Chapter 29

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 assignable 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 passes through two periods separated by a critical phase: a period of autonomy or efflorescence, a critical moment, a period of definitive constitution 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 passions, and especially sexual 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 asserts 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.

_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 constitution 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 repetition. 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 accumulated 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 passed its adult stage, becomes attenuated by slow atrophy without undergoing serious change of form. Nevertheless, I am able to cite the case of a well-known scholar who began with a taste for art, especially plastic art, went over rapidly to literature, devoted his life to biologic studies, in which he gained a very deserved reputation; then, in turn, became totally disgusted with scientific research, came back to literature and finally to the arts, which have entirely monopolized him.

Finally--for there are very many forms--in some the imagination, though strong, scarcely passes beyond the first stage, always retains its youthful, almost childish form, hardly modified by a minimum of rationality. Let us note that it is not a question here of the characteristic ingenuousness of some inventors, which has caused them to be called "grown-up children," but of the candor and inherent simplicity of the imagination itself. This exceptional form is hardly reconcilable except with esthetic creation. Let us add the mystic imagination. It could furnish examples, less in its religious conceptions, which are without control, than in its reveries of a scientific turn. Contemporary mystics have invented adaptations of the world that take us back to the mythology of early times. This prolonged childhood of the imagination, which is, in a word, an anomaly, produces curiosities rather than lasting works.

At this third period in the development of the imagination appears a second, subsidiary law, that of _increasing complexity_; it follows a progressive line from the simple to the complex. Indeed, it is not, strictly speaking, a law of the imagination but of the rational development exerting an influence on it by a counter-action. It is a law of the mind that _knows_, not of one that _imagines_.

It is needless to show that theoretical and practical intelligence develops as an increasing complex. But from the time that the mind distinguishes clearly between the possible and the impossible, between the fancied and the real--which is a capacity wanting in primitive man--as soon as man has formed rational habits and has undergone experience the impress of which is ineffaceable, the creative imagination is subject, _nolens volens_, to new conditions; it is no longer absolute mistress of itself, it has lost the assurance of its infancy, and is under the rules of logical thought, which draws it along in its train. Aside from the exceptions given above--and even they are partial exceptions only--creative power depends on the ability to understand, which imposes upon it its form and developmental law. In literature and in the arts comparison between the simplicity of primitive creations and the complexity of advanced civilizations has become commonplace. In the practical, technical, scientific and social worlds the higher up we go the more we have to know in order to create, and in default of this condition we merely repeat when we think we are inventing.

II

Historically considered, in the species, the development of the imagination follows the same line of progress as in the individual. We will not repeat it; it would be mere reiteration in a vaguer form of what we have just said. A few brief notes will suffice.

Vico--whose name deserves to be mentioned here because he was the first to see the good that we can get from myths for the study of the imagination--divided the course of humanity into three successive ages: divine or theocratic, heroic or fabulous, human or historic, after which the cycle begins over again. Although this too hypothetic conception is now forgotten, it is sufficient for our purposes. What, indeed, are those first two stages that have everywhere and always been the harbingers and preparers of civilization, if not the triumphant period of the imagination? It has produced myths, religions, legends, epics and martial narratives, and imposing monuments erected in honor of gods and heroes. Many nations whose evolution has been incomplete have not gone beyond this stage.

Let us now consider this question under a more definite, more limited, better known form--the history of intellectual development in Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire. It shows very distinctly our three periods.

No one will question the preponderance of the imagination during the middle Ages: intensity of religious feeling, ceaselessly repeated epidemics of superstition; the institution of chivalry, with all its accessories; heroic poetry, chivalric romances; courts of love, efflorescence of Gothic art, the beginning of modern music, etc. On the other hand, the _quantity_ of imagination applied during this epoch to practical, industrial, commercial invention is very small. Their scientific culture, buried in Latin jargon, is made up partly of antique traditions, partly of fancies; what the ten centuries added to positive science is almost _nil_. Our figure, with its two curves, one imaginative, the other rational, thus applies just as well to historical development as to individual development during this first period.

No more will anyone question that the Renaissance is a critical moment, a transition period, and a transformation analogous to that which we have noted in the individual, when there rises, opposed to imagination, a rival power.

Finally, it will be admitted without dissent that during the modern period social imagination has become partly decayed, partly rationalized, under the influence of two principal factors--one scientific, the other economic. On the one hand the development of science, on the other hand the great maritime discoveries, by stimulating industrial and commercial inventions, have given the imagination a new field of activity. There have arisen points of attraction that have drawn it into other paths, have imposed upon it other forms of creation that have often been neglected or misunderstood and that we shall study in the Third Part.

THIRD PART

THE PRINCIPAL TYPES OF IMAGINATION

PRELIMINARY

After having studied the creative imagination in its constitutive elements and in its development we purpose, in this last part, describing its principal forms. This will be neither analytic nor genetic but concrete. The reader need not fear wearisome repetition; our subject is sufficiently complex to permit a third treatment without reiteration.

The expression "creative imagination," like all general terms, is an abbreviation and an abstraction. There is no "imagination in general," but only _men who imagine_, and who do so in different ways; the reality is in them. The diversities in creation, however numerous, should be reducible to types that are _varieties_ of imagination, and the determination of these varieties is analogous to that of character as related to will. Indeed, when we have settled upon the physiological and psychological conditions of voluntary activity we have only done a work in _general_ psychology. Men being variously constituted, their modes of action bear the stamp of their individuality; in each one there is a personal factor that, whatever its ultimate nature, puts its mark on the will and makes it energetic or weak, rapid or slow, stable or unstable, continuous or intermittent. The same is true of the creative imagination. We cannot know it completely without a study of its varieties, without a special psychology, toward which the following chapters are an attempt.

How are we to determine these varieties? Many will be inclined to think that the method is indicated in advance. Have not psychologists distinguished, according as one or another of image-groups preponderates, visual, auditory, motor and mixed types? Is not the way clear and is it not well enough to go in this direction? However natural this solution may appear, it is illusory and can lead to naught. It rests on the equivocal use of the word "imagination," which at one time means mere reproduction of images, and at another time creative activity, and which, consequently, keeps up the erroneous notion that in the creative imagination images, the raw materials, are the essential part. The materials, no doubt, are not a negligible element, but by themselves they cannot reveal to us the species and varieties that have their origin in an anterior and superior tendency of mind. We shall see in the sequel that the very nature of constructive imagination may express itself indifferently in sounds, words, colors, lines, and even numbers. The method that should allege to settle the various orientations of creative activity according to the nature of images would no more go to the bottom of the matter than would a classification of architecture according to the materials employed (as rock, brick, iron, wood, etc.) with no regard for differences of style.

This method aside, since the determination must be made according to the individuality of the architect, what method shall we follow? The matter is even more perplexing than the study of character. Although various authors have treated the latter subject (we have attempted it elsewhere), no one of the proposed classifications has been universally accepted. Nevertheless, despite their differences, they coincide in several points, because these have the advantage of resting on a common basis--the large manifestations of human nature, feeling, doing, thinking. In our subject I find nothing like this and I seek in vain for a point of support. Classifications are made according to the essential dominating attributes; but, as regards the varieties of the creative imagination, what are they?

We may, indeed, as was said above, distinguish two great classes--the intuitive and the combining. From another point of view we may distinguish invention of free range (esthetic, religious, mystic) from invention more or less restricted (mechanical, scientific, commercial, military, political, social). But these two divisions are too general, leading to nothing. A true classification should be in touch with facts, and this one soars too high.

Leaving, then, to others, more skilled or more fortunate, the task of a rational and systematic determination, if it be possible, we shall try merely to distinguish and describe the principal forms, such as experience gives them to us, emphasizing those that have been neglected or misinterpreted. What follows is thus neither a classification nor even a complete enumeration.

We shall study at first two general forms of the creative imagination--the plastic and the diffluent--and later, special forms, determined by their content and subject.

* * * * *

Wundt, in a little-noticed passage of his _Physiological Psychology_, has undertaken to determine the composition of the "principal forms of talent," which he reduces to four:

The first element is imagination. It may be intuitive, "that is, conferring on representations a clearness of sense-perception," or combining; "then it operates on multiple combinations of images." A very marked development in both directions at the same time is uncommon; the author assigns reasons for this.

The second element is understanding (_Verstand_). It may be inductive--i.e., inclining toward the collection of facts in order to draw generalizations from them--or deductive, taking general concepts and laws to trace their consequences.

If the intuitive imagination is joined to the inductive spirit we have the talent for observation of the naturalist, the psychologist, the pedagogue, the man of affairs.

If the intuitive imagination is combined with the deductive spirit we have the analytical talent of the systematic naturalist, of the geometrician. In Linnaeus and Cuvier the intuitive element predominates; in Gauss, the analytical element.

The combining imagination joined to the inductive spirit constitutes "the talent for invention strictly so-called," in industry, in the technique of science; it gives the artist and the poet the power of composing their works.

The combining imagination plus the deductive spirit gives the speculative talent of the mathematician and philosopher; deduction predominates in the former, imagination in the latter.[78]

FOOTNOTES:

[78] Wundt, _Physiologische Psychologie_, 4th German edition, Vol. II, pp. 490-95.