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