MENTAL IMAGES AND IDEAS
As you sit thinking, a company of you together, your thoughts run in
many diverse lines. Yet with all this diversity, your minds possess this
common characteristic: _Though your thinking all takes place in what we
call the present moment, it goes on largely in terms of past
experiences._
1. THE PART PLAYED BY PAST EXPERIENCE
PRESENT THINKING DEPENDS ON PAST EXPERIENCE.--Images or ideas of things
you have seen or heard or felt; of things you have thought of before and
which now recur to you; of things you remember, such as names, dates,
places, events; of things that you do not remember as a part of your
past at all, but that belong to it nevertheless--these are the things
which form a large part of your mental stream, and which give content to
your thinking. You may think of a thing that is going on now, or of one
that is to occur in the future; but, after all, you are dependent on
your past experience for the material which you put into your thinking
of the present moment.
Indeed, nothing can enter your present thinking which does not link
itself to something in your past experience. The savage Indian in the
primeval forest never thought about killing a deer with a rifle merely
by pulling a trigger, or of turning a battery of machine guns on his
enemies to annihilate them--none of these things were related to his
past experience; hence he could not think in such terms.
THE PRESENT INTERPRETED BY THE PAST.--Not only can we not think at all
except in terms of our past experience, but even if we could, the
present would be meaningless to us; for the present is interpreted in
the light of the past. The sedate man of affairs who decries athletic
sports, and has never taken part in them, cannot understand the wild
enthusiasm which prevails between rival teams in a hotly contested
event. The fine work of art is to the one who has never experienced the
appeal which comes through beauty, only so much of canvas and variegated
patches of color. Paul says that Jesus was "unto the Greeks,
foolishness." He was foolishness to them because nothing in their
experience with their own gods had been enough like the character of
Jesus to enable them to interpret Him.
THE FUTURE ALSO DEPENDS ON THE PAST.--To the mind incapable of using
past experience, the future also would be impossible; for we can look
forward into the future only by placing in its experiences the elements
of which we have already known. The savage who has never seen the
shining yellow metal does not dream of a heaven whose streets are paved
with gold, but rather of a "happy hunting ground." If you will analyze
your own dreams of the future you will see in them familiar pictures
perhaps grouped together in new forms, but coming, in their elements,
from your past experience nevertheless. All that would remain to a mind
devoid of a past would be the little bridge of time which we call the
"present moment," a series of unconnected _nows_. Thought would be
impossible, for the mind would have nothing to compare and relate.
Personality would not exist; for personality requires continuity of
experience, else we should be a new person each succeeding moment,
without memory and without plans. Such a mind would be no mind at all.
RANK DETERMINED BY ABILITY TO UTILIZE PAST EXPERIENCE.--So important is
past experience in determining our present thinking and guiding our
future actions, that the place of an individual in the scale of creation
is determined largely by the ability to profit by past experience. The
scientist tells us of many species of animals now extinct, which lost
their lives and suffered their race to die out because when, long ago,
the climate began to change and grow much colder, they were unable to
use the experience of suffering in the last cold season as an incentive
to provide shelter, or move to a warmer climate against the coming of
the next and more rigorous one. Man was able to make the adjustment;
and, providing himself with clothing and shelter and food, he survived,
while myriads of the lower forms perished.
The singed moth again and again dares the flame which tortures it, and
at last gives its life, a sacrifice to its folly; the burned child fears
the fire, and does not the second time seek the experience. So also can
the efficiency of an individual or a nation, as compared with other
individuals or nations, be determined. The inefficient are those who
repeat the same error or useless act over and over, or else fail to
repeat a chance useful act whose repetition might lead to success. They
are unable to learn their lesson and be guided by experience. Their past
does not sufficiently minister to their present, and through it direct
their future.
2. HOW PAST EXPERIENCE IS CONSERVED
PAST EXPERIENCE CONSERVED IN BOTH MENTAL AND PHYSICAL TERMS.--If past
experience plays so important a part in our welfare, how, then, is it to
be conserved so that we may secure its benefits? Here, as elsewhere, we
find the mind and body working in perfect unison and harmony, each doing
its part to further the interests of both. The results of our past
experience may be read in both our mental and our physical nature.
On the physical side past experience is recorded in modified structure
through the law of habit working on the tissues of the body, and
particularly on the delicate tissues of the brain and nervous system.
This is easily seen in its outward aspects. The stooped shoulders and
bent form of the workman tell a tale of physical toil and exposure; the
bloodless lips and pale face of the victim of the city sweat shop tell
of foul air, long hours, and insufficient food; the rosy cheek and
bounding step of childhood speak of fresh air, good food and happy play.
On the mental side past experience is conserved chiefly by means of
_images_, _ideas_, and _concepts_. The nature and function of concepts
will be discussed in a later chapter. It will now be our purpose to
examine the nature of images and ideas, and to note the part they play
in the mind's activities.
THE IMAGE AND THE IDEA.--To understand the nature of the image, and then
of the idea, we may best go back to the percept. You look at a watch
which I hold before your eyes and secure a percept of it. Briefly, this
is what happens: The light reflected from the yellow object, on striking
the retina, results in a nerve current which sets up a certain form of
activity in the cells of the visual brain area, and lo! a _percept_ of
the watch flashes in your mind.
Now I put the watch in my pocket, so that the stimulus is no longer
present to your eye. Then I ask you to think of my watch just as it
appeared as you were looking at it; or you may yourself choose to think
of it without my suggesting it to you. In either case _the cellular
activity in the visual area of the cortex is reproduced_ approximately
as it occurred in connection with the percept, and lo! an _image_ of the
watch flashes in your mind. An image is thus an approximate copy of a
former percept (or several percepts). It is aroused indirectly by means
of a nerve current coming by way of some other brain center, instead of
directly by the stimulation of a sense organ, as in the case of a
percept.
If, instead of seeking a more or less exact mental _picture_ of my
watch, you only think of its general _meaning_ and relations, the fact
that it is of gold, that it is for the purpose of keeping time, that it
was a present to me, that I wear it in my left pocket, you then have an
_idea_ of the watch. Our idea of an object is, therefore, the general
meaning of relations we ascribe to it. It should be remembered, however,
that the terms image and idea are employed rather loosely, and that
there is not yet general uniformity among writers in their use.
ALL OUR PAST EXPERIENCE POTENTIALLY AT OUR COMMAND.--Images may in a
certain sense take the place of percepts, and we can again experience
sights, sounds, tastes, and smells which we have known before, without
having the stimuli actually present to the senses. In this way all our
past experience is potentially available to the present. All the objects
we have seen, it is potentially possible again to see in the mind's eye
without being obliged to have the objects before us; all the sounds we
have heard, all the tastes and smells and temperatures we have
experienced, we may again have presented to our minds in the form of
mental images without the various stimuli being present to the
end-organs of the senses.
Through images and ideas the total number of objects in our experience
is infinitely multiplied; for many of the things we have seen, or heard,
or smelled, or tasted, we cannot again have present to the senses, and
without this power we would never get them again. And besides this fact,
it would be inconvenient to have to go and secure afresh each sensation
or percept every time we need to use it in our thought. While _habit_,
then, conserves our past experience on the physical side, the _image_
and the _idea_ do the same thing on the mental side.
3. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN IMAGERY
IMAGES TO BE VIEWED BY INTROSPECTION.--The remainder of the description
of images will be easier to understand, for each of you can know just
what is meant in every case by appealing to your own mind. I beg of you
not to think that I am presenting something new and strange, a curiosity
connected with our thinking which has been discovered by scholars who
have delved more deeply into the matter than we can hope to do. Every
day--no, more than that, every hour and every moment--these images are
flitting through our minds, forming a large part of our stream of
consciousness. Let us see whether we can turn our attention within and
discover some of our images in their flight. Let us introspect.
I know of no better way to proceed than that adopted by Francis Galton
years ago, when he asked the English men of letters and science to think
of their breakfast tables, and then describe the images which appeared.
I am about to ask each one of you to do the same thing, but I want to
warn you beforehand that the images will not be so vivid as the sensory
experiences themselves. They will be much fainter and more vague, and
less clear and definite; they will be fleeting, and must be caught on
the wing. Often the image may fade entirely out, and the idea only be
left.
THE VARIED IMAGERY SUGGESTED BY ONE'S DINING TABLE.--Let each one now
recall the dining table as you last left it, and then answer questions
concerning it like the following:
Can I see clearly in my "mind's eye" the whole table as it stood spread
before me? Can I see all parts of it equally clearly? Do I get the snowy
white and gloss of the linen? The delicate coloring of the china, so
that I can see where the pink shades off into the white? The graceful
lines and curves of the dishes? The sheen of the silver? The brown of
the toast? The yellow of the cream? The rich red and dark green of the
bouquet of roses? The sparkle of the glassware?
Can I again hear the rattle of the dishes? The clink of the spoon
against the cup? The moving up of the chairs? The chatter of the voices,
each with its own peculiar pitch and quality? The twitter of a bird
outside the window? The tinkle of a distant bell? The chirp of a
neighborly cricket?
Can I taste clearly the milk? The coffee? The eggs? The bacon? The
rolls? The butter? The jelly? The fruit? Can I get the appetizing odor
of the coffee? Of the meat? The oranges and bananas? The perfume of the
lilac bush outside the door? The perfume from a handkerchief newly
treated to a spray of heliotrope?
Can I recall the touch of my fingers on the velvety peach? On the
smooth skin of an apple? On the fretted glassware? The feel of the fresh
linen? The contact of leather-covered or cane-seated chair? Of the
freshly donned garment? Can I get clearly the temperature of the hot
coffee in the mouth? Of the hot dish on the hand? Of the ice water? Of
the grateful coolness of the breeze wafted in through the open window?
Can I feel again the strain of muscle and joint in passing the heavy
dish? Can I feel the movement of the jaws in chewing the beefsteak? Of
the throat and lips in talking? Of the chest and diaphragm in laughing?
Of the muscles in sitting and rising? In hand and arm in using knife and
fork and spoon? Can I get again the sensation of pain which accompanied
biting on a tender tooth? From the shooting of a drop of acid from the
rind of the orange into the eye? The chance ache in the head? The
pleasant feeling connected with the exhilaration of a beautiful morning?
The feeling of perfect health? The pleasure connected with partaking of
a favorite food?
POWER OF IMAGERY VARIES IN DIFFERENT PEOPLE.--It is more than probable
that some of you cannot get perfectly clear images in all these lines,
certainly not with equal facility; for the imagery from any one sense
varies greatly from person to person. A celebrated painter was able,
after placing his subject in a chair and looking at him attentively for
a few minutes, to dismiss the subject and paint a perfect likeness of
him from the visual image which recurred to the artist every time he
turned his eyes to the chair where the sitter had been placed. On the
other hand, a young lady, a student in my psychology class, tells me
that she is never able to recall the looks of her mother when she is
absent, even if the separation has been only for a few moments. She can
get an image of the form, with the color and cut of the dress, but never
the features. One person may be able to recall a large part of a concert
through his auditory imagery, and another almost none.
In general it may be said that the power, or at least the use, of
imagery decreases with age. The writer has made a somewhat extensive
study of the imagery of certain high-school students, college students,
and specialists in psychology averaging middle age. Almost without
exception it was found that clear and vivid images played a smaller part
in the thinking of the older group than of the younger. More or less
abstract ideas and concepts seemed to have taken the place of the
concrete imagery of earlier years.
IMAGERY TYPES.--Although there is some difference in our ability to use
imagery of different sensory types, probably there is less variation
here than has been supposed. Earlier pedagogical works spoke of the
_visual_ type of mind, or the _audile_ type, or the _motor_ type, as if
the possession of one kind of imagery necessarily rendered a person
short in other types. Later studies have shown this view incorrect,
however. The person who has good images of one type is likely to excel
in all types, while one who is lacking in any one of the more important
types will probably be found short in all.[4] Most of us probably make
more use of visual and auditory than of other kinds of imagery, while
olfactory and gustatory images seem to play a minor rôle.
4. THE FUNCTION OF IMAGES
Binet says that the man who has not every type of imagery almost equally
well developed is only the fraction of a man. While this no doubt puts
the matter too strongly, yet images do play an important part in our
thinking.
IMAGES SUPPLY MATERIAL FOR IMAGINATION AND MEMORY.--Imagery supplies the
pictures from which imagination builds its structures. Given a rich
supply of images from the various senses, and imagination has the
material necessary to construct times and events long since past, or to
fill the future with plans or experiences not yet reached. Lacking
images, however, imagination is handicapped, and its meager products
reveal in their barrenness and their lack of warmth and reality the
poverty of material.
Much of our memory also takes the form of images. The face of a friend,
the sound of a voice, or the touch of a hand may be recalled, not as a
mere fact, but with almost the freshness and fidelity of a percept. That
much of our memory goes on in the form of ideas instead of images is
true. But memory is often both aided in its accuracy and rendered more
vital and significant through the presence of abundant imagery.
IMAGERY IN THE THOUGHT PROCESSES.--Since logical thinking deals more
with relations and meanings than with particular objects, images
naturally play a smaller part in reasoning than in memory and
imagination. Yet they have their place here as well. Students of
geometry or trigonometry often have difficulty in understanding a
theorem until they succeed in visualizing the surface or solid involved.
Thinking in the field of astronomy, mechanics, and many other sciences
is assisted at certain points by the ability to form clear and accurate
images.
THE USE OF IMAGERY IN LITERATURE.--Facility in the use of imagery
undoubtedly adds much to our enjoyment and appreciation of certain
forms of literature. The great writers commonly use all types of images
in their description and narration. If we are not able to employ the
images they used, many of their most beautiful pictures are likely to be
to us but so many words suggesting prosaic ideas.
Shakespeare, describing certain beautiful music, appeals to the sense of
smell to make himself understood:
... it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odor!
_Lady Macbeth_ cries:
Here's the smell of the blood still:
All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.
Milton has _Eve_ say of her dream of the fatal apple:
... The pleasant sav'ry smell
So quickened appetite, that I, methought,
Could not but taste.
Likewise with the sense of touch:
... I take thy hand, this hand
As soft as dove's down, and as white as it.
Imagine a person devoid of delicate tactile imagery, with senseless
finger tips and leaden footsteps, undertaking to interpret these
exquisite lines:
Thus I set my printless feet
O'er the cowslip's velvet head,
That bends not as I tread.
Shakespeare thus appeals to the muscular imagery:
At last, a little shaking of mine arm
And thrice his head thus waving up and down,
He raised a sigh so piteous and profound
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk
And end his being.
Many passages like the following appeal to the temperature images:
Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
Thou dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot!
To one whose auditory imagery is meager, the following lines will lose
something of their beauty:
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here we will sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Note how much clear images will add to Browning's words:
Are there not two moments in the adventure of a diver--one when a
beggar he prepares to plunge, and one, when a prince he rises with
his pearl?
POINTS WHERE IMAGES ARE OF GREATEST SERVICE.--Beyond question, many
images come flooding into our minds which are irrelevant and of no
service in our thinking. No one has failed to note many such. Further,
we undoubtedly do much of our best thinking with few or no images
present. Yet we need images. Where, then, are they most needed? _Images
are needed wherever the percepts which they represent would be of
service._ Whatever one could better understand or enjoy or appreciate by
seeing it, hearing it, or perceiving it through some other sense, he can
better understand, enjoy or appreciate through images than by means of
ideas only.
5. THE CULTIVATION OF IMAGERY
IMAGES DEPEND ON SENSORY STIMULI.--The power of imaging can be
cultivated the same as any other ability.
In the first place, we may put down as an absolute requisite _such an
environment of sensory stimuli as will tempt every sense to be awake and
at its best_, that we may be led into a large acquaintance with the
objects of our material environment. No one's stock of sensory images is
greater than the sum total of his sensory experiences. No one ever has
images of sights, or sounds, or tastes, or smells which he has never
experienced.
Likewise, he must have had the fullest and freest possible liberty in
motor activities. For not only is the motor act itself made possible
through the office of imagery, but the motor act clarifies and makes
useful the images. The boy who has actually made a table, or a desk, or
a box has ever afterward a different and a better image of one of these
objects than before; so also when he has owned and ridden a bicycle, his
image of this machine will have a different significance from that of
the image founded upon the visual perception alone of the wheel he
longingly looked at through the store window or in the other boy's
dooryard.
THE INFLUENCE OF FREQUENT RECALL.--But sensory experiences and motor
responses alone are not enough, though they are the basis of good
imagery. _There must be frequent recall._ The sunset may have been never
so brilliant, and the music never so entrancing; but if they are never
thought of and dwelt upon after they were first experienced, little will
remain of them after a very short time. It is by repeating them often in
experience through imagery that they become fixed, so that they stand
ready to do our bidding when we need next to use them.
THE RECONSTRUCTION OF OUR IMAGES.--To richness of experience and
frequency of the recall of our images we must add one more factor;
namely, that of their _reconstruction_ or working over. Few if any
images are exact recalls of former percepts of objects. Indeed, such
would be neither possible nor desirable. The images which we recall are
recalled for a purpose, or in view of some future activity, and hence
must be _selective_, or made up of the elements of several or many
former related images.
Thus the boy who wishes to construct a box without a pattern to follow
recalls the images of numerous boxes he may have seen, and from them all
he has a new image made over from many former percepts and images, and
this new image serves him as a working model. In this way he not only
gets a copy which he can follow to make his box, but he also secures a
new product in the form of an image different from any he ever had
before, and is therefore by so much the richer. It is this working over
of our stock of old images into new and richer and more suggestive ones
that constitutes the essence of constructive imagination.
The more types of imagery into which we can put our thought, the more
fully is it ours and the better our images. The spelling lesson needs
not only to be taken in through the eye, that we may retain a visual
image of the words, but also to be recited orally, so that the ear may
furnish an auditory image, and the organs of speech a motor image of the
correct forms. It needs also to be written, and thus given into the
keeping of the hand, which finally needs most of all to know and retain
it.
The reading lesson should be taken in through both the eye and the ear,
and then expressed by means of voice and gesture in as full and complete
a way as possible, that it may be associated with motor images. The
geography lesson needs not only to be read, but to be drawn, or molded,
or constructed. The history lesson should be made to appeal to every
possible form of imagery. The arithmetic lesson must be not only
computed, but measured, weighed, and pressed into actual service.
Thus we might carry the illustration into every line of education and
experience, and the same truth holds. _What we desire to comprehend
completely and retain well, we must apprehend through all available
senses and conserve in every possible type of image and form of
expression._
6. PROBLEMS IN INTROSPECTION AND OBSERVATION
1. Observe a reading class and try to determine whether the pupils
picture the scenes and events they read about. How can you tell?
2. Similarly observe a history class. Do the pupils realize the events
as actually happening, and the personages as real, living people?
3. Observe in a similar way a class in geography, and draw conclusions.
A pupil in computing the cost of plastering a certain room based the
figures on the room _filled full of plaster_. How might visual imagery
have saved the error?
4. Imagine a three-inch cube. Paint it. Then saw it up into inch cubes,
leaving them all standing in the original form. How many inch cubes have
paint on three faces? How many on two faces? How many on one face? How
many have no paint on them? Answer all these questions by referring to
your imagery alone.
5. Try often to recall images in the various sensory lines; determine in
what classes of images you are least proficient and try to improve in
these lines.
6. How is the singing teacher able, after his class has sung through
several scores, to tell that they are flatting?
7. Study your imagery carefully for a few days to see whether you can
discover your predominating type of imagery.