ive
person is such from lack of materials or through the absence of
resourcefulness.

Without contenting ourselves with these theoretical remarks, let us
rapidly show that it is thus that these things actually happen. All the
work of the creative imagination may be classed under two great
heads--esthetic inventions and practical inventions; on the one hand,
what man has brought to pass in the domain of art, and on the other
hand, all else. Though this division may appear strange, and
unjustifiable, it has reason for its being, as we shall see hereafter.

Let us consider first the class of non-esthetic creations. Very
different in nature, all the products of this group coincide at one
point:--they are of practical utility, they are born of a vital need, of
one of the conditions of man's existence. There are first the inventions
"practical" in the narrow sense--all that pertains to food, clothing,
defense, housing, etc. Every one of these special needs has stimulated
inventions adapted to a special end. Inventions in the social and
political order answer to the conditions of collective existence; they
arise from the necessity of maintaining the coherence of the social
aggregate and of defending it against inimical groups. The work of the
imagination whence have arisen the myths, religious conceptions, and the
first attempts at a scientific explanation may seem at first
disinterested and foreign to practical life. This is an erroneous
supposition. Man, face to face with the higher powers of nature, the
mystery of which he does not penetrate, has a _need_ of acting upon it;
he tries to conciliate them, even to turn them to his service by magic
rites and operations. _His_ curiosity is not at all theoretic; he does
not aim to know for the sake of knowing, but in order to act upon the
outside world and to draw profit therefrom. To the numerous questions
that necessity puts to him his imagination alone responds, because his
reason is shifting and his scientific knowledge _nil_. Here, then,
invention again results from urgent needs.

Indeed, in the course of the nineteenth century and on account of
growing civilization all these creations reach a second moment when
their origin is hidden. Most of our mechanical, industrial and
commercial inventions are not stimulated by the immediate necessity of
living, by an urgent need; it is not a question of existence but of
better existence. The same holds true of social and political i