The imagination of a blind-deaf mute like Laura Bridgman must be confined entirely to tactile and motor material All blind persons mart belong to the 'tactile ' and ' motile'
types of the French authors.When the young man whose cataracts were removed by Dr.Franz was shown different geometric figures, he said he "had not been able to form from them the idea of a square and a disk until he perceived a sensation of what he saw in the points of his fingers, as if he really touched the objects."
Professor Stricker of Vienna, who seems to have the motile form of imagination developed in unusual strength, has given a very careful analysis of his own else in a couple of monographs with which all students should become familiar. His recollections both of his own movements and of those of other things are accompanied invariably by distinct muscular feelings in those parts of his body which would naturally be used in effecting or in following the movement.In thinking of a soldier marching, for example, it is as if he were helping the image to march by marching himself in his rear.And if he suppresses this sympathetic feeling in his own legs, and concentrates all his attention on the imagined soldier, the litter becomes, as it were, paralysed.In general his imagined movements, of whatsoever objects, seem paralysed the moment no feelings of movement either in his own eyes or in his own limbs accompany them.
The movements of articulate speech play a predominant part in his mental life.
"When after my experimental work I proceed to its description, as a rule I reproduce in the first instance only words, which I had already associated with the perception of the various details of the observation whilst the latter was going on.For speech plays in all my observing so important a part that I ordinarily clothe phenomena in words as fast as I observe them."
Most persons, on being asked in what sort of terms they imagine words, will say 'in terms of hearing.'
It is not until their attention is expressly drawn to the point that they find it difficult to say whether auditory images or motor images connected with the organs of articulation predominate.A good way of bringing the difficulty to consciousness is that proposed by Stricker: Partly open your mouth and then imagine any word with labials or dentals in it, such as 'bubble,' 'toddle.' Is your image under these conditions distinct? To most people the image is at first 'thick,' as the sound of the word would be if they tried to pronounce it with the lips parted.Many can never imagine the words clearly with the mouth open; others succeed after a few preliminary trials.The experiment proves how dependent our verbal imagination is on actual feelings in lips, tongue, throat, larynx, etc.
"When we recall the impression of a word or sentence, if we do not speak it out, we feel the twitter of the organs just about to come to that point.The articulating parts -- the larynx, the tongue, the lips are all sensibly excited; a suppressed articulation is in fact the material of our recollection , the intellectual manifestation, the idea of speech.
The open mouth in Stricker's experiment not only prevents actual articulation of the labials, but our feeling of its openness keeps us from imagining their articulation, just as a sensation of glaring light will keep us from strongly imagining darkness.In persons whose auditory imagination is weak, the articulatory image seems to constitute the whole material for verbal thought.Professor Stricker says that in his own case no auditory image enters into the words of which he thinks.
Like most psychologists, however, he makes of his personal peculiarities a rule, and says that verbal thinking is normally and universally an exclusively motor representation.I certainly get auditory images, both of vowels and of consonants, in addition to the articulatory images or feelings on which this author lays such stress.And I find that numbers of my students, after repeating his experiments, come to this conclusion.There is at first a difficulty due to the open mouth.That, however, soon vanishes, as does also the difficulty of thinking of one vowel whilst continuously sounding another.What probably remains true, however, is that most men have a less auditory and a more articulatory verbal imagination than they are apt to be aware of. Professor Stricker himself has acoustic images, and can imagine the sounds of musical instruments, and the peculiar voice of a friend.A statistical inquiry on a large scale, into the variations of acoustic, tactile, and motor imagination, would probably bear less fruit than Galton's inquiry into visual images.A few monographs by competent observers, like Stricker, about their own peculiarities, would give much more valuable information about the diversities which prevail.
Touch-images are very strong in some people.The most vivid touch-images come when we ourselves barely escape local injury, or when we see another injured.The place
may then actually tingle with the imaginary sensation -- perhaps not altogether imaginary, sine goose-flesh, paling or reddening, and other evidences of actual mucular contraction in the spot may result.
"An educated man," says a writer who must always be quoted when it is question of the powers of imagination,
"told me once that on entering his house one day he received a shock from crushing the finger of one of his little children in the door.At the moment of his fright he felt a violent pain in the corresponding finger of his own body, and this pain abode with him three days."
The same author makes the following discrimination, which probably most men could verify:
