Essay on the Creative Imagination

by Th. Ribot

To sum up: Pure intuition and pure combination are exceptional; ordinarily, it is a mixed process in which one of the two elements prevails and permits its qualification. If we note, in addition, that it would be easy to group under these two headings names of the first rank, we shall conclude that the difference is altogether in the mechanism, not in the nature of creation, and is consequently accessory; and that this difference is reducible to natural dispositions, which we may contrast as follows:

Ready-witted minds, excelling in conception, making the whole almost out of one piece.	Logically-developing minds, excelling in elaboration.
Work primarily unconscious.	Patience the preponderating rôle.
	Work primarily conscious.
Actions quick.	Actions slow.

V

"Were we to raise monuments to inventors in the arts and sciences, there would be fewer statues to men than to children, animals, and especially fortune." In this wise expressed himself one of the sage thinkers of the eighteenth century, Turgot. The importance of the last factor has been much exaggerated. Chance may be taken in two senses—one general, the other narrow.

(1) In its broad meaning, chance depends on entirely internal, purely psychic circumstances. We know that one of the best conditions for inventing is abundance of material, accumulated experience, knowledge—which augment the chances of original association of ideas. It has even been possible to maintain that the nature of memory implies the capacity of creating in a special direction. The revelations of inventors or of their biographers leave no doubt as to the necessity of a large number of sketches, trials, preliminary drawings, no matter whether it is a matter of industry, commerce, a machine, a poem, an opera, a picture, a building, a plan of campaign, etc. "Genius for discovery," says Jevons, depends on the number of notions and chance thoughts coming to the inventor's mind. To be fertile in hypotheses—that is the first requirement for finding something new. The inventor's brain must be full of forms, of melodies, of mechanical agents, of commercial combinations, of figures, etc., according to the nature of his work. "But it is very rare that the ideas we find are exactly those we were seeking. In order to find, we must think along other lines."[77] Nothing is more true.

So much for chance within: it is indisputable, whatever may have been said of it, but it depends finally on individuality—from it arises the non-anticipated synthesis of ideas. The abundance of memory-ideas, we know, is not a sufficient condition for creation; it is not even a necessary condition. It has been remarked that a relative ignorance is sometimes useful for invention: it favors assurance. There are inventions, especially scientific and industrial, that could not have been made had the inventors been arrested by the ruling and presumably invincible dogmas. The inventor was all the more free the more he was unaware of them. Then, as it was quite necessary to bow before the accomplished fact, theory was broadened to include the new discovery and explain it.

(2) Chance, in the narrow sense, is a fortunate occurrence stimulating invention: but to attribute to it the greater part, is a partial, erroneous view. Here, what we call chance, is the meeting and convergence of two factors—one internal (individual genius), the other, external (the fortuitous occurrence).

It is impossible to determine all that invention owes to chance in this sense. In primitive humanity its influence must have been enormous: the use of fire, the manufacture of weapons, of utensils, the casting of metals: all that came about through accidents as simple as, for example, a tree falling across a stream suggesting the first idea of a bridge.

In historic times—and to keep merely to the modern period—the collection of authentic facts would fill a large volume. Who does not know of Newton's apple, Galileo's lamp, Galvani's frog? Huygens declared that, were it not for an unforeseen combination of circumstances, the invention of the telescope would require "a superhuman genius;" it is known that we owe it to children who were playing with pieces of glass in an optician's shop. Schönbein discovered ozone, thanks to the phosphorous odor of air traversed by electric sparks. The discoveries of Grimaldi and of Fresnel in regard to interferences, those of Faraday, of Arago, of Foucault, of Fraunhofer, of Kirchoff, and of hundreds of others owed something to "fortune." It is said that the sight of a crab suggested to Watt the idea of an ingenious machine. To chance, also, many poets, novelists, dramatists, and artists have owed the best part of their inspirations: literature and the arts abound in fictitious characters whose real originals are known.