When we have said that images, their association and dissociation, reflection, and emotion are the constituent elements of the creative imagination, it will be found that we have omitted an irreducible factor, the principal element, the proprium quid of this mental operation, that which gives the first impulse, which is the cause of creative work, and constitutes its unity. This x, which, for want of a better term, we may call spontaneity, is of the nature of an instinct. It is a craving to create, equivalent, in the intellectual order, to the generative craving in the physiological order. It shows itself at first, modestly, in the invention of childish games; later, and more brilliantly, in the budding of myths, that collective and anonymous work of primitive humanity; later still, in art properly so called. There always remains the craving for superimposing on the world of sense another world, having its origin in man, who believes in it, at least for the moment. If it should seem a mistake to compare instinct, which is fixed, with the æsthetic activity, which passes for absolute liberty, we must remember that we are dealing, not with their development, but with their origin; and in that point they coincide. True creative activity has the innateness of instinct, an innateness in this case to be rendered by the word precocity. This is proved by innumerable facts; at some unforeseen moment the spark flashes out; experience has hardly anything to do with it. It has its necessity and its fatality; the creator has his task to accomplish; he is fitted for one kind of work only; even when he has some adaptability, he is imprisoned within his own manner, and keeps his own individual style; if he leaves it, he fails altogether, or becomes a bad imitator of others. It has its impersonality; creation is not the child of the will, but of that unconscious impulse which we call inspiration; it seems to the creator as if another acted in him and through him, transcended his personality and made him a mere mouth-piece. What further is needed to show, as far as origin is concerned, the characteristics of instinct? In physiological creation the fertilised ovule assimilates to itself, according to its nature, the materials of its environment, and, following the laws of an inexorable determinism, becomes, in the end, a healthy individual or a monster. In the case of instinct, an external or internal excitation brings into play a pre-established mechanism, and the act goes straight to its end, or turns to a gross error. In æsthetic creation the process is identical; we know by means of numerous biographical documents, which I cannot here reproduce, that the creative moment with artists presents itself under one or other of two forms: either a rapid intuition, in which the generating idea appears as a whole, or a fragmentary, partial view, which gradually completes itself; unity established beforehand or arrived at afterwards; the intuition or the fragment. The intellectual ovule, too, is forced to this dilemma—revelation or abortion.
I do not insist on a subject which would require to be dwelt on at length, and which I propose to treat in another work where it will be more in place; but it was necessary to point out that under this superabundance of strength, this vaguely described useless activity, there is something more definite, an active tendency utilising this superfluous energy, and giving to it various directions, among others that of intellectual creation, with images for materials—a creative instinct having its type in primitive animism, the common source of myths and arts.
Let it not be objected that all this concerns the creator only, and that he alone feels this craving, this tendency, this inclination to act, which is the root of æsthetic emotion. He who experiences it in any degree, however coarse or however subtle—spectator, listener, dilettante—must perform over again, in a measure proportioned to his powers, the creator’s work. Without some analogy between their natures, however slight, the spectator will feel nothing; he must live the artist’s life and play his game, incapable of producing by himself, but capable of being, and even forced to be, an echo.
Now let us lay aside these theoretic considerations for a question of fact. Can we find the transition between play under its simple form of movement, expended for the sake of pleasure, and æsthetic activity, i.e., creation-play? This transition must represent the origin and primitive form of art. This primordial art, now impoverished, dried up, like an old tree which has emptied all its sap into its suckers, is dancing, or rather the pantomime-dance forming an inseparable whole. In its origin it is “an expression of muscular force simulating the acts of life.” No commentary is needed to show that here the junction between superfluous motor activity and æsthetic creation takes place: dancing includes both. Since we are at the source, it is as well to insist on this, all the more so, as the importance of this primordial art has in general either been forgotten or insufficiently emphasised by psychology.[[206]] Let us note its principal characteristics.
First of all, the artist finds his material in himself: a possibility of movements useful neither for seeking food, nor for defending himself, nor for attacking others, nor for his preservation, or that of his species, in any form whatever.
This art is primordial. We find it in the early stages of all peoples and tribes, even the most savage. The documents collected by ethnologists leave us in no doubt on this point, except, perhaps, with regard to the Arabs and the Fuegians; and, even in their case, there is nothing to prove that it is not our insufficient information that is at fault. We may therefore call it the natural art par excellence.
It is universal. It is found in all latitudes, all ages, all races, as much among the utilitarian Chinese and the grave Romans of the early ages, as among nations reputed artistic or frivolous.
It is symbolical, it means something, it expresses a feeling, a state of mind; that is to say, it has the essential and fundamental character of æsthetic creation. Originally, dancing had a sexual, warlike, or religious significance; it was appropriated to all the solemn acts of public and private life. Among the natives of North America there were dances for war, for peace, for diplomatic negotiations, for hunting expeditions in common; others, again, for each of the gods, for harvests, deaths, births, marriages. The negroes have a passion for it which almost reaches delirium. The ancient Chinese judged of the manners of a people from their dances; they had themselves a great number, bearing different names. This enumeration would be endless; it is simpler to say that dancing marks a phase of symbolism which all races of mankind have passed through.
Indubitably, in the genesis of the æsthetic sentiment, we have here the first stage, semi-physiological, semi-artistic, play becoming art. Let us further remark that primitive dancing is a composite manifestation, including the rudimentary form of two acts destined, later on, to separate in the course of their evolution—music and poetry. Poor music indeed, consisting sometimes of three notes only, but remarkable for the strictness of rhythm and measure, and poor poetry, consisting in a short sentence incessantly repeated, or even in monosyllables without precise signification.
Such is the original form of the arts aiming at motion. As for the arts whose result is repose, they are, with the exception of architecture, indirectly derived from the same source. Dancing, being a pantomime, has plastic qualities; it is living plasticity. Furthermore, as a social and ceremonial act, it requires ornaments which at first were applied to the human body: drawings, tattooings, or colours simply smeared on. Later on, the representation of forms and colours is externalised, passes from men to things, in order to fashion or modify them, becoming ornamentation, sculpture, painting.