The Essence of Creativity
THE subject of this book is the power which our minds possess of bringing something out of nothing. It is this 'creative power which has produced poetry and the fine arts, the dis- coveries of physieal science; the systems of speculative philosophy—in a word, all those achievements of our species for the sake of .which a- deity outraged by our folly and cruelty might still permit us to .continue. The problem which the exercise of this power presents is obvious. Do we, when we create, really bring something out of nothing ? If so, why don't we bring what we please, when we please ? Or do we merely copy what is there, in which case why is it so much more thrilling when copied than when just there ?
Or consider the process whereby we set out to seek and find new knowledge. Either we know already what we want to know, or we do not. In the first event the know- ledge is not new ; in the second, not knowing what it is that we want to find out, we cannot know when we have found it. It was primarily this difficulty which led Plato to his theory of knowledge as recognition. According to this view there is no new knowledge, for there is a sense in which we have always known everything.
For Professor Spearman, however, knowledge may be new ; mind, in other words, is really creative ; but, he holds, the clue to its creativity in art and invention must be sought in the ordinary processes of knowing which we perform in everyday life ; for these, too, are creative. Accordingly, Professor Spearman investigates the nature of the principles which govern the process, whatever it is, that occur whenever we know something. He enumerates eight principles, three qualitative and five quantitative, and finds the germ of the mind's creativity in its ability, in a case in which some- thing (x) is present to the mind in a certain relation to supply something else (y) in the same relation. Here is his "statement of the theory " On some previous occasion a and b have been known to possess the relation r. There- after by transferring r .to a', which is different from a, the mind can evoke b', which is not only different from b, bUt appears capable of transcending all existence, known, real Or even possible." This sounds forbidding, but, like so many psychological principles, is simply a putting into precise and technical language of something which we already know. If, for example, I know that a train (a) leaves Paddington (b) at 4.30 (relation r), I can then think of a train a' leaving Waterloo b' at 4.30, although no such train exists. In other words, I have mentally created the Waterloo train. It is in this process, which he calls "Noe-genesis," that for Professor Spearman the essence of creativity lies, and he proceeds to apply it to an interpretation of the facts of artistic creation and appreciation.
The treatment here is, perhaps, inevitably superficial, inevitably, because it may be doubted whether the peculiar kind of creativity which results in great art is completely interpretable in terms of psychology.
Professor Spearman writes sensibly enough of the functions of repetition, variety, exaggeration, emotional power in art, and of the artist's manner or style ; but too much of what he says is at the level of " the principle of retentivity which demands repetition must be supplemented by the principle of fatigue which requires variety," or, in other words, pictures must not be too monotonous or they become boring. Even when translated into psychological language the consideration is not impressive.
Professor Spearman later applies his doctrine of " Noe- genesis " to the mind's creation of unrealities in dreams, hallucinations and delusions, and to the case of scientific invention. In a final chapter lie treats of " The Greatest Creation of All," that is, the creation of the familiar world of everyday life. The issues here raised are philosophical. Professor Spearman's treatment seems to suggest Solipsism, or the view that we only know our own mental states, and refers those who really wish to believe that the Universe contains something other than themselves to Dr. Aveling's works for comfort. This is a pleasant, sensible sort of book which covers a good deal of ground, but the profundities are, perhaps, almost too elaborately eschewed.
C. E. M. JoAo.
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