ticular individual only, yet he may at once accept this
individual as a sign, or type, of a class of objects, and can readily
apply the new knowledge in interpreting other similar things. Although,
for example, the pupil has experienced but one such object, he does not
necessarily think of it as a mere individual--this thing--but as a
representative of a possible class of objects, a beetle. In other words
the new particular notion tends to pass directly into a general, or
class, notion.

B. LEARNING THROUGH IMAGINATION

As an example of a lesson in which the pupil secures knowledge through
the use of his imagination, may be taken first the case of one called
upon to image some single object of which he may have had no actual
experience, as a desert, London Tower, the sphinx, etc. Taking the last
named as an example, the learner must select certain characteristics as,
woman, head, lion, body, etc., all of which are qualities which have
been learned in other past experiences. Moreover, the mind must
organize these several qualities into the representation of a single
object, the sphinx. Here, evidently, the pupil follows fully the normal
process of learning.

1. The term--the sphinx--suggests a problem, or felt need, namely, to
read meaning into the vaguely realized term.

2. Under the direction of the instructor or the text-book, the pupil
selects, or analyses out of past experience, such ideas as, woman, head,
body, lion, which are felt to have a value in interpreting the present
problem.

3. A synthetic, or relating, activity of mind unifies the selected ideas
into an ideally constructed object which is accepted by the learner as a
particular object, although never directly known through the senses.

Nor is the method different in more complex imagination processes. In
literary interpretation, for instance, when the reader meets such
expressions as:

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way
And leaves the world to darkness and to me;

the words of the author suggest a problem to the mind of the reader.
This problem then calls up in the mind of the student a set of images
out of earlier experience, as bell, evening, herd, ploughman, lea, etc.,
which the mind unifies into the representation of the particular scene
depicted in the lines. It is in this way that much of our knowledge of
various objects an