IV
The determination of the characters belonging to the inventive genius has necessitated some seemingly irrelevant remarks on the action of the environment. Let us return to invention, strictly so-called.
For inventing there is always required a natural aptitude, sometimes, a happy chance.
The natural disposition should be accepted as a fact. Why does a man create? Because he is capable of forming new combinations of ideas. However naïve this answer may be, there is no other. The only thing possible, is the determination of the conditions necessary and sufficient for producing novel combinations: this has been done in the first part of this book, and there is no occasion for going over it again. But there is another aspect in creative work to be considered—its psychological mechanism, and the form of its development.
Every normal person creates little or much. He may, in his ignorance, invent what has been already done a thousand times. Even if this is not a creation as regards the species, it is none the less such for the individual. It is wrong to say, as has been said, that an invention "is a new and important idea." Novelty only is essential—that is the psychological mark: importance and utility are accessory, merely social marks. Invention is thus unduly limited when we attribute it to great inventors only. At this moment, however, we are concerned only with these, and in them the mechanism of invention is easier to study.
We have already seen how false is the theory that holds that there is always a sudden stroke of inspiration, followed by a period of rapid or slow execution. On the contrary, observation reveals many processes that apparently differ less in the content of invention than according to individual temperament. I distinguish two general processes of which the rest are variations. In all creation, great or small, there is a directing idea, an "ideal"—understanding the word not in its transcendental sense, but merely as synonymous with end or goal—or more simply, a problem to solve. The locus of the idea, of the given problem, is not the same in the two processes. In the one I term "complete" the ideal is at the beginning: in the "abridged" it is in the middle. There are also other differences which the following tables will make more clear:
| First Process (complete). | ||
| 1st phase | 2nd phase | 3d phase |
| IDEA (commencement) Special incubation of more or less duration | INVENTION, or DISCOVERY (end) | VERIFICATION, or APPLICATION |
The idea excites attention and takes a fixed character. The period of brooding begins. For Newton it lasted seventeen years, and at the time of definitely establishing his discovery by calculation he was so overcome with emotion that he had to assign to another the task of completing it. The mathematician Hamilton tells us that his method of quaternians burst upon him one day, completely finished, while he was near a bridge in Dublin. "In that moment I had the result of fifteen years' labor." Darwin gathers material during his voyages, spends a long time observing plants and animals, then through the chance reading of Malthus' book, hits upon and formulates his theory. In literary and artistic creation similar examples are frequent.[72]
The second phase is only an instant, but essential—the moment of discovery, when the creator exclaims his "Eureka!"[73] With it, the work is virtually or really ended.
| Second Process (abridged). | ||
| 1st phase | 2nd phase | 3rd phase |
| General preparation (unconscious) | IDEA (commencement) INSPIRATION ERUPTION | CONSTRUCTIVE and DEVELOPING period. |