SECOND PART

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IMAGINATION.

CHAPTER I

IMAGINATION IN ANIMALS

Up to this point the imagination has been treated analytically only.
This process alone would give us but a very imperfect idea of its
essentially concrete and lively nature were we to stop here. So this
part continues the subject in another shape. I shall attempt to follow
the imagination in its ascending development from the lowest to the most
complex forms, from the animal to the human infant, to primitive man,
thence to the highest modes of invention. It will thus be exhibited in
the inexhaustible variety of its manifestations which the abstract and
simplifying process of analysis does not permit us to suspect.

I

I shall not dwell at length on the imagination of animals, not only
because the question is much involved but also because it is hardly
liable to a positive solution. Even eliminating mere anecdotes and
doubtful observations, there is no lack of verified and authentic
material, but it still remains to interpret them. As soon as we begin to
conjecture we know how difficult it is to divest ourselves of all
anthropomorphism.

The question has been formulated, even if not treated, with much system
by Romanes in his _Mental Evolution in Animals_.[35] Taking
"imagination" in its broadest sense, he recognizes four stages:

1. Provoked revival of images. For example, the sight of an orange
reminds one of its taste. This is a low form of memory, resting on
association by contiguity. It is met with very far down in the animal
scale, and the author furnishes abundant proof of it.

2. Spontaneous revival. An object present calls up an absent object.
This is a higher form of memory, frequent in ants, bees, wasps, etc.,
which fact explains the mistrustful sagacity of wild animals. At night,
the distant baying of a hound stops the fox in his course, because all
the dangers he has undergone are represented in his mind.

These two stages do not go beyond memory pure and simple, i.e.,
reproductive imagination. The other two constitute the higher
imagination.

3. The capacity of associating absent images, without suggestion derived
from without, through an internal working of the mind. It is the lower
and primitive form of the creative imagination, which may be called a
passive synthesis. In order to establish its existence, Romanes reminds
us that dreams have been proven in dogs, horses, and a large number