THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION
[Sidenote: _The Process of Creative Imagination_]
There is another type of imagination from the purely reproductive
memory imagination of which we have been speaking in this book.
There is also Creative Imagination.
Creative Imagination is more than mere memory. It takes the
elements of the past as reproduced by memory and rearranges
them. It forms new combinations out of the material of the
past. It forms new combinations of ideas, emotions and their
accompanying impulses to muscular activity, the elements of
mental "complexes." It recombines these elements into new and
original mental pictures, the creations of the inventive mind.
[Sidenote: _Business and Financial Imagination_]
No particular profession or pursuit has a monopoly of creative
imagination. It is not the exclusive property of the poet, the
artist, the inventor, the philosopher. We tell you this because
you have heard all your life of the poetic imagination, the
artistic imagination, and so on, but it is rare indeed that you
have heard mention of the business imagination.
The fact is no man can succeed in any pursuit unless he has a
creative imagination. Without creative imagination the human race
would still be living in caves. Without creative imagination
there would be no ships, no engines, no automobiles, no
corporations, no systems, no plans, no business. Nothing exists
in all the world that had not a previous counterpart in the mind
of him who designed it. And back of all is the creative mind of
God.
[Sidenote: _How Wealth is Created_]
Mind is supreme. Mind shapes and controls matter. Every concrete
thing in the world is the product of a thinking consciousness.
The richly tinted canvas is the physical expression of the
artist's dream. The great factory, with its whirling mechanisms
and glowing furnaces, is the material manifestation of the
promoter's financial imagination. The jeweled ornament, the book,
the steamship, the office building, all are but concrete
realizations of human thought molded out of formless matter.
Mind, finite and infinite, is eternally creative and creating in
the organization of formless matter and material forces into
concrete realities.
[Sidenote: _The Klamath Philosophy_]
Says Max Mueller in his "Psychological Religion": "The Klamaths,
one of the Red Indian tribes, believe in a Supreme God whom they
call 'The Most Ancient One,' 'Our Old Father,' or 'The Old One on
High.' He is believed to have created the world--that is, to have
made plants, animals and man. But when asked how the Old Father
created the world, the Klamath philosopher replies: _'By thinking
and willing.'"_
[Sidenote: _How Men Get Things_]
We get what we desire because the things we desire are the
things we think about. Love begets love. The man who is looking
for trouble generally finds it. Despair is the forerunner of
disaster, and fear brings failure, because despair and fear are
the emotional elements attendant upon thoughts of defeat.
Behind every thing and every act is, and always has been,
thought--thought of sufficient intensity to shape and fashion the
physical event.
Mind, and mind alone, possesses the inscrutable power to create.
Your career is ordered by the thoughts you entertain. Mental
pictures tend to accomplish their own realization. Therefore, be
careful to hold only those thoughts that will build up rather
than tear down the structure of your fortunes.
[Sidenote: _Prerequisites to Achievement_]
Creative imagination is an absolute prerequisite to material
achievement.
The business man must scheme and plan and devise and foresee. He
must create in imagination today the results that he is to
achieve tomorrow. He must combine the elements of his past
experiential complexes into a mental picture of future events as
he would have them. Riches are but the material realization of a
financial imagination. The wealth of the world is but the sum
total of the contributions of the creative thoughts of the
successful men of all ages.
[Sidenote: _How to Take Radical Steps in Business_]
With these principles before you, you can plainly see that the
_creative imagination must be called upon in the solution of
every practical question in every hour of the business day._
Consider its part in two phases of your business life--first,
when you are contemplating a radical change in your business
situation; second, when you are seeking to improve some
particular department of your business.
[Sidenote: _How to Take Radical Steps in Business_]
In the determination of how best you can better yourself, either
in your present field of action or by the selection of a new one,
take the following steps: (1) Pass in review before the mind's
eye your present situation; (2) Your possible ways of betterment;
(3) The various circumstances and individuals that will aid in
this or that line of self-advancement; (4) The difficulties that
may confront you. Having selected your field, (5) Consider
various possible plans of action; (6) Have prevision of their
working out; (7) Compare the ultimate results as you foresee
them; (8) Decide upon the one most promising, and then with this
plan as a foundation for further imaginings, (9) Once more call
before you the elements that will contribute to success; (10) See
the possible locations for your new place of business and choose
among them; (11) Outline in detail the methods to be pursued in
getting and handling business; (12) See the different kinds of
employees and associates you will require, and select certain
classes as best suited to your needs; (13) Foresee possible
difficulties to be encountered and adjust your plans to meet
them; and, most important of all, (14) Have a clear and
persistent vision of yourself as a man of action, setting to work
upon your plan at a fixed hour and carrying it to a successful
issue within a given time.
[Sidenote: _The Expansion of Business Ideals_]
There is excellent practical psychology in the following from
"Thoughts on Business":
"Men often think of a position as being just about so big and no
bigger, when, as a matter of fact, a position is often what one
makes it. A man was making about $1,500 a year out of a certain
position and thought he was doing all that could be done to
advance the business. The employer thought otherwise, and gave
the place to another man who soon made the position worth $8,000
a year--at exactly the same commission.
[Sidenote: _Rising to the Emergency_]
"The difference was in the men--in other words, in what the two
men thought about the work. One had a little conception of what
the work should be, and the other had a big conception of it. One
thought little thoughts, and the other thought big thoughts.
"The standards of two men may differ, not especially because one
is naturally more capable than the other, but because one is
familiar with big things and the other is not. The time was when
the former worked in a smaller scope himself, but when he saw a
wider view of what his work might be he rose to the occasion and
became a bigger man. It is just as easy to think of a mountain as
to think of a hill--when you turn your mind to contemplate it.
The mind is like a rubber band--you can stretch it to fit almost
anything, but it draws in to a small scope when you let go.
[Sidenote: _The Constructive Imagination_]
"Make it your business to know what is the best that might be in
your line of work, and stretch your mind to conceive it, and then
devise some way to attain it.
[Sidenote: _Little Tasks and Big Tasks_]
"Big things are only little things put together. I was greatly
impressed with this fact one morning as I stood watching the
workmen erecting the steel framework for a tall office building.
A shrill whistle rang out as a signal, a man over at the engine
pulled a lever, a chain from the derrick was lowered, and the
whistle rang out again. A man stooped down and fastened the chain
around the center of a steel beam, stepped back and blew the
whistle once more. Again the lever was moved at the engine, and
the steel beam soared into the air up to the sixteenth story,
where it was made fast by little bolts.
"The entire structure, great as it was, towering far above all
the neighboring buildings, was made up of pieces of steel and
stone and wood, put together according to a plan. The plan was
first imagined, then penciled, then carefully drawn, and then
followed by the workmen. It was all a combination of little
things.
[Sidenote: _Working Up a Department_]
"It is encouraging to think of this when you are confronted by a
big task. Remember that it is only a group of little tasks, any
of which you can easily do. It is ignorance of this fact that
makes some men afraid to try."
Suppose, now, that instead of making a radical change in your
business situation, you are simply seeking to improve some
particular department of your business.
[Sidenote: _Imagination in Handling Employees_]
In commercial affairs men are the great means to money-making,
and efficient personal service the great key to prosperity. In
your dealings with employees do not be guided by the necessities
of the moment. Expediency is the poorest of all excuses for
action. Have regard not only for your own immediate needs, but
also for the welfare and future conduct of your employees. It is
part of the burden of the executive head that he must do the
forethinking not only for himself but for those under him.
Perhaps the man you have under observation for advancement to
some executive position has all the basic qualifications of
judicial sense, discrimination and attentiveness to details, but
you are uncertain whether he has enough imagination to devise new
ways and means of doing things and developing business in new
fields. If you wish to try a simple but very effective test along
this line, you can adopt the following standard psychological
experiment, which has been used at Harvard, Cornell and many
other colleges and schools.
[Sidenote: _How to Test an Employee's Imagination_]
Let fall a drop of ink on each of several pieces of white paper,
letterhead size. This will make irregular blotches of varying
forms. Let the subject be seated at a desk and ask him to write
briefly about what he sees in each blotched sheet, whether it be
an animal form suggested by the outline of the blot, or anything
else that comes into his mind while looking at the black spot.
The principle involved here is the same as that involved in
seeing pictures in a flickering log fire or having a vision of
past or future events by gazing into a crystal. In any of these
cases, it is not the blot, the fire or the crystal that produces
the vision, but the creative imagination that recombines old
elements into new forms. The number of images suggested to one by
certain standard forms of ink-blot when compared with established
results is a measure of his imaginative ability.
[Sidenote: _Imagination in Business Generally_]
In the choice of a location for your factory or store, you must
foresee its future traffic and transportation possibilities. In
passing upon a proposed advertisement you must get inside the
head of the man on the street and see it as he will see it. In
the purchase of your stock of goods you must gauge the trend of
popular taste and foresee the big demand. In your dealings with
creditors you must plan a course of action that will enable you
to settle the account to _your_ best interest at _their_
request. You must find a way to collect from your debtors and at
the same time hold their business. And so in a hundred thousand
different ways you are constantly required to use creative
thought in laying every stone in the structure of your fortune.
[Sidenote: _Imagination and Action_]
Do not understand us as saying that imagination, as the
term is popularly used, is all you need. There must be also
action, incessant, persistent. But _creative imagination,
in a psychological and scientific sense, begets action. Every
thought carries with it the impellent energy to effect its
realization._ Use your imagination in your business and the
action will take care of itself. Given imagination and action,
and you are sure to win.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
Removed duplicate sidenotes and adjusted placement of sidenotes.
The original book used asterisks as ellipses.
End of Project Gutenberg's Power of Mental Imagery, by Warren Hilton