the sciences, it was owing more to patient attention than to any other talent.” D’Alembert says: “Genius is always thinking of the thing.”
Kay says: “Possibly the most comprehensive definition of genius is the power of concentrating and prolonging the attention upon any one given subject.” Grillparzer says: “Inspiration is a concentration of that which, for the time being, represents all the forces and capacities upon a single point. The reinforcement of the state of mind comes from the fact that its several powers, instead of spreading themselves over the whole world, are contained within the bounds of a single object—they touch one another, and reciprocally help and reinforce each other.”
In that volume of this series entitled “Perceptive Power,” we have given the most approved scientific methods of cultivating and developing the faculty of Voluntary Attention.
Once more, we wish to impress upon your mind the fact that the mind is a unity, not a mere aggregation of particular mental faculties. Each faculty is found to call upon and to make use of the special powers of the other faculties. Each mental process is found to involve the elements of several faculties. The activities of the several faculties, or groups of faculties, are found to blend into each other in harmonious effective coordination. In the consideration of any one special faculty, or class of faculties, this important fact is often overlooked.
OBSERVATION AND IMAGINATION. You have seen that the Constructive Imagination depends upon the perceptive powers for its “raw materials.” Without a proper supply of these “raw materials” of perception and observation, the Constructive Imagination cannot proceed to continue and create those edifices of creative images which serve as the models or patterns of the subsequent materialization. Remember always, that the Constructive Imagination cannot create “something out of nothing.” Without having first sown the field of memory with the seed of perception and observation, there can be raised no crop of Constructive Imagination.
The child with three blocks is limited in his building operations—give him nine blocks, and he will be able to effect many more combinations. This is just as true of the individual who wishes to employed effectively his Constructive Imagination: his limits are determined by the amount of perceptive material at his disposal. The Eskimo dwelling in the Arctic regions can never hope to create imaginative pictures of the things of the temperate or the tropical zones, unless, by some chance, he has gained a knowledge of the latter by means of books, pictures, or the descriptions of travelers. Even in that exceptional event, as Halleck says, “He must interpret all that he reads in terms of the scant shrubbery with which he is familiar, and his best imaginative picture of tropical foliage will be meager and dwarfed.”
You will do well to cultivate your powers of Perception and Observation, in connection with your work of developing your powers of Constructive Imagination. Consult some good text book on this subject. We feel justified in calling your attention in this connection to that book of this series entitled “Perceptive Power”; it will be found to contain practical instruction based upon the best scientific methods of cultivating, developing and training the Perceptive Powers and the faculty of Observation.
We scarcely need to point out to you that a very large part of the mental processes of any and all kinds are performed, wholly or in part, on planes or levels of consciousness below the planes or levels of the ordinary consciousness. Modern psychology has so thoroughly demonstrated this fact that we need do no more than to mention it here. As might be expected, the processes of Constructive Imagination are performed to a great extent in this way.
We might even say that the conscious performance of Constructive Imagination is limited to (1) the initiatory stages in which the germ of the creative process is carefully considered in consciousness, and the initial impulse is imparted to it; after which it is placed in the subconscious field for incubation; (2) the intermediate stages in which the partially incubated creation is raised to the plane of consciousness, there to be examined by the conscious mentality; adjustments, adaptations and suggestions of improvement added; after which the incomplete process is again relegated to the subconscious levels; and (3) the last stage in which the practically completed creation is raised to the levels of consciousness for a final inspection; here the “finishing touches” are added and the work is completed. The greater part of the process, you will note, is performed on the subconscious levels or planes of the mind.
Hoffding says: “The interweaving of the elements of the picture in the imagination takes place in a great measure below the threshold of consciousness, so that the image suddenly emerges in consciousness complete in its broad outlines, the conscious result of an unconscious process.” The above statement, however, should have contained the proviso that the subconscious processes referred to were performed only after (and because) the conscious mentality previously had been actively employed in earnest and concentrated consideration of the subject in question.
The autobiographies and biographies of men of genius, great inventors, great scientists, and others actively employing Constructive Imagination, are filled with illustrations of the workings of the subconscious faculties of the mind; these show conclusively the important part played by these “below the surface” mental activities in all creative and inventive thought.
While the activities of the Constructive Imagination proceed more or less freely, or even spontaneously, and cannot properly be reduced to a mere mechanical form of procedure, nevertheless there are certain general stages or steps of the process which are sufficiently determined in form to be subject to classification. The following general classification is offered with the understanding that it is not rigid nor exclusive; it is merely an attempt to picture the several apparently separate steps or stages of a process which, in reality, is continuous rather than composed of separated parts.
(1) THE GERM STAGE. This is the stage of the first general thought concerning the nature of the thing sought to be created by the Constructive Imagination. A writer has stated it as, “the first idea coming to the mind as a possible solution of a problem which has been put to one, or has ‘struck’ him, by reason of his needs and requirements, or those of others, and which has assumed nebulous form by reason of his previous observations, studies and researches.”
The energy of this germ is supplied by the “desire Feeling” arising from the needs of the individual, or those of others which are known to him, and which represent obstacles to the efficient expression of his nature. This desired fuller expression may be in the direction of selfpreservation, health, welfare, protection, or general comfort; or that of military or commercial supremacy or success; or that of sexual expression, with its many secondary forms of manifestation. Again, it may be in the direction of mechanical invention and construction, in response to the “mechanical instinct”; or that of artistic production; or that of social reforms and improvements. Likewise, it may be in the direction of knowledge of science or philosophy; or that of religious or theological interpretation or explanation, and all that pertains to these. In short, every form of desire, feeling, emotion, need, lack or want—every “frustrated purpose”—every emotional state which tends to manifest in willaction—may supply the motor or energizing element in the germ of Constructive Imagination.
Around this energizing element are loosely gathered the general ideas connected with the discovery and creation of that which will fill this want, satisfy this desire, comfort this feeling, fill this emotional void. The germ, so constituted, has been described by a writer as “an embryonic, unstable, and uncoordinated manifestation of the creative imagination—a transition stage between passive reproduction and organized construction.”
(2) THE INCUBATION STAGE. This is the stage in which the germ rests in the womb of the subconscious mentality. Here the mind operates along the lines of both conscious and subconscious activity. The conscious mentality observes the new ideas to which the interested attention now is directed by reason of the demands of the incubating germ in the subconscious mental womb, and then passes them down to the subconscious plane, there to be absorbed, assimilated
