CHAPTER FIVE 



IMAGINATION 



" With accurate experiment and observation to work upon, 

 imagination becomes the architect of physical theory." 



— Tyndall 



Productive thinking 



THIS chapter and the next contain a brief discussion on 

 how ideas originate in the mind and what conditions are 

 favourable for creative mental eflfort. The critical examination 

 of the processes involved will be rendered easier if I do as I 

 have done in other parts of this book, and make an arbitrary 

 division of what is really a single subject. Consequently much 

 of the material in this chapter should be considered in connection 

 with Intuition and much of the next chapter appUes equally to 

 Imagination. 



Dewey analyses conscious thinking into the following phases. 

 First comes awareness of some difficulty or problem which 

 provides the stimulus. This is followed by a suggested solution 

 springing into the conscious mind. Only then does reason come 

 into play to examine and reject or accept the idea. If the idea 

 is rejected, our mind reverts to the previous stage and the 

 process is repeated. The important thing to realise is that the 

 conjuring up of the idea is not a dehberate, voluntary act. It 

 is something that happens to us rather than something we do.^' 



In ordinary thinking ideas continually " occur " to us in this 

 fashion to bridge over the steps in reasoning and we are so 

 accustomed to the process that we are hardly aware of it. Usually 

 the new ideas and combinations result from the immediately pre- 

 ceding thought calling up associations that have been developed 

 in the mind by past experience and education. Occasionally, how- 

 ever, there flashes into the mind some strikingly original idea, not 

 based on past associations or at any rate not on associations that 

 are at first apparent. We may suddenly perceive for the first time 



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