If I mistake not, this indicates that the "creative instinct" exists in all men to some extent--feeble in some, perceptible in others, brilliant in the great inventors. For I do not hesitate to maintain that the creative instinct, taken in this strict meaning, compared to animal instinct, is a mere figure of speech, an "entity" regarded as a reality, an abstraction. There are needs, appetites, tendencies, desires, common to all men, which, in a given individual at a given moment can result in a creative act; but there is no special psychic manifestation that may be the "creative instinct." What, indeed, could it be? Every instinct has its own particular end:--hunger, thirst, sex, the specific instincts of the bee, ant, beaver, consist of a group of movements adapted for a determinate end that is always the same. Now, what would be a creative instinct _in general_ which, by hypothesis, could produce in turn an opera, a machine, a metaphysical theory, a system of finance, a plan of military campaign, and so forth? It is a pure fancy. Inventive genius has not _a_ source, but _sources_. Let us consider from our present viewpoint the human duality, the _homo duplex_: Suppose man reduced to a state of pure intelligence, that is, capable of perceiving, remembering, associating, dissociating, reasoning, and nothing else. All creative activity is then impossible, because there is nothing to solicit it. Suppose, again, man reduced to organic manifestations; he is then no more than a bundle of wants, appetites, instincts,--that is, of motor activities, blind forces that, lacking a sufficient cerebral organ, will produce nothing. The cooperation of both these factors is indispensable: without the first, nothing begins; without the second, nothing results. I hold that it is in needs that we must seek for the primary cause of all inventions; it is evident that the motor element alone is insufficient. If the needs are strong, energetic, they may determine a production, or, if the intellectual factor is insufficient, may spoil it. Many want to make discoveries but discover nothing. A want so common as hunger or thirst suggests to one some ingenious method of satisfying it; another remains entirely destitute. In short, in order that a creative act occur, there is required, first, a need; then, that it arouse a combination of images; and lastly, that it objectify and _realize_ itself in an appropriate form.