 Third Part Chapter 3 of Essay on the Creative Imagination. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Essay on the Creative Imagination by Thea Dill-Ribo. Third Part. The Principle Types of Imagination. Chapter 3 Mystic Imagination. Mystic Imagination deserves a place of honor, as it is the most complete and most daring of purely theoretic invention. Related to difluent imagination, especially in the latter's effective form, it has its own special characters which we shall try to separate out. Mysticism rests essentially on two modes of mental life, feeling which we need not study, and imagination which in the present instance represents the intellectual factor. Whether the part of consciousness that this state of mind requires and permits the imaginative in nature and nothing else, it is easy to find out. Indeed, the mystic considers the data of sense as vain appearances, or at the most as signs revealing and frequently laying bare the world of reality. He therefore finds no solid support in perception. On the other hand, he scorns reasoned thought, looking upon it as a cripple, halting half-way. He makes neither deductions nor inductions, and does not draw conclusions after the method of scientific hypotheses. The conclusion, then, is that he imagines, that is, that he realizes a construction in images that is for him knowledge of the world, and he never proceeds, and does not proceed here, save ex analogia hominus. 1. The root of the mystic imagination consists of a tendency to incarnate the ideal in the sensible, to discover a hidden idea in every material phenomenon or occurrence, to suppose in things a supernatural principle that reveals itself to whoever may penetrate to it. Its fundamental character, from which the others are derived, is thus a way of thinking symbolically, but the algebraist also thinks by means of symbols, yet it is not on that account a mystic. The nature of this symbolism must then be determined. In doing so, let us note, first of all, that our images, understanding the word image in its broadest sense, may be divided into two distinct groups. One, concrete images, earliest to be received, being representations of greatest power, residues of our perceptions, with which they have a direct and immediate relation. Two, symbolic images, or signs, of secondary acquirement, being representations of lesser power, having only indirect and mediate relations with things. Let us make the differences between the two clear by a few simple examples. Concrete images are, in the visual sphere, the recollection of faces, monuments, landscapes, etc. In the auditory sphere, the remembrance of the sounds of the sea, wind, the human voice, a melody, etc. In the motor sphere, the tossing one feels when resting after having been at sea. The illusions of those who have had limbs amputated, etc. Symbolic images are, in the visual order, written words, ideographic signs, etc. In the auditory order, spoken words are verbal images, in the motor order, significant gestures, and even better, the finger language of deaf mutes. Psychologically, these two groups are not identical in nature. Concrete images result from a persistence of perceptions, and draw from the latter all their validity. Symbolic images result from a mental synthesis. From an association of perception and image, or of image and image. If they have not the same origin, no more do they disappear in the same way, as is proven by very numerous examples of aphasia. The originality of mystic imagination is found in this fact. It transforms concrete images into symbolic images, and uses them as such. It extends this process even to perceptions, so that all manifestations of nature, or of human art, take on a value as signs or symbols. We shall later find numerous examples of this. Its mode of expression is necessarily synthetic. In itself, and because of the materials that it makes use of, it differs from the effective imagination previously described. It also differs from sensuous imagination, which makes use of forms, movements, colors, as having a value of their own, and from the imagination developing in the functions of words, through an analytic process. It has thus a rather special mark. Other characters are related to this one of symbolism, or else are derived from it. Namely, one, an external character, the manner of writing and of speaking, the mode of expression, whatever it is. The dominant style among mystics, says von Hartmann, is metaphorical in the extreme, now flat and ordinary, more often turgid and emphatic. Conscious of imagination betrays itself there, ordinarily, in the thought and in the form in which that is rendered. A sign of mysticism, which it has been believed may often be taken as an essential sign, is obscurity and unintelligibility of language. We find it in almost all those who have written. We might add that even in the plastic arts, symbolists and decadents have attempted, as far as possible, methods that merely indicate and suggest, or hint, instead of giving real definite objects. Which fact makes them inaccessible to the greater number of people. This characteristic of obscurity is due to two causes. First, mystical imagination is guided by the logic of feeling, which is purely subjective, full of leaps, jerks, and gaps. Again, it makes use of the language of images, especially visual images. A language whose ideal is vagueness, just as the ideal of verbal language is precision. All this can be summed up in a phrase, the subjective character inherent in the symbol. While seeming to speak like everyone else, the mystic uses a personal idiom. Things become symbols at the pleasure of his fancy. He does not use signs that have a fixed and universally admitted value. It is not surprising if we do not understand him. Two. An extraordinary abuse of analogy and comparison in their various forms, allegory, parable, etc. A natural consequence of a mode of thinking that proceeds by means of symbols, not concepts. It has been said, and rightly, that the only force that makes the vast field of mysticism fruitful is analogy. Basouay, a great opponent of mystics, has already remarked. One of the characteristics of these authors is the pushing of allegories to the extreme limit. With warm imagination, having at their disposal over excited senses, they are lavish of changes of expression and figures, hoping thereby to explain the world's mysteries. We know, to what inventive labours, the Vedas, the Bible, the Koran, and other sacred books have given rise. The distinction between literal and figurative sense, which is boundlessly arbitrary, has given commentators a freedom to imagine equal to that of the myth creators. All this is yet very reasonable, but the imagination left to itself stops at no extravagance. After having strained the meaning of expressions, the imaginative mind exercises itself on words and letters. Thus the Kabbalists would take the first or the last letters of the words composing a verse, and would form with them a new word, which was to reveal the hidden meaning. Again, they would substitute for the letters composing words the numbers that these letters represent in the Hebrew numerical system, and form the strangest combinations with them. In the Sohaar, all the letters of the alphabet come before God, each one begging to be chosen as the creative element of the universe. Let us also bring to mind numerical mysticism, different from numerical imagination here to forestudy. Here number is no longer the means that mind employs in order to soar in time and space. It becomes a symbol and material for fanciful construction. Here arise those sacred numbers teeming in the old Oriental religions, three the symbol of Trinity, four symbol of the cosmic elements, seven representing the moon and the planets, etc. In such notions may perhaps be best found the genesis of the present superstitions in regard to lucky and unlucky numbers, like the number 13, which have such persistence. Besides these fantastic meanings, there are more complicated inventions, calculating from the letters of one's name, the years of life of a sick person, the auspices of a marriage, etc. The Pythagorean philosophy, as Zeller has shown, is the systematic form of this mathematical mysticism, for which numbers are not symbols of quantitative relations, but the very essence of things. This exaggerated symbolism, which makes the works of mystics so fragile and which permits the mind to feed only on glimpses, has nevertheless an undeniable source of energy in its enchanting capacity to suggest. Without doubt, suggestion exists also in art, but much more weekly, for reasons that we shall indicate. 3. Another characteristic of mystic imagination is the nature and the great degree of belief accompanying it. We already know that when an image enters consciousness, even in the form of a recollection, of a purely passive reproduction, it appears at first, and for a moment, just as real as a precept. Much more so in the case of imaginative constructions, but this illusion has degrees, and with mystics it attains its maximum. In the scientific and practical world, the work of the imagination is accompanied by only a conditional and provisional belief. The construction in images must justify its existence, in the case of the scientist by explaining, and in the case of the man of affairs, by being embodied in an invention that is useful and answers its purpose. In the aesthetic field, creation is accompanied by a momentary belief. Fancy, remarks Gruess, is necessarily joined to appearance. Its special character does not consist merely in freedom in images. What distinguishes it from association and from memory is this, that what is merely representative is taken for the reality. The creative artist has a conscious illusion. Be wüste, zelb steichung. The aesthetic pleasure is an oscillation between the appearance and the reality. Mystic imagination presupposes an unconditioned and permanent belief. Mystics are believers in the true sense. They have faith. This character is peculiar to them, and has its origins in the intensity of the effective state that excites and supports this form of invention. Intuition becomes an object of knowledge only when clothed in images. There has been much dispute as to the objective value of those symbolic forms that are the working material of the mystic imagination. This contest does not concern us here, but we may make the positive statement that the constructive imagination has never obtained such a frequently hallucinatory form as in the mystics. Visions, touch illusions, external voices, inner and wordless voices, which we now regard as psychomotor hallucinations. All that we meet every moment in their works until they become common place. But as to the nature of these psychic states, there are only two solutions possible. One naturalistic that we shall indicate, the other supernatural, which most theologians hold, and which regards these phenomena as valid and true revelation. In either case, the mystic imagination seems to us naturally tending toward objectification. It tends outwardly by a spontaneous movement that places it on the same level as reality. Whichever conclusion we adopt, no imaginative type has the same great gift of energy and permanence in belief. Two, mystic imagination working along the lines peculiar to it produces cosmological, religious, and metaphysical constructions, a summary exposition of which will help us understand its true nature. One, the all embracing cosmological form is the conception of the world by a purely imaginative being. It is rare, abnormal, and is nowadays met with only in a few artists, dreamers, or morbidly aesthetic persons, as a kind of survival and temporary form. Thus Victor Hugo sees in each letter of the alphabet the pictured imitation of one of the objects essential to human knowledge. A is the head, the gable, the cross beam, the arch, arcs. D is the back, dos. E is the basement, the console, et cetera, so that man's house and its architecture, man's body and its structure, and then justice, music, the church, war, harvesting, geometry, mountains, et cetera, all that is comprised in the alphabet through the mystic virtue of form. Even more radical is Gerard de Neveu, who moreover was frequently subject to hallucinations. At certain times everything takes on for me a new aspect. Secret voices come out of plant, tree, animals, from the humblest insects, to caution and encourage me. Conscious and lifeless objects have mysterious turns, the meaning of which I understand. To others, contemporaries, their real world is a fairyland. The Middle Ages, a period of lively imagination and slight rational culture overflowed in this direction. Many thought that on this earth everything is a sign, a figure, and that the visible is worth nothing except insofar as it covers up the invisible. Plants, animals, there is nothing that does not become subject for interpretation. All the members of the body are emblems. The head is Christ. The hairs are the saints. The legs are the apostles. The eye is contemplation, et cetera. There are extant special books in which all that is seriously explained. Who does not know the symbolism of the cathedrals, and the vagaries to which it has given rise? The towers are prayer. The columns the apostles. The stones and the mortar. The assembly of the faithful. The windows are the organs of sense. The buttresses and abutments are the divine assistance, and so on, to the minutest detail. In our day of intense intellectual development, it is not given to many to return sincerely to a mental condition that recalls that of the earliest times. Even if we come near it, we still find a difference. Primitive man puts life, consciousness, activity into everything. Symbolism does likewise, but it does not believe in an autonomous, distinct, particular soul, inherent in each thing. The absence of abstraction and generalization, characteristic of humanity in its early beginnings, when it peoples the world with myriads of animate beings, has disappeared. Every source of activity, revealed by symbols, appears as a fragmentary manifestation. It descends from a single, primary, personal or impersonal spring. At the root of this imaginative construction, there is always either theism or pantheism. 2. Mystical imagination has often and erroneously been identified with religious imagination. Although it may be held that every religion, no matter how dull and poor, presupposes a latent mysticism, because it supposes an unknown beyond the reach of sense, there are religions very slightly mystical, in fact. Those of savages, strictly utilitarian, among barbarians, the martial cults of the Germans and the Aztecs, among civilized races, Rome and Greece. If we leave out oriental influences and the mysteries, which according to Aristotle were not dogmatic teaching, but a show, an assemblance of symbols, acting by evocation or suggestion, following the special mode of mystic imagination that we already know. However, even though the mystic imagination is not confined to the bounds of religious thought, history shows us that there it attains its completest expansion. To be brief, and to keep strictly within our subject, let us note that in the completely developed great religions there has arisen opposition between the rationalists and the imaginative expounders, between the dogmatists and the mystics. The former rational architects, built by means of abstract ideas, logical relations and methods, by deduction and the others, imaginative builders, care little for this learned magnificence. They excel in vivid creations because the moving energy within them is in their feelings, in their hearts, because they speak a language made up of concrete images, and consequently, their wholly symbolic speech is at the same time an original construction. The mystic imagination is a transformation of the mythic imagination, the myth changing into symbols. They cannot escape the necessity of this. On the other hand, the effective states cannot longer remain vague, diffuse, purely internal. They must become fixed in time and space, and condensed into images, forming a personality, legend, event, or right. Thus, Buddha represents the tendencies toward pity and resignation, summing up the aspirations for final rest. On the other hand, abstract ideas, pure concepts, being repugnant to the mystic's nature, it is also necessary that they take on images through which they may be seen. For example, the relations between God and man in the various forms of communion, the idea of divine protection in incarnations, mediators, et cetera. But the images made use of are not dry and colorless, like words that by long use have lost all direct representative value and are merely marks or tags. Being symbolic, that is, concrete, they are, as we have seen, direct substitutes for reality, and they differ as much from words as sketching and drawing differ from our alphabetical signs, which are, however, their derivatives or abbreviations. It must, however, be noted that if the mystic fact is a naive effort to apprehend the absolute, a mode of symbolic, not dialectic thinking that lives on symbols and finds in them the only fitting expression, it seems that this imaginative phase has been to some minds only in internal form, for they have attempted to go beyond it through ecstasy, aspiring to grasp the ultimate principle as pure unity without image and without form, which metaphysical realism hopes to attain by other methods and by a different route. One at once calls to mind Plotinus, whose highest philosophy is a kind of indescribable ecstasy. However interesting they may be for psychology, these intemps, luring one on further and further by their seeming or real elimination of every symbolic element, become foreign to our subject, and we cannot consider them at greater length here. 3. History shows that philosophy has done nothing but transform ideas of mystic production, substituting for the form of images and undemonstrated statements the form of assertions of a rational system. This declaration of a metaphysician saves us from dwelling on the subject long. When we seek the difference between religious and metaphysical or philosophical symbolism, we find in it the nature of the constitutive elements. Turned in the direction of religion, mystic symbolism presupposes two principal elements, imagination and feeling. Turned into a metaphysical direction, it presupposes imagination and a very small rational element. This substitution involves appreciable deviation from the primitive type. The construction is of greater logical regularity. Besides, and this is the important characteristic, the subject matter, though still resembling symbolic images, tends to become concepts. Such are vivified abstractions, allegorical beings, hereditary entities of spirits and of gods. In short, metaphysical mysticism is a transition form towards metaphysical rationalism, although these two tendencies have always been inimical in the history of philosophy, just as in the history of religion. In this imaginative plan of the world, we may recognize stages according to the increasing weakness of the systems, depending on the number and quality of the hypotheses. For example, the progression is apparent between Plotinus and the frenzied creations of the Gnostics and the Caballists. With the latter, we come into a world of unbridled fancy, which, in place of human romances, invents cosmic romances. Here appear the allegorical beings mentioned above, half concept, half symbol, the ten sefiros of the cabala, immutable forms of being, the syzygies or couples of Gnosticism, soul and reflection, depth and silence, reason and life, inspiration and truth, etc. The Absolute manifesting itself by the unfolding of fifty-two attributes, each unfolding comprising seven eons, corresponding to the three hundred and sixty-four days of the year, etc. It would be wearisome to follow these extravagant thoughts, which though the learned may treat them with some respect, have for the psychologist only the interest of pathologic evidence. Moreover, this form of mystic imagination presents too little that it's new for us to speak of it without repeating ourselves. To conclude, the mystic imagination in its alluring freedom, its variety and its richness, is second to no form, not even to aesthetic invention, which, according to common prejudice, is the type par excellence. Following the most venturesome methods of analogy, it has constructed conceptions of the world made up almost wholly of feelings and images, symbolic architectures. Chapter 3 Third 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. Third Part. The Principle Types of Imagination. Chapter 4. The Scientific Imagination. It is quite generally recognized that imagination is indispensable in all sciences, that without it we could only copy, repeat, imitate, that it is a stimulus driving us onward and launching us into the unknown. If there does exist a very widespread prejudice to the contrary, if many hold that scientific culture throttles imagination, we must look for the explanation of this view first. In the equivocation pointed out several times that makes the essence of the creative imagination consist of images, which are here most often replaced by abstractions or extracts of things, whence it results that the created work does not have the living forms of religion, of art, or even a mechanical invention, and then in the rational requirements regulating the development of the creative faculty. It may not wander at will. In either case, its end is determined, and in order to exist, that is, in order to be accepted, the invention must become subject to pre-established rules. This variety of imagination being, after the aesthetic form, the one that psychologists have best described, we may therefore be brief. A complete study of the subject, however, remains yet to be made. Indeed, we may remark that there is no scientific imagination in general, that its form must vary according to the nature of the science, and that consequently, it really resolves itself into a certain number of genera and even of species. Whence arises the need of monographs, each one of which should be the work of a competent man? No one will question that mathematicians have a way of thinking all their own. But even this is too general. The arithmetician, the algebraist, and more generally the analyst, in whom invention obtains in the most abstract form of discontinuous functions, symbols and their relations, cannot imagine like the geometrician. One may well speak of the ideal figures of geometry, the empirical origin of which is no longer anywhere contested. But we cannot escape from representing them as somehow in space. Does anyone think that Manj, the creator of descriptive geometry, who by his work has aided builders, architects, mechanics, stonecutters in their labors, could have the same type of imagination as the mathematician who has been given up all his life to the theory of number? Here then are at least two well marked varieties, to say nothing of mixed forms. The physicist's imagination is necessarily more concrete since he is incessantly obliged to refer to the data of sense or to that totality of visual, tactile, motor, acoustic, thermic, et cetera, representations that we term the properties of matter. Our eye, says Tindall, cannot see sound waves contract and dilate, but we construct them in thought, that is, by means of visual images. The same remarks are true of chemists. The founders of the atomic theory certainly saw atoms and pictured them in the mind's eye and their arrangement in compound bodies. The complexity of the imagination increases still more in the geologist, the botanist, the zoologist. It approaches more and more with its increasing details to the level of perception. The physician in whom science becomes also an art has need of visual representations of the exterior and interior, microscopic and macroscopic, of the various forms of disease conditions. Auditory representations, auscultation, tactile representations, touch, reverberation, et cetera. And let us also add that we are not speaking merely of the diagnosis of diseases, which is a matter of reproductive imagination, but of the discovery of a new pathologic entity proven and made certain from the symptoms. Lastly, if we do not hesitate to give a very broad extension to the term scientific and apply it also to invention and social matters, we shall see that the latter is still more exacting, for one must represent to oneself not only the elements of the past and of the present, but in addition, construct a picture of the future, according to probable inductions and deductions. It might be objected that the foregoing enumeration proves a great variety in the content of creative imagination, but not in the imagination itself, and that nothing has proven that under all these various aspects, there does not exist a so-called scientific imagination that always remains identical. This position is untenable, for we have seen above. See Part I, Chapter II. That there exists no creative instinct in general, no one mere indeterminate creative power, but only wants, that in certain cases, excite novel combinations of images. The nature of the separable materials, then, is a factor of the first importance. It is determining, and indicates to the mind the direction in which it is turned, and all treason in this regard is paid for by aborted construction, by painful labor for some petty result. Invention, separated from what gives it body and soul, is nothing but a pure abstraction. The monographs called for above would then be a not-unneeded work. It is only from them collectively that the role of the imagination in the sciences could be completely shown, and we might, by abstraction, separate out the characters common to all varieties, the essential marks of this imaginative type. Mathematics aside, all the sciences dealing with facts, from astronomy to sociology, suppose three moments, namely observation, conjecture, verification. The first depends on external and internal sense, the second on the creative imagination, the third on rational operations, although the imagination is not entirely barred from it. In order to study its influence on scientific development, we shall study it, A, in the sciences and process of formation, B, in the established sciences, C, in the processes of verification. Two. It has often been said that the perfection of a science is measured by the amount of mathematics it requires. We might say, conversely, that its lack of completeness is measured by the amount of imagination that it includes. It is a psychological necessity, where the human mind cannot explain or prove there it invents, preferring a semblance of knowledge to its total absence. Compare the preface to Kant's critique of pure reason. Our reason is always troubled with questions which cannot be ignored because they spring from the very nature of reason and which cannot be answered because they transcend the powers of human reason. Imagination fulfills the function of a substitute. It furnishes a subjective, conjectural solution in place of an objective, rational explanation. This substitution has degrees. The sway of the imagination is almost complete in the pseudo-sciences, alchemy, astrology, magic, occultism, et cetera, which it would be more proper to call embryonic sciences, for they were the beginnings of more exact disciplines and their fancies have not been without use. In the history of science, this is the golden age of the creative imagination, corresponding to the myth-making period already studied. Two. The semi-sciences, incompletely proved. Certain portions of biology, psychology, sociology, et cetera. Although they show a regression of imaginative explanation repulsed by the hitherto absent or insufficient experimentation, nevertheless abound in hypotheses that succeed, contradict, destroy one another. It is a commonplace truism that does not need to be dwelt on. They furnish ad libitim examples of what has been rightly termed scientific mythology. Aside from the quantity of imagination expended, often without great profit, there is another character to be noted, the nature of the belief that accompanies imaginative creation. We have already seen repeatedly that the intensity of the imaginary conception is in direct ratio to the accompanying belief, or rather that the two phenomena are really one, merely the two aspects of one in the same state of consciousness. But faith, that is the adherence of the mind to an undemonstrated assertion is here at its maximum. There are in the sciences hypotheses that are not believed in, that are preserved for their didactic usefulness because they furnish a simple and convenient method of explanation. Thus, the properties of matter, heat, electricity, magnetism, et cetera, regarded by physicists as distinct qualities even in the first half of the last century, the two electric fluids, cohesion, affinity, et cetera in chemistry, these are some of the convenient and admitted expressions to which, however, we attach no explanatory value. There is also, to be mentioned, the hypothesis held as an approximation of reality. This is the truly scientific position. It is accompanied by a provisional and ever-revocable belief. This is admitted, in principle at least, by all scientists and has been put into practice by many of them. Lastly, there is the hypothesis regarded as the truth itself, one that is accompanied by a complete, absolute belief. But daily observation and history show us that in the realm of embryonic and ill-proven sciences, this disposition is more flourishing than anywhere else. The less proof there is, the more we believe. This attitude, however wrong from the standpoint of the logician, seems to the psychologist natural. The mind clings tenaciously to the hypothesis because the latter is its own creation or because in adopting it, it seems to the mind that it should have itself discovered the hypothesis, so much thus the latter harmonize with its inner states. Let us take the hypothesis of evolution, for example. We need not mention its high philosophical bearing and the immense influence that it exerts on almost all forms of human thought. Nevertheless, it still remains a hypothesis. But for many, it is an indisputable and inviolable dogma raised far above all controversy. They accept it with the uncompromising fervor of believers, a new proof of the underlying connection between imagination and belief. They increase and decrease pari-pasu. Three, should we assign as belonging solely to the imagination every invention or discovery in a word whatever is new in the well-organized sciences that form a body of solid, constantly broadening doctrine? It is a hard question. That which raises scientific knowledge above popular knowledge is the use of an experimental method and rigorous reasoning processes. But is not induction and deduction going from the known to the unknown? Without desiring to depreciate the method and its value, it must nevertheless be admitted that it is preventive, not inventive. It resembles, says Kondalak, the parapets of a bridge which do not help the traveler to walk but keep him from falling over. It is of value, especially as a habit of mind. People have wisely discourced on the methods of invention. There are none, but for which fact we could manufacture inventors just as we make mechanics and watchmakers. It is the imagination that invents, that provides the rational faculties with their materials, with the position and even the solution of their problems. Reasoning is only a means for control and proof. It transforms the work of the imagination into acceptable logical results. If one has not imagined beforehand, the logical method is aimless and useless for we cannot reason concerning the completely unknown. Even when a problem seems to advance towards solution wholly through the reason, the imagination ceaselessly intervenes in the form of a succession of groupings, trials, guesses and possibilities that it proposes. The function of method is to determine its value to accept or reject it. In the rare notes that he has left, James Watt writes that one afternoon he had gone out for a stroll on the green of Glasgow and his thoughts were absorbed with the experiments in which he was busy, trying to prevent the cooling of the cylinder. The thought then came to him that steam, being an elastic fluid, should expand and be precipitated in a space formerly void and having made a vacuum in a separate vessel and open communication between the steam of the cylinder and the vacant space, we see what should follow. Thus having imagined the masterpiece of his discovery, he enumerates the processes that employed in turn allowed him to perfect it. Let us show by a few examples that conjecture, the work of the combining imagination, is at the root of the most diverse scientific inventions. Every mathematical invention is at first only an hypothesis that must be demonstrated, that is, must be brought under previously established general principles. Prior to the decisive moment of rational verification, it is only a thing imagined. In a conversation concerning the place of imagination in scientific work, says Liebik, a great French mathematician expressed the opinion to me that the greater part of mathematical truth is acquired not through deduction, but through the imagination. He might have said all the mathematical truths without being wrong. We know that Pascal discovered the 32nd proposition of Euclid all by himself. It is true that it has been concluded, wrongly perhaps, that he had also discovered all the earlier ones, the order followed by the Greek geometrician not being necessary and not excluding other arrangements. However it be, reasoning alone was not enough for that discovery. Many people, says Neville, of whom I am one, might have thought hard all their lives without finding out the 32 propositions of Euclid. This fact alone shows clearly the difference between invention and demonstration, imagination and reason. In the sciences dealing with facts, all the best established experimental truths have passed through a conjectural stage. History permits no doubt on this point. What makes it appear otherwise is the fact that for centuries there has gradually come to be formed a body of solid belief, making a hole stored away in classic treatises from which we learned from childhood and in which they seem to be arranged of themselves. We are not told of the series of checks and failures through which they have passed. Innumerable are the inventions that remained for a long time in a state of conjecture, matters of pure imagination, because various circumstances did not permit them to take shape, to be demonstrated and verified. Thus in the thirteenth century Roger Bacon had a very clear idea of a construction on rails similar to our railroads, of optical instruments that would permit, as does the telescope, to see very far and to discover the invisible. It is even claimed that he must have foreseen the phenomena of interferences, the demonstration of which had to be awaited ten centuries. On the other hand there are guesses that have met success without much delay, but in which the imaginative phase that of the invention preceding all demonstration is easy to locate. We know that Tycho Bray, lacking inventive genius but rich in capacity for exact observation, met Kepler, an adventurous spirit. Together the two made a complete scientist. We have seen how Kepler, guided by a preconceived notion of the harmony of the spheres, after many trials and corrections, ended by discovering his laws. Copernicus recognized expressly that his theory was suggested to him by an hypothesis of Pythagoras, that of a revolution of the earth about a central fire assumed to be in a fixed position. Newton imagined his hypothesis of gravitation from the year 1666 on, then abandoned it, the result of his calculations disagreeing with observation. Finally he took it up again after a lapse of a few years, having obtained from Paris the new measure of the terrestrial meridian that permitted him to prove his guess. In relating his discoveries, Lavossier is lavish in expressions that leave no doubt as to their originally conjectural character. He suspects that the air of the atmosphere is not a simple thing but is composed of two very different substances. He presumes that the permanent alkalis, potash, soda, and the earth's lime, magnesia should not be considered simple substances. And he adds, what I present here is at the most, no more than a mere conjecture. We have mentioned above the case of Darwin. Besides, the history of scientific discoveries is full of facts of this sort. The passage from the imaginative to the rational phase may be slow or sudden. For eight months, says Kepler, I have seen a first glimmer for three months daylight. For the last week I see the sunlight of the most wonderful contemplation. On the other hand, Aoui drops a bit of crystallized calcium spar and looking at one of the broken prisms cries out, all is found! And immediately verifies his quick intuition in regard to the true nature of crystallization. We have already indicated the psychological reasons for these differences. Underneath all the reasoning, inductions, deductions, calculations, demonstrations, methods, and logical apparatus of every sort, there is something animating them that is not understood. That is the work of that complex operation, the constructive imagination. To conclude, the hypothesis is a creation of the mind invested with a provisional reality that may, after verification, become permanent. False hypotheses are characterized as imaginary by which designation is meant that they have not become freed from the first state. But for psychology they are different neither in their origin nor in their nature from those scientific hypotheses that, subjected to the power of reason or of experiment, have come out victorious. Besides, in addition to abortive hypotheses, there are dethroned ones. What theory was more clinging, more fascinating in its applications, than that of Flaugistan? Kant praised it as one of the greatest discoveries of the 18th century. The development of the sciences is replete with these downfalls. They are psychological regressions. The invention, considered for a time as adequate to reality, decays, returns to the imaginative phase whence it seems to have emerged and remains pure imagination. Four, imagination is not absent from the third stage of scientific research in demonstration and experimentation, but here we must be brief. One, because it passes to a minor place yielding its rank to other modes of investigation, and two, because this study would have to become doubly employed with the practical and mechanical imagination, which will occupy our attention later. The imagination is here only an auxiliary, a useful instrument serving, one, in the sciences of reasoning, to discover ingenious methods of demonstration, stratagems for avoiding or overcoming difficulties. Two, in the experimental sciences for inventing methods of research or of control, whence its analogy above mentioned to the practical imagination. Furthermore, the reciprocal influence of these two forms of imagination is a matter of common observation. A scientific discovery permits the invention of new instruments. The invention of new instruments makes possible experiments that are increasingly more complicated and delicate. One remark further, this constructive imagination at the third stage is the only one met with in many scientists. They lack genius for invention, but discover details, additions, corrections, improvements. A recent author distinguishes, A, those who have created the hypothesis, prepared the experiments, and imagined the appropriate apparatus. B, those who have imagined the hypothesis and the experiment, but used means already invented. And C, those who, having found the hypothesis made and demonstrated, have thought out a new method of verification. The scientific imagination becomes poorer as we follow it down this scale, which, however, bears no relation to exactness of reasoning and firmness of method. Neglecting species and varieties, we may reduce the fundamental characters of the scientific imagination to the following. For its material, it has concepts. The degree of abstraction of which varies with the nature of the science. It employs only those associational forms that have an objective basis. Although its mission is to form new combinations, the discoveries consisting of the relation of ideas capable of being united, which hitherto have been isolated. Laplace. Here is an example in confirmation, taken from Declow's book on Pasteur. Herschel established a relation between the crystalline structure of quartz and the rotary power of the substance. Later on, Bio established it for sugar, tartaric acid, et cetera. That is, for substances in solution, once he concluded that the rotary power is due to the form of the molecule itself, not to the arrangement of the molecules in relation to one another. Pasteur discovered a relation between molecular dissimetry and hemiodry, and the study of hemiodry in crystals led him logically to that affirmation and spontaneous generation. All association with an effective basis is strictly excluded. It aims toward objectivity. In its conjectural construction, it attempts to reproduce the order and connection of things. Wents its natural affinity for realistic art, which is midway between fiction and reality. It is unifying, and so just the opposite of the aesthetic imagination, which is rather developmental. It puts forward the master idea, Claude Bernard's idea directrice, a center of attraction and impulse that enlivens the entire work. The principle of unity, without which no creation succeeds, is nowhere more visible than in the scientific imagination. Even when illusory, it is useful. Pasteur, scrupulous scientist that he was, did not hesitate to say, the experimenter's illusions are a part of his power. They are the preconceived ideas serving as guides for him. Five, it does not seem to me wrong to regard the imagination of the metaphysician as a variety of the scientific imagination. Both arise from one and the same requirement. Several times before this, we have emphasized this point that the various forms of imagination are not the work of an alleged creative instinct, but that each particular one has arisen from a special need. The scientific imagination has for its prime motive the need of partial knowledge or explanation. The metaphysical imagination has for its prime motive the need of a total or complete explanation. The latter is no longer an endeavor on a restricted group of phenomena, but a conjecture as to the totality of things as aspiration toward completely unified knowledge, a need of final explanation that, for certain minds, is just as imperious as any other need. This necessity is expressed by the creation of a cosmic or human hypothesis constructed after the type and methods of scientific hypotheses, but radically subjective in its origin, only apparently objective. It is a rationalized myth. The three moments requisite for the constitution of a science are found here, but in a modified form, reflection replaces observation. The choice of the hypothesis becomes all important, and its application to everything corresponds to scientific proof. One, the first moment or preparatory stage does not belong to our subject. It requires, however, a word in passing. In all science, whether well or ill-established, firm or weak, we start from facts derived from observation or experiment. Here, facts are replaced by general ideas. The terminus of every science is, then, the starting point of philosophical speculation. Metaphysics begins where each separate science ends, and the limits of the latter are theories, hypotheses. These hypotheses become working material for metaphysics, which, consequently, is a hypothesis built on hypotheses. A conjecture grafted on conjecture, a work of imagination superimposed on works of imagination. Its principal source, then, is imagination, to which reflection applies itself. Metaphysicians, indeed, hold that the object of their researches, far from being symbolic and abstract, as in science, or fictitious and imaginary as in art, is the very essence of things, absolute reality. Unfortunately, they have never proven that it suffices to seek in order to find and to wish in order to get. Two, the second stage is critical. It is concerned with finding the principle that rules and explains everything. In the invention of his theory, the metaphysician gives his measure and permits us to value his imaginative power. But the hypothesis, which in science is always provisional and revocable, is here the supreme reality, the fixed position, the inconclusive quid. The choice of the principle depends on several causes. The chief of these is the creator's individuality. Every metaphysician has a point of view, a personal way of contemplating and interpreting the totality of things, a belief that tends to recruit adherents. Secondary causes are the influence of earlier systems, the sum of acquired knowledge, the social milieu, the variable predominance of religions, sciences, morality, aesthetic culture. Without troubling ourselves with classifications, otherwise very numerous, into which we may group systems, idealism, materialism, monism, et cetera, we shall, for our purpose, divide metaphysicians into the imaginative and rational, according as the imagination is superior to the reason, or the reason rules the imagination. The differences between these two types of mind, already clearly shown in the choice of the hypothesis, are proven in its development. Three, the fundamental principle, indeed, must come out of its state of involution and justify its universal validity by explaining everything. This is the third moment when the scientific process of verification is replaced by a process of construction. All imaginative metaphysics have a dynamic basis. For example, the Platonic ideas, Leibniz mononology, the nature philosophy of shelling, Schopenhauer's will, and Hartman's unconscious, the mystics, the systems that assume a world soul, et cetera. Semi-abstract, semi-poetic constructions, they are permeated with imagination, not only in the general conception, but also in the numberless details of its application. Such are the fulgurations of Leibniz, those very rich digressions of Schopenhauer, et cetera. They have the fascination of a work of art as much as that of science, and this is no longer questioned by metaphysicians themselves. They are living things. Rational metaphysics, on the other hand, have a chilly aspect, which brings them nearer the abstract sciences. Such are most of the mechanical conceptions, the Hegelian dialectic, Spinoza's construction, more geometrical, the summa of the Middle Ages. These are buildings of concepts solidly cemented together with logical relations. But art is not wholly absent. It is seen in the systematic concatenation, in the beautiful ordering, in the symmetry of division, in the skill with which the generative principle is constantly brought in and showing it ever-present, explaining everything. It has been possible to compare these systems with the architecture of the Gothic cathedrals, in which the dominant idea is incessantly repeated in the numberless details of the construction and in the branching multiplicity of ornamentation. Further, whatever view we adopt as to its ultimate value, it must be recognized that the imagination of the great metaphysicians by the originality and fearlessness of its conceptions, by its skill in perfecting all parts of its work is inferior to no other form. It is equal to the highest if it does not indeed surpass them. End of third part, chapter four. Third part, chapter five of Essay on the Creative Imagination. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Essay on the Creative Imagination by Theodil Ribot. Third part, The Principle Types of Imagination. Chapter five, The Practical and Mechanical Imagination. The study of the practical imagination is not without difficulties. First of all, it has not hitherto attracted psychologists so that we enter the field at random and wander unguided in an unexplored region. But the principle obstacle is in the lack of determination of this form of imagination and in the absence of boundary lines. Where does it begin and where does it end? Penetrating all our life even in its least details, it is likely to lead us astray through the diversity, often insignificant of its manifestations. To convince ourselves of this fact, let us take a man regarded as least imaginative. Subtract the moments when his consciousness is busyed with perceptions, memories, emotions, logical thought and action. All the rest of his mental life must be put down to the credit of the imagination. Even thus limited, this function is not a negligible quantity. It includes the plans and constructions for the future and all the dreams of escaping from the present. And there is no man but makes such. This had to be mentioned on account of its very triteness because it is often forgotten. And consequently, the field of the creative imagination is unduly restricted, being limited little by little to exceptional cases. It must however be recognized that these small facts teach us little. Consequently, following our adopted procedure, dwelling longest on the clearer and more evident cases in which the work of creating appears distinctly, we shall rapidly pass over the lower forms of the practical imagination in order to dwell on the higher form, technical or mechanical imagination. One, if we take an ordinary imaginative person, understanding by this expression, one whom his nature singles out for no special invention, we see that he excels in the small inventions, adapted for a moment, for a detail, for the petty needs constantly arising in human life. It is a fruitful, ingenious, industrious mind, one that knows how to take hold of things. The active, enterprising American, capable of passing from one occupation to another according to circumstances, opportunity, or imagined profits furnishes a good example. If we descend from this form of sane imagination toward the morbid forms, we meet first the unstable, knights of industry, hunters of adventure, inventors frequently of questionable means, people hungry for change, always imagining what they haven't, trying in turn all professions, becoming workmen, soldiers, sailors, merchants, et cetera, not from expediency, but from natural instability. Further down are found the acknowledged freaks at the brink of insanity, who are but the extreme form of the unstable, and who, after having wasted haphazard much useless imagination and in an insane asylum or worse still. Let us consider these three groups together. Let us eliminate the intellectual and moral qualities characteristic of each group, which establish notable differences between them, and let us consider only their inventive capacity as applied to practical life. One character common to all is mobility, the tendency to change. It is a matter of current observation that men of lively imagination are changeable. Common opinion, which is also the opinion of moralists and of most psychologists, attributes this mobility, this instability, to the imagination. This, in my opinion, is just upside down. It is not because they have an active imagination that they are changeable, but it is because they are changeable that their imagination is active. We thus return to the motor basis of all creative work. Each new or merely modified disposition becomes a center of attraction and pull. Doubtless the inner push is a necessary condition, but it is not sufficient. If there were not within them a sufficient number of concrete, abstract, or semi-abstract representations susceptible of various combinations, nothing would happen. But the origin of invention and of its frequent or constant changes of direction lies in the emotional and motor constitution, not in the quantity or quality of representations. I shall not dwell longer on a subject already treated. See above Part 1, Chapter 2. But it was proper to show in passing that common opinion starts from an erroneous conception of the primary conditions of invention, whether great or small, speculative or practical. In the immense empire of the practical imagination superstitious beliefs form a goodly province. What is superstition? By what positive signs do we recognize it? An exact definition and a sure criterion are impossible. It is a flitting notion that depends on the times, places and nature of minds. Has it not often been said that the religion of one is superstition to another and vice versa? This too is only a single instance from among many others for the common opinion that restricts superstition within the bounds of religious faith is an incomplete view. There are peculiar beliefs far into every dogma and every religious feeling from which the most radical free thinker is not exempt. For example, the superstitions of gamblers. Indeed, at the bottom of all such beliefs, we always find the vague, semi-conscious notion of a mysterious power, destiny, fate, chance. Without taking the trouble to set arbitrary limits, let us take the facts as they are without possible question. That is, imaginary creations, subjective fancies, having reality only for those admitting them. Even a summary collection of past and present superstitions would fill a library. Aside from those having a frankly religious mark, others almost as numerous surround civil life, birth, marriage, death, appearance and healing of diseases, dies faste et qui ne faste, propitious or fateful words, auguries drawn from the meeting or acts of certain animals. The list would be endless. All that can be attempted here is a determination of the principal condition of that state of mind, the psychology of which is in the last analysis and very simple. We shall thus answer in an indirect and incomplete manner the question of criterion. First, since we hold that the origin of all imaginative creation is a need, a desire, a tendency, where then is the origin of that inexhaustible font of fancies? In the instinct for individual preservation, oriented in the direction of the future, man seeks to divine future events and by various means to act on the order of things to modify it for his own advantage or to appease his evil fate. As for the mental mechanism that, set in motion by this desire, produces the vain images of the superstitious, it implies one, a deep idea of causality reduced to a post hoc ergo proctor hoc. Herodotus says of the Egyptian priests, they have discovered more prodigies and presages than any other people because when some extraordinary thing appears, they noted as well as all the events following it so that if a similar prodigy appears anew, they expect to see the same events reproduced. It is the hypothesis of an indissoluble association between two or more events assumed without verification, without criticism. This manner of thinking depends on the weakness of the logical faculties or on the excessive influence of the feelings. Two, the abuse of reasoning by analogy. This great artisan of the imagination is satisfied with likenesses so vague and agreements so strange that it dares everything. Resemblance is no longer a quality of things imposed on the mind, but an hypothesis of the mind imposed on things. Astrology groups into constellations, stars that are billions of miles apart, believes that it discovers there an animal shape, human or any other, and deduces there from alleged influences. This star is reddish, Mars, sign of blood. This other is of a pure, brilliant, silvery light, Venus, or livid, Saturn, and acts in a different way. We know what clever structures of conjectures and prognoses have been built upon these foundations. Need we mention the middle-aged practice of charms, which even in our day still has adherence among cultured people, the physicians of the time of Charles II, says Lang, gave their patients mummy powder, pulverized mummies, because the mummies having lasted a long time must prolong life. Gold in solution has been esteemed as a medicine. Gold, being a perfect substance, should produce perfect health. In order to get rid of a disease, nothing is more frequent among primitive men than to picture the sick person on wood or on the ground, and to strike the injured part with an arrow or knife in order to annihilate the sickening principle. Three, finally, there is the magic influence ascribed to certain words. It is the triumph of the theory of Namana Numana. We need not return to it. But the working of the mind on words, erecting them into entities, conferring life and power on them in a word, the activity that creates myths and is the final basis of all constructive imagination, appears also here. If this book were not merely an essay, we should have had to study language as an instrument of the practical life in its relations to the creative imagination, especially the function of analogy in the extension and transformation of the meanings of words. Works on linguistics are full of evidence on this point. One could do better still by attending exclusively to the vernacular, to slang, which shows us creative force in action. Slang, says one philologist, has the property of figuring, expressing, and picturing language. With it, however low its origin, one could reconstruct a people or a society. Its principle not only means our metaphor and allegory. It lends itself equally to methods that degrade or ennobl existing words, but with a very marked preference for the worse or degrading meanings. Two, up to this point, we have considered the practical imagination only in its somewhat petty aspect and small inventions or as semi-morbid and superstitious fancies. We now come to its higher form, mechanical invention. This subject has not been studied by psychologists. Not that they have misunderstood its role, which is after all very evident, but they limit themselves to speak of it cursorily without emphasizing it. In order to appreciate its importance, I see no other way than to put ourselves face to face with the works that it has produced, to question the history of discovery and useful arts, to profit by the disclosures of inventors and their biographers. Of a work of this kind, which would be very long because the materials are scattered, we can give here only a rough sketch, merely to take there from what is of interest for psychology and what teaches us in regard to the characters peculiar to this type of imagination. The erroneous view that opposes imagination to the useful and claims that they are mutually exclusive is so widespread and so persistent that we shall seem too many to be expressing a paradox when we say that if we could strike the balance of the imagination that man has spent and made permanent in aesthetic life on the one hand and in technical and mechanical invention on the other, the balance would be in favor of the latter. This assertion, however, will not seem paradoxical to those who have considered the question. Why, then, the view above mentioned? Why are people inclined to believe that our present subject, if not entirely foreign to the imagination, is only an impoverished form of it? I account for it by the following reasons. Aesthetic imagination, when fully complete, is simply fixed, that is, remains a fictitious matter recognized as such. It has a frankly subjective personal character, arbitrary in its choice of means. A work of art, a poem, a novel, a drama, an opera, a picture, a statue might have been otherwise than it is. It is possible to modify the general plan to add or reduce an episode to change an ending. The novelist who in the course of his work changes his characters, the dramatic author who, in deference to public sentiment, substitutes a happy denouement in place of a catastrophe, furnished naive testimony of this freedom of imagination. Moreover, artistic creation, expressing itself in words, sounds, lines, forms, colors, is cast in a mold that allows it only a feeble material reality. The mechanical imagination is objective. It must be embodied, take on a form that gives it a place side by side with products of nature. It is arbitrary, neither in its choice nor in its means. It is not a free creature having its end in itself. In order to succeed, it is subjected to rigorous physical conditions, to a determinism. It is at this cost that it becomes a reality. And as we instinctively establish an antithesis between the imaginary and the real, it seems that the mechanical invention is outside the realm of the imagination. Moreover, it requires the constant intervention of calculation, of reasoning, and lastly, of a manual operation of supreme importance. We may say without exaggerating that the success of many mechanical creations depends on the skillful manipulation of materials. But this last moment, because it is decisive, should not make us forget its antecedents, especially the initial moment, which is for psychology, similar to all other instances of invention when the idea arises, tending to become objective. Otherwise, the differences here pointed out between the two forms of imagination, aesthetic and mechanical, are but relative. The former is not independent of technical apprenticeship, often of long duration. For example, in music, sculpture, painting. As for the latter, we should not exaggerate its determinism. Often the same end can be reached by different inventions, by means differently imagined, through different mental constructions. And it follows that, after all allowances are made, these differently realized imaginations are equally useful. The difference between the two types is found in the nature of the need or desire stimulating the invention, and secondly, in the nature of the materials employed. Others have confounded two distinct things, liberty of imagination, which belongs rather to aesthetic creation, and quality and power of imagination, which may be identical in both cases. I have questioned certain inventors very skillful in mechanics, addressing myself to those, preferably, whom I knew to be strangers to any preconceived psychological theory. Their replies agree, and prove that the birth and development of mechanical invention are very strictly like those found in other forms of constructive imagination. As an example, I cite the following statement of an engineer, which I render literally. The so-called creative imagination surely proceeds in very different ways, according to temperament, aptitudes, and in the same individual, following the mental disposition, the milieu. We may, however, as far as regards mechanical inventions, distinguish four sufficiently clear phases, the germ, incubation, flowering, and completion. By germ, I mean the first idea coming to the mind to furnish a solution for a problem, that the whole of one's observations, studies, and researches has put before one, or that, put by another, has struck one. Then comes incubation, often very long and painful, or, again, even unconscious. Instinctively, as well as voluntarily, one brings to the solution of the problem all the materials that the eyes and ears can gather. When this latent work is sufficiently complete, the idea suddenly bursts forth. It may be at the end of a voluntary tension of mind, or at the occasion of a chance remark, tearing the veil that hides the surmised image. But this image always appears simple and clear. In order to get the ideal solution into practice, there is required a struggle against matter, and the bringing to an issue is the most thankless part of the inventor's work. In order to give consistency and body to the idea caught sight of enthusiastically in an oriole, one must have patience, a perseverance through all trials. One must view on all sides the mechanical agencies that should serve to set the image together, until the latter has attained the simplicity that alone makes invention viable. In this work of bringing to a head, the same spirit of invention and imagination must be constantly drawn upon for the solution of all the details, and it is against this arduous requirement that the great majority of inventors rebel again and again. This is then, I believe, how one may, in a general way, understand the genesis of an invention. It follows from this that here, as almost everywhere, the imagination acts through association of ideas. Thanks to a profound acquaintance with known mechanical methods, the inventor succeeds through association of ideas in getting novel combinations producing new effects towards the realization of which his mind has in advance been bent. But for a slightly explored subject, the foregoing remarks are not enough. It is necessary to determine more precisely the general and special characters of this form of imagination. One, general characters. I term general characters those that the mechanical imaginations possesses in common with the best known least-questioned forms of the constructive imagination. In order to be convinced that, so far as concerns these characters, it does not differ from the rest, let us take, for the sake of comparison, aesthetic imagination, since it is agreed, rightly or wrongly, that this is the model par excellence. We shall see that the essential psychological conditions coincide in the two instances. The mechanical imagination, thus, has, like the other, its ideal, that is, a perfection conceived and put forward as capable little by little of being realized. The idea is at first hidden. It is, to use our correspondence phrase, the germ, the principle of unity, center of attraction, that suggests, excites, and groups appropriate associations of images, in which it is enwrapped and organized into a structure, an ensemble of means converging toward a common end. It thus presupposes an association of experience. The inventor undoes, decomposes, breaks up in thought, or makes an experience, a tool, an instrument, a machine, an agency for building anew with the debris. The practical imagination is no more foreign to inspiration than the aesthetic imagination. The history of useful inventions is full of men who suffered privations, persecution, ruin, who fought to the bitter end against relatives and friends, drawn by the need of creating, fascinated not by the hope of future gain, but by the idea of an imposed mission, of a destiny they had to fulfill. What more have poets and artists done? The fixed and irresistible idea has led more than one to a foreseen death, as in the discovery of explosives, the first attempts at lightning conductors, aeronautics, and many others. Thus, from a true intuition, primitive civilizations have put on a level great poets and great inventors, erected into divinities or demigods, historical or legendary personages in whom the genius of discovery is personified. Among the Hindus, Vakava Karma, among the Greeks, Hephaestos, Prometheus, Tryptolamos, the Dallas, and Icarus, the Chinese, despite their dry imagination, have done the same, and we find the same condition in Egypt, Assyria, and everywhere. Moreover, the practical and mechanical arts have passed through a first period of no change, during which the artisan, subjected to fixed rules and an undisputed tradition, considers himself an instrument of divine revelation. Little by little he has emerged from that theological age to enter the humanistic age. When being fully conscious of being the author of his work, he labors freely, changes and modifies according to his own inspiration. Mechanical and industrial imagination, like aesthetic imagination, has its preparatory period, its zenith and decline, the periods of the precursors, of the great inventors, and of mere perfectors. At first a venture is made, effort is wasted with small result, the man has come too early, or lacks clear vision, then a great imaginative mind arises, blossoms. After him the work passes into the hands of D. Minori's, pupils or imitators, who add a bridge, modify, such is the order. The many times written history of the application of steam, from the time of the Iolapile of Hiro of Alexandria to the heroic period of Nukimin and Watt, and the improvements made since their time is one proof of the statement. Another example, the machine for measuring duration is at first a simple klepsydra, then there are added marks indicating the subdivisions of time, then a water gauge causes a hand to move around a dial, then two hands for the hours and minutes, then comes a great moment. By the use of weights, the klepsydra becomes a clock. At first massive encumbersome, later lightened, becoming capable with taiko bray of marking seconds. And then another moment, hugens invents the spiral spring to replace the weights and the clock simplified and lightened becomes the watch. Two, special characters, the special characteristics of the mechanical imagination being the marks belonging to this type, we shall study them at greater length. One, there is first of all, at least in great inventors an inborn quality, that is a natural disposition which does not originate in experience and owes the latter only its development. This quality is a bent in a practical useful direction, a tendency to act, not in the realm of dreams or human feeling, not on individuals or social groups, not toward the attainment of theoretical knowledge of nature, but to become master over natural forces, to transform them and adapt them toward an end. Every mechanical invention arises from a need, from the strict necessity for individual preservation, in the case of primitive man who wages war against the powers of nature, from the desire for well-being and the necessity for luxury in a growing civilization, from the need of creating little engines, imitating instruments and machines in the child. In a word, every particular invention, great or small, arises from a particular need. Four, we repeat again, there is no creative instinct in general. A man distinguished for various inventions along practical lines writes, as far as my memory allows, I can state that in my case, conception always results from a material or mental need. It springs up suddenly, thus in 1887 a speech of Bismarck made me so angry that I immediately thought of arming my country with a repeating rifle. I had already made various applications to the Ministry of War when I learned that the Label system had just been adopted. My patriotism was fully satisfied, but I still have the design of the gun that I invented. This communication mentions two or three other inventions that arose under analogous circumstances but have had a chance of being adopted. The same correspondent, without my having asked him in regard to this, gives me the following details. When about seven years old, I saw a locomotive, it's fire and smoke. My father's stove also made fire and smoke but lacked wheels. If then, I told my father, we put wheels under the stove, it would move like a locomotive. Later, when about 13, the site of a steam threshing machine suggested to me the idea of making a horseless wagon. I began a child's construction of one which my father made me give up, et cetera. The tendency toward mechanical invention shows itself very early in some children. We gave examples of it before. Our inventor adds, my imagination was strongest at about the age of 25 to 35. I am now 45 years old. After that time, it seems to me that the remainder of life is good only for producing less important conceptions, forming a natural consequence of the principal conceptions born of the period of youth. Among the requisite qualities, I mentioned the natural and necessary preeminence of certain groups of sensations or images, visual, tactile, motor, that may be decisive in determining the direction of the inventor. Mechanical invention grows by successive stratifications and additions, as in the sciences, but more completely. It is a fine verification of the subsidiary law of growing complexity previously discussed, see above Part 2, Chapter 5. And we ask ourselves how such a work could have been misunderstood or so lightly appreciated. It does not pertain to our subject to make even a summary table of this long development. The reader can consult the special works which, unfortunately, are most often fragmentary and lack a general view. So we should feel grateful to a historian of the useful arts, El Bordeaux, for having attempted to separate out the philosophy of the subject and for having fastened it down in the following formulas. A. The exploitation of the powers of nature is made according to their degree of power. B. The extension of working instruments has followed a logical evolution in the direction of growing complexity and perfection. Man, according to the observations of Monsieur Bordeaux, has applied his creative activity to natural forces and has set them to work according to a regular order, namely, one, human forces, the only ones available during the state of nature and the savage state. Before all else, man created weapons. The most circumscribed primitive races have invented engines for attack and defense of wood, bone, stone, as they were able. Then the weapon became a tool by special adaptation. The battle club serves as a lever, the tomahawk as a hammer, the flint ax as a hatchet, et cetera. In this manner, there is gradually formed an arsenal of instruments, inferior to most animals as regards certain work that would have to be done with the aid of our organic resources alone. We are superior to all as soon as we set our tools at work. If the rodents with their sharp teeth cut wood better than we can, we do it still better with the ax, the chisel, the saw. Some birds, with the help of a strong beak by repeated blows, penetrate the trunk of a tree, but the auger, the gimlet, the wimple do the same work better and more quickly. The knife is superior to the corn of horse teeth for tearing meat. The hoe better than the mole's paw for digging earth. The trowel better than the beaver's tail for beating and spreading mortar. The ore permits us to rival the fishes fin, the sail, the wing of the bird. The distaff and spindle allow our imitating the industry of insect spinners, et cetera. Man thus reproduces and sums up in his technical contrivances the scattered perfections of the animal world. He even succeeds in surpassing them because in the form of tools he uses substances and combinations of effects that cannot figure as part of an organism. It is scarcely likely that most of these inventions arose from a voluntary imitation of animals, but even supposing such an origin, there would still remain a fine place for personal creative work. Man has produced by conscious effort what life realizes by methods that escape us so that the creative imagination in man is a succeedoneum of the generative powers of nature. Two, during the pastoral stage, man brought animals under subjection and discipline. An animal is a machine, ready-made, that needs only to be trained to obedience, but this training has required and stimulated all sorts of inventions, from the harness with which to equip it, to the chariots, wagons and rows with which and on which it moves. Three, later the natural motors, air and water have furnished new material for human ingenuity. For example, in navigation, wind and water mills, used at first to grind grain, then for a multitude of uses, sawing, milling, lifting hammers, et cetera. Four, lastly, much later, come products of an already mature civilization. Artificial motors, explosives, powder and all its derivatives and substitutes, steam, which has made such great progress. If the reader pleased to represent to himself well the immense number of facts that we have just indicated in a few lines, if he pleased to note that every invention, great or small, before becoming a fixed and realized thing, was at first an imagination, a mere contrivance of the brain, an assembly of new combinations or new relations, he will be forced to admit that nowhere, not accepting even aesthetic production, has man imagined to such a great extent. One of the reasons, though not the only one, that supports the contrary opinion is, that by the very law of their growing complexity, inventions are grafted one on another. In all the useful arts, improvements have been so slow and so gradually wrought, that each one of them passed unperceived without leaving its author the credit for its discovery. The immense majority of inventions are anonymous. Some great names alone survive. But whether individual or collective, imagination remains imagination. In order that the plow, at first a simple piece of wood hardened by the fire and pushed along with the human hand, should become what it is today, through a long series of modifications described in the special works, who knows how many imaginations have labored. In the same way, the uncertain flame of a resinous branch guiding vaguely in the night leads us, through a long series of inventions to gas and electric lighting. All objects, even the most ordinary and most common, that now service in our everyday life, are condensed imagination. Three, more than any other form, mechanical imagination depends strictly on physical conditions. It cannot rest content with combining images. It postulates material factors that impose themselves unyieldingly. Compared to it, the scientific imagination has much more freedom in the building of its hypotheses. In general, every great invention has been preceded by a period of abortive attempts. History shows that the so-called initial moment of a mechanical discovery, followed by its improvements, is the moment ending a series of unsuccessful trials. We thus skip a phase of pure imagination, of imaginative construction that has not been able to enter into the mold of an appropriate determinism. There must have existed innumerable inventions that we might term mechanical romances, which, however, we cannot refer to because they have left us no trace, not being born viable. Others are known as curiosities because they have blazed the path. We know that Otto de Garrica made four fruitless attempts before discovering his air pump. The brothers Montgolfier were possessed with the desire to make imitation clouds, like those they saw moving over the Alps. In order to imitate nature, they at first enclosed water vapor in a light, stout case, which fell on cooling. Then they tried hydrogen, then the production of a gas with electrical properties, and so on. Thus, after a succession of hypotheses and failures, they finally succeeded. From the end of the 16th century, there was offered the possibility of communicating at a distance by means of electricity. In a work published in 1624, the Jesuit, Fr. de Rauchon, described an imaginary apparatus by means of which he said people could converse at a distance for the aid of lovers who, by the connection of their movements would cause a needle to move about a dial on which would be written the letters of the alphabet. And the drawing accompanying the text is almost a picture of Breguet's telegraph. But the author considered it impossible in the absence of lovers having such ability. Mechanical inventions that fail correspond to erroneous or unverified scientific hypotheses. They do not emerge from the stage of pure imagination, but they are instructive to the psychologists because they give in bare form the initial work of the constructive imagination in the technical field. There still remains the requirements of reasoning, of calculation, of adaptation to the properties of matter. But we repeat, this determinism has several possible forms. One can reach the same goal through different means. Besides, these determining conditions are not lacking in any type of imagination. There is only a difference as between lesser and greater. Every imaginative construction from the moment that it is little more than a group of fancies, a spectral image haunting a dreamer's brain must take on a body, submit to external conditions on which it depends, and which materialize it somewhat. In this respect, architecture is an excellent example. It is classed among the fine arts, but it is subject to so many limitations that its process of invention strongly resembles technical and mechanical creations. Thus it has been possible to say that architecture is the least personal of all the arts. Before being an art, it is an industry in the sense that it has nearly always a useful end that is imposed on it and rules its manifestations. Whatever it builds, a temple, a theater, a palace, it must, before all else, subordinate its work to the end assigned to it in advance. This is not all. It must take account of materials, climate, soil, location, habits, of all things that may require much skill, tact, calculation, which, however, do not interest art as such and do not permit architecture to manifest its purely aesthetic qualities. Thus, at bottom, there is an identity of nature between the constructive imagination of the mechanic and that of the artist. The difference is only in the end, the means and the conditions. The formula, ars homo aditus naturi, has been too often restricted to aesthetics. It should comprehend everything artificial. Esthete's doubtless hold that their imagination has for them a loftier quality. A disputed question that psychology may not discuss. For it, the essential mechanism is the same in the two cases. A great mechanic is a poet in his own way because he makes instruments imitating life. Those constructions that at other times are the marvel of the ignorant crowd deserve the admiration of the reflecting. Something of the power that has organized matter seems to have passed into combinations in which nature is imitated or surpassed. Our machines, so varied in form and in function, are the representatives of a new kingdom, intermediate between senseless and animate forms, having the passivity of the former and the activity of the latter and exploiting everything for our sake. They are counterfeits of animate beings, capable of giving inert substances a regular functioning. They're a skeleton of iron, organs of steel, muscles of leather, soul of fire, panting or smoking breath, rhythm of movement, sometimes even the shrill or plaintive cries of expression effort or simulating pain, all that contributes to give them a fantastic likeness to life, a specter and dream of inorganic life. And of third part, chapter five. Third part, chapter six, of Essay on the Creative Imagination. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Essay on the Creative Imagination by Thea Dool Rebo. Third part, the principal types of imagination. Chapter six, The Commercial Imagination. Taking the word commercial in its broadest signification, I understand by this expression all those forms of the constructive imagination that have for their chief aim the production and distribution of wealth, all inventions making for individual or collective enrichment. Even less study than the form preceding, this imaginative manifestation reveals as much ingenuity as any other. The human mind is largely busy in that way. There are inventors of all kinds. The great among these equal those whom general opinion ranks as highest. Here as elsewhere, the great body invent nothing, live according to tradition and routine and imitation. Invention in the commercial or financial field is subject to various conditions with which we are not concerned. One, external conditions, geographical, political, economic, social, et cetera, varying according to place, time and people. Such is its external determinism. Human and social here, in place of cosmic, physical as in mechanical invention. Two, internal, psychological conditions, most of which are foreign to the primary and essential inventive act. On one hand, foresight, calculation, strength of reasoning. In a word, capacity for reflection. On the other hand, assurance, recklessness, soaring into the unknown. In a word, strong capacity for action. Whence arise if we leave out the mixed forms, two principal types, the calculating, the venturesome. In the former, the rational element is first. They are cautious, calculating, selfish exploiters with no great moral or social preoccupations. In the latter, the active and emotional element predominates. They have a broader sweep of this sort with the merchant sailors of Tyre, Carthage and Greece, the merchant travelers of the Middle Ages, the mercantile and gain-hungry explorers of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. Later, in a changed form, the organizers of great companies, the inventors of monopolies, American trusts, et cetera. These are the great imaginative minds. Eliminating then from our subject what is not the purely imaginative element in order to study it alone, I see only two points for us to treat if we would avoid repetition. At the initial moment of invention, the intuitive act that is its germ during the period of development and organization the necessary and exclusive role of schematic images. One, by intuition, we generally understand a practical immediate judgment that goes straight to the goal. Tact, wisdom, scent, divination are synonymous or equivalent expressions. First, let us note that intuition does not belong exclusively to this part of our subject for it is found in parvo throughout but in commercial invention it is preponderating on account of the necessity of perceiving quickly and surely and of grasping chances. Genius for business, someone has said, consists in making exact hypotheses regarding the fluctuations of values. To characterize the mental state is easy if it is a matter merely of giving examples. Very difficult if one attempts to discover its mechanism. The physician who in a trice diagnosis a disease who on a higher level group symptoms in order to deduce a new disease from them like Duchamp de Bourgnon, the politician who knows human nature, the merchant who sense a good venture, etc., furnish examples of intuition. It does not depend on the degree of culture not to mention women whose insight into practical matters is well known. There are ignorant people, peasants, even savages who in their limited sphere are the equals of fine diplomats. But these facts teach us nothing concerning its psychological nature. Intuition presupposes acquired experience of a special nature that gives the judgment its validity and turns it in a particular direction. Nevertheless, this accumulated knowledge of itself gives no evidence as to the future. Now every intuition is an anticipation of the future resulting from only two processes, inductive or deductive reasoning. For example, the chemist foreseeing a reaction, imagination, that is a representative construction. Which is the chief process here? Evidently the former because it is not a matter of fancy hypothesis but of adaptation of former experience to a new case. Intuition resembles logical operations much more than it does imaginative combinations. We may liken it to unconscious reasoning if we are not afraid of the seeming contradiction of this expression, which supposes a logical operation without consciousness of the middle term. Although questionable, it is perhaps to be preferred to other proposed explanations such as automatism, habit, instinct, nervous connections. Carpenter, who as a promoter of unconscious cerebration deserves to be consulted, likens this state to reflection. In ending, he reprints a letter that John Stuart Mill wrote to him on the subject in which he says in substance that this capacity is found in persons who have experience and lean toward practical things but attach little importance to theory. Every intuition then becomes concrete as a judgment equivalent to a conclusion. But what seems obscure and even mysterious in it is the fact that from among many possible solutions it finds at first shot the proper one. In my opinion, this difficulty arises largely from a partial comprehension of the problem. By intuition, people mean only cases in which the divination is correct. They forget the other far more numerous cases that are failures. The act by which one reaches a conclusion is a special case of it. What constitutes the originality of the operation is not its accuracy, but its rapidity. The latter is the essential character, the former accessory. Further, it must be acknowledged that the gift of seeing correctly is an inborn quality. Vouch safe to one, deny to another. People are born with it. Just as they are born right or left-handed, experience does not give it, only permits it to be put to use. As for knowing why the intuitive act now succeeds and at another time fails, that is a question that comes down to the natural distinction between accurate and erroneous minds, which we do not need to examine here. Without dwelling longer on this initial stage, let us return to the commercial imagination and follow it in its development. The human race passed through a pre-commercial age. The Australians, Fujians, and their class seemed to have had no idea whatever of exchange. This primitive period, which was long, corresponds to the age of the Horde or large clan. Commercial invention arising like the other forms from needs, simple and indispensable at first, artificial and superfluous later, could not arise in that dim period when the groups had almost their sole relations with one another as war. Nothing called it to arise. But at a higher stage, the rudimentary form of commerce, exchange in kind or truck, appeared early and almost everywhere. Then this long, cumbersome, inconvenient method gave place to a more ingenious invention, the employment of standard values, beings or material objects serving as a common measure for all the rest. Their choice varied with the time, place, and people. For example, certain shells, salt, cocoa seeds, cloth, straw matting, cattle, slaves, et cetera. But this innovation held all the remainder in the germ, for it was the first attempt at substitution. But during the earliest period of commercial evolution, the chief effort at invention consisted of finding increasingly more simple methods in the mechanism of exchange. Thus, there succeeded to these disparate values, the precious metals, in the form of powder and ingots, subject to theft and the inconveniences of weighing. Then money of fixed denomination struck under the authority of a chief or of a social group. Finally, gold and silver are replaced by the letter of credit, the bank check, and the numerous forms of fiduciary money. Historically, the evolution has not always proceeded strictly in this order, which, however, seems the most logical one. Negotiable drafts were known to the Assyrians and Carthaginians. For thousands of years, Egypt used ingots, not real money, but it was acquainted with fiduciary money. In the New World, the Peruvians made use of the scale, the Aztecs were ignorant of its use, et cetera. Every one of these forward steps is due to inventors. I say inventors in the plural because it is proven that every chance in the means of exchange has been imagined several times in several ages, though in the same way on the surface of our Earth. Summing up, the inventive labor of this period is reduced to creating increasingly more simple and more rapid methods of substitution in the commercial mechanism. The appearance of commerce on a large scale has depended on the state of agriculture, industry, ways of communication, social and economic conditions, and political extension. It came into being toward the end of the Roman Republic. After the interruption of the Middle Ages, the activity is taken up again by the Italian cities, the Hanseatic League, et cetera, in the 15th century with the great maritime discoveries in the 16th century by the conquistadors hungering for adventure and wealth. Later on, by the mixed expeditions whose expenses are defrayed by merchants in common and which are often accompanied by armed vans that fight for them. Lastly comes the incorporation of great companies that have been wittily dubbed conquistadors of the counting house. We now come to the moment when commercial invention attains its complex form and must move great masses. Taken as a whole, its psychological mechanism is the same as that of any other creative work. In the first instance, the idea arises from inspiration, from reflection, or by chance. Then comes a period of fermenting during which the inventor sketches his construction in images, represents to himself the material to be worked upon, the grouping of stockholders, the making up of a capital, the mechanism of buying and selling, et cetera. All this differs from the genesis of an aesthetic or mechanical work only in the end or in the nature of the images. In the second phase, it is necessary to proceed to execution. A castle in the air must be made a solid structure. Then appear a thousand obstructions in the details that must be overcome. As everywhere else, minor inventions become grafted on the principal invention, the author lets us see the poverty or richness in resource of his mind. Finally, the work is triumphant, fails or is only half successful. Did it keep only to these general traits? Commercial imagination would be merely the reiteration with slight changes of forms already studied, but it has characteristics all its own that must be distinguished. One, it is a combining or tactical imagination. Here to four, we have met nothing like it. This special mark is derived from the very nature of its determinism, which is very different from that limiting the scientific or mechanical imagination. Every commercial project, in order to emerge from the internal, purely imaginative phase and become a reality, requires coming to a head very exact calculation of frequently numerous, divergent, even contrary elements. The American dealer speculating ingrain is under the absolute necessity of being quickly and surely informed regarding the agricultural situation in all countries of the world that are rich in grain, that export or import, in regard to the probable chances of rain or drought, the tariff duties of the various countries, et cetera. Lacking that, he buys and sells haphazard. Moreover, as he deals in enormous quantities, the least error means great losses. The smallest profit on a unit is of account and is multiplied and increased into a noticeable gain. Besides that initial intuition that shows opportune business and moments, commercial imagination presupposes a well-studied, detailed campaign for attack and defense, a rapid and reliable glance at every moment of execution in order to incessantly modify this plan. It is a kind of war. All this totality of special conditions results from a general condition, namely competition, strife. We shall come back to this point at the end of the chapter. Let us follow to the end the working of this creative imagination. Like the other forms, this kind of invention arises from a need, a desire, that of the spreading of self-feeling of the expansion of the individual under the form of enrichment. But this tendency and with it the resulting imaginative creation can undergo changes. It is a well-known law of the emotional life that what is at first sought as a means may become an end and be desired for itself. A very central passion may at length undergo a sort of idealization. People study a science at first because it is useful and later because of its fascination and we may desire money in order to spend it and later in order to hoard it. Here it is the same. The financial inventor is often possessed with a kind of intoxication. He no longer labors for lucre, but for art. He becomes in his own way an author of romance. His imagination, set at the beginning toward gain, now seeks only its complete expansion, the assertion and eruption of its creative power, the pleasure of inventing for invention's sake. Daring the extraordinary, the unheard of, it is the victory of pure construction. This condition has been well described by various novelists among them Zola in Money. The natural equilibrium between the three necessary elements of creation, mobility, combination of images, calculation is destroyed. The rational element gives way, is obliterated, and the speculator is launched into adventure with the possibility of a dazzling success or astounding catastrophe. But let us note well that the primary and sole cause of this change is in the effective and motor element, in a hypertrophy of the lust for power, in an unmeasured and morbid want of expansion of self. Here as everywhere, the source of invention is the emotional nature of the inventor. Two, a second special character of commercial imagination is the exclusive employment of schematic representations. Although this process is also met with in the sciences, and especially in social inventions, the imaginative type that we are now considering has the privilege of using them without exception. This then is the proper moment for a description. By schematic images, I mean those that are, by their very nature, intermediate between the concrete image and the pure concept, but approach more nearly the concept. We have already pointed out very different kinds of representations, concrete images, material pertaining to plastic and mechanical imagination, the emotional abstractions of the defluent imagination, effective images, the type of which is found in musicians, symbolic images, familiar and mystics. It may seem improper to add another class to this list, but it is not a meaningless subtlety. Indeed, there are no images in general that, according to the ordinary conception, would be copies of reality. Even their separation into visual, auditory, motor, et cetera, is not sufficient because it distinguishes them only with regard to their origin. There are other differences. We have seen that the image, like everything living, undergoes corrosion, damages, twisting and transformation. Once it comes about, that this remainder of former impressions varies according to its composition, that is in simplicity, complexity, grouping of its constitutive elements, et cetera, and takes on many aspects. On the other hand, as the difference between the chief types of creative imagination depends in part on the materials employed, on the nature of the images that serve in mental building, a precise determination of the nature of the images belonging to each type is not an idle operation. In order to clearly explain what we mean by schematic images, let us represent by a line PC, the scale of images according to the degree of complexity, from the precept P to the concept C. As far as I am aware, this determination of all the degrees has never been made. The work would be delicate. I do not regard it as impossible. I have no intention to undertake it, even as I do not pretend that I have given above the complete list of the various forms of images. If then we consider the foregoing figure merely as a means of representing the gradation to the eye, the image in moving by hypothesis from the moment of perception P is less and less in contact with reality, become simplified, impoverished and loses some of its constitutive elements. At X, it crosses the middle threshold to approach nearer and nearer to the concept. At G, let us locate generic images, primitive forms of generalization, whose nature and process of becoming are well known. For further details on this point, we refer the reader to our Evolution of General Ideas, chapter one. We should place farther along at S, schematic images, which require a higher function of mind. Indeed, the generic image results from a spontaneous fusion of like or very analogous images, such as the vague representation of the oak, the horse, the negro, et cetera. It belongs to only one class of objects. The schematic image results from a voluntary act. It is not limited to exact resemblances. It rises into abstraction. So it is scarcely accompanied by a fleeting representation of concrete objects. It is almost reduced to the word. At a higher level, it is freed from all sensuous elements or pictures and is reduced, in the present instance, to the mere notion of value. It is not different from a pure concept. While the artist and the mechanic build with concrete images, the commercial imagination can act directly, neither on things nor on their immediate representations. Because from the time that it goes beyond the primitive age, it requires a substitution of increasing generality. Materials become values that are in turn reducible to symbols. Consequently, it proceeds as in the stating and solving of abstract problems, in which, after having substituted for things and their relations, figures and letters, calculation works with signs and indirectly with things. Aside from the first moment of invention, the finding of the idea, an invariable psychological state, it must be recognized that in its development and detailed construction, the commercial imagination is made up chiefly of calculations and combinations that hardly permit concrete images. If we admit then, and this is unquestionable, that these are the materials par excellence of the creative imagination, we shall be disposed to hold that the imaginative type we are now studying is a kind of involution, a case of impoverishment, an unacceptable thesis as regards the invention itself, but strictly acceptable as regards the conditions that necessity imposes upon it. In closing, let us note that financial imagination does not always have as its goal the enriching of an individual or of a closely limited group of associates. It can aim higher, act on greater masses, address itself strenuously to a problem as complex as the reformation of the finances of a powerful state. All the civilized nations count in their history, men who imagined a financial system and succeeded with various fortunes in making it prevail. The word system, consecrated by usage, makes unnecessary any comment and relates this form of imagination to that of scientists and philosophers. Every system rests on a master conception, on an ideal, a center about which there is assembled the mental construction made up of imagination and calculation which, if circumstances permit, must take shape, must show that it can live. Let us call to mind the author of the first or at least of the most notorious of these systems. Law claimed that he was applying the methods of philosophy, the principle of Descartes, to social economy, abandon hitherto to chance and empiricism. His idea was the institution of credit by the state. Commerce, said he, was during its first stage the exchange of merchandise in kind. In a second stage, exchange by means of another more manageable commodity or universal value, security equivalent to the object it represented, it must enter a third stage, when exchange will be made by a purely conventional sign having no value of its own. Paper represents money, just as the latter represents goods with the difference that the paper is not security but a simple promise constituting credit. The state must do systematically what individuals have done instinctively but it must also do what individuals cannot do, create currency by printing on the paper of exchange the seal of public authority. We know the history of the downfall of this system, the eulogies and criticisms it has received but because of the originality and boldness of his views, the inexhaustible fecundity of his lesser inventions, law holds an undisputed place among the great imaginative minds. Three, we said above that commerce in its higher manifestations is a kind of war. A general, a former professor in the war college, told me that when he heard a great merchant tell of the quick and sure service of his commercial information, the conception of the whole and the care and all the details of his operations, he could not help from exclaiming, why, that is war. Here, then, would be the place to study the military imagination. The subject cannot be treated safe by a man of the profession so I shall limit myself to a few brief remarks based on personal information or gleaned from authorities. Between the various types of imagination hitherto studied, we have shown great differences as regards their external conditions. While the so-called forms of pure imagination, whence aesthetic, mythic, religious, mystic creations arise, can realize themselves by submitting to material conditions that are simple and not very exacting, the others can become embodied only when they satisfy an ensemble of numerous, inevitable, rigorously determined conditions. The goal is fixed, the materials are rigid, there is little choice of the appropriate means. If there be added to the inflexible laws of nature unforeseen human passions and determinations as in political or social invention or the offensive combination of opponents as in commerce and war, then the imaginative construction is confronted with problems of constantly growing complexity. The most ingenious inventor cannot invent an object as a whole, letting his work develop through an eminent logic. The early plan must be continually modified and readapted, and the difficulty arises not merely from the multiple elements of the problem to be solved, but from ceaseless changes in their positions. So one can advance only step by step and go forward by calculations and strict examination of possibilities. Hence it results that underneath this thick covering of material and intellectual conditions, calculation, reasoning, spontaneity, the aptness for finding new combinations that art of inventing without which we hardly advance reveals itself to few clear-sighted persons, but in spite of everything, this creative power is everywhere, flowing like subterranean streams, a vivifying agency. These general remarks, though not applicable exclusively to the military imagination, find their justification in it because of its extreme complexity. Let us rapidly enumerate, proceeding from without, inwards, the enormous mass of representations that it has to move and combine in order to make its construction adequate to reality, able at a precise moment to cease being a dream. One, arms, engines, instruments of destruction and supply, varying according to time, place, richness of the country, et cetera. Two, the equally variable human element, mercenaries, a national army, strong, tried troops, or weak and new. Three, the general principles of war acquired by the study of the masters. Four, more personal is the power of reflection, the habitual solving of tactical and strategic problems. Battles, said Napoleon, are thought out at length, and in order to be successful, it is necessary that we think several times in regard to what may happen. All the foregoing should be headed science, advancing more and more within the secret psychology of the individual we come to art, the characteristic work of pure imagination. Five, let us note the exact rapid intuition at the commencement of the opportune moments. Six, lastly, the creative element, the conception, a natural gift bearing the hallmark of each inventor. Thus the Napoleonic aesthetics have always derived from a single concept based on a principle that may be summed up thus, strict economy wherever it can be done, expenditure without limit on the decisive point. This principle inspires the strategy of the master. It directs everything, especially his battle tactics, in which it is synthesized and summed up. General Bonal, the matriot de la guerre, 1899, page 137. In him, Napoleon, says the writer, there was something of the poet, and one could explain all his acts by means of this singular complex, a medley of imagination, passion, and calculation. The dreams of an ocean with the positive cast of mind of a mathematician and the passions of a Corsican, such were the heterogeneous elements that clashed in that powerful organization. Such an analytical terms appears the hidden spring that makes everything move, and it is to be attributed neither to experience nor to reasoning nor to wise combinations, for it arises from the innermost depths of the inventor. Their principle exists in him in a latent state, that is, in the depths of the unconscious, and unconsciously it is that he applies it when the shock of the circumstances, of goal and means, causes to flash from his brain the spark stimulating the artistic solution par excellence, one that reaches the limits of human perfection. End of third part, chapter six.