Show MENTAL IMAGES Slatcrlal PlcturcsiContemporanc Wit Thought Impressed Upon thc Brain A man conversing in earnest saya Emerson in his ssay on Nature If Iif ho watch his intellectual processes will find that a material image more or less luminous ariscsin his mind coutempo raneous with every thought which furnishes fur-nishes the vestrnCnt of the thought This power of forming mental images appears to vary iffstrength amoug individuals indi-viduals to a considerable degree Naturally Natu-rally wo should expect to find it powerful power-ful in poets and artists Charles Dickens Dick-ens ha himself told us that he actually saw his creations as he wrote and 1tL I Taine mentions apairiter who only looked look-ed at an object while he sketched its outline and was able to fill in the color from the image df ifc in his mind O the other hand tire are people of equa intelligence who being unable to see such mental inures themselves have doubted their existence and Mr Francis Fran-cis Galton has shown that habits of abstract ab-stract thought such as men of science and philosophersjindulge in are apt to weaken the capacity of forming mental pictures J Mr Kirkpatrickof Winona Mimi an experimental psychologist has made a series of observations en this phenomenon phenom-enon with the help of his classes The scholars were aske to write down just what caine into their minds when certain cer-tain familiar words such as book tree church were called out and tho answers wero carefully investigated Ho found that the majority j of the students stu-dents formed distinct images of tho objects ob-jects corresponding to the words and the rest formed indistinct imagesJ with a few exceptions who seem to have indulged in-dulged in philosopnical abstractioiis The word book for example called up visions of a Bible a dictionary a novel in all but a few scholars who thought of food for thomindl or the thoughts of some person if x jihe word tree was represented by some kind 01 tree more especially the illustrious cherry cher-ry tree which George Washington < cut down Tho word church usually evoked a picture of some cli relinth vicinity but some of thehearers thought of a religious rgt f tipT it ima1 itfeujfc iiolnTiiiitrcau t that most people are visualizers in thinking while a few are nonvisualizers The tendency tenden-cy to form distinct images was very conspicuous among the female students and in both sexes ifreaches an abnormal abnor-mal development about tho ages of 14 and 15 or during the period of adolescence adoles-cence which it has been otherwise observed ob-served is also one of exceptional good health and rapid growth The tendency is further checked or fostered by tho occupations oc-cupations in life Cassells Magazine |