have attempted it
elsewhere), no one of the proposed classifications has been universally
accepted. Nevertheless, despite their differences, they coincide in
several points, because these have the advantage of resting on a common
basis--the large manifestations of human nature, feeling, doing,
thinking. In our subject I find nothing like this and I seek in vain for
a point of support. Classifications are made according to the essential
dominating attributes; but, as regards the varieties of the creative
imagination, what are they?

We may, indeed, as was said above, distinguish two great classes--the
intuitive and the combining. From another point of view we may
distinguish invention of free range (esthetic, religious, mystic) from
invention more or less restricted (mechanical, scientific, commercial,
military, political, social). But these two divisions are too general,
leading to nothing. A true classification should be in touch with facts,
and this one soars too high.

Leaving, then, to others, more skilled or more fortunate, the task of a
rational and systematic determination, if it be possible, we shall try
merely to distinguish and describe the principal forms, such as
experience gives them to us, emphasizing those that have been neglected
or misinterpreted. What follows is thus neither a classification nor
even a complete enumeration.

We shall study at first two general forms of the creative
imagination--the plastic and the diffluent--and later, special forms,
determined by their content and subject.

* * * * *

Wundt, in a little-noticed passage of his _Physiological Psychology_,
has undertaken to determine the composition of the "principal forms of
talent," which he reduces to four:

The first element is imagination. It may be intuitive, "that is,
conferring on representations a clearness of sense-perception," or
combining; "then it operates on multiple combinations of images." A very
marked development in both directions at the same time is uncommon; the
author assigns reasons for this.

The second element is understanding (_Verstand_). It may be
inductive--i.e., inclining toward the collection of facts in order to
draw generalizations from them--or deductive, taking general concepts
and laws to trace their consequences.

If the intuitive imagination is joined to the inductive spirit we have
the talent for observation of the naturalist, the psychologist, the
pedagogu