Produced by Clare Boothby and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net +------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in | | this text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of | | this document. | | | | The children's letters on page 108 have been reproduced in | | this text as diagrams. | +------------------------------------------------------------+ ESSAY ON THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION BY TH. RIBOT TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY ALBERT H. N. BARON FELLOW IN CLARK UNIVERSITY LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD. 1906 COPYRIGHT BY THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO. CHICAGO, U. S. A. 1906 _All rights reserved._ TO THE MEMORY OF MY TEACHER AND FRIEND, Arthur Allin, Ph. D., PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, WHO FIRST INTERESTED ME IN THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHOLOGY, THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED, WITH REVERENCE AND GRATITUDE, BY THE TRANSLATOR. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. The name of Th. Ribot has been for many years well known in America, and his works have gained wide popularity. The present translation of one of his more recent works is an attempt to render available in English what has been received as a classic exposition of a subject that is often discussed, but rarely with any attempt to understand its true nature. It is quite generally recognized that psychology has remained in the semi-mythological, semi-scholastic period longer than most attempts at scientific formulization. For a long time it has been the "spook science" _per se_, and the imagination, now analyzed by M. Ribot in such a masterly manner, has been one of the most persistent, apparently real, though very indefinite, of psychological spooks. Whereas people have been accustomed to speak of the imagination as an entity _sui generis_, as a lofty something found only in long-haired, wild-eyed "geniuses," constituting indeed the center of a cult, our author, Prometheus-like, has brought it down from the heavens, and has clearly shown that _imagination is a function of mind common to all men in some degree_, and that it is shown in as highly developed form in commercial leaders and practical inventors as in the most bizarre of romantic idealists. The only difference is that the manifestation is not the same.