Nowadays the case could hardly be recorded in so simple a way; we
have learned that _ideational type is a very complicated and itself a
very variable matter_. Marked differences of imagery, as between one
mind and another, undoubtedly exist; but the distribution into types
is made difficult by two facts. The first is that there are great
differences in the nature of images even where the gross type is the
same; thus, of two predominantly eye-minded persons, the one may have
vivid and precise, the other vague and obscure images. The second is
that imagery varies with the nature of the test made, the situation
or material that arouses the images; in strictness, we can only say
that, under such-and-such conditions, the imaginal type proved to be
such-and-such. With these cautions before us, we can, however, make
out four common types. The =versatile= type uses visual, auditory and
verbal-motor images more or less indifferently. A second type prefers
=visual= images, with verbal-motor a good second. A third type prefers
=verbal images of the auditory-motor kind=, with visual images a poor
second. A fourth is almost exclusively =verbal-motor=. In this last
type, kinæsthesis, in the special form of the feel of articulation, has
reconquered the place that it held in the long-gone past, before speech
had come (p. 119).
We observe nothing of these differences in daily life, simply because
we are interested in meanings and not in processes; so long as the
audience gets somewhere near the meaning that the speaker or writer
is trying to convey, everything necessary for practical purposes has
been accomplished. All the same, _there are many signs of ideational
type_, if we are on the alert to seize them. The attitude of attention
is different, according as a man’s ideas are visual or auditory-motor;
the child’s mode of recitation is different, slow and systematic in the
former case, quick and impulsive in the latter; the mistakes made are
characteristic; and you can tell by an author’s style whether he has
visual images and whether he hears his sentences ring in the mind’s
ear. _It is natural to connect the dominance of certain images with
the choice of certain professions; but a correlation cannot be made
out._ “I should have thought,” remarks Galton, “that the faculty of
visualisation would be common among geometricians, but many of the
highest seem able somehow to get on without much of it;” and again “men
who declare themselves entirely deficient in the power of seeing mental
pictures can become painters” of acknowledged rank. The late Professor
James wrote to the same effect: “I am myself a good draughtsman, and
have a very lively interest in pictures, statues, architecture and
decoration. But I am an extremely poor visualiser.” These statements,
to be sure, were made without any thorough-going investigation; we
must remember that there are different ways of geometrising as there
are different styles and ideals of painting; and we may add that there
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