t discover its true direction at
the outset; it imitated while trying to invent. What has been said above
concerning the chronological development of the imagination would be
tiresome repetition. The need of creating followed from the first the
line of least resistance, where it found certain materials ready to
hand. But in order to arrive to full consciousness of itself it needed
more time, more knowledge, more accumulated experience.

We might here ask whether the contrary case is also met with; i.e.,
where the imagination, in this third period, would return to the
inclinations of the first period. This regressive metamorphosis--for I
cannot style it otherwise--is rare but not without examples. Ordinarily
the creative imagination, when it has passed its adult stage, becomes
attenuated by slow atrophy without undergoing serious change of form.
Nevertheless, I am able to cite the case of a well-known scholar who
began with a taste for art, especially plastic art, went over rapidly
to literature, devoted his life to biologic studies, in which he gained
a very deserved reputation; then, in turn, became totally disgusted with
scientific research, came back to literature and finally to the arts,
which have entirely monopolized him.

Finally--for there are very many forms--in some the imagination, though
strong, scarcely passes beyond the first stage, always retains its
youthful, almost childish form, hardly modified by a minimum of
rationality. Let us note that it is not a question here of the
characteristic ingenuousness of some inventors, which has caused them to
be called "grown-up children," but of the candor and inherent simplicity
of the imagination itself. This exceptional form is hardly reconcilable
except with esthetic creation. Let us add the mystic imagination. It
could furnish examples, less in its religious conceptions, which are
without control, than in its reveries of a scientific turn. Contemporary
mystics have invented adaptations of the world that take us back to the
mythology of early times. This prolonged childhood of the imagination,
which is, in a word, an anomaly, produces curiosities rather than
lasting works.

At this third period in the development of the imagination appears a
second, subsidiary law, that of _increasing complexity_; it follows a
progressive line from the simple to the complex. Indeed, it is not,
strictly speaking, a law of the imagination but of the rational
development exerting