IMAGINATION.
=What it is.=--_Sensations, once experienced, modify the nervous organism,
so that copies of them arise again in the mind after the original
outward stimulus is gone._ No mental copy, however, can arise in the
mind, of any kind of sensation which has never been directly excited
from without.
The blind may dream of sights, the deaf of sounds, for years after they
have lost their vision or hearing; but the man _born_ deaf can never be
made to imagine what sound is like, nor can the man _born_ blind ever
have a mental vision. In Locke's words, already quoted, "the mind can
frame unto itself no one new simple idea." The originals of them all
must have been given from without. Fantasy, or Imagination, are the
names given to the faculty of reproducing copies of originals once felt.
The imagination is called 'reproductive' when the copies are literal;
'productive' when elements from different originals are recombined so as
to make new wholes.
When represented with surroundings concrete enough to constitute a
_date_, these pictures, when they revive, form _recollections_. We have
just studied the machinery of recollection. When the mental pictures are
of data freely combined, and reproducing no past combination exactly, we
have acts of imagination properly so called.
=Men differ in visual imagination.= Our ideas or images of past sensible
experiences may be either distinct and adequate or dim, blurred, and
incomplete. It is likely that the different degrees in which different
men are able to make them sharp and complete has had something to do
with keeping up such philosophic disputes as that of Berkeley with Locke
over abstract ideas. Locke had spoken of our possessing 'the general
idea of a triangle' which "must be neither oblique nor rectangle,
neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these
at once." Berkeley says: "If any man has the faculty of framing in his
mind such an idea of a triangle as is here described, it is in vain to
pretend to dispute him out of it, nor would I go about it. All I desire
is that the reader would fully and certainly inform himself whether _he_
has such an idea or no."
Until very recent years it was supposed by philosophers that there was a
typical human mind which all individual minds were like, and that
propositions of universal validity could be laid down about such
faculties as 'the Imagination.' Lately, however, a mass of revelations
have poured in which make us see how false a view this is. There are
imaginations, not 'the Imagination,' and they must be studied in detail.
Mr. Galton in 1880 began a statistical inquiry which may be said to have
made an era in descriptive psychology. He addressed a circular to large
numbers of persons asking them to describe the image in their mind's eye
of their breakfast-table on a given morning. The variations were found
to be enormous; and, strange to say, it appeared that eminent scientific
men on the average had less visualizing power than younger and more
insignificant persons.
The reader will find details in Mr. Galton's 'Inquiries into Human
Faculty,' pp. 83-114. I have myself for many years collected from each
and all of my psychology-students descriptions of their own visual
imagination; and found (together with some curious idiosyncrasies)
corroboration of all the variations which Mr. Galton reports. As
examples, I subjoin extracts from two cases near the ends of the scale.
The writers are first cousins, grandsons of a distinguished man of
science. The one who is a good visualizer says:
"This morning's breakfast-table is both dim and bright; it is dim if I
try to think of it when my eyes are open upon any object; it is
perfectly clear and bright if I think of it with my eyes closed.--All
the objects are clear at once, yet when I confine my attention to any
one object it becomes far more distinct.--I have more power to recall
color than any other one thing: if, for example, I were to recall a
plate decorated with flowers I could reproduce in a drawing the exact
tone, etc. The color of anything that was on the table is perfectly
vivid.--There is very little limitation to the extent of my images: I
can see all four sides of a room, I can see all four sides of two,
three, four, even more rooms with such distinctness that if you should
ask me what was in any particular place in any one, or ask me to count
the chairs, etc., I could do it without the least hesitation.--The more
I learn by heart the more clearly do I see images of my pages. Even
before I can recite the lines I see them so that I could give them very
slowly word for word, but my mind is so occupied in looking at my
printed image that I have no idea of what I am saying, of the sense of
it, etc. When I first found myself doing this I used to think it was
merely because I knew the lines imperfectly; but I have quite convinced
myself that I really do see an image. The strongest proof that such is
really the fact is, I think, the following:
"I can look down the mentally seen page and see the words that
_commence_ all the lines, and from any one of these words I can continue
the line. I find this much easier to do if the words begin in a straight
line than if there are breaks. Example:
_Étant fait_....
_Tous_....
_A des_....
_Que fit_....
_Céres_....
_Avec_....
_Un fleur_....
_Comme_....
(La Fontaine 8. iv.)"
The poor visualizer says:
"My ability to form mental images seems, from what I have studied of
other people's images, to be defective and somewhat peculiar. The
process by which I seem to remember any particular event is not by a
series of distinct images, but a sort of panorama, the faintest
impressions of which are perceptible through a thick fog.--I cannot shut
my eyes and get a distinct image of anyone, although I used to be able
to a few years ago, and the faculty seems to have gradually slipped
away.--In my most vivid dreams, where the events appear like the most
real facts, I am often troubled with a dimness of sight which causes the
images to appear indistinct.--To come to the question of the
breakfast-table, there is nothing definite about it. Everything is
vague. I cannot say _what_ I see. I could not possibly count the chairs,
but I happen to know that there are ten. I see nothing in detail.--The
chief thing is a general impression that I cannot tell exactly what I do
see. The coloring is about the same, as far as I can recall it, only
very much washed out. Perhaps the only color I can see at all distinctly
is that of the table-cloth, and I could probably see the color of the
wall-paper if I could remember what color it was."
A person whose visual imagination is strong finds it hard to understand
how those who are without the faculty can think at all. _Some people
undoubtedly have no visual images at all worthy of the name_, and
instead of _seeing_ their breakfast-table, they tell you that they
_remember_ it or _know_ what was on it. The 'mind-stuff' of which this
'knowing' is made seems to be verbal images exclusively. But if the
words 'coffee,' 'bacon,' 'muffins,' and 'eggs' lead a man to speak to
his cook, to pay his bills, and to take measures for the morrow's meal
exactly as visual and gustatory memories would, why are they not, for
all practical intents and purposes, as good a kind of material in which
to think? In fact, we may suspect them to be for most purposes better
than terms with a richer imaginative coloring. The scheme of
relationship and the conclusion being the essential things in thinking,
that kind of mind-stuff which is handiest will be the best for the
purpose. Now words, uttered or unexpressed, are the handiest mental
elements we have. Not only are they very _rapidly_ revivable, but they
are revivable as actual sensations more easily than any other items of
our experience. Did they not possess some such advantage as this, it
would hardly be the case that the older men are and the more effective
as thinkers, the more, as a rule, they have lost their visualizing
power, as Mr. Galton found to be the case with members of the Royal
Society.
=Images of Sounds.=--These also differ in individuals. Those who think by
preference in auditory images are called audiles by Mr. Galton. _This
type_, says M. Binet, "_appears to be rarer than the visual_. Persons of
this type imagine what they think of in the language of sound. In order
to remember a lesson they impress upon their mind, not the look of the
page, but the sound of the words. They reason, as well as remember, by
ear. In performing a mental addition they repeat verbally the names of
the figures, and add, as it were, the sounds, without any thought of the
graphic signs. Imagination also takes the auditory form. 'When I write a
scene,' said Legouvé to Scribe, 'I _hear_; but you _see_. In each phrase
which I write, the voice of the personage who speaks strikes my ear.
_Vous, qui êtes le théâtre même_, your actors walk, gesticulate before
your eyes; I am a _listener_, you a _spectator_.'--'Nothing more true,'
said Scribe; 'do you know where I am when I write a piece? In the middle
of the parterre.' It is clear that the _pure audile_, seeking to develop
only a single one of his faculties, may, like the pure visualizer,
perform astounding feats of memory--Mozart, for example, noting from
memory the _Miserere_ of the Sistine Chapel after two hearings; the deaf
Beethoven, composing and inwardly repeating his enormous symphonies. On
the other hand, the man of auditory type, like the visual, is exposed
to serious dangers; for if he lose his auditory images, he is without
resource and breaks down completely."
=Images of Muscular Sensations.=--Professor Stricker of Vienna, who seems
to be a 'motile' or to have this form of imagination developed in
unusual strength, has given a careful analysis of his own case. His
recollections both of his own movements and of those of other things are
accompanied invariably by distinct muscular feelings in those parts of
his body which would naturally be used in effecting or in following the
movement. In thinking of a soldier marching, for example, it is as if he
were helping the image to march by marching himself in his rear. And if
he suppresses this sympathetic feeling in his own legs and concentrates
all his attention on the imagined soldier, the latter becomes, as it
were, paralyzed. In general his imagined movements, of whatsoever
objects, seem paralyzed, the moment no feelings of movement either in
his own eyes or in his own limbs accompany them. The movements of
articulate speech play a predominant part in his mental life. "When,
after my experimental work," he says, "I proceed to its description, as
a rule I reproduce in the first instance only words which I had already
associated with the perception of the various details of the observation
whilst the latter was going on. For speech plays in all my observing so
important a part that I ordinarily clothe phenomena in words as fast as
I observe them."
Most persons, on being asked _in what sort of terms they imagine words_,
will say, 'In terms of hearing.' It is not until their attention is
expressly drawn to the point that they find it difficult to say whether
auditory images or motor images connected with the organs of
articulation predominate. A good way of bringing the difficulty to
consciousness is that proposed by Stricker: Partly open your mouth and
then imagine any word with labials or dentals in it, such as 'bubble,'
'toddle.' Is your image under these conditions distinct? To most people
the image is at first 'thick,' as the sound of the word would be if
they tried to pronounce it with the lips parted. Many can never imagine
the words clearly with the mouth open; others succeed after a few
preliminary trials. The experiment proves how dependent our verbal
imagination is on actual feelings in lips, tongue, throat, larynx, etc.
Prof. Bain says that "a _suppressed articulation is in fact the material
of our recollection_, the intellectual manifestation, the _idea_ of
speech." In persons whose auditory imagination is weak, the articulatory
image does indeed seem to constitute the whole material for verbal
thought. Professor Stricker says that in his own case no auditory image
enters into the words of which he thinks.
=Images of Touch.=--These are very strong in some people. The most vivid
touch-images come when we ourselves barely escape local injury, or when
we see another injured. The place may then actually tingle with the
imaginary sensation--perhaps not altogether imaginary, since
goose-flesh, paling or reddening, and other evidences of actual muscular
contraction in the spot, may result.
"An educated man," says Herr G. H. Meyer, "told me once that on entering
his house one day he received a shock from crushing the finger of one of
his little children in the door. At the moment of his fright he felt a
violent pain in the corresponding finger of his own body, and this pain
abode with him three days."
The imagination of a blind deaf-mute like Laura Bridgman must be
confined entirely to tactile and motor material. _All blind persons must
belong to the 'tactile' and 'motile' types_ of the French authors. When
the young man whose cataracts were removed by Dr. Franz was shown
different geometric figures, he said he "had not been able to form from
them the idea of a square and a disk until he perceived a sensation of
what he saw in the points of his fingers, as if he really touched the
objects."
=Pathological Differences.=--The study of Aphasia (see p. 114) has of late
years shown how unexpectedly individuals differ in the use of their
imagination. In some the habitual 'thought-stuff,' if one may so call
it, is visual; in others it is auditory, articulatory, or motor; in
most, perhaps, it is evenly mixed. These are the "indifferents" of
Charcot. The same local cerebral injury must needs work different
practical results in persons who differ in this way. In one what is
thrown out of gear is a much-used brain-tract; in the other an
unimportant region is affected. A particularly instructive case was
published by Charcot in 1883. The patient was a merchant, an exceedingly
accomplished man, but a visualizer of the most exclusive type. Owing to
some intra-cerebral accident he suddenly lost all his visual images, and
with them much of his intellectual power, without any other perversion
of faculty. He soon discovered that he could carry on his affairs by
using his memory in an altogether new way, and described clearly the
difference between his two conditions. "Every time he returns to A.,
from which place business often calls him, he seems to himself as if
entering a strange city. He views the monuments, houses, and streets
with the same surprise as if he saw them for the first time. When asked
to describe the principal public place of the town, he answered, 'I know
that it is there, but it is impossible to imagine it, and I can tell you
nothing about it.'"
He can no more remember his wife and children's face than he can
remember A. Even after being with them some time they seem unusual to
him. He forgets his own face, and once spoke to his image in a mirror,
taking it for a stranger. He complains of his loss of feeling for
colors. "My wife has black hair, this I know; but I can no more recall
its color than I can her person and features." This visual amnesia
extends to objects dating from his childhood's years--paternal mansion,
etc., forgotten. No other disturbances but this loss of visual images.
Now when he seeks something in his correspondence, he must rummage among
the letters like other men, until he meets the passage. He can recall
only the first few verses of the Iliad, and must _grope_ to recite
Homer, Virgil, and Horace. Figures which he adds he must now whisper to
himself. He realizes clearly that he must help his memory out with
auditory images, which he does with effort. _The words and expressions
which he recalls seem now to echo in his ear, an altogether novel
sensation for him._ If he wishes to learn by heart anything, a series of
phrases for example, he must _read them several times aloud_, so as to
impress his ear. When later he repeats the thing in question, the
sensation of inward hearing which precedes articulation rises up in his
mind. This feeling was formerly unknown to him.
Such a man would have suffered relatively little inconvenience if his
images for hearing had been those suddenly destroyed.
=The Neural Process in Imagination.=--Most medical writers assume that the
cerebral activity on which imagination depends occupies a different
_seat_ from that subserving sensation. It is, however, a simpler
interpretation of the facts to suppose that _the same nerve-tracts are
concerned in the two processes_. Our mental images are aroused always by
way of association; some previous idea or sensation must have
'suggested' them. Association is surely due to currents from one
cortical centre to another. Now all we need suppose is that these
intra-cortical currents are unable to produce in the cells the strong
explosions which currents from the sense-organs occasion, to account for
the subjective difference between images and sensations, without
supposing any difference in their local seat. To the strong degree of
explosion corresponds the character of 'vividness' or sensible presence,
in the object of thought; to the weak degree, that of 'faintness' or
outward unreality.
If we admit that sensation and imagination are due to the activity of
the same parts of the cortex, we can see a very good teleological reason
why they should correspond to discrete kinds of process in these
centres, and why the process which gives the sense that the object is
really there ought normally to be arousable only by currents entering
from the periphery and not by currents from the neighboring cortical
parts. We can see, in short, why _the sensational process_ OUGHT TO _be
discontinuous with all normal ideational processes, however intense_.
For, as Dr. Münsterberg justly observes, "Were there not this peculiar
arrangement we should not distinguish reality and fantasy, our conduct
would not be accommodated to the facts about us, but would be
inappropriate and senseless, and we could not keep ourselves alive."
Sometimes, by exception, the deeper sort of explosion may take place
from intra-cortical excitement alone. In the sense of hearing, sensation
and imagination _are_ hard to discriminate where the sensation is so
weak as to be just perceptible. At night, hearing a very faint striking
of the hour by a far-off clock, our imagination reproduces both rhythm
and sound, and it is often difficult to tell which was the last real
stroke. So of a baby crying in a distant part of the house, we are
uncertain whether we still hear it, or only imagine the sound. Certain
violin-players take advantage of this in diminuendo terminations. After
the pianissimo has been reached they continue to bow as if still
playing, but are careful not to touch the strings. The listener hears in
imagination a degree of sound fainter than the pianissimo.
_Hallucinations_, whether of sight or hearing, are another case in
point, to be touched on in the next chapter. I may mention as a fact
still unexplained that several observers (Herr G. H. Meyer, M. Ch. Féré,
Professor Scott of Ann Arbor, and Mr. T. C. Smith, one of my students)
have noticed negative after-images of objects which they had been
imagining with the mind's eye. It is as if the retina itself were
locally fatigued by the act.