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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 present,
the psychology of the imagination is concerned almost wholly with its
part in esthetic creation and in the sciences. We scarcely get beyond
that; its other manifestations have been occasionally mentioned--never
investigated. Yet invention in the fine arts and in the sciences is only
a special case, and possibly not the principal one. We hope to show that
in practical life, in mechanical, military, industrial, and commercial
inventions, in religious, social, and political institutions, the human
mind has expended and made permanent as much imagination as in all other
fields.

The constructive imagination is a faculty that in the course of ages has
undergone a reduction--or at least, some profound changes. So, for
reasons indicated later on, the mythic activity has been taken in this
work as the central point of our topic, as the primitive and typical
form out of which the greater number of the others have arisen. The
creative power is there shown entirely unconfined, freed from all
hindrance, careless of the possible and the impossible; in a pure state,
unadulterated by the opposing influence of imitation, of ratiocination,
of the knowledge of natural laws and their uniformity.

In the first or analytical part, we shall try to resolve the
constructive imagination into its constitutive factors, and study each
of them singly.

The second or genetic part will follow the imagination in its
development as a whole from the dimmest to the most complex forms.

Finally, the third or concrete part, will be no longer devoted to the
imagination, but to imaginative beings, to the principal types of
imagination that observation shows us.

May, 1900.




ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS.



                                                              PAGE

Translator's Preface                                             v

Author's Preface                                               vii


INTRODUCTION.

THE MOTOR NATURE OF THE CONSTRUCTIVE IMAGINATION.

  Transition from the reproductive to the creative
  imagination.--Do all representations contain motor
  elements?--Unusual effects produced by images: vesication,
  stigmata; their conditions; their meaning for our
  subject.--The imagination is, on the intellectual side,
  equivalent to will. Proof: Identity of development;
  subjective, personal character of both; teleologic
  character; analogy between the abortive forms of the
  imagination and abulias.                                       3


FIRST PART.

ANALYSIS OF THE IMAGINATION.


CHAPTER I.

THE INTELLECTUAL FACTOR.

  Dissociation, preparatory work.--Dissociation in complete,
  incomplete and schematic images.--Dissociation in series.
  Its principal causes: internal or subjective, external or
  objective.--Association: its role reduced to a single
  question, the formation of new combinations.--The principal
  intellectual factor is thinking by analogy. Why it is an
  almost inexhaustible source of creation. Its mechanism. Its
  processes reducible to two, viz.: personification,
  transformation.                                               15


CHAPTER II.

THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR.

  The great importance of this element.--All forms of the
  creative imagination imply affective elements. Proofs: All
  affective conditions may influence the imagination. Proofs:
  Association of ideas on an emotional basis; new combinations
  under ordinary and extraordinary forms.--Association by
  contrast.--The motor element in tendencies.--There is no
  creative instinct; invention has not _a_ source, but
  _sources_, and always arises from a need.--The work of the
  imagination reduced to two great classes, themselves
  reducible to special needs.--Reasons for the prejudice in
  favor of a creative instinct.                                 31


CHAPTER III.

THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR.

  Various views of the "inspired state." Its essential
  characteristics; suddenness, impersonality.--Its relations
  to unconscious activity.--Resemblances to hypermnesia, the
  initial state of alcoholic intoxication and somnambulism on
  waking.--Disagreements concerning the ultimate nature of
  unconsciousness: two hypotheses.--The "inspired state" is
  not a cause, but an index.--Associations in unconscious
  form.--Mediate or latent association: recent experiments and
  discussions on this subject.--"Constellation" the result of
  a summation of predominant tendencies. Its mechanism.         50


CHAPTER IV.

THE ORGANIC CONDITIONS OF THE IMAGINATION.

  Anatomical conditions: various hypotheses. Obscurity of the
  question. Flechsig's theory.--Physiological conditions: are
  they cause, effect, or accompaniment? Chief factor: change
  in cerebral and local circulation.--Attempts at
  experimentation.--The oddities of inventors brought under
  two heads: the explicable and inexplicable. They are helpers
  of inspiration.--Is there any analogy between physical and
  psychic creation? A philosophical hypothesis on the
  subject.--Limitation of the question. Impossibility of an
  exact answer.                                                 65


CHAPTER V.

THE PRINCIPLE OF UNITY.

  Importance of the unifying principle. It is a fixed idea or
  a fixed emotion.--Their equivalence.--Distinction between
  the synthetic principle and the ideal, which is the
  principle of unity in motion: the ideal is a construction in
  images, merely outlined.--The principal forms of the
  unifying principles: unstable, organic or middle, extreme or
  semi-morbid.--Obsession of the inventor and the sick:
  insufficiency of a purely psychological criterion.            79


SECOND PART.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IMAGINATION.


CHAPTER I.

IMAGINATION IN ANIMALS.

  Difficulties of the subject.--The degree of imagination in
  animals.--Does creative synthesis exist in them? Affirmation
  and denials.--The special form of animal imagination is
  motor, and shows itself through play: its numerous
  varieties.--Why the animal imagination must be above all
  motor: lack of intellectual development.--Comparison with
  young children, in whom the motor system predominates: the
  roles of movements in infantile insanity.                     93


CHAPTER II.

IMAGINATION IN THE CHILD.

  Division of its development into four principal
  periods.--Transition from passive to creative imagination:
  perception and illusion.--Animating everything: analysis of
  the elements constituting this moment: the role of
  belief.--Creation in play: period of imitation, attempts at
  invention.--Fanciful invention.                              103


CHAPTER III.

PRIMITIVE MAN AND THE CREATION OF MYTHS.

  The golden age of the creative imagination.--Myths:
  hypotheses as to the origin: the myth is the <DW43>-physical
  objectification of man in the phenomena that he perceives.
  The role of imagination.--How myths are formed. The moment
  of creation: two operations--animating everything,
  qualifying everything. Romantic invention lacking in peoples
  without imagination. The role of analogy and of association
  through "constellation."--The evolution of myths: ascension,
  acme, decline.--The explanatory myths undergo a radical
  transformation: the work of depersonification of the myth.
  Survivals.--The non-explanatory myths suffer a partial
  transformation: Literature is a fallen and rationalized
  mythology.--Popular imagination and legends: the legend is
  to the myth what illusion is to hallucination.--Unconscious
  processes that the imagination employs in order to create
  legends: fusion, idealization.                               118


CHAPTER IV.

THE HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION.

  Is a psychology of great inventors possible? Pathological
  and physiological theories of genius.--General characters of
  great inventors. Precocity: chronological order of the
  development of the creative power. Psychological reasons
  for this order. Why the creator commences by
  imitating.--Necessity or fatalism of vocation.--The
  representative character of great creators. Discussion as to
  the origin of this character--is it in the individual or in
  the environment?--Mechanism of creation. Two principal
  processes--complete, abridged. Their three phases; their
  resemblances and differences.--The role of chance in
  invention: it supposes the meeting of two factors--one
  internal, the other external.--Chance is an occasion for,
  not an agent of, creation.                                   140


CHAPTER V.

LAW OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IMAGINATION.

  Is the creative imagination, in its evolution, subject to
  any law?--It passes through two stages separated by a
  critical phase.--Period of autonomy; critical period; period
  of definite constitution. Two cases: decay or transformation
  through logical form, through deviation.--Subsidiary law of
  increasing complexity.--Historical verification.             167


THIRD PART.

THE PRINCIPAL TYPES OF IMAGINATION.

PRELIMINARY.

  The need of a concrete study.--The varieties of the creative
  imagination, analogous to the varieties of character.        179


CHAPTER I.

THE PLASTIC IMAGINATION.

  It makes use of clear images, well determined in space, and
  of associations of objective relations.--Its external
  character.--Inferiority of the affective element.--Its
  principal manifestations: in the arts dealing with form; in
  poetry (transformation of sonorous into visual images); in
  myths with clear outline; in mechanical invention.--The dry
  and rational imagination its elements.                       184


CHAPTER II.

THE DIFFLUENT IMAGINATION.

  It makes use of vague images linked according to the least
  rigorous modes of association. Emotional abstractions; their
  nature.--Its characteristic of inwardness.--Its principal
  manifestations: revery, the romantic spirit, the chimerical
  spirit; myths and religious conceptions, literature and the
  fine arts (the symbolists), the class of the marvelous and
  fantastic.--Varieties of the diffluent imagination: first,
  numerical imagination; its nature; two principal forms,
