Essay on the Creative Imagination Part 6

[30] For the distinction between this form of imagination and the two others (fixed, objectified), I refer the reader to the Conclusion of this work, where the subject will be treated in detail.

[31] Colozza, _L'immagin.a.z.ione nella Scienza_, Rome, 1900, pp. 111 ff.

[32] This unifying, organizing, creative principle is so active in certain minds that, placed face to face with any work whatever--novel, picture, monument, scientific or philosophic theory, financial or political inst.i.tution--while believing that they are merely considering it, they spontaneously remake it. This characteristic of their psychology distinguishes them from mere critics.

[33] Oelzelt-Newin, _op. cit._, p. 49.

[34] Pitres et Regis, _Semeiologie des obsessions et des idees fixes_, 1878. Seglas, _Lecons cliniques sur les maladies mentales_, 1895. Raymond et Janet, _Nevroses et idees fixes_, 1898.

SECOND PART

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IMAGINATION.

CHAPTER I

IMAGINATION IN ANIMALS

Up to this point the imagination has been treated a.n.a.lytically only.

This process alone would give us but a very imperfect idea of its essentially concrete and lively nature were we to stop here. So this part continues the subject in another shape. I shall attempt to follow the imagination in its ascending development from the lowest to the most complex forms, from the animal to the human infant, to primitive man, thence to the highest modes of invention. It will thus be exhibited in the inexhaustible variety of its manifestations which the abstract and simplifying process of a.n.a.lysis does not permit us to suspect.

I

I shall not dwell at length on the imagination of animals, not only because the question is much involved but also because it is hardly liable to a positive solution. Even eliminating mere anecdotes and doubtful observations, there is no lack of verified and authentic material, but it still remains to interpret them. As soon as we begin to conjecture we know how difficult it is to divest ourselves of all anthropomorphism.

The question has been formulated, even if not treated, with much system by Romanes in his _Mental Evolution in Animals_.[35] Taking "imagination" in its broadest sense, he recognizes four stages:

1. Provoked revival of images. For example, the sight of an orange reminds one of its taste. This is a low form of memory, resting on a.s.sociation by contiguity. It is met with very far down in the animal scale, and the author furnishes abundant proof of it.

2. Spontaneous revival. An object present calls up an absent object.

This is a higher form of memory, frequent in ants, bees, wasps, etc., which fact explains the mistrustful sagacity of wild animals. At night, the distant baying of a hound stops the fox in his course, because all the dangers he has undergone are represented in his mind.

These two stages do not go beyond memory pure and simple, i.e., reproductive imagination. The other two const.i.tute the higher imagination.

3. The capacity of a.s.sociating absent images, without suggestion derived from without, through an internal working of the mind. It is the lower and primitive form of the creative imagination, which may be called a pa.s.sive synthesis. In order to establish its existence, Romanes reminds us that dreams have been proven in dogs, horses, and a large number of birds; that certain animals, especially in anger, seem to be subject to delusions and pursued by phantoms; and lastly, that in some there is produced a condition resembling nostalgia, expressing itself in a violent desire to return to former haunts, or in a wasting away resulting from the absence of accustomed persons and things. All these facts, especially the latter, can hardly be explained without a vivid recollection of the images of previous life.

4. The highest stage consists of intentionally reuniting images in order to make novel combinations from them. This may be called an active synthesis, and is the true creative imagination. Is this sometimes found in the animal kingdom? Romanes very clearly replies, no; and not without offering a plausible reason. For creation, says he, there must first be capacity for abstraction, and, without speech, abstraction is very weak.

One of the conditions for creative imagination is thus wanting in the higher animals.

We here come to one of those critical moments, so frequent in animal psychology, when one asks, Is this character exclusively human, or is it found in embryo in lower forms? Thus it has been possible to support a theory opposing that of Romanes. Certain animals, says Oelzelt-Newin, fulfill all the conditions necessary for creative imagination--subtle senses, good memory, and appropriate emotional states.[36] This a.s.sertion is perhaps true, but it is purely dialectic. It is equivalent to saying that the thing is possible; it does not establish it as a fact. Besides, is it very certain that all the conditions for creative imagination are present here, since we have just shown that there is lack of abstraction? The author, who voluntarily limits his study to birds and the construction of their nests, maintains, against Wallace and others, that nest-building requires "the mysterious synthesis of representations." We might with equal reason bring the instances of other building animals (bees, wasps, white ants, the common ants, beavers, etc.). It is not unreasonable to attribute to them an antic.i.p.ated representation of their architecture. Shall we say that it is "instinctive," consequently unconscious? At least, may we not group under this head, changes and adaptations to new conditions which these animals succeed in applying to the typical plans of their construction?

Observations and even systematic experiments (like those of Huber, Forel, _et al._) show that, reduced to the alternative of the impossibility of building or the modification of their habits, certain animals modify them. Judging from this, how refuse them invention altogether? This contradicts in no way the very just reservation of Romanes. It is sufficient to remark that abstraction or dissociation has stages, that the simplest are accessible to the animal intelligence. If, in the absence of words, the logic of concepts is forbidden it, there yet remains the logic of images,[37] which is sufficient for slight innovations. In a word, animals can invent according to the extent that they can dissociate.

In our opinion, if we may with any truthfulness attribute a creative power to animals, we must seek it elsewhere. Generally speaking, we attribute only a mediocre importance to a manifestation that might very well be the proper form of animal fancy. It is purely motor, and expresses itself through the various kinds of play.

Although play may be as old as mankind, its psychology dates only from the nineteenth century. We have already seen that there are three theories concerning its nature--it is "expenditure of superfluous activity," "a mending, restoring of strength, a recuperation," "an apprenticeship, a preliminary exercise for the active functions of life and for the development of our natural gifts."[38] The last position, due to Groos, does not rule out the other two; it holds the first valid for the young, the second for adults; but it comprehends both in a more general explanation.

Let us leave this doctrinal question in order to call attention to the variety and richness of form of play in the animal world. In this respect the aforementioned book of Groos is a rich mine of evidence to which I would refer the reader. I limit myself to summing up his cla.s.sification. He distinguishes nine cla.s.ses of play, viz.: (1) Those that are at bottom experimental, consisting of trials at hazard without immediate end, often giving the animal a certain knowledge of the properties of the external world. This is the introduction to an experimental physics, optics, and mechanics for the brood of animals.

(2) Movements or changes of place executed of their own accord--a very general fact as is proven by the incessant movements of b.u.t.terflies, flies, birds, and even fishes, which often appear to play in the water rather than to seek prey; the mad running of horses, dogs, etc., in free s.p.a.ce. (3) Mimicry of hunting, i.e., playing with a living or dead prey: the dog and cat following moving objects, a ball, feather, etc.

(4) Mimic battles, teasing and fighting without anger. (5) Architectural art, revealing itself especially in the building of nests: certain birds ornament them with shining objects (stones, bits of gla.s.s), by a kind of antic.i.p.ation of the esthetic feeling. (6) Doll-play is universal in mankind, whether civilized or savage. Groos believes he has found its equivalent in certain animals. (7) Imitation through pleasure, so familiar in monkeys (grimaces); singing-birds which counterfeit the voices of a large number of beasts. (8) Curiosity, which is the only mental play one meets in animals--the dog watching, from a wall or window, what is going on in the street. (9) Love-plays, "which differ from the others in that they are not mere exercises, but have in view a real object." They have been well-known since Darwin's time, he attributing to them an esthetic value which has been denied by Wallace, Tylor, Lloyd Morgan, Wallaschek, and Groos.

Let us recapitulate in thought the immense quant.i.ty of motor expressions included in these nine categories and let us note that they have the following characters in common: They are grouped in combinations that are often new and unforeseen; they are not a repet.i.tion of daily life, acts necessary for self-preservation. At one time the movements are combined simultaneously (exhibition of beautiful colors), again (and most often) successively (amorous parades, fights, flight, dancing, emission of noises, sounds or songs); but, under one form or another, there is _creation_, _invention_. Here, the imagination acts in its purely motor character; it consists of a small number of images that become translated into actions, and serve as a center for their grouping; perhaps even the image itself is hardly conscious, so that all is limited to a spontaneous production and a collection of motor phenomena.

It will doubtless be said that this form of imagination belongs to a very shallow, poor psychology. It cannot be otherwise. It is necessary that imaginative production be found reduced to its simplest expression in animals, and the motor form must be its special characteristic mark.

It cannot have any others for the following reasons: incapacity for the work that necessarily precedes abstraction or dissociation, breaking into bits the data of experience, making them raw material for the future construction; lack of images, and especially fewness of possible combinations of images. This last point is proven alike from the data of animal psychology and of comparative anatomy. We know that the nervous elements in the brain serving as connections between sensory regions--whether one conceive of them as centers (Flechsig), or as bundles of commisural fibers (Meynert, Wernicke)--are hardly outlined in the lower mammalia and attain only a mediocre development in the higher forms.

By way of corroboration of the foregoing, let us compare the higher animals with young children: this comparison is not based on a few far-fetched a.n.a.logies, but in a thorough resemblance in nature. Man, during the first years of his life, has a brain but slightly differentiated, especially as regards connections, a very poor supply of images, a very weak capacity for abstraction. His intellectual development is much inferior to that of reflex, instinctive, impulsive, and imitative movements. In consequence of this predominance of the motor system, the simple and imperfect images, in children as in animals, tend to be immediately changed into movements. Even most of their inventions in play are greatly inferior to those enumerated above under nine distinct heads.

A serious argument in favor of the prevalence of imagination of the motor type in the child is furnished by the princ.i.p.al part taken by movements in infantile insanity: a remark made by many alienists. The first stage of this madness, they say, is found in the convulsions that are not merely a physical ailment, but "a muscular delirium." The disturbance of the automatic and instinctive functions of the child is so often a.s.sociated with muscular disturbances that at this age the mental disorders correspond to the motor ganglionic centers situated below those parts that later a.s.sume the labor of a.n.a.lysis and of imagination. The disturbances are in the primary centers of organization and according to the symptoms lack those a.n.a.lytic or constructive qualities, those ideal forms, that we find in adult insanity. If we descend to the lowest stage of human life--to the baby--we see that insanity consists almost entirely of the activity of a muscular group acting on external objects. The insane baby bites, kicks, and these symptoms are the external measure of the degree of its madness.[39] Has not ch.o.r.ea itself been called a muscular insanity?

Doubtless, there likewise exists in the child a sensorial madness (illusions, hallucinations); but by reason of its feeble intellectual development the delirium causes a disorder of movements rather than of images; its insane imagination is above all a motor insanity.

To hold that the creative imagination belonging to animals consists of new combinations of movements is certainly an hypothesis. Nevertheless, I do not believe that it is merely a mental form without foundation, if we take into account the foregoing facts. I consider it rather as a point in favor of the motor theory of invention. It is a singular instance in which the original form of creation is shown bare. If we wanted to discover it, it would be necessary to seek it where it is reduced to the greatest simplicity--in the animal world.

FOOTNOTES:

[35] Chapter X.

[36] _Op. cit._, Appendix.

[37] For a more detailed study of this subject, the reader is referred to the author's _Evolution of General Ideas_ (English trans., Open Court Publishing Co., Chicago), chapter I, section I.

[38] A rather extended study of the subject by H. A. Carr will be found in the _Investigations of the Department of Psychology and Education of the University of Colorado_, vol. I, Number 2, 1902.

The late Professor Arthur Allin devoted much time to the investigation of play. See his brief article ent.i.tled "Play" in the _University of Colorado Studies_, vol. I, 1902, pp. 58-73. (Tr.)

[39] Hack Tuke, "Insanity of Children," in _Dictionary of Psychological Medicine_.

CHAPTER II

THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION IN THE CHILD

At what age, in what form, under what conditions does the creative imagination make its appearance? It is impossible to answer this question, which, moreover, has no justification. For the creative imagination develops little by little out of pure reproduction by an evolutionary process, not by sudden eruption. Nevertheless, its evolution is very slow on account of causes both organic and psychological.

We could not dwell long on the organic causes without falling into tiresome repet.i.tions. The new-born infant is a spinal being, with an unformed diffluent brain, composed largely of water. Reflex life itself is not complete in him, and the cortico-motor system only hinted at; the sensory centers are undifferentiated, the a.s.sociational systems remain isolated for a long time after birth. We have given above Flechsig's observation on this point.

The psychological causes reduce themselves to the necessity for a consolidation of the primary and secondary operations of the mind, without which the creative imagination cannot take form. To be precise, we might distinguish, as does Baldwin, four epochs in the mental development of the child: (1) affective (rudimentary sensory processes, pleasures and pains, simple motor adaptations); (2) and (3) objective, in which the author establishes two grades, (a) appearance of special senses, of memory, instincts primarily defensive, and imitation; (b) complex memory, complicated movements, offensive activities, rudimentary will; (4) subjective or final (conscious thought, const.i.tutive will, ideal emotions). If we accept this scheme as approximately correct, the _moment_ of imagination must be a.s.signed to the third period (the second stage of the objective epoch) which fulfills all the sufficient and necessary conditions for its origination and for its rise above pure reproduction.

Whatever the propitious age may be, the study of the child-imagination is not without difficulties. In order to enter into the child-mind, we must become like a child; as it is, we are limited to an interpretation of it in terms of the adult, with much false interpretation possible, agreeing too much or too little with the facts. Furthermore, the children studied live and grow up in a civilized environment. The result is that the development of their imagination is rarely unhampered and complete; for as soon as their fancy pa.s.ses the middle level, the rationalizing education of parents and teachers is eager to master and control it. In truth it gives its full measure and reveals itself in the fulness of growth only among primitive peoples. With us it is checked in its flight by an antagonistic power, which treats it as a harbinger of insanity. Finally, children are not equally well-suited for this study; we must make a distinction between the imaginative and non-imaginative, and the latter should be eliminated.