Essay on the Creative Imagination Part 10

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, but _particular_ tendencies, 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 circ.u.mstances. The distinction between these two orders of creators--the great and the ordinary--has been made too often to need repet.i.tion, 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 cla.s.s somewhat at hazard. Yet genius remains, as Schopenhauer used to say, _monstrum per excessum_; excessive development in one direction.

Hypertrophy of a special apt.i.tude 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 apt.i.tudes, such as Vinci, Michaelangelo, Goethe, etc., always have a predominating tendency which, in common opinion, sums them up.

III

A third characteristic is the clearly defined _individuality_ of 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 the _origin_, 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 must not 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 acc.u.mulated influences of some individuals and their initiative, or to the environment, to circ.u.mstances, 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 ma.s.ses?--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 demiG.o.d, "_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 writer _par excellence_.

"The alleged 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 ma.s.ses make this blossoming possible. Because, say the others, this flowering modifies profoundly the social and intellectual condition of the ma.s.ses 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 ma.s.s 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 his _milieu_; 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 examine _objectively_ the 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 h.o.m.ogeneous. 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 period _per 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 surpa.s.s 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 of labor 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 compet.i.tion 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. In this 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 a.n.a.logous to natural selection, i.e., by its own power. As superficial, it corresponds to talent, survives and prospers chiefly through the help of circ.u.mstances 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 for _imitation_.

IV

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 apt.i.tude, 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 nave 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 psychological _mechanism_, 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." _Novelty_ only 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 reveals many processes that apparently differ less in the _content_ of 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. The _locus_ of 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 phase 2nd phase 3d phase IDEA INVENTION, VERIFICATION, (commencement) or or Special incubation DISCOVERY APPLICATION of more or less (end) duration

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 a.s.sign 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, spends a 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 phase 2nd phase 3rd phase General preparation IDEA (commencement) CONSTRUCTIVE (unconscious) INSPIRATION and ERUPTION DEVELOPING period.

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 cla.s.ses--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 pa.s.s 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 princ.i.p.al 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 correspond on 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 princ.i.p.ally 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, a.n.a.logous 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's _Hamlet_ could 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 a _difference_, 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, a _motif_, 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 the _mechanism_, not in the _nature_ of creation, and is consequently accessory; and that this difference is reducible to natural dispositions, which we may contrast as follows:

Ready-witted minds, Logically-developing excelling in conception, minds, excelling in making the whole almost elaboration.

out of one piece.