the prejudice in
favor of a creative instinct. 31

CHAPTER III.

THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR.

Various views of the "inspired state." Its essential
characteristics; suddenness, impersonality.--Its relations
to unconscious activity.--Resemblances to hypermnesia, the
initial state of alcoholic intoxication and somnambulism on
waking.--Disagreements concerning the ultimate nature of
unconsciousness: two hypotheses.--The "inspired state" is
not a cause, but an index.--Associations in unconscious
form.--Mediate or latent association: recent experiments and
discussions on this subject.--"Constellation" the result of
a summation of predominant tendencies. Its mechanism. 50

CHAPTER IV.

THE ORGANIC CONDITIONS OF THE IMAGINATION.

Anatomical conditions: various hypotheses. Obscurity of the
question. Flechsig's theory.--Physiological conditions: are
they cause, effect, or accompaniment? Chief factor: change
in cerebral and local circulation.--Attempts at
experimentation.--The oddities of inventors brought under
two heads: the explicable and inexplicable. They are helpers
of inspiration.--Is there any analogy between physical and
psychic creation? A philosophical hypothesis on the
subject.--Limitation of the question. Impossibility of an
exact answer. 65

CHAPTER V.

THE PRINCIPLE OF UNITY.

Importance of the unifying principle. It is a fixed idea or
a fixed emotion.--Their equivalence.--Distinction between
the synthetic principle and the ideal, which is the
principle of unity in motion: the ideal is a construction in
images, merely outlined.--The principal forms of the
unifying principles: unstable, organic or middle, extreme or
semi-morbid.--Obsession of the inventor and the sick:
insufficiency of a purely psychological criterion. 79

SECOND PART.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IMAGINATION.

CHAPTER I.

IMAGINATION IN ANIMALS.

Difficulties of the subject.--The degree of imagination in
animals.--Does creative synthesis exist in them? Affirmation
and denials.--The special form of animal imagination is
motor, and shows itself through play: its numerous
varieties.--Why the animal imagination must be above all
motor: lack of intellectual development.--Comparison with
young children, in whom the motor system predominates: the
roles of moveme