Chapter III: Primitive Man and the Creation of Myths

The golden age of the creative imagination.--Myths:
hypotheses as to the origin: the myth is the psycho-physical
objectification of man in the phenomena that he perceives.
The role of imagination.--How myths are formed. The moment
of creation: two operations--animating everything,
qualifying everything. Romantic invention lacking in peoples
without imagination. The role of analogy and of association
through "constellation."--The evolution of myths: ascension,
acme, decline.--The explanatory myths undergo a radical
transformation: the work of depersonification of the myth.
Survivals.--The non-explanatory myths suffer a partial
transformation: Literature is a fallen and rationalized
mythology.--Popular imagination and legends: the legend is
to the myth what illusion is to hallucination.--Unconscious
processes that the imagination employs in order to create
legends: fusion, idealization. 118

CHAPTER IV.

THE HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION.

Is a psychology of great inventors possible? Pathological
and physiological theories of genius.--General characters of
great inventors. Precocity: chronological order of the
development of the creative power. Psychological reasons
for this order. Why the creator commences by
imitating.--Necessity or fatalism of vocation.--The
representative character of great creators. Discussion as to
the origin of this character--is it in the individual or in
the environment?--Mechanism of creation. Two principal
processes--complete, abridged. Their three phases; their
resemblances and differences.--The role of chance in
invention: it supposes the meeting of two factors--one
internal, the other external.--Chance is an occasion for,
not an agent of, creation. 140

CHAPTER V.

LAW OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IMAGINATION.

Is the creative imagination, in its evolution, subject to
any law?--It passes through two stages separated by a
critical phase.--Period of autonomy; critical period; period
of definite constitution. Two cases: decay or transformation
through logical form, through deviation.--Subsidiary law of
increasing complexity.--Historical verification. 167

THIRD PART.

THE PRINCIPAL TYPES OF IMAGINATION.

PRELIMINARY.

The need of a concrete study.--The varieties of the creative
imagination, analogous to the varieties of character. 179

CHAPTER I.

THE PLASTIC IMAGINATION.

It makes use of clear images, well determined in space, and
of associations of objective relations.--Its external
character.--Inferiority of the affective element.--Its
principal manifestations: in the arts dealing with form; in
poetry (transformation of sonorous into visual images); in
myths with clear outline; in mechanical invention.--The dry
and rational imagination its elements. 184

CHAPTER II.

THE DIFFLUENT IMAGINATION.

It makes use of vague images linked according to the least
rigorous modes of association. Emotional abstractions; their
nature.--Its characteristic of inwardness.--Its principal
manifestations: revery, the romantic spirit, the chimerical
spirit; myths and religious conceptions, literature and the
fine arts (the symbolists), the class of the marvelous and
fantastic.--Varieties of the diffluent imagination: first,
numerical imagination; its nature; two principal forms,
cosmogonic and scientific conceptions; second, musical
imagination, the type of the affective imagination. Its
characteristics; it does not develop save after an interval
of time.--Natural transposition of events in
musicians.--Antagonism between true musical imagination and
plastic imagination. Inquiry and facts on the subject.--Two
great types of imagination. 195

CHAPTER III.

MYSTIC IMAGINATION.

Its elements; its special characteristics.--Thinking
symbolically.--Nature of this symbolism.--The mystic changes
concrete images into symbolic images.--Their obscurity;
whence it arises.--Extraordinary abuse of analogy.--Mystic
labor on letters, numbers, etc.--Nature and extent of the
belief accompanying this form of imagination: it is
unconditional and permanent.--The mystic conception of the
world a general symbolism.--Mystic imagination in religion
and in metaphysics. 221

CHAPTER IV.

THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION.

It is distinguishable into genera and species.--The need for
monographs that have not yet appeared.--The imagination in
growing sciences--belief is at its maximum; in the organized
sciences--the negative role of method.--The conjectural
phase; proof of its importance.--Abortive and dethroned
hypotheses.--The imagination in the processes of
verification.--The metaphysician's imagination arises from
the same need as the scientist's.--Metaphysics is a
rationalized myth.--Three moments.--Imaginative and
rationalist. 236