ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the nature of imagination, 'die Phantasie', which is the most striking feature of the artistic world. The brilliant work of Y. Hirn on the origins of art is partly psychological, and partly sociological, as it employs modern psychological methods for a study of the art impulse, by means of ethnology and anthropology, the influence of external and social forces on the development of primitive art. Art itself occupies an intermediate position between language and myth, artistic production is a particular continuation of expressive movements, inasmuch as it fixes in permanent form what is transitory in gesture and speech. The imaginative representations of mythology originally constituted the most important content of art. The most characteristic feature of art itself is technique, 'la technique', in the wide sense of the word, in the sense that includes, as well as the orthodox and traditional technique of the individual arts, its improvement and modification in the hands of the original artist.
