milarly observe a history class. Do the pupils realize the events
as actually happening, and the personages as real, living people?

3. Observe in a similar way a class in geography, and draw conclusions.
A pupil in computing the cost of plastering a certain room based the
figures on the room _filled full of plaster_. How might visual imagery
have saved the error?

4. Imagine a three-inch cube. Paint it. Then saw it up into inch cubes,
leaving them all standing in the original form. How many inch cubes have
paint on three faces? How many on two faces? How many on one face? How
many have no paint on them? Answer all these questions by referring to
your imagery alone.

5. Try often to recall images in the various sensory lines; determine in
what classes of images you are least proficient and try to improve in
these lines.

6. How is the singing teacher able, after his class has sung through
several scores, to tell that they are flatting?

7. Study your imagery carefully for a few days to see whether you can
discover your predominating type of imagery.

CHAPTER IX

IMAGINATION

Everyone desires to have a good imagination, yet not all would agree as
to what constitutes a good imagination. If I were to ask a group of you
whether you have good imaginations, many of you would probably at once
fall to considering whether you are capable of taking wild flights into
impossible realms of thought and evolving unrealities out of airy
nothings. You would compare yourself with great imaginative writers,
such as Stevenson, Poe, De Quincey, and judge your power of imagination
by your ability to produce such tales as made them famous.

1. THE PLACE OF IMAGINATION IN MENTAL ECONOMY

But such a measure for the imagination as that just stated is far too
narrow. A good imagination, like a good memory, is the one which serves
its owner best. If DeQuincey and Poe and Stevenson and Bulwer found the
type which led them into such dizzy flights the best for their
particular purpose, well and good; but that is not saying that their
type is the best for you, or that you may not rank as high in some other
field of imaginative power as they in theirs. While you may lack in
their particular type of imagination, they may have been short in the
type which will one day make you famous. The artisan, the architect, the
merchant, the artist, the farmer, the teacher, the professional
man--all need imagination in their vocations not less