第79章

without a doubt each one of them differed from the others in size, in girth, by the more or less obtuse angles of its branches, by the more or less abrupt jutting out of its scales, by the style of its texture; consequently, my twenty or thirty visual sensations were different.But no one of these sensations has completely survived in its echo; the twenty or thirty revivals have blunted one another; thus upset and agglutinated by their resemblance they are confounded together, and my present representation is their residue only.This is the product, or rather the fragment, which is deposited in us, when eve have gone through a series of similar facts or individuals, Of our numerous experiences there remain on the following day four or five more or less distinct recollections, which, obliterated themselves, leaves behind in us a simple colorless, vague representation, into which enter as components various reviving sensations, in an utterly feeble, incomplete, and abortive state.-- But this representation is not the general and abstract idea.It is but its accompaniment, and, if I may say so, the ore from which it is extracted.For the representation, though badly, sketched, is a sketch, the sensible sketch of a distinct individual.

But my abstract idea corresponds to the whole class; it differs, then from the representation of in individual.

-- Moreover, my abstract idea is perfectly clear and determinate;

now that I possess it, I never fall to recognize an araucaria among the various plants which may be shown me; it differs then from the coil used and floating representation I have of some particular araucaria."

In other words, a blurred picture is just as much a single mental fact as a sharp picture is; and the use of either picture by the mind to symbolize a whole class of individuals is a new mental function , requiring some other modification of consciousness than the mere perception that the picture is distinct or not.I may bewail the indistinctness of my mental image of my absent friend.That does not prevent my thought from meaning him alone, however.And I may mean all mankind, with perhaps a very sharp image of one man in my mind's eye.The meaning is a function of the more I transitive' parts of consciousness, the 'fringe' of relations which we feel surrounding the image, be the latter sharp or dim.This was explained in a previous place (see p.473 ff., especially the note to page 477), and I would not touch upon the matter at all here but for its historical interest.

Our ideas or images of past sensible experiences may then be either distinct and adequate or dim, blurred, and incomplete.

It is likely that the different degrees in which different men are able to make them sharp and complete has had something to do with keeping up such philosophic disputes as that of Berkeley with Locke over abstract ideas.Locke had spoken of our possessing 'the general idea of a triangle'

which "must be neither oblique nor rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once."Berkeley says:

"If any man has the faculty of framing in his mind such an idea of a triangle as is here described, it is in vain to pretend to dispute him out of it, nor would I go about it.All I desire is that the reader would fully and certainly inform himself whether he has such an idea or no."

Until very recent years it was supposed by all philosophers that there was a typical human mind which all individual minds were like, and that propositions of universal validity could be laid down about such faculties as 'the Imagination.' Lately, however, a mass of revelations have poured in, which make us see how false a view this is.There are imaginations, not 'The Imagination,' and they must be studied in detail.INDIVIDUALS DIFFER IN IMAGINATION.

The first breaker of ground in this direction was Fechner, in 1860.Fecher was gifted with unusual talent for subjective observation, and in chapter xiv of his 'Psychophysik' he gave the results of a most careful comparison of his own optical after-images, with his optical memory-pictures, together with accounts by several other individuals of their optical memory-pictures. The results was to show a great personal diversity."It would be interesting," he writes, to work up the subject statistically; and I regret that other occupations have kept me from fulfilling my earlier intention to proceed in this way."

Fechner's intention was independently executed by Mr.Galton, the publication of whose results in 1880 may be said to have made an era in descriptive Psychology.

"It is not necessary," says Galton, "to trouble the reader with my early tentative steps.After the inquiry had been fairly started it took the form of submitting a certain number of printed questions to a large number of persons.There is hardly any more difficult task than that of framing questions which are not likely to be misunderstood, which admit of easy reply, and which cover the ground of inquiry.I did my best in these respects, without forgetting the most important part of all-namely, to tempt my correspondents to write freely in fuller explanation of their replies, and on cognate topics as well.These separate letters have proved more instructive and interesting by far than the replies to the set questions.

"The first group of the rather long series of queries related to the illumination, definition, and coloring of the mental image, and were framed thus:

"Before addressing yourself to any of the Questions on the opposite page, think of some definite object -- suppose it is your breakfast-table as you sat down to it this morning -- and consider carefully the picture that rises before your mind's eye.

" '1.Illumination.-- Is the image dim or fairly clear? Is its brightness comparable to that of the actual scene?

" '2.Definition.-- Are all the objects pretty well defined at the same timid, or is the place of sharpest definition at any one moment more contracted than it is in a real scene?