THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 219 



and a mirage; and, vice versa, reason represents under the 

 single general concept of a rose objects that imagination is 

 forced to represent by means of two distinct images, e.g., a 

 yellow, and a white rose. Imagery depicts only the super- 

 ficial or exterior properties of an object, whereas thought 

 penetrates beneath the phenomenal surface to interior prop- 

 erties and supersensible relationships. The sensory percept 

 apprehends the existence of a fact, while the rational concept 

 analyzes its nature. Hence sense-perception is concerned with 

 the reality of existence, while thought is concerned with the 

 reality of essence. 



Certain American psychologists employ the term imageless 

 thought to designate abstract concepts. The expression is 

 liable to be misunderstood. It should not be construed as 

 excluding all concomitance and concurrence of sensible im- 

 agery, in relation to the process of thought. What is really 

 meant is that sensible appearances do not make up the sum- 

 total of our internal experiences, but that we are also aware 

 of mental acts and states which are not reducible to imagery. 

 In other words, we experience thought; and thought and im- 

 agery, though concomitant, are not commensurable. The clar- 

 ity and coherence of thought does not depend on the clarity 

 or germaneness of the accompanying imagery, nor is it ever 

 adequately translatable into terms of that imagery. Thus the 

 universal triangle of geometry, which is not right, nor oblique, 

 nor isosceles, neither scalene nor equilateral, neither large nor 

 small, neither here nor there, neither now nor then, is not vis- 

 ualizable in terms of concrete imagery, although we are clearly 

 conscious of its significance in geometrical demonstrations. 

 Imagery differs according to the person, one man being a 

 visualist, another an audist, another a tactualist, another a 

 motor-verbalist, etc. But thought is the same in all, and 

 consequently it is thought, and not imagery, which we convey 

 by means of speech. Helen Keller, whose imagery is mainly 

 motor and tactile, can exchange views with an audist or vis- 

 ualist on the subject of geometry, even though the amount 



