Whence, then, comes this persistent and in some respects seductive idea that creation is an instinctive result? Because a happy invention has characteristics that evidently relate it to instinctive activity in the strict sense of the word. First, precocity, of which we shall later give numerous examples, and which resembles the innateness of instinct. Again, orientation in a single direction: the inventor is, so to speak, polarized; he is the slave of music, of mechanics, of mathematics; often inapt at everything outside his own particular sphere. We know the witticism of Madame du Deffant on Vaucanson, who was so awkward, so insignificant when he ventured outside of mechanics. "One should say that this man had manufactured himself." Finally, the ease with which invention often (not always) manifests itself makes it resemble the work of a pre-established mechanism. But these and similar characteristics may be lacking. They are necessary for instinct, not for invention. There are great creators who have been neither precocious nor confined in a narrow field, and who have given birth to their inventions painfully, laboriously. Between the mechanism of instinct and that of imaginative creation there are frequently great analogies but not identity of nature. Every tendency of our organization, useful or hurtful, may become the beginning of a creative act. Every invention arises from a particular need of human nature, acting within its own sphere and for its own special end. If now it should be asked why the creative imagination directs itself preferably in one line rather than in another--toward poetry or physics, trade or mechanics, geometry or painting, strategy or music, etc.--we have nothing in answer. It is a result of the individual organization, the secret of which we do not possess. In ordinary life we meet people visibly borne along toward love or good cheer, toward ambition, riches or good works; we say that they are "so built," that such is their character. At bottom the two questions are identical, and current psychology is not in a position to solve them. FOOTNOTES: [12] _Ueber Phantasievorstellungen_, Graz, 1889, p. 48. [13] _Die Spiele der Thiere_, Jena, 1896. The subject has been very well treated by this author, pp. 294-301. [14] The "disinterested" view is found widely advocated or hinted at in literature. Cf. Goethe's "Der Saenger" (Tr.). [15] _Psychology_, I, 571 ff. [16] Hoeffding, _Psychologie_, p. 219; _Eng. trans._, p. 161. [17] Groos, _Die Spiele der Thiere_, 1896, and _Die Spiele der Menschen_, 1899 (Eng. trans., Appletons, New York, 1898, 1901). CHAPTER III THE UNCONSCIOUS FACTOR I