IMAGINATION. 53 



a moment suppose that the writers of the latter are a haphazard pro- 

 portion of those to whom they were sent. Indeed I know of some who, 

 disavowing all possession of the power, and of many others who, pos- 

 sessing it in too faint a degree to enable them to express what their 

 experiences really were, in a manner satisfactory to themselves, sent no 

 returns at all. Considerable statistical similarity was, however, ob- 

 served between the sets of returns furnished by the schoolboys and 

 those sent by my separate correspondents, and I may add that they ac- 

 cord in this respect with the oral information I have elsewhere obtained. 

 The conformity of replies from so many different sources which was 

 clear from the first, the fact of their apparent trustworthiness being on 

 the whole much increased by cross-examination (though I could give 

 one or two amusing instances of break-down), and the evident effort 

 made to give accurate answers, have convinced me that it is a much 

 easier matter than I had anticipated to obtain trustworthy replies to 

 psychological questions. Many persons, especially women and intelli- 

 gent children, take pleasure in introspection, and strive their very best 

 to explain their mental processes. I think that a delight in self-dissec- 

 tion must be a strong ingredient in the pleasure that many are said to 

 take in confessing themselves to priests. 



" Here, then, are two rather notable results : the one is the proved 

 facility of obtaining statistical insight into the processes of other per- 

 sons' minds, whatever a priori objection may have been made as to its 

 possibility ; and the other is that scientific men, as a class, have feeble 

 powers of visual representation. There is no doubt whatever on the 

 latter point, ho«'ever it may be accounted for. My own conclusion is 

 that an over-ready perception of sharp mental pictures is antagonistic 

 to the acquirement of habits of highly-generalized and abstract thought, 

 especially when the steps of reasoning are carried on by words as 

 symbols, and that if the faculty of seeing the pictures was ever possessed 

 by men who think hard, it is very apt to be lost by disuse. The highest 

 minds are probably those in which it is not lost, but subordinated, and 

 is ready for use on suitable occasions. I am, however, bound to say 

 that the missing faculty seems to be replaced so serviceably by other 

 modes of conception, chiefly, I believe, connected with the incipient 

 motor sense, not of the eyeballs only but of the muscles generally, that 

 men ivho declare themselves entirely deficient in the poiver of seeing 

 mental pictures can nevertheless give lifelike descriptions of what they 

 have seen, and can otherwise express themselves as if they were gifted 

 with a vivid visual imagination. They can also become painters oftlie 

 rank of Royal Academicians* . . . 



* [I am myself a good draughtsman, and have a very lively interest in 

 pictures, statues, architecture aud decoration, and a keen sensibility to 

 artistic effects. But I am an extremely poor visualizer, and find myself 

 often unable to reproduce in my mind's eye pictures which I have most 

 carefully examined. — W. J.] 



