I fear that the distance between the facts here given and the creative imagination proper will seem to the reader very great indeed. And why so? First, because the creative activity here has as its only material the organism, and is not separated from the creator. Then, too, because these facts are extremely simple, and the creative imagination, in the ordinary sense, is extremely complex; here there is one operating cause, a single representation more or less complex, while in imaginative creation we have several co-operating images with combinations, coordination, arrangement, grouping. But it must not be forgotten that our present aim is simply to find _a transition stage_[2] between reproduction and production; to show the common origin of the two forms of imagination--the purely representative faculty and the faculty of creating by means of the intermediation of images;--and to show at the same time the work of separation, of severance between the two. II Since the chief aim of this study is to prove that the basis of invention must be sought in motor manifestations, I shall not hesitate to dwell on it, and I take the subject up again under another, clearer, more precise, and more psychological form, in putting the following question: Which one among the various modes of mind-activity offers the closest analogy to the creative imagination? I unhesitatingly answer, _voluntary activity_: Imagination, in the intellectual order, is the equivalent of will in the realm of movements. Let us justify this comparison by some proof. 1. Likeness of development in the two instances. Growth of voluntary control is progressive, slow, crossed and checked. The individual has to become master of his muscles and by their agency extend his sway over other things. Reflexes, instinctive movements, and movements expressive of emotion constitute the primary material of voluntary movements. The will has no movements of its own as an inheritance: it must coordinate and associate, since it separates in order to form new associations. It reigns by right of conquest, not by right of birth. In like manner, the creative imagination does not rise completely armed. Its raw materials are images, which here correspond to muscular movements. It goes through a period of trial. It always is, at the start (for reasons indicated later on), an imitation; it attains its complex forms only through a process of growth.