Essay on the Creative Imagination Part 15

[90] Or, as it has been expressed, "human qualities raised to their highest power." (Tr.)

[91] The same statement holds good as regards the "Temptations of Saint Anthony" and other a.n.a.logous subjects that have often attracted painters.

[92] R. Dubois, _Lecons de physiologie generale et comparee_, p.

286.

[93] Von Baer, in James, _Psychology_, I, 639.

[94] _Psychology of the Emotions_, Part I, Chapter IX.

[95] Arreat, _Memoire et Imagination_, p. 118.

[96] Mendelssohn wrote to an author who composed verses for his _Lieder_: "Music is more definite than speech, and to want to explain it by means of words is to make the meaning obscure. I do not think that words suffice for that end, and were I persuaded to the contrary, I would not compose music. There are people who accuse music of being ambiguous, who allege that words are always understood: for me it is just the other way; words seem to me vague, ambiguous, unintelligible, if we compare them to the true music that fills the soul with a thousand things better than words. What the music that I like expresses to me seems to me too _definite_, rather than too indefinite, for anyone to be able to match words to it."

[97] Oelzelt-Newin, _op. cit._, pp. 22-23. For a.n.a.logous facts from contemporary musicians, see Paulhan, _Rev. Phil._, 1898, pp. 234-35.

[98] For the sake of brevity and clearness I do not give here the observations and evidence. They will be found at the end of this work, as Appendix D.

Under the t.i.tle "An experimental test of musical expressiveness,"

Gilman, in _American Journal of Psychology_, vol. IV, No. 4, and vol.

V, No. 1 (1892-3), has studied from another point of view the effect of music on various listeners. Eleven selections were given; I note that three or four at the most excited visual images--ten (perhaps eleven), emotional states. More recently, the _Psychological Review_ (September, 1898, pp. 463 ff.) has published a personal observation of Macdougal in which sight-images accompany the hearing of music only exceptionally and under special conditions. The author characterizes himself as a "poor visualizer;" he declares that music arouses in him only very rarely visual representations; "even then they are fragmentary, consisting of simple forms without bond between them, appearing on a dark background, remaining visible for a moment or two, and soon disappearing." But, having gone to the concert fatigued and jaded, he sees nothing during the first number: the visions begin during the _andante_ of the second, and accompany "in profusion" the rendering of the third. (See Appendix D.) May we not a.s.sume that the state of fatigue, by lowering the vital tone, which is the basis of the emotional life, likewise diminishes the tendency of affective dispositions to arise again under the form of memory? On the other hand, sensory images remain without opposition and come to the front; at least, unless they are reenforced by a state of semi-morbid excitation.

CHAPTER III.

THE MYSTIC IMAGINATION

Mystic imagination deserves a place of honor, as it is the most complete and most daring of purely theoretic invention. Related to diffluent imagination, especially in the latter's affective form, it has its own special characters, which we shall try to separate out.

Mysticism rests essentially on two modes of mental life--feeling, which we need not study; and imagination, which, in the present instance, represents the intellectual factor. Whether the part of consciousness that this state of mind requires and permits be imaginative in nature and nothing else it is easy to find out. Indeed, the mystic considers the data of sense as vain appearances, or at the most as signs revealing and frequently laying bare the world of reality. He therefore finds no solid support in perception. On the other hand, he scorns reasoned thought, looking upon it as a cripple, halting half-way. He makes neither deductions nor inductions, and does not draw conclusions after the method of scientific hypotheses. The conclusion, then, is that he imagines, i.e., that he realizes a construction in images that is for him knowledge of the world; and he never proceeds, and does not proceed here, save _ex a.n.a.logia hominis_.

I

The root of the mystic imagination consists of a tendency to incarnate the ideal in the sensible, to discover a hidden "idea" in every material phenomenon or occurrence, to suppose in things a supranatural principle that reveals itself to whoever may penetrate to it. Its fundamental character, from which the others are derived, is thus a way of thinking _symbolically_; but the algebraist also thinks by means of symbols, yet is not on that account a mystic. The nature of this symbolism must, then, be determined.

In doing so, let us note first of all that our images--understanding the word "image" in its broadest sense--may be divided into two distinct groups:

(1) _Concrete_ images, earliest to be received, being representations of greatest power, residues of our perceptions, with which they have a direct and immediate relation.

(2) _Symbolic_ images, or signs, of secondary acquirement, being representations of lesser power, having only indirect and mediate relations with things.

Let us make the differences between the two clear by a few simple examples.

Concrete images are: In the visual sphere, the recollection of faces, monuments, landscapes, etc.; in the auditory sphere, the remembrance of the sounds of the sea, wind, the human voice, a melody, etc.; in the motor sphere, the tossings one feels when resting after having been at sea, the illusions of those who have had limbs amputated, etc.

Symbolic images are: In the visual order, written words, ideographic signs, etc.; in the auditory order, spoken words or verbal images; in the motor order, significant gestures, and even better, the finger-language of deaf-mutes.

Psychologically, these two groups are not identical in nature. Concrete images result from a persistence of perceptions and draw from the latter all their validity; symbolic images result from a mental synthesis, from an a.s.sociation of perception and image, or of image and image. If they have not the same origin, no more do they disappear in the same way, as is proven by very numerous examples of aphasia.

The originality of mystic imagination is found in this fact: It transforms concrete images into symbolic images, and uses them as such.

It extends this process even to perceptions, so that all manifestations of nature or of human art take on a value as signs or symbols. We shall later find numerous examples of this. Its mode of expression is necessarily synthetic. In itself, and because of the materials that it makes use of, it differs from the affective imagination previously described; it also differs from sensuous imagination, which makes use of forms, movements, colors, as having a value of their own; and from the imagination developing in the functions of words, through an a.n.a.lytic process. It has thus a rather special mark.

Other characters are related to this one of symbolism, or else are derived from it, viz.:

(1) An external character: the manner of writing and of speaking, the mode of expression, whatever it is. "The dominant style among mystics,"

says von Hartmann, "is metaphorical in the extreme--now flat and ordinary, more often turgid and emphatic. Excess of imagination betrays itself there, ordinarily, in the thought and in the form in which that is rendered.... A sign of mysticism which it has been believed may often be taken as an essential sign, is obscurity and unintelligibility of language. We find it in almost all those who have written."[99] We might add that even in the plastic arts, symbolists and "_decadents_" have attempted, as far as possible, methods that merely indicate and suggest or hint instead of giving real, definite objects: which fact makes them inaccessible to the greater number of people.

This characteristic of obscurity is due to two causes. First, mystical imagination is guided by the logic of feeling, which is purely subjective, full of leaps, jerks, and gaps. Again, it makes use of the language of images, especially visual images--a language whose ideal is vagueness, just as the ideal of verbal language is precision. All this can be summed up in a phrase--the subjective character inherent in the symbol. While seeming to speak like everyone else, the mystic uses a personal idiom: things becoming symbols at the pleasure of his fancy, he does not use signs that have a fixed and universally admitted value. It is not surprising if we do not understand him.

(2) An extraordinary abuse of a.n.a.logy and comparison in their various forms (allegory, parable, etc.)--a natural consequence of a mode of thinking that proceeds by means of symbols, not concepts. It has been said, and rightly, that "the only force that makes the vast field of mysticism fruitful is a.n.a.logy."[100] Bossuet, a great opponent of mystics, had already remarked: "One of the characteristics of these authors is the pus.h.i.+ng of allegories to the extreme limit." With warm imagination, having at their disposal overexcited senses, they are lavish of changes of expressions and figures, hoping thereby to explain the world's mysteries. We know to what inventive labors the Vedas, the Bible, the Koran, and other sacred books have given rise. The distinction between literal and figurative sense, which is boundlessly arbitrary, has given commentators a freedom to imagine equal to that of the myth-creators.

All this is yet very reasonable; but the imagination left to itself stops at no extravagance. After having strained the meaning of expressions, the imaginative mind exercises itself on words and letters.

Thus, the cabalists would take the first or the last letters of the words composing a verse, and would form with them a new word which was to reveal the hidden meaning. Again, they would subst.i.tute for the letters composing words the numbers that these letters represent in the Hebrew numerical system and form the strangest combinations with them.

In the _Zohar_, all the letters of the alphabet come before G.o.d, each one begging to be chosen as the creative element of the universe.

Let us also bring to mind numerical mysticism, different from numerical imagination heretofore studied. Here, number is no longer the means that mind employs in order to soar in time and s.p.a.ce; it becomes a symbol and material for fanciful construction. Hence arise those "sacred numbers"

teeming in the old oriental religions:--3, symbol of the trinity; 4, symbol of the cosmic elements; 7, representing the moon and the planets, etc.[101] Besides these fantastic meanings, there are more complicated inventions--calculating, from the letters of one's name, the years of life of a sick person, the auspices of a marriage, etc. The Pythagorean philosophy, as Zeller has shown, is the systematic form of this mathematical mysticism, for which numbers are not symbols of quant.i.tative relations, but the very essence of things.

This exaggerated symbolism, which makes the works of mystics so fragile, and which permits the mind to feed only on glimpses, has nevertheless an undeniable source of energy in its enchanting capacity to suggest.

Without doubt suggestion exists also in art, but much more weakly, for reasons that we shall indicate.

(3) Another characteristic of mystic imagination is the nature and the great degree of belief accompanying it. We already know[102] that when an image enters consciousness, even in the form of a recollection, of a purely pa.s.sive reproduction, it appears at first, and for a moment, just as real as a percept. Much more so, in the case of imaginative constructions. But this illusion has degrees, and with mystics it attains its maximum.

In the scientific and practical world, the work of the imagination is accompanied by only a conditional and provisional belief. The construction in images must justify its existence, in the case of the scientist, by explaining; and in the case of the man of affairs, by being embodied in an invention that is useful and answers its purpose.

In the esthetic field, creation is accompanied by a momentary belief.

Fancy, remarks Groos, is necessarily joined to appearance. Its special character does not consist merely in freedom in images; what distinguishes it from a.s.sociation and from memory is this--that what is merely representative is taken for the reality. The creative artist has a conscious illusion (_bewusste Selbsttauschung_): _the esthetic pleasure is an oscillation between the appearance and the reality_.[103]

Mystic imagination presupposes an unconditioned and permanent belief.

Mystics are believers in the true sense--they have faith. This character is peculiar to them, and has its origin in the intensity of the affective state that excites and supports this form of invention.

Intuition becomes an object of knowledge only when clothed in images.

There has been much dispute as to the objective value of those symbolic forms that are the working material of the mystic imagination. This contest does not concern us here; but we may make the positive statement that the constructive imagination has never obtained such a frequently hallucinatory form as in the mystics. Visions, touch-illusions, external voices, inner and "wordless" voices, which we now regard as psycho-motor hallucinations--all that we meet every moment in their works, until they become commonplace. But as to the nature of these psychic states there are only two solutions possible--one, naturalistic, that we shall indicate; the other, supernatural, which most theologians hold, and which regards these phenomena as valid and true revelation. In either case, the mystic imagination seems to us naturally tending toward objectification. It tends outwardly, by a spontaneous movement that places it on the same level as reality. Whichever conclusion we adopt, no imaginative type has the same great gift of energy and permanence in belief.

II

Mystic imagination, working along the lines peculiar to it, produces cosmological, religious, and metaphysical constructions, a summary exposition of which will help us understand its true nature.

(1) The all-embracing cosmological form is the conception of the world by a purely imaginative being. It is rare, abnormal, and is nowadays met with only in a few artists, dreamers, or morbidly esthetic persons, as a kind of survival and temporary form. Thus, Victor Hugo sees in each letter of the alphabet the pictured imitation of one of the objects essential to human knowledge: "_A_ is the head, the gable, the cross-beam, the arch, _arx_; _D_ is the back, _dos_; _E_ is the bas.e.m.e.nt, the console, etc., so that man's house and its architecture, man's body and its structure, and then justice, music, the church, war, harvesting, geometry, mountains, etc.--all that is comprised in the alphabet through the mystic virtue of form."[104] Even more radical is Gerard de Nerval (who, moreover, was frequently subject to hallucinations): "At certain times everything takes on for me a new aspect--secret voices come out of plant, tree, animals, from the humblest insects, to caution and encourage me. Formless and lifeless objects have mysterious turns the meaning of which I understand." To others, contemporaries, "the real world is a fairy land."

The middle ages--a period of lively imagination and slight rational culture--overflowed in this direction. "Many thought that on this earth everything is a sign, a figure, and that the visible is worth nothing except insofar as it covers up the invisible." Plants, animals--there is nothing that does not become subject for interpretation; all the members of the body are emblems; the head is Christ, the hairs are the saints, the legs are the apostles, the eye is contemplation, etc. There are extant special books in which all that is seriously explained. Who does not know the symbolism of the cathedrals, and the vagaries to which it has given rise? The towers are prayer, the columns the apostles, the stones and the mortar the a.s.sembly of the faithful; the windows are the organs of sense, the b.u.t.tresses and abutments are the divine a.s.sistance; and so on to the minutest detail.

In our day of intense intellectual development, it is not given to many to return sincerely to a mental condition that recalls that of the earliest times. Even if we come near it, we still find a difference.

Primitive man puts life, consciousness, activity, into everything; symbolism does likewise, but it does not believe in an autonomous, distinct, particular soul inherent in each thing. The absence of abstraction and generalization, characteristic of humanity in its early beginnings, when it peoples the world with myriads of animate beings, has disappeared. Every source of activity revealed by symbols appears as a fragmentary manifestation; it descends from a single primary, personal or impersonal, spring. At the root of this imaginative construction there is always either theism or pantheism.