A second line of development is in the direction of constructiveness. Taking things apart and putting them together, building blocks, assembling dolls and toy animals into "families" or "parties" setting table or arranging toy chairs in a room, are examples of this style of manipulation, which calls less for manual dexterity than for seeing ways in which objects can be rearranged.
Make-believe is a third direction followed in the development of manipulation. The little boy puts together a row of blocks and pushes it along the floor, asserting that it is a train of cars. The little girl lays her doll carefully in its bed, saying "My baby's sick; that big dog did bite him". This might be spoken of as "manipulating things according to the meanings attached to them", the blocks being treated as cars, and the doll as a sick baby.
Perhaps a little later than make-believe to make its appearance in the child is story-telling the fourth type of manipulation. Where in make-believe he has an actual object to manipulate according to the meaning attached to it, in story-telling he simply talks about persons and things and makes them perform in his story. He comes breathless into the house with a harrowing tale of being pursued by a hippopotamus in the woods; or he gives a fantastic account of the doings of his acquaintances. For this he is sometimes accused of being a "little liar"--as indeed he [{483}] probably is when circumstances demand--and sometimes, more charitably, he is described as being still unable to distinguish observation from imagination; but really what he has not yet grasped is the social difference between his make-believe, which no one objects to, and his story-telling, which may lead people astray.
Both make-believe and story-telling are a great convenience to the child, since he is able by their means to manipulate big and important objects that he could not manage in sober reality. He thus finds an outlet for tendencies that are blocked in sober reality--blocked by the limitations of his environment, blocked by the opposition of other people, blocked by his own weakness and lack of knowledge and skill. Unable to go hunting in the woods, he can play hunt in the yard; unable to go to war with the real soldiers, he can shoulder his toy gun and campaign all about the neighborhood. The little girl of four years, hearing her older brothers and sisters talk of their school, has her own "home work" in "joggity", and her own graduation exercises.
Preliminary Definition of Imagination
In such ways as we have been describing, the little child shows "imagination", or mental manipulation. In story-telling the objects manipulated are simply thought of; in make-believe, though there is actual motor manipulation of present objects, the attached meanings are the important matter; and in construction there is apt to be a plan in mind in advance of the motor manipulation, as when you look at the furniture in a room and consider possible rearrangements.
The materials manipulated in imagination are usually facts previously perceived, and to be available for mental [{484}] manipulation they must now be recalled; but they are not merely recalled--they are rearranged and give a new result that may never have been perceived. A typical product of imagination is composed of parts perceived at different times and later recalled and combined, as a centaur is composed of man and horse, or a mermaid of woman and fish. Imagination is like reasoning in being a mental reaction; but it differs from reasoning in being manipulation rather than exploration; reasoning consists in seeing relationships that exist between facts, and imagination in putting facts into new relationships. These are but rough distinctions and definitions; we shall try to do a little better after we have examined a variety of imaginative performances.
"Imagination" and "invention" mean very much the same mental process, though "imagination" looks rather to the mental process itself, and "invention" more to the outcome of the process, which is a product having some degree of novelty and originality.
Imagination, like association and like attention, is sometimes free, and sometimes controlled. Controlled imagination is directed towards the accomplishment of some desired result, while free imagination wanders this way and that, with no fixed aim. Controlled imagination is seen in planning and designing; free imagination occurs in moments of relaxation, and may be called "play of the imagination". The free variety, as the simpler, will be considered first.
Our study will have more point if we first remind ourselves what are the psychological problems to be attacked in studying any mental activity. What is the stimulus and what the response? These are the fundamental questions. But the study of response breaks up into three subordinate questions, regarding the tendency that is awakened, regarding the [{485}] end-result obtained, and regarding the often complex process or series of responses, that leads to the end-result.