Essay on the Creative Imagination Part 11

Work primarily unconscious. Patience the preponderating role.

Work primarily conscious.

Actions quick. Actions slow.

V

"Were we to raise monuments to inventors in the arts and sciences, there would be fewer statues to men than to children, animals, and especially _fortune_." In this wise expressed himself one of the sage thinkers of the eighteenth century, Turgot. The importance of the last factor has been much exaggerated. Chance may be taken in two senses--one general, the other narrow.

(1) In its broad meaning, chance depends on entirely internal, purely psychic circ.u.mstances. We know that one of the best conditions for inventing is abundance of material, acc.u.mulated experience, knowledge--which augment the chances of original a.s.sociation of ideas.

It has even been possible to maintain that the nature of memory implies the capacity of creating in a special direction. The revelations of inventors or of their biographers leave no doubt as to the necessity of a large number of sketches, trials, preliminary drawings, no matter whether it is a matter of industry, commerce, a machine, a poem, an opera, a picture, a building, a plan of campaign, etc. "Genius for discovery," says Jevons, depends on the number of notions and chance thoughts coming to the inventor's mind. To be fertile in hypotheses--that is the first requirement for finding something new. The inventor's brain must be full of forms, of melodies, of mechanical agents, of commercial combinations, of figures, etc., according to the nature of his work. "But it is very rare that the ideas we find are exactly those we were seeking. In order to find, _we must think along other lines_."[77] Nothing is more true.

So much for chance within: it is indisputable, whatever may have been said of it, but it depends finally on individuality--from it arises the non-antic.i.p.ated synthesis of ideas. The abundance of memory-ideas, we know, is not a sufficient condition for creation; it is not even a necessary condition. It has been remarked that a relative ignorance is sometimes useful for invention: it favors a.s.surance. There are inventions, especially scientific and industrial, that could not have been made had the inventors been arrested by the ruling and presumably invincible dogmas. The inventor was all the more free the more he was unaware of them. Then, as it was quite necessary to bow before the accomplished fact, theory was broadened to include the new discovery and explain it.

(2) Chance, in the narrow sense, is a fortunate occurrence stimulating invention: but to attribute to it the greater part, is a partial, erroneous view. Here, what we call chance, is the meeting and convergence of _two_ factors--one internal (individual genius), the other, external (the fortuitous occurrence).

It is impossible to determine all that invention owes to chance in this sense. In primitive humanity its influence must have been enormous: the use of fire, the manufacture of weapons, of utensils, the casting of metals: all that came about through accidents as simple as, for example, a tree falling across a stream suggesting the first idea of a bridge.

In historic times--and to keep merely to the modern period--the collection of authentic facts would fill a large volume. Who does not know of Newton's apple, Galileo's lamp, Galvani's frog? Huygens declared that, were it not for an unforeseen combination of circ.u.mstances, the invention of the telescope would require "a superhuman genius;" it is known that we owe it to children who were playing with pieces of gla.s.s in an optician's shop. Schonbein discovered ozone, thanks to the phosphorous odor of air traversed by electric sparks. The discoveries of Grimaldi and of Fresnel in regard to interferences, those of Faraday, of Arago, of Foucault, of Fraunhofer, of Kirchoff, and of hundreds of others owed something to "fortune." It is said that the sight of a crab suggested to Watt the idea of an ingenious machine. To chance, also, many poets, novelists, dramatists, and artists have owed the best part of their inspirations: literature and the arts abound in fict.i.tious characters whose real originals are known.

So much for the external, fortuitous factor; its role is clear. That of the internal factor is less so. It is not at all apparent to the ordinary mind, escaping the unreflecting. Yet it is extremely important.

The same fortuitous event pa.s.ses by millions of men without exciting anything. How many of Pisa's inhabitants had seen the lamp of their cathedral before Galileo! He does not necessarily find who wants to find. The happy chance comes only to those worthy of it. In order to profit thereby, one must first possess the spirit of observation, wide-awake attention, that isolates and fixates the accident; then, if it is a matter of scientific or practical inventions, the penetration that seizes upon relations and finds unforeseen resemblances; if it concerns esthetic productions, the imagination that constructs, organizes, gives life.

Without repeating an evident truism, although it is often misunderstood, we ought to end by remarking that _chance is an occasion for, not an agent of, creation_.

FOOTNOTES:

[65] See above, Chapter II.

[66] Some of these and the following figures are borrowed from Oelzelt-Newin, _op. cit._, pp. 70 ff.

[67] Compare the well-known theory of Dr. Hughlings-Jackson. (Tr.)

[68] For an elaborate and interesting discussion of this subject, see Tolstoi's _Physiology of War_. As showing the later trend of thought on this general theme, see the excellent summary by Professor Seligman, _The Economic Interpretation of History_. (Tr.)

[69] William James, _The Will to Believe and other Essays_, pp. 218 ff.; Jastrow, _Psych. Rev._, May, 1898, p. 307; J. Royce, _ibid._, March, 1898; Baldwin, _Social and Ethical Interpretations_, etc.

[70] Joly, _Psychologie des grands hommes_.

[71] Osborn, _From the Greeks to Darwin_.

[72] Such, according to Binet and Pa.s.sy, seem to be the cases of the Goncourts, Pailleron, etc. See "Psychologie des auteurs dramatiques," in _L'annee psychologique_, I, 96.

[73] Compare the striking instance of this moment as given by Froebel, in his _Autobiography_, in connection with his idea of the Kindergarten. (Tr.)

[74] Quoted by Arreat, _Memoire et Imagination_, p. 118. (Paris, F.

Alcan.)

[75] Paulhan ("De l'invention," _Rev. Philos._, December, 1898, pp.

590 ff.) distinguishes three kinds of development in invention: (1) Spontaneous or reasoned--the directing idea persists to the end; (2) transformation, which comprises several contradictory evolutions succeeding and replacing one another in consequence of impressions and feelings; (3) deviation, which is a composite of the two preceding forms.

[76] Cf. the well-known doctrine of Empedocles. (Tr.)

[77] P. Souriau, _Theorie de l'invention_, pp. 6-7.

CHAPTER V

LAW OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IMAGINATION

Is imagination, so often called "a capricious faculty," subject to some law? The question thus asked is too simple, and we must make it more precise.

As the direct cause of invention, great or small, the imagination acts without a.s.signable determination; in this sense it is what is known as "spontaneity"--a vague term, which we have attempted to make clear. Its appearance is irreducible to any law; it results from the often fortuitous convergence of various factors previously studied.

Leaving aside the moment of origin, does the inventive power, considered in its individual and specific development, seem to follow any law, or, if this term appear too ambitious, does it present, in the course of its evolution, any perceptible regularity? Observation separates out an empirical law; that is, extracts directly an abridged formula that is only a condensation of facts. We may enunciate it thus: The creative imagination in its complete development pa.s.ses through two periods separated by a critical phase: a period of autonomy or efflorescence, a critical moment, a period of definitive const.i.tution presenting several aspects.

This formula, being only a summary of experience, should be justified and explained by the latter. For this purpose we can borrow facts from two distinct sources: (a) individual development, which is the safest, clearest, and easiest to observe; (b) the development of the species, or historical development, according to the accepted principle that phylogenesis and ontogenesis follow the same general line.

I

_First Period._ We are already acquainted with it: it is the imaginative age. In normal man, it begins at about the age of three, and embraces infancy, adolescence, youth: sometimes a longer, sometimes a shorter period. Play, romantic invention, mythic and fantastic conceptions of the world sum it up first; after that, in most, imagination is dependent on the influence of the pa.s.sions, and especially s.e.xual love. For a long time it remains without any rational element.

Nevertheless, little by little, the latter wins a place.

Reflection--including under the term the working of the intelligence--begins very late, grows slowly, and the proportion as it a.s.serts itself, gains an influence over the imaginative activity and tends to reduce it. This growing antagonism is represented in the following figure.

The curve IM is that of the imagination during this first period. It rises at first very slowly, then attains a rapid ascent and keeps at a height that marks its greatest attainment in this earliest form. The dotted line RX represents the rational development that begins later, advances much more slowly, but progressively, and reaches at X the level of the imaginative curve. The two intellectual forms are present like two rivals. The position MX on the ordinate marks the beginning of the second period.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

_Second Period._ This is a critical period of indeterminate length, in any case, always much briefer than the other two. This critical moment can be characterized only by its causes and results. Its causes are, in the physiological sphere, the formation of an organism and a fully developed brain; in the psychologic order, the antagonism between the pure subjectivity of the imagination and the objectivity of ratiocinative processes; in other words, between mental instability and stability. As for the results, they appear only in the third period, the resultant of this obscure, metamorphic stage.

_Third Period._ It is definite: in some way or another and in some degree the imagination has become rationalized, but this change is not reducible to a single formula.

(1) The creative imagination falls, as is indicated in the figure, where the imagination curve MN' descends rapidly toward the line of abcissas without ever reaching it. This is the most general case; only truly imaginative minds are exceptions. One falls little by little into the prose of practical life--such is the downfall of love which is treated as a phantom, the burial of the dreams of youth, etc. This is a regression, not an end; for the creative imagination disappears completely in no man; it only becomes accessory.

(2) It keeps up but becomes transformed; it adapts itself to the conditions of rational thought; it is no longer pure imagination, but becomes a mixed form--the fact is indicated in the diagram by the union of the two lines, MN, the imagination, and XO, the rational. This is the case with truly imaginative beings, in whom inventive power long remains young and fresh.

This period of preservation, of definitive const.i.tution with rational transformation, presents several varieties. First, and simplest, _transformation into logical form_. The creative power manifested in the first stage remains true to itself, and always follows the same trend.

Such are the precocious inventors, those whose vocation appeared early and never changed direction. Invention loses its childish or juvenile character in becoming virile; there are no other changes. Compare Schiller's _Robbers_, written in his teens, with his _Wallenstein_, dating from his fortieth year; or the vague sketches of the adolescent James Watt with his inventions as a man.

Another case is the _metamorphosis_ or _deviation_ of creative power. We know what numbers of men who have left a great name in science, politics, mechanical or industrial invention started out with mediocre efforts in music, painting, and especially poetry, the drama, and fiction. The imaginative impulse did not discover its true direction at the outset; it imitated while trying to invent. What has been said above concerning the chronological development of the imagination would be tiresome repet.i.tion. The need of creating followed from the first the line of least resistance, where it found certain materials ready to hand. But in order to arrive to full consciousness of itself it needed more time, more knowledge, more acc.u.mulated experience.

We might here ask whether the contrary case is also met with; i.e., where the imagination, in this third period, would return to the inclinations of the first period. This regressive metamorphosis--for I cannot style it otherwise--is rare but not without examples. Ordinarily the creative imagination, when it has pa.s.sed its adult stage, becomes attenuated by slow atrophy without undergoing serious change of form.