bstract ideas and concepts seemed to have taken the place of the
concrete imagery of earlier years.

IMAGERY TYPES.--Although there is some difference in our ability to use
imagery of different sensory types, probably there is less variation
here than has been supposed. Earlier pedagogical works spoke of the
_visual_ type of mind, or the _audile_ type, or the _motor_ type, as if
the possession of one kind of imagery necessarily rendered a person
short in other types. Later studies have shown this view incorrect,
however. The person who has good images of one type is likely to excel
in all types, while one who is lacking in any one of the more important
types will probably be found short in all.[4] Most of us probably make
more use of visual and auditory than of other kinds of imagery, while
olfactory and gustatory images seem to play a minor role.

4. THE FUNCTION OF IMAGES

Binet says that the man who has not every type of imagery almost equally
well developed is only the fraction of a man. While this no doubt puts
the matter too strongly, yet images do play an important part in our
thinking.

IMAGES SUPPLY MATERIAL FOR IMAGINATION AND MEMORY.--Imagery supplies the
pictures from which imagination builds its structures. Given a rich
supply of images from the various senses, and imagination has the
material necessary to construct times and events long since past, or to
fill the future with plans or experiences not yet reached. Lacking
images, however, imagination is handicapped, and its meager products
reveal in their barrenness and their lack of warmth and reality the
poverty of material.

Much of our memory also takes the form of images. The face of a friend,
the sound of a voice, or the touch of a hand may be recalled, not as a
mere fact, but with almost the freshness and fidelity of a percept. That
much of our memory goes on in the form of ideas instead of images is
true. But memory is often both aided in its accuracy and rendered more
vital and significant through the presence of abundant imagery.

IMAGERY IN THE THOUGHT PROCESSES.--Since logical thinking deals more
with relations and meanings than with particular objects, images
naturally play a smaller part in reasoning than in memory and
imagination. Yet they have their place here as well. Students of
geometry or trigonometry often have difficulty in understanding a
theorem until they succeed in visualizing the surface or solid involved.
Thinking in the