and accurate tone-images, than ordinary men. The intellectual type is feeble in artists, for example, who are by nature receptive and emotional. Still more explicit in the interpretation of individual differences is Queyrat in his work entitled L'imagination et ses variétés chez l'enfant: étude de psychologie expérimentale appliquée à l'éducation intellectuelle (Paris, 1895). Queyrat analyzes the imagination into three types -visual, auditory, and motor. His thesis is that predominance of a certain type determines aptitude for science, art, or professional life, as the case may be. Hence it becomes the duty of the educator to discover the predominant type in the child, and thus to direct him intelligently in his choice of a vocation, at the same time developing other types harmoniously. ("La prédominance dans un esprit d'un ordre d'images lui assure des aptitudes prononcées pour une science, un art, une profession. Le rôle de l'éducateur est donc de s'appliquer à la reconnaître, afin, s'il y trouve réal avantage, de possesser l'enfant dans la voie que lui trace la nature" (p. 156).

Further developments in this direction- that is, in the direction of giving an immediate and specific social significance to individual variations of mental imagery-would be in the nature of detailed application. And a thorough test of the hypothesis would involve experiments on children and adults extending over a considerable period of time. I have not been able to learn of any such experiments. Hence the hypothesis can be criticised here only as to its logical merits. The attractiveness of the hypothesis lies in its possibility of affording a positive interpretation of individual variation, by connecting the variation with division of labor in society. The special type of imagery which an individual possesses, especially if he possesses it to an unusual degree, makes him all the more fit, the hypothesis could readily be stretched to say, to discharge some particular function. in the social organism. But the hypothesis is broad at the expense of depth. It is as superficial as it is attractive. It is premature. On the face of it, there is no more reason for associating a predominant type of mental imagery with a call to a particular vocation—say the visual type with the vocation of the artist - than there is in associating red hair with a fiery temper. It is true that there may be some deeplying relation between the two; but it is equally true that, until this relation has been made out, the comparison is merely one of superficial and inconstant resemblance I say inconstant, because inquiries have revealed many exceptions to the supposed rule.'

16- 24.

1 Cf. GALTON, Inquiries into Human Faculty, pp. 88 and 94. Cf. LAY, Mental Imagery, pp.

Ribot, in his recent and suggestive work on imagination (Essai sur l'imagination créatrice, Paris, 1900), criticises the analysis of the imagination into the various types as illusory and futile. Such an analysis, he says, does no more than point out the materials with which the imagination works. It has no more meaning than a classification of architectural structures on the basis of the materials employed; say, a classification of monuments into those made of stone, brick, iron, wood, etc., without reference to differences in style (p. 150). Ribot then proposes the following classification of the principal types of imagination:

1. Plastic.

2. Diffluent.

3. Mystic.

4. Scientific.

5. Practical and mechanical.

6. Commercial.

7. Utopian.

It is not necessary to reproduce his definitions of these types; the essentially social and objective reference of the criterion of the classification is evident. Its value and its limitations fall together. Its value, to say nothing of the richness of detail with which Ribot has illuminated his pages, lies in the truth that the imagination does finally express itself in an objective world of fact. Ribot sums up this truth in the closing sentence of the book: L'imagination constructive pénètre la vie tout entière, individuelle et collective, spéculation et pratique, sous toutes ses formes: elle est partout." Its limitations lie in the disregard of psychological processes, sensorial or otherwise, that lead up to the objective, overt results; its limitations lie also in the assumption that the sense elements involved in the imagination are so much "material," on and with which the creative powers work. Ribot is also to be classed with Spinoza and Hume, in so far as he regards sense elements merely as the given, the raw stuff, the data of experience.

A conception which, logically speaking, enables Ribot to analyze and classify the various types of imagery on an objective basis, and at the same time to regard the reproduced sense elements as so much "material," is the conception of the motor aspect of imagery. "La nature motrice de l'imagination constructive" is the title of the introductory chapter, and is a theme that reappears again and again throughout the entire work. Essayons de suivre pas à pas la transition qui conduit de la reproduction pure et simple à la création, en

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montrant la persistance et la prépondérance de l'élément moteur à mesure qu'on s'élève de la répétition à l'invention" (p. 1). Even in a purely reproductory image a motor element is present, Ribot would say, for such an image is a residue of an anterior perception; and perception always involves movements. In virtue of this motor element the image always tends to find outward expression. . . . l'élément moteur de l'image tend à lui faire perdre son caractère purement intérieur, à l'objectiver, à l'extériorer, à la projecter hors de nous" (p. 2). But Ribot fails to see anything creative in this tendency of the image. to pass into an act. He distinguishes sharply between reprodutive and creative imagination. The criterion is the objective one. The reproductive imagination is that which gives rise only to the repetition of some act or object. To be creative, the imagination must result in something new.

Ribot's work is a contribution to sociology rather than to psychology. Or it might be described as embodying a type of social psychology in which "l'élément moteur" forms a sort of bridge between two sets of phenomena-one psychical or subjective, the other social or objective. Such a conception as this marks an advance over the conception previously referred to-the conception that there is an immediate, qualitative correspondence between certain types of mental imagery and certain activities or vocations. It gives us a glimpse of a mechanism between image and result, idea and fact. I am not attempting to express an appreciation of Ribot's work as a whole, with its clear, though not always convincing, analyses, and its suggestive comparisons. I merely wish to use certain points emphasized in the work; namely, the fact that an image, whether visual, auditory, or tactual, is always motor; and the fact that by virtue of this motor phase an image always tends to objectify itself in the world of fact. And yet there is nothing novel, or strikingly "creative," in these points. They are simply expressions or applications of the current doctrine of sensori-motor and ideo-motor reactions.

What might be called the official work on the psychology of the imagination has not, it seems to me, brought to light results that have a very direct bearing upon the problems raised in our discussion of the imagination as treated by Spinoza and Hume. This cannot be urged as a criticism against the careful descriptive work that has been done, nor against the brilliant interpretations of recent French writers. But a solution will have to be sought in and through other phases of psychology.

SEC. III. A PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF IMAGE-DEVELOPMENT.

In this part of the discussion I am especially indebted to Professor Dewey's reinterpretation of the doctrine of sensori-motor reaction, as found notably in his article on the "Reflex-Arc Concept in Psychology" (Psychological Review, Vol. III, p. 357).

The fundamental assumption with Spinoza and Hume—and with Ribot as well the assumption that the sense element in experience is externally imposed, is a datum; an "impression," to use Hume's word; "material," to use Ribot's-suggests the point at which analysis may be most effectively directed. If the assumption be granted, then we have either of two alternatives presented, according as we regard the recipient " faculty" of the mind as passive respecting its data, or as active. With Spinoza we may regard it as passive, and the problems already indicated (p. 48) will arise, the most pressing of which is perhaps the problem of individuality. What can be done for a self that is half bond and half free half imagination and half reason? Is it a self at all? It takes a thoroughgoing empiricist, or associationist, like Herbert Spencer, for example, to push this conception past Spinoza and on to its logical ultimatum, completely generalizing the method of forming the individual out of a continual raining in of sense-impressions but at the expense of a complete dissipation of individuality. Spinoza was a semi-Spencerian. Or with Hume we may regard the imagination as actively recombining and projecting its sense data; and another set of difficulties will arise, chief among which is the wholly irresponsible character of the imagination thus conceived apart from its material. In short, the assumption, in whichever way it is taken, creates more difficulties than it solves.

A counter-assumption which I wish to test on this group of problems is the assumption that a sensation is not a given element, a datum, but appears as the locus of a problem. It marks or locates the point in the organic activity of an individual where the strain is greatest, where demand for readjustment is most acute. A sensation is the way in which strain seems to the individual- in that sense it is seeming rather than being. It is the appeal which the demand for readjustment makes to the individual — in that sense it is particular rather than universal. It does not presuppose organic activity as a basis. is organic activity come to consciousness in the process of becoming more organic. The so-called reflex arc is not sensori-motor or ideomotor, in the sense that it is made up of two joints or segments, one of which is sensory up to a certain point, and the other motor. The

It

"reflex arc," or, as it has been more aptly termed, the "organic circuit" of stimulus and response, is either all sensory or all motor, depending upon whether it is a matter of immediate experience, or a matter of mediate or inferred experience; depending upon whether it is my experience from my point of view, in which case it is sensory; or my experience from your point of view, in which case it is motor. A kinæsthetic sensation is as much a sensation as a visual or auditory sensation. And, conversely, a visual sensation involves motor adjustments as much as a kinæsthetic sensation.

To say that a sensation appears as the locus of a problem does not mean that every sensation is to be so regarded. A sensation may be simply the point of least resistance in some habitual attitude or response which is anything but problematic. The barking of a distant dog breaks in upon my stream of consciousness as I write these lines. Since I have no jurisdiction whatever over that dog, the barking is barely perceived; in other words, only the most habitual and elementary forms of auditory perception and interpretation are brought into play. The case might be very different, however, if I knew that I could exercise some sort of control over the dog. In that event I might allow myself to be irritated by the barking. The more I felt that it was in my power to do something to check the disturbance, the more the sensation in question would appear to be the locus of a problem. The rattling of a window, the flapping of a curtain, the squeaking of a sign-board, are often almost entirely ignored, until it occurs to one that something can be done to stop the noise; then, unless the suggestion is followed up without delay, the noise is liable to become a source of irritation, a locus of a problem. I doubt whether Carlyle had been so much disturbed as he was by the cackling of his neighbors' fowls, if there had not been. some suggestion, however remote, of the possibility of Mrs. Carlyle's purchasing the offenders, as she finally did, and silencing them forever. Instead of its being true that a sensation is a datum given from without, it is more true to the facts of experience to say that when a sensation is so regarded it is liable to be annihilated. Wholly from without? Well, then it does not concern me; I can't help it. It is only when I feel myself to be in some way responsible for a sensation; it is only when it arises within my range of activities, my habits of control, that it persists and grows more intense.

The greatest difficulty that stands in the way of this assumption or hypothesis as to the nature of sensation would seem to be the objection that it is absolutely idealistic-if sensation is not given from without,