Essay on the Creative Imagination

by Th. Ribot

The appearance of commerce on a large scale has depended on the state of agriculture, industry, ways of communication, social and economic conditions and political extension. It came into being toward the end of the Roman Republic. After the interruption of the Middle Ages the activity is taken up again by the Italian cities, the Hanseatic League, etc.; in the fifteenth century with the great maritime discoveries; in the sixteenth century by the Conquistadores, hungering for adventure and wealth; later on, by the mixed expeditions, whose expenses are defrayed by merchants in common, and which are often accompanied by armed bands that fight for them; lastly comes the incorporation of great companies that have been wittily dubbed "Conquistadores of the counting-house."

We now come to the moment when commercial invention attains its complex form and must move great masses. Taken as a whole, its psychological mechanism is the same as that of any other creative work. In the first instance, the idea arises, from inspiration, from reflection, or by chance. Then comes a period of fermenting during which the inventor sketches his construction in images, represents to himself the material to be worked upon, the grouping of stockholders, the making up of a capital, the mechanism of buying and selling, etc. All this differs from the genesis of an esthetic or mechanical work only in the end, or in the nature of the images. In the second phase it is necessary to proceed to execution—a castle in the air must be made a solid structure. Then appear a thousand obstructions in the details that must be overcome. As everywhere else, minor inventions become grafted on the principal invention; the author lets us see the poverty or richness in resource of his mind. Finally, the work is triumphant, fails, or is only half-successful.

Did it keep only to these general traits, commercial imagination would be merely the reiteration, with slight changes, of forms already studied; but it has characteristics all its own that must be distinguished.

(1) It is a combining or tactical imagination. Heretofore, we have met nothing like it. This special mark is derived from the very nature of its determinism, which is very different from that limiting the scientific or mechanical imagination. Every commercial project, in order to emerge from the internal, purely imaginative phase, and become a reality, requires "coming to a head," very exact calculation of frequently numerous, divergent, even contrary elements. The American dealer speculating in grain is under the absolute necessity of being quickly and surely informed regarding the agricultural situation in all countries of the world that are rich in grain, that export or import; in regard to the probable chances of rain or drouth; the tariff duties of the various countries, etc. Lacking that, he buys and sells haphazard. Moreover, as he deals in enormous quantities, the least error means great losses, the smallest profit on a unit is of account, and is multiplied and increased into a noticeable gain.

Besides that initial intuition that shows opportune business and moments, commercial imagination presupposes a well-studied, detailed campaign for attack and defense, a rapid and reliable glance at every moment of execution in order to incessantly modify this plan—it is a kind of war. All this totality of special conditions results from a general condition,—namely, competition, strife. We shall come back to this point at the end of the chapter.

Let us follow to the end the working of this creative imagination. Like the other forms, this kind of invention arises from a need, a desire—that of the spreading of "self-feeling," of the expansion of the individual under the form of enrichment. But this tendency, and with it the resulting imaginative creation, can undergo changes.

It is a well-known law of the emotional life that what is at first sought as a means may become an end and be desired for itself. A very sensual passion may at length undergo a sort of idealization; people study a science at first because it is useful, and later because of its fascination; and we may desire money in order to spend it, and later in order to hoard it. 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. The rational element gives way, is obliterated, and the speculator is launched into adventure with the possibility of a dazzling success or astounding catastrophe. But let us note well that the primary and sole cause of this change is in the affective and motor element, in an hypertrophy of the lust for power, in an unmeasured and morbid want of expansion of self. Here, as everywhere, the source of invention is the emotional nature of the inventor.

(2) A second special character of commercial imagination is the exclusive employment of schematic representations. Although this process is also met with in the sciences and especially in social inventions, the imaginative type that we are now considering has the privilege of using them without exception. This, then, is the proper moment for a description.

By "schematic images" I mean those that are, by their very nature, intermediate between the concrete image and the pure concept, but approach more nearly the concept. We have already pointed out very different kinds of representations—concrete images, material pertaining to plastic and mechanical imagination; the emotional abstractions of the diffluent imagination; affective images, the type of which is found in musicians; symbolic images, familiar in mystics. It may seem improper to add another class to this list, but it is not a meaningless subtlety. Indeed, there are no images in general that, according to the ordinary conception, would be copies of reality. Even their separation into visual, auditory, motor, etc., is not sufficient, because it distinguishes them only with regard to their origin. There are other differences. We have seen that the image, like everything living, undergoes corrosions, damages, twisting, and transformation: whence it comes about that this remainder of former impressions varies according to its composition, i.e., in simplicity, complexity, grouping of its constitutive elements, etc., and takes on many aspects. On the other hand, as the difference between the chief types of creative imagination depends in part on the materials employed—on the nature of the images that serve in mental building—a precise determination of the nature of the images belonging to each type is not an idle operation.

In order to clearly explain what we mean by schematic images, let us represent by a line, PC, the scale of images according to the degree of complexity, from the percept, P, to the concept, C.