Psychology Part 55

Look at a pillar, for example. If the pillar is too ma.s.sive for the load supported, it gives you the unsatisfactory impression of doing something absurdly small for your powers. If on the contrary the pillar is too slender for the load that seems to rest upon it, you get the feeling of strain and insecurity; but if it is rightly proportioned, you get the feeling of a worthy task successfully accomplished. The pillar, according to empathy, pleases you by arousing and gratifying your mastery impulse; and many other architectural effects can be interpreted in the same way.

Empathy can perhaps explain the appeal of the _big_ in art and nature.

In spite of the warnings put forth against thinking of mere bigness as great or fine, we must admit that size makes a very strong appeal to something in human nature. The most perfect miniature model of a cathedral, however interesting and attractive as it rests on the table before you, fails to make anything like the impression that is made by the giant building towering above you. Big trees, lofty cliffs, grand canyons, tremendous waterfalls, huge banks of clouds, the illimitable expanse of the sea, demonstrate cogently the strong appeal of the big.

Perhaps the big is not necessarily grand, but the grand or sublime must be big or somehow suggest bigness. The question is, then, what it is in us that responds to the appeal of the big.

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Perhaps it is the submissive tendency that is aroused. This great mountain, so far outcla.s.sing me that I am not tempted in the least to compete with it, affords me the joy of willing submission. The escape motive may come in along with submissiveness--at the first sight of the mountain a thrill of fear pa.s.ses over me, but I soon realize that the mountain will not hurt me in spite of its awe-inspiring vastness; so that my emotion is blended of the thrill of fear, the relief of escape, and the humble joy of submission. That is one a.n.a.lysis of the esthetic effect of bigness.

Empathy suggests a very different a.n.a.lysis. According to this, projecting myself into the mountain, identifying myself with it, I experience the sensation of how it feels to be a mountain. It feels big--I feel big. My mastery impulse is gratified. To decide between these two opposing interpretations ought to be possible from the behavior or introspection of a person in the presence of some big object. If he feels insignificant and humble and bows reverently before the object, we may conclude that the submissive tendency is in action; but if the sight of the grand object makes him feel strong and fine, if he throws out his chest and a gleam comes into his eye, then everything looks like the mastery motive. Quite possibly, the effect varies with the person and the occasion.

We have to think of art as a great system or collection of inventions that owes its existence to its appeal to human nature, and that has found ways, as its history has progressed, of making its appeal more and more varied. Art is a type in these respects of many social enterprises, such as sport, amus.e.m.e.nt, and even such serious matters as politics and industry. Each of these is a collection of inventions that persists because it appeals to human impulses, and each one appeals to a variety of different impulses.

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The Psychology of Inventive Production

To the consumer, art is play, but to the producer it is work, in the sense that it is directed towards definite ends and has to stand criticism according as it does or does not reach those ends. What is true of the producer of art works is true also of other inventors, and we may as well consider all sorts of controlled imagination together.

In spite of the element of control that is present in productive invention, the really gifted inventor seems to make play of his work to a large extent. Certainly the inventive genius does not always have his eyes fixed on the financial goal, nor on the appeal which his inventions are to make to the public. It is astonishing to read in the lives of inventors what a lot of comparatively useless contrivances they busied themselves with, apparently from the pure joy of inventing. One prolific writer said that he "never worked in his life, only played". The inventor likes to manipulate his materials, and this playfulness has something to do with his originality, by helping to keep him out of the rut.

That "necessity is the mother of invention" is only half of the truth; it points to the importance of a directive tendency, but fails to show how the inventor manages to leave the beaten path and really invent.

Necessity, or some desire, puts a question, without which the inventor would not be likely to find the answer; but he needs a kind of flexibility or playfulness, just because his job is that of seeing things in a new light. We must allow him to toy with his materials a bit, and even to be a bit "temperamental", and not expect him to grind out works of art or other inventions as columns of figures are added.

When inventive geniuses have been requested to indicate their method, they have been able to give only vague hints. How does the musical composer, for example, free himself of {518} all the familiar pieces and bring the notes into a fresh arrangement? All that he can tell about it is usually that he had an "inspiration"; the new air simply came to him. Now, of course the air did not really come to him from outside; he made it, it was his reaction, but it was a quick, free reaction, of which he could observe little introspectively.

Perhaps the best-studied case of invention is that of the learner in typewriting, who, after laboriously perfecting his "letter habits" or responses to single letters by appropriate finger movements on the keyboard, may suddenly find himself writing in a new way, the word no longer being spelled out, but being written as a unit by a coordinated series of finger movements. The amazing thing is that, without trying for anything of the kind, he has been able to break away from his habit of spelling out the word, and shift suddenly to a new manner of writing. He testifies that he did not plan out this change, but was surprised to find himself writing in the new way. He was feeling well that day, hopeful and ambitious, he was striving for greater speed, and, while he was completely absorbed in his writing, this new mode of reaction originated.

We see in this experimentally studied case some of the conditions that favor invention. Good physical condition, freshness, mastery of the subject, striving for some result, and "hopefulness". Now, what is that last? Confidence, enterprise, willingness to "take a chance", eagerness for action and readiness to break away from routine? Some of this independent, manipulating spirit was probably there.

A soldier, so wounded as to paralyze his legs but capable of recovery by training, had advanced far enough to hobble about with a cane and by holding to the walls. One morning, feeling pretty chipper, he took a chance and left the wall, cutting straight across the room; and getting through without a fall, was naturally much encouraged and {519} maintained this advance. This might be called invention; it was breaking away from what had become routine, and that is the essential fact about the inventive reaction. This playful spirit of cutting loose, manipulating, and rearranging things to suit yourself is certainly a condition favorable to invention. It does not guarantee a valuable invention, but it at least helps towards whatever invention the individual's other qualifications make possible.

Another condition favorable to invention is youth. Seldom does a very old person get outside the limits of his previous habits. Few great inventions, artistic or practical, have emanated from really old persons, and comparatively few even from the middle-aged. On the other hand, boys and girls under eighteen seldom produce anything of great value, not having as yet acquired the necessary mastery of the materials with which they have to deal. The period from twenty years up to forty seems to be the most favorable for inventiveness.

Imagination Considered in General

Finally, we must return to the question of definition or general description that was left open near the beginning of the chapter.

There seem to be two steps in the inventive response, one preliminary, the other strictly inventive. The preliminary step brings the stimuli to bear, and invention is the response that follows.

Typically, the preliminary stage consists in recall; and a.s.sociation by similarity, bringing together materials from different past experiences, is very important as a preliminary to invention. Facts recalled from different contexts are thus brought together, and invention consists in a response to such novel combinations of facts.

The two steps in invention are, first, getting a combination of stimuli, and second, responding to the combination.

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Sometimes it has been said that imagination consists in putting together material from different sources, but this leaves the matter in mid-air; recall can bring together facts from different sources and so afford the stimulus for an imaginative response, but the response goes beyond the mere togetherness of the stimuli. Thinking of a man and also of a horse is not inventing a centaur; there is a big jump from the juxtaposition of the data to the specific arrangement that imagination gives them. The man plus the horse may give no response at all, or may give many other responses besides that of a centaur; for example, a picture of the man and the horse politely bowing to each other. The particular manipulation, or imaginative response, that is made varies widely; sometimes it consists in taking things apart rather than putting them together, as when you imagine how a house would look with the evergreen tree beside it cut down; always it consists in putting the data into new relationships.

Imagination thus presents a close parallel to reasoning, where, also, there are two stages, the preliminary consisting in getting the premises together and the final consisting in perceiving the conclusion. The final response in imagination is in general like that in reasoning; both are _perceptive reactions_; but imagination is freer and more variable. Reasoning is governed by a very precise aim, to see the actual meaning of the combined premises; that is, it is exploratory; while imagination, though it is usually more or less steered either by a definite aim or by some bias in the direction of agreeable results, has after all much more lat.i.tude. It is seeking, not a relationship that is there, but one that can be put there.

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EXERCISES

1. Outline the chapter.

2. Make a list of hobbies and amus.e.m.e.nts that you specially enjoy, and try to discover the sources of satisfaction in each.

3. Recall two stories that you specially enjoyed, and try to discover the sources of satisfaction in each.

4. How far does the account of daydreams given in the text square with your own daydreams, and how far does it seem inadequate?

5. An experiment on the speed of revery or of daydreaming.

Beginning at a recorded time, by your watch, let your mind wander freely for a few moments, stopping as soon as your stream of thoughts runs dry. Note the time at the close. Now review your daydream (or revery), and tally off the several scenes or happenings that you thought of, so as to count up and see how many distinct thoughts pa.s.sed through your mind. How many seconds, on the average, were occupied by each successive item?

6. Why do dreams seem real at the time?

7. a.n.a.lysis of a dream. Take some dream that you recall well, and let your thoughts play about it, and about the separate items of it--about each object, person, speech, and happening in the dream--with the object of seeing whether they remind you of anything personally significant. Push the a.n.a.lysis back to your childhood, by asking whether anything about the dream symbolizes your childish experiences or wishes. To be sure, the psychoa.n.a.lyst would object that the individual cannot be trusted to make a complete a.n.a.lysis of his own dream--just as the psychologist would object to your accepting the recalled experiences and wishes as necessarily standing in any causal relation to your dream--but, at any rate, the exercise is interesting.

8. Problems in invention. Solve some of these, and compare the mental process with that of reasoning.

(a) Devise a game to be played by children and adults together, to everybody's satisfaction.

(b) Imagine a weird animal, after the a.n.a.logy of the centaur.

(c) Imagine an interesting incident, bringing in an old man, a little girl, and a waterfall.

(d) Design the street plan for an ideal small town, built on both sides of a small river.

9. Show how empathy might make us prefer a symmetrical building to one that is lop-sided.

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REFERENCES

On the imagination and play of children, see Norsworthy and Whitley's _Psychology of Childhood_, 1918, Chapters IX and XII.

For Freud's views regarding dreams, see his _Interpretation of Dreams_, translated by Brill, 1913.

For a view which, though psychoa.n.a.lytical, diverges somewhat from that of Freud, see Maurice Nicoll, _Dream Psychology_, 1917; also C. W.

Kimmins, _Children's Dreams_, 1920.

For studies of play, see Edward S. Robinson, "The Compensatory Function of Make-Believe Play", in the _Psychological Review_ for 1920, Vol. 27, pp. 429-439; also M. J. Reaney, _The Psychology of the Organized Group Game_, 1916.

On invention, see Josiah Royce, "The Psychology of Invention", in the _Psychological Review_ for 1898, Vol. 5, pp. 113-144; also F. W.