CHAPTER II
THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION IN THE CHILD
At what age, in what form, under what conditions does the creative imagination make its appearance? It is impossible to answer this question, which, moreover, has no justification. For the creative imagination develops little by little out of pure reproduction by an evolutionary process, not by sudden eruption. Nevertheless, its evolution is very slow on account of causes both organic and psychological.
We could not dwell long on the organic causes without falling into tiresome repetitions. The new-born infant is a spinal being, with an unformed diffluent brain, composed largely of water. Reflex life itself is not complete in him, and the cortico-motor system only hinted at; the sensory centers are undifferentiated, the associational systems remain isolated for a long time after birth. We have given above Flechsig's observation on this point.
The psychological causes reduce themselves to the necessity for a consolidation of the primary and secondary operations of the mind, without which the creative imagination cannot take form. To be precise, we might distinguish, as does Baldwin, four epochs in the mental development of the child: (1) affective (rudimentary sensory processes, pleasures and pains, simple motor adaptations); (2) and (3) objective, in which the author establishes two grades, (a) appearance of special senses, of memory, instincts primarily defensive, and imitation; (b) complex memory, complicated movements, offensive activities, rudimentary will; (4) subjective or final (conscious thought, constitutive will, ideal emotions). If we accept this scheme as approximately correct, the moment of imagination must be assigned to the third period (the second stage of the objective epoch) which fulfills all the sufficient and necessary conditions for its origination and for its rise above pure reproduction.
Whatever the propitious age may be, the study of the child-imagination is not without difficulties. In order to enter into the child-mind, we must become like a child; as it is, we are limited to an interpretation of it in terms of the adult, with much false interpretation possible, agreeing too much or too little with the facts. Furthermore, the children studied live and grow up in a civilized environment. The result is that the development of their imagination is rarely unhampered and complete; for as soon as their fancy passes the middle level, the rationalizing education of parents and teachers is eager to master and control it. In truth it gives its full measure and reveals itself in the fulness of growth only among primitive peoples. With us it is checked in its flight by an antagonistic power, which treats it as a harbinger of insanity. Finally, children are not equally well-suited for this study; we must make a distinction between the imaginative and non-imaginative, and the latter should be eliminated.
When we have thus chosen suitable subjects, observation shows from the start sufficiently distinct varieties, different orientations of the imagination depending on intellectual causes, such as the predominance of visual or acoustic or tactile-motor images making for mechanical invention; or dependent on emotional causes, that is, of character, according as the latter is timid, joyous, exuberant, retired, healthy, sickly, etc.
If we now attempt to follow the development of the child-imagination, we may distinguish four principal stages, without assigning them, otherwise, a rigorous chronological order.
1. The first stage consists of the passage from passive to creative imagination. Its history would be long were we to include all the hybrid forms that are made up partly of memories, partly of new groupings, being at the same time repetition and construction. Even in the adult, they are very frequent. I know a person who is always afraid of being smothered, and for this reason urgently asks that in his coffin his shirt be not tight at the neck: this odd prepossession of the mind belongs neither to memory nor to imagination. This particular case illustrates in a very clear form the nature of the first flights of the mind attempting to exercise its imaginative powers. Without enumerating other facts of this kind, it is more desirable to follow the imagination's development, limiting ourselves to two forms of the psychic life—perception and illusion. The necessary presence of the image in these two forms has been so often proven by contemporary psychology that a few words to recall this to mind will be sufficient.
There seems to be a radical difference between perception, which seizes reality, and imagination. Nevertheless, it is generally admitted that in order to rise above sensation to perception, there must be a synthesis of images. To put it more simply, two elements are required—one, coming from without, the physiological stimulus acting on the nerves and the sensory centers, which becomes translated in consciousness through the vague state that goes by the name "sensation"; the other, coming from within, adds to the sensations present appropriate images, remnants of former experiences. So that perception requires an apprenticeship; we must feel, then imperfectly perceive, in order to finally perceive well. The sensory datum is only a fraction of the total fact; and in the operation we call "perceiving," that is, apprehending an object directly, a part only of the object is represented.
This, however, does not go beyond reproductive imagination. The decisive step is taken in illusion. We know that illusion has as a basis and support a modification of the external senses which are metamorphosed, amplified by an immediate construction of the mind: a branch of a tree becomes a serpent, a distant noise seems the music of an orchestra. Illusion has as broad a field as perception, since there is no perception but may undergo this erroneous transformation, and it is produced by the same mechanism, but with interchange of the two terms. In perception, the chief element is the sensory, and the representative element is secondary; in illusion, we have just the opposite condition: what one takes as perceived is merely imagined—the imagination assumes the principal rôle. Illusion is the type of the transitional forms, of the mixed cases, that consist of constructions made up of memories, without being, in the strict sense, creations.
2. The creative imagination asserts itself with its peculiar characteristics only in the second stage, in the form of animism or the attributing of life to everything. This turn of the mind is already known to us, though mentioned only incidentally. As the state of the child's mind at that period resembles that which in primitive man creates myths, we shall return to it in the next chapter. Works on psychology abound in facts demonstrating that this primitive tendency to attribute life and even personality to everything is a necessary phase that the mind must undergo—long or short in duration, rich or poor in inventions, according to the level of the child's imagination. His attitude towards his dolls is the common example of this state, and also the best example, because it is universal, being found in all countries without exception, among all races of men. It is needless to pile up facts on an uncontroverted point.[40] Two will suffice; I choose them on account of their extravagance, which shows that at this particular moment animism, in certain minds, can dare anything. "One little fellow, aged one year eight months, conceived a special fondness for the letter W, addressing it thus: 'Dear old boy W.' Another little boy well on in his fourth year, when tracing a letter L, happened to slip, so that the horizontal limb formed an angle, thus:
He instantly saw the resemblance to the sedentary human form, and said: 'Oh, he's sitting down.' Similarly, when he made an F turn the wrong way and then put the correct form to the left, thus,
he exclaimed, 'They're talking together!'" One of Sully's correspondents says: "I had the habit of attributing intelligence not only to all living creatures ... but even to stones and manufactured articles. I used to feel how dull it must be for the pebbles in the causeway to lie still and only see what was round about. When I walked out with a basket for putting flowers in, I used sometimes to pick up a pebble or two and carry them out to have a change."
Let us stop a moment in order to try to determine the nature of this strange mental state, all the more as we shall meet it again in primitive man, and since it presents the creative imagination at its beginning.
a. The first element is a fixed idea, or rather, an image, or group of images, that takes possession of consciousness to the exclusion of everything else:—it is the analogue of the state of suggestion in the hypnotized subject, with this sole difference—that the suggestion does not come from without, from another, but from the child itself—it is auto-suggestion. The stick that the child holds between his legs becomes for him an imaginary steed. The poverty of his mental development makes all the easier this contraction of the field of his consciousness, which assures the supremacy of the image.
b. This has as its basis a reality that it includes. This is an important detail to note, because this reality, however tiny, gives objectivity to the imaginary creation and incorporates it with the external world. The mechanism is like that which produces illusion, but with a stable character excluding correction. The child transforms a bit of wood or paper into another self, because he perceives only the phantom he has created; that is, the images, not the material exciting them, haunt his brain.
c. Lastly, this creative power investing the image with all its attributes of real existence is derived from a fundamental fact—the state of belief, i.e., adherence of the mind founded on purely subjective conditions. It does not come within my province to treat incidentally such a large question. Neglected by the older physiology, whose faculty-method inclined it toward this omission, belief or faith has recently become the object of numerous studies.[41] I necessarily limit myself to remarking that but for this psychic state, the nature of the imagination is totally incomprehensible. The peculiarity of the imagination is the production of a reality of human origin, and it succeeds therein only because of the faith accompanying the image.
Representation and belief are not completely separated; it is the nature of the image to appear at first as a real object. This psychological truth, though proven through observation, has made itself acceptable only with great difficulty. It has had to struggle on the one hand against the prejudices of common-sense for which imagination is synonymous with sham and vain appearance and opposed to the real as non-being to being; on the other hand, against a doctrine of the logicians who maintain that the idea is at first merely conceived with no affirmation of existence or non-existence (apprehensio simplex). This position, legitimate in logic, which is an abstract science, is altogether unacceptable in psychology, a concrete science. The psychological viewpoint giving the true nature of the image has prevailed little by little. Spinoza already asserts "that representations considered by themselves contain no errors," and he "denies that it is possible to perceive [represent] without affirming." More explicitly, Hume assigns belief to our subjective dispositions: Belief does not depend on the nature of the idea, but on the manner in which we conceive it. Existence is not a quality added to it by us; it is founded on habit and is irresistible. The difference between fiction and belief consists of a feeling added to the latter but not to the former. Dugald Stewart treats the question purely as a psychologist following the experimental method. He enumerates very many facts whence he concludes that imagination is always accompanied by an act of belief, but for which fact the more vivid the image, the less one would believe it; but just the contrary happens—the strong representation commands persuasion like sensation itself. Finally, Taine treats the subject methodically, by studying the nature of the image and its primitive character of hallucination.[42] At present, I think, there is no psychologist who does not regard as proven that the image, when it enters consciousness, has two moments. During the first, it is objective, appearing as a full and complete reality; during the second, which is definitive, it is deprived of its objectivity, reduced to a completely internal event, through the effect of other states of consciousness which oppose and finally annihilate its objective character. There is an affirmation, then negation; impulse, then inhibition.
Faith, being only a mode of existence, an attitude of the mind, owes its creative and vivifying power to general dispositions of our constitution. Besides the intellectual element which is its content, its material—the thing affirmed or denied—there are tendencies and other affective factors (desire, fear, love, etc.) giving the image its intensity, and assuring it success in the struggle against other states of consciousness. There are active faculties that we sometimes designate by the name "will," understanding by the term, as James says, not only deliberate volition, but all the factors of belief (hope, fear, passions, prejudices, sectarian feeling, and so forth),[43] and this has justly given rise to the truthful saying that the test of belief is action.[44] This explains how in love, religion, in the moral life, in politics, and elsewhere, belief can withstand the logical assaults of the rationalizing intelligence—its power is found everywhere. It lasts as long as the mind waits and consents; but, as soon as these affective and active dispositions disappear in life's experience, faith falls with them, leaving in its place a formless content, an empty and dead representation.
After this, is it necessary to remark that belief depends peculiarly on the motor elements of our organization and not on the intellectual? As there is no imagination without belief, nor belief without imagination, we return by another route to the thesis supported in the first part of this essay, that creative activity depends on the motor nature of images.
Insofar as concerns the special case of the child, the first of the two moments (the affirming) that the image undergoes in consciousness is all in all for him, the second (the rectifying) is nothing: there is hypertrophy of one, atrophy of the other. For the adult the contrary is true—in many cases, indeed, in consequence of experience and habit, the first moment, wherein the image should be affirmed as a reality, is only virtual, is literally atrophied. We must, however, remark that this applies only partially to the ignorant and even less to the savage.
We might, nevertheless, ask ourselves if the child's belief in his phantoms is complete, entire, absolute, unreserved. Is the stick that he bestrides perfectly identified with a horse? Was Sully's child, that showed its doll a series of engravings to choose from, completely deceived? It seems that we must rather admit an intermittence, an alteration between affirmation and negation. On the one hand, the skeptical attitude of those who laugh at it displeases the child, who is like a devout believer whose faith is being broken down. On the other hand, doubt must indeed arise in him from time to time, for without this, rectification could never occur—one belief opposes the other or drives it away. This second work proceeds little by little, but then, under this form, imagination retreats.
3. The third stage is that of play, which, in chronological order, coincides with the one just preceding. As a form of creation it is already known to us, but in passing from animals to children, it grows in complexity and becomes intellectualized. It is no longer a simple combination of images.
Play serves two ends—for experimenting: as such it is an introduction to knowledge, gives certain vague notions concerning the nature of things; for creating: this is its principal function.
The human child, like the animal, expends itself in movements, forms associations new to it, simulates defence, flight, attack; but the child soon passes beyond this lower stage, in order to construct by means of images (ideally). He begins by imitating: this is a physiological necessity, reasons for which we shall give later (see chapter iv. infra). He constructs houses, boats, gives himself up to large plans; but he imitates most in his own person and acts, making himself in turn soldier, sailor, robber, merchant, coachman, etc.
To the period of imitation succeed more serious attempts—he acts with a "spirit of mastery," he is possessed by his idea which he tends to realize. The personal character of creation is shown in that he is really interested only in a work that emanates from himself and of which he feels himself the cause. B. Perez relates that he wanted to give a lesson to his nephew, aged three and a half years, whose inventions seemed to him very poor. Perez scratched in the sand a trench resembling a river, planted little branches on both banks, and had water flow through it; put a bridge across, and launched boats. At each new act the child would remain cool, his admiration would always have to be waited for. Out of patience, he remarked shortly that "this isn't at all entertaining." The author adds: "I believed it useless to persist, and I trampled under foot, laughing at myself, my awkward attempt at a childish construction."[45] "I had already read it in many a book, but this time I had learned from experience that the free initiative of children is always superior to the imitations we pretend to make for them. In addition, this experience and others like it have taught me that their creative force is much weaker than has been said."
4. At the fourth stage appears romantic invention, which requires a more refined culture, being a purely internal, wholly imaginative (i.e., cast in images) creation. It begins at about three or four years of age. We know the taste of imaginative children for stories and legends, which they have repeated to them until surfeited: in this respect they resemble semi-civilized people, who listen greedily to rhapsodies for hours at a time, experiencing all the emotions appropriate to the incidents of the tale. This is the prelude to creation, a semi-passive, semi-active state, an apprentice period, which will permit them to create in their own turn. Thus the first attempts are made with reminiscences, and imitated rather than created.
Of this we find numerous examples in the special works. A child of three and a half saw a lame man going along a road, and exclaimed: "Look at that poor ole man, mamma, he has dot [got] a bad leg." Then the romance begins: He was on a high horse; he fell on a rock, struck his poor leg; he will have to get some powder to heal it, etc. Sometimes the invention is less realistic. A child of three often longed to live like a fish in the water, or like a star in the sky. Another, aged five years nine months, having found a hollow rock, invented a fairy story: the hole was a beautiful hall inhabited by brilliant mysterious personages, etc.[46]
This form of imagination is not as common as the others. It belongs to those whom nature has well endowed. It forecasts a development of mind above the average. It may even be the sign of an inborn vocation and indicate in what direction the creative activity will be orientated.
Let us briefly recall the creative rôle of the imagination in language, through the intervening of a factor already studied—thinking by analogy, an abundant source of often picturesque metaphors. A child called the cork of a bottle "door;" a small coin was called by a little American a "baby dollar;" another, seeing the dew on the grass, said, "The grass is crying."
The extension of the meaning of words has been studied by Taine, Darwin, Preyer, and others. They have shown that its psychological mechanism depends sometimes on the perception of resemblance, again on association by contiguity, processes that appear and intermingle in an unforeseen manner. Thus, a child applies the word "mambro" at first to his nurse, then to a sewing machine that she uses, then by analogy to an organ that he sees on the street adorned with a monkey, then to his toys representing animals.[47] We have elsewhere given more similar cases, where we perceive the fundamental difference between thought by imagery and rational thought.
To conclude: At this period the imagination is the master-faculty and the highest form of intellectual development. It works in two directions, one principal—it creates plays, invents romances, and extends language; the other secondary—it contains a germ of thought and ventures a fanciful explanation of the world which can not yet be conceived according to abstract notions and laws.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] One will find a large number of examples in Sully's work, Studies of Childhood, Chapter ii, entitled "The Age of Imagination." Most of the observations given in the present chapter have been borrowed from this author.
[41] Apropos of this subject compare especially the recent studies by William James, Varieties of Religious Experience. (Tr.)
[42] Spinoza, Ethics, II, 49, Scholium; Hume, Human Understanding, Part III, Section VII ff.; Dugald Stewart, Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Vol. I, Ch. III; Taine, On Intelligence, Part II.
[43] James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays, p. 10.
[44] Payot, De la croyance, 139 ff.
[45] B. Perez, Les trois premières années de l'enfant, p. 323.
[46] Sully, op. cit., pp. 59-61. Compayré, L'évolution intellectuelle et morale de l'enfant, p. 145.
(Some time ago the writer was riding on a train, when the engine, for some reason or other, began to slow up, jerking, puffing, almost groaning, until it finally came to a full stop. The groaning continued. A little girl of about three called to her mother, "Too-too sick, too-too sick," and when finally the train started on again, the child was overjoyed that "too-too" was well again. (Tr.))
[47] Sully, op. cit., p. 164.