galton.org 75
Mental Imagery
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engineers, and architects usually possess the faculty of seeing mental
images with remarkable clearness and precision.
A few dots like those used by the Bushmen give great assistance in
creating an imaginary picture, as proved by our general habit of working
out ideas by the help of marks and rude lines. The use of dolls by children
also testifies to the value of an objective support in the construction of
mental images. The doll serves as a kind of skeleton for the child to clothe
with fantastic attributes, and the less individuality the doll has, the more it
is appreciated by the child, who can the better utilise it as a lay figure in
many different characters. The chief art of strengthening visual, as well as
every other form of memory, lies in multiplying associations; the
healthiest memory being that in which all the associations are logical, and
toward which all the senses concur in their due proportions. It is
wonderful how much the vividness of a recollection is increased when
two or more lines of association are simultaneously excited. Thus the
inside of a known house is much better visualised when we are looking at
its outside than when we are away from it, and some chess-players have
told me that it is easier for them to play a game from memory when they
have a blank board before them than when they have not.
There is an absence of flexibility in the mental imagery of most
persons. They find that the first image they have acquired of any scene is
apt to hold its place tenaciously in spite of subsequent need of correction.
They find a difficulty in shifting their mental view of an object, and
examining it at pleasure in different positions. If they see an object
equally often in many positions the memories combine and confuse one
another, forming a “composite” blur, which they cannot dissect into its
components. They are less able to visualise the features of intimate friends
than those of persons of whom they have caught only a single glance.
Many such persons have expressed to me their grief at finding themselves
powerless to recall the looks of dear relations whom they had lost, while
they had no difficulty in recollecting faces that were uninteresting to
them.
Others have a complete mastery over their mental images. They can
call up the figure of a friend and make it sit on a chair or stand up at will;
they can make it turn round and
