of pure construction.
The natural equilibrium between the three necessary elements of
creation--mobility, combination of images, calculation--is destroyed.
The rational element gives way, is obliterated, and the speculator is
launched into adventure with the possibility of a dazzling success or
astounding catastrophe. But let us note well that the primary and sole
cause of this change is in the affective and motor element, in an
hypertrophy of the lust for power, in an unmeasured and morbid want of
expansion of self. Here, as everywhere, the source of invention is the
emotional nature of the inventor.

(2) A second special character of commercial imagination is the
exclusive employment of schematic representations. Although this process
is also met with in the sciences and especially in social inventions,
the imaginative type that we are now considering has the privilege of
using them without exception. This, then, is the proper moment for a
description.

By "schematic images" I mean those that are, by their very nature,
intermediate between the concrete image and the pure concept, but
approach more nearly the concept. We have already pointed out very
different kinds of representations--concrete images, material pertaining
to plastic and mechanical imagination; the emotional abstractions of the
diffluent imagination; affective images, the type of which is found in
musicians; symbolic images, familiar in mystics. It may seem improper to
add another class to this list, but it is not a meaningless subtlety.
Indeed, there are no images in general that, according to the ordinary
conception, would be copies of reality. Even their separation into
visual, auditory, motor, etc., is not sufficient, because it
distinguishes them only with regard to their _origin_. There are other
differences. We have seen that the image, like everything living,
undergoes corrosions, damages, twisting, and transformation: whence it
comes about that this remainder of former impressions varies according
to its composition, i.e., in simplicity, complexity, grouping of its
constitutive elements, etc., and takes on many aspects. On the other
hand, as the difference between the chief types of creative imagination
depends in part on the materials employed--on the nature of the images
that serve in mental building--a precise determination of the nature of
the images belonging to each type is not an idle operation.

In order to clearly explain what we me