Th. Ribot

“ In order to give consistence and body to the idea caught sight of enthusiastically in an aureole, one must have patience, a perseverance through all trials. One must view on all sides the mechanical agencies that should serve to set the image together, until the latter has attained the simplicity that alone makes invention viable. In this work of bringing to a head, the same spirit of invention and imagination must be constantly drawn upon for the solution of all the details, and it is against this arduous requirement that the great majority of inventors rebel again and again. ”

“ Let us—merely as an illustration to fix our ideas—admit the hypothesis of a primitive nebula. Imagine (which is impossible) an intelligent being, able, at that point in the world’s history, to draw up a scheme of the existing laws. He could discover none but those which govern matter in the gaseous state,—some of which are still extant, others unknown to us, and unknowable—since, their conditions of existence having ceased, they are annihilated. ”

“ We take the observable fact in the rough, whether legitimate or not. Now, does not the believer, whatever his degree of culture, whatever his religion, at the moment when he feels the emotion, tremble, turn pale, exhibit the sacer horror, the overwhelming awe which may end in unconsciousness, the prostrate attitude? Have not the mystics over and over again described the violent disturbances which agitate them, the internal tempest which ravages them, till, calm being re-established, they express themselves in language frequently recalling that of sexual love? ”

“ The myth here is not a disguise, but an expression; no language is more true and more supple. It permits a glimpse of, or rather, it causes us to discern the forms of clouds, movements of the air, changes of seasons, [201] all the happenings of sky, fire, storm: external nature has never met a mind so impressionable and pliant in which to mirror itself in all the inexhaustible variety of its appearances. However changeable nature may be, this imagination corresponds to it. It has no fixed gods; they are changeable like the things themselves; they blend one into another. ”

“ If it means that all change suggests to every normal man who witnesses it an invincible belief in a known or unknown agent of its production, then the assertion is incontestable: but this, as we have seen, is only the popular, practical, and external notion of causality. If the true concept (that of the solidly constituted sciences) , which is reducible to an inflexible, invariable determination, is implied, then it is a fallacy to pretend that the human mind acquired it at the outset. The belief in a universal law of causality is no gratuitous gift of nature: it is a conquest. ”

“ Everywhere and always man has had for material scarcely anything save natural phenomena—the sky, land, water, stars, storms, wind, seasons, life, death, etc. On each of these themes he builds thousands of explanatory stories, which vary from the grandly imposing to the laughably childish. Every myth is the work of a human group which has worked according to the tendencies of its special genius under the influence of various stages of intellectual culture. No process is richer in resources, of freer turn, or more apt to give what every inventor promises—the novel and unexpected. ”

“ This is proved by innumerable facts; at some unforeseen moment the spark flashes out; experience has hardly anything to do with it. It has its necessity and its fatality; the creator has his task to accomplish; he is fitted for one kind of work only; even when he has some adaptability, he is imprisoned within his own manner, and keeps his own individual style; if he leaves it, he fails altogether, or becomes a bad imitator of others. It has its impersonality; creation is not the child of the will, but of that unconscious impulse which we call inspiration ”

“ Thus it has been said: speech is a necessary product in which neither reflexion nor will participate, and which is derived from a secret instinct in man (Heyse) . Renan sustained a similar thesis. For Max Müller, “man is born speaking, as he is born thinking; speech marks the transition from (concrete) intuitions to ideas; it is a fact in the development of the mind; it is created with no distinct consciousness of means and end.” For Steinthal, on the contrary, “language is neither an invention nor an innate product; man creates it himself, but it is not begotten of the reflecting mind.” ”

“ Between the mechanism of instinct and that of imaginative creation there are frequently great analogies but not identity of nature. Every tendency of our organization, useful or hurtful, may become the beginning of a creative act. Every invention arises from a particular need of human nature, acting within its own sphere and for its own special end.
If now it should be asked why the creative imagination directs itself preferably in one line rather than in another—toward poetry or physics, trade or mechanics, geometry or painting, strategy or music, etc.—we have nothing in answer. ”

“ Is the most emotional art also—as required by our thesis—the most dependent on physiological conditions? Yes, and if we wish to demonstrate this, facts are so numerous that the only difficulty is to choose between them. Let us leave aside every intellectual element, all representations, either vague or distinct, evoked by music; let us, further, avoid all metaphysical dissertations on its nature and its revelation of the Infinite, or its origin in the human species, in order to confine ourselves to its physical and affective aspect, and to grasp the connection. ”

“ In the genesis of myths, the second moment is that of fanciful invention. Entities take form; they have a history and adventures: they become the stuff for a romance. People of poor and dry imagination do not reach the second period. Thus, the religion of the Romans peopled the universe with an innumerable quantity of genii. No object, no act, no detail, but had its own presiding genius. ”

“ Through countless generations our ancestors, on finishing their daily task, in the evening have thought with satisfaction of the work accomplished; it was in this frame of mind that they looked on the approach of evening and the sunset. Why does a landscape representing it produce on us an impression of repose and peace? We have no other answer than this: for countless generations past the evening sky has been associated with the consciousness of work finished and a feeling of rest and satisfaction.” Apart from its extreme flimsiness, this hypothesis would not be applicable to all the arts. ”

“ It seems at first that these two terms—imagination and number—must be mutually exclusive. Every number is precise, rigorously determined, since we can always reduce it to a relation with unity; it owes nothing to fancy. But the series of numbers is unlimited in two directions: starting from any term in the series, we may go on ever increasingly or ever decreasingly. The working of the mind gives rise to a possible infinity that is limitless: it thus traces a route for the movement of the imagination. The number, or rather the series of numbers, is less an object than a vehicle. ”

“ When it reaches the consciousness, it merely becomes sensible. Thus what is at first a vague sense of discomfort, asserts itself in the consciousness as hunger, and may lead to theft, murder, and all sorts of excesses. Another state of the organism shows itself in floating, indeterminate desires, then asserts itself as love for some particular being, and may in the end break out like a thunderstorm. It would be superfluous to review in like manner the whole of the passions, making the same comments. Whether simple or complex, their evolution is the same. ”

“ People have wisely discoursed on the "methods" of invention. There are none; but for which fact we could manufacture inventors just as we make mechanics and watchmakers. It is the imagination that invents, that provides the rational faculties with their materials, with the position, and even the solution of their problems. Reasoning is only a means for control and proof; it transforms the work of the imagination into acceptable, logical results. If one has not imagined beforehand, the logical method is aimless and useless, for we cannot reason concerning the completely unknown. ”

“ Let us remark that, in its origin, the “knowledge” which we take in its lowest degree has only a practical value; sensation is a monitor, an aid, an instrument, a weapon with only one aim—the preservation of the individual,—and completely subordinated to that end; otherwise, it is nothing but a useless manifestation, a luxury. The nexus between the sensations and the organic and motor reactions is therefore innate—i.e., it results from the very constitution of the animal. If it fails, the conditions of existence are at fault. ”

“ Here it is the same: the financial inventor is often possessed with a kind of intoxication—he no longer labors for lucre, but for art; he becomes, in his own way, an author of romance. His imagination, set at the beginning toward gain, now seeks only its complete expansion, the assertion and eruption of its creative power, the pleasure of inventing for invention's sake, [133] daring the extraordinary, the unheard-of—it is the victory of pure construction. The natural equilibrium between the three necessary elements of creation—mobility, combination of images, calculation—is destroyed. ”

“ Besides this, let us observe ourselves and interrogate our own consciousness. “Let us consider ourselves at one of those moments of calm and apparent indifference, when it seems as if nothing could move us, and our numbed sensibility remains, as it were, suspended between pleasure and pain. This deceptive appearance of insensibility and aridity always masks some more or less feeble sensations of ease or uneasiness, some more or less slight and confused sentiments of joy or grief which are none the less real for being in nowise vivid or exciting. ”