Essay on the Creative Imagination Part 19

(1) Human forces, the only ones available during the "state of nature"

and the savage state. Before all else, man created weapons: the most circ.u.mscribed primitive races have invented engines for attack and defense--of wood, bone, stone, as they were able. Then the weapon became a tool by special adaptation:--the battle-club serves as a lever, the tomahawk as a hammer, the flint ax as a hatchet, etc. In this manner there is gradually formed an a.r.s.enal of instruments. "Inferior to most animals as regards certain work that would have to be done with the aid of our organic resources alone, we are superior to all as soon as we set our tools at work. If the rodents with their sharp teeth cut wood better than we can, we do it still better with the ax, the chisel, the saw.

Some birds, with the help of a strong beak, by repeated blows, penetrate the trunk of a tree: but the auger, the gimlet, the wimble do the same work better and more quickly. The knife is superior to the carnivore's teeth for tearing meat; the hoe better than the mole's paw for digging earth, the trowel than the beaver's tail for beating and spreading mortar. The oar permits us to rival the fish's fin; the sail, the wing of the bird. The distaff and spindle allow our imitating the industry of insect spinners; etc. Man thus reproduces and sums up in his technical contrivances the scattered perfections of the animal world. He even succeeds in surpa.s.sing them, because, in the form of tools, he uses substances and combinations of effects that cannot figure as part of an organism."[127] It is scarcely likely that most of these inventions arose from a voluntary imitation of animals: but even supposing such an origin, there would still remain a fine place for personal creative work. Man has produced by conscious effort what life realizes by methods that escape us; so that the creative imagination in man is a _succedaneum_ of the generative powers of nature.

(2) During the pastoral stage man brought animals under subjection and discipline. An animal is a machine, ready-made, that needs only to be trained to obedience; but this training has required and stimulated all sorts of inventions, from the harness with which to equip it, to the chariots, wagons, and roads with which and on which it moves.

(3) Later, the natural motors--air and water--have furnished new material for human ingenuity, e.g., in navigation; wind- and water-mills, used at first to grind grain, then for a mult.i.tude of uses--sawing, milling, lifting hammers; etc.

(4) Lastly, much later, come products of an already mature civilization, artificial motors, explosives,--powder and all its derivatives and subst.i.tutes--steam, which has made such great progress.

If the reader please to represent to himself well the immense number of facts that we have just indicated in a few lines; if he please to note that every invention, great or small, before becoming a fixed and realized thing, was at first an imagination, a mere contrivance of the brain, an a.s.sembly of new combinations or new relations, he will be forced to admit that nowhere--not excepting even esthetic production--has man imagined to such a great extent.

One of the reasons--though not the only one--that supports the contrary opinion is, that by the very law of their growing complexity, inventions are grafted one on another. In all the useful arts improvements have been so slow, and so gradually wrought, that each one of them pa.s.sed unperceived, without leaving its author the credit for its discovery.

The immense majority of inventions are anonymous--some great names alone survive. But, whether individual or collective, imagination remains imagination. In order that the plow, at first a simple piece of wood hardened by the fire and pushed along with the human hand, should become what it is to-day, through a long series of modifications described in the special works, who knows how many imaginations have labored! In the same way, the uncertain flame of a resinous branch guiding vaguely in the night leads us, through a long series of inventions, to gas and electric lighting. All objects, even the most ordinary and most common that now serve us in our everyday-life, are _condensed imagination_.

(III) More than any other form, mechanical imagination depends strictly on physical conditions. It cannot rest content with combining images, it postulates material factors that impose themselves unyieldingly.

Compared to it, the scientific imagination has much more freedom in the building of its hypotheses. In general, every great invention has been preceded by a period of abortive attempts. History shows that the so-called "initial moment" of a mechanical discovery, followed by its improvements, is the moment ending a series of unsuccessful trials: we thus skip a phase of pure imagination, of imaginative construction that has not been able to enter into the mold of an appropriate determinism.

There must have existed innumerable inventions that we might term mechanical romances, which, however, we cannot refer to because they have left us no trace, not being born viable. Others are known as curiosities because they have blazed the path. We know that Otto de Guericke made four fruitless attempts before discovering his air-pump.

The brothers Montgolfier were possessed with the desire to make "imitation clouds," like those they saw moving over the Alps. "In order to imitate nature," they at first enclosed water-vapor in a light, stout case, which fell on cooling. Then they tried hydrogen; then the production of a gas with electrical properties; and so on. Thus, after a succession of hypotheses and failures, they finally succeeded. From the end of the sixteenth century there was offered the possibility of communicating at a distance by means of electricity. "In a work published in 1624 the Jesuit, Father Leurechon, described an imaginary apparatus (by means of which, he said, people could converse at a distance) for the aid of lovers who, by the connection of their movements, would cause a needle to move about a dial on which would be written the letters of the alphabet; and the drawing accompanying the text is almost a picture of Breguet's telegraph." But the author considered it impossible "in the absence of lovers having such ability."[128]

Mechanical inventions that fail correspond to erroneous or unverified scientific hypotheses. They do not emerge from the stage of pure imagination, but they are instructive to the psychologist because they give in bare form the initial work of the constructive imagination in the technical field.

There still remain the requirements of reasoning, of calculation, of adaptation to the properties of matter. But, we repeat, this determinism has several possible forms--one can reach the same goal through different means. Besides, these determining conditions are not lacking in any type of imagination; there is only a difference as between lesser and greater. Every imaginative construction from the moment that it is little more than a group of fancies, a spectral image haunting a dreamer's brain, must take on a body, submit to external conditions on which it depends, and which materialize it somewhat. In this respect, architecture is an excellent example. It is cla.s.sed among the fine arts; but it is subject to so many limitations that its process of invention strongly resembles technical and mechanical creations. Thus it has been possible to say that "Architecture is the least personal of all the arts." "Before being an art it is an industry in the sense that it has nearly always a useful end that is imposed on it and rules its manifestations. Whatever it builds--a temple, a theater, a palace--it must before all else subordinate its work to the end a.s.signed to it in advance. This is not all:--it must take account of materials, climate, soil, location, habits--of all things that may require much skill, tact, calculation, which, however, do not interest art as such, and do not permit architecture to manifest its purely esthetic qualities."[129]

Thus, at bottom, there is an ident.i.ty of nature between the constructive imagination of the mechanic and that of the artist: the difference is only in the end, the means, and the conditions. The formula, _Ars h.o.m.o additus naturae_, has been too often restricted to esthetics--it should comprehend everything artificial. Esthetes, doubtless, hold that their imagination has for them a loftier quality--a disputed question that psychology need not discuss; for it, the essential mechanism is the same in the two cases: a great mechanic is a poet in his own way, because he makes instruments imitating life. "Those constructions that at other times are the marvel of the ignorant crowd deserve the admiration of the reflecting:--Something of the power that has organized matter seems to have pa.s.sed into combinations in which nature is imitated or surpa.s.sed.

Our machines, so varied in form and in function, are the representatives of a new kingdom intermediate between senseless and animate forms, having the pa.s.sivity of the former and the activity of the latter, and exploiting everything for our sake. They are counterfeits of animate beings, capable of giving inert substances a regular functioning. Their skeleton of iron, organs of steel, muscles of leather, soul of fire, panting or smoking breath, rhythm of movement--sometimes even the shrill or plaintive cries expressing effort or simulating pain:--all that contributes to give them a fantastic likeness to life--a specter and dream of inorganic life."[130]

FOOTNOTES:

[119] See above, Part One, chapter II.

[120] For a complete and recent study of the question, see A.

Lehmann, _Aberglaube und Zauberei von den altesten Zeiten bis in die Gegenwart_, 1898.

[121] Lang, _op. cit._, I, 96. There will be found many other facts of this kind.

[122] If this book were not merely an essay, we should have had to study language as an instrument of the practical life in its relations to the creative imagination, especially the function of a.n.a.logy, in the extension and transformation of the meanings of words. Works on linguistics are full of evidence on this point. One could do better still by attending exclusively to the vernacular, to slang, which shows us creative force in action. "Slang," says one philologist, "has the property of figuring, expressing, and picturing language.... With it, however low its origin, one could reconstruct a people or a society." Its princ.i.p.al, not only, means, are metaphor and allegory. It lends itself equally to methods that degrade or enn.o.ble existing words, but with a very marked preference for the worse or degrading meanings.

[123] Ample information on this point will be found in the work of Espinas, _Les Origines de la Technologie_.

[124] The same correspondent, without my having asked him in regard to this, gives me the following details: "When about seven years old I saw a locomotive, its fire and smoke. My father's stove also made fire and smoke, but lacked wheels. If, then, I told my father, we put wheels under the stove, it would move like a locomotive. Later, when about thirteen, the sight of a steam threshing-machine suggested to me the idea of making a horseless wagon. I began a childish construction of one, which my father made me give up," etc.

The tendency toward mechanical invention shows itself very early in some children--we gave examples of it before. Our inventor adds: "My imagination was strongest at about the age of 25 to 35 (I am now 45 years old). After that time it seems to me that the remainder of life is good only for producing less important conceptions, forming a natural consequence of the princ.i.p.al conceptions born of the period of youth."

[125] See above, Part Two, chapter V.

[126] L. Bourdeau, _Les Forces de l'Industrie_, Paris, 1884. This very substantial work, abounding in facts, conceived after a systematic plan, has aided us much in this study.

[127] _Op. cit._, pp. 45-46.

[128] Quoted by L. Bourdeau (_op. cit._, p. 354), who also mentions many other attempts: an anonymous Scot in 1753, Lesage of Geneva, 1780, Lh.o.m.ond (France, 1787), Battencourt (Spain, 1787), Reiser, a German (1794), Salva (Madrid, 1796). The insufficient study of dynamic electricity did not permit them to succeed.

[129] E. Veron, _L'Esthetique_, p. 315.

[130] L. Bourdeau, _op. cit._, p. 233.

CHAPTER VI

THE COMMERCIAL IMAGINATION

Taking the word "commercial" in its broadest signification, I understand by this expression all those forms of the constructive imagination that have for their chief aim the production and distribution of wealth, all inventions making for individual or collective enrichment. Even less studied than the form preceding, this imaginative manifestation reveals as much ingenuity as any other. The human mind is largely busied in that way. There are inventors of all kinds--the great among these equal those whom general opinion ranks as highest. Here, as elsewhere, the great body invent nothing, live according to tradition, in routine and imitation.

Invention in the commercial or financial field is subject to various conditions with which we are not concerned:

(1) External conditions:--Geographical, political, economic, social, etc., varying according to time, place, and people. Such is its external determinism--human and social here in place of cosmic, physical, as in mechanical invention.

(2) Internal, psychological conditions, most of which are foreign to the primary and essential inventive act:--on one hand, foresight, calculation, strength of reasoning;--in a word, capacity for reflection; on the other hand, a.s.surance, recklessness, soaring into the unknown--in a word, strong capacity for action. Whence arise, if we leave out the mixed forms, two princ.i.p.al types--the calculating, the venturesome. In the former the rational element is first. They are cautious, calculating, selfish exploiters, with no great moral or social preoccupations. In the latter, the active and emotional element predominates. They have a broader sweep. Of this sort were the merchant-sailors of Tyre, Carthage, and Greece; the merchant-travelers of the Middle Ages, the mercantile and gain-hungry explorers of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries; later, in a changed form, the organizers of great companies, the inventors of monopolies, American "trusts," etc. These are the great imaginative minds.

Eliminating, then, from our subject, what is not the purely imaginative element in order to study it alone, I see only two points for us to treat, if we would avoid repet.i.tion--at the initial moment of invention, the intuitive act that is its germ; during the period of development and organization, the necessary and exclusive role of schematic images.

I

By "intuition" we generally understand a practical, immediate judgment that goes straight to the goal. Tact, wisdom, scent, divination, are synonymous or equivalent expressions. First let us note that intuition does not belong exclusively to this part of our subject, for it is found _in parvo_ throughout; but in commercial invention it is preponderating on account of the necessity of perceiving quickly and surely, and of grasping chances. "Genius for business," someone has said, "consists in making exact hypotheses regarding the fluctuations of values." To characterize the mental state is easy, if it is a matter merely of giving examples; very difficult, if one attempts to discover its mechanism.

The physician who in a trice diagnoses a disease, who, on a higher level, groups symptoms in order to deduce a new disease from them, like d.u.c.h.enne de Boulogne; the politician who knows human nature, the merchant who scents a good venture, etc., furnish examples of intuition.

It does not depend on the degree of culture;--not to mention women, whose insight into practical matters is well known, there are ignorant people--peasants, even savages--who, in their limited sphere, are the equals of fine diplomats.

But all these facts teach us nothing concerning its psychological nature. Intuition presupposes acquired experience of a special nature that gives the judgment its validity and turns it in a particular direction. Nevertheless, this acc.u.mulated knowledge of itself gives no evidence as to the future. Now, every intuition is an antic.i.p.ation of the future, resulting from only two processes:--inductive or deductive reasoning, e.g., the chemist foreseeing a reaction; imagination, i.e., a representative construction. Which is the chief process here?

Evidently the former, because it is not a matter of fancied hypothesis, but of adaptation of former experience to a new case. Intuition resembles logical operations much more than it does imaginative combinations. We may liken it to unconscious reasoning, if we are not afraid of the seeming contradiction of this expression which supposes a logical operation without consciousness of the middle term. Although questionable, it is perhaps to be preferred to other proposed explanations--such as automatism, habit, "instinct," "nervous connections." Carpenter, who as promoter of "unconscious cerebration,"

deserves to be consulted, likens this state to reflection. In ending, he reprints a letter that John Stuart Mill wrote to him on the subject, in which he says in substance that this capacity is found in persons who have experience and lean toward practical things, but attach little importance to theory.[131]

Every intuition, then, becomes concrete as a judgment, equivalent to a conclusion. But what seems obscure and even mysterious in it is the fact that, from among many possible solutions, it finds at the first shot the proper one. In my opinion this difficulty arises largely from a partial comprehension of the problem. By "intuition" people mean only cases in which the divination is correct; they forget the other, far more numerous, cases that are failures. The act by which one reaches a conclusion is a special case of it. What const.i.tutes the originality of the operation is not its accuracy, but its _rapidity_--the latter is the essential character, the former accessory.

Further, it must be acknowledged that the gift of seeing correctly is an inborn quality, vouchsafed to one, denied to another:--people are born with it, just as they are born right-or left-handed: experience does not give it--only permits it to be put to use. As for knowing why the intuitive act now succeeds and at another time fails, that is a question that comes down to the natural distinction between accurate and erroneous minds, which we do not need to examine here.

Without dwelling longer on this initial stage, let us return to the commercial imagination, and follow it in its development.

II

The human race pa.s.sed through a pre-commercial age. The Australians, Fuegians, and their cla.s.s seem to have had no idea whatever of exchange.

This primitive period, which was long, corresponds to the age of the horde or large clan. Commercial invention, arising like the other forms from needs,--simple and indispensable at first, artificial and superfluous later,--could not arise in that dim period when the groups had almost their sole relations with one another as war. Nothing called it to arise. But at a higher stage the rudimentary form of commerce, exchange in kind or truck, appeared early and almost everywhere. Then this long, c.u.mbersome, inconvenient method gave place to a more ingenious invention--the employment of "standard values," beings or material objects serving as a common measure for all the rest:--their choice varied with the time, place, and people--e.g., certain sh.e.l.ls, salt, cocoa-seeds, cloth, straw-matting, cattle, slaves, etc.; but this innovation held all the remainder in the germ, for it was the first attempt at subst.i.tution. But during the earliest period of commercial evolution the chief effort at invention consisted of finding increasingly more simple methods in the mechanism of exchange. Thus, there succeeded to these disparate values, the precious metals, in the form of powder and ingots, subject to theft and the inconveniences of weighing. Then, money of fixed denomination, struck under the authority of a chief or of a social group. Finally, gold and silver are replaced by the letter of credit, the bank check, and the numerous forms of fiduciary money.[132]

Every one of these forward steps is due to inventors. I say inventors, in the plural, because it is proven that every change in the means of exchange has been imagined several times, in several ages--though in the same way--on the surface of our earth.

Summing up--the inventive labor of this period is reduced to creating increasingly more simple and more rapid methods of _subst.i.tution_ in the commercial mechanism.