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Inquiries into Human Faculty
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.
But there is no reason why it should be so, if the faculty is free in its
action, and not tied to reproduce hard and persistent forms; it may then
produce generalised pictures out of its past experiences quite
automatically. It has no difficulty in reducing images to the same scale,
owing to our constant practice in watching objects as they approach or
recede, and consequently grow or diminish in apparent size. It readily
shifts images to any desired point of the field of view, owing to our habit
of looking at bodies in motion to
