The golden age of the creative imagination.--Myths: hypotheses as to the origin: the myth is the psycho-physical objectification of man in the phenomena that he perceives. The role of imagination.--How myths are formed. The moment of creation: two operations--animating everything, qualifying everything. Romantic invention lacking in peoples without imagination. The role of analogy and of association through "constellation."--The evolution of myths: ascension, acme, decline.--The explanatory myths undergo a radical transformation: the work of depersonification of the myth. Survivals.--The non-explanatory myths suffer a partial transformation: Literature is a fallen and rationalized mythology.--Popular imagination and legends: the legend is to the myth what illusion is to hallucination.--Unconscious processes that the imagination employs in order to create legends: fusion, idealization. 118 CHAPTER IV. THE HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION. Is a psychology of great inventors possible? Pathological and physiological theories of genius.--General characters of great inventors. Precocity: chronological order of the development of the creative power. Psychological reasons for this order. Why the creator commences by imitating.--Necessity or fatalism of vocation.--The representative character of great creators. Discussion as to the origin of this character--is it in the individual or in the environment?--Mechanism of creation. Two principal processes--complete, abridged. Their three phases; their resemblances and differences.--The role of chance in invention: it supposes the meeting of two factors--one internal, the other external.--Chance is an occasion for, not an agent of, creation. 140 CHAPTER V. LAW OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE IMAGINATION. Is the creative imagination, in its evolution, subject to any law?--It passes through two stages separated by a critical phase.--Period of autonomy; critical period; period of definite constitution. Two cases: decay or transformation through logical form, through deviation.--Subsidiary law of increasing complexity.--Historical verification. 167 THIRD PART. THE PRINCIPAL TYPES OF IMAGINATION. PRELIMINARY. The need of a concrete study.--The varieties of the creative imagination, analogous to the varieties of character. 179 CHAPTER I. THE PLASTIC IMAGINATION. It makes use of clear images, well determined in space, and of associations of objective relations.--Its external character.--Inferiority of the affective element.--Its principal manifestations: in the arts dealing with form; in poetry (transformation of sonorous into visual images); in myths with clear outline; in mechanical invention.--The dry and rational imagination its elements. 184 CHAPTER II. THE DIFFLUENT IMAGINATION.