articular forms, the mind may proceed in two
quite different ways. In some cases the mind seemingly allows itself to
drift without purpose and almost without sense, building up fantastic
representations of imaginary objects or events. This happens especially
in our periods of day-dreaming. Here various images, evidently drawn
from past experience, come before consciousness in a spontaneous way and
enter into most unusual forms of combination, with little regard even to
probability. In these moods the timid lad becomes a strong hero, and his
rustic Audrey, a fair lady, for whose sake he is ever performing untold
feats of valour. Here the ideas, instead of being selected and combined
for a definite purpose through an act of voluntary attention, are
suggested one after the other by the mere law of association. Because
in such fantastic products of the imagination the various images appear
in consciousness and combine themselves without any apparent control or
purpose, the process is known as passive imagination, or phantasy. Such
a type, it is evident, will have little significance as an actual
process of learning.

=B. Active, or Constructive.=--Opposed to the above type is that form of
imagination in which the mind proceeds to build up a particular ideal
representation with some definite purpose, or end, in view. A student,
for example, who has never seen an aeroplane and has no direct knowledge
of the course to be traversed, may be called upon in his composition
work to describe an imaginary voyage through the air from Toronto to
Winnipeg. In such an act of imagination, the selecting of elements to
enter into the ideal picture must be chosen with an eye to their
suitability to the end in view. When also a child is called upon in
school to form an ideal representation of some object of which he has
had no direct experience, as for instance, a mental picture of a
volcano, he must in the same way, under the guidance of the teacher,
select and combine elements of his actual experience which are adapted
to the building up of a correct mental representation of an actual
volcano. This type of imagination is known as active, or constructive,
imagination.

=Factors in Constructive Imagination.=--In such a purposeful, or active,
process of imagination the following factors may be noticed:

1. The purpose, end, or problem calling for the exercise of the
imagination.

2. A selective act of attention, in which the fitness or unf