Psychology · William James
IMAGINATION.
"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.
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."
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.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.