At first sight it would appear quite wrong to speak of a methodical imagination, or even of method as being in any way characteristic of imaginative activity; but on reflection it will be evident that, although no analysis can define the limits of imagination, it can show some of the various ways in which this power usually works.

In the effort to combine images in a startling fashion, and with a view to cause a deep impression on the mind of the reader or hearer, the man of imagination has recourse to an exaggerated treatment of reality, chiefly by postulating some impossibility or improbability of relationship.

The Use of Analogy

Every reader of science is struck by the important place given to analogy in the work of discovery. This place is not bestowed arbitrarily: analogy stands where it does as an aid in research simply because the Universe is based upon order; it has a rational plan, and discovers itself to us by means of a method that can be apprehended by Reason: Into this subject we are not called upon to enter. Our purpose is to illustrate the principle itself, and to show its value as a means of intellectual advancement.

We shall begin by showing how a miner used his imagination and sense of analogy.

Hargreaves, a miner who had been in the Californian gold rush, was struck by the similarity of certain surface formations in Australia to those he had seen in the Far West. He thought a while; then he got the notion of gold, and he proceeded to put that notion to the test of experiment. He found gold at once, and started the great gold “boom” of the island continent. This is a good instance of reasoning by analogy; like conditions promise like results. Of course, the law is open to a false estimate, just as others are. You cannot safely argue that because an article sells well in London it is sure to sell well in New York, or vice versa. Many a man has lost his money by embarking on propositions of this kind, based on a superficial, as distinct from a real, analogy. This failure he attributes to bad luck or to the stupidity of the public. It is due neither to one nor to the other but to inaccurate thinking.

The ability to think in the right way is therefore of the utmost importance, as we have so often stated; but the trouble is to persuade men and women to regard thinking as an art that needs to be cultivated.

Training the Imagination

What is meant by training the imagination? We mean, first of all, the deliverance, of the mind from dominance by the actual. For instance, those people who follow strictly a prosaic routine, day in, day out, from year end to year end, .with scarcely ever a sustained thought outside it, need arousing from this unimaginative life; and in most cases it can be done by showing them where they are neglecting their opportunities; that is, we show them a panorama of what is being missed in life, both real and ideal, by the neglect of a great mental function. “I thought imagination belonged only to poets,” writes a Pelman student, “but I have now realized I have an imagination of my own, a very pleasant discovery. Of course I knew it before, in a vague way; now I realize it.”

Further, training the imagination means the practice of exercises that will at once awake more interest in such activity, and give great facility in the use of the power as applied to the needs of the individual.

“Can this be done?” asks the incredulous person. It can; it has been done already. Admittedly, the training is more difficult than that of other mental powers, partly because imagination itself is one of the most complex of functions, and partly because the material for experiment is not very abundant. But the complexity is not a burdensome matter to the individual himself; he is not conscious of the deep intricacy of, the imaginative process during the moments of its action; and, once awakened to his opportunities material is exceedingly plentiful. The real difficulty is that of providing exercises for every type of mind; but even this has been overcome.

Apart from training by means of Exercises, however, there is observable in the history of men and women of imaginative ability on a certain reliance on feeling and on environment as sources of inspiration. Naturally, these inspirations depend on knowledge, and knowledge depends on the activity of the senses. No opportunity should be lost, especially during walks in the country, of enlarging the boundaries of knowledge, so as to provide material; sights, sounds tastes, odors, and touch-sensations, in the service of imagination.

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Imagination begins in infancy; grows in the schoolroom and the playground; develops rapidly in the period of youth; enlarges itself in young adulthood, attains sobriety in middle-age; and never ceases its activity so long as mind endures. It is necessary to make this emphatic statement, because at the outset we wish to convince you that you have in your mental nature a power that can transform your life; first in thought and afterward in deed.

Right and Wrong Vision

Remember, the vision must be right. You can have a right one and turn it to good account. John Howard envisioned an improved prison system, and no self-sacrifice was allowed to stand in the way of its coining to pass. Hence the reforms which followed the publication of his State of Prisons in England and Wales, and which arose out of his personal visits to penal establishments. On the other hand a nation had envisioned a world in which its genius should predominate by the will of God, and nothing was allowed to stand in the way of its attempted realization. From this only evil could follow.

In like manner you can imagine a great financial future and begin to work for that alone, if your soul is built that way; or you can imagine a life with steady and proportionate advance as its chief characteristic; but vision you must have, if you are to get the best out of your powers. To form a purpose and to devise a plan for carrying it into action, is to use the imagination in constructing a picture of the future. That future should be a blend of the real and the ideal, uniting the, responsibilities of financial security and true citizenship with the needs of the higher culture.

Images and Imagery

The first part of the word “imagination” is “image“. An image is often thought of as a concrete object, like the white plaster images carried by Italian peddlers, or the religious images of saints and holy persons used for devotional purposes.?But the images here referred to are, of course, purely mental.

For instance, when we ask you if you have been to the Zoo, there arises instantly in your mind a picture of the buildings as you saw them, and of the animals that impressed you most; perhaps the giraffe, or the figure of some great elephant. If you have never been there, you have no images in your mind; or, if you know the place only by photographs of it, your imagining power is restricted to that.?We can reproduce, faintly or vividly, only that which in some way we have known by means of the senses.

Imagery and Mental Efficiency

It follows, then, that the ability to use the sense images of our past experience is of real importance. Perception lays the foundation of a fruitful mentality by living a full and complete sense life, thereby gathering a rich harvest of images of all kinds; and we have now to show how the ability to reproduce them, and the habit of expressing them, contribute their quota to the development of mental efficiency. Let us suppose a novelist wishes to suggest to his readers, by means of a phrase, a man who is very careful and economical in small things. He might express himself in this way: “John Jones put down his pen, turned down the gas, and was soon walking quickly down Oxford Street.” The sentence is bald and bare. By way of contrast notice how Arnold Bennett expresses the idea in one of his novels:

“He dropped his pen, reduced the gas to a speck of blue, and in half a minute was hurrying along Oxford Street.”

The difference is at once discernible. To turn down the gas is something; but to reduce it to a speck of blue is to make us see the thing realistically. Besides, it shows mind: a desire for economy. One of the primary qualifications of a novelist is this power of reproductive imagination; he must have lived the life of observation so fully that when he writes about people and things he can see them, hear them, and “sense” them in every possible way. He must also make his readers “sense” them. That is one reason why some of Dickens characters, for instance, are as real as if they had actually lived; indeed, Mr. Micawber and Mark Tapley are, if anything, more real, to a certain type of mind, than a distant relative could be.

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The Recollection of Isolated Fact

The subconscious action of Association may sometimes be employed effectually in the effort to recall an isolated fact, the remembrance of which cannot be awakened easily by any other means. The method is to return to the surroundings in which you last were aware of the fact you wish to remember. For example, if you have mislaid bunch of keys, you may remember where you placed them if you go back to the place where you know you last used them. If you have “forgotten” the funny story told you by a friend, it may recur to you if you think of what preceded it. The reproduction of some of the component elements in a situation tends to revive in the mind the impressions made by other component elements which may not be actually reproduced without such stimulus. It is, of course, impossible to classify these purely arbitrary associations, depending as they do chiefly upon propinquity of time and place.

So-called “Systems of Mnemonics”

Various systems of so-called “Mnemonics” are founded upon arbitrary associations of locality. In some of these, the pupil is directed to imagine a square sheet of paper, ruled into nine or sixteen squares, and then to imagine that he sees in each square a word or picture indicative of the fact to be remembered. ‘It would be appalling to contemplate the chaotic state of a brain subjected to such a tax through several weeks of diligent study. A somewhat similar system instructing the pupil to locate and picture in imagination all the facts he wants to remember, as being present in some room familiar to him. There would be obvious impediments in the way of applying this method to the memorization of a list of the Presidents of the United States, or the mountains of Europe, or the Emperors of Rome. In a later lesson we illustrate fully the correct manner of dealing with such facts.

Originality of ideas is a fascinating subject. And not only fascinating but really, important. “New ideas” in commerce, in literature, art, and the other professions, mean progress. The next lesson will therefore appeal to you very forcibly.

Don’ts

1. Don’t allow your resolutions to crumble; just continue in the spirit with which you began the Course.

2. Don’t complain that you are a “born mind-wanderer.” You may be, but conquer the habit by discipline. Hundreds have succeeded before you.

3. Don’t skim this Lesson. Go over it until you know it.

4. Don’t fail to test your knowledge by self-questioning.

5. Don’t be satisfied with a half-knowledge of anything. Be thorough.

6. Don’t forget that the formal exercises we prescribe, will, if practiced, enable you to do consciously what was, at first, a conscious effort.

Do This

1. In all mental training, effort should be carried out in a rational manner. Therefore, however diligently you work at mental connection see to it that your mind has its periods of “play.”

2. The four words in this lesson which should be mastered in all their ramifications are: Connection, classification, definition and standard.

3. Decide what classifications you need in (a) your calling, and (b) for your private studies.

4. Begin to use the principles of mental connection as an aid in the evolving of new ideas.

5. Make it a matter of conscience, of pride, if you will, to work for certain prescribed periods of time without allowing your mind to wander.

6. Remember that mental training involves moral training. The virtue of perseverance in really the power of concentration in one of its many forms of expression.

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Think accurately.

You need not only a knowledge of words but of values. You must follow the right methods as well as possess the power of expression.

Stream of Thought

Ask yourself this question: “Do my continually changing thoughts and feelings follow each other at random?”  Chart yourself and your actions for an hour and you will likely see that there is a pattern to your actions even if you fall off track. You see something that triggers another thought or action and then you get distracted from what you are doing and follow a new path.

Mind-Wanderer

Even a mind that wanders thinks according to the laws of association. The worst mind-wanderer in the world has thoughts which are intimately connected in this way, even though in a five minutes’ reverie he may begin with a thought about margarine and finish up with a speculation about the planet Mars. The mischief, however, is often serious. A person who uses thinking powers in this listless fashion becomes unable to fix attention on anything for long; memory develops deplorable weaknesses due to inattention; and, as a consequence, self-confidence decreases, in corresponding ratio. No doubt there are times when we should allow the mind to take its own course, or accept the drift in which we find ourselves. The mind must not be drilled unceasingly; it must on occasion “stand at ease,” as in the conversation of a social evening. But when business or study is before us, and we have a program to fill, hour by hour, the more consistently we follow the demands of attention, the better it is for our mental powers generally.

Connected and Unconnected Facts and Ideas

If you take an unordered list of words you find it rather difficult to recall them, because they are not so grouped as to. be an organic whole. Here is such a list: dome, a, glass, many, of, white, eternity, life, stains, radiance, of, colored, the, like. As a mere list of words it seems to convey no meaning—but when Shelley used them he wrote:

Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,

Stains the white radiance of Eternity

What a difference! The introduction of method by means of grammatical arrangement, and the infusion of exalted feeling, turns a seemingly unmeaning group of words into poetry of the highest order.

Do you arrange, according to a plan, all the new things you learn, or do you throw them on to a sort of general heap? For instance, if you pick up a popular paper and read that a certain burglar wrote a book whilst serving a term of penal servitude, do you simply say “He must have been a unique burglar” and then forget the matter, or do you immediately place the fact in its proper association with other books, some of them famous which have been written in prisons? If you do, then, your powers work on the principles of mental connection; you classify your knowledge as it comes to you. If you do not, you will find that you forget half of what you read, because its associations are weak. You will also experience more difficulty in learning, and new ideas will be slow in coming.

Untidy Minds

Such are the evils of having an untidy mind, in which impressions, ideas, convictions, fancies, and all the phenomena of consciousness are so ill arranged that you never know where to find anything when you want it. Classification is the introduction of order into the mental life: a place for everything and everything in its place. Here’s how you can create order out of chaos:

In the first place don’t make a tremendous business of it. It is really quite a simple affair and not one to worry about. Life would not be worth living if, immediately you got out of bed in the morning you had to begin solemnly to classify the toilet soap, then the towel, then the breakfast, and so on throughout the livelong day. There is a time to classify these things, and it is done unconsciously by repeated use. Let these things happen and then start paying attention to what you do. If you read the morning paper, be alert and think as you read an article about the topic and whether you have heard about it before.  Look for associations by way of similarity or contrast. You may have no other chance during the day of exercising your mind in this way; but if you form the habit you will classify ideas and information unconsciously and without effort. Start linking thoughts with other things you have heard about. This helps your general concentration and your judgment.

The Trained Mind

One mark of a trained mind is (a) its ability to classify experience and to deal with individual instances, (b) knowledge of the best standards. The reader is, therefore, urged to introduce more order into his or her thought-life. The process itself is often greatly illuminating; the sudden confrontation of one experience with a like experience, happening in different circumstances, may result in a flash of insight carrying the mind altogether beyond the limits of the classification itself.

It must not be forgotten that all our ordered schemes of knowledge are tentative arrangements; they stand for the best we know, but they are not final.

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The practical effect of this teaching ought to be highly encouraging, for we have met with hundreds of cases in which men and women have wrongly accused themselves of lack of concentration. They had been trying to fix the attention on one thing, and because they had failed they became exceedingly depressed. What they lacked was control. Attention wandered off into numerous by-paths.

Causes of Mind Wandering

What are the causes of these conditions? They may be classified as follows:

• Physical causes, due to nervous illness of various kinds; the effects of shock or accident; excitable temperament; restlessness.
• Mental causes, due to a profusion of interests; a mind that works very rapidly; natural indolence ; lack of interest; the habit of drifting.
• Economic causes, due to a monotony of daily work; highly specialized duties narrowing the mental sphere.

Advantages of Concentration

The first and most obvious advantage of controlled attention is that the whole of the mental functions are hereby developed to the limit of their capacity. The act of close attention means that whilst you examine one object, or one idea, you are unconsciously exercising your memory, recalling similar objects or ideas. You are using your imagination in conceiving improvement by change. You are all the time comparing and contrasting, testing theories and accepting or rejecting them.

There is no merit in concentration itself; its value lies in the opportunity it gives to the functioning of our mental powers as a whole. There is no illumination in it per se, but even a searchlight cannot throw its beams into the sky without the help of the mechanism which makes light, and focus possible, and that is what concentration does for the mind.

The Morals of Concentration

It has been said that the mind of man is a great arena of conflict in which thoughts struggle together for supremacy and where the fittest alone survive. There is more than a mere figure of speech in this view. Not only do the more interesting and the most forceful ideas survive to become the glory and the sadness of memory, but certain ideas persist in spite of ourselves and against our best interests; at least for a time. There are people whose minds are plagued with undesirable thoughts, and, usually, this condition is dealt with by the moralist. But it is just as much a question for the psychologist.

How to Develop Concentration

Active attention springs from interest, as a rule; that is, the emotional element is the compelling power. But there is also an interest which is the offspring of attention. There are many middle aged men who have acquired a liking for golf; at first they had no interest in the game, and simply went round the links in order to fulfill a promise to the doctor. But slowly interest began to grow, and with it came attention and effort. Later, this middle aged person who grumblingly, and often angrily, walked after the little white ball, is keen on winning a prize. Although in the first place attention created interest, it is now interest which sustains attention; and it may be written down as a law that the more interest you have, the greater will be your power of concentration.

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There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dulness. I need only suggest what kind of sermons are still listened to in the most enlightened countries. There are such words as joy and sorrow, but they are only the burden of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, while we believe in the ordinary and mean. We think that we can change our clothes only. It is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind. Who knows what sort of seventeen-year locust will next come out of the ground? The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.

The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks which the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets. Every one has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which had stood in a farmer’s kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and afterward in Massachusetts—from an egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still, as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond it; which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn. Who does not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality strengthened by hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the alburnum of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb—heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive board—may unexpectedly come forth from amidst society’s most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last!

I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this; but such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

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Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the ices. I thought that there was no need of ice to freeze them. They talked to me of the age of the wine and the fame of the vintage; but I thought of an older, a newer, and purer wine, of a more glorious vintage, which they had not got, and could not buy. The style, the house and grounds and “entertainment” pass for nothing with me. I called on the king, but he made me wait in his hall, and conducted like a man incapacitated for hospitality. There was a man in my neighborhood who lived in a hollow tree. His manners were truly regal. I should have done better had I called on him.

How long shall we sit in our porticoes practising idle and musty virtues, which any work would make impertinent? As if one were to begin the day with long-suffering, and hire a man to hoe his potatoes; and in the afternoon go forth to practise Christian meekness and charity with goodness aforethought! Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. This generation inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious line; and in Boston and London and Paris and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress in art and science and literature with satisfaction. There are the Records of the Philosophical Societies, and the public Eulogies of Great Men! It is the good Adam contemplating his own virtue. “Yes, we have done great deeds, and sung divine songs, which shall never die”—that is, as long as we can remember them. The learned societies and great men of Assyria—where are they? What youthful philosophers and experimentalists we are! There is not one of my readers who has yet lived a whole human life. These may be but the spring months in the life of the race. If we have had the seven-years’ itch, we have not seen the seventeen-year locust yet in Concord. We are acquainted with a mere pellicle of the globe on which we live. Most have not delved six feet beneath the surface, nor leaped as many above it. We know not where we are. Beside, we are sound asleep nearly half our time. Yet we esteem ourselves wise, and have an established order on the surface. Truly, we are deep thinkers, we are ambitious spirits! As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and bide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information, I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me the human insect.

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I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries. My neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but I am no more interested in such things than in the contents of the Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will. They tell me of California and Texas, of England and the Indies, of the Hon. Mr.—-of Georgia or of Massachusetts, all transient and fleeting phenomena, till I am ready to leap from their court-yard like the Mameluke bey. I delight to come to my bearings—not walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may—not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator. I love to weigh, to settle, to gravitate toward that which most strongly and rightfully attracts me—not hang by the beam of the scale and try to weigh less—not suppose a case, but take the case that is; to travel the only path I can, and that on which no power can resist me. It affords me no satisfaction to commerce to spring an arch before I have got a solid foundation. Let us not play at kittly-benders. There is a solid bottom everywhere. We read that the traveller asked the boy if the swamp before him had a hard bottom. The boy replied that it had. But presently the traveller’s horse sank in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, “I thought you said that this bog had a hard bottom.” “So it has,” answered the latter, “but you have not got half way to it yet.” So it is with the bogs and quicksands of society; but he is an old boy that knows it. Only what is thought, said, or done at a certain rare coincidence is good. I would not be one of those who will foolishly drive a nail into mere lath and plastering; such a deed would keep me awake nights. Give me a hammer, and let me feel for the furring. Do not depend on the putty. Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction—a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse. So will help you God, and so only. Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work.

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No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well. For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infinity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out. In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that is. Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe. Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. “Tell the tailors,” said he, “to remember to make a knot in their thread before they take the first stitch.” His companion’s prayer is forgotten.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town’s poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. Maybe they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society. If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me. The philosopher said: “From an army of three divisions one can take away its general, and put it in disorder; from the man the most abject and vulgar one cannot take away his thought.” Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty and meanness gather around us, “and lo! creation widens to our view.” We are often reminded that if there were bestowed on us the wealth of Croesus, our aims must still be the same, and our means essentially the same. Moreover, if you are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you are but confined to the most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal with the material which yields the most sugar and the most starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. You are defended from being a trifler. No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.

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