FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[146]See above, Part I,chapter II.[147]It is a postulate of contemporary physiology that all the neurones taken together cannot spontaneously, that is, of themselves, give rise to any movement—they receive from without, and expend their energy outwards. Nevertheless, between the two moments that, in reflex and instinctive actions, seem continuous, a third interposes, which, for the higher psychic acts, may be of long duration. Thus, reasonings in logical form and reflection regarding a decision to be made have a feeble tendency to become changed into acts; their motor effects are indirect, and at a long range. But this intermediate moment ispar excellencethe moment for psychology. It is also the moment of the personal equation: every man receives, transforms, and restores outwards according to his own organization, temperament, idiosyncrasies, character—in a word, according to his personality, of which needs, tendencies, desires, are the direct and immediate expression. So we come back, by another route, to the same definition of spontaneity.[148]Besides these three principal forms, there are intermediate forms, transitions from one category to another, that are hard to classify: certain mythic creations are half-sketched, half-fixed; and we find religious and social and political conceptions, partly theoretic or fixed, partly practical or objective.[149]Taine,On Intelligence, Part I, Book II, ch. I.[150]SeeAppendix E.[151]Sante de Santis,I Sogni, chapter X; Dr. Tissié,Les Rêves, esp. p. 165, the case of a merchant who dreams of having paid a certain debt, and several weeks afterward meets his creditor, and maintains that they are even, giving way only to proof.[152]For the complete account, see hisPathologie des émotions, pp. 345-49. (Paris, F. Alcan.)[153]Dr. Max Simon, in an article on "Imagination in Insanity" (Annales médico-psychologiques, December, 1876), holds that every kind of mental disease has its own form of imagination that expresses itself in stories, compositions, sketches, decorations, dress, and symbolic attributes. The maniac invents complicated and improbable designs; the persecuted, symbolic designs, strange writings, bordering on the horrible; megalomaniacs look for the effect of everything they say and do; the general paralytic lives in grandeur and attributes capital importance to everything; lunatics love the naïve and childishly wonderful.There are also great imaginers who, having passed through a period of insanity, have strongly regretted it "as a state in which the soul, more exalted and more refined, perceives invisible relations and enjoys spectacles that escape the material eyes." Such was Gérard de Nerval. As for Charles Lamb, he would assert that he should be envied the days spent in an insane asylum. "Sometimes," he said in a letter to Coleridge, "I cast a longing glance backwards to the condition in which I found myself; for while it lasted I had many hours of pure happiness. Do not believe, Coleridge, that you have tasted the grandeur and all the transport of fancy if you have not been insane. Everything seems to me now insipid in comparison." Quoted by A. Barine,Névrosés, p. 326.[154]There has often been cited the instance of certain maniacs at Charenton, who, during the Franco-Prussian War, despite the stories that were told them, the papers that they read, and the shells bursting under the walls of the asylum, maintained that the war was only imagined, and that all was only a contrivance of their persecutors.

[146]See above, Part I,chapter II.

[147]It is a postulate of contemporary physiology that all the neurones taken together cannot spontaneously, that is, of themselves, give rise to any movement—they receive from without, and expend their energy outwards. Nevertheless, between the two moments that, in reflex and instinctive actions, seem continuous, a third interposes, which, for the higher psychic acts, may be of long duration. Thus, reasonings in logical form and reflection regarding a decision to be made have a feeble tendency to become changed into acts; their motor effects are indirect, and at a long range. But this intermediate moment ispar excellencethe moment for psychology. It is also the moment of the personal equation: every man receives, transforms, and restores outwards according to his own organization, temperament, idiosyncrasies, character—in a word, according to his personality, of which needs, tendencies, desires, are the direct and immediate expression. So we come back, by another route, to the same definition of spontaneity.

[148]Besides these three principal forms, there are intermediate forms, transitions from one category to another, that are hard to classify: certain mythic creations are half-sketched, half-fixed; and we find religious and social and political conceptions, partly theoretic or fixed, partly practical or objective.

[149]Taine,On Intelligence, Part I, Book II, ch. I.

[150]SeeAppendix E.

[151]Sante de Santis,I Sogni, chapter X; Dr. Tissié,Les Rêves, esp. p. 165, the case of a merchant who dreams of having paid a certain debt, and several weeks afterward meets his creditor, and maintains that they are even, giving way only to proof.

[152]For the complete account, see hisPathologie des émotions, pp. 345-49. (Paris, F. Alcan.)

[153]Dr. Max Simon, in an article on "Imagination in Insanity" (Annales médico-psychologiques, December, 1876), holds that every kind of mental disease has its own form of imagination that expresses itself in stories, compositions, sketches, decorations, dress, and symbolic attributes. The maniac invents complicated and improbable designs; the persecuted, symbolic designs, strange writings, bordering on the horrible; megalomaniacs look for the effect of everything they say and do; the general paralytic lives in grandeur and attributes capital importance to everything; lunatics love the naïve and childishly wonderful.There are also great imaginers who, having passed through a period of insanity, have strongly regretted it "as a state in which the soul, more exalted and more refined, perceives invisible relations and enjoys spectacles that escape the material eyes." Such was Gérard de Nerval. As for Charles Lamb, he would assert that he should be envied the days spent in an insane asylum. "Sometimes," he said in a letter to Coleridge, "I cast a longing glance backwards to the condition in which I found myself; for while it lasted I had many hours of pure happiness. Do not believe, Coleridge, that you have tasted the grandeur and all the transport of fancy if you have not been insane. Everything seems to me now insipid in comparison." Quoted by A. Barine,Névrosés, p. 326.

There are also great imaginers who, having passed through a period of insanity, have strongly regretted it "as a state in which the soul, more exalted and more refined, perceives invisible relations and enjoys spectacles that escape the material eyes." Such was Gérard de Nerval. As for Charles Lamb, he would assert that he should be envied the days spent in an insane asylum. "Sometimes," he said in a letter to Coleridge, "I cast a longing glance backwards to the condition in which I found myself; for while it lasted I had many hours of pure happiness. Do not believe, Coleridge, that you have tasted the grandeur and all the transport of fancy if you have not been insane. Everything seems to me now insipid in comparison." Quoted by A. Barine,Névrosés, p. 326.

[154]There has often been cited the instance of certain maniacs at Charenton, who, during the Franco-Prussian War, despite the stories that were told them, the papers that they read, and the shells bursting under the walls of the asylum, maintained that the war was only imagined, and that all was only a contrivance of their persecutors.

Among the descriptions of the inspired state found in various authors, I select only three, which are brief and have each a special character.

I. Mystic inspiration, in a passive form, in Jacob Boehme (Aurora): "I declare before God that I do not myself know how the thing arises within me, without the participation of my will. I do not even know that which I must write. If I write, it is because the Spirit moves me and communicates to me a great, wonderful knowledge. Often I do not even know whether I dwell in spirit in this present world and whether it is I myself that have the fortune to possess a certain and solid knowledge."

II. Feverish and painful inspiration in Alfred de Musset: "Invention annoys me and makes me tremble. Execution, always too slow for my wish, makes my heart beat awfully, and weeping, and keeping myself from crying aloud, I am delivered of an idea that is intoxicating me, but of which Iam mortally ashamed and disgusted next morning. If I change it, it is worse, it deserts me—it is much better to forget it and wait for another; but this other comes to me so confused and misshapen that my poor being cannot contain it. It presses and tortures me, until it has taken realizable proportions, when comes the other pain, of bringing forth, a truly physical suffering that I cannot define. And that is how my life is spent when I let myself be dominated by this artistic monster in me. It is much better, then, that I should live as I have imagined living, that I go to all kinds of excess, and that I kill this never-dying worm that people like me modestly term their inspiration, but which I call, plainly, my weakness."[156]

III. The poet Grillparzer[157]analyzes the condition, thus:

"Inspiration, properly so called, is the concentration of all the faculties and aptitudes on a single point which, for the moment, should include the rest of the world less than represent it. The strengthening of the state of the soul comes from the fact that its various faculties, instead of being disseminated over the whole world, find themselves contained within the limits of a single object, touch one another, reciprocally upholding, reënforcing, completing themselves. Thanks to this isolation, the object emerges out of the average level of itsmilieu, is illumined all around and put in relief—it takes body, moves, lives. But to attain this is necessary the concentration of all the faculties. It is only when the art-work has been a world for the artist that it is also a world for others."

FOOTNOTES:[155]See Part One,chapter III.[156]George Sand,Elle et Lui, I.[157]In Oelzelt-Newin,op. cit., p. 49.

[155]See Part One,chapter III.

[156]George Sand,Elle et Lui, I.

[157]In Oelzelt-Newin,op. cit., p. 49.

We have seen that in the question of the unconscious there must be recognized a positive part—facts, and an hypothetical part—theories.[158]

Insofar as the facts are concerned, it would be well, I think, to establish two categories—(1) static unconscious, comprising habits, memory, and, in general, all that is organized knowledge. It is a state of preservation, of rest; very relatively, since representations suffer incessant corrosion and change. (2) Dynamic unconscious, which is a state of latent activity, of elaboration and incubation. We might give a multitude of proofs of this unconscious rumination. The well-known fact that an intellectual work gains by being interrupted; that in resuming it one often finds it cleared up, changed, even accomplished, was explained by some psychologists prior to Carpenter by "the resting of the mind." It would be just as valid to say that a traveler covers leagues by lying abed. The authorjust mentioned[159]has brought together many observations in which the solution of a mathematical, mechanical, commercial problem appeared suddenly after hours and days of vague, undefinable uneasiness, the cause of which is unknown, which, however, is only the result of an underlying cerebral working; for the trouble, sometimes rising to anguish, ceases as soon as the unawaited conclusion has entered consciousness. The men who think the most are not those who have the clearest and "most conscious" ideas, but those having at their disposal a rich fund of unconscious elaboration. On the other hand, shallow minds have a naturally poor unconscious fund, capable of but slight development; they give out immediately and rapidly all that they are able to give; they have no reserve. It is useless to allow them time for reflection or invention. They will not do better; they may do worse.

As to the nature of the unconscious working, we find disagreement and darkness. One may doubtless maintain, theoretically, that in the inventor everything goes on in subconsciousness and in unconsciousness, just as in consciousness itself, with the exception that a message does not arrive as far as the self; that the labor that may be followed, in clear consciousness, in its progress and retreats, remains the same when it continues unknown to us. This is possible. Yet it must at least be recognized that consciousness is rigorously subject to the conditionof time, the unconscious is not. This difference, not to mention others, is not negligible, and could well arouse other problems.

The contemporary theories regarding the nature of the unconscious seem to me reducible to two principal positions—one psychological, the other physiological.

1. The physiological theory is simple and scarcely permits any variations. According to it, unconscious activity is simply cerebral; it is an "unconscious cerebration." The psychic factor, which ordinarily accompanies the activity of the nervous centers, is absent. Although I incline toward this hypothesis, I confess that it is full of difficulties.

It has been proven through numerous experiments (Féré, Binet, Mosso, Janet, Newbold, etc.) that "unconscious sensations"[160]act, since they produce the same reactions as conscious sensations, and Mosso has been able to maintain that "the testimony of consciousness is less certain than that of the sphygmograph." But the particular instance of invention is very different; for it does not merely suppose the adaptation to an end which the physiological factor would suffice to explain; it implies a series of adaptations, corrections, rational operations,of which nervous activity alone furnishes us no example.[161]

2. The psychological theory is based on an equivocal use of the word consciousness. Consciousness has one definite mark—it is an internal event existing, not by itself, but for me and insofar as it is known by me. But the psychological theory of the unconscious assumes that if we descend from clear consciousness progressively to obscure consciousness, to the subconscious, to the unconscious that manifests itself only through its motor reactions, the first state thus successively impoverished, still remains, down to its final term, identical in its basis with consciousness. It is an hypothesis that nothing justifies.

No difficulty arises when we bear in mind the legitimate distinction between consciousness of self and consciousness in general, the former entirely subjective, the latter in a way objective (the consciousness of a man captivated by an attractive scene; better yet, the fluid form of revery or of the awaking from syncope). We may admit that thisevanescent consciousness, affective in nature, felt rather than perceived, is due to a lack of synthesis, of relations among the internal states, which remain isolated, unable to unite into a whole.

The difficulty commences when we descend into the region of the subconscious, which allows stages whose obscurity increases in proportion as we move away from clear consciousness, "like a lake in which the action of light is always nearing extinction" (in double coexisting personalities, automatic writing, mediums, etc.). Here some postulate two currents of consciousness existing at the same time in one person without reciprocal connection. Others suppose a "field of consciousness" with a brilliant center and extending indefinitely toward the dim distance. Still others liken the phenomenon to the movement of waves, whose summit alone is lighted up. Indeed, the authors declare that with these comparisons and metaphors they make no pretense of explaining; but certainly they all reduce unconsciousness to consciousness, as a special to a general case, and what is that if not explaining?

I do not intend to enumerate all the varieties of the psychological theory. The most systematic, that of Myers, accepted by Delboef and others, is full of a biological mysticism all its own. Here it is in substance: In every one of us there is a conscious self adapted to the needs of life, and potential selves constituting the subliminal consciousness. The latter, much broader in scope than personal consciousness, has dependent on it the entire vegetative life—circulation, trophic actions, etc. Ordinarily the conscious self is on the highest level, the subliminal consciousness on the second; but in certain extraordinary states (hypnosis, hysteria, divided consciousness, etc.) it is just the reverse. Here is the bold part of the hypothesis: Its authors suppose that the supremacy of the subliminal consciousness is a reversion, a return to the ancestral. In the higher animals and in primitive man, according to them, all trophic actions entered consciousness and were regulated by it. In the course of evolution this became organized; the higher consciousness has delegated to the subliminal consciousness the care of silently governing the vegetative life. But in case of mental disintegration there occurs a return to the primitive state. In this manner they explain burns through suggestion, stigmata, trophic changes of a miraculous appearance, etc. It is needless to dwell on this conception of the unconscious. It has been vehemently criticised, notably by Bramwell, who remarks that if certain faculties could little by little fall into the domain of subliminal consciousness because they were no longer necessary for the struggle for life, there are nevertheless faculties so essential to the well-being of the individual that we ask ourselves how they have been able to escape from the control of the will. If, for example, some lower type had the power of arresting pain, how could it lose it?

At the foundation of the psychological theory in all its forms is the unexpressed hypothesis thatconsciousness may be likened to a quantity that forever decreases without reaching zero. This is a postulate that nothing justifies. The experiments of psychophysicists, without solving the question, would support rather the opposite view. We know that the "threshold of consciousness" or minimum perceptible quantity, appears and disappears suddenly; the excitation is not felt under a determinate limit. Likewise in regard to the "summit of perception" or maximum perceptible, any increase of excitation is no longer felt if above a determinate limit. Moreover, in order that an increase or diminution be felt between these two extreme limits, it is necessary that both have a constant relation—differential threshold—as is expressed in Weber's law. All these facts, and others that I omit, are not favorable to the thesis of growing or diminishing continuity of consciousness. It has even been maintained that consciousness "has an aversion for continuity."

To sum up: The two rival theories are equally unable to penetrate into the inner nature of the unconscious factor. We have thus had to limit ourselves to taking it as a fact of experience and to assign it its place in the complex function that produces invention.

The observations of Flournoy (in his book, mentioned above, Part I,chapter III) have a particular interest in relation to our subject. His medium, Helène S......—very unlike others, who are satisfied with forecasts of the future, disclosures ofunknown past events, counsel, prognosis, evocation, etc., without creating anything, in the proper sense—is the author of three or four novels, one of which, at least, is invented out of whole cloth—revelations in regard to the planet Mars, its countries, inhabitants, dwellings, etc. Although the descriptions and pictures of Helène S. are found on comparison to be borrowed from our terrestrial globe, and transposed and changed, as Flournoy has well shown, it is certain that in this "Martian novel," to say nothing of the others, there is a richness of invention that is rare among mediums: the creative imagination in its subliminal (unconscious) form encloses the other in its éclat. We know how much the cases of mediums teach us in regard to the unconscious life of the mind. Here we are permitted, as an exceptional case, to penetrate into the dark laboratory of romantic invention, and we can appreciate the importance of the labor that is going on there.

FOOTNOTES:[158]See Part I,Chapter III.[159]Mental Physiology, Book II, chapter 13.[160]This expression is put in quotation marks because in American and English usage "sensation" is defined in terms of consciousness, and such an expression as "unconscious sensation" is paradoxical, and would lead to futile discussion. (Tr.)[161]For the detailed criticism of unconscious cerebration, see Boris Sidis,The Psychology of Suggestion: A research into the subconscious nature of Man and Society, New York, Appletons, 1898, pp. 121-127. The author, who assumes the coëxistence of two selves—one waking, the other subwaking, and who attributes to the latter all weakness and vice (according to him the unconscious is incapable of rising above mere association by contiguity; it is "stupid," "uncritical," "credulous," "brutal," etc.) would be greatly puzzled to explain its rôle in creative activity.

[158]See Part I,Chapter III.

[159]Mental Physiology, Book II, chapter 13.

[160]This expression is put in quotation marks because in American and English usage "sensation" is defined in terms of consciousness, and such an expression as "unconscious sensation" is paradoxical, and would lead to futile discussion. (Tr.)

[161]For the detailed criticism of unconscious cerebration, see Boris Sidis,The Psychology of Suggestion: A research into the subconscious nature of Man and Society, New York, Appletons, 1898, pp. 121-127. The author, who assumes the coëxistence of two selves—one waking, the other subwaking, and who attributes to the latter all weakness and vice (according to him the unconscious is incapable of rising above mere association by contiguity; it is "stupid," "uncritical," "credulous," "brutal," etc.) would be greatly puzzled to explain its rôle in creative activity.

For Froschammer,Fancyis the original principle of things. In his philosophical theory it plays the same part as Hegel'sIdea, Schopenhauer'sWill, Hartmann'sUnconscious, etc. It is, at first, objective—in the beginning the universal creative power is immanent in things, just as there is contained in the kernel the principle that shall give the plant its form and construct its organism; it spreads out into the myriads of vegetable and animal existences that have been succeeded or that still live on the surface of the Cosmos. The first organized beings must have been very simple; but little by little the objective imagination increases its energy by exercising it; it invents and realizes increasingly more complex images that attest the progress of its artistic genius. So Darwin was right in asserting that a slow evolution raises up organized beings towards fulness of life and beauty of form.

Step by step, it succeeds in becoming conscious of itself in the mind of man—it becomes subjective.Generative power, at first diffused throughout the organism, becomes localized in the generative organs, and becomes established in sex. "The brain, in living beings, may form a pole opposed to the reproductive organs, especially when these beings are very high in the organic scale." Thus changed, the generative power has become capable of perceiving new relations, of bringing forth internal worlds. In nature and in man it is the same principle that causes living forms to appear—objective images in a way, and subjective images, a kind of living forms that arise and die in the mind.[163]

This metaphysical theory, one of the many varieties ofmens agitat molem, being, like every other, a personal conception, it is superfluous to discuss or criticise its evident anthropomorphism. But, since we are dealing with hypotheses, I venture to risk a comparison between embryological development in physiology, instinct in psychophysiology, and the creative imagination in psychology. These three phenomena are creations, i.e., a disposition of certain materials following a determinate type.

In the first case, the ovum after fertilization is subject to a rigorously determined evolution whence arises such and such an individual with its specific and personal characters, its hereditary influences,etc. Every disturbing factor in this evolution produces deviations, monstrosities, and the creation does not attain the normal. Embryology can follow these changes step by step. There remains one obscure point in any event, and that is, the nature of what the ancients called thenisus formativus.

In the case of instinct, the initial moment is an external or internal sensation, or rather, a representation—the image of a nest to be built, in the case of the bird; of a tunnel to be dug, for the ant; of a comb to be made, for the bee and the wasp; of a web to be spun, for the spider, etc. This initial state puts into action a mechanism determined by the nature of each species, and ends in creations of special kinds. However, variations of instinct, its adaptation to various conditions, show that the conditions of the determinism are less simple, that the creative activity is endowed with a certain plasticity.

In the third case, creative imagination, the ideal, a sketched construction, is the equivalent of the ovum; but it is evident that the plasticity of the creative imagination is much greater than that of instinct. The imagination may radiate in several very different ways, and the plan of the invention, as we have seen,[164]may arise as a whole and develop regularly in an embryological manner, or else present itself in a fragmentary, partial form that becomes complete after a series of attractions.

Perhaps an identical process, forming threestages—a lower, middle, and higher—is at the root of all three cases. But this is only a speculative hypothesis, foreign to psychology proper.

FOOTNOTES:[162]See above, Part One,Chapter IV.[163]Those who, not having the courage to read the 575 pages of Froschammer's book, want more details, may profitably consult the excellent analysis that Séailles has given (Rev. Philos., March, 1878, pp. 198-220). See also Ambrosi,Psicologia dell' immaginazione nella storia della filosofia, pp. 472-498.[164]See above, Part II,chapter IV.

[162]See above, Part One,Chapter IV.

[163]Those who, not having the courage to read the 575 pages of Froschammer's book, want more details, may profitably consult the excellent analysis that Séailles has given (Rev. Philos., March, 1878, pp. 198-220). See also Ambrosi,Psicologia dell' immaginazione nella storia della filosofia, pp. 472-498.

[164]See above, Part II,chapter IV.

The question asked above,[166]Does the experiencing of purely musical sounds evoke images, universally, and of what nature and under what conditions? seemed to me to enter a more general field—the affective imagination—which I intend to study elsewhere in a special work. For the time being I limit myself to observations and information that I have gathered, picking from them several that I give here for the sake of shedding light on the question. I give first the replies of musicians; then, those of non-musicians.

1. M. Lionel Dauriac writes me: "The question that you ask me is complex. I am not a 'visualizer;' I have infrequent hypnagogic hallucinations, and they are all of the auditory type.

"... Symphonic music aroused in me no image of the visual type while I remained the amateur that you knew from 1876 to 1898. When that amateur began to reflect methodically on theart of his taste, he recognized in music a power of suggesting:

"1. Sonorous, non-musical images—thunder, clock. Example, the overture ofWilliam Tell.

"2. Psychic images—suggestion of a mental state—anger, love, religious feeling.

"3. Visual images, whether following upon the psychic image or through the intermediation of a programme.

"Under what condition, in a symphonic work, is the visual image, introduced by the psychic image, produced? In the event of a break in the melodic web (see myPsychologie dans l'Opéra, pp. 119-120). Here are given, without orderly arrangement, some of the ideas that have come to me:

"Beethoven'ssymphony in C majorappears to me purely musical—it is of a sonorous design. Thesymphony in D major(the second) suggests to me visual-motor images—I set a ballet to the first part and keep track altogether of the ballet that I picture. TheHeroic Symphony(aside from the funeral march, the meaning of which is indicated in the title) suggests to me images of a military character, ever since the time that I noticed that the fundamental theme of the first portion is based on notes of perfect harmony—trumpet-notes and, by association, military. Thefinaleof this symphony, which I consider superior to other parts, does not cause me to see anything.Symphony in B flat major—I see nothing there—this may be said without qualification.Symphony in C minor—it is dramatic, althoughthe melodic web is never broken. The first part suggests the image, not of Fate knocking at the gate, as Beethoven said, but of a soul overcome with the crises of revolt, accompanied by a hope of victory. Visual images do not come except as brought by psychic images."

F. G., a musician, always sees—that is the rule, notably in thePastoral, and in theHeroic Symphony. In Bach'sPassionhe beholds the scene of the mystic lamb.

A composer writes me: "When I compose or play music of my own composition I behold dancing figures; I see an orchestra, an audience, etc. When I listen to or play music by another composer I do not see anything." This communication also mentions three other musicians who see nothing.

2. D......, so little of a musician that I had some trouble to make him understand the term "symphonic music," never goes to concerts. However, he went once, fifteen years ago, and there remains in his memory very clearly the principal phrase of a minuet (he hums it)—he cannot recall it without seeing people dancing a minuet.

M. O. L...... has been kind enough to question in my behalf sixteen non-musical persons. Here are the results of his inquiry:

Eight see curved lines.

Three see images, figures springing in the air, fantastic designs.

Two see the waves of the ocean.

Three do not see anything.

FOOTNOTES:[165]See Part Three,Chapter II.[166]Ibid.,IV.

[165]See Part Three,Chapter II.

[166]Ibid.,IV.

I have questioned a very great number of imaginative persons, well known to me as such, and have chosen preferably those who, not making a profession of creating, let their fancy wander as it wills, without professional care. In all the mechanism is the same, differing scarcely more than temperament and degree of culture. Here are two examples.

B......, forty-six years of age, is acquainted with a large part of Europe, North America, Oceania, Hindoostan, Indo-China, and North Africa, and has not passed through these countries on the run, but, because of his duties, resided there some time. It is worthy of remark, as will be seen from the following observation, that the remembrance of such various countries does not have first place in this brilliant, fanciful personage—which fact is an argument in favor of the very personal character of the creative imagination.

"In a general way, imagination, very lively inme, functions by association of ideas. Memory or the outer world furnishes me some data. On this data there is not always, though there should be, imaginative work proper, and then things remain as they are, without end.

"But when I meet a construction—it matters little whether ancient or in the course of erection—the formula, 'That ought to be fixed,' is one that rises mechanically to my mind in such a case; often it happens that I think aloud and say it, although alone. When going away from the architectural subject[168]under consideration, I make up infinite variations upon it, one after another. Sometimes the things start from a reflex...."

After having noted his preference for the architecture of the Middle Ages, B...... adds (here he touches on the unconscious factor):

"Were I to explain or attempt to explain how the Middle Ages have such an attraction for my mind, I should see therein an atavistic accumulation of religious feeling fixed in my family, on the female side no doubt, and of religiousness in ecclesiastical architecture—these touch.

"Another example illustrating the rôle of association of ideas in the same matter. One Sunday night I left Noumea in the carriage of Dr. F...... who was going to visit a nunnery five leagues from there. At the moment of our arrival the doctor asked what time it was. 'Half-past two,' I said, looking at my watch. As we stopped in the conventcourt in front of the chapel Iheardthe lusty conclusion of a psalm. 'They are singing vespers,' I remarked to the doctor. He commenced to laugh. 'What time are vespers sung in your town?' 'At half-past two,' I answered. I opened the chapel door in order to show the doctor that vespers had just been held: the chapel was vacant. As I stood there, somewhat non-plussed, the doctor remarked, 'Cerebral automatism.'

"I may add here,by associationof ideas. The doctor had seen through me, and had with fine insight perceivedwhyI hadheardthe end of the psalm. The incident made a great impression on me, all the more as ever since the age of eight my memory testifies to a like hallucination, but of sight in place of hearing. It was at L...... that on Good Friday they rang at the cathedral with all their might. It was the very moment before the bells remain silent for three days, and it is known that this silence, ordained in the liturgy, is explained to children by telling them that during these two days the bells have flown to Rome. Naturally I was treated to this little tale, and as they finished telling it, Isawa bell flying at an angle that I could still describe.

"But this transforming power of my imagination is not present in me to the same extent as regards all things. It is much more operative in relation to Romano-Gothic architecture, mystic literature, and sociological knowledge than in relation, for instance, to my memories of travels. When I seeagain, in the mind's eye, the Isle of Bourbon, Niagara, Tahiti, Calcutta, Melbourne, the Pyramids and the Sphinx, the graphic representation is intellectually perfect. The objects live again in all their external surroundings. I feel theKhamsinn, the desert wind that scorched me at the foot of Pompey's Column; I hear the sea breaking into foam on the barrier reef of Tahiti. But the image does not lead to evocation of related or parallel ideas.

"When, on the other hand, I take a walk over the Comburg moor, the castle weighs upon me in all its massiveness; the recollections of theMémoires d'Outre-tombebesiege me like living pictures. I see, like Chateaubriand himself, the family of great famished lords in their feudal castle. With Chateaubriand I return in the twinkling of an eye to the Niagara that we have both seen. In the fall of the waters I find the deep and melancholy note that he himself found; and after that I think of that dark cathedral of Dol that evidently suggested to the author hisGénie du Christianisme.

"In literature, things are very unequally suggestive to me. Classic literature has only few paths outwards for me—Tacitus, Lucretius, Juvenal, Homer, and Saint-Simon excepted. I read the other authors of this class partly for themselves, without making a comparison. On the other hand, the reading of Dante, Shakespeare, St. Jerome's compact verses on the Hebrew, and Middle Age prose excites within me a whole world of ideas, like Wagner's music,canto-fermo, and Beethoven. Certainthings form a link for me from one order of ideas to another. For example, Michaelangelo and the Bible, Rembrandt and Balzac, Puvis de Chavannes and the Merovingian narratives.

"To sum up: There are in me certainmilieuxespecially favorable to imagination. When any circumstance brings me into one of them, it is rare that an imaginative network does not occur; and, if one is produced, association of ideas will perform the work. When I give myself up to serious work, I have to mistrust myself: and in this connection I shall surprise people when I say that in the class of ideas above indicated the subject exciting the most ideas in me is sociology."

M......, sixty years of age, artistic temperament. Because of the necessities of life, he has followed a profession entirely opposite to his bent. He has given me his "confession" in the form of fragmentary notes made day by day. Many aremoralremarks on the subject of his imagination—I leave them out. I note especially the unconquerable tendency to make up little romances and some details in regard to visual representation, and a dislike for numbers.

"It happens that I experience sharp regret when I see the photograph of a monument, e.g., the Pantheon, the proportions of which I have constructed according to the descriptions of the monument and the idea that I had of the life of the Greeks. The photograph mars my dream.

"From the seen to the unknown. In the S. G.library. A slender young woman, smartly dressed—spotless black gloves—between her fingers a small pencil and a tiny note-book. What business has this affectation this morning in a classic and dull building, in a common environment of poor workmen? She is not a servant-maid, and not a teacher. Now for the solution of the unknown. I follow the woman to her family, into her home, and it is quite a task.

"In the same library. I want to get an address from theAlmanach Bottin. A young man, perhaps a student, has borrowed the ridiculous volume. Bent over it, his hands in his hair, he turns the leaves with the sage leisure of a scholar looking for a commentary. From the empty dictionary he often draws out a letter. He must have received this letter this morning from the country. His family advises him to apply to so-and-so. It is a question of money and employment. He must locate the people who, provincial ignorance said, are near him. And so goes the wandering imagination.

"When I feel myself drawn to anyone, I prefer seeing images or portraits rather than the reality. That is how I avoid making unforeseen discoveries that would spoil my model.

"If I make numerical calculations, in the absence of concrete factors, the imagination goes afield, and the figures group themselves mechanically, harkening to an inner voice that arranges them in order to get the sense.

"There may be an imagination devoted to arithmeticalcalculations—forms, beings intrude, even the outline of the figure 3, for example; and then the addition or any other calculation is ruined.

"I revert to the impossibility of making an addition without a swerve of imagination, because plastic figures are always ready before the calculator. The man of imagination is always constructing by means of plastic images.[169]Life possesses him, intoxicates him, so he never gets tired."

THE END

FOOTNOTES:[167]See Conclusion,II, above.[168]B...... is not an architect.[169]We see that the speaker is a visualizer.

[167]See Conclusion,II, above.

[168]B...... is not an architect.

[169]We see that the speaker is a visualizer.

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