Wilhelm Wundt, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The principle I call creative resultants — or creative synthesis, to use the shorter name — states that in all psychical combinations the product is not a mere sum of the separate elements that compose such combinations, but that it represents a new creation.1 This is the fundamental law governing the formal relation between components and their resultants across every level of mental life, from the simplest sensory fusion to the most complex act of volition.
What makes this more than a slogan is the precision with which it must be qualified. The new whole is genuinely new — its resulting qualities are not contained in the elements — and yet it is not arbitrary, not conjured from nothing.2 The general disposition of the product is formed by the elements themselves, so that no further components beyond those elements are necessary for its creation.1
The creation is lawful; the novelty is real. Both must be held together. Consider the spatial image that arises when light sensations of the retina fuse with the sensations of strain in the eye during its movements and adjustments.1 Those elements are the necessary and sufficient conditions for the spatial image; and yet the spatial image itself, as a unified perceptual whole, is something that was not contained in any of those elements taken separately.
Or take an act of volition formed under the pressure of several motives, some combating, some aiding one another: the act is the necessary creation of that motivational complex, and yet it is no mere sum of motive-elements — it is something new, connecting those elements into one united resultant.1 The interdependence of resultants and relations is equally essential to the principle.
Each change in the internal relations of the components modifies the constitution of the resultant in a corresponding manner.3 A melody is not the sum of its tones, but alter one relation among those tones and the whole resultant shifts; a complex aesthetic feeling is a resultant of the simpler aesthetic feelings bound to the different parts of a perception, determined precisely by their qualitative relations.3
You cannot explain the psychical value of a new creative compound without attending to the internal relations of its components, just as you cannot comprehend the peculiarity of those relations without taking into account their resulting influences.3 The clearest proof of the principle, and the one I return to most often, is the apperceptive combination — the logical process of thought as it is expressed in the combination of sentences in speech.3
A thought-content stands first as a whole in consciousness, not yet raised to clear apperception; then, in the act of expression, it is analyzed into parts set into grammatical relations with one another, and those relations are joined into a unified resultant by the logical arrangement itself. The whole precedes and exceeds the analysis; the analysis reveals relations that reconstitute the whole at a higher level of clarity.
And it is worth marking what this principle does to the compounds themselves. The attributes of psychical compounds are never limited to those of the elements that enter into them; new attributes, peculiar to the compounds themselves, always arise as a result of the combination.4 The systems of sensational qualities remain fixed no matter how many compounds arise from them, while the systems of affective qualities continually increase — because every new combination generates affective attributes that belonged to none of its parts.4
The mind, in combining, genuinely adds to the world it contains. This is why the associationist picture of the mind as a mechanism of linked ideas is insufficient. It accounts for contiguity and repetition; it cannot account for the fact that combination creates. Creative synthesis is not an ornament added to the psychology — it is the central law without which the higher mental life, from perception to reasoning to volition, remains unintelligible.
It attempts to state the fact that in all psychical combinations the product is not a mere sum of the separate elements that compose such combinations, but that it represents a new creation. But at the same time, the general disposition of this product is formed by the elements, so that further components are not necessary for its creation.An Introduction to Psychology
Thus in the light sensations of the retina, combined and fused with the sensations of strain in the eye in its movements and adjustments, are contained the essentials for the production of a given spatial image. At the same time this spatial image itself is something new, which as regards the resulting qualities is not contained in those elements.An Introduction to Psychology
We cannot explain the psychical value of new creative compounds without considering the internal relations of their components, just as we cannot comprehend the peculiarity of these relations without continually taking into account their resulting influences.An Introduction to Psychology
The attributes of psychical compounds are never limited to those of the elements that enter into them, but new attributes, peculiar to the compounds themselves, always arise as a result of the combination of these elements.Outlines of Psychology