tant part to play.
It is by viewing in his imagination the effect of the one course of
action as compared with the other, that man finally decides what
constitutes the proper line of conduct. Even when indifferent as to his
moral conduct, man pictures to himself what his friends may say and
think of certain lines of action. For the enjoyment of life, also, the
exercise of imagination has a place. It is by filling up the present
with ideals and hopeful anticipations for the future, that much of the
monotony of our work-a-day hours is relieved.

=Development of Imagination.=--A prime condition of a creative
imagination is evidently the possession of an abundance of mental
materials which may be dissociated and re-combined into new mental
products. These materials, of course, consist of the images and ideas
retained by the mind from former experiences. One important result,
therefore, of providing the young child with a rich store of images of
sight, sound, touch, movement, etc., is that it provides his developing
imagination with necessary materials. But the mere possession of
abundant materials in the form of past images will not in itself develop
the imagination. Here, as elsewhere, it is only by exercising
imagination that ability to imagine can be developed. Opportunity for
such an exercise of the imagination, moreover, may be given the child in
various ways. As already noted, a chief function of play is that it
stimulates the child to use his imagination in reconstructing the
objects about him and clothing them with many fancied attributes. In
supplementary reading and story work, also, the imagination is actively
exercised in constructing the ideal situations, as they are being
presented in words by the book or the teacher. Nature study, likewise,
by bringing before the child the secret processes of nature, as noting,
for instance, the life history of the butterfly, the germination of
seeds, etc., will call upon him to use his imagination in various ways.
On the other hand, to deprive a young child of all such opportunities
will usually result in preventing a proper development of the
imagination.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THINKING

=Nature of Thinking.=--In the study of general method, as well as in
that of the foregoing mental processes, it has been taken for granted
that our minds are capable of identifying different objects on the basis
of some common feature or features. This tendency of the mind to
identi