exist at all. On the other hand, the visual imagery is, as a rule, much the most prominent, and the auditory, motor, and tactile follow in decreasing importance. There are, however, great individual differences of which teacher and public speaker must take account. These differences are partly native, but defects in imagery can probably be largely overcome by training, and, if so, it is extremely important to overcome them. Imagery is to be thus trained in three ways: (1) through cultivating the senses; (2) through reproducing in the several sense modalities; and (3) through constructing in the various kinds of imagery. EXERCISES 1. Is it going too far to say that there is always some concrete basis to all forms of ideation? 2. Show what is meant for a speaker or writer to take the point of view of his audience in respect to mental imagery. 3. What difference is there between the imagery needed for appreciating literature and that needed for appreciating a discussion of the value of Latin? 4. How can the student train his own imagery? 5. Darwin found himself unable to appreciate poetry in his old age. Is there any connection between that and his development as a scientist? Could he have retained his ability to appreciate poetry without interfering with his work as scientist? NOTE. An excellent discussion of mental imagery is to be found in Colvin's The Learning Process (Macmillan), pp. 101-115, and 123-27. Also in Halleck's Education of the Central Nervous System, Chapters VII-XI. Most of the quotations from literature used in this chapter are taken from Halleck's book. CHAPTER XV IMAGINATION AND ITS CULTURE Past experience must be recast. In our chapter on memory we saw how past experiences are reinstated in consciousness. Now memory is an extremely important faculty, and is, indeed, basic to all mental processes. Yet if man were capable only of recalling past experiences as they occurred he would be destined to an exceedingly sterile and inefficient life. He would be able to deal consciously only with situations which were exactly the same as those met in the past, but he could not adjust himself effectively to any new situation. But it is evident that, on this simple level of consciousness, we can not get far. Our problems are never absolutely identical with those of the past, and are usually considerably different from them. We can not, therefore, ordinarily apply to them adequately the "performed judgments of the past. We must reconstruct our methods. We must analyze tear apart our past experiences and understand the significance of their several parts. Then, when confronted with a new situation, we must select from a wide range of analyzed past experiences those parts which serve our present purpose and combine them into a new synthesis, every element of which is there completely adapted to its peculiar function. All originality and progress depends upon the ability to do just this. Imagination. And here comes in our new function of the mind to supplement the work of the memory, imagination. For the ability thus to tear apart our past experi ences and recombine their elements into new constructs is dependent upon this popularly but wrongly despised faculty. Imagination is nothing more nor less than the holding of constructs before the mind when the corresponding objects are not present to sense. Ordinarily, however, when we think of imagination we have in mind the formation of new mental constructs, and it is in that somewhat restricted sense that we shall here use the term.1 And so, used in this sense, the essence of imagination is the rearrangement spoken of above as so essential to progress. Imagination and memory. In this respect we may contrast memory and imagination. In the former, experiences are recalled in just the form in which they were first had; in the latter, it is only the elements which were previously experienced, the object into which they have been combined never having been previously met with. Thus the inventor of the telephone was able to call up in memory the telegraph, for he had seen this instrument. But the telephone he could only imagine, since although he had seen disks, electromagnets, wire, etc., he was obliged to bring these together in his mind into a new combination to get from them the idea of the telephone. In the memory experience, the past furnished the elements in their old order; in the imagination experience, it furnished the elements, but he worked them over, rearranged them. However, we must make this contrast cautiously. For we now know that one recalls in memory no experience exactly as he had it. There is always some rearrangement, omission, or change in relative importance, so that all memory involves some of the elements of imagination. On the other hand, much imagination is of the reproductive type, where one's construct is one which he has, in essentials, 1 Most psychologists include under imagination a discussion of "reproductive" imagination and of mental imagery. Judd, however, places the emphasis upon rearrangement. met before, but which he does not now refer to his past. In fact the two faculties shade gradually into each other. In so far as we do not notice the rearrangement but recognize the experience as belonging, as a whole, to our past we have memory; in so far as we build a construct not referred, as a whole, to our past we have imagination. Yet the distinguishing feature of imagination is rearrangement, while that of memory is the reinstatement of experiences without such rearrangement, and with the recognition of them as unmodified past experiences. Imagination dependent upon past. From what has been said it is already clear that imagination, as well as memory, depends upon the past. It must go there for all of its materials. Angell says: It is a favorite conceit of the untutored mind to suppose that it is possible mentally to create absolutely new materials for ideas, that it is possible to burst over the bounds of one's past experience and beget thoughts which are wholly novel. This is a flattering delusion which a little reflection will effectually dispel, although there is a distorted truth underlying the vanity of the belief. In the case of the eight-legged dog it is clear that, although we may never have encountered just such a creature in any of our adventures, the superfluous legs with which we have endowed him, which constitute his sole claim to novelty, are merely as legs familiar items in every experience with the canine breed. No matter how tame or how fantastic the imagination may be, it is thus dependent wholly upon the past for its materials. The strangest figures of the ancient mythologies -the nine-headed Hydra; the centaurs, with the head of a man and the body of a horse; the Furies, with their hair of serpents were only grotesque combinations of bodily parts seen in the men and animals of ordinary life. New machines that are thought out are only new combinations of simpler ones with which the inventor is already familiar. To get a perfect face Apelles is said to have traveled all over Greece, getting the idea for a nose here, a forehead there, and a chin elsewhere, and it is in much that way that every artist works, whether in sculpture, painting, or literature. The elements of the old have been dissociated and then recombined into new constructs - as a woman's head on the body of a fish or have been changed in proportion - as in the case of a very small man with a very large head. Need of rich past experience. —So imagination draws its materials from the past. You see, then, how important, from this standpoint, is a rich past experience. No one who has not had it can be fruitful in imagination. Of course he may have a fantastic imagination, startling on account of its wildness, but that may be far from an effective one. In imagination one wishes to rebuild and he can do this only out of the materials which he has gathered in the past. And if he is to be resourceful in devising expedients he must have at command a breadth of experiences upon which to draw. To be sure the rapidity and the manner in which these come back to him are important as well as their number, but it is quite clear that one can not plan devices of which he has not experienced the elements. So, to develop toward resourcefulness in shop, school, or public arena, one must keep wide awake and keenly observant. In art or in literature this is likewise obviously true. It has been said that one may write lyric poetry as early as eighteen or twenty, because in this it is enough to give vent to one's own emotions with the chance that they will strike a responsive chord in others, but that no one should attempt to write a novel until he is past forty, since before that time he has not observed and experienced life in sufficient breadth. The more experience the writer can get, through reading, travel, participation in social activities, and especially through personal suffering, the better balanced will be his work. One who undertakes to produce without such mass of material will inevitably produce works that are sterile, P |