little of that anonymous collaboration the highest expression of which, as we have seen, is the mythic activity. By way of summary, and whatever be the causes, we may say that there is a universal tendency in all living matter toward variation, whether we consider vegetables, animals, or the physical and mental man. The need of innovating is only a special case, rare in the lower races, frequent in the higher. This tendency toward variation is fundamental or superficial: As fundamental, it corresponds to genius, and survives through processes analogous to natural selection, i.e., by its own power. As superficial, it corresponds to talent, survives and prospers chiefly through the help of circumstances and environment. Here, the orientation comes from without, not from within. According as the spirit of the time inclines rather to poetry or painting, or music, or scientific research, or industry, or military art, minds of the second order are dragged into the current--showing that a goodly part of their power is in the aptness, not for invention, but for _imitation_. IV The determination of the characters belonging to the inventive genius has necessitated some seemingly irrelevant remarks on the action of the environment. Let us return to invention, strictly so-called. For inventing there is always required a natural aptitude, sometimes, a happy chance. The natural disposition should be accepted as a fact. Why does a man create? Because he is capable of forming new combinations of ideas. However naive this answer may be, there is no other. The only thing possible, is the determination of the conditions necessary and sufficient for producing novel combinations: this has been done in the first part of this book, and there is no occasion for going over it again. But there is another aspect in creative work to be considered--its psychological _mechanism_, and the form of its development. Every normal person creates little or much. He may, in his ignorance, invent what has been already done a thousand times. Even if this is not a creation as regards the species, it is none the less such for the individual. It is wrong to say, as has been said, that an invention "is a new and important idea." _Novelty_ only is essential--that is the psychological mark: importance and utility are accessory, merely social marks. Invention is thus unduly limited when we attribute it to great inventors only. At this moment, however, we are concerned only with these, and in them the mechanism of invention is easier to study.