of the latest and most improved types of the modern locomotive—but such was the fact. In this connection, it is interesting to note that some of these earlier types were as truly the ancestors of the automobile, as of the locomotive.
The rapid progress in the late stages of the evolution of the modern automobile from the crude “horseless carriage” of a quartercentury further back, is a matter of personal knowledge to the middleaged man of today. But the automobile had a much earlier history, as you may see by reading the article upon “Automobiles, in any good encyclopedia. It may surprise you to learn that as far back as 1802 a steam roadcarriage was driven from Cambridge to London, England—a distance of over 90 miles.
It is said that the inflated rubber tire of the bicycle was an important factor in the rapid development of the modern automobile; and that the improvements in the gasoline engines, made possible by the development of the automobile, solved the great difficulty in the case of “flying machines,” and thus made possible the modern aeroplane. Here you have typical examples of the “recombination” principle in Constructive Imagination. The history of the evolution of the telephone is also worth study in this connection; look it up in some standard encyclopedia.
Ribot says concerning this fact of the evolution of inventions: “Mechanical and industrial imagination, like esthetic imagination, has its preparatory period, its zenith and decline: the periods of the precursors, of the great inventors, and of mere perfecters. At first a venture is made, effort is wasted with small result,—the man has come too early, or he lacks clear vision. Then a great imaginative mind arises, blossoms; after him, the work passes into the hands of pupils, imitators, or perfecters, who add, abridge, modify. Such is the order.”
The history of the application of steam as a power for operating machinery is a long one; its beginnings are found in the Eolipile of Hero of Alexandria, its critical and thrilling period is found in the work of Newcomen and Watt, its period of fruitbearing lies in the present. The history of timekeeping, or timemeasuring, instruments furnishes us with another example of the evolutionary progress of invention. First, came the simple Clepsydra, or waterclock, in which time was measured by the flow of water; then came a watergauge causing a hand to move around a dial; the two hands, indicating hours and minutes, respectively. Then came a great improvement, i. e., the addition of weights, by means of which the Clepsydra became a true clock; this improved clock was at first cumbersome and massive, but gradually became smaller and lighter. Then, TychoBrahe contrived a clockform capable of measuring seconds of time. Then came another great improvement, i. e., Huygens’ invention of the spiral spring replacing the weights; the clock gradually evolved into the crude, large and cumbersome watch. The watch, in turn, by gradual steps evolved into the thin, small, and marvelously accurate modern watch.
Man observed the efficient natural instruments and implements of the lower animals—and began to improve upon them. He employed the models of the sharp cutting teeth of the rodents as the designs for his evolution of the axe, the chisel, the saw. From the woodpeckers, he borrowed the idea which he gradually worked out in the form of the auger, the gimlet, the wimble. From the tigers and other carnivorous animals, he took his model for his crude knives and other cutting implements. From the beaver, he learned how to make and use the trowel. From the claws of the digging animals, he evolved the idea of the hoe and the rake. From the fish’s fin, he secured the rudimentary idea of the oar. From the wing of the bird, he acquired his first idea of the sail. From the spinning insects, he learned the nature and use of the spindle and distaff. From these humble beginnings arose the marvelous array of the highly efficient implements, tools and machinery employed by civilized man today.
More than this: from his original weapons of offense and defense, the battleaxes and clubs, he evolved his tools of work such as the hatchet, the treecutting axe, the hammer. The lifting power of the battleaxe, or warclub, empirically discovered, gave him his first idea of the principle of the lever. The use of the rude sail developed the idea of the windmill; the rolling log in the water suggested the waterwheel to him—the waterwheel, first employed to grind grain, afterward was used to saw wood, lift heavy materials, move great hammers. From these rude applications of natural power, he gradually developed the higher and more complex forms now in common use. The use of the horse and the ox to pull trees and logs, itself an adaptation, gradually evolved into the use of these animals to pull chariots and wagons; these in turn were the beginnings of the motorvehicles of today.
Ribot says: “Every invention, great and small, before becoming a fixed and realized thing, was first an imagined idea, a mere contrivance of the brain, an assembly of new combinations or new relations. In inventions, man has imagined to a great extent. By the very law of the complexity of inventions, all inventions are found to be grafted upon one another. In all the useful arts, improvements have been so slow, and so gradually wrought, that each one of them passed unperceived, without leaving its author the credit for its discovery. The immense majority of inventions are anonymous—some great names alone survive. But, whether individual or collective, Imagination remains Imagination. In order that the plow, at first a single piece of wood hardened by the fire and pushed along by human hand, should become what it is today, through a long series of modifications described in special works, who knows how many imaginations have labored! In the same way, the uncertain flame of a resinous branch, guided vaguely in the night, leads us through a long series of inventions to gas and electric lighting. All objects, even the most ordinary and now common, that now serve in our ordinary, everyday life, are ‘condensed Imagination’.”
One is impressed by the striking analogy between the processes of Invention, as just described, and the processes of “grafting” in horticulture. Horticultural “grafting” is defined as: “The process of taking a shoot or scion cut from one tree or shrub, and inserting it in a vigorous stock of its own or a closely allied species, so as to cause them to unite, and thus to cause the graft to derive a larger supply of nutritive power than it could otherwise obtain.”
By reference to the history of any invention—we have given actual illustrations of several—you will see that the new ideaimage always is grafted upon the stock of some older ideaimage. The new contrivance is the graft of a new contrivance upon an earlier contrivance either of Nature or of Man. Nature also is seen to proceed in the same way in her processes of Creative Evolution.
Bergson tells us that “Creation” and “Evolution” are but two names for the same universal creative process: all Creation is Evolution and all Evolution is Creation. He says: “A great creative process is in progress, sweeping everything along in its course. The actual present is all existence gathered up in this creative process. The past is also gathered up into it, exists in it, is carried along in it, as it presses forward toward the future. It is an unceasing becoming, which preserves the past and creates the future. It is Creative Evolution—a process in which Past, Present, and Future are involved.”
Psychologists and philosophers alike are in agreement concerning the fundamental fact that even the highest forms of Constructive Imagination are dependent upon the raw materials of reproduced senseexperiences; and that Constructive Imagination can build only with these materials, for it has no others with which to build. But this fact has been overemphasized—in some cases to even such an extent that the term “creative” has been tacitly denied to even the highest activities of the Constructive Imagination. This particular view is too often presented as “the whole truth,” the other half of which must be supplied in order to perfect the whole. We ask you to consider the following statements expressing and illustrating the opposing viewpoints; for we wish you to perceive the truth in both of its aspects, and thus see the thing as it is.
Thought from the first of these two respective viewpoints furnishes the report that even the most efficient Constructive Imagination is “tied to the stake of perception by a cord of greater or less strength.” In this view, the Imagination is held to be entirely dependent for its working materials upon the perceptions arising from senseexperience. Those holding to this view argue that, because of this fact, the Imagination is
