PRINCIPLES DETERMINING METHOD. 159 



blossoms, as distinguished from that particular blossom. 

 Or they may have to add to the picture of the flower 

 those of the other parts of the plant to form a picture 

 of the plant, or those of other stages of growth to 

 understand its life history. Finally, as was shown in 

 Chapter I, the images of the dandelion must be related 

 to what the mind knows about its environment. 



This process of relating to other mind pictures, omit- 

 ting some features, adding others, combining and modi- 

 fying, may be continued until we get the beautiful 

 series of pictures embodied in Lowell's " To the Dande- 

 lion." 



The power or the process of repeating or reprodu- 

 cing the images of what has been perceived and apper- 

 ceived is memory. The power or process of relating 

 and combining these images, selecting parts of some, 

 adding to others, combining parts of several to form a 

 mind picture of what has not been perceived, we call 

 imagination. The distinction between memory and 

 imagination as thus denned is not very sharp. Fre- 

 quently imagination is considered as including both 

 memory then called reproductive imagination and 

 imagination proper, distinguished as constructive ima- 

 gination. Both have a most important part in determin- 

 ing method in nature study or in any other subject. 



We recognize the importance of memory, or repro- 

 ductive imagination, in all education. The education 

 of the past, and much of the education of to-day, has 

 relied too much on memory of words rather than of 

 sense-percepts, memory which has very little sense-per- 



