Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV IMAGINATION Even without the nerve stimulus and the sensation, we are still able to construct images from our past experiences. This power is imagination. IMAGINATION AND PERCEPTION Imagination depends on perception for its material. Every element in imagination must first have been found in perception. A color-blind person blind to red cannot imagine red. A person deaf from birth, cannot imagine sound. The chief difference between imagination and perception lies in the fact that in perception the stimulus is present to the senses, while in imagination there is no external stimulus, and it is therefore as a rule less vivid. However, the two processes are sometimes so nearly equal in vividness, that we mistake imagination for actual sensory experience. Especially is this true of our dreams, which, though wholly the creation of imagination, seem to be reality. Perception is also dependent on imagination. When we read in a familiar language, we never take the trouble to see all the letters; we just catch a few characteristic points in the shape of a word, and then supply the rest by imagination from memory. KINDS OF IMAGINATION Sense Classes of Imagination. — Thus there are as many kinds of imagination as there are kinds of perception, and of the same types, as visual imagination, auditory imagination, etc. For example, if a certain song is mentioned, one may have a mental picture of the printed score, or one may imagine hearing some one sing it. Again, one may feel certain vibrations in the throat like those felt in singing, or one may feel the touch of the piano keys as one thinks of playing the song. Reproductive and Productive. — Some psychologists classify imagination as reproductive or productive. In the first form of imagination, the mind...