These two stages do not go beyond memory pure and simple, i.e., reproductive imagination. The other two constitute the higher imagination.
3. The capacity of associating absent images, without suggestion derived from without, through an internal working of the mind. It is the lower and primitive form of the creative imagination, which may be called a passive synthesis. In order to establish its existence, Romanes reminds us that dreams have been proven in dogs, horses, and a large number of birds; that certain animals, especially in anger, seem to be subject to delusions and pursued by phantoms; and lastly, that in some there is produced a condition resembling nostalgia, expressing itself in a violent desire to return to former haunts, or in a wasting away resulting from the absence of accustomed persons and things. All these facts, especially the latter, can hardly be explained without a vivid recollection of the images of previous life.
4. The highest stage consists of intentionally reuniting images in order to make novel combinations from them. This may be called an active synthesis, and is the true creative imagination. Is this sometimes found in the animal kingdom? Romanes very clearly replies, no; and not without offering a plausible reason. For creation, says he, there must first be capacity for abstraction, and, without speech, abstraction is very weak. One of the conditions for creative imagination is thus wanting in the higher animals.
We here come to one of those critical moments, so frequent in animal psychology, when one asks, Is this character exclusively human, or is it found in embryo in lower forms? Thus it has been possible to support a theory opposing that of Romanes. Certain animals, says Oelzelt-Newin, fulfill all the conditions necessary for creative imagination—subtle senses, good memory, and appropriate emotional states.[36] This assertion is perhaps true, but it is purely dialectic. It is equivalent to saying that the thing is possible; it does not establish it as a fact. Besides, is it very certain that all the conditions for creative imagination are present here, since we have just shown that there is lack of abstraction? The author, who voluntarily limits his study to birds and the construction of their nests, maintains, against Wallace and others, that nest-building requires "the mysterious synthesis of representations." We might with equal reason bring the instances of other building animals (bees, wasps, white ants, the common ants, beavers, etc.). It is not unreasonable to attribute to them an anticipated representation of their architecture. Shall we say that it is "instinctive," consequently unconscious? At least, may we not group under this head, changes and adaptations to new conditions which these animals succeed in applying to the typical plans of their construction? Observations and even systematic experiments (like those of Huber, Forel, et al.) show that, reduced to the alternative of the impossibility of building or the modification of their habits, certain animals modify them. Judging from this, how refuse them invention altogether? This contradicts in no way the very just reservation of Romanes. It is sufficient to remark that abstraction or dissociation has stages, that the simplest are accessible to the animal intelligence. If, in the absence of words, the logic of concepts is forbidden it, there yet remains the logic of images,[37] which is sufficient for slight innovations. In a word, animals can invent according to the extent that they can dissociate.
In our opinion, if we may with any truthfulness attribute a creative power to animals, we must seek it elsewhere. Generally speaking, we attribute only a mediocre importance to a manifestation that might very well be the proper form of animal fancy. It is purely motor, and expresses itself through the various kinds of play.
Although play may be as old as mankind, its psychology dates only from the nineteenth century. We have already seen that there are three theories concerning its nature—it is "expenditure of superfluous activity," "a mending, restoring of strength, a recuperation," "an apprenticeship, a preliminary exercise for the active functions of life and for the development of our natural gifts."[38] The last position, due to Groos, does not rule out the other two; it holds the first valid for the young, the second for adults; but it comprehends both in a more general explanation.
Let us leave this doctrinal question in order to call attention to the variety and richness of form of play in the animal world. In this respect the aforementioned book of Groos is a rich mine of evidence to which I would refer the reader. I limit myself to summing up his classification. He distinguishes nine classes of play, viz.: (1) Those that are at bottom experimental, consisting of trials at hazard without immediate end, often giving the animal a certain knowledge of the properties of the external world. This is the introduction to an experimental physics, optics, and mechanics for the brood of animals. (2) Movements or changes of place executed of their own accord—a very general fact as is proven by the incessant movements of butterflies, flies, birds, and even fishes, which often appear to play in the water rather than to seek prey; the mad running of horses, dogs, etc., in free space. (3) Mimicry of hunting, i.e., playing with a living or dead prey: the dog and cat following moving objects, a ball, feather, etc. (4) Mimic battles, teasing and fighting without anger. (5) Architectural art, revealing itself especially in the building of nests: certain birds ornament them with shining objects (stones, bits of glass), by a kind of anticipation of the esthetic feeling. (6) Doll-play is universal in mankind, whether civilized or savage. Groos believes he has found its equivalent in certain animals. (7) Imitation through pleasure, so familiar in monkeys (grimaces); singing-birds which counterfeit the voices of a large number of beasts. (8) Curiosity, which is the only mental play one meets in animals—the dog watching, from a wall or window, what is going on in the street. (9) Love-plays, "which differ from the others in that they are not mere exercises, but have in view a real object." They have been well-known since Darwin's time, he attributing to them an esthetic value which has been denied by Wallace, Tylor, Lloyd Morgan, Wallaschek, and Groos.
Let us recapitulate in thought the immense quantity of motor expressions included in these nine categories and let us note that they have the following characters in common: They are grouped in combinations that are often new and unforeseen; they are not a repetition of daily life, acts necessary for self-preservation. At one time the movements are combined simultaneously (exhibition of beautiful colors), again (and most often) successively (amorous parades, fights, flight, dancing, emission of noises, sounds or songs); but, under one form or another, there is creation, invention. Here, the imagination acts in its purely motor character; it consists of a small number of images that become translated into actions, and serve as a center for their grouping; perhaps even the image itself is hardly conscious, so that all is limited to a spontaneous production and a collection of motor phenomena.
It will doubtless be said that this form of imagination belongs to a very shallow, poor psychology. It cannot be otherwise. It is necessary that imaginative production be found reduced to its simplest expression in animals, and the motor form must be its special characteristic mark. It cannot have any others for the following reasons: incapacity for the work that necessarily precedes abstraction or dissociation, breaking into bits the data of experience, making them raw material for the future construction; lack of images, and especially fewness of possible combinations of images. This last point is proven alike from the data of animal psychology and of comparative anatomy. We know that the nervous elements in the brain serving as connections between sensory regions—whether one conceive of them as centers (Flechsig), or as bundles of commisural fibers (Meynert, Wernicke)—are hardly outlined in the lower mammalia and attain only a mediocre development in the higher forms.