Chapter 25

THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION IN THE CHILD

At what age, in what form, under what conditions does the creative imagination make its appearance? It is impossible to answer this question, which, moreover, has no justification. For the creative imagination develops little by little out of pure reproduction by an evolutionary process, not by sudden eruption. Nevertheless, its evolution is very slow on account of causes both organic and psychological.

We could not dwell long on the organic causes without falling into tiresome repetitions. The new-born infant is a spinal being, with an unformed diffluent brain, composed largely of water. Reflex life itself is not complete in him, and the cortico-motor system only hinted at; the sensory centers are undifferentiated, the associational systems remain isolated for a long time after birth. We have given above Flechsig's observation on this point.

The psychological causes reduce themselves to the necessity for a consolidation of the primary and secondary operations of the mind, without which the creative imagination cannot take form. To be precise, we might distinguish, as does Baldwin, four epochs in the mental development of the child: (1) affective (rudimentary sensory processes, pleasures and pains, simple motor adaptations); (2) and (3) objective, in which the author establishes two grades, (a) appearance of special senses, of memory, instincts primarily defensive, and imitation; (b) complex memory, complicated movements, offensive activities, rudimentary will; (4) subjective or final (conscious thought, constitutive will, ideal emotions). If we accept this scheme as approximately correct, the _moment_ of imagination must be assigned to the third period (the second stage of the objective epoch) which fulfills all the sufficient and necessary conditions for its origination and for its rise above pure reproduction.

Whatever the propitious age may be, the study of the child-imagination is not without difficulties. In order to enter into the child-mind, we must become like a child; as it is, we are limited to an interpretation of it in terms of the adult, with much false interpretation possible, agreeing too much or too little with the facts. Furthermore, the children studied live and grow up in a civilized environment. The result is that the development of their imagination is rarely unhampered and complete; for as soon as their fancy passes the middle level, the rationalizing education of parents and teachers is eager to master and control it. In truth it gives its full measure and reveals itself in the fulness of growth only among primitive peoples. With us it is checked in its flight by an antagonistic power, which treats it as a harbinger of insanity. Finally, children are not equally well-suited for this study; we must make a distinction between the imaginative and non-imaginative, and the latter should be eliminated.

When we have thus chosen suitable subjects, observation shows from the start sufficiently distinct varieties, different orientations of the imagination depending on intellectual causes, such as the predominance of visual or acoustic or tactile-motor images making for mechanical invention; or dependent on emotional causes, that is, of character, according as the latter is timid, joyous, exuberant, retired, healthy, sickly, etc.

If we now attempt to follow the development of the child-imagination, we may distinguish four principal stages, without assigning them, otherwise, a rigorous chronological order.

1. The first stage consists of the passage from passive to creative imagination. Its history would be long were we to include all the hybrid forms that are made up partly of memories, partly of new groupings, being at the same time repetition and construction. Even in the adult, they are very frequent. I know a person who is always afraid of being smothered, and for this reason urgently asks that in his coffin his shirt be not tight at the neck: this odd prepossession of the mind belongs neither to memory nor to imagination. This particular case illustrates in a very clear form the nature of the first flights of the mind attempting to exercise its imaginative powers. Without enumerating other facts of this kind, it is more desirable to follow the imagination's development, limiting ourselves to two forms of the psychic life--perception and illusion. The necessary presence of the image in these two forms has been so often proven by contemporary psychology that a few words to recall this to mind will be sufficient.

There seems to be a radical difference between perception, which seizes reality, and imagination. Nevertheless, it is generally admitted that in order to rise above sensation to perception, there must be a synthesis of images. To put it more simply, two elements are required--one, coming from without, the physiological stimulus acting on the nerves and the sensory centers, which becomes translated in consciousness through the vague state that goes by the name "sensation"; the other, coming from within, adds to the sensations present appropriate images, remnants of former experiences. So that perception requires an apprenticeship; we must feel, then imperfectly perceive, in order to finally perceive well. The sensory datum is only a fraction of the total fact; and in the operation we call "perceiving," that is, apprehending an object directly, a part only of the object is represented.

This, however, does not go beyond reproductive imagination. The decisive step is taken in illusion. We know that illusion has as a basis and support a modification of the external senses which are metamorphosed, amplified by an immediate construction of the mind: a branch of a tree becomes a serpent, a distant noise seems the music of an orchestra. Illusion has as broad a field as perception, since there is no perception but may undergo this erroneous transformation, and it is produced by the same mechanism, but with interchange of the two terms. In perception, the chief element is the sensory, and the representative element is secondary; in illusion, we have just the opposite condition: what one takes as perceived is merely imagined--the imagination assumes the principal role. Illusion is the type of the transitional forms, of the mixed cases, that consist of constructions made up of memories, without being, in the strict sense, creations.

2. The creative imagination asserts itself with its peculiar characteristics only in the second stage, in the form of animism or the attributing of life to everything. This turn of the mind is already known to us, though mentioned only incidentally. As the state of the child's mind at that period resembles that which in primitive man creates myths, we shall return to it in the next chapter. Works on psychology abound in facts demonstrating that this primitive tendency to attribute life and even personality to everything is a necessary phase that the mind must undergo--long or short in duration, rich or poor in inventions, according to the level of the child's imagination. His attitude towards his dolls is the common example of this state, and also the best example, because it is universal, being found in all countries without exception, among all races of men. It is needless to pile up facts on an uncontroverted point.[40] Two will suffice; I choose them on account of their extravagance, which shows that at this particular moment animism, in certain minds, can dare anything. "One little fellow, aged one year eight months, conceived a special fondness for the letter W, addressing it thus: 'Dear old boy W.' Another little boy well on in his fourth year, when tracing a letter L, happened to slip, so that the horizontal limb formed an angle, thus:

| | +---+ |

He instantly saw the resemblance to the sedentary human form, and said: 'Oh, he's sitting down.' Similarly, when he made an F turn the wrong way and then put the correct form to the left, thus,

+--- ---+ | | +-- --+ | |

he exclaimed, 'They're talking together!'" One of Sully's correspondents says: "I had the habit of attributing intelligence not only to all living creatures ... but even to stones and manufactured articles. I used to feel how dull it must be for the pebbles in the causeway to lie still and only see what was round about. When I walked out with a basket for putting flowers in, I used sometimes to pick up a pebble or two and carry them out to have a change."

Let us stop a moment in order to try to determine the nature of this strange mental state, all the more as we shall meet it again in primitive man, and since it presents the creative imagination at its beginning.

a. The first element is a fixed idea, or rather, an image, or group of images, that takes possession of consciousness to the exclusion of everything else:--it is the analogue of the state of suggestion in the hypnotized subject, with this sole difference--that the suggestion does not come from without, from another, but from the child itself--it is auto-suggestion. The stick that the child holds between his legs becomes for him an imaginary steed. The poverty of his mental development makes all the easier this contraction of the field of his consciousness, which assures the supremacy of the image.

b. This has as its basis a reality that it includes. This is an important detail to note, because this reality, however tiny, gives objectivity to the imaginary creation and incorporates it with the external world. The mechanism is like that which produces illusion, but with a stable character excluding correction. The child transforms a bit of wood or paper into another self, because he perceives only the phantom he has created; that is, the images, not the material exciting them, haunt his brain.