able to rules, and is
here found among "idealists," as elsewhere among the foremost
empiricists and iconoclasts. (Tr.)

[142] See above, Part III, chapter III.

[143] We recommend to the reader the "Epilogue sur l'Analogie," in
_Le Monde Industriel_, pp. 244 ff., where he will learn that the
"goldfinch depicts the child born of poor parents; the pheasant
represents the jealous husband; the cock is the symbol of the man of
the world; the cabbage is the emblem of mysterious love," etc. There
are several pages in this tone, with alleged reasons in support of
the statements.

[144] See above, chapter II.

[145] For an excellent account of the principles of these movements,
see Rae, _Contemporary Socialism_; for Owen's ideals, his
_Autobiography_; and for an account of some of the trials, Bushee's
"Communistic Societies in the United States," _Political Science
Quarterly_, vol. XX, pp. 625 ff. (Tr.)

CONCLUSION.

CONCLUSION

I

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION

Why is the human mind able to create? In a certain sense this question
may seem idle, childish, and even worse. We might just as well ask why
does man have eyes and not an electric apparatus like the torpedo? Why
does he perceive directly sounds but not the ultra-red and ultra-violet
rays? Why does he perceive changes of odors but not magnetic changes?
And so on _ad infinitum_. We will put the question in a very different
manner: Being given the physical and mental constitution of man such as
it is at present, how is the creative imagination a natural product of
this constitution?

Man is able to create for two principal reasons. The first, motor in
nature, is found in the action of his needs, appetites, tendencies,
desires. The second is the possibility of a spontaneous revival of
images that become grouped in new combination.

1. We have already shown in detail[146] that the hypothesis of a
"creative instinct," if the expression is used not as an abbreviated or
metaphorical formula but in the strict sense, is a pure chimera, an
empty entity. In studying the various types of imagination we have
always been careful to note that every mode of creation may be reduced,
as regards its beginnings, to a tendency, a want, a special, determinate
desire. Let us recall for the last time these initial conditions of all
invention--these desires, conscious or not, that excite it.

The wants, tendencies, desires--it matters not which term w