HEAD OFFICE: MONTREAL, FEBRUARY 1953

THE CREATIVE URGE

BUSINESS has progressed and the material needsof people have been met because men and womenwere obsessed by a creative urge.

Behind material civilization are initiative, enter-prise, the impulse to make things, to improve things,and to move forward. Progress is the result of inven-tiveness, and behind inventiveness is imagination, aspecial quality of the human race.

Every method we use in production of goods, indistribution and in selling, was at some time or othernew to the world. To put them into use there had tobe daring men and women, people who saw visionsand attacked problems with ferocious determination.

Theirs were creative efforts, whether they werebuilding businesses or bridges, inventing mechanicaldevices or discovering elements, writing books orcomposing poems, sculpturing statues or paintingpictures or erecting great buildings. In whatever stateof civilization he has lived in all ages, man has had thecreative urge, to put into form in word, colour, sound,or stone and steel, thoughts and ideals and aspirationsthat were in him.

All individuals are not equally creative. Some do notreplace old expectancies with new ones year by year.But the great new forms of democracy and indus-trialism were evoked by the creative work of thosewho saw life not as a having and a resting but as agrowing and a becoming.

It is not necessary to think of creativeness on a highintellectual plane. The man engaged in some plasticart finds the physical handling of materials a sheerjoy -- the shaping of wood or pottery or plastic ormetal into graceful or useful form, the cutting andsewing and embroidering of fabrics into clothing orslip covers or drapes: no matter how lowly his posi-tion in the social world, the man who realizes thathe is making things is rich in experience.

Creativeness in Business

New methods, invention, and discovery have playeda constant part in the rapid development of productionand distribution of commodities. Old theories have

been abandoned for new ideas. Both business andscience realize that there are no final truths in materialcivilization. The building of a new business or of anew type of business organization exhibits creative-ness of a high order.

Wagner and Leonardo da Vinci and Edison andEaton all had this in common: each one had made anotion that was new to his time and place a funda-mental part of his thinking power.

Had these men believed the adage "You can’t makea silk purse out of a sow’s ear" then Wagner wouldnot have stirred generations of people by his greatoperas, Leonardo would not have delighted andpuzzled four centuries of people with his "MonaLisa" or inspired them with his "The Last Supper"or set so fast a pace with his excursions into mathe-matics, engineering, and architecture; Edison wouldnever have attempted to bring light out of the end of acouple of wires, and Eaton would not have introducedthe cash sale principle of economical merchandisinginto the retail business.

The power and tendency to move of themselves,instead of waiting at a dockside for a tug to pull orpush them are evidences that today’s progressivebusiness men have creative minds. They will notallow their initiative to be strangled by a noose ofred tape nor will they be stopped by signs erected bywell-meaning people: "No thoroughfare: it can’t bedone."

Initiative -- getting things started m is an importantpart of creativeness. Doing, even if what is done turnsout to be unsuccessful, is the way of the creative man,rather than spending time wondering what to do. Aman who sees a dozen possibilities in a landscape, ina business situation, in a natural resource, or in apolitical or social situation, but who has not the initia-tive to act on any one of them, is not creative.

Adventure in Creation

The people who are frequently bored, and find lifewearisome, are people who have not realized the joy

of devising and making things. They are the peoplefor whom commercial methods of kiUing time havebecome big business.

The others, the unboreable, know that life evolvesby being exposed, not by being protected. They arenot afraid to try something that is not in the book ofrules. Fish colonised the land, not because they werepushed out of the sea, but by. a sort of imaginativevital force akin to our own inventive and creativedrive.

That is the spirit of progressive business: addingaction and work to ideas. The Duke of Edinburgh saidin a speech to British business men: "If we are to re-cover prosperity, we shall have to find ways of emanci-pating energy and enterprise from the frustrating con-trol of constitutionally timid ignoramuses."

The adventure into creative thought and action leadsto constructiveness. First, a man has an idea thatseems like something from a fairy tale, requiringmagic for its making. Then he pictures his idea asreality, and devotes his mind and effort to thoughtand work to make it come true.

The creative person is not aimless. His brain hasnot calcified, but is living, flexible, and able to modifyitself so as to accommodate new thoughts and giveexpression to them. Dr. H. Stafford Hatfield, the dis-tinguished British scientist (he was one of the selectfew taken by the Admiralty into the Back Room duringthe war) puts this point in a picturesque way. Hesays in his Pelican book The Inventor and His Worldthat craft afloat on a river are of two kinds, those withmeans of propulsion and the lighters which must betowed. Then he goes on: "Mankind is divided intothe same two classes, except that a considerable p.er-centage of human lighters possesses engines rustingfrom lack of use, but often capable, when rocks andrapids are sighted in the tideway, of being started upand averting shipwreck."

There is no automatic force in the nature of thingswhich will carry us forward irrespective of our ownefforts. Active thinking has been one of the strongestforces in bringing man to his present position ofsupremacy in the scale of animal life.

First came man’s effort to improve his physical en-vironment, then to improve intellectually, and finallyto improve emotionally and spiritually. He has re-peatedly broken with the pattern of the past, seekinga better way, instead of the customary way, of doingthings. Churchill remarked with confusing logic:"There is nothing wrong in change, if it is in the rightdirection."

Natural Endowment

Creativeness is a personal but not a private thing.It requires communication to other people.

No amount of musical education will enable a per-son who is not endowed with creativeness to com-pose a single original melody, and no .quantity ofbusiness schooling will help the uncreatlve man in

business to build commercial success. Without facilityin expression and a knowledge of the techniques inovolved, a man may have great tunes playing in his heador great business opportunities at his fingertips, buthe cannot become a creative person.

This is far from saying that techniques alone willproduce music or big business, but they do enablethe creative person to break the new ground he seeslying fallow.

Creativeness and invention are not merely adaptingthings to new uses. In inventing, man the thinkercombines scraps of his knowledge of nature to formsome new substance or object that previously did notexist, or to formulate a principle in some hithertochaotic area.

Creation is not by chance. If all Shakespeare’s wordswere written on pieces of paper and put into a lotterydrum, and drawn one by one, it is possible, but ex-tremely improbable, that they might yield a sonnet ora play better than he ever wrote.

The scientist does not create the facts which hediscovers, any more than the business man createsthe state of the world in which he does business. Butevery important step in science or in business involvesthe creation of the means of discovery. A man mustmake a hypothesis to be his guide, and conduct ex-periments to test it. There must be an idea, and anurge to make the idea come true.

Given that, the act of creation may proceed by littleand by little. "I can compile a whole dictionary bywriting two pages a day, or paint my fresco by concen-trating on 4 square inches of it at a time," said ErnestDimnet, French abb6 and author. All valuable pro-cesses in physics and chemistry started with smalllaboratory experiments.

Poesy and Preparation

The creative urge comes to a man from all over theplace, from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap ofpaper, from a snatch of conversation. Then he strivesto unload himself of the vision he has seen. The great-est works of art and the most magnificent achieve-ments of men in practical affairs have arisen fromexperiences in everyday life amid everyday people.

It is probably disastrous, in whatever sphere of lifeone moves, not to be a poet, not to be receptive to theradiance of inspiration that gleams at some time on thedullest existence.

The imaginative aboriginal never built a hut butit was the visible embodiment of a thought of his, anymore than the writer of a book or a poem or an essaycan produce a line of writing without an outpouringof something that is within himself m not merely theflow of ink on paper.

From poet to business man may seem to some to bea far reach, but the same principles apply. Only ourworks can reveal to us and to others the self-conscious-ness that dwells in us and render it articulate.

But both poet and man-of-affairs need nourishment.Superiority in creative ability is not accidental; itrests upon a solid basis of preparation. Variety of lifeis important to the person with an originative mind.All our great advancement industrially has been pre-ceded by our increase in natural knowledge. Withoutwide experience, our creation will be limited.

No one can construct something out of nothing.Creative thoughts do not come at random: they pro-ceed by a law of association which enables us to uniteformer images with our ideas and thus create novelresults.

The wise man, whether writer or office manager,factory worker or painter, makes sure that his imagina-tion receives plenty of material. Its storehouse mustbe kept filled. Then, under the influence of creativeexcitement, that material will be brought out andamalgamated with new thoughts to produce some-thing that is unique.

Somerset Maugham commented on this point: "Theauthor does not only write when he is at his desk; hewrites all day long, when he is thinking, when he isreading, when he is experiencing; everything he seesand feels is significant to this purpose.., he is foreverstoring and making over his impressions."

This is good advice to men in industry, to teachers,to women in the home: to everyone who is not contentto stand still.

On Trying Again

Creative work has this in its favour: when it goeswell the work is pure delight, and when the taskbecomes hard the holder of the whip is still oneself.

The person urged on by the creative impulse soonfinds virtue in the discipline of finishing what hestarts. Careers have begun briUiantly, but ended likestarshells, bright but unlasting. Loss of interest ordifficulty of achievement kill off the efforts of thosewho are insufficiently inspired.

To the inspired person, being licked is all part ofthe game, and the experience is counted toward finalvictory. Even a genuine accomplishment is not ac-cepted by the creatlve-minded person as a finality,but as something enclosing a jewel for future finding.It is the search that counts, not the finding.

William Bolitho, author of Twelve Against the Gods,put it cogently when he said: "The most importantthing in life is not to capitalize on your gains. Anyfool can do that. The really important thing is toprofit from your losses. That requires intelligence;and it makes the difference between a man of senseand a fool."

Success in any field of human endeavour is a historyof recommencements. Every great canvas has the storybehind it of innumerable sketches and trials, of studyand disappointment. The thing is for the man with acreative idea to keep putting it back on the easel.

Victories in the arena of creative endeavour willprepare us to cope with the unexpected and the un-predictable in life. We learn to discard innumerable

details, to reorganize the elements, and to extractfrom a situation what is essential to our creativepurpose.

Imagination

To discriminate properly, one needs imagination.The most degrading poverty is poverty of the imagina-tion, because without it there can be only animal-likeor mechanical recording of sensations conveyed bythe senses.

Imagination is the difference between creative androutine living.

But imagination, the spark plug of creative activity,needs to be dominated by reason -- at least, it mustnever wholly escape from it. Constructive imaginationhas a definite and even vital place in human life. It isimagination with a purpose, imagination that is selec-tive, imagination which is aided by the thinkingpower.

In the first volume of the Alexander HamiltonModern Business library it is said: "No man of feebleimagination ever achieved real success in business.By imagination is meant the mind’s ability to recallpast experiences m sensations, emotions, feelings,perceptions m and to cause them to reappear in theconsciousness in infinite variety."

We have not yet developed into a sort of purelylogical animal. We have within us a whole regionwhich responds to some different appeal, which ispreparing for the surprises of the future. Planning forthat future, how we may convert chaos into order inour own lives or in the lives of others, is in itself acreative act, part and parcel of the accomplishment.

There is no time limit to this activity, because we arealways at the beginning of a new period. Aristotle,who flourished in Greece around 350 B.C., is creditedwith the first organized scientific inquiry in the world.He had 1,000 men collecting material for his naturalhistory. But still the search goes on, with more thou-sands than ever before probing the secrets of the earthin physics and chemistry, the secrets of stars it wouldtake years to reach at the speed of light, the secrets ofthe human mind, and mysteries unthought of byAristotle and so unknown to him.

Neither is there a special time in history allottedto each discovery and invention. Galileo droppedheavy bodies from the top of the leaning tower ofPisa, and demonstrated that bodies of differentweight if released together would reach the earthtogether. So far as experimental skill and delicacy ofapparatus were concerned, this experiment could havebeen made anytime within the preceding five thousandyears. But no one thought to do it.

Ideals and Achievement

What sustains the creative person in the fine arts orin the practical arts is an ideal, a vision, a sense ofwhat might be. Modern plumbing has been of littlevalue in solving mankind’s real problems, but thespirit that begat it is the only spirit that holds out hope,in a material way, of reaching solutions.

While today’s world may have lost belief in idealconceptions, it remains true that every man’s idealis the highest product of which his imagination iscapable. So long as he can conceive new ideas in art,in plumbing, in manufacture, in literature, in distribu-tion, or in any other intellectual or practical sphere ofhuman life and hope, even if the ideals are not imme-diately attainable, man is a creative being.

Every achievement is first of all an idea; every visiblesuccess is first of all an invisible thought. It is the ex-pression of an idea in the life men lead that satisfiestheir cravings. By it they are inspired to furtherthoughts and actions: reaching a goal of finished ac-complishment would only mean entering upon a lifeof mindless action.

This is well illustrated by a scene in James Hilton’sLost Horizon. When the plane-wrecked party topped themountain pass, there was spread before them a mar-vellous view, with the monastery snuggling on theslope of the Valley of the Blue Moon. The hero of thestory, Conway, felt that he had reached at last someplace that was an end, a finality.

But Conway found that it was not a finality. At thelamasery he learned that they were collecting theart and literary treasures of the world. The High Lamahoped that when the passions of men had spent them-selves in futile strife the world would find preservedthere all the culture it had discarded. Even Shangri-Lais an unfinished story.

Inspiration

Much is made in talk about creative work of theword "inspiration." Perhaps inspiration is not alto-gether intuition. It may be the ability to seize and ex-press an inrush of thought. What comes to a creativeman with baffling altogetherness has to be spread outin sequence and put into words and actions.

The something that comes may come from far away,beyond conscious thinking. It may be great in itself,but it will remain only an unshaped kind of somethinguntil it is given worthy expression through a creativeprocess.

To give it expression may be hard work and painful.George Sand said Chopin’s inspiration was miracu-lous, coming on his piano suddenly complete orsinging in his head during a walk, but afterwards¯ be an the most heartrending labour I ever saw Itg . ¯ ."was a series of efforts, of Irresolutions, and of frettmgsto seize again certain details of the theme he had heard.Chopin would shut himself up in his room for wholedays writing, walking, breaking h!s pens, repeatingand altering a bar a hundred times.

Perhaps the way to become inspired is to gather allpossible data and add one’s own ideas, experiencesand memories, and then move them about until onefeels the "click", the spark, that gives the sensation:"That’s it!"

This is as close as we can come to the essence ofcreative achievement. Dr. Hatfield pictures it this way:"We need a mind possessing very fully the aptitudefor a certain general notion. Moving along the high-way of established method, it comes across a hole, a

bad spot. The journey is interrupted, and the defi-ciency is examined in all its bearings with the mostintense interest. And then, out of the depths of theunconscious mind comes a suggestion, a vision, of anew form."

When is the time of life for creative activity? No onecan say with surety that youth or age is preferred. Oneof the factors is a common requirement whatever theage of the participant: work. Idleness is incompatiblewith creation. Creation is over-work. The steadygrind of a seven or eight hour day simply does notproduce it. It needs sweating and worrying.

One thing is certain: the impulse to create must beseized at the vital moment of its appearance. The rayof sunshine is on that bough for only this point intime, the leaves are a shower of silver pieces, perhapsfor the last time this summer, the weather may changetomorrow, the inclination of the sun will have changedin a week: to the landscape artist these things meanthat now is the only time, for things will never bequite the same again.

It is no different in other fields of creative effort.The work may go in a humdrum way for days or weekswith black days of complete unproductiveness anddiscouragement: but when the desire and the idea arethere the creatively-minded man must seize themoment and persevere to completion of his idea.

Qualities/or Creativeness

The creative person combines several qualities. Hemust be in love with progress generally and in somespecific field of activity. This does not mean merelyan eager-beaver effort to construct things, but faithin the values that lie behind progress.

He needs a thorough grasp of the fundamental factsin the special field in which he is to exercise hiscreative powers, sufficient education to understandthe principles, and imagination to see the hithertohidden possibilities.

It will help the creative person if he cultivatesability to look at his environment and his work ob-iectively, so that he can consider without heat andbias the pros and cons of a problem and its solution.In all but his own specialty (where he will be contentto stand alone) he will conserve his energy by con-forming to custom and accepting the judgment ofother specialists.

Creative activity is an antidote for escapism. It leadsa man away from trash into a search for truth. It causesdiscontent, it is true, discontent with present per-formance in machinery, in art and in business practices,but this is accompanied by a vision of achieving some-thing better.

There are three aspects of the creative urge: dream-ing of something that might be better than what wenow have; imagining how it is to be brought aboutand planning how to do it; and work. The way tomake the creative urge effective in life is to combinethese three basic things with patience, persistence andendurance.

This is still the sort of world where a good idea,properly developed, can go places.

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