598 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



bent goes deep into human nature, and it is transmitted to our 

 offspring ; it reveals itself early in life, is a most valuable guide- 

 mark to the educator, and plays a prominent role in the develop- 

 ment of enthusiasm and of genius. It is one aspect of this im- 

 portant trait that is here to be treated — an aspect best described 

 as " sensory apperception " — the part of our individual bent due 

 to the relative intellectual importance of the several senses. 



Man is a visual animal ; as a race we are eye-minded. We re- 

 gard " seeing as believing," and say we " see " when we compre- 

 hend. The language of every -day use, as well as the imagery of 

 poetry, abounds in illustrations of the "pictorial" nature of 

 'thought. Primitive forms of " picture-writing " testify to the 

 ease with which the eye takes the lead in expressing ideas ; and 

 modern civilization increases a hundred-fold this natural visual 

 supremacy, which by some is regarded as originally due to the 

 function of sight as a distance-sense (" anticipatory touch " of 

 Spencer). The use of object-lessons, models, diagrams, the reduc- 

 tion of complex relations to the curves of the graphic system, and 

 a host of similar devices,* all show how firmly the eye is the ap- 

 prehensive organ of mankind, and how generally its educational 

 value is appreciated. While, as a genus, we are eye-minded (in 

 the same sense in which we might call a dog smell-minded), cer- 

 tain portions of the genus Jiomo possess this faculty to a greater 

 degree than others. Women visualize more distinctly than men ; 

 children think more vividly than adults ; the French are (or were) 

 noted for the skill with which they can foresee the effect of dress- 

 combinations, festal decorations, and the like, and their phrase 

 for " imagine " is " figurez-vous." Similar individual variations 

 have been well brought out by the studies of Mr. Francis Galton.f 

 From the examination of a large number of answers to a long 

 series of questions, he concluded that the brightness, vividness, . 

 and reality of the mental picture of a former experience varied in 

 different persons from all absence of any pictorial element in the 

 remembrance to a remembrance comparable to a colored photo- 

 graph of the original scene. In describing their remembrance of 

 the morning's breakfast-table, some saw it all bright, definite, and 

 complete ; the persons present, their costume, the dishes, the 

 view — all stood out as in the actual scene. Another group could 

 visualize only the main features ; the picture lacked reality, omit- 

 ted details, and was only fairly clear ; while a third set could 



* Perhaps the most striking device is that of teaching children the tones of the scale 

 by association with colors (also with position of the hand, etc.) ; thus do would be red, mi 

 yellow, etc. The association is explained (?) as due to a similar emotional effect of the 

 sound and the color. I have heard a class of children sing from colors, and set up tunes in 

 the same way. 



f " Inquiries into Human Faculty," London, 1883. 



