"The visualizing faculty is a natural gift, and, like all natural gifts, has a tendency to be inherited.In this faculty the tendency to inheritance is exceptionally strong, as I have abundant evidence to prove, especially in respect to certain rather rare peculiarities,...which, when they exist at all, are usually found among two, three, or more brothers and sisters, parents, children, uncles and aunts, and cousins.
"Since families differ so much in respect to this gift, we may suppose that races would also differ, and there can be no doubt that such is the case.I hardly like to refer to civilized nations, because their natural faculties are too much modified by education to allow of their being appraised in an off-hand fashion.I may, however, speak of the French, who appear to possess the visualizing faculty in a high degree.The peculiar ability they show in prearranging ceremonials and fêtes of all kinds, and their undoubted genius for tactics and strategy, show that they are able to foresee effects with unusual clearness.
Their ingenuity in all technical contrivances is an additional testimony in the same direction, and so is their singular clearness of expression.
Their phrase is "figurez-vous,' or 'picture to yourself,' seems to express their dominant mode of perception.Our equivalent of 'Imagine' is ambiguous...
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"I have many cases of persons mentally reading off scores when playing the pianoforte, or manuscript when they are making speeches.One statesman has assured me that a certain hesitation in utterance which he has at times is due to his being plagued by the image of his manuscript speech with its original erasures and corrections.
He cannot lay the ghost, and he puzzles in trying to decipher it.
"Some few persons see mentally in print every word that is uttered; they attend to the visual equivalent and not to the sound of the words, and they read them off usually as from a long imaginary strip of paper, such as is unwound from telegraphic instruments."
The reader will find further details in Mr.Galton's 'Inquiries into Human Faculty,' pp.83-114. I have myself for many years collected from each and all of my psychology-students descriptions of their own visual imagination ; and found (together with some curious idiosyncrasies) corroboration of all the variations which Mr.Galton reports.
As examples, I subjoin extracts from two cases near the ends of the scale.
The writers are first cousins, grandsons of a distinguished man of science.
The one who is a good visualizer says:
"This morning's breakfast-table is both dim and bright; it is dim if I try to think of it when my eyes are open upon any object; it is perfectly clear and bright if I think of it with my eyes closed.-- All the objects are clear at once, yet when I confine my attention to any one object it becomes far more distinct.-- I have more power to recall color than any other one thing: if, for example, I
were to recall a plate decorated with flowers I could reproduce in a drawing the exact tone, etc.The color of anything that was on the table is perfectly vivid.-- There is very little limitation to the extent of my images: I
can see all four sides of a room, I can see all four sides of two, three, four, even more rooms with such distinctness that if you should ask me what was in any particular place in any one, or ask me to count the chairs, etc., I could do it without the least hesitation.-- The more I learn by heart the more clearly do I see images of my pages.Even before I can recite the lines I see them so that I could give them very slowly word for word, but my mind is so occupied in looking at my printed image that I have no idea of what I am saying, of the sense of it, etc.When I first found myself doing this I used to think it was merely because I knew the lines imperfectly;
but I have quite convinced myself that I really do see an image.The strongest proof that such is really the fact is, I think, the following:
" I can look down the mentally seen page and see the words that commence all the lines, and from any one of these words I can continue the line.I find this much easier to do if the words begin ill a straight line than if there are breaks.
Example:
Étant fait.....Tous.....A des.....Que fit.....Céres Avec.....Un fleur.....Comme.....(La Fontaine 8.iv.)"
The poor visualizer says :
"My ability to form mental images seems, from what I have studied of other people's images, to be defective, and somewhat peculiar.The process by which I seem to remember any particular event is not by x series of distinct images, but a sort of panorama, the faintest impressions of which are perceptible through a thick fog.-- I
cannot shut my eyes and get a distinct image of anyone, although I used to be able to a few years ago, and the faculty seems to have gradually slipped away.-- In my most vivid dreams, where the events appear like the most real facts, I am often troubled with dimness of sight which causes the images to appear indistinct.-- To come to the question of the breakfast-table, there is nothing definite about it.Everything is vague.I cannot say what I see.I could not possibly count the chairs, but I happen to know that there are ten.I see nothing in detail.-- The chief thing is in general impression that I cannot tell exactly what I do see.The coloring is about the same, as far as I can recall it, only very much washed out.Perhaps the only color I can see at all distinctly is that of the tablecloth, and I could probably see the color of the wall-paper if I could remember what color it was."
A person whose visual imagination is strong finds it hard to understand how those who are without the faculty can think at all.Some people undoubtedly have no visual images at all worthy of the name , and instead of seeing their breakfast-table, they tell you that they remember it or know what was on it.
This knowing and remembering takes place undoubtedly by means of verbal images, as was explained already in Chapter IX, pp.265-6.
