FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[48]Primitive man has been defined as "he for whom sensuous data and images surpass in importance rational concepts." From this standpoint, many contemporary poets, novelists, and artists would be primitive. The mental state of the human individual is not enough for such a determination; we must also take account of the (comparative) simplicity of the social environment.[49]Let us mention the euhemeristic theory of Herbert Spencer, taken up recently by Grant Allen (The Evolution of the Idea of God, 1897), who brings down all religious and mythic concepts from a single origin—the worship of the dead.[50]"When I tried to briefly characterize mythology in its inner nature, I called it a disease of language rather than a disease of thought. The expression was strange but intentionally so, meant to arouse attention and to provoke opposition. For me, language and thought are inseparable."Nouvelles études de Mythologie, p. 51.[51]Vignoli,Mito e Scienza, p. 27.[52]Marillier, Preface to the French translation of Andrew Lang'sMyth, Ritual, and Religion.[53]On this point consult a work very rich in information, W. Crooke's book,Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India, 1897.[54]"The Indian traversing the Montaña never feels himself alone. Legions of beings accompany him. All of the nature to whom he owes his soul speaks to him through the noise of the wind, in the roaring of the waterfall. The insect like the bird—everything, even to the bending twig wet with dew—for him has language, distinct personality. The forest is alive in its depths, has caprices, periods of anger; it avoids the thicket under the tread of the huntsman, or again presses him more closely, drags him into infected swamps, into closed bogs, where miserable goblins exhaust all their witchcraft upon him, drink his blood by attaching their lips to the wounds made by briers. The Indian knows all that; he knows those dread genii by name." Monnier,Des Andes au Para, p. 300.[55]See Part I,Chapter IV.[56]Op. cit., pp. 23-24.[57]Lang,op. cit., I, 162, andpassim.[58]Max Müller,op cit., p. 12.[59]Nouveaux Essais, p. 320.[60]See Lang,Myth, Ritual and Religion, I, p. 234, a passage from theRig-Veda, with four very different translations by Max Müller, Wilson, Benfrey, and Langlois.[61]On curiosity as the beginning of knowledge, compare the position held by Plato. (Tr.)[62]On this general subject consult the interesting though somewhat general article by Professor John Dewey, "The Interpretation of the Savage Mind," in thePsychological Review, May, 1903. The author justly criticises the current description of savages in negative terms, and contends that there is general misunderstanding of the true nature of the savage and of his activities. (Tr.)[63]It is now well accepted that Thales cannot be regarded as propounding a materialistic theory when he declares that everything is derived from water; for with him, "water" stands not merely for the substance that we call chemically "H2O," but for the "spirit that is in water" as well—the water-spirit is theGrundprincip. (Tr.)[64]Max Müller,op. cit., 39, 47-48, 59-60.

[48]Primitive man has been defined as "he for whom sensuous data and images surpass in importance rational concepts." From this standpoint, many contemporary poets, novelists, and artists would be primitive. The mental state of the human individual is not enough for such a determination; we must also take account of the (comparative) simplicity of the social environment.

[49]Let us mention the euhemeristic theory of Herbert Spencer, taken up recently by Grant Allen (The Evolution of the Idea of God, 1897), who brings down all religious and mythic concepts from a single origin—the worship of the dead.

[50]"When I tried to briefly characterize mythology in its inner nature, I called it a disease of language rather than a disease of thought. The expression was strange but intentionally so, meant to arouse attention and to provoke opposition. For me, language and thought are inseparable."Nouvelles études de Mythologie, p. 51.

[51]Vignoli,Mito e Scienza, p. 27.

[52]Marillier, Preface to the French translation of Andrew Lang'sMyth, Ritual, and Religion.

[53]On this point consult a work very rich in information, W. Crooke's book,Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India, 1897.

[54]"The Indian traversing the Montaña never feels himself alone. Legions of beings accompany him. All of the nature to whom he owes his soul speaks to him through the noise of the wind, in the roaring of the waterfall. The insect like the bird—everything, even to the bending twig wet with dew—for him has language, distinct personality. The forest is alive in its depths, has caprices, periods of anger; it avoids the thicket under the tread of the huntsman, or again presses him more closely, drags him into infected swamps, into closed bogs, where miserable goblins exhaust all their witchcraft upon him, drink his blood by attaching their lips to the wounds made by briers. The Indian knows all that; he knows those dread genii by name." Monnier,Des Andes au Para, p. 300.

[55]See Part I,Chapter IV.

[56]Op. cit., pp. 23-24.

[57]Lang,op. cit., I, 162, andpassim.

[58]Max Müller,op cit., p. 12.

[59]Nouveaux Essais, p. 320.

[60]See Lang,Myth, Ritual and Religion, I, p. 234, a passage from theRig-Veda, with four very different translations by Max Müller, Wilson, Benfrey, and Langlois.

[61]On curiosity as the beginning of knowledge, compare the position held by Plato. (Tr.)

[62]On this general subject consult the interesting though somewhat general article by Professor John Dewey, "The Interpretation of the Savage Mind," in thePsychological Review, May, 1903. The author justly criticises the current description of savages in negative terms, and contends that there is general misunderstanding of the true nature of the savage and of his activities. (Tr.)

[63]It is now well accepted that Thales cannot be regarded as propounding a materialistic theory when he declares that everything is derived from water; for with him, "water" stands not merely for the substance that we call chemically "H2O," but for the "spirit that is in water" as well—the water-spirit is theGrundprincip. (Tr.)

[64]Max Müller,op. cit., 39, 47-48, 59-60.

We now pass from primitive to civilized man, from collective to individual creation, the characters of which it remains for us to study as we find them in great inventors who exhibit them on a large scale. Fortunately, we may dismiss the treatment of the oft-discussed, never-solved problem of the psychological nature of genius. As we have already noted, there enter into its composition factors other than the creative imagination, although the latter is not the least among them. Besides, great men being exceptions, anomalies, or as the current expression has it, "spontaneous variations," we may askin liminewhether their psychology is explicable by means of simple formulæ, as with the average man, or whether even monographs teach us no more concerning their nature than general theories that are never applicable to all cases. Taking genius, then, as synonymous with great inventor, accepting itde factohistorically and psychologically, our task is limited to the attempt to separate characters that seem, from observation and experiment, to belong to it as peculiarly its own.

Putting aside vague dissertations and dithyrambics in favor of theories with a scientific tendency as to the nature of genius, we meet first the one attributing to it a pathological origin. Hinted at in antiquity (Aristotle, Seneca, etc.), suggested in the oft-expressed comparison between inspiration and insanity, it has reached, as we know—through timid, reserved, and partial statements (Lélut)—its complete expression in the famous formula of Moreau de Tours, "Genius is a neurosis."

Neuropathy was for him the exaggeration of vital properties and consequently the most favorable condition for the hatching of works of genius. Later, Lombroso, in a book teeming with doubtful or manifestly false evidence, finding his predecessor's theory too vague, attempts to give it more precision by substituting for neurosis in general a specific neurosis—larvated epilepsy. Alienists, far from eagerly accepting this view, have set themselves to combat it and to maintain that Lombroso has compromised everything in wanting to make the term too precise. There are several possible hypotheses, they say: either the neuropathic state is the direct, immediate cause of which the higher faculties of genius are effects; or, the intellectual superiority, through the excessive labor and excitation it involves, causes neuropathic disturbances; or, there is no relation of cause and effect between genius and neurosis, but mere coëxistence, since there are found very mediocre neuropaths, and men above the average without a neurotic blemish; or, the two states—the one psychic, the other physiological—are both effects, resulting from organic conditions that produce according to circumstances genius, insanity, and divers nervous troubles. Every one of these hypotheses can allege facts in its favor. We must, however, recognize that in most men of genius are found so many peculiarities, physical eccentricities and disorders of all kinds that the pathologic theory retains much probability.

There remain for consideration the sane geniuses who, despite many efforts and subtleties, have not yet been successfully brought under the foregoing formula, and who have made possible the enunciation of another theory. Recently, Nordau, rejecting the theory of his master Lombroso, has maintained that it is just as reasonable to say that "genius is a neurosis" as that "athleticism is a cardiopathy" because many athletes are affected with heart disease. For him, "the essential elements of genius are judgment and will." Following this definition, he establishes the following hierarchy of men of genius: At the highest rung of the ladder are those in whom judgment and will are equally powerful; men of action who make world-history (Alexander, Cromwell, Napoleon)—these are masters of men. On the second level are found the geniuses of judgment, with no hyper-development of will—these are masters of matter (Pasteur, Helmholtz, Röntgen). On the third step are geniuses of judgment without energetic will—thinkers and philosophers. What then shall we do with the emotional geniuses—the poets and artists? Theirs is not genius in the strict sense, "because it creates nothing new and exercises no influence on phenomena." Without discussing the value of this classification, without examining whether it is even possible,—since there is no common measure between Alexander, Pasteur, Shakespeare, and Spinoza,—and whether, on the other hand, common opinion is not right in putting on the same level the great creators, whoever they be, solely because they are far above the average, this remark is absolutely necessary: In the definition above cited the creative facultypar excellence—imagination—necessary to all inventors, is entirely left out.

We can, however, derive some benefit from this arbitrary division. Although it is impossible to admit that "emotional geniuses" create nothing new and have no influence on society, they do form a special group. Creative work requires of them a nervous excitability and a predominance of affective states that rapidly become morbid. In this way they have provided the pathological theory with most of its facts. It would perhaps be necessary to recognize distinctions between the various forms of invention. They require very different organic and psychic conditions in order that some may profit by morbid dispositions that are far from useful to others. This point should deserve a special study never made hitherto.

We shall reduce to three the characters ordinarily met in most great inventors. No one of them is without exception.

1.Precocity, which is reducible to innateness. The natural bent becomes manifest as soon as circumstances allow—it is the sign of the true vocation. The story is the same in all cases: at one moment the flash occurs; but this is not as frequent as is supposed. False vocations abound. If we deduct those attracted through imitation, environmental influence, exhortations and advice, chance, the attraction of immediate gain, aversion to a career imposed from without which they shun and adoption of an opposite one, will there remain many natural and irresistible vocations?

We have seen above that[65]the passage from reproductive to constructive imagination takes place toward the end of the third year. According to some authors, this initial period should be followed by a depression about the fifth year; thenceforward the upward progress is continuous. But the creative faculty, from its nature and content, develops in a very clear, chronological order. Music, plastic arts, poetry, mechanical invention, scientific imagination—such is the usual order of appearance.

In music, with the exception of a few child-prodigies, we hardly find personal creation before the age of twelve or thirteen. As examples of precocitymay be cited: Mozart, at the age of three; Mendelssohn, five; Haydn, four; Handel, twelve; Weber, twelve; Schubert, eleven; Cherubini, thirteen; and many others. Those late in developing—Beethoven, Wagner, etc.—are fewer by far.[66]

In the plastic arts, vocation and creative aptitude are shown perceptibly later, on the average about the fourteenth year: Giotto, at ten; Van Dyck, ten; Raphael, eight; Guerchin, eight; Greuze, eight; Michaelangelo, thirteen; Albrecht Dürer, fifteen; Bernini, twelve; Rubens and Jordaens being also precocious.

In poetry we find no work having any individual character before sixteen. Chatterton died at that age, perhaps the only example of so young a poet leaving any reputation. Schiller and Byron also began at sixteen. Besides this, we know that the talent for versification, at least as imitation, is very early in developing.

In mechanical arts children have early a remarkable capacity for understanding and imitating. At nine, Poncelet bought a watch that was out of order in order to study it, then took it apart and put it together correctly. Arago tells that at the same age Fresnel was called by his comrades a "man of genius," because he had determined by correct experiments "the length and caliber of children's elder-wood toy cannon giving the longest range; also, which green or dry woods used in themanufacture of bows have most strength and lasting power." In general, the average of mechanical invention is later, and scarcely comes earlier than that of scientific discovery.

The form of abstract imagination requisite for invention in the sciences has no great personal value before the twentieth year: there are a goodly number, however, who have given proof of it before that age—Pascal, Newton, Leibniz, Gauss, Auguste Comte, etc. Almost all are mathematicians.

These chronological variations result not from chance, but from psychological conditions necessary for the development of each form of imagination. We know that the acquisition of musical sounds is prior to speech: many children can repeat a scale correctly before they are able to talk. On the other hand, as dissolution follows evolution in inverse order,[67]aphasic patients lacking the most common words, can nevertheless sing. Sound-images are thus organized before all others, and the creative power when acting in this direction finds very early material for its use. For the plastic arts a longer apprenticeship is necessary for the education of the senses and movements. To acquire manual dexterity one must become skilled in observing form, combinations of lines and colors, and apt at reproducing them. Poetry and first attempts at novel-writing presuppose some experience of the passions of human life and a certain reflection of which thechild is incapable. Invention in the mechanic arts, as in the plastic arts, requires the education of the senses and movements; and, further, calculation, rational combination of means, rigorous adaptation to practical necessities. Lastly, scientific imagination is nothing without a high development of the capacity for abstraction, which is a matter of slow growth. Mathematicians are the most precocious because their material is the most simple; they have no need, as in the case of the experimental sciences, of an extended knowledge of facts, which is acquired only with time.

At this period of its development the imagination is in large part imitation. We must explain this paradox. The creator begins by imitating: this is such a well-known fact that it is needless to give proof of it, and it is subject to few exceptions. The most original mind is, at first, consciously or unconsciously somebody's disciple. It is necessarily so. Nature gives only one thing, "the creative instinct;" that is, the need of producing in a determined line. This internal factor alone is insufficient. Aside from the fact that the imagination at first has at its disposal only a very limited material, it lacks technique, the processes indispensable for realizing itself. As long as the creator has not found the suitable form into which to cast his creation he must indeed borrow it from another; his ideas must suffer the necessity of a provisional shelter. This explains how it is that later the inventor, reaching full consciousness of himself,in order to complete mastery of his methods, often breaks with his models, and burns what he at first adorned.

A second character consists of the necessity, the fatality of creation. Great inventors feel that they have a task to accomplish; they feel that they are charged with a mission. On this point we have a large number of testimonials and avowals. In the darkest days of his life Beethoven, haunted by the thought of suicide, wrote, "Art alone has kept me back. It seemed to me that I could not leave the world before producing all that I felt within me." Ordinarily, inventors are apt in only one line; even when they have a certain versatility, they remain bound to their own peculiar manner—they have their mark—like Michaelangelo; or, if they attempt to change it, if they try to be unfaithful as respects their vocation, they fall much below themselves.

This characteristic of irresistible impulsion which makes the genius create not because he wants to, but because he must do it, has often been likened to instinct. This very widespread view has been examined before (Part I,Chapter ii).

We have seen that there is no creative instinct in general, butparticulartendencies, orientated in a definite direction, which in most respects resemble instinct. It is contrary to experience and logic to admit that the creative genius follows any path whatever at his choice—a proposition that Weismann,in his horror of inheritance of acquired characters (which are a kind of innateness) is not afraid to support. That is true only of the man of talent, a matter of education and circumstances. The distinction between these two orders of creators—the great and the ordinary—has been made too often to need repetition, although it is proper to recognize that it is not always easy in practice, that there are names that cause us to hesitate, which we class somewhat at hazard. Yet genius remains, as Schopenhauer used to say,monstrum per excessum; excessive development in one direction. Hypertrophy of a special aptitude often makes genius fall, as far as the others are concerned, below the average level. Even those exceptional men who have given proof of multiple aptitudes, such as Vinci, Michaelangelo, Goethe, etc., always have a predominating tendency which, in common opinion, sums them up.

A third characteristic is the clearly definedindividualityof the great creator. He is the man of his work; he has done this or that: that is his mark. He is "representative." There is no other opinion as to this; what is a subject of discussion is theorigin, not the nature of this individuality. The Darwinian theory as to the all-powerful action of environment has led to the question whether the representative character of great inventors comes from themselves, and from them alone, or mustnot rather be sought in the unconscious influence of the race and epoch of which they are at a given instant only brighter sparks. This debate goes beyond the bounds of our subject. To decide whether social changes are due mostly to the accumulated influences of some individuals and their initiative, or to the environment, to circumstances, to hereditary transmission, is not a problem for psychology to solve. We can not, however, totally avoid this discussion, for it touches the very springs of creation.

Is the inventive genius the highest degree of personality or a synthesis of masses?—the result of himself or of others?—the expression of an individual activity or of a collective activity? In short, should we look for his representative character within him or without? Both these alternatives have authoritative supporters.

For Schopenhauer, Carlyle (Hero-worship), Nietzsche,et al., the great man is an autonomous product, a being without a peer, a demigod, "Uebermensch." He can be explained neither by heredity, nor by environment.

For others (Taine, Spencer, Grant, Allen,et al.), the important factor is seen in the race and external conditions. Goethe held that a whole family line is summarized some day in a single one of its members, and a whole people in one or several men. For him, Louis XIV and Voltaire are respectively the French king and writerpar excellence. "Thealleged great men," says Tolstoi, "are only the labels of history, they give their names to events."[68]

Each party explains the same facts according to its own principle and in its own peculiar way. The great historic epochs are rich in great men (the Greek republics of the fourth century B. C., the Roman Republic, the Renaissance, French Revolution, etc.). Why? Because, say some, periods put into ferment by the deep working of the masses make this blossoming possible. Because, say the others, this flowering modifies profoundly the social and intellectual condition of the masses and raises their level. For the former the ferment is deep down; for the latter it is on top.

Without presuming to solve this vexed question, I lean toward the view of individualism pure and simple. It seems to me very difficult to admit that the great creator is only the result of his environment. Since this influence acts on many others, it is very necessary that, in great men, there should be in addition a personal factor. Besides, in opposition to the exclusively environmental theory we may bring the well-known fact that most innovators and inventors at first arouse opposition. We know the invariable sentence on everything novel—it is "false" or "bad;" then it is adopted with the statement that it had been known for a long time.In the hypothesis of collective invention, it seems that the mass of people should applaud inventors, recognizing itself in them, seeing its confused thought take form and body: but most often the contrary happens. The misoneism of crowds seems to me one of the strongest arguments in favor of the individual character of invention.

We can doubtless distinguish two cases—in the first, the creator sums up and clearly translates the aspirations of hismilieu; in the second, he is in opposition to it because he goes beyond it. How many innovators have been disappointed because they came before their time! But this distinction does not reach to the bottom of the question, and is not at all sufficient as an answer.

Let us leave this problem, which, on account of its complexity, we can hardly solve through peremptory reasoning, and let us try to examineobjectivelythe relation between creation and environment in order that we may see to what extent the creative imagination, without losing its individual character—which is impossible—depends on the intellectual and social surrounding.

If, with the American psychologists,[69]we term the disposition for innovating a "spontaneous variation"—a Darwinian term explaining nothing, but convenient—we may enunciate the following law:

The tendency toward spontaneous variation (invention) is always in inverse ratio to the simplicity of the environment.

The savage environment is in its nature very simple, consequently homogeneous. The lower races show a much smaller degree of differentiation than the higher; in them, as Jastrow says, physical and psychic maturity is more precocious, and as the period just before the adult age is the plastic periodper se, this diminishes the chances of a departure from the common type. Thus comparison between whites and blacks, between primitive and civilized peoples, shows that, for equal populations, there is an enormous disproportion as to the number of innovators.

The barbarian environment is much more complex and heterogeneous: it contains all the rudiments of civilized life. Consequently, it favors more individual variations and is richer in superior men. But these variations are rarely produced outside of a very restricted field—political, military, religious. So it seems impossible to agree with Joly[70]that neither primitive nor barbarian peoples produce superior minds, "unless," as he says, "by this name we mean those that simply surpass their congeners." But is there a criterion other than that? I see none. Greatness is altogether a relative idea; and would not our great creators seem, to beings better endowed than we, very small?

The civilized environment, requiring division oflabor and consequently a constantly growing complexity of heterogeneous elements, is an open door for all vocations. Doubtless, the social spirit always retains something of that tendency toward stagnation that is the rule in lower social orders; it is more favorable to tradition than to innovation. But the inevitable necessity of a warm competition between individuals and peoples is a natural antidote for that natural inertia; it favors useful variations. Moreover, civilization means evolution; consequently the conditions under which the imagination is active change with the times. Let us suppose, Weismann justly says, that in the Samoan Islands there were born a child having the singular and extraordinary genius of Mozart. What could he accomplish? At the most, extend the gamut of three or four tones to seven, and create a few more complex melodies; but he would be as unable to compose symphonies as Archimedes would have been to invent an electric dynamo. How many creators have been wrecked because the conditions necessary for their inventions were lacking? Roger Bacon foresaw several of our great discoveries; Cardan, the differential calculus; Van Helmont, chemistry; and it has been possible to write a book on the forerunners of Darwin.[71]We talk so much of the free flight of imagination, of the all-comprehensive power of the creator, that we forget the sociological conditions—not to mention others—on which they are every moment dependent. Inthis respect, no invention is personal in the strict sense; there always remains in it a little of that anonymous collaboration the highest expression of which, as we have seen, is the mythic activity.

By way of summary, and whatever be the causes, we may say that there is a universal tendency in all living matter toward variation, whether we consider vegetables, animals, or the physical and mental man. The need of innovating is only a special case, rare in the lower races, frequent in the higher. This tendency toward variation is fundamental or superficial: As fundamental, it corresponds to genius, and survives through processes analogous to natural selection, i.e., by its own power. As superficial, it corresponds to talent, survives and prospers chiefly through the help of circumstances and environment. Here, the orientation comes from without, not from within. According as the spirit of the time inclines rather to poetry or painting, or music, or scientific research, or industry, or military art, minds of the second order are dragged into the current—showing that a goodly part of their power is in the aptness, not for invention, but forimitation.

The determination of the characters belonging to the inventive genius has necessitated some seemingly irrelevant remarks on the action of the environment. Let us return to invention, strictly so-called.

For inventing there is always required a natural aptitude, sometimes, a happy chance.

The natural disposition should be accepted as a fact. Why does a man create? Because he is capable of forming new combinations of ideas. However naïve this answer may be, there is no other. The only thing possible, is the determination of the conditions necessary and sufficient for producing novel combinations: this has been done in the first part of this book, and there is no occasion for going over it again. But there is another aspect in creative work to be considered—its psychologicalmechanism, and the form of its development.

Every normal person creates little or much. He may, in his ignorance, invent what has been already done a thousand times. Even if this is not a creation as regards the species, it is none the less such for the individual. It is wrong to say, as has been said, that an invention "is a new and important idea."Noveltyonly is essential—that is the psychological mark: importance and utility are accessory, merely social marks. Invention is thus unduly limited when we attribute it to great inventors only. At this moment, however, we are concerned only with these, and in them the mechanism of invention is easier to study.

We have already seen how false is the theory that holds that there is always a sudden stroke of inspiration, followed by a period of rapid or slow execution. On the contrary, observation revealsmany processes that apparently differ less in thecontentof invention than according to individual temperament. I distinguish two general processes of which the rest are variations. In all creation, great or small, there is a directing idea, an "ideal"—understanding the word not in its transcendental sense, but merely as synonymous with end or goal—or more simply, a problem to solve. Thelocusof the idea, of the given problem, is not the same in the two processes. In the one I term "complete" the ideal is at the beginning: in the "abridged" it is in the middle. There are also other differences which the following tables will make more clear:

First Process(complete).1st phase2nd phase3d phaseIDEA (commencement)Special incubationof more or lessdurationINVENTION,orDISCOVERY(end)VERIFICATION,orAPPLICATION

The idea excites attention and takes a fixed character. The period of brooding begins. For Newton it lasted seventeen years, and at the time of definitely establishing his discovery by calculation he was so overcome with emotion that he had to assign to another the task of completing it. The mathematician Hamilton tells us that his method of quaternians burst upon him one day, completely finished, while he was near a bridge in Dublin. "In that moment I had the result of fifteen years' labor." Darwin gathers material during his voyages, spendsa long time observing plants and animals, then through the chance reading of Malthus' book, hits upon and formulates his theory. In literary and artistic creation similar examples are frequent.[72]

The second phase is only an instant, but essential—the moment of discovery, when the creator exclaims his "Eureka!"[73]With it, the work is virtually or really ended.

Second Process(abridged).1st phase2nd phase3rd phaseGeneral preparation(unconscious)IDEA (commencement)INSPIRATIONERUPTIONCONSTRUCTIVEandDEVELOPINGperiod.

This is the process in intuitive minds. Such seems to have been the case of Mozart, Poe, etc. Without attempting what would be a tedious enumeration of examples, we may say that this form of creation comprises two classes—those coming to maturity through an internal impulse, a sudden stroke of inspiration, and those who are suddenly illumined by chance. The two processes differ superficially rather than essentially. Let us briefly compare them.

With some, the first phase is long and fully conscious;in others it seems negligible, equal to zero—there is nothing of it because there exists a natural or acquired tendency toward equilibrium. "For a long time," says Schumann, "I had the habit of racking my brain, and now I scarcely need to scratch my forehead. Everything runs naturally."[74]

The second phase is almost the same in both cases: it is only an instant, but it is essential—it is the moment of imaginative synthesis.

Lastly, the third phase is very short for some, because the main labor is already done, and there remains only the finishing touch or the verification. It is long for others, because they must pass from the perceived idea to complete realization, and because the preparatory work is faulty; so that for these the second creative process is shortened in appearance only.

Such seem to me the two principal forms of the mechanism of creation. These are genera; they include species and varieties that a patient and minute study of the processes peculiar to various inventors would reveal to us. We must bear in mind that this work makes no claim of being a monograph on invention, but merely a sketch.[75]

The two processes above described seem to correspondon the whole to the oft-made distinction between the intuitive or spontaneous, and the combining or reflective imagination.

The intuitive, essentially synthetic form, is found principally in the purely imaginative types, children and savages. The mind proceeds from the whole to details. The generative idea resembles those concepts which, in the sciences, are of wide range because they condense a generalization rich in consequences. The subject is at first comprehended as a whole; development is organic, and we may compare it to the embryological process that causes a living being to arise from the fertilized ovum, analogous to an immanent logic. As a type of this creative form there has often been given a letter wherein Mozart explains his mode of conception. Recently (and that is why I do not reprint it here) it has been suspected of being apocryphal. I regret this—it was worthy of being authentic. According to Goethe, Shakespeare'sHamletcould have been created only through an intuitive process, etc.

The combining, discursive imagination proceeds from details to the vaguely-perceived unity. It starts from a fragment that serves as a matrix, and becomes completed little by little. An adventure, an anecdote, a scene, a rapid glance, a detail, suggests a literary or artistic creation; but the organic form does not appear in a trice. In science, Kepler furnishes a good example of this combining imagination.It is known that he devoted a part of his life trying strange hypotheses, until the day when, having discovered the elliptical orbit of Mars, all his former work took shape and became an organized system. Did we want to make use once more of an embryological comparison, it would be necessary to look for it in the strange conceptions of ancient cosmogonies: they believed that from an earthly slime arose parts of bodies and separate organs which through a mysterious attraction and happy chance ended by sticking together, and forming living bodies.[76]

It is an accepted view that of these two modes, one, the abridged or intuitive process, is superior to the other. I confess to having held this prejudice. On examination, I find it doubtful, even false. There is adifference, not any "higher" and "lower."

First of all, both these forms of creation are necessary. The intuitive process can suffice for an invention of short duration: a rhyme, a story, a profile, amotif, an ornamental stroke, a little mechanical contrivance, etc. But as soon as the work requires time and development the discursive process becomes absolutely necessary: with many inventors one easily perceives the change from one form to the other. We have seen that in the case of Chopin, "creation was spontaneous, miraculous," coming complete and sudden. But George Sand adds: "The crisis over, then commenced the most heartrending labor at which I have ever been present,"and she pictures him to us agonized, for days and weeks, running after the bits of lost inspiration. Goethe, likewise, in a letter to Humboldt regarding his Faust, which occupied him for sixty years, full of interruptions and gaps: "The difficulty has been to get through strength of will what is really to be gotten only by a spontaneous act of nature." Zola, according to his biographer, Toulouse, "imagines a novel, always starting out with a general idea that dominates the work; then, from induction to induction, he draws out of it the characters and all the story."

To sum up: Pure intuition and pure combination are exceptional; ordinarily, it is a mixed process in which one of the two elements prevails and permits its qualification. If we note, in addition, that it would be easy to group under these two headings names of the first rank, we shall conclude that the difference is altogether in themechanism, not in thenatureof creation, and is consequently accessory; and that this difference is reducible to natural dispositions, which we may contrast as follows:

Ready-witted minds,excelling in conception,making the whole almostout of one piece.Logically-developingminds, excelling inelaboration.Work primarily unconscious.Patience the preponderatingrôle.Work primarily conscious.Actions quick.Actions slow.

"Were we to raise monuments to inventors in the arts and sciences, there would be fewer statues to men than to children, animals, and especiallyfortune." 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 circumstances. We know that one of the best conditions for inventing is abundance of material, accumulated experience, knowledge—which augment the chances of original association 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 isvery 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-anticipated 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 assurance. 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 oftwofactors—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, thecasting 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 circumstances, 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 glass in an optician's shop. Schönbein 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 fictitious characters whose real originals are known.

So much for the external, fortuitous factor; its rôle 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 passes by millions of men without exciting anything. How many of Pisa's inhabitants had seen the lamp of their cathedralbefore 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 thatchance is an occasion for, not an agent of, creation.

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