ust be for the pebbles in the causeway to lie
still and only see what was round about. When I walked out with a basket
for putting flowers in, I used sometimes to pick up a pebble or two and
carry them out to have a change."

Let us stop a moment in order to try to determine the nature of this
strange mental state, all the more as we shall meet it again in
primitive man, and since it presents the creative imagination at its
beginning.

a. The first element is a fixed idea, or rather, an image, or group of
images, that takes possession of consciousness to the exclusion of
everything else:--it is the analogue of the state of suggestion in the
hypnotized subject, with this sole difference--that the suggestion does
not come from without, from another, but from the child itself--it is
auto-suggestion. The stick that the child holds between his legs becomes
for him an imaginary steed. The poverty of his mental development makes
all the easier this contraction of the field of his consciousness, which
assures the supremacy of the image.

b. This has as its basis a reality that it includes. This is an
important detail to note, because this reality, however tiny, gives
objectivity to the imaginary creation and incorporates it with the
external world. The mechanism is like that which produces illusion, but
with a stable character excluding correction. The child transforms a bit
of wood or paper into another self, because he perceives only the
phantom he has created; that is, the images, not the material exciting
them, haunt his brain.

c. Lastly, this creative power investing the image with all its
attributes of real existence is derived from a fundamental fact--the
state of belief, i.e., adherence of the mind founded on purely
subjective conditions. It does not come within my province to treat
incidentally such a large question. Neglected by the older physiology,
whose faculty-method inclined it toward this omission, belief or faith
has recently become the object of numerous studies.[41] I necessarily
limit myself to remarking that but for this psychic state, the nature of
the imagination is totally incomprehensible. The peculiarity of the
imagination is the production of a reality of human origin, and it
succeeds therein only because of the faith accompanying the image.

Representation and belief are not completely separated; it is the nature
of the image to appear at first as a real object. This psychological
truth, thoug