“puts together,” in more or less new combination, the materials which it obtains from without. Say these reasoners, the Imagination is entirely dependent upon outside materials for its constructive work; it is limited to the materials obtained through the experience of its owner, or those of others.
These thinkers point out that the Imagination is like a builder who uses the material of a disorderly pile of bricks in order to build a fine house; or like the watchmaker who puts together the numerous parts of the intricate timekeeper; or like the artisan who; employing masses of metal, makes an engine, a sewing machine, a bicycle. Carrying this idea to its logical conclusion, we may say (as one writer points out) that: “Thus a painting is a mere combination of forms and colors; an oratorio, of sounds; an epic poem, of words or ideas previously existing in the mind. The elements of a poem like ‘Paradise Lost’—its streams, flowers, angels and deities—were all in the mind of the poet before he began to write, and all that Imagination did was to combine them into one harmonious whole.” In short, in this view, Imagination is merely the power of combination—it does not include the true creative element; its materials are previously existent—all that Imagination does it to put them together.
Thought from the second viewpoint furnishes a somewhat different report—its argument being more or less of the nature of what in legal procedure is known as a “demurrer.” A “demurrer” (in plain language) asks the question: “Well, even admitting that what you say is so—what of it? The “demurrer” asks judgment on this point: whether the matter alleged by the opposite party, even assuming it to be true, is sufficient in law to sustain the action or the defense, as the case may be.
Say this set of reasoners: We admit that the Imagination does not “create something out of nothing”; and that its creative work is performed by combining, arranging, adapting, or weaving the raw materials furnished by perception, apperception and experience. But is this not true of all other kinds of creative work of which the human mind has any knowledge? Does the human mind know of anything having been “made from nothing?” Can it form a conception of any such happening? Is not the term “creative” a statement of the act of puttingtogether, combining, manufacturing, making, composing, constituting “something from other things”? If this be so—and it is beyond question true—then the opposing side is merely quibbling over the meaning of a word and are not dealing with facts!
These thinkers say further: The opposite side has told but a halftruth—not the whole truth; that which is withheld is as important as that which has been stated. Every work of art, every process of reasoning, every product of hand, brain, reason, imagination, or their combinations, is a composition, a joining, a fusing, a welding, a puttingtogether. Sounds are combined in music; words are combined in a poem; colors are combined in a painting; but do sounds, words, and colors alone make these productions works of art? Shakespeare’s immortal works are, in this view, but aggregations of letters of the alphabet; but did Shakespeare play no part in the creation—was he not a creator of his works? The omitted portion of the truth is this: It is not alone the materials employed in the construction, but also the manner in which these materials are combined, arranged, and put together, that constitutes the creation. As a writer has said: “This power of ideal conception which uses these dead elements to express its living ideals, is the work of the Constructive Imagination!”
Brooks gives us the essence and spirit of this second viewpoint, in the following able statement made many years ago:
“Imagination can combine objects of sense into new forms, but it can do more than this. The objects of sense, in most cases, are merely the materials with which Imagination works. Imagination is a plastic power, moulding the things of sense into new forms to express its ideals; and it is these ideals that constitute the real products of Imagination. The objects of the material world are to it like clay in the hands of the potter; it shapes them into forms according to its own ideals of grace and beauty. He who sees no more than a mere combination in the great creations of the Imagination, misses the essential element, and elevates into significance that which is merely incidental.”
You will readily see that here, as in many other cases, the truth of the matter is found only in the reconciliation of the two opposing sides; each side voices a halftruth—the whole truth is found by uniting the two halves. It is true that the Imagination must do its work by employing the materials of perception, apperception, and experience; but there is the marvelous “combining power” required to “put together” these elements, factors, and parts of the material so furnished. A child has the necessary twentysix letters plainly marked on its alphabet buildingblocks; but it might try for eternity to compose a “Paradise Lost,” one of Shakespeare’s Plays, a Synthetic Philosophy, an Emerson’s Essay, or a work on the Higher Mathematics, by means of an accidental “putting together” of those letters! It needs that “something else” to accomplish the task; and that “something else” is the discriminating, selecting, combining faculties and powers of the efficient Constructive Imagination!
Finally, there is another element usually involved in the higher products of the Constructive Imagination. In the processes of the Constructive Imagination, just as in many of Nature’s subtle processes, the work of “creation” is accomplished, not by the mere more or less purposive “setting in place” of separate bits of material, as, for example in the building of a toyhouse with the materials of buildingblocks, or of a card house with a pack of playing cards; there is often, rather, a “fusing” of material and its subsequent hardening, as, for instance, in the fusing of copper, tin and zinc, into the “new” metal called bronze; or the crystallization of the particles of water into ice. Water is “created” from particles of oxygen and hydrogen, but these two elements become fused by chemical action, and really form a new substance, not merely a “put together” mixture. Thus, things may be put together in such a subtle way as to constitute a new thing differing from either of its constituents.
A thing is often more than “the mere sum of its parts”—to this sum must be added the new element of “mutual relation” or “working relation.” This new element figures largely in the creative processes of Constructive Imagination. Thus, King Milanda’s Chariot, in the ancient Buddhist story, consisted not alone of its several parts, but also of the arrangement, mutual relations, and working unity of those parts—these lastmentioned elements being supplied by the Constructive Imagination of the designer of the chariot. Again, the color, Green, is composed of Yellow and Blue—yet Green is a true color, differing from either of its compositive parts, or from both of them when not united.
Ribot says: “All creation whatever, great and small, shows an organic character; it implies a unifying, synthetic principle.” Colozza says: “We know nothing of a complex psychic production that remains simply the sum of its component elements, each preserving its own character, with no modifications. The natures of the components disappear in order to give birth to a novel phenomenon that has its own and particular features. The construction of the imaginative ideal is not a mere grouping of past experiences; in its totality it has its own individual characteristics, among which we no more see the composing lines than we see the components, oxygen and hydrogen, in water.” Wundt says: “In no scientific or artistic production does the whole appear as made up of its parts, like a mosaic.” Mill says that imaginative creations are cases of “mental chemistry”; the facts bear him out in the statement.
Neither should it be forgotten that a very high order of mental activity is manifested in every process of true Constructive Imagination. The mental powers of Comparison, Discrimination, Deliberation, Judgment, and Selection are involved in the higher processes of Constructive Imagination. The imaging powers produce and exhibit a great number of images, each of which is a candidate for the office which Constructive Imagination is striving to fill properly and adequately. Here we have another instance of the “struggle for existence,” and the “survival of the fittest.” Here, “Many are called, but few are chosen.” Image after image is produced, examined, tested, and then either rejected or else either tentatively or permanently accepted.
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