logical discourse it
is sure to prove of great service. It is important that you find out at
once just how full and how trustworthy is your imagination, for it is
capable of cultivation--as well as of abuse.

Francis Galton[29] says: "The French appear to possess the visualizing
faculty in a high degree. The peculiar ability they show in
pre-arranging ceremonials and fetes of all kinds and their undoubted
genius for tactics and strategy show that they are able to foresee
effects with unusual clearness. Their ingenuity in all technical
contrivances is an additional testimony in the same direction, and so is
their singular clearness of expression. Their phrase _figurez-vous_, or
_picture to yourself_, seems to express their dominant mode of
perception. Our equivalent, of 'image,' is ambiguous."

But individuals differ in this respect just as markedly as, for
instance, the Dutch do from the French. And this is true not only of
those who are classified by their friends as being respectively
imaginative or unimaginative, but of those whose gifts or habits are not
well known.

Let us take for experiment six of the best-known types of imaging and
see in practise how they arise in our own minds.

By all odds the most common type is, (a) _the visual image_. Children
who more readily recall things seen than things heard are called by
psychologists "eye-minded," and most of us are bent in this direction.
Close your eyes now and re-call--the word thus hyphenated is more
suggestive--the scene around this morning's breakfast table. Possibly
there was nothing striking in the situation and the image is therefore
not striking. Then image any notable table scene in your experience--how
vividly it stands forth, because at the time you felt the impression
strongly. Just then you may not have been conscious of how strongly the
scene was laying hold upon you, for often we are so intent upon what we
see that we give no particular thought to the fact that it is impressing
us. It may surprise you to learn how accurately you are able to image a
scene when a long time has elapsed between the conscious focussing of
your attention on the image and the time when you saw the original.

(b) _The auditory image_ is probably the next most vivid of our recalled
experiences. Here association is potent to suggest similarities. Close
out all the world beside and listen to the peculiar wood-against-wood
sound of the sharp thunder among rocky mountains-