Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

things to get for breakfast and two for dinner. When you go to the grocer's, think of one part of his counter as your breakfast table and another part as your dinner table, and go over the things wanted for breakfast and the things wanted for dinner. Then you will remember the four things for breakfast and the two for dinner. Then you will have two other places to go for the dinner. What are they?" "The gardener's for leeks, and the butcher's for meat and suet.”

66

"Very

well. That is three of the places. What is the fourth?” "The dressmaker's to tell her to bring out calico, and thread, and tape for the dress." "Now," said her master, "I think you can tell me everything you are going for." Yes," said Betty; "I'm going to the grocer's, the butcher's, and the gardener's. At the grocer's I'm going to get tea, coffee, sugar, and jam for breakfast, and barley and currants for dinner. But then I shall not have all the things for dinner, so I must go to the butcher's for a shoulder of mutton and suet, and for leeks to the gardener's. Then I must call at the dressmaker's to tell her to bring lining, tape, and thread for the dress." Off goes Betty and does everything she has to do. "Never tell us again," said her master, “that you can't help having a bad memory.” — Tate's Philosophy of Education. What does this illustrate?

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small]

growth of the mind of a child, you doubtless noticed that he seemed to remember persons before he showed any signs of thinking of them when they are absent. A child shows in the most unmistakable ways that he remembers his father and mother some time before he gives any evidence of thinking of them when they are away. The power of the mind to form ideas of things not present is called imagination.

What is an Image? We may call imagination the image-making faculty, if we give a broad enough meaning to image. We can think not only of absent persons, but of tastes, touches, hopes, fears, etc., no longer experienced. If, then, we define imagination as the image-making faculty, we must remember that an image is the mental representation of any experience whatever.

Two Kinds of Imagination. There are two kinds of imagination. When a child cries for his absent mamma, the act of imagination evidently consists in holding before the mind a copy, more or less faithful, of the mother, as seen and known. But the same child will soon think of

[ocr errors]

things he has never seen - of things that have never come within the range of his experience. He will tell you of what he will do when he becomes a bird, or of good little girls putting a cat's eyes in after a bad dog has scratched them out and much besides of the same sort. The first kind of imagination is called reminiscent or reproductive, since it reproduces past experiences; the second is called constructive, since it takes ideas or images furnished by the reproductive imagination and combines them into new wholes.

Difference between Reproductive Imagination and Memory." But what is the difference," you at once ask, "between reproductive imagination and memory? I hear a song, and it makes me think of the friend whom I heard sing it a few days ago; an image of my friend as singing the song rises before my mind. This, I suppose, is both an act of memory and reproductive imagination; what is the difference between the two?"

To begin with, in its early stages, memory exists without imagination. A child who knows his mamma when he sees her, but can not think of her when she is absent, illustrates this.

"But when he begins to think of his absent mamma, as he will by and by, what, then, is the difference between memory and reproductive imagination? When he thinks about her, does he not remember her, and is not his thought of her an image, and therefore the product of the imagination?" Yes; but there is a difference between simply thinking of her, or rather between simply having the image of her in his mind, and knowing that image as the image of one he has seen. The difference between

REPRODUCTIVE IMAGINATION.

257

reproductive imagination and constructive imagination is that the images resulting from reproductive imagination are copies of past experiences, while those resulting from constructive imagination are not. Now, it is altogether possible for one to suppose that what are really products of reproductive imagination are products of constructive imagination, because the images resulting from the act of reproductive imagination are not accompanied by a recollection of the original experiences.

We shall see the relation between them from another point of view if we remember that the exercise of the reproductive imagination is a part, of which the memory of an absent object is the whole. There can be no memory of an absent object unless the image of it is in the mind, and that image is the product of the reproductive imagination. But having the image of an absent object, and remembering the object, are not the same. There is no complete act of memory of an absent object until the image in the mind is recognized as the image of some particular object or thing already experienced. Moreover, while a complete act of memory of an absent object involves retention, reproduction, recognition, and localization, the imagination of it requires but two-retention and reproduction. If the image of a past object or experience comes unattended by any of the images that formed a part of its original escort, it can not be localized — i.e., completely remembered nevertheless it is imagined. Also, it may

not be recognized; even then it is imagined.

We saw in the last lesson that there is no such thing as a single faculty of memory; that we ought to speak of the memories rather than of the memory of the mind, since we have as many memories as there are classes of

facts to be remembered. The same is true of the imagination. Mr. Galton has done more perhaps than any other man to impress this fact upon the world. He sent out a long series of questions, the first group of which related to the illumination, definition, and coloring of the mental image, and were framed as follows:

Before addressing yourself to any of the Questions on the opposite page, think of some definite object suppose it is your breakfast-table as you sat down to it this morning --and consider carefully the picture that rises before your mind's eye.

"I. Illumination. Is the image dim or fairly clear? Is its brightness comparable to that of the actual scene?

"2. Definition.— Are all the objects pretty well defined at the same time, or is the place of sharpest definition at any one moment more contracted than it is in a real scene? "3. Coloring.-Are the colors of the china, of the toast, bread-crust, mustard, meat, parsley, or whatever may have been on the table, quite distinct and natural?"

The answers to these questions revealed the interesting fact that the clearness, and definiteness, and vividness of the images in men's mind vary in the most remarkable way from individual to individual.

Influence of the Will upon Imagination. — There is not a moment when images of one sort or another are not in our minds. Sometimes we ourselves determine to a considerable extent their character. As Dr. Reid said, "We seem to treat the thoughts that present themselves to the fancy" — imagination "in crowds as a great man treats the courtiers who attend at his levee. They are all ambitious of his attention. He goes round the circle,

« AnteriorContinuar »