Training The Imagination
Imagination is highly susceptible of cultivation, and its training
should constitute one of the most important aims of education. Every
school subject, but especially such subjects as deal with description
and narration--history, literature, geography, nature study and
science--is rich in opportunities for the use of imagination. Skillful
teaching will not only find in these subjects a means of training the
imagination
them living matter, throbbing with life and action, rather than so many
dead words or uninteresting facts.
GATHERING OF MATERIAL FOR IMAGINATION.--Theoretically, then, it is not
hard to see what we must do to cultivate our imagination. In the first
place, we must take care to secure a large and usable stock of images
from all fields of perception. It is not enough to have visual images
alone or chiefly, for many a time shall we need to build structures
involving all the other senses and the motor activities as well. This
means that we must have a first-hand contact with just as large an
environment as possible--large in the world of Nature with all her
varied forms suited to appeal to every avenue of sense; large in our
contact with people in all phases of experience, laughing with those who
laugh and weeping with those who weep; large in contact with books, the
interpreters of the men and events of the past. We must not only let all
these kinds of environment drift in upon us as they may chance to do,
but we must deliberately seek to increase our stock of experience;
for, after all, experience lies at the bottom of imagination as of every
other mental process. And not only must we thus put ourselves in the way
of acquiring new experience, but we must by recall and reconstruction,
as we saw in an earlier discussion, keep our imagery fresh and usable.
For whatever serves to improve our images, at the same time is bettering
the very foundation of imagination.
WE MUST NOT FAIL TO BUILD.--In the second place, we must not fail to
build. For it is futile to gather a large supply of images if we let
the material lie unused. How many people there are who put in all their
time gathering material for their structure, and never take time to do
the building! They look and listen and read, and are so fully occupied
in absorbing the immediately present that they have no time to see the
wider significance of the things with which they deal. They are like the
students who are too busy studying to have time to think. They are so
taken up with receiving that they never perform the higher act of
combining. They are the plodding fact gatherers, many of them doing good
service, collecting material which the seer and the philosopher, with
their constructive power, build together into the greater wholes which
make our systems of thought. They are the ones who fondly think that, by
reading books full of wild tales and impossible plots, they are training
their imagination. For them, sober history, no matter how heroic or
tragic in its quiet movements, is too tame. They have not the patience
to read solid and thoughtful literature, and works of science and
philosophy are a bore. These are the persons who put in all their time
in looking at and admiring other people's houses, and never get time to
do any building for themselves.
WE SHOULD CARRY OUR IDEALS INTO ACTION.--The best training for the
imagination which I know anything about is that to be obtained by taking
our own material and from it building our own structure. It is true
that it will help to look through other people's houses enough to
discover their style of building: we should read. But just as it is not
necessary for us to put in all the time we devote to looking at houses,
in inspecting doll houses and Chinese pagodas, so it is not best for us
to get all our notions of imaginative structures from the marvelous and
the unreal; we get good training for the imagination from reading
Hiawatha, but so can we from reading the history of the primitive
Indian tribes. The pictures in Snowbound are full of suggestion for
the imagination: but so is the history of the Puritans in New England.
But even with the best of models before us, it is not enough to follow
others' building. We must construct stories for ourselves, must work out
plots for our own stories; we must have time to meditate and plan and
build, not idly in the daydream, but purposefully, and then make our
images real by carrying them out in activity, if they are of such a
character that this is possible; we must build our ideals and work to
them in the common course of our everyday life; we must think for
ourselves instead of forever following the thinking of others; we must
initiate as well as imitate.
More
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The Control Of Emotions
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IMAGES DEPEND ON SENSORY STIMULI.--The power of imaging can be cultivated the same as any other ability. In the first place, we may put down as an absolute requisite such an environment of sensory stimuli as will tempt every sense to be awake and ... The Effects Of Attention
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Nothing is more obvious than that memory cannot return to us what has never been given into its keeping, what has not been retained, or what for any reason cannot be recalled. Further, if the facts given back by memory are not recognized as belongin... The Function Of Images
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Small use to be a child unless one can play. Says Karl Groos: Perhaps the very existence of youth is due in part to the necessity for play; the animal does not play because he is young, but he is young because he must play. Play is a constant factor... The Material Used By Imagination
What is the material, the mental content, out of which imagination builds its structures? IMAGES THE STUFF OF IMAGINATION.--Nothing can enter the imagination the elements of which have not been in our past experience and then been conserved in th... The Mechanism Of Thinking
It is evident from the foregoing discussion that we may include under the term thinking all sorts of mental processes by which relations are apprehended between different objects of thought. Thus young children think as soon as they begin to underst... The Mind's Dependence On The External World
But can we first see how in a general way the brain and nervous system are primarily related to our thinking? Let us go back to the beginning and consider the babe when it first opens its eyes on the scenes of its new existence. What is in its mind?... The Nature Of Association
We may define association, then, as the tendency among our thoughts to form such a system of bonds with each other that the objects of consciousness are vitally connected both (1) as they exist at any given moment, and (2) as they occur in successio... The Nature Of Consciousness
INNER NATURE OF THE MIND NOT REVEALED BY INTROSPECTION.--We are not to be too greatly discouraged if, even by introspection, we cannot discover exactly what the mind is. No one knows what electricity is, though nearly everyone uses it in one form or... The Nature Of Feeling
It will be our purpose in the next few chapters to study the affective content of consciousness--the feelings and emotions. The present chapter will be devoted to the feelings and the one that follows to the emotions. THE DIFFERENT FEELING QUALIT... The Nature Of Habit
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HOW A PERCEPT IS FORMED.--How, then, do we proceed to the discovery of this world of objects? Let us watch the child and learn the secret from him. Give the babe a ball, and he applies every sense to it to discover its qualities. He stares at it, he... The Nature Of Sensation
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There has been much discussion and not a little controversy as to the true nature of the will. Just what is the will, and what is the content of our mental stream when we are in the act of willing? Is there at such times a new and distinctly differe... The Part Played By Past Experience
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Nor are we to think that cultivation of expression results in better power of expression alone, or that lack of cultivation results only in decreased power of expression. INTELLECTUAL VALUE OF EXPRESSION.--There is a distinct mental value in expr... The Place Of Habit In The Economy Of Our Lives
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Nowhere more than in connection with our emotions are the close inter-relations of mind and body seen. All are familiar with the fact that the emotion of anger tends to find expression in the blow, love in the caress, fear in flight, and so on. But ... The Relations Of Mind And Brain
INTERACTION OF MIND AND BRAIN.--How, then, come these two widely different facts, mind and brain, to be so related in our speech? Why are the terms so commonly interchanged?--It is because mind and brain are so vitally related in their processes and... The Stuff Of Memory
What are the forms in which memory presents the past to us? What are the elements with which it deals? What is the stuff of which it consists? IMAGES AS THE MATERIAL OF MEMORY.--In the light of our discussion upon mental imagery, and with the aid ... The Training Of Perception
In the physical world as in the spiritual there are many people who, having eyes, see not and ears, hear not. For the ability to perceive accurately and richly in the world of physical objects depends not alone on good sense organs, but also on inte... The Types Of Association
FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF ASSOCIATION.--Stated on the physiological side, the law of habit as set forth in the definition of association in the preceding section includes all the laws of association. In different phrasing we may say: (1) Neurone groups acc... The Tyranny Of Habit
EVEN GOOD HABITS NEED TO BE MODIFIED.--But even in good habits there is danger. Habit is the opposite of attention. Habit relieves attention of unnecessary strain. Every habitual act was at one time, either in the history of the race or of the indiv... Training In Association
Since association is at bottom nothing but habit at work in the mental processes, it follows that it, like other forms of habit, can be encouraged or suppressed by training. Certainly, no part of one's education is of greater importance than the cha... Training The Imagination
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Although imagination enters every field of human experience, and busies itself with every line of human interest, yet all its activities can be classed under two different types. These are (1) reproductive, and (2) creative imagination. REPRODUCT... Volitional Types
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Let us next inquire what are the qualities which enter into what we call a good memory. The merchant or politician will say, Ability to remember well people's faces and names; the teacher of history, The ability to recall readily dates and events; t... Where Consciousness Resides
I--the conscious self--dwell somewhere in this body, but where? When my finger tips touch the object I wish to examine, I seem to be in them. When the brain grows weary from overstudy, I seem to be in it. When the heart throbs, the breath comes quic...