flooding into our minds which are irrelevant and of no
service in our thinking. No one has failed to note many such. Further,
we undoubtedly do much of our best thinking with few or no images
present. Yet we need images. Where, then, are they most needed? _Images
are needed wherever the percepts which they represent would be of
service._ Whatever one could better understand or enjoy or appreciate by
seeing it, hearing it, or perceiving it through some other sense, he can
better understand, enjoy or appreciate through images than by means of
ideas only.

5. THE CULTIVATION OF IMAGERY

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
at its best_, that we may be led into a large acquaintance with the
objects of our material environment. No one's stock of sensory images is
greater than the sum total of his sensory experiences. No one ever has
images of sights, or sounds, or tastes, or smells which he has never
experienced.

Likewise, he must have had the fullest and freest possible liberty in
motor activities. For not only is the motor act itself made possible
through the office of imagery, but the motor act clarifies and makes
useful the images. The boy who has actually made a table, or a desk, or
a box has ever afterward a different and a better image of one of these
objects than before; so also when he has owned and ridden a bicycle, his
image of this machine will have a different significance from that of
the image founded upon the visual perception alone of the wheel he
longingly looked at through the store window or in the other boy's
dooryard.

THE INFLUENCE OF FREQUENT RECALL.--But sensory experiences and motor
responses alone are not enough, though they are the basis of good
imagery. _There must be frequent recall._ The sunset may have been never
so brilliant, and the music never so entrancing; but if they are never
thought of and dwelt upon after they were first experienced, little will
remain of them after a very short time. It is by repeating them often in
experience through imagery that they become fixed, so that they stand
ready to do our bidding when we need next to use them.

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF OUR IMAGES.--To richness of experience and
frequency of the recall of our images we must add one more fac