The Reconstruction of Our Images.—To richness of experience and frequency of the recall of our images we must add one more factor; namely, that of their reconstruction or working over. Few if any images are exact recalls of former percepts of objects. Indeed, such would be neither possible nor desirable. The images which we recall are recalled for a purpose, or in view of some future activity, and hence must be selective, or made up of the elements of several or many former related images.
Thus the boy who wishes to construct a box without a pattern to follow recalls the images of numerous boxes he may have seen, and from them all he has a new image made over from many former percepts and images, and this new image serves him as a working model. In this way he not only gets a copy which he can follow to make his box, but he also secures a new product in the form of an image different from any he ever had before, and is therefore by so much the richer. It is this working over of our stock of old images into new and richer and more suggestive ones that constitutes the essence of constructive imagination.
The more types of imagery into which we can put our thought, the more fully is it ours and the better our images. The spelling lesson needs not only to be taken in through the eye, that we may retain a visual image of the words, but also to be recited orally, so that the ear may furnish an auditory image, and the organs of speech a motor image of the correct forms. It needs also to be written, and thus given into the keeping of the hand, which finally needs most of all to know and retain it.
The reading lesson should be taken in through both the eye and the ear, and then expressed by means of voice and gesture in as full and complete a way as possible, that it may be associated with motor images. The geography lesson needs not only to be read, but to be drawn, or molded, or constructed. The history lesson should be made to appeal to every possible form of imagery. The arithmetic lesson must be not only computed, but measured, weighed, and pressed into actual service.
Thus we might carry the illustration into every line of education and experience, and the same truth holds. What we desire to comprehend completely and retain well, we must apprehend through all available senses and conserve in every possible type of image and form of expression.
6. PROBLEMS IN INTROSPECTION AND OBSERVATION
1. Observe a reading class and try to determine whether the pupils picture the scenes and events they read about. How can you tell?
2. Similarly observe a history class. Do the pupils realize the events as actually happening, and the personages as real, living people?
3. Observe in a similar way a class in geography, and draw conclusions. A pupil in computing the cost of plastering a certain room based the figures on the room filled full of plaster. How might visual imagery have saved the error?
4. Imagine a three-inch cube. Paint it. Then saw it up into inch cubes, leaving them all standing in the original form. How many inch cubes have paint on three faces? How many on two faces? How many on one face? How many have no paint on them? Answer all these questions by referring to your imagery alone.