Essay on the Creative Imagination Part 9

The first process is a fusion or combination. The myth precedes the fact; the historical personage or event enters into the mould of a pre-existing myth. "It is necessary that the mythic form be fashioned before one may pour into it, in a more or less fluid state, the historic metal." Imagination had created a solar mythology long before it could be incarnated by the Greeks in Hercules and his exploits. "There was historically a Roland, perhaps even an Arthur, but the greater part of the great deeds that the poetry of the Middle Ages attributes to them had been accomplished long before by mythological heroes whose very names had been forgotten."[64] At one time the man is completely hidden by the myth and becomes absolutely legendary; again, he a.s.sumes only an aureole that transfigures him. This is exactly what occurs in the simpler phenomenon of sensory illusion: now the real (the perception) is swamped by the images, is transformed, and the objective element reduced to almost nothing; at another time, the objective element remains master, but with numerous deformations.

The second process is idealization, which can act conjointly with the other. Popular imagination incarnates in a real man its ideal of heroism, of loyalty, of love, of piety, or of cowardice, cruelty, wickedness, and other abnormalities. The process is more complex. It presupposes in addition to mythic creation a labor of abstraction, through which a dominating characteristic of the historic personage is chosen and everything else is suppressed, cast into oblivion: the ideal becomes a center of attraction about which is formed the legend, the romantic tale. Compare the Alexander, the Charlemagne, the Cid of the Middle Age traditions to the character of history.

Even much nearer to us, this process of extreme simplification--which the law of mental inertia or of least effort is sufficient to explain--always persists: Lucretia Borgia remains the type of debauchery, Henry IV of good fellowship, etc. The protests of historians and the doc.u.mentary evidence that they produce avail nothing: the work of the imagination resists everything.

To conclude: We have just pa.s.sed over a period of mental evolution wherein the creative imagination reigns exclusively, explains everything, is sufficient for everything. It has been said that the imagination is "a temporary derangement." It seems so to us, although it is often an effort toward wisdom, i.e., toward the comprehension of things. It would be more correct to say, with Tylor, that it represents a state intermediate between that of a man of our time, prosaic and well-to-do, and that of a furious madman, or of a man in the delirium of fever.

FOOTNOTES:

[48] Primitive man has been defined as "he for whom sensuous data and images surpa.s.s in importance rational concepts." From this standpoint, many contemporary poets, novelists, and artists would be primitive. The mental state of the human individual is not enough for such a determination; we must also take account of the (comparative) simplicity of the social environment.

[49] Let us mention the euhemeristic theory of Herbert Spencer, taken up recently by Grant Allen (_The Evolution of the Idea of G.o.d_, 1897), who brings down all religious and mythic concepts from a single origin--the worship of the dead.

[50] "When I tried to briefly characterize mythology in its inner nature, I called it a disease of language rather than a disease of thought. The expression was strange but intentionally so, meant to arouse attention and to provoke opposition. For me, language and thought are inseparable." _Nouvelles etudes de Mythologie_, p. 51.

[51] Vignoli, _Mito e Scienza_, p. 27.

[52] Marillier, Preface to the French translation of Andrew Lang's _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_.

[53] On this point consult a work very rich in information, W.

Crooke's book, _Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India_, 1897.

[54] "The Indian traversing the Montana never feels himself alone.

Legions of beings accompany him. All of the nature to whom he owes his soul speaks to him through the noise of the wind, in the roaring of the waterfall. The insect like the bird--everything, even to the bending twig wet with dew--for him has language, distinct personality. The forest is alive in its depths, has caprices, periods of anger; it avoids the thicket under the tread of the huntsman, or again presses him more closely, drags him into infected swamps, into closed bogs, where miserable goblins exhaust all their witchcraft upon him, drink his blood by attaching their lips to the wounds made by briers. The Indian knows all that; he knows those dread genii by name." Monnier, _Des Andes au Para_, p. 300.

[55] See Part I, Chapter IV.

[56] _Op. cit._, pp. 23-24.

[57] Lang, _op. cit._, I, 162, and _pa.s.sim_.

[58] Max Muller, _op cit._, p. 12.

[59] _Nouveaux Essais_, p. 320.

[60] See Lang, _Myth, Ritual and Religion_, I, p. 234, a pa.s.sage from the _Rig-Veda_, with four very different translations by Max Muller, Wilson, Benfrey, and Langlois.

[61] On curiosity as the beginning of knowledge, compare the position held by Plato. (Tr.)

[62] On this general subject consult the interesting though somewhat general article by Professor John Dewey, "The Interpretation of the Savage Mind," in the _Psychological Review_, May, 1903. The author justly criticises the current description of savages in negative terms, and contends that there is general misunderstanding of the true nature of the savage and of his activities. (Tr.)

[63] It is now well accepted that Thales cannot be regarded as propounding a materialistic theory when he declares that everything is derived from water; for with him, "water" stands not merely for the substance that we call chemically "H2O," but for the "spirit that is in water" as well--the water-spirit is the _Grundprincip_.

(Tr.)

[64] Max Muller, _op. cit._, 39, 47-48, 59-60.

CHAPTER IV

THE HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION

We now pa.s.s from primitive to civilized man, from collective to individual creation, the characters of which it remains for us to study as we find them in great inventors who exhibit them on a large scale.

Fortunately, we may dismiss the treatment of the oft-discussed, never-solved problem of the psychological nature of genius. As we have already noted, there enter into its composition factors other than the creative imagination, although the latter is not the least among them.

Besides, great men being exceptions, anomalies, or as the current expression has it, "spontaneous variations," we may ask _in limine_ whether their psychology is explicable by means of simple formulae, as with the average man, or whether even monographs teach us no more concerning their nature than general theories that are never applicable to all cases. Taking genius, then, as synonymous with great inventor, accepting it _de facto_ historically and psychologically, our task is limited to the attempt to separate characters that seem, from observation and experiment, to belong to it as peculiarly its own.

Putting aside vague dissertations and dithyrambics in favor of theories with a scientific tendency as to the nature of genius, we meet first the one attributing to it a pathological origin. Hinted at in antiquity (Aristotle, Seneca, etc.), suggested in the oft-expressed comparison between inspiration and insanity, it has reached, as we know--through timid, reserved, and partial statements (Lelut)--its complete expression in the famous formula of Moreau de Tours, "Genius is a neurosis."

Neuropathy was for him the exaggeration of vital properties and consequently the most favorable condition for the hatching of works of genius. Later, Lombroso, in a book teeming with doubtful or manifestly false evidence, finding his predecessor's theory too vague, attempts to give it more precision by subst.i.tuting for neurosis in general a specific neurosis--larvated epilepsy. Alienists, far from eagerly accepting this view, have set themselves to combat it and to maintain that Lombroso has compromised everything in wanting to make the term too precise. There are several possible hypotheses, they say: either the neuropathic state is the direct, immediate cause of which the higher faculties of genius are effects; or, the intellectual superiority, through the excessive labor and excitation it involves, causes neuropathic disturbances; or, there is no relation of cause and effect between genius and neurosis, but mere coexistence, since there are found very mediocre neuropaths, and men above the average without a neurotic blemish; or, the two states--the one psychic, the other physiological--are both effects, resulting from organic conditions that produce according to circ.u.mstances genius, insanity, and divers nervous troubles. Every one of these hypotheses can allege facts in its favor.

We must, however, recognize that in most men of genius are found so many peculiarities, physical eccentricities and disorders of all kinds that the pathologic theory retains much probability.

There remain for consideration the sane geniuses who, despite many efforts and subtleties, have not yet been successfully brought under the foregoing formula, and who have made possible the enunciation of another theory. Recently, Nordau, rejecting the theory of his master Lombroso, has maintained that it is just as reasonable to say that "genius is a neurosis" as that "athleticism is a cardiopathy" because many athletes are affected with heart disease. For him, "the essential elements of genius are judgment and will." Following this definition, he establishes the following hierarchy of men of genius: At the highest rung of the ladder are those in whom judgment and will are equally powerful; men of action who make world-history (Alexander, Cromwell, Napoleon)--these are masters of men. On the second level are found the geniuses of judgment, with no hyper-development of will--these are masters of matter (Pasteur, Helmholtz, Rontgen). On the third step are geniuses of judgment without energetic will--thinkers and philosophers. What then shall we do with the emotional geniuses--the poets and artists? Theirs is not genius in the strict sense, "because it creates nothing new and exercises no influence on phenomena." Without discussing the value of this cla.s.sification, without examining whether it is even possible,--since there is no common measure between Alexander, Pasteur, Shakespeare, and Spinoza,--and whether, on the other hand, common opinion is not right in putting on the same level the great creators, whoever they be, solely because they are far above the average, this remark is absolutely necessary: In the definition above cited the creative faculty _par excellence_--imagination--necessary to all inventors, is entirely left out.

We can, however, derive some benefit from this arbitrary division.

Although it is impossible to admit that "emotional geniuses" create nothing new and have no influence on society, they do form a special group. Creative work requires of them a nervous excitability and a predominance of affective states that rapidly become morbid. In this way they have provided the pathological theory with most of its facts. It would perhaps be necessary to recognize distinctions between the various forms of invention. They require very different organic and psychic conditions in order that some may profit by morbid dispositions that are far from useful to others. This point should deserve a special study never made hitherto.

I

We shall reduce to three the characters ordinarily met in most great inventors. No one of them is without exception.

1. _Precocity_, which is reducible to innateness. The natural bent becomes manifest as soon as circ.u.mstances allow--it is the sign of the true vocation. The story is the same in all cases: at one moment the flash occurs; but this is not as frequent as is supposed. False vocations abound. If we deduct those attracted through imitation, environmental influence, exhortations and advice, chance, the attraction of immediate gain, aversion to a career imposed from without which they shun and adoption of an opposite one, will there remain many natural and irresistible vocations?

We have seen above that[65] the pa.s.sage from reproductive to constructive imagination takes place toward the end of the third year.

According to some authors, this initial period should be followed by a depression about the fifth year; thenceforward the upward progress is continuous. But the creative faculty, from its nature and content, develops in a very clear, chronological order. Music, plastic arts, poetry, mechanical invention, scientific imagination--such is the usual order of appearance.

In music, with the exception of a few child-prodigies, we hardly find personal creation before the age of twelve or thirteen. As examples of precocity may be cited: Mozart, at the age of three; Mendelssohn, five; Haydn, four; Handel, twelve; Weber, twelve; Schubert, eleven; Cherubini, thirteen; and many others. Those late in developing--Beethoven, Wagner, etc.--are fewer by far.[66]

In the plastic arts, vocation and creative apt.i.tude are shown perceptibly later, on the average about the fourteenth year: Giotto, at ten; Van Dyck, ten; Raphael, eight; Guerchin, eight; Greuze, eight; Michaelangelo, thirteen; Albrecht Durer, fifteen; Bernini, twelve; Rubens and Jordaens being also precocious.

In poetry we find no work having any individual character before sixteen. Chatterton died at that age, perhaps the only example of so young a poet leaving any reputation. Schiller and Byron also began at sixteen. Besides this, we know that the talent for versification, at least as imitation, is very early in developing.

In mechanical arts children have early a remarkable capacity for understanding and imitating. At nine, Poncelet bought a watch that was out of order in order to study it, then took it apart and put it together correctly. Arago tells that at the same age Fresnel was called by his comrades a "man of genius," because he had determined by correct experiments "the length and caliber of children's elder-wood toy cannon giving the longest range; also, which green or dry woods used in the manufacture of bows have most strength and lasting power." In general, the average of mechanical invention is later, and scarcely comes earlier than that of scientific discovery.

The form of abstract imagination requisite for invention in the sciences has no great personal value before the twentieth year: there are a goodly number, however, who have given proof of it before that age--Pascal, Newton, Leibniz, Gauss, Auguste Comte, etc. Almost all are mathematicians.

These chronological variations result not from chance, but from psychological conditions necessary for the development of each form of imagination. We know that the acquisition of musical sounds is prior to speech: many children can repeat a scale correctly before they are able to talk. On the other hand, as dissolution follows evolution in inverse order,[67] aphasic patients lacking the most common words, can nevertheless sing. Sound-images are thus organized before all others, and the creative power when acting in this direction finds very early material for its use. For the plastic arts a longer apprenticeship is necessary for the education of the senses and movements. To acquire manual dexterity one must become skilled in observing form, combinations of lines and colors, and apt at reproducing them. Poetry and first attempts at novel-writing presuppose some experience of the pa.s.sions of human life and a certain reflection of which the child is incapable.

Invention in the mechanic arts, as in the plastic arts, requires the education of the senses and movements; and, further, calculation, rational combination of means, rigorous adaptation to practical necessities. Lastly, scientific imagination is nothing without a high development of the capacity for abstraction, which is a matter of slow growth. Mathematicians are the most precocious because their material is the most simple; they have no need, as in the case of the experimental sciences, of an extended knowledge of facts, which is acquired only with time.

At this period of its development the imagination is in large part imitation. We must explain this paradox. The creator begins by imitating: this is such a well-known fact that it is needless to give proof of it, and it is subject to few exceptions. The most original mind is, at first, consciously or unconsciously somebody's disciple. It is necessarily so. Nature gives only one thing, "the creative instinct;"

that is, the need of producing in a determined line. This internal factor alone is insufficient. Aside from the fact that the imagination at first has at its disposal only a very limited material, it lacks technique, the processes indispensable for realizing itself. As long as the creator has not found the suitable form into which to cast his creation he must indeed borrow it from another; his ideas must suffer the necessity of a provisional shelter. This explains how it is that later the inventor, reaching full consciousness of himself, in order to complete mastery of his methods, often breaks with his models, and burns what he at first adorned.

II

A second character consists of the necessity, the fatality of creation.