From our Magic Words outpost at Blogger:

"'Creation,' like 'creative,' is one of those hypnotic words which are prone to cast a spell upon the understanding and dissolve our thinking into a haze.  And out of this nebulous state of the intellect springs a strange but widely prevalent idea.  The shaping spirit of imagination sits aloof, like God as he is commonly conceived, creating in some thaumaturgic fashion out of nothing its visionary world.  That and that only is deemed to be 'originality'—that, and not the imperial moulding of old matter into imperishably new forms.  The ways of creation are wrapt in mystery; we may only marvel, and bow the head."  —John Livingston Lowes, The Road to Xanadu, 1927