.4-J! .- 



HUMAN CREATIONS 



Marvelous is each living being in the use it makes of its structures and adjustments. 

 The eagle and the hummingbird and the horse go as high and as far and as fast 

 as their bodies permit. Man alone of all living things has vied v/ith the gods in creat- 

 ing out of what he finds at hand new combinations of use and beauty and power, 

 of delicacy and grandeur. Of all animals, man alone makes his dreams come true 



and then combine the elements in new ways. We thus use past experiences 

 in a way that no other Hving being can. 



Creativity A dog will play with a stick, or a cat with a ball of yarn. 

 Young children pile up blocks or put together bits of glass or wood. They 

 try now one arrangement, now another. The various kinds of play may 

 appear very much alike. Yet in children this kind of play includes the be- 

 ginning of what we may call creative activity. For presently we see the 

 child's play go beyond the mere handling of things. 



In his imagination the child can abstract, or remove, the red of a cherry 

 and place it on a piece of paper. One can remove (in imagination) the 

 wings of an eagle and attach them to the shoulders of a horse or perhaps 

 of a human being. Was it not by some such act that man eventually arose 

 from the earth and soared into the sky? 



We take for granted the bridges and wings that man has created to 

 carry him across the chasms that would stop him in his wanderings. We 

 take for granted the artificial caves that man has made for shelter. With 

 his imagining and abstracting man has been creating new kinds of materials 

 that nature never made, even new kinds of plants and new kinds of ani- 

 mals — actually 7iew species (set pages 496-501). In recent times he has 

 been trying to change himself over to meet his idea of what is good — 

 not merely applying cosmetics and surface ornaments, but changing the 



58 



