Chapter I: Front Matter

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ESSAY ON THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION

BY

TH. RIBOT

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH

BY

ALBERT H. N. BARON FELLOW IN CLARK UNIVERSITY

LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD. 1906

COPYRIGHT BY THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO. CHICAGO, U. S. A. 1906 _All rights reserved._

TO THE MEMORY OF MY TEACHER AND FRIEND,

Arthur Allin, Ph. D.,

PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO,

WHO FIRST INTERESTED ME IN THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHOLOGY, THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED, WITH REVERENCE AND GRATITUDE, BY

THE TRANSLATOR.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

The name of Th. Ribot has been for many years well known in America, and his works have gained wide popularity. The present translation of one of his more recent works is an attempt to render available in English what has been received as a classic exposition of a subject that is often discussed, but rarely with any attempt to understand its true nature.

It is quite generally recognized that psychology has remained in the semi-mythological, semi-scholastic period longer than most attempts at scientific formulization. For a long time it has been the "spook science" _per se_, and the imagination, now analyzed by M. Ribot in such a masterly manner, has been one of the most persistent, apparently real, though very indefinite, of psychological spooks. Whereas people have been accustomed to speak of the imagination as an entity _sui generis_, as a lofty something found only in long-haired, wild-eyed "geniuses," constituting indeed the center of a cult, our author, Prometheus-like, has brought it down from the heavens, and has clearly shown that _imagination is a function of mind common to all men in some degree_, and that it is shown in as highly developed form in commercial leaders and practical inventors as in the most bizarre of romantic idealists. The only difference is that the manifestation is not the same.

That this view is not entirely original with M. Ribot is not to his discredit--indeed, he does not claim any originality. We find the view clearly expressed elsewhere, certainly as early as Aristotle, that the greatest artist is he who actually embodies his vision and will in permanent form, preferably in social institutions. This idea is so clearly enunciated in the present monograph, which the author modestly styles an essay, that when the end of the book is reached but little remains of the great imagination-ghost, save the one great mystery underlying all facts of mind.

That the present rendering falls far below the lucid French of the original, the translator is well aware; he trusts, however, that the indulgent reader will take into account the good intent as offsetting in part, at least, the numerous shortcomings of this version.

I wish here to express my obligation to those friends who encouraged me in the congenial task of translation.

A. H. N. B.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

Contemporary psychology has studied the purely reproductive imagination with great eagerness and success. The works on the different image-groups--visual, auditory, tactile, motor--are known to everyone, and form a collection of inquiries solidly based on subjective and objective observation, on pathological facts and laboratory experiments. The study of the creative or constructive imagination, on the other hand, has been almost entirely neglected. It would be easy to show that the best, most complete, and most recent treatises on psychology devote to it scarcely a page or two; often, indeed, do not even mention it. A few articles, a few brief, scarce monographs, make up the sum of the past twenty-five years' work on the subject. The subject does not, however, at all deserve this indifferent or contemptuous attitude. Its importance is unquestionable, and even though the study of the creative imagination has hitherto remained almost inaccessible to experimentation strictly so-called, there are yet other objective processes that permit of our approaching it with some likelihood of success, and of continuing the work of former psychologists, but with methods better adapted to the requirements of contemporary thought.

The present work is offered to the reader as an essay or first attempt only. It is not our intention here to undertake a complete monograph that would require a thick volume, but only to seek the underlying conditions of the creative imagination, showing that it has its beginning and principal source in the natural tendency of images to become objectified (or, more simply, in the motor elements inherent in the image), and then following it in its development under its manifold forms, whatever they may be. For I cannot but maintain that, at present, the psychology of the imagination is concerned almost wholly with its part in esthetic creation and in the sciences. We scarcely get beyond that; its other manifestations have been occasionally mentioned--never investigated. Yet invention in the fine arts and in the sciences is only a special case, and possibly not the principal one. We hope to show that in practical life, in mechanical, military, industrial, and commercial inventions, in religious, social, and political institutions, the human mind has expended and made permanent as much imagination as in all other fields.

The constructive imagination is a faculty that in the course of ages has undergone a reduction--or at least, some profound changes. So, for reasons indicated later on, the mythic activity has been taken in this work as the central point of our topic, as the primitive and typical form out of which the greater number of the others have arisen. The creative power is there shown entirely unconfined, freed from all hindrance, careless of the possible and the impossible; in a pure state, unadulterated by the opposing influence of imitation, of ratiocination, of the knowledge of natural laws and their uniformity.

In the first or analytical part, we shall try to resolve the constructive imagination into its constitutive factors, and study each of them singly.

The second or genetic part will follow the imagination in its development as a whole from the dimmest to the most complex forms.

Finally, the third or concrete part, will be no longer devoted to the imagination, but to imaginative beings, to the principal types of imagination that observation shows us.

May, 1900.

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGE

Translator's Preface v

Author's Preface vii

INTRODUCTION.

THE MOTOR NATURE OF THE CONSTRUCTIVE IMAGINATION.

Transition from the reproductive to the creative
imagination.--Do all representations contain motor
elements?--Unusual effects produced by images: vesication,
stigmata; their conditions; their meaning for our
subject.--The imagination is, on the intellectual side,
equivalent to will. Proof: Identity of development;
subjective, personal character of both; teleologic
character; analogy between the abortive forms of the
imagination and abulias. 3

FIRST PART.

ANALYSIS OF THE IMAGINATION.

CHAPTER I.

THE INTELLECTUAL FACTOR.

Dissociation, preparatory work.--Dissociation in complete,
incomplete and schematic images.--Dissociation in series.
Its principal causes: internal or subjective, external or
objective.--Association: its role reduced to a single
question, the formation of new combinations.--The principal
intellectual factor is thinking by analogy. Why it is an
almost inexhaustible source of creation. Its mechanism. Its
processes reducible to two, viz.: personification,
transformation. 15

CHAPTER II.

THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR.

The great importance of this element.--All forms of the
creative imagination imply affective elements. Proofs: All
affective conditions may influence the imagination. Proofs:
Association of ideas on an emotional basis; new combinations
under ordinary and extraordinary forms.--Association by
contrast.--The motor element in tendencies.--There is no
creative instinct; invention has not _a_ source, but
_sources_, and always arises from a need.--The work of the
imagination reduced to two great classes, themselves
reducible to special needs.--Reasons for the prejudice in
favor of a creative instinct. 31

CHAPTER III.

THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR.

Various views of the "inspired state." Its essential
characteristics; suddenness, impersonality.--Its relations
to unconscious activity.--Resemblances to hypermnesia, the
initial state of alcoholic intoxication and somnambulism on
waking.--Disagreements concerning the ultimate nature of
unconsciousness: two hypotheses.--The "inspired state" is
not a cause, but an index.--Associations in unconscious
form.--Mediate or latent association: recent experiments and
discussions on this subject.--"Constellation" the result of
a summation of predominant tendencies. Its mechanism. 50

CHAPTER IV.

THE ORGANIC CONDITIONS OF THE IMAGINATION.

Anatomical conditions: various hypotheses. Obscurity of the
question. Flechsig's theory.--Physiological conditions: are
they cause, effect, or accompaniment? Chief factor: change
in cerebral and local circulation.--Attempts at
experimentation.--The oddities of inventors brought under
two heads: the explicable and inexplicable. They are helpers
of inspiration.--Is there any analogy between physical and
psychic creation? A philosophical hypothesis on the
subject.--Limitation of the question. Impossibility of an
exact answer. 65

CHAPTER V.

THE PRINCIPLE OF UNITY.

Importance of the unifying principle. It is a fixed idea or
a fixed emotion.--Their equivalence.--Distinction between
the synthetic principle and the ideal, which is the
principle of unity in motion: the ideal is a construction in
images, merely outlined.--The principal forms of the
unifying principles: unstable, organic or middle, extreme or
semi-morbid.--Obsession of the inventor and the sick:
insufficiency of a purely psychological criterion. 79

SECOND PART.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IMAGINATION.

CHAPTER I.

IMAGINATION IN ANIMALS.

Difficulties of the subject.--The degree of imagination in
animals.--Does creative synthesis exist in them? Affirmation
and denials.--The special form of animal imagination is
motor, and shows itself through play: its numerous
varieties.--Why the animal imagination must be above all
motor: lack of intellectual development.--Comparison with
young children, in whom the motor system predominates: the
roles of movements in infantile insanity. 93

CHAPTER II.

IMAGINATION IN THE CHILD.

Division of its development into four principal
periods.--Transition from passive to creative imagination:
perception and illusion.--Animating everything: analysis of
the elements constituting this moment: the role of
belief.--Creation in play: period of imitation, attempts at
invention.--Fanciful invention. 103