GENERIC IMAGES. 54 i 



thoughts to generalities, I refuse to dwell upon single cases. While 

 waiting for some new general idea to suggest itself, I have the con- 

 sciousness of there being many competing images struggling to appear, 

 which do not belong to the same genus, and therefore restrain instead 

 of reenf orcing one another. At length the black-robed figure suddenly 

 reappears ; on viewing which, the accessories assume an appropriate 

 character, and the mind wanders among a variety of these, as it had 

 previously done among the others. In the course of the degradation 

 of highly generalized pictures to individual ones, many generic repre- 

 sentations are sure to appear which are good so far as they go, but are 

 not complete pictures. Whenever the mind has halted in a vain effort 

 to make the image more comprehensive without injuring its congruity, 

 the dead-lock is relieved by the sudden obliteration of a large part of 

 it, leaving a vacancy which is filled by some one of the competing 

 associations overcoming the others, and presenting itself within the 

 narrow field of view of our full consciousness and attention. 



Other conditions being the same, it is reasonable to suppose that 

 the idea that has been most frequently dwelt upon will have left the 

 deepest impression on the brain, and will have precedence. Thus, in 

 making a drawing of a pendulum in the act of swinging, we should 

 always represent it at one or other side of its excursion, when it delays, 

 stops for an instant, and returns. We see it longer in either of those 

 extreme positions than in any of the intermediate ones. Similarly, we 

 draw a man walking, or otherwise in motion, in the attitude where 

 there is a momentary change of direction, and consequently more or 

 less of rest at or about that position. It is different when the move- 

 ment is continuous ; the wheel of a moving carriage is drawn in a 

 blur, with, however, numerous radial streaks, showing, if I mistake 

 not, that attentive observation is never continuous, but acts in rapid 

 pulses, so that the revolving wheel is seen in many momentary posi- 

 tions. I have endeavored, in this way, to measure the intervals be- 

 tween the successive throbs of close attention. If a wheel revolves 

 rapidly, it is impossible to analyze its motion, and its spokes form an 

 apparently equable shade. 



In my memoir, read about a year ago before the Anthropological 

 Institute, on composite portraits, I used a phrase, which I wrote with 

 a little misgiving, which I have since quoted, and which I wish now to 

 amend. I desired briefly to convey the idea that composite portraits 

 were in a true sense generalizations and analogous to the images 

 stamped on the brain, as already described, and I used these words : 

 " A composite portrait represents the picture that could rise before the 

 mind's eye of an individual who had the gift of pictorial imagination 

 in an exalted degree." 



The question we have now to answer is this : 



If a person gifted with the visualizing power in perfection should 

 pose his eye in the place of the object-glass of the camera, would the 



