this process (extended to its utmost limits), you will in turn have formed the combination of every one of the many thousands of words in the largest English Dictionary. Stop to think of it for a moment: Every word in any or all of the great dictionaries is made up and composed of combinations of certain of 26 letters—no more. And a list of new words, exceeding in number the known words, could be composed and madeup in the same way.
But, of course, in the actual practice of Creative Composition, you will not be faced with so formidable and so complicated a task as that above illustrated. Your combinations will be far more simple, owing to the fact that your imaginative imageideas are classified properly. For instance: if you wish to conjoin your “house” block with your several “building material” blocks, you have but to go to your “building material” compartment, and pick out the following respective “building material” blocks, i. e., “brick,” “stone,” “wood,” “iron,” “steel,” “concrete,” etc. If you wish to form a combination between the imageidea of some utensil and some undetermined particular kind of metal, you have but to test your “metallic utensil” block with each of the following “metalclass” blocks, i. e., “iron,” “copper,” “gold,” “silver,” “nickel,” “zinc,” “platinum,” “lead,” “tin,” “antimony,” “manganese,” “mercury,” “aluminum,” “cobalt,” “tungsten,” etc.
If you wish to associate your imageidea of a textile fabric with that of some particular kind of textile material not yet decided upon, you have but to test out the respective blocks of “cotton,” “flax,” “hemp,” “jute,” “linen,” “wool,” “silk,” etc., until the desired combination is discovered. If you wish to employ a geometrical form, you will take out each of the imageidea blocks named in our diagram of Geometrical Figures in a preceding section of this book, until you discover the one best suited for the purpose.
If you wish to invent or to discover some new particular color, you need but to take out the three blocks of the Three Primary Colors, i. e., Red, Blue, and Yellow, and then by experimental combinations, employing shade and tint agencies, you will in time reach any possible tint, shade or hue in the great world of colors. Nature has proceeded in just this way, for she has made a world of almost infinite variety of material things, by the combination and “Creative Composition” of about eighty elements of material substance, these in turn having been created and recombined from still more elementally material.
As we have said, all inventions and discoveries have been made in just this way, viz., by the process of Creative Composition. The locomotive is a combination of “wagon,” certain mechanical agencies and appliances, “stove,” “teakettle” and “engine.” The automobile is the combination of “wagon,” “stove,” “gas,” “explosion,” “engine,” and certain mechanical contrivances. The wagon was the primary building block of both locomotive and automobile. The wagon, in turn is but the combination of wheel, axle, and body; the wheel itself being an evolution from the rolling log.
The aeroplane is but a combination of “kite,” “engine,” and “propeller”—all old ideas formed by Creative Composition into a new one. The steamboat is but the idea of “boat,” plus “steamengine” and “millwheels.” The primitive boat, itself, was but the combination of “floating log,” plus the idea of “hollowingout.” The farmtractor now employed in plowing, etc., is but the combination of “plow’” and “automobile.” The plow itself was the combination of the imageidea of “hard sharpened stick,” and magnified “spearhead” or “battleaxe.”
In short, every contrivance of Man, every tool, every instrument, every utensil, every article designed for use, of each and every kind, will be found to have been evolved from very simple beginnings along the line of experimentation and Creative Composition. Every thing made by Man is “put together,” made up of material parts; and the idea of every such thing is “made up” of simpler and more elemental ideas, united and combined in Creative Composition. This is the only way in which Man has ever invented or contrived anything; and this is always the way in which you must proceed in your work of Constructive Imagination. The truth of the matter is so simple that most persons entirely overlook it: you have possibly never thought of it until you now have it presented to you in this book—and this without any reflection on your intelligence, we assure you.
But here is an important point. While Man has always employed this principle in his inventive and creative work, he has done so almost entirely instinctively and unconsciously—and with an almost entire absence of scientific system and logical order. Now that modern psychology has uncovered the process for us—has taken off the cover so that we may see “how the thing works,” and “how the wheels go ’round”—we may hope for much more effective and efficient exercise of the power of the Constructive Imagination in the future. Already a number of great inventors and scientific investigators have taken advantage of the new teaching of psychology concerning this phase of mental operation, and they have thereby attained results far superior to those possible under the old hitormiss methods.
Artists and writers, also, employ the same general methods of Creative Composition, though in most cases in a more or less haphazard and instinctive way. The various characters, situations, scenes and combinations of pictures, stories and plays, are gathered together from a comparatively small list of elements—the great variety of results arising from the many possible combinations and arrangements of these few elements. If this seems incredible to you, you have but to remember the almost infinite number of possible combinations of the 26 letters of the alphabet—the largest dictionary contains only a small proportion of the possible wordcreations by such combinations. Again, from 52 playing cards, are derived all of the numerous combinations of “hands” dealt out in card games—in many games, in fact, a smaller number of cards is used.
That modern writers are turning this principle of Creative Composition to practical account is evident to those who study the advertising columns of magazines devoted to the writing craft. For instance, there is advertised a book for storywriters called “The 36 Dramatic Situations,” which is described as follows: “A catalogue of all the possible situations that the many relations of life offer to the writer. The author has read and analyzed thousands of plays and novels, and resolved their basic story material into fundamental categories. A true philosophic consideration, but practical in every respect, that makes available to every writer all the possible material that life offers him.” Again, there is advertised a book called “The Fiction Factory,” which is described as follows: “A writer who wrote thousands of stories and made thousands of dollars by setting up a storymill, tells how he did it, and gives a record of his work in this instructive, stimulating book. * * * It should be in the hands of everyone interested in how authors do their work.” You may smile at these advertisements, and shrug your shoulders—but you buy and read the stories so composed.
Jack London, the popular novelist, in his story of “Martin Eden” (which many regard as being largely autobiographical) pictures his hero as busily engaged in writing “newspaper storiettes” for the syndicates which supply them to the newspapers in all parts of the country. These productions were what are known as “pot boilers,” of course—written hastily to meet the popular demand and to gratify the popular taste. Martin had not yet arrived at the place and time where his more finished, more subtle, and more realistic efforts were appreciated by readers and accepted by publishers.
London pictures Martin busily engaged in reading over his rejected storiettes, and thus finding out how not to write such productions, as well as “just how” to write them. He found out what to put in, and what to leave out. In this way he worked out a perfect formula. This formula consisted of three parts, viz., (1) A pair of lovers jarred apart; (2) They are united by some deed or event; (3) Wedding bells. He reached the conclusion that the third part was an unvarying quantity; but that the first and second parts could be varied an infinite number of times.
The
