but the powers of such men to visualise the separate boards with
different sets of men on the different boards, some ivory, some wood,
and so forth, are well known, and I need not repeat them. I will
rather give the following extract from an article in the _Pall Mall
Gazette_, 27th June 1882, on the recent chess tournament at Vienna:--
"The modern feats of blindfold play (without sight of board) greatly
surpass those of twenty years ago. Paul Morphy, the American, was
the first who made an especial study of this kind of display,
playing some seven or eight games blindfold and simultaneously
against various inferior opponents, and making lucrative exhibitions
in this way. His abilities in this line created a scare among other
rivals who had not practised this test of memory. Since his day many
chess-players who are gifted with strong and clear memory and power
of picturing to the mind the ideal board and men, have carried this
branch of exhibition play far beyond Morphy's pitch; and,
contemporaneously with this development, it has become acknowledged
that skill in blindfold play is not an absolute test of similarly
relative powers over the board: _e.g._ Blackburne and Zukertort can
play as many as sixteen, or even twenty, blindfold games at a time,
and win about 80 per cent of them at least. Steinitz, who beats them
both in match play, does not essay more than six blindfold at a time.
Mason does not, to our knowledge, make any _spécialité_ at all of
this sort."
I have many cases of persons mentally reading off scores when
playing the pianoforte, or manuscript when they are making speeches.
One statesman has assured me that a certain hesitation in utterance
which he has at times, is due to his being plagued by the image of
his manuscript speech with its original erasures and corrections. He
cannot lay the ghost, and he puzzles in trying to decipher it.
Some few persons see mentally in print every word that is uttered;
they attend to the visual equivalent and not to the sound of the
words, and they read them off usually as from a long imaginary strip
of paper, such as is unwound from telegraphic instruments. The
experiences differ in detail as to size and kind of type, colour of
paper, and so forth, but are always the same in the same person.
A well-known frequenter of the Royal Institution tells me that he
often craves for an absence of visual perceptions, they are so
brilliant and persistent. The Rev. George Henslow speaks of their
extreme restlessness; they oscillate, rotate, and change.
It is a mistake to suppose that sharp sight is accompanied by clear
visual memory. I have not a few instances in which the independence
of the two faculties is emphatically commented on; and I have at
least one clear case where great interest in outlines and accurate
appreciation of straightness, squareness, and the like, is
unaccompanied by the power of visualising. Neither does the faculty
go with dreaming. I have cases where it is powerful, and at the same
time where dreams are rare and faint or altogether absent. One
friend tells me that his dreams have not the hundredth part of the
vigour of his waking fancies.
The visualising and the identifying powers are by no means
necessarily combined. A distinguished writer on meta-physical topics
assures me that he is exceptionally quick at recognising a face that
he has seen before, but that he cannot call up a mental image of any
face with clearness.
Some persons have the power of combining in a single perception more
than can be seen at any one moment by the two eyes. It is needless
to insist on the fact that all who have two eyes see stereoscopically,
and therefore somewhat round a corner. Children, who can focus their
eyes on very near objects, must be able to comprise in a single
mental image much more than a half of any small object they are
examining. Animals such as hares, whose eyes are set more on the
side of the head than ours, must be able to perceive at one and the
same instant more of a panorama than we can. I find that a few
persons can, by what they often describe as a kind of touch-sight,
visualise at the same moment all round the image of a solid body.
Many can do so nearly, but not altogether round that of a
terrestrial globe. An eminent mineralogist assures me that he is
able to imagine simultaneously all the sides of a crystal with which
he is familiar. I may be allowed to quote a curious faculty of my
own in respect to this. It is exercised only occasionally and in
dreams, or rather in nightmares, but under those circumstances I am
perfectly conscious of embracing an entire sphere in a single
perception. It appears to lie within my mental eyeball, and to be
viewed centripetally.
This power of comprehension is practically attained in many cases by
indirect methods. It is a common feat to take in the whole
surroundings of an imagined room with such a rapid mental sweep as
to leave some doubt whether it has not been viewed simultaneously.
Some persons have the habit of viewing objects as though they were
partly transparent; thus, if they so dispose a globe in their
imagination as to see both its north and south poles at the same time,
they will not be able to see its equatorial parts. They can also
perceive all the rooms of an imaginary house by a single mental
glance, the walls and floors being as if made of glass. A fourth
class of persons have the habit of recalling scenes, not from the
point of view whence they were observed, but from a distance, and
they visualise their own selves as actors on the mental stage. By
one or other of these ways, the power of seeing the whole of an
object, and not merely one aspect of it, is possessed by many persons.
The place where the image appears to lie, differs much. Most persons
see it in an indefinable sort of way, others see it in front of the
eye, others at a distance corresponding to reality. There exists a
power which is rare naturally, but can, I believe, be acquired
without much difficulty, of projecting a mental picture upon a piece
of paper, and of holding it fast there, so that it can be outlined
with a pencil. To this I shall recur.
Images usually do not become stronger by dwelling on them; the first
idea is commonly the most vigorous, but this is not always the case.
Sometimes the mental view of a locality is inseparably connected
with the sense of its position as regards the points of the compass,
real or imaginary. I have received full and curious descriptions
from very different sources of this strong geographical tendency,
and in one or two cases I have reason to think it allied to a
considerable faculty of geographical comprehension.
The power of visualising is higher in the female sex than in the male,
and is somewhat, but not much, higher in public schoolboys than in
men. After maturity is reached, the further advance of age does not
seem to dim the faculty, but rather the reverse, judging from
numerous statements to that effect; but advancing years are
sometimes accompanied by a growing habit of hard abstract thinking,
and in these cases--not uncommon among those whom I have
questioned--the faculty undoubtedly becomes impaired. There is
reason to believe that it is very high in some young children, who
seem to spend years of difficulty in distinguishing between the
subjective and objective world. Language and book-learning certainly
tend to dull it.
The visualising faculty is a natural gift, and, like all natural
gifts, has a tendency to be inherited. In this faculty the tendency
to inheritance is exceptionally strong, as I have abundant evidence
to prove, especially in respect to certain rather rare peculiarities,
of which I shall speak in the next chapter, and which, when they
exist at all, are usually found among two, three, or more brothers
and sisters, parents, children, uncles and aunts, and cousins.
Since families differ so much in respect to this gift, we may
suppose that races would also differ, and there can be no doubt that
such is the case. I hardly like to refer to civilised nations,
because their natural faculties are too much modified by education
to allow of their being appraised in an off-hand fashion. I may,
however, speak of the French, who appear to possess the visualising
faculty in a high degree. The peculiar ability they show in
prearranging ceremonials _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.
It is among uncivilised races that natural differences in the
visualising faculty are most conspicuous. Many of them make carvings
and rude illustrations, but only a few have the gift of carrying a
picture in their mind's eye, judging by the completeness and
firmness of their designs, which show no trace of having been
elaborated in that step-by-step manner which is characteristic of
draughtsmen who are not natural artists.
Among the races who are thus gifted are the commonly despised, but,
as I confidently maintain from personal knowledge of them, the much
underrated Bushmen of South Africa. They are no doubt deficient in
the natural instincts necessary to civilisation, for they detest a
regular life, they are inveterate thieves, and are incapable of
withstanding the temptation of strong drink. On the other hand, they
have few superiors among barbarians in the ingenious methods by
which they supply the wants of a difficult existence, and in the
effectiveness and nattiness of their accoutrements. One of their
habits is to draw pictures on the walls of caves of men and animals,
and to colour them with ochre. These drawings were once numerous,
but they have been sadly destroyed by advancing colonisation, and
few of them, and indeed few wild Bushmen, now exist. Fortunately a
large and valuable collection of facsimiles of Bushman art was made
before it became too late by Mr. Stow, of the Cape Colony, who has
very lately sent some specimens of them to this country, in the hope
that means might be found for the publication of the entire series.
Among the many pictures of animals in each of the large sheets full
of them, I was particularly struck with one of an eland as giving a
just idea of the precision and purity of their best work. Others,
again, were exhibited last summer at the Anthropological Institute
by Mr. Hutchinson.
The method by which the Bushmen draw is described in the following
extract from a letter written to me by Dr. Mann, the well-known
authority on South African matters of science. The boy to whom he
refers belonged to a wild tribe living in caves in the Drakenberg,
who plundered outlying farms, and were pursued by the neighbouring
colonists. He was wounded and captured, then sent to hospital, and
subsequently taken into service. He was under Dr. Mann's observation
in the year 1860, and has recently died, to the great regret of his
employer, Mr. Proudfoot, to whom he became a valuable servant.
Dr. Mann writes as follows:--
"This lad was very skilful in the proverbial Bushman art of
drawing animal figures, and upon several occasions I induced
him to show me how this was managed among his people. He
invariably began by jotting down upon paper or on a slate a
number of isolated dots which presented no connection or trace
of outline of any kind to the uninitiated eye, but looked like
the stars scattered promiscuously in the sky. Having with much
deliberation satisfied himself of the sufficiency of these dots,
he forthwith began to run a free bold line from one to the other,
and as he did so the form of an animal--horse, buffalo, elephant,
or some kind of antelope--gradually developed itself. This was
invariably done with a free hand, and with such unerring accuracy
of touch, that no correction of a line was at any time attempted.
I understood from the lad that this was the plan which was invariably
pursued by his kindred in making their clever pictures."
It is impossible, I think, for a drawing to be made on this method
unless the artist had a clear image in his mind's eye of what he was
about to draw, and was able, in some degree, to project it on the
paper or slate.
Other living races have the gift of drawing, but none more so than
the Eskimo. I will therefore speak of these and not of the
Australian and Tasmanian pictures, nor of the still ruder
performances of the old inhabitants of Guiana, nor of those of some
North American tribes, as the Iroquois. The Eskimos are geographers
by instinct, and appear to see vast tracts of country mapped out in
their heads. From the multitude of illustrations of their
map-drawing powers, I may mention one of those included in the
journals of Captain Hall, at p. 224, which were published in 1879 by
the United States Government, under the editorship of Professor J. E.
Nourse. It is the facsimile of a chart drawn by an Eskimo who was a
thorough barbarian in the accepted sense of the word; that is to say,
he spoke no language besides his own uncouth tongue, he was wholly
uneducated according to our modern ideas, and he lived in what we
should call a savage fashion. This man drew from memory a chart of
the region over which he had at one time or another gone in his canoe.
It extended from Pond's Bay, in lat. 73°, to Fort Churchill, in lat.
58°44', over a distance in a straight line of more than 960 nautical,
or 1100 English miles, the coast being so indented by arms of the
sea that its length is six times as great. On comparing this rough
Eskimo outline with the Admiralty chart of 1870, their accordance is
remarkable. I have seen many MS. route maps made by travellers a few
years since, when the scientific exploration of the world was much
less advanced than it is now, and I can confidently say that I have
never known of any traveller, white or brown, civilised or
uncivilised, in Africa, Asia, or Australia, who, being unprovided
with surveying instruments, and trusting to his memory alone, has
produced a chart comparable in extent and accuracy to that of this
barbarous Eskimo. The aptitude of the Eskimos to draw, is abundantly
shown by the numerous illustrations in Rink's work, all of which
were made by self-taught men, and are thoroughly realistic.
So much for the wild races of the present day; but even the Eskimo
are equalled in their power of drawing by the men of old times. In
ages so far gone by, that the interval that separates them from our
own may be measured in perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, when
Europe was mostly icebound, a race who, in the opinion of all
anthropologists, was closely allied to the modern Eskimo, lived in
caves in the more habitable places. Many broken relics of that race
have been found; some few of these are of bone engraved with flints
or carved into figures, and among these are representations of the
mammoth, elk, and reindeer, which, if made by an English labourer
with the much better implements at his command, would certainly
attract local attention and lead to his being properly educated, and
in much likelihood to his becoming a considerable artist if he had
intellectual powers to match.
It is not at all improbable that these prehistoric men had the same
geographical instincts as the modern Eskimo, whom they closely
resemble in every known respect. If so, it is perfectly possible
that scraps of charts scratched on bone or stone, of prehistoric
Europe, when the distribution of land, sea, and ice was very
different to what it is now, may still exist, buried underground,
and may reward the zeal of some future cave explorer.
There is abundant evidence that the visualising faculty admits of
being developed by education. The testimony on which I would
lay especial stress is derived from the published experiences of
M. Lecoq de Boisbaudran, late director of the École Nationale de Dessein,
in Paris, which are related in his _Education de la M. émoire
Pittoresque_ [1] He trained his pupils with extraordinary success,
beginning with the simplest figures. They were made to study the
models thoroughly before they tried to draw them from memory. One
favourite expedient was to associate the sight memory with the
muscular memory, by making his pupils follow at a distance the
outlines of the figures with a pencil held in their hands. After
three or four months' practice, their visual memory became greatly
strengthened. They had no difficulty in summoning images at will, in
holding them steady, and in drawing them. Their copies [7] were
executed with marvellous fidelity, as attested by a commission of
the Institute, appointed in 1852 to inquire into the matter, of
which the eminent painter Horace Vernet was a member. The present
Slade Professor of Fine Arts at University College, M. Légros, was a
pupil of M. de Boisbaudran. He has expressed to me his indebtedness
to the system, and he has assured me of his own success in teaching
others in a somewhat similar way.
[Footnote 7: Republished in an 8vo, entitled _Enseignment
Artistique_. Morel et Cie. Paris, 1879.]
Colonel Moncrieff informs me that, when wintering in 1877 near Fort
Garry in North America, young Indians occasionally came to his
quarters, and that he found them much interested in any pictures or
prints that were put before them. On one of these occasions he saw
an Indian tracing the outline of a print from the _Illustrated News_
very carefully with the point of his knife. The reason he gave for
this odd manoeuvre was, that he would remember the better how to
carve it when he returned home.
I could mention instances within my own experience in which the
visualising faculty has become strengthened by practice; notably one
of an eminent electrical engineer, who had the power of recalling
form with unusual precision, but not colour. A few weeks after he
had replied to my questions, he told me that my inquiries had
induced him to practise his colour memory, and that he had done so
with such success that he was become quite an adept at it, and that
the newly-acquired power was a source of much pleasure to him.
A useful faculty, easily developed by practice, is that of retaining
a retinal picture. A scene is flashed upon the eye; the memory of it
persists, and details, which escaped observation during the brief
time when it was actually seen, may be analysed and studied at
leisure in the subsequent vision.
The memories we should aim at acquiring are, however, such as are
based on a thorough understanding of the objects observed. In no
case is this more surely effected than in the processes of
mechanical drawing, where the intended structure has to be portrayed
so exactly in plan, elevation, side view, and sections, that the
workman has simply to copy the drawing in metal, wood, or stone, as
the case may be. It is undoubtedly the fact that mechanicians,
engineers, and architects usually possess the faculty of seeing
mental images with remarkable clearness and precision.
A few dots like those used by the Bushmen give great assistance in
creating an imaginary picture, as proved by our general habit of
working out ideas by the help of marks and rude lines. The use of
dolls by children also testifies to the value of an objective
support in the construction of mental images. The doll serves as a
kind of skeleton for the child to clothe with fantastic attributes,
and the less individuality the doll has, the more it is appreciated
by the child, who can the better utilise it as a lay figure in many
different characters. The chief art of strengthening visual, as well
as every other form of memory, lies in multiplying associations; the
healthiest memory being that in which all the associations are
logical, and toward which all the senses concur in their due
proportions. It is wonderful how much the vividness of a
recollection is increased when two or more lines of association are
simultaneously excited. Thus the inside of a known house is much
better visualised when we are looking at its outside than when we
are away from it, and some chess-players have told me that it is
easier for them to play a game from memory when they have a blank
board before them than when they have not.
There is an absence of flexibility in the mental imagery of most
persons. They find that the first image they have acquired of any
scene is apt to hold its place tenaciously in spite of subsequent
need of correction. They find a difficulty in shifting their mental
view of an object, and examining it at pleasure in different
positions. If they see an object equally often in many positions the
memories combine and confuse one another, forming a "composite" blur,
which they cannot dissect into its components. They are less able to
visualise the features of intimate friends than those of persons of
whom they have caught only a single glance. Many such persons have
expressed to me their grief at finding themselves powerless to
recall the looks of dear relations whom they had lost, while they
had no difficulty in recollecting faces that were uninteresting to
them.
Others have a complete mastery over their mental images. They can
call up the figure of a friend and make it sit on a chair or stand
up at will; they can make it turn round and attitudinise in any way,
as by mounting it on a bicycle or compelling it to perform gymnastic
feats on a trapeze. They are able to build up elaborate geometric
structures bit by bit in their mind's eye, and add, subtract, or
alter at will and at leisure. This free action of a vivid
visualising faculty is of much importance in connection with the
higher processes of generalised thought, though it is commonly put
to no such purpose, as may be easily explained by an example. Suppose
a person suddenly to accost another with the following words:--
"I want to tell you about a boat." What is the idea that the word
"boat" would be likely to call up? I tried the experiment with this
result. One person, a young lady, said that she immediately saw the
image of a rather large boat pushing off from the shore, and that it
was full of ladies and gentlemen, the ladies being dressed in white
and blue. It is obvious that a tendency to give so specific an
interpretation to a general word is absolutely opposed to philosophic
thought. Another person, who was accustomed to philosophise, said
that the word "boat" had aroused no definite image, because he had
purposely held his mind in suspense. He had exerted himself not to
lapse into any one of the special ideas that he felt the word boat
was ready to call up, such as a skiff, wherry, barge, launch, punt,
or dingy. Much more did he refuse to think of any one of these with
any particular freight or from any particular point of view. A habit
of suppressing mental imagery must therefore characterise men who
deal much with abstract ideas; and as the power of dealing easily
and firmly with these ideas is the surest criterion of a high order
of intellect, we should expect that the visualising faculty would be
starved by disuse among philosophers, and this is precisely what I
found on inquiry to be the case.