Chapter 15

THE PRACTICAL AND MECHANICAL IMAGINATION.

Indetermination of this imaginative form.--Inferior forms: the industrious, the unstable, the eccentric. Why people of lively imagination are changeable.--Superstitious beliefs. Origin of this form of imagination--its mental mechanism and its elements.--The higher form--mechanical imagination.--Man has expended at least as much imagination there as in esthetic creation.--Why the contrary view prevails.--Resemblances between these two forms of imagination.--Identity of development. Detail observation--four phases.--General characters. This form, at its best, supposes inspiration; periods of preparation, of maturity, and of decline.--Special characters: invention occurs in layers. Principal steps of its development.--It depends strictly on physical conditions.--A phase of pure imagination--mechanical romances. Examples.--Identical nature of the imagination of the mechanic and that of the artist. 256