have provided the pathological theory with most of its facts. It
would perhaps be necessary to recognize distinctions between the various
forms of invention. They require very different organic and psychic
conditions in order that some may profit by morbid dispositions that are
far from useful to others. This point should deserve a special study
never made hitherto.

I

We shall reduce to three the characters ordinarily met in most great
inventors. No one of them is without exception.

1. _Precocity_, which is reducible to innateness. The natural bent
becomes manifest as soon as circumstances allow--it is the sign of the
true vocation. The story is the same in all cases: at one moment the
flash occurs; but this is not as frequent as is supposed. False
vocations abound. If we deduct those attracted through imitation,
environmental influence, exhortations and advice, chance, the attraction
of immediate gain, aversion to a career imposed from without which they
shun and adoption of an opposite one, will there remain many natural and
irresistible vocations?

We have seen above that[65] the passage from reproductive to
constructive imagination takes place toward the end of the third year.
According to some authors, this initial period should be followed by a
depression about the fifth year; thenceforward the upward progress is
continuous. But the creative faculty, from its nature and content,
develops in a very clear, chronological order. Music, plastic arts,
poetry, mechanical invention, scientific imagination--such is the usual
order of appearance.

In music, with the exception of a few child-prodigies, we hardly find
personal creation before the age of twelve or thirteen. As examples of
precocity may be cited: Mozart, at the age of three; Mendelssohn, five;
Haydn, four; Handel, twelve; Weber, twelve; Schubert, eleven; Cherubini,
thirteen; and many others. Those late in developing--Beethoven, Wagner,
etc.--are fewer by far.[66]

In the plastic arts, vocation and creative aptitude are shown
perceptibly later, on the average about the fourteenth year: Giotto, at
ten; Van Dyck, ten; Raphael, eight; Guerchin, eight; Greuze, eight;
Michaelangelo, thirteen; Albrecht Duerer, fifteen; Bernini, twelve;
Rubens and Jordaens being also precocious.

In poetry we find no work having any individual character before
sixteen. Chatterton died at that age, perhaps the only example of so
young a poet leaving any reputation. Schill