PERSONAL POWER (Complete 12 Volume Edition). William Walker Atkinson

      II

       THE IMAGING FACULTIES

       Table of Content

      ONE OF the most characteristic, essential and distinctive attributes of your mental being is the power of producing mental images. Without this power you would be unable to think, to remember, to act intelligently. If your sensations did not impress themselves upon your mind so that it was afterward possible for you to recall them as images, you would always remain a mere infant in mental development. Your experience would remain as a closed book to you, and you could never hope to profit by turning over the pages of its records. You would be no wiser at fifty years of age than you were at three. You would have no memory, no imagination, no power of rational thought based upon experience.

      A “mental image” may be defined as: “a representation in the mind, by means of an ideal picture, of an experience originally obtained through the medium of the senses.” By “representation” is meant: “the act of re­presenting or presenting anew in consciousness, the form or picture originally experienced through sense­reports.” The “representative powers of the mind,” (whether of memory or of imagination) are: “those powers of the mind whereby it forms ideal images or mental pictures of things not present to the senses at the time: such ideal images or mental pictures being the mental reproduction of any experience whatsoever.”

      While the term “image” is borrowed from optics in order to symbolize the retained mental impressions of past experiences, the figurative term must not be too literally interpreted. Not only are the images or pictures of visual impressions and experiences retained in the mind, and are possible of representation or reproduction in memory or imagination, but the impressions of sound, taste, smell, touch and muscular sensations are equally retained and are subject to reproduction. There are auditory, gustatory, olfactory, tactile and muscular images or pictures in the mind, as well as visual or optical images or pictures. In fact, the completed and composite mental image or picture of any particular thing usually is a complex product, made up of the interwoven material of several kinds of sense-­reports.

      There is a close relation, yet a marked difference, between the original sense­impression and its represented image or picture. After an object is removed from vision, or the eyes shut, there remains in the mind the image of the thing seen, actually existent though more obscure than when it was perceived in vision; the same principle applies to images of impressions received through the other senses. Aristotle called these images “the phantasms which have the form of the object without the substance, as the impression of a seal upon wax has the form of the seal without its substance.” Psychologists have held that sensations have their origin in the objective stimuli, while the represented image has its stimulation from within.

      It is generally held by psychologists that no sensation is actually “perceived” by the mind until a mental image of it is formed. Likewise, that the mind cognizes no physical experiences unless they give rise to mental images; the mind perceives, understands, and remembers nothing but mental images. Recollection, imagination, and the processes of thought are held to be possible only by means of calling up and arranging the mental images of things which have originally arisen through sense­experience. Even the higher operations of thought, such as judgment, reasoning, abstraction, generalization, combination of ideas, proceed by means of the employment of previously acquired mental images.

      The two great general classes of mental representation are (1) Memory, and (2) Imagination. In spite of the popular distinction between these two phases of mental activity, there is present in them a basic unity of nature and essential principle. Both are processes involving the employment of representative images, and there is really no absolute line of demarcation between them or their products. It was formerly held that there existed an actual distinction between the two respective processes, the line of which was drawn as follows: (1) Memory reproduces or represents the exact image of the original mental impression, while (2) Imagination reproduces or represents a variation of such original impression, or a new combination of the elements of original impressions. But this absolute distinction or differentiation is not held generally by the best modern psychologists.

      The present opinion is that even the best memory­images do not exactly reproduce the original impression; instead, they always omit certain portions, add details not in the original, and exhibit changes in arrangement of details. It is now stated as a law of psychology that “Representative images never exactly reproduce the original impression; this is true of the images of memory as well as of those of imagination.” There is, of course, admitted that some representative images more closely approach exact reproduction than do others; some are more literal copies of things experienced than are others. But the elements of variation, change, addition or commission, are always present and active.

      You may arrive at a correct understanding of the real distinction between the processes of Memory and those of Imagination by considering the four essential elements involved in the process of completed Memory, viz., (1) Retention, in which the mind retains the image of the impression made upon it by the sense­reports; (2) Reproduction, in which the mind brings again into consciousness the mental image which it has retained; (3) Recognition, in which the mind identifies the reproduced mental image with the object causing the original impression; and (4) Localization, in which the mind locates the original impression (which has been recognized) at a certain more or less definite time and place.

      Now then, what are the elements involved in the processes of Imagination? First, you will see at once that the element of Retention must be involved, as, otherwise, the mental image could never be again brought into consciousness. Secondly, you will see that the element of Reproduction must be involved, as, otherwise, the mind would lack the power to bring again into consciousness the retained mental image. So far, at least, Imagination and Memory travel along the same road; for, in both cases, the mind must possess and exercise the power of retaining the mental image, and also the power of reproducing it in consciousness. But here the absolute identity of the two processes cease; the stream of Representation divides itself into two branches, each of which pursues its own special course. The course of the Memory stream has been described in the preceding paragraph; that of the stream of Imagination you are now asked to consider.

      In what is called Reproductive Imagination the mind merely reproduces a more or less correct mental image or picture of a previously experienced impression which has been retained in its subconscious storehouse. This, you will note, is precisely what Memory does in its first and second processes. Here the process may be regarded as that either of the Reproductive Imagination or of the Memory. Or, the idea may be stated in another form, viz., Reproductive Imagination is but a special instance of incompleted Memory; or else, Memory is a special case of Reproductive Imagination. There is no absolute line of distinction between the images of Reproductive Imagination and those of Memory in its second stage; both are the same product of the representative or imaginative power.

      But, as we have said, here the identity ceases. In true Memory the reproduced image is now referred to the object causing the original impression—it is identified with that object by the process of Recognition. But in Reproductive Imagination the mind does not perform the process of full Recognition, i. e., identification with the object causing the original impression. At the most, the Reproductive Imagination performs but a quasi­recognition, i. e., it identifies the image with some image previously experienced in consciousness, but with no special effort to identify it with the particular original object. In fact, the image may be a composite of several original impressions, not referable to any special object; as when we are conscious of the image of “a horse” (of a general picture of the horse­species, rather than of some particular horse).

      There is a difference between (a) having a mental image in consciousness, and (b) knowing that image as the image of a particular something previously experienced