52 PSYCHOLOGY. 



izing, to which novelists and poets continually allude, which has left 

 an abiding mark on the vocabularies of every language, and which 

 supplies the material out of which dreams and the well-known halluci- 

 nations of sick people are built. 



" To my astonishment, I found tiiat the great majority of the men 

 of science to whom I first avvUed protested that mental imagery was 

 unknown to them., and they looked on me as fanciful and fantastic in 

 supposing that the words ' mental imagery ' really expressed what I 

 believed everybody supposed them to mean. They had no more notion 

 of its true nature than a color-blind man, who has not discerned his 

 defect, has of the nature of color. They had a mental deficiency of 

 which they were luiaware, and naturally enough supposed that those 

 who affirmed they possessed it were romancing. To illustrate their 

 mental attitude it will be sufficient to quote a few lines from the letter 

 of one of my correspondents, who writes : 



" 'These questions presuppose assent to some sort of a proposition re- 

 garding the "mind's eye," and the "images" which it sees. . . . This 

 points to some initial fallacy. ... It is only by a figure of speech that 

 I can describe my recollection of a scene as a "mental image" which 

 lean "see "with my "mind's eye." ... I do not see it . . . anymore 

 than a man sees the thousand lines of Sophocles which under due 

 pressure he is ready to repeat. The memory possesses it,' etc. 



" Much the same result followed inquiries made for me by a friend 

 among members of the French Institute. 



" On the other hand, when I spoke to persons whom I met in gen- 

 eral society, I found an entirely different disposition to prevail. Many 

 men and a yet larger number of women, and many hoys and girls, 

 declared that they habitually saw mental imagery.^ and. that it was 

 perfectly distinct to them and full of color. The more I pressed and 

 crossed-questioned them, professing myself to be incredulous, the more 

 obvious was the truth of their first assertions. They described 

 their imagery in minute detail, and they spoke in a tone of surprise at 

 my apparent hesitation in accepting what they said. I felt that I my- 

 self should have spoken exactly as they did if I had been describing a 

 scene that lay before my eyes, in broad daylight, to a blina man who 

 persisted in doubting the reality of vision. Reassured by this happier 

 experience, I recommenced to inquire among scientific men, and soon 

 found scattered instances of what I sought, though in by no means the 

 same abundance as elsewhere. I then circulated my questions more 

 generally among my friends and through their hands, and obtained re- 

 plies . . . from persons of both sexes, and of various ages, and in the 

 end from occasional correspondents in nearly every civilized country. 



" I have also received batches of answers from various educational 

 establishments both in England and America, which were made after 

 the masters had fully explained the meaning of the questions, and in- 

 terested the boys in them. These have the merit of returns derived 

 from a general census, which my other data lack, because I cannot for 



