Part 8 (1/2)
From the standpoint of the old psychology, a chapter bearing the above t.i.tle would be considered quite out of place in a book on Thought-Culture, the Imagination being considered as outside the realm of practical psychology, and as belonging entirely to the idealistic phase of mental activities. The popular idea concerning the Imagination also is opposed to the ”practical” side of its use. In the public mind the Imagination is regarded as something connected with idle dreaming and fanciful mental imaging. Imagination is considered as almost synonomous with ”Fancy.”
But the New Psychology sees beyond this negative phase of the Imagination and recognizes the positive side which is essentially constructive when backed up with a determined will. It recognizes that while the Imagination is by its very nature _idealistic_, yet these ideals may be made real--these subjective pictures may be materialized objectively. The positive phase of the Imagination manifests in planning, designing, projecting, mapping out, and in general in erecting the mental framework which is afterward clothed with the material structure of actual accomplishment. And, accordingly, it has seemed to us that a chapter on ”Constructive Imagination” might well conclude this book on Thought-Culture.
Halleck says: ”It was once thought that the imagination should be repressed, not cultivated, that it was in the human mind like weeds in a garden.... In this age there is no mental power that stands more in need of cultivation than the imagination. So practical are its results that a man without it cannot possibly be a good plumber. He must image short cuts for placing his pipe. The image of the direction to take to elude an obstacle must precede the actual laying of the pipe. If he fixes it before traversing the way with his imagination, he frequently gets into trouble and has to tear down his work. Some one has said that the more imagination a blacksmith has, the better will he shoe a horse. Every time he strikes the red-hot iron, he makes it approximate to the image in his mind. Nor is this image a literal copy of the horse's foot. If there is a depression in that, the imagination must build out a corresponding elevation in the image, and the blows must make the iron fit the image.”
Brodie says: ”Physical investigation, more than anything else, helps to teach us the actual value and right use of the imagination--of that wondrous faculty, which, when left to ramble uncontrolled, leads us astray into a wilderness of perplexities and errors, a land of mists and shadows; but which, properly controlled by experience and reflection, becomes the n.o.blest attribute of man, the source of poetic genius, the instrument of discovery in science, without the aid of which Newton would never have invented fluxions nor Davy have decomposed the earths and alkalies, nor would Columbus have found another continent.”
The Imagination is more than Memory, for the latter merely reproduces the impressions made upon it, while the Imagination gathers up the material of impression and weaves new fabrics from them or builds new structures from their separated units. As Tyndall well said: ”Philosophers may be right in affirming that we cannot transcend experience; but we can at all events carry it a long way from its origin. We can also magnify, diminish, qualify and combine experiences, so as to render them fit for purposes entirely new. We are gifted with the power of imagination and by this power we can lighten the darkness which surrounds the world of the senses. There are tories, even in science, who regard imagination as a faculty to be feared and avoided rather than employed. But bounded and conditioned by cooperant reason, imagination becomes the mightiest instrument of the physical discoverer.
Newton's pa.s.sage from a falling apple to a falling moon was, at the outset, a leap of the imagination.”
Brooks says: ”The imagination is a creative as well as a combining power.... The Imagination can combine objects of sense into new forms, but it can do more than this. The objects of sense are, in most cases, merely the materials with which it works. The imagination is a plastic power, moulding the things of sense into new forms to express its ideals; and it is these ideals that const.i.tute the real products of the imagination. The objects of the material world are to it like clay in the hands of the potter; it shapes them into forms according to its own ideals of grace and beauty.... He, who sees no more than a mere combination in these creations of the imagination, misses the essential element and elevates into significance that which is merely incidental.”
Imagination, in some degree or phase, must come before voluntary physical action and conscious material creation. Everything that has been created by the hand of man has first been created in the _mind_ of man by the exercise of the Imagination. Everything that man has wrought has first existed in his mind as an _ideal_, before his hands, or the hands of others, wrought it into material _reality_. As Maudsley says: ”It is certain that in order to execute consciously a voluntary act we must have in the mind a conception of the aim and purpose of the act.”
Kay says: ”It is as serving to guide and direct our various activities that mental images derive their chief value and importance. In anything that we purpose or intend to do, we must first of all have an idea or image of it in the mind, and the more clear and correct the image, the more accurately and efficiently will the purpose be carried out. We cannot exert an act of volition without having in the mind an idea or image of what we will to effect.”
Upon the importance of a scientific use of the Imagination in every-day life, the best authorities agree. Maudsley says: ”We cannot do an act voluntarily unless we know what we are going to do, and we cannot know exactly what we are going to do until we have taught ourselves to do it.” Bain says: ”By aiming at a new construction, we must clearly conceive what is aimed at. Where we have a very distinct and intelligible model before us, we are in a fair way to succeed; in proportion as the ideal is dim and wavering we stagger and miscarry.”
Kay says: ”A clear and accurate idea of what we wish to do, and how it is to be effected, is of the utmost value and importance in all the affairs of life. A man's conduct naturally shapes itself according to the ideas in his mind, and nothing contributes more to his success in life than having a high ideal and keeping it constantly in view. Where such is the case one can hardly fail in attaining it. Numerous unexpected circ.u.mstances will be found to conspire to bring it about, and even what seemed at first hostile may be converted into means for its furtherance; while by having it constantly before the mind he will be ever ready to take advantage of any favoring circ.u.mstances that may present themselves.”
Simpson says: ”A pa.s.sionate desire and an unwearied will can perform impossibilities, or what seem to be such, to the cold and feeble.”
Lytton says: ”Dream, O youth, dream manfully and n.o.bly, and thy dreams shall be prophets.” Foster says: ”It is wonderful how even the casualities of life seem to bow to a spirit that will not bow to them, and yield to subserve a design which they may, in their first apparent tendency, threaten to frustrate. When a firm decisive spirit is recognized it is curious to see how s.p.a.ce clears around a man and leaves him room and freedom.” Tanner says: ”To believe firmly is almost tantamount in the end to accomplishment.” Maudsley says: ”Aspirations are often prophecies, the harbingers of what a man shall be in a condition to perform.” Macaulay says: ”It is related of Warren Hastings that when only seven years old there arose in his mind a scheme which through all the turns of his eventful life was never abandoned.” Kay says: ”When one is engaged in seeking for a thing, if he keep the image of it clearly before the mind, he will be very likely to find it, and that too, probably, where it would otherwise have escaped his notice.”
Burroughs says: ”No one ever found the walking fern who did not have the walking fern in his mind. A person whose eye is full of Indian relics picks them up in every field he walks through. They are quickly recognized because the eye has been commissioned to find them.”
Constructive Imagination differs from the phases of the faculty of Imagination which are akin to ”Fancy,” in a number of ways, the chief points of difference being as follows:
The Constructive Imagination is always exercised in the pursuance of _a definite intent and purpose_. The person so using the faculty starts out with the idea of accomplis.h.i.+ng certain purposes, and with the direct intent of thinking and planning in that particular direction. The fanciful phase of the Imagination, on the contrary, starts with no definite intent or purpose, but proceeds along the line of mere idle phantasy or day-dreaming.
The Constructive Imagination _selects its material_. The person using the faculty in this manner abstracts from his general stock of mental images and impressions those particular materials which fit in with his general intent and purpose. Instead of allowing his imagination to wander around the entire field of memory, or representation, he deliberately and voluntarily selects and sets apart only such objects as seem to be conducive to his general design or plan, and which are logically a.s.sociated with the same.
The Constructive Imagination operates upon the lines of _logical thought_. One so using the faculty subjects his mental images, or ideas, to his _thinking faculties_, and proceeds with his imaginative constructive work along the lines of Logical Thought. He goes through the processes of Abstraction, Generalization or Conception, Judgment and the higher phases of Reasoning, in connection with his general work of Constructive Imagination. Instead of having the objects of thought before him in material form, he has them represented to his mind _in ideal form_, and he works upon his material in that shape.
The Constructive Imagination is _voluntary_--under the control and direction of the will. Instead of being in the nature of a dream depending not upon the will or reason, it is directly controlled not only by reason but also by the will.