A serious argument in favor of the prevalence of imagination of the motor type in the child is furnished by the principal part taken by movements in infantile insanity: a remark made by many alienists. The first stage of this madness, they say, is found in the convulsions that are not merely a physical ailment, but "a muscular delirium." The disturbance of the automatic and instinctive functions of the child is so often associated with muscular disturbances that at this age the mental disorders correspond to the motor ganglionic centers situated below those parts that later assume the labor of analysis and of imagination. The disturbances are in the primary centers of organization and according to the symptoms lack those analytic or constructive qualities, those ideal forms, that we find in adult insanity. If we descend to the lowest stage of human life--to the baby--we see that insanity consists almost entirely of the activity of a muscular group acting on external objects. The insane baby bites, kicks, and these symptoms are the external measure of the degree of its madness.[39] Has not chorea itself been called a muscular insanity? Doubtless, there likewise exists in the child a sensorial madness (illusions, hallucinations); but by reason of its feeble intellectual development the delirium causes a disorder of movements rather than of images; its insane imagination is above all a motor insanity. To hold that the creative imagination belonging to animals consists of new combinations of movements is certainly an hypothesis. Nevertheless, I do not believe that it is merely a mental form without foundation, if we take into account the foregoing facts. I consider it rather as a point in favor of the motor theory of invention. It is a singular instance in which the original form of creation is shown bare. If we wanted to discover it, it would be necessary to seek it where it is reduced to the greatest simplicity--in the animal world. FOOTNOTES: [35] Chapter X. [36] _Op. cit._, Appendix. [37] For a more detailed study of this subject, the reader is referred to the author's _Evolution of General Ideas_ (English trans., Open Court Publishing Co., Chicago), chapter I, section I. [38] A rather extended study of the subject by H. A. Carr will be found in the _Investigations of the Department of Psychology and Education of the University of Colorado_, vol. I, Number 2, 1902. The late Professor Arthur Allin devoted much time to the investigation of play. See his brief article entitled "Play" in the _University of Colorado Studies_, vol. I, 1902, pp. 58-73. (Tr.) [39] Hack Tuke, "Insanity of Children," in _Dictionary of Psychological Medicine_. CHAPTER II THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION IN THE CHILD