reamer lives forever,
but a thinker dies in a day." (Tr.)

CHAPTER II

THE EMOTIONAL FACTOR.

The influence of emotional states on the working of the imagination is a
matter of current observation. But it has been studied chiefly by
moralists, who most often have criticised or condemned it as an endless
cause of mistakes. The point of view of the psychologist is altogether
different. He does not need at all to investigate whether emotions and
passions give rise to mental phantoms--which is an indisputable
fact--but _why_ and _how_ they arise. For, the emotional factor yields
in importance to no other; it is the ferment without which no creation
is possible. Let us study it in its principal forms, although we may not
be able at this moment to exhaust the topic.

I

It is necessary to show at the outset that the influence of the
emotional life is unlimited, that it penetrates the entire field of
invention with no restriction whatever; that this is not a gratuitous
assertion, but is, on the contrary, strictly justified by facts, and
that we are right in maintaining the following two propositions:

1. _All forms of the creative imagination imply elements of feeling._

This statement has been challenged by authoritative psychologists, who
hold that "emotion is added to imagination in its esthetic aspect, not
in its mechanical and intellectual form." This is an error of fact
resulting from the confusion, or from the imperfect analysis, of two
distinct cases. In the case of non-esthetic creation, the role of the
emotional life is simple; in esthetic creation, the role of emotional
element is double.

Let us consider invention, first, in its most general form. The
emotional element is the primal, original factor; for all invention
presupposes a want, a craving, a tendency, an unsatisfied impulse, often
even a state of gestation full of discomfort. Moreover, it is
concomitant, that is, under its form of pleasure or of pain, of hope, of
spite, of anger, etc., it accompanies all the phases or turns of
creation. The creator may, haphazard, go through the most diverse forms
of exaltation and depression; may feel in turn the dejection of repulse
and the joy of success; finally the satisfaction of being freed from a
heavy burden. I challenge anyone to produce a solitary example of
invention wrought out _in abstracto_, and free from any factors of
feeling. Human nature does not allow such a miracle.

Now, let us t