Essay on the Creative Imagination Part 23

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A

THE VARIOUS FORMS OF INSPIRATION[155]

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 pa.s.sive form, in Jacob Boehme (_Aurora_): "I declare before G.o.d that I do not myself know how the thing arises within me, without the partic.i.p.ation 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 I am 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] a.n.a.lyzes the condition, thus:

"Inspiration, properly so called, is the concentration of all the faculties and apt.i.tudes 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, reenforcing, completing themselves. Thanks to this isolation, the object emerges out of the average level of its _milieu_, 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.

APPENDIX B

ON THE NATURE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR

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 mult.i.tude 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 author just 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 condition of 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 princ.i.p.al 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 (Fere, 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 a.s.sumes 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 this evanescent 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 const.i.tuting 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 that consciousness may be likened to a quant.i.ty 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 quant.i.ty, 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 a.s.sign 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, Helene S......--very unlike others, who are satisfied with forecasts of the future, disclosures of unknown 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 Helene 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 eclat. 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 a.s.sumes the coexistence 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 a.s.sociation by contiguity; it is "stupid," "uncritical," "credulous," "brutal," etc.) would be greatly puzzled to explain its role in creative activity.

APPENDIX C

COSMIC AND HUMAN IMAGINATION[162]

For Froschammer, _Fancy_ is the original principle of things. In his philosophical theory it plays the same part as Hegel's _Idea_, Schopenhauer's _Will_, Hartmann's _Unconscious_, 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 a.s.serting 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 s.e.x. "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 of _mens 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 the _nisus 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 three stages--a lower, middle, and higher--is at the root of all three cases. But this is only a speculative hypothesis, foreign to psychology proper.