m, which is very different from that limiting the
scientific or mechanical imagination. Every commercial project, in order
to emerge from the internal, purely imaginative phase, and become a
reality, requires "coming to a head," very exact calculation of
frequently numerous, divergent, even contrary elements. The American
dealer speculating in grain is under the absolute necessity of being
quickly and surely informed regarding the agricultural situation in all
countries of the world that are rich in grain, that export or import; in
regard to the probable chances of rain or drouth; the tariff duties of
the various countries, etc. Lacking that, he buys and sells haphazard.
Moreover, as he deals in enormous quantities, the least error means
great losses, the smallest profit on a unit is of account, and is
multiplied and increased into a noticeable gain.

Besides that initial intuition that shows opportune business and
moments, commercial imagination presupposes a well-studied, detailed
campaign for attack and defense, a rapid and reliable glance at every
moment of execution in order to incessantly modify this plan--it is a
kind of war. All this totality of special conditions results from a
general condition,--namely, competition, strife. We shall come back to
this point at the end of the chapter.

Let us follow to the end the working of this creative imagination. Like
the other forms, this kind of invention arises from a need, a
desire--that of the spreading of "self-feeling," of the expansion of the
individual under the form of enrichment. But this tendency, and with it
the resulting imaginative creation, can undergo changes.

It is a well-known law of the emotional life that what is at first
sought as a means may become an end and be desired for itself. A very
sensual passion may at length undergo a sort of idealization; people
study a science at first because it is useful, and later because of its
fascination; and we may desire money in order to spend it, and later in
order to hoard it. Here it is the same: the financial inventor is often
possessed with a kind of intoxication--he no longer labors for lucre,
but for art; he becomes, in his own way, an author of romance. His
imagination, set at the beginning toward gain, now seeks only its
complete expansion, the assertion and eruption of its creative power,
the pleasure of inventing for invention's sake,[133] daring the
extraordinary, the unheard-of--it is the victory