144 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 



taken to mean the highest development of the faculty in the 

 intentional imaging of past impressions. In this sense we 

 speak of the imaginations of the poet, imaginations of the 

 heart, scientific use of the imagination, and so on ; in all of 

 which cases we presuppose the powers of high abstraction as 

 well as those of intentional ideal combinations of former 

 actual impressions. It is needless to say that even in man, 

 long before the faculty in question attains to this degree of 

 development, it occurs in lower degrees. Indeed, this 

 highest degree may be said to bear the same relation to the 

 lower degrees that recollection bears to memory ; it implies 

 the introspective searching of the mind with the conscious 

 purpose of forming an ideal structure. But just as recollec- 

 tion is preceded by memory, or the power of intentional 

 association by that of sensuous association, so is imagination 

 of the intentional kind preceded by imagination of the 

 sensuous. 



After considering the subject I think we may, for the 

 purposes of analysis, conveniently divide the grades of 

 Imagination into four classes : — 



1. On seeing any object, such as an orange, we are at 

 once re-minded of the taste of an orange — have an imagina- 

 tion of that taste ; and this is ^called up by the force of mere 

 sensuous association. This is the lowest stage of mental 

 imagery. 



2. Next we hai^e the stage in which we form a mental 

 picture of an absent object suggested to us by some other 

 object, as when water may suggest to us the idea of wine. 



3. At a still higher stage[we may form an idea indepen- 

 dently of any obvious suggestion from without, as when a 

 lover thinks of his mistress even in spite of external dis- 

 tractions ; the course of ideation is here self-sustained, and 

 no longer dependent for its mind-pictures (ideas) upon the 

 suggestions of immediate sense-perceptions. At this stage 

 we have dreaming in sleep, where the course of ideation runs 

 on in a continuous stream when all tlie channels of sense are 

 closed. 



4. Lastly we have the stage of intentionally forming 

 mind-pictures with the set purpose of obtaining new ideal 

 combinations. 



Such being the great differences in the degrees to which 

 the faculty of Imagination may attain, I have made the 



