There was invention in this early story, and imagination also, altho not
so abundant. But as the author brooded over the incidents of Mowgli's
babyhood there in the thick of the forest, in the midst of the beasts,
whose blood-brother he became, suddenly his imagination revealed to him
that the jungle and all its inhabitants must be governed by law, or else
it was a realm of chaos. It is this portrayal of wild life subject to an
immitigable code which gives its sustaining moral to the narrative of
Mowgli's career. As Mr. Kipling said to me once, "When I had found the
Law of the Jungle the rest was easy!" For him it may have been easy,
since his invention is ever fresh and fertile; but the finding of the
Law of the Jungle--that transcended mere invention with all its
multiplied ingenuities--that was a stroke of imagination.

This distinction between imagination and invention may not be as
important as that between imagination and fancy urged by Wordsworth a
century ago; and no doubt there is always danger in any undue
insistence upon catchwords, which are often empty of meaning, and which
are sometimes employed to convey a misleading suggestion. This
distinction has its own importance, however, and it is not empty or
misleading. It needs to be accepted in art as it has been accepted in
science, in which domain a fertile discovery is recognized as possible
only to the imagination, while a specific device is spoken of as an
invention. Newton and Darwin were discoverers by their possession of
imagination; whereas the telegraph and the telephone are to be credited
to humbler inventors, making application of principles already
discovered.

This opening century of ours is an era of extraordinary dexterity and of
wide-spread cleverness, and we need to be put on our guard against the