form in which a nation has treasured them for ages. If thoughts are to
become seed-thoughts, their form must be changed through the process of
growth; otherwise no crop of new thoughts can mature. The expression,
seed-thoughts, is a figure of speech based upon vegetable life. The
mind may be likened unto soil that has become fertile through the labor
and skill of the husbandman. The mind grows fertile and productive by
cultivation. Like the sower going forth to sow, the good teacher deposits
in the youthful mind ideas which germinate and bring forth a harvest
of thought, sentiment, and purpose. If the grain of wheat be cut in
pieces, and then put into the soil, there can be no growth, because the
life has been destroyed. The ideas which the teacher instils into the
minds of the pupils should be living ideas. Their vitality should not be
destroyed by dissection into fragments from which all life has departed.
Sunshine and moisture are conditions of growth. Lack of sympathy is
lack of sunshine. Cold natures have an Arctic effect in stunting and
preventing growth. Again, instruction may be so dry that nothing can
thrive under its influence. Like a drought, it may speedily evaporate
the child’s love of school and interest in study. Weeds may choke the
growing crop. These the husbandman removes and destroys, so that the
good seed may have a chance to ripen. With equal solicitude the faithful
teacher watches the development of the seed-thoughts which are sprouting
in the mind. For a time the seed is hid in the earth. Seed-thoughts
disappear in the unconscious depths of the soul. They are not lost. By
processes which we cannot explain, they sprout and grow and ripen. That
such mysterious processes are going forward in the hidden depths of the
soul cannot be doubted. A process of growth may be unseen; its visible
results are evidence that it exists and is going forward. If the soil be
barren or the conditions of growth be wanting, no harvest is possible.
Unfortunately, the unskilful husbandman always blames the soil and the
weather when he himself is at fault. Unfortunate is the pupil whose
teacher is a fossil, devoid of life and the power to infuse life. Under
such a teacher the pupil always gets the blame.
XII
IMAGING AND THINKING
Things more excellent than any image are expressed through
images.
JAMBLICHUS.
An unimaginative person can neither be reverent nor kind.
RUSKIN.
Few men have imagination enough for the truth of reality.
GOETHE.
Science does not know its debt to the imagination.
EMERSON.
The human race is governed by its imagination.
NAPOLEON.
XII
IMAGING AND THINKING
Every human being divides the world into two parts, the self and the
not-self. It would not be right to say that he divides the world into two
hemispheres, because self may occupy more space and engross more thought
than all else in the universe.
[Sidenote: Self.]
The idea of self is complex. It includes our thoughts, emotions, and
purposes. Kindred and friends, home and country, creed and occupation,
dress and personal appearance, possessions and the work one has done,—in
fact, all one has and is and does enters into the idea of self. When
we lose a child, a manuscript, an investment, a position, we are apt
to feel as if a part of ourselves had been lost. So closely are the
things of self identified with the inner self, the self in the narrowest
signification of the term, that the latter is oftentimes lost in the
former; and the end of existence is sought in wealth, fame, honor, social
position, erudition, and the thousand other things which intensify the
feeling of self by giving it form and content.
[Sidenote: Image of self.]
An important element in the thought of self is the image of self that
every man carries in his own mind. This image of self is derived from
looking-glasses and photographs, from the sight of hands and feet and
the other impressions of the physical organism which reach the mind
through the senses. In the minds of many persons the image of self is
ever present, it matters not whether they are eating or drinking, walking
or talking, singing or thinking, posing or working. The perpetual
presence of the image of self gives rise to vanity and pride, to avarice,
ambition, and other detestable forms of selfishness.
It is the province of education to bring self and the things of self into
proper relation with the not-self, with God and the universe. That this
may be accomplished the images of sense and the idea of self must be made
to take their proper place in the domain of thought and volition.
[Sidenote: Education defined.]
Not many years ago it was customary in certain quarters to define
education as the process of unsensing the mind and unselfing the will.
The definition never became popular. It contains a truth and an error,
both deserving of careful consideration. The maxim may signify that by
the process of education the soul is to be emancipated from the tyranny
of the senses and from the domination of selfish desires. The mind may
be hindered in its growth because it is under the thraldom of desire and
appetite. Excess in eating and drinking, in sight-seeing, and in other
pleasures which so easily ripen into dissipation may check the normal
development of the higher faculties. The delight which some gifted
natures find in beautiful colors and good music may prevent them from
acquiring the power of abstract and abstruse thinking. The things of the
mind may be sacrificed to the things of sense, the higher life of the
soul may be stifled through the exaltation of self and the domination of
selfish desires.
[Sidenote: Unsensing the mind.]
What is meant by unsensing the mind? It may mean, for instance, that
the student of arithmetic is to be freed from the necessity of counting
strokes or fingers in finding the sum or the product of two numbers; that
the learner is to get away from the cats and dogs of the First Reader as
soon as possible; that he is to be lifted by education to the plane on
which he can think in abstract and general terms. In this sense it is
correct to say that it is the purpose of education to unsense the mind.
The phrase may also be interpreted to imply that the habit of thinking
by means of visual images is to be got rid of. In this sense it is a
dangerous maxim.
[Sidenote: Arrested development.]
The first thinking of children is carried on in mental pictures. It is
one of the aims of the school to lift the learner above this necessity
of thinking in things by enabling him to think in symbols. These symbols
are in their turn visualized; and we may have specimens of arrested
development in the use of figures as well as in the use of fingers,
blocks, or other objects employed in teaching the fundamental operations
of integers and fractions. The principal of a well-known ward school
aimed at great speed in arithmetical calculations. The results which
his teachers obtained excited surprise and admiration. The test of
progress was the number of digits that a pupil could add, or subtract, or
multiply, or divide in a minute. The danger of this instruction became
apparent when it was found that of five or six hundred children drilled
in that way only one ever reached the high school, and she was only a
third-rate student, who never acquired skill or proficiency in thinking
in abstract and general terms. Mental energy was exhausted in the attempt
to develop lightning calculators. There was no growth in the direction of
thinking the laws and truths which make knowledge scientific.
[Sidenote: The thinking of savages.]
The untutored savage is guided by sense impressions; he thinks in mental
pictures; he is incapable of a chain of reasoning like the demonstration
of a theorem in geometry. Tribes have been found who could not count
beyond three; any number in excess of two was called many or a multitude.
Whilst their powers of observation were developed to a remarkable degree,
they lacked the power of abstruse thought. Their descendants, who are
now at school, make rapid progress in knowledge which appeals to the
senses; they find more than the usual difficulty in studies requiring
demonstrative reasoning or sustained effort in scientific thought. Music
is their delight; they can be taught to sing like birds in the air;
their bands give sighs to brass itself. As in the eighteenth century the
Iroquois, who would not submit to the doctrines of Christianity, were
overcome by concerts, so, in the nineteenth, the missionaries of British
Columbia appeal to the red man’s ear for music in winning him for the
Christian religion.
[Sidenote: Popular audiences.]
Language is full of faded metaphors which show how the things of the mind
are conceived in images formed through the senses. Those who address
popular audiences clothe their thoughts in figures of speech based upon
the mental pictures in which the common people carry on their thinking.
The ability to think in the language of science and philosophy is a later
development, and those who by disuse or neglect impair their power to
think in sense-images pay a penalty in losing, or never acquiring, the
power to move the multitudes.
[Sidenote: Mental pictures.]
The power to think in mental pictures, or through the sense-impressions
which memory recalls, varies in different persons. Occasionally the sense
of touch is very active; the child in such cases manifests a desire to
handle everything within reach, and undoubtedly gains impressions of
peculiar strength answering its desire to know. A limited number of
children in every school get their best impressions through the ear,
and hence are said to be ear-minded; but the far larger proportion are
eye-minded to the extent of connecting their most accurate knowledge
with images obtained through vision. Similar peculiarities exist among
older persons. A friend claims that he hears the voices of speakers while
reading the proof-sheets of their speeches. Another friend claims that
he cannot bring up a mental picture of the faces of his children and his
friends, but he writes out strains of music which he thinks and hears
while seated on railway cars. The power of bringing up a vivid picture of
the breakfast-table, or of some scene of special interest, is possessed
by many persons. They live over again in memory the delights of travel,
and enjoy scenery through the vivid mental pictures stored away in the
treasure-house of memory. The ability to appreciate the best literature
in prose and poetry depends largely upon the power of visualizing the
realities at the basis of the descriptions and figures of speech. Francis
Galton thinks that the perspicuous style of French literature and the
wonderful manual skill of the French people is due to their power of
thinking in visual images. He says,—
[Sidenote: The French.]
“The French appear to possess the visualizing faculty in a high degree.
The peculiar ability they show in prearranging ceremonials and fêtes of
all kinds and their undoubted genius for tactics and strategy show that
they are able to foresee effects with unusual clearness. Their ingenuity
in all technical contrivances is an additional testimony in the same
direction, and so is their singular clearness of expression. Their phrase
‘figurez-vous,’ or ‘picture to yourself,’ seems to express their dominant
mode of perception. Our equivalent of ‘imagine’ is ambiguous.”[29]
[Sidenote: Galton’s investigations.]
The profession of teaching owes Mr. Galton a special debt of gratitude
for the light which his investigations throw upon the process of
thinking. These investigations were published in a volume entitled
“Inquiries into Human Faculty.” When he began to inquire among
his friends as to their power to call up mental pictures of the
breakfast-table, those engaged in scientific pursuits were inclined
to consider him fanciful and fantastic in supposing that the words
_mental imagery_ really expressed what he thought everybody supposed
them to mean. He says they had no more notion of its true nature than a
color-blind man who has not discerned his defect has of the nature of
color. When he spoke to persons in general society, he got very different
replies. Among other curious things which he discovered, he found that
the power of thinking in sense-images, or mental pictures, may be partly
inherited, partly developed by practice, and that it may be impaired
by disuse or by the habit of hard thinking peculiar to men engaged in
scientific pursuits. Scientific men, as a class, have feeble powers of
visual representation. He reached the conclusion that “an over-ready
perception of sharp mental pictures is antagonistic to the acquirement
of highly generalized and abstract thought, especially when the steps of
reasoning are carried on by words as symbols, and that if the faculty of
seeing the pictures was ever possessed by men who think hard, it is very
apt to be lost by disuse.”
[Sidenote: Wrong methods.]
He further claims that the visualizing faculty can be developed by
education. This is very significant. It shows how unwise methods may harm
our children in two directions. The wrong method may keep the mind at
work in the concrete when the science under consideration demands more
advanced and very different methods of thought. In the other direction
the mind may be tied to words, descriptions, book methods, and symbolic
representations, whereas the thinking which one’s future duties demand
points in the direction of drawing, mechanics, and handicrafts, in which
success turns upon the power of thinking in visual images and mental
pictures. One cannot forbear quoting his language in so far as it bears
upon the thinking developed by schools for manual training in distinction
from the thinking developed by the university which aims to fit its
students for the professions and for scientific thought and experimental
research.
[Sidenote: Thinking in images.]
“There can, however, be no doubt as to the utility of the visualizing
faculty when it is duly subordinated to the higher intellectual
operations. A visual image is the most perfect form of mental
representation wherever the shape, position, and relations of objects
in space are concerned. It is of importance in every handicraft and
profession where design is required. The best workmen are those who
visualize the whole of what they propose to do before they take a tool in
their hands. The village smith and the carpenter who are employed on odd
jobs employ it no less for their work than the mechanician, the engineer,
and the architect. The lady’s maid who arranges a new dress requires it
for the same reason as the decorator employed on a palace, or the agent
who lays out great estates. Strategists, artists of all denominations,
physicists who contrive new experiments, and, in short, all who do not
follow routine, have need of it. The pleasure its use can afford is
immense. I have many correspondents who say that the delight of recalling
beautiful scenery and great works of art is the highest that they know;
they carry whole picture-galleries in their minds. Our bookish and wordy
education tends to repress this valuable gift of nature. A faculty
that is of importance in all technical and artistic occupations, that
gives accuracy to our perceptions, and justness to our generalizations
is starved by lazy disuse instead of being cultivated judiciously in
such a way as will, on the whole, bring the best return. I believe
that a serious study of the best method of developing and utilizing
this faculty, without prejudice to the practice of abstract thought in
symbols, is one of the many pressing desiderata in the yet unformed
science of education.”[30]
What is meant by the process of unselfing the will? If the maxim is
interpreted to mean that education must eliminate the selfishness of
the individual, and teach him to will and act for the good of humanity,
especially of all with whom he comes in contact, the maxim points out an
important end of education. If, on the other hand, the maxim is made to
mean that the self, with its peculiarities, is to be sacrificed in the
educative process, it carries a contradiction on its face. The lower self
may have to be sacrificed in order that the higher self may be conserved.
He that loseth his life shall save it; he that saveth his life shall lose
it, is the teaching of Holy Writ.
Open a dictionary and search for words indicating how the belief in the
necessity of emancipating life from the dominion of self has been woven
into the very texture of the English language. Egotism, which originally
meant the excessive use of the pronoun I, has come to signify all kinds
of self-praise, self-exaltation, and to include all manner of parading
one’s virtues and excellencies; egoism denotes a state of mind in which
the feelings are concentrated on self. Vanity and self-conceit are two
words closely allied to the natural selfishness of the human heart. The
former indicates the feeling which springs from the thought that we are
highly esteemed by others; the latter is an overweening opinion of one’s
talents, capacities, and importance. There is another list of compound
words, like self-denial, self-sacrifice, self-abnegation, which point to
the importance of eliminating self and thoughts of self from the soul’s
activities in thinking and willing. Virtues like humility, love, service,
sacrifice, are lauded in every Christian land. They are the Christian
virtues exemplified by Jesus of Nazareth, who lived to do good to others,
and who died that the sinning, sorrowing millions on earth might find
peace and consolation for their troubled souls.
[Sidenote: Selfishness.]
The unselfing of the will depends as much upon right thinking as does the
unsensing of the mind. The untrained mind deals too much with things near
at hand in the objective world; the uneducated will deals too much with
the thing nearest to every man in the subjective world,—the individual
self. The thought of self may enter so thoroughly into the feelings and
activities of the soul that the rights of others are never thought of
in the gratification of self and in the efforts at self-aggrandizement
and self-glorification. Selfish desire and selfish ambition may dominate
the soul and cause the individual to trample upon the dearest rights
of others. The millions which some men heap up are squeezed from the
productive toil of thousands, perhaps millions, of human hands. Colossal
fortunes can seldom be made without reducing a considerable number of
human beings to a condition of living from hand to mouth, to a state of
chronic poverty. That the inordinate ambition of a masterful politician
may be gratified, the hopes of other aspirants must be frustrated and
their rights must be trampled upon. Hence in the end there is little
happiness among office-holders and office-seekers. The selfishness of
great conquerors is still more inexcusable. In the effort to gratify an
unholy ambition the lives of thousands are sacrificed, their blood is
spilt upon the battle-field, and their health is undermined by suffering
and disease. If the men who send the soldier to the front were themselves
compelled to sleep in ditches, or to expose themselves to the fire of
machine-guns upon the open field, wars would not be declared, or, if
declared, would soon cease.
[Sidenote: Self-sacrifice.]
The higher life demands that the lower self be subordinated, regulated
and sublimated in the education of man. The individual may be taught to
find happiness in self-sacrifice for the sake of others, in deeds of
love, charity, and benevolence. That this may result from the educative
process, there should occur a change of heart, resulting in a change of
view and in a transformation of the habits of thought so that self is
seen in its true relation to mankind and to God, so that the things of
time and sense shall stand in true relation to the verities of eternity
and the interests of the higher life.
[Sidenote: Self-development.]
On the other hand, if the maxim is interpreted to mean that any gifts
_or_ powers of the self are to be sacrificed in preparation for a given
calling, say for the army or navy, it becomes a dangerous heresy. The
true end of education is found in the harmonious development of all our
faculties. Every man is in one sense the product of countless ages and
generations, and from another point of view he is a new creation fresh
from the hand of his Maker, and a distinct setting forth of the creative
power of Him who said, “Let us make man in our own image, after our
likeness.” As such he has a claim upon immortality, as well as upon all
the help which earth can give him towards a full realization of self.
Every person feels that there are possibilities of his being which are
never realized in this world; that it will require the ceaseless ages
of eternity to unfold and mature his God-given powers and traits. Any
unselfing of the will in the sense of sacrificing or checking the growth
and fruition of the best of which the self is capable, is a violation of
Spencer’s famous definition that education is a preparation for complete
living.
[Sidenote: Justice to others.]
What, then, is the relation of the imaging power to the proper unselfing
of the will and the full realization of the self? “A great deal of the
selfishness of the world comes not from bad hearts, but from languid
imaginations.”[31] To do justice to others, we must put ourselves in
their place. This we cannot do except through the exercise of the
imagination. The imagination is the creative power of the mind. By means
of it we can create for our thinking the world in which our neighbor
lives, and learn to understand his motives, aims, hopes, needs, and
temptations. This will keep us from many a mistake in judging his conduct
and estimating his character. Moreover, this thinking of ourselves
into the life and surroundings of our fellow-men is a condition of
success in dealing with them. It helps the merchant to sell his wares
and the teacher to govern his pupils. It helps the orator to reach the
hearts of the audience whom he is addressing, and the journalist to
write editorials that will modify the views and mould the thinking of
the reading public. Every profession and every occupation requires the
constant exercise of the imagination so that we may see life from our
neighbor’s point of view, and, in sympathizing with him or helping him,
outgrow our innate selfishness. A hard, cruel, unforgiving man makes a
failure of life even though he win riches, fame, and public position.
[Sidenote: Ideals.]
By means of the imagination we paint ideals of life and conduct, which
hover before the mind in the hour of struggle and trial, luring us onward
and upward, spurring us to greater effort, and giving to life added
charms and glories. Without the power to imagine what is beyond the
real, the workman sinks to the level of drudgery, and never rises to the
plane of artistic production.
[Sidenote: The child’s imagination.]
[Sidenote: Geography.]