[56] _Op. cit._, pp. 23-24. [57] Lang, _op. cit._, I, 162, and _passim_. [58] Max Mueller, _op cit._, p. 12. [59] _Nouveaux Essais_, p. 320. [60] See Lang, _Myth, Ritual and Religion_, I, p. 234, a passage from the _Rig-Veda_, with four very different translations by Max Mueller, Wilson, Benfrey, and Langlois. [61] On curiosity as the beginning of knowledge, compare the position held by Plato. (Tr.) [62] On this general subject consult the interesting though somewhat general article by Professor John Dewey, "The Interpretation of the Savage Mind," in the _Psychological Review_, May, 1903. The author justly criticises the current description of savages in negative terms, and contends that there is general misunderstanding of the true nature of the savage and of his activities. (Tr.) [63] It is now well accepted that Thales cannot be regarded as propounding a materialistic theory when he declares that everything is derived from water; for with him, "water" stands not merely for the substance that we call chemically "H2O," but for the "spirit that is in water" as well--the water-spirit is the _Grundprincip_. (Tr.) [64] Max Mueller, _op. cit._, 39, 47-48, 59-60. CHAPTER IV THE HIGHER FORMS OF INVENTION We now pass from primitive to civilized man, from collective to individual creation, the characters of which it remains for us to study as we find them in great inventors who exhibit them on a large scale. Fortunately, we may dismiss the treatment of the oft-discussed, never-solved problem of the psychological nature of genius. As we have already noted, there enter into its composition factors other than the creative imagination, although the latter is not the least among them. Besides, great men being exceptions, anomalies, or as the current expression has it, "spontaneous variations," we may ask _in limine_ whether their psychology is explicable by means of simple formulae, as with the average man, or whether even monographs teach us no more concerning their nature than general theories that are never applicable to all cases. Taking genius, then, as synonymous with great inventor, accepting it _de facto_ historically and psychologically, our task is limited to the attempt to separate characters that seem, from observation and experiment, to belong to it as peculiarly its own. Putting aside vague dissertations and dithyrambics in favor of theories with a scientific tendency as to the nature of genius, we meet first the one attributing to it a pathological origin. Hinted at in antiquity (Aristotle, Seneca, etc.), suggested in the oft-expressed comparison between inspiration and insanity, it has reached, as we know--through timid, reserved, and partial statements (Lelut)--its complete expression in the famous formula of Moreau de Tours, "Genius is a neurosis."