nts in infantile insanity. 93

CHAPTER II.

IMAGINATION IN THE CHILD.

Division of its development into four principal
periods.--Transition from passive to creative imagination:
perception and illusion.--Animating everything: analysis of
the elements constituting this moment: the role of
belief.--Creation in play: period of imitation, attempts at
invention.--Fanciful invention. 103

CHAPTER III.

PRIMITIVE MAN AND THE CREATION OF MYTHS.

The golden age of the creative imagination.--Myths:
hypotheses as to the origin: the myth is the psycho-physical
objectification of man in the phenomena that he perceives.
The role of imagination.--How myths are formed. The moment
of creation: two operations--animating everything,
qualifying everything. Romantic invention lacking in peoples
without imagination. The role of analogy and of association
through "constellation."--The evolution of myths: ascension,
acme, decline.--The explanatory myths undergo a radical
transformation: the work of depersonification of the myth.
Survivals.--The non-explanatory myths suffer a partial
transformation: Literature is a fallen and rationalized
mythology.--Popular imagination and legends: the legend is
to the myth what illusion is to hallucination.--Unconscious
processes that the imagination employs in order to create
legends: fusion, idealization. 118

CHAPTER IV.

THE HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION.

Is a psychology of great inventors possible? Pathological
and physiological theories of genius.--General characters of
great inventors. Precocity: chronological order of the
development of the creative power. Psychological reasons
for this order. Why the creator commences by
imitating.--Necessity or fatalism of vocation.--The
representative character of great creators. Discussion as to
the origin of this character--is it in the individual or in
the environment?--Mechanism of creation. Two principal
processes--complete, abridged. Their three phases; their
resemblances and differences.--The role of chance in
invention: it supposes the meeting of two factors--one
internal, the other external.--Chance is an occasion for,
not an agent of, creation. 140

CHAPTER V.

LAW OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IMAGINATION.

Is the creative imagination, in its evoluti