cians and fishes are
great; to the scientist, slight. Here, again, numerous agreements are
possible, provided one take no account either of their solidity or their
frailty.

3. Lastly, in minds without power, there occurs a semi-unconscious
operation that we may call a transfer through the omission of the middle
term. There is analogy between _a b c d e_ and _g h a i f_ through the
common letter _a_; between _g h a i f_ and _x y f z q_ through the
common letter _f_; and finally an analogy becomes established between _a
b c d e_ and _x y f z q_ for no other reason than that of their common
analogy with _g h a i f_. In the realm of the affective states,
transfers of this sort are not at all rare.

Analogy, an unstable process, undulating and multiform, gives rise to
the most unforeseen and novel groupings. Through its pliability, which
is almost unlimited, it produces in equal measure absurd comparisons and
very original inventions.

After these remarks on the mechanism of thinking by analogy, let us
glance at the processes it employs in its creative work. The problem is,
apparently, inextricable. Analogies are so numerous, so various, so
arbitrary, that we may despair of finding any regularity whatever in
creative work. Despite this it seems, however, reducible to two
principal types or processes, which are personification, and
transformation or metamorphosis.

Personification is the earlier process. It is radical, always identical
with itself, but transitory. It goes out from ourselves toward other
things. It consists in attributing life to everything, in supposing in
everything that shows signs of life--and even in inanimate
objects--desires, passions, and acts of will analogous to ours, acting
like ourselves in view of definite ends. This state of mind is
incomprehensible to an adult civilized man; but it must be admitted,
since there are facts without number that show its existence. We do not
need to cite them--they are too well known. They fill the works of
ethnologists, of travelers in savage lands, of books of mythology.
Besides, all of us, at the commencement of our lives, during our
earliest childhood, have passed through this inevitable stage of
universal animism. Works on child-psychology abound in observations that
leave no possible room for doubt on this point. The child endows
everything with life, and he does so the more in proportion as he is
more imaginative. But this stage, which among civilized pe