truthful saying that the test of belief is action. This explains how in love, religion, in the moral life, in politics and elsewhere, belief can withstand the logical assaults of the rationalizing intelligence. Its power is found everywhere. It lasts as long as the mind waits and consents, but as soon as these effective and active dispositions disappear in life's experience, faith falls with them, leaving in its place a formless content, an empty and dead representation. After this, is it necessary to remark that belief depends peculiarly on the motor elements of our organization and not on the intellectual? As there is no imagination without belief, nor belief without imagination, we return by another route to the thesis supported in the first part of this essay, that creative activity depends on the motor nature of images. Insofar as concerns the special case of the child, the first of the two moments, the affirming, that the image undergoes in consciousness, is all and all for him. The second, the rectifying, is nothing. There is hypertrophy of one, atrophy of the other. For the adult the contrary is true. In many cases indeed, in consequence of experience and habit, the first moment wherein the image should be affirmed as a reality is only virtual, is literally atrophied. We must however remark that this applies only partially to the ignorant and even less to the savage. We might nevertheless ask ourselves if the child's belief in his phantoms is complete, entire, absolute, unreserved. Is the stick that he bestrides perfectly identified with a horse? Was Sully's child that showed its doll a series of engravings to choose from, completely deceived? It seems that we must rather admit an intermittent, an alteration between affirmation and negation. On the one hand, the skeptical attitude of those who laugh at it displeases the child, who is like a devout believer whose faith is being broken down. On the other hand, doubt must indeed arise in him from time to time, for without this rectification could never occur. One belief opposes the other or drives it away. This second work proceeds little by little, but then under this form imagination retreats. Three. The third stage is that of play, which in chronological order coincides with the one just proceeding. As a form of creation, it is already known to us, but in passing from animals to children, it grows in complexity and becomes intellectualized. It is no longer a simple combination of images. Play serves two ends. For experimenting as such, it is an introduction to knowledge. Give certain vague notions concerning the nature of things, for creating this is its principle function. The human child, like the animal, expends itself in movements, forms associations new to it, simulates defense, flight, attack, but the child soon passes beyond this lower stage in order to construct by means of images, ideally. He begins by imitating. This is a physiological necessity, reasons for which we shall give later, IMPRA. He constructs houses, boats, gives himself up to large plans, but he imitates most in his own person and acts, making himself in turn soldier, sailor, robber, merchant, coachman, etc. To the period of imitation succeed more serious attempts. He acts with a spirit of mastery. He is possessed by his idea which he tends to realize. The personal character of creation is shown in that he is really interested only in a work that emanates from himself, and of which he feels himself the cause. B. Perez relates that he wanted to give a lesson to his nephew, aged three and a half years, whose inventions seemed to him very poor. Perez scratched in the sand a trench resembling a river, planted little branches on both banks, and had water flow through it, put a bridge across, and launched boats. At each new act the child would remain cool, his admiration would always have to be waited for. Out of patience he remarked shortly that this isn't at all entertaining. The author adds, I believed it was useless to persist, and I trampled underfoot, laughing at myself, my awkward attempt at a childish construction. I had already read it in many a book, but this time I had learned from experience that the free initiative of children is always superior to the imitations we pretend to make for them. In addition, this experience and others like it have taught me that their creative force is much weaker than has been said. 4. At the fourth stage appears romantic invention, which requires a more refined culture, being a purely internal, wholly imaginative, that is cast in images, creation. It begins at about three or four years of age. We know the taste of imaginative children for stories and legend, which they have repeated to them until surfited. In this respect they resemble semi-civilized people who listen greedily to rhapsodies for hours at a time, experiencing all the emotions appropriate to the incidence of the tale. This is the prelude to creation, a semi-passive, semi-active state, and apprentice period, which will permit them to create in their own turn. Thus the first attempts are made with reminiscences, and imitated rather than created. Of this we find numerous examples in the special works. A child of three and a half saw a lame man going along a road and exclaimed, Look at that poor old man, mama. He is not a bad leg. Then the romance begins. He was on a high horse. He fell on a rock, struck his poor leg. He will have to get some powder to heal it, etc. Sometimes the invention is less realistic. A child of three often longed to live like a fish in the water, or like a star in the sky. Another, aged five years, nine months, having found a hollow rock, invented a fairy story. The whole was a beautiful hall inhabited by brilliant mysterious personages, etc. This form of imagination is not as common as the others. It belongs to those whom nature has well endowed. It forecasts a development of mind above the average. It may even be the sign of an inborn vocation, and indicate in what direction the creative activity will be oriented. Let us briefly recall the creative role of the imagination in language through the intervening of a factor already studied, thinking by analogy, an abundant source of often picturesque metaphors. A child called the quirk of a bottle, door. A small coin was called by a little American, a baby dollar. Another, seeing the dew on the grass, said, the grass is crying. The extension of the meaning of words has been studied by Tain, Darwin, Prayer, and others. They have shown that its psychological mechanism depends sometimes on the perception of resemblance, again on association by contiguity, processes that appear in intermingle in an unforeseen manner. Thus a child applies the word membro at first to his nurse, then to a sewing machine that she uses, then by analogy to an organ that he sees on the street adorned with a monkey, then to his toys representing animals. We have elsewhere given more similar cases where we perceive the fundamental difference between thought by imagery and rational thought. To conclude, at this period the imagination is the master faculty and the highest form of intellectual development. It works in two directions. One principle. It creates plays, invents romances, and extends language. The other secondary. It contains a germ of thought and ventures a fanciful explanation of the world which cannot yet be conceived according to abstract notions and laws. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 3 Primitive Man and the Creation of Miss We come now to a unique period in the history of the development of the imagination, its golden age. In Primitive Man, still confined in savagery, or just starting toward civilization, it reaches its full bloom in the creation of myths, and we are rightly astonished that psychologists, obstinately attached to aesthetics, have neglected such an important form of activity, one so rich in information concerning the creative imagination, where indeed find more favorable conditions for knowing it. Man, prior to civilization, is a purely imaginative being, that is, the imagination marks the summit of his intellectual development. He does not go beyond this stage, but it is no longer an enigma as in animals, nor a transitory phase as in the civilized child who rapidly advances to the age of reason. It is a fixed state, permanent, and lasting throughout life. Primitive Man has been defined as, he for whom sensuous data and images surpass in importance rational concepts. From this standpoint, many contemporary poets, novelists, and artists would be primitive. The mental state of the human individual is not enough for such a determination. We must also take account of the comparative simplicity of the social environment. It is there revealed to us in its entire spontaneity. It has free reign. It can create without imitation or tradition. It is not imprisoned in any conventional form. It is sovereign. As primitive man has knowledge neither of nature nor of its laws, he does not hesitate to embody the most senseless imaginings, flitting through his brain. The world is not for him, a totality of phenomena subject to laws, and nothing limits or hinders him. The working of the pure imagination, left to itself and unadulterated by the intrusion and tyranny of rational elements, becomes translated into one form, the creation of myths, an anonymous unconscious work, which, as long as its rule lasts, is sufficient in every way, comprehends everything, religion, poetry, history, science, philosophy, law. Myths have the advantage of being the incarnation of pure imagination, and moreover, they permit psychologists to study them objectively. Thanks to the labors of the 19th century, they offer an almost inexhaustible content. While past ages forgot, misunderstood, disfigured, and often despised myths, as aberrations of the human mind, as unworthy of an hour's attention, it is no longer necessary in our time to show their interest and importance, even for psychology, which, however, has not as yet drawn all the benefit possible from them. But before commencing the psychological study of the genesis and formation of myths, considered as an objective emanation of the creative imagination, we must briefly summarize the hypotheses at present offered for their origin. We find two principal ones, the one etymological, genealogical, or linguistic, the other ethno-psychological or anthropological. Let us mention the heuramaristic theory of Herbert Spencer, taken up recently by Grant Allen, who brings down all religious and mythic concepts from a single origin, the worship of the dead. The first, whose principle, though not sole champion, is Max Müller, holds that myths are the result of a disease of language. Words become things, namana numina. This transformation is the effect of two principal linguistic causes. A. Polynomy, several words for one thing. Thus the sun is designated by more than twenty names in the Vedas. Apollo, Phaethon, Hercules are three personifications of the sun. Veruna, Knight, and Yama, Death express at first the same conception and have become two distinct deities. In short, every word tends to become an entity having its attributes and its legends. B. Emonomy, a single word for several things. The same adjective, shining, refers to the sun, a fountain, spring, etc. This is another source of confusion. Let us also add metaphors taken literally. Plays upon words, wrong construction, etc. The opponents of this doctrine maintain that in the formation of myths, words represent scarcely five percent. Whatever may be the worth of this assertion, the purely philological explanation remains without value for psychology. It is neither true nor false. It does not solve the question, it merely avoids it. The word is only an occasion, a vehicle, without the working of the mind exciting it, nothing would change. Moreover, Max Müller himself has recently recognized this. When I tried to briefly characterize mythology in its inner nature, I called it a disease of language rather than a disease of thought. The expression was strange, but intentionally so, meant to arouse attention and to provoke opposition. For me, language and thought are inseparable. The anthropological theory, much more general than the foregoing, penetrates further to psychological origins. It leads us to the first advances of the human mind. It regards the myth not as an accident of primitive life, but as a natural function, a mode of activity proper to man during a certain period of his development. Later, the mythic creations seem absurd, often immoral, because they are the survival of a distant epic, cherished and consecrated through tradition, habits, and respect for antiquity. According to the definition that seems to me best adapted for psychology, the myth is the psychological objectification of man and all the phenomena that he can perceive. It is a humanization of nature according to processes peculiar to the imagination. Are these two views irreconcilable? It does not seem so to me, provided we accept the first as only a partial explanation. In any event, both schools agree on one important point for us, that the material for myths is furnished by the observation of natural phenomena, including the great events of human life, birth, sickness, death, etc. This is the objective factor. The creation of myths has its explanation in the nature of human imagination. This is the subjective factor. We cannot deny that most works on mythology have a very decided tendency to give the greater importance to the first factor, in which respect they need a little psychology. The periodic returns of the dawn, the sun, the moon and stars, winds and storms have their effect also, we may suppose, on monkeys, elephants and other animals, supposedly the most intelligent. Have they inspired myths? Just the opposite. The surprising monotony of the ideas that the various races have made final causes of phenomena, of the origin and destiny of man, whence it results that the numberless myths are reduced to a very small number of types, shows that it is the human imagination that takes the principal part and that it is on the whole, perhaps not so rich as we are pleased to say, that it is even very poor compared to the fecundity of nature. Let us now study the psychology of this creative activity, reducing it to these two questions. How are myths formed? What line does their evolution follow? 1. The psychology of the origin of the myth, of the work that causes its rise, may theoretically and for the sake of facilitating analysis, be regarded as two principal moments, that of creation proper and that of romantic invention. A. The moment of creation presupposes two inseparable operations, which however, we have to describe separately. The first consists of attributing life to all things, the second of assigning qualities to all things. Animating everything, that is attributing life and action to everything, representing everything to oneself as living and acting, even mountains, rocks, and other objects seemingly incapable of movement. Of this inborn and irresistible tendency, there are so many facts improve that enumeration is needless, it is the rule. The evidence gathered by ethnologists, mythologists, and travelers fills large volumes. This state of mind does not particularly belong to long past ages. It is still in existence, it is contemporary, and if we would see it with our own eyes, it is not at all necessary to plunge into virgin countries, for there are frequent reversions even in civilized lands. On the hull, says Tyler, it must be regarded as conceited that to the lower races of humanity, the sun and stars, the trees and rivers, the winds and clouds, become animated creatures living like men and beasts, fulfilling their special function in creation, or rather, that what the human eye can reach is only the instrument or the matter of which some gigantic being, like a man hidden behind the visible things, makes use. The grounds on which such ideas are based cannot be regarded as less than a poetic fancy or an ill-understood metaphor. They depend on a vast philosophy of nature, certainly rude and primitive, but coherent and serious. The second operation of the mind, inseparable as we have said from the first, attributes to these imaginary beings various qualities, but all important to man. They are good or bad, useful or hurtful, weak or powerful, kind or cruel. One remains stupefied before the swarming of these numberless genie, whom no natural phenomena, no active life, no form of sickness escapes, and these beliefs remain unbroken, even among the tribes that are in contact with old civilizations. Primitive man lives and moves among the ceaseless phantoms of his own imagination. The Indian traversing the Montagna never feels himself alone. Legions of beings accompany him. All of the nature to whom he owes his soul speaks to him through the noise of the wind in the roaring of the waterfall. The insect like the bird, everything, even to the bending twig, wet with dew, for him has language, distinct personality. The forest is alive in its depths, has caprices, periods of anger. It avoids the thicket under the tread of the huntsman, or again presses him more closely, drags him into infected swamps, into closed bogs, where miserable goblins exhaust all their witchcraft upon him, drink his blood by attaching their lips to the wounds made by the briars. The Indian knows all that. He knows those dread genie by name. Lastly, the psychological mechanism of the creative moment is very simple. It depends on a single factor previously studied, thinking by analogy. It is a matter, first of all, and this is important, of conceiving beings analogous to ourselves, cast in our mold, cut from our pattern, that is, feeling and acting, then qualifying them, and determining them according to the attributes of our own nature. But the logic of images, very different from that of reason, concludes an objective resemblance. It regards as alike what seems alike. It attributes to an internal linking of images, the validity of an objective connection between things. Once arises the discord between the imagined world and the world of reality. Analogies that for us are only fancies were for the man of past ages, real, Tyler. B. In the Genesis of Miss, the second moment is that of fanciful invention. Entities take form. They have a history and adventures. They become the stuff for a romance. People of poor and dry imagination do not reach the second period. Thus the religion of the Romans peopled the universe with an innumerable quantity of genii. No object, no act, no detail, had its own presiding genius. There was one for germinating grain, for sprouting grain, for grain and flour, for blighted grain, for the door, its hinges, its lock, etc. There was a myriad of misty, formless entities. This is animism arrested at its first stage. Abstraction has killed imagination. Who created those legends and tales of adventure constituting the subject matter of mythology? Probably inspired individuals, priests, or prophets. They came perhaps from dreams, hallucinations, insane attacks. They are derived from several sources. Whatever their origin, they are the work of imaginative minds par excellence. We shall study them later. Who confronted with any event whatever must, because of their nature, construct a romance. Besides analogy, this imaginative creation has as its principle source the associational form already described under the name Constellation. We know that it is based on the fact that, in certain cases, the arousing of an image group is the result of a tendency prevailing at a given instant over several that are possible. This operation has already been expounded theoretically with individual examples in support. But in order to gauge its importance, we must see it act in large masses. Mists allow us to do this. Ordinarily, they have been studied in their historical development according to their geographical distribution or ethnic character. If we proceed otherwise, if we consider only their content, that is, the very few themes upon which the human imagination has labored, such as celestial phenomena, terrestrial disturbances, floods, the origin of the universe, of man, etc. We are surprised at the wonderful richness of variety. What diversity in the solar mists are those of creation, of fire, of water? These variations are due to multiple causes, which have orientated the imagination now in one direction, now in another. Let us mention the principal ones. Racial characteristics, whether the imagination is clear or mobile, poor or exuberant, the manner of living, totally savage, or on a level of civilization, the physical environment, external nature cannot be reflected in the brain of a Hindu in the same way as in that of a Scandinavian. And lastly, that assemblage of considerable and unexpected causes grouped under the term chance. The variable combinations of these different factors, with the predominance of one or the other, explain the multiplicity of the imaginative conceptions of the world, in contrast to the unity and simplicity of scientific conceptions. 2. The form of imagination now occupying our attention by reason of its non-individual, anonymous, collective character, attains a long development that we may follow in its successive phases of ascent, climax, and decline. To begin with, is it necessarily inherent in the human mind? Are there races or groups of men totally devoid of myths? Which is a slightly different question from that usually asked. Are there tribes totally devoid of religious thoughts? Although it is very doubtful that there are such now, it is probable that there were in the beginning when man had scarcely left the brute level, at least if we agree with Vignoli, that we already find in the higher animals embryonic forms of animism. In any event, mythic creation appears early, we can infer this from the signs of parility of certain legends. Savages, who could not know themselves, the Iroquois, the Australian Aborigines, the natives of the Ataman Islands, believed that the earth was at first sterile and dry, all the water having been swallowed by a gigantic frog or toad, which was compelled by queer stratagems to regurgitate it. These are little children's imaginings. Among the Hindus, the same myth takes the form of an alluring epic, the dragon watching over the celestial waters, of which he has taken possession, is wounded by Indra after a heroic battle and restores them to the earth. Cosmogenes, lang remarks, furnish a good example of the development of myths. It is possible to mark out stages and rounds according to the degree of culture and intelligence. The natives of Oceania believed that the world was created and organized by spiders, grasshoppers, and various birds. More advanced peoples regard powerful animals as gods in disguise. Such are certain Mexican divinities. Later, all trace of animal worship disappears, and the character of the myth is purely anthropomorphic. Cune, in a special work, has shown how the successive stages of social evolution express themselves in the successive stages of mythology, myths of cannibals, of hunters, of herders, land-tillers, sailors. Speaking of pure savagery, Max Müller admits at least two periods, Pan-Aryan and Indo-Iranian, prior to the Vedic period. In the course of this slow evolution, the work of the imagination passes little by little from infancy, becomes more and more complex, subtle, and refined. In the Aryan race, the Vedic epic, despite its sacrodotal ritualism, is considered as the period par excellence of mythic efflorescence. The myth, says Tain, is not here in the Vedas a disguise, but an expression. No language is more true and more supple. It permits a glimpse of, or rather causes us to discern, the forms of mist, the movements of the air, changes of seasons, all the accidents of sky, fire, storm. External nature has never found a mode of thought so graceful and flexible for reflecting itself thereby in all the inexhaustible variety of her appearances. However changeable nature may be, the imagination is equally so. It animates everything, not only fire in general, agony, but also the seven forms of flame, the wood that lights it, the ten fingers of the sacrificing priest, the prayer itself, and even the railing surrounding the altar. This is one example among many others. The partisans of the linguistic theory have been able to maintain that at this moment every word is a myth, because every word is a name designating a quality, or an act, transformed by the imagination into substance. Max Müller has translated a page of Hesiod, substituting the analytic, abstract, rational language of our time for the image-making names. Immediately all the mystical material vanishes. Thus Saline kisses the sleeping endymion becomes the dry formula It is Night. The most skilled linguists often declare themselves unable to change the pliant tongue of the imaginative age into our algebraic idioms. Thought by imagery cannot remain itself and at the same time take on a rational dress. The mental state that marks the zenith of the free development of the imagination is at present met with only in mystics and in some poets. Language has, however, preserved numerous vestiges of it in current expressions, the mythic significance of which has been lost, the sun rises, the sea is treacherous, the wind is mad, the earth is thirsty, etc. To this triumphant period there succeeds among the races that have made progress in evolution, that is, that have been able to rise above the age of pure imagination the period of waning, of regression, of decline. In order to understand it and perceive the how and why of it let us first note that myths are reducible to two great categories. A. The explicative myths arising from utility from the necessity of knowing. These undergo a radical transformation. B. The non-explicative myths resulting from a need of luxury from a pure desire to create. These undergo only a partial transformation. Let us follow them in the accomplishment of their destinies. A. The myths of the first class answering the various needs of knowing in order afterwards to act are much the more numerous. Is primitive man by nature curious? The question has been variously answered. Thus, Tyler says yes, Spencer no. The affirmative and negative answers are not perhaps irreconcilable if we take account of the differences in races. Taking it generally, it is hard to believe that he is not curious. He holds his life at that price. He is in the presence of the universe just as we are when confronted with an unknown animal or fruit. Is it useful or hurtful? He has all the more need for a conception of the world since he feels himself dependent on everything. While our subordination as regards nature is limited by the knowledge of her laws, he is on account of his animism in a position similar to ours before an assembly of persons whom we have to approach or avoid, conciliate, or yield to. It is necessary that he be practically curious. That is indispensable for his preservation. There has been alleged the indifference of primitive man to the complicated engines of civilization, a steamboat, a watch, etc. This shows not lack of curiosity, but absence of intelligence or interest for what he does not consider immediately useful for his needs. His conception of the world is a product of the imagination because no other is possible for him. The problem is imperatively set. He solves it as best he can. The myth is a response to a host of theoretical and practical needs. For him, the imaginative explanation takes the place of the rational explanation which is yet unborn and which for great reasons cannot arise. First, because the poverty of his experience limited to a small circle engenders a multitude of erroneous associations which remain unbroken in the absence of other experiences to contradict and shatter them. Secondly, because of the extreme weakness of his logic and especially of his conception of causality, which most often reduces itself to a post hoc or go proctor hoc. Once we have the thorough subjectivity of his interpretation of the world, in short, primitive man makes without exception or reserve and in terms of images what science makes provisionally with reserves and by means of concepts, namely hypotheses. Thus the explicative myths are as we see an epitome of a practical philosophy proportion to the requirements of the man of the earliest or slightly cultured ages. Then comes the period of critical transformation, a slow progressive substitution of a rational conception of the world for the imaginative conception. It results from a work of depersonification of the myth which little by little loses its subjective anthropomorphic character in order to become all the more objective without ever succeeding therein completely. This transformation occurs thanks to two principal supports, methodical and prolonged observation of phenomena which suggests the objective notion of stability and law opposed to the caprices of animism. Example, the work of the ancient astronomers of the Orient, the growing power of reflection and of logical rigor at least in well endowed races. It does not concern the subject in hand to trace here the fortunes of the old battle whereby the imagination assailed by a rival power loses little by little its position and preponderance in the interpretation of the world. A few remarks will suffice. To begin with, the myth is transformed into philosophic speculation but without total disappearance as is seen in the mystic speculations of the Pythagoreans. In the cosmologies of Empedocles ruled by two human-like antitheses love and hate. Even to Thales an observing positive spirit that calculates eclipses the world is full of demons remains a primitive animism. It is now well accepted that Thales cannot be regarded as propounding a materialistic theory when he declares that everything is derived from water for with him, water stands not merely for the substance that we call chemically H2O but for the spirit that is in water as well. The water spirit is the Grunprincy. In Plato even leaving out his theory of ideas the employment of myth is not merely a playful mannerism but a real survival. This work of elimination begun by the philosophers is more firmly established in the first attempts of pure science the Alexandrian mathematicians naturalists like Aristotle certain Greek physicians. Nevertheless we know how imaginary concepts remained alive in physics, chemistry, biology down to the 16th century. We know the bitter struggle that the two following centuries witnessed against occult qualities and loose methods. Even in our day Stowell has been able to propose to write a treatise on myth and science. Without speaking at this time of the hypotheses admitted as such and on account of their usefulness there yet remain in the sciences many latent signs of primitive anthropomorphism. At the beginning of the 19th century people believed in several properties of matter that we now regard as merely modes of energy. But this latter notion an expression of permanence underneath the various manifestations of nature is for science only an abstract symbolic formula. If we attempt to embody it to make it concrete and representable then whether we will or know it resolves itself into the feeling of muscular effort that is takes on a human character. To produce no other examples we see that so far as concerns the last term of this slow regression the imagination is not yet completely annulled although it may have had to recede incessantly before a more solid and better armed rival. B. In addition to the explanatory myths there are those having no claim to be in this class although they have perhaps been originally suggested by some phenomenon of animate or inanimate nature. They are much less numerous than the others since they do not answer multiple necessities of life. Such are the epic or heroic stories, popular tales, romances which are found as early as ancient Egypt. It is the first appearance of that form of aesthetic activity destined later to become literature. Here the mythic activity suffers only a superficial metamorphosis. The essence is not changed. Literature is mythology transformed and adapted to the variable conditions of civilization. If this statement appeared doubtful or disrespectful we should note the following. Historically, from myths wherein their figure at first only divine personages there arise the epics of the Hindus, Greeks, Scandinavians, etc. in which the gods and heroes are confounded live in the same world on a level. Little by little the divine character is rubbed out. The myth approaches the ordinary conditions of human life until it becomes the romantic novel and finally the realistic story. Psychologically, the imaginative work that has at first created the gods and superior beings before whom man bows because he has unconsciously produced them becomes more and more humanized as it becomes conscious. But it cannot cease being a projection of the feelings, ideas, and nature of man into the fictitious beings upon whom the belief of their creator and of his hearers confers an illusory and fleeting existence that gods have become puppets whose master man feels himself and whom he treats as he likes. Throughout the manifold techniques, aesthetics, documentary collections, reproductions of the social life, the creative activity of the earliest time remains at bottom unchanged. Literature is a decadent and rationalized mythology. 3. Thus the mythic activity of ancient times still exists among civilized peoples, unmodified as in literary creation but in its pure form as a non-individual, collective, anonymous, unconscious work? Yes, as the popular imagination when creating legends. In passing from natural phenomena to historic events and persons, the constructive imagination takes a slightly different position which we may characterize thus legend is to myth, what illusion is to hallucination. The psychological mechanism is the same in both cases. Illusion and legend are partial imaginations. Hallucination and myth are total imaginations. Illusion may vary in all shades between exact perception and hallucination. Legend can run all the way from exact history to pure myth. The difference between illusion and hallucination is sometimes imperceptible. The same is sometimes true of legend and myth. Sensory illusion is produced by an addition of images changing perception. Legend is also produced by an addition of images changing the historic personage or event. The only difference then is in the material used, in one case a datum of sense, a natural phenomenon, in the other a fact of history, a human event. The psychological genesis of legends being thus established in general what according to the facts are the unconscious processes that the imagination employs for creating them. We may distinguish two principal ones. The first process is a fusion or combination. The myth precedes the fact. The historical personage or event enters into the mold of a preexisting myth. It is necessary that the mythic form be fashioned before one may pour into it in a more or less fluid state, the historic metal. Imagination had created a solar mythology long before it could be incarnated by the Greeks, in Hercules and his exploits. There was historically a Roland, perhaps even an Arthur, but the greater part of the great deeds that the poetry of the Middle Ages attributes to them have been accomplished long before by mythological heroes whose very names have been forgotten. At one time, the man is completely hidden by the myth and becomes absolutely legendary. Again he assumes only an Oriole that transfigures him. This is exactly what occurs in the simpler phenomenon of sensory illusion. Now the real, the perception, is swamped by the images, is transformed, and the objective element reduced to almost nothing. At another time, the objective element remains master but with numerous deformations. The second process is idealization, which can act conjointly with the other. Popular imagination incarnates in a real man its ideal of heroism, of loyalty, of love, of piety, or of cowardice, cruelty, wickedness, and other abnormalities. The process is more complex. It presupposes in addition to mythic creation a labor of abstraction through which a dominating characteristic of the historic personage is chosen and everything else is suppressed, cast into oblivion. The ideal becomes a center of attraction about which is formed a legend, the romantic tale. Compare the Alexander, the Charlemagne, the Sid of the Middle Ages traditions to the character of history. Even much nearer to us, this process of extreme simplification, which the law of mental inertia or of least effort is sufficient to explain, always persists. Lucretia Borgia remains the type of debauchery, Henry IV of Good Fellowship, etc. The protests of historians and the documentary evidence that they produce avail nothing. The work of the imagination resists everything. To conclude, we have just passed over a period of mental evolution wherein the creative imagination reigns exclusively, explains everything, is sufficient for everything. It has been said that the imagination is a temporary derangement. It seems so to us, although it is often an effort toward wisdom, that is, toward the comprehension of things. It would be more correct to say, with Tyler, that it represents a state intermediate between that of a man of our time, prosaic and well-to-do, and that of a furious madman or of a man in the delirium of fever.