Nowadays the case could hardly be recorded in so simple a way; we have learned that ideational type is a very complicated and itself a very variable matter. Marked differences of imagery, as between one mind and another, undoubtedly exist; but the distribution into types is made difficult by two facts. The first is that there are great differences in the nature of images even where the gross type is the same; thus, of two predominantly eye-minded persons, the one may have vivid and precise, the other vague and obscure images. The second is that imagery varies with the nature of the test made, the situation or material that arouses the images; in strictness, we can only say that, under such-and-such conditions, the imaginal type proved to be such-and-such. With these cautions before us, we can, however, make out four common types. The versatile type uses visual, auditory and verbal-motor images more or less indifferently. A second type prefers visual images, with verbal-motor a good second. A third type prefers verbal images of the auditory-motor kind, with visual images a poor second. A fourth is almost exclusively verbal-motor. In this last type, kinæsthesis, in the special form of the feel of articulation, has reconquered the place that it held in the long-gone past, before speech had come (p. 119).
We observe nothing of these differences in daily life, simply because we are interested in meanings and not in processes; so long as the audience gets somewhere near the meaning that the speaker or writer is trying to convey, everything necessary for practical purposes has been accomplished. All the same, there are many signs of ideational type, if we are on the alert to seize them. The attitude of attention is different, according as a man’s ideas are visual or auditory-motor; the child’s mode of recitation is different, slow and systematic in the former case, quick and impulsive in the latter; the mistakes made are characteristic; and you can tell by an author’s style whether he has visual images and whether he hears his sentences ring in the mind’s ear. It is natural to connect the dominance of certain images with the choice of certain professions; but a correlation cannot be made out. “I should have thought,” remarks Galton, “that the faculty of visualisation would be common among geometricians, but many of the highest seem able somehow to get on without much of it;” and again “men who declare themselves entirely deficient in the power of seeing mental pictures can become painters” of acknowledged rank. The late Professor James wrote to the same effect: “I am myself a good draughtsman, and have a very lively interest in pictures, statues, architecture and decoration. But I am an extremely poor visualiser.” These statements, to be sure, were made without any thorough-going investigation; we must remember that there are different ways of geometrising as there are different styles and ideals of painting; and we may add that there are plenty of instances on the other side; Goethe and Dickens were magnificent visualisers. The study of imaginal type, in relation to the interests and achievement of its possessor, thus offers an inviting field of work.
(1) State in your own words, and without looking at the book, why the psychologist has to do with meaning, and what meaning is psychologically. Illustrate from your own experience; find, in particular, a case of meaning carried by kinæsthesis, and a case of meaning carried in purely nervous terms.
(2) Draw diagrams to illustrate the typical perception and idea, and the various stages in its reduction to the skeleton-type described at the end of § 24.
(3) Qualitative perceptions undergo relatively little change. What changes have they undergone? How is it that these changes have not unfitted them to mean quality?
(4) A stereoscope and a set of slides prepared by the author may be obtained from the C. H. Stoelting Co., 3047 Carroll Avenue, Chicago, Ill. Explain the construction of the stereoscope, part by part; and work carefully through the slides, writing down what you see. It is useless to play with the instrument; take the experiments seriously.
(5) If you are touched with a pencil on wrist and chest, and try to retouch the places stimulated, you are more nearly right on wrist than on chest. Why? Try the experiment several times over.
(6) You have probably often heard the rising tone of a siren-whistle sounded by some manufactory or given as a fire-signal. Can you image it? If so, what is the index of change? If not, try to lay your finger on this index when you next hear the whistle.