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ESSAY ON THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION

BY

TH. RIBOT


TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH

BY

ALBERT H. N. BARON
FELLOW IN CLARK UNIVERSITY


LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD.
1906

COPYRIGHT BY
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO.
CHICAGO, U. S. A.
1906
_All rights reserved._


TO THE MEMORY OF MY TEACHER
AND FRIEND,

Arthur Allin, Ph. D.,

PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION,
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO,

WHO FIRST INTERESTED ME IN THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHOLOGY,
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED, WITH REVERENCE
AND GRATITUDE, BY

THE TRANSLATOR.




TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.


The name of Th. Ribot has been for many years well known in America, and
his works have gained wide popularity. The present translation of one of
his more recent works is an attempt to render available in English what
has been received as a classic exposition of a subject that is often
discussed, but rarely with any attempt to understand its true nature.

It is quite generally recognized that psychology has remained in the
semi-mythological, semi-scholastic period longer than most attempts at
scientific formulization. For a long time it has been the "spook
science" _per se_, and the imagination, now analyzed by M. Ribot in such
a masterly manner, has been one of the most persistent, apparently real,
though very indefinite, of psychological spooks. Whereas people have
been accustomed to speak of the imagination as an entity _sui generis_,
as a lofty something found only in long-haired, wild-eyed "geniuses,"
constituting indeed the center of a cult, our author, Prometheus-like,
has brought it down from the heavens, and has clearly shown that
_imagination is a function of mind common to all men in some degree_,
and that it is shown in as highly developed form in commercial leaders
and practical inventors as in the most bizarre of romantic idealists.
The only difference is that the manifestation is not the same.

That this view is not entirely original with M. Ribot is not to his
discredit--indeed, he does not claim any originality. We find the view
clearly expressed elsewhere, certainly as early as Aristotle, that the
greatest artist is he who actually embodies his vision and will in
permanent form, preferably in social institutions. This idea is so
clearly enunciated in the present monograph, which the author modestly
styles an essay, that when the end of the book is reached but little
remains of the great imagination-ghost, save the one great mystery
underlying all facts of mind.

That the present rendering falls far below the lucid French of the
original, the translator is well aware; he trusts, however, that the
indulgent reader will take into account the good intent as offsetting in
part, at least, the numerous shortcomings of this version.

I wish here to express my obligation to those friends who encouraged me
in the congenial task of translation.

A. H. N. B.




AUTHOR'S PREFACE


Contemporary psychology has studied the purely reproductive imagination
with great eagerness and success. The works on the different
image-groups--visual, auditory, tactile, motor--are known to everyone,
and form a collection of inquiries solidly based on subjective and
objective observation, on pathological facts and laboratory experiments.
The study of the creative or constructive imagination, on the other
hand, has been almost entirely neglected. It would be easy to show that
the best, most complete, and most recent treatises on psychology devote
to it scarcely a page or two; often, indeed, do not even mention it. A
few articles, a few brief, scarce monographs, make up the sum of the
past twenty-five years' work on the subject. The subject does not,
however, at all deserve this indifferent or contemptuous attitude. Its
importance is unquestionable, and even though the study of the creative
imagination has hitherto remained almost inaccessible to experimentation
strictly so-called, there are yet other objective processes that permit
of our approaching it with some likelihood of success, and of continuing
the work of former psychologists, but with methods better adapted to
the requirements of contemporary thought.

The present work is offered to the reader as an essay or first attempt
only. It is not our intention here to undertake a complete monograph
that would require a thick volume, but only to seek the underlying
conditions of the creative imagination, showing that it has its
beginning and principal source in the natural tendency of images to
become objectified (or, more simply, in the motor elements inherent in
the image), and then following it in its development under its manifold
forms, whatever they may be. For I cannot but maintain that, at