Visual and auditory “images” or representations may be supplemented by
those of any of the other twenty-odd qualities of sense impression.
The memory of a dance recalls a number of these, tactual, olfactory,
kinesthetic, mostly, however, in the average person, not clearly
conscious.
People have to be taught to see what is before their eyes. They also
have to be taught to recognize timbres of musical instruments, intervals
between tones, composition of various chords, etc.
Conscious attention must be used to enable some people to recognize the
difference between various flavours, perfumes, odours, bouquets of wine,
etc.
This sharpening of sense discrimination is accomplished by means of the
conscious attention to the various images.
The sharpening of sense discrimination with the assistance of the
mental standard supplied by the various representations of former sense
impressions involves a change in the sense organ itself if we include
in the organ, as we must, its nerve connections with the brain and with
other organs.
§ 165
This is how we may conceive the effect of mind upon body. The
imagination, composed of its various qualities of images visual, auditory
and other, involves the change in the sense organ and in the brain and
the other organs connected. We are thus being changed continually,
both body and mind, by impressions coming from without and by the
reverberations of these impressions that are known as mental images.
Is it any wonder that the drama, and lately the moving picture, is
recognized as one of the deepest transmuting influences in human life?
§ 166
Every sense impression is a suggestion. It is a psychological axiom that
every idea tends to work itself out into an act on the part of the person
that accepts the idea. This is the basis of hypnotism and any form of
non-hypnotic suggestion.
It is evident then, that the sense impressions received every second of
our waking life (together with the images or reverberations of these
impressions that continue to live in the unconscious and appear only
occasionally in consciousness) accumulate suggestive force. It is evident
that every individual is subjected from birth to a continuous stream of
suggestions, some of which he accepts (among them the most often repeated
ones).
If these suggestions are formed of images (conscious or unconscious) of
health, happiness and triumphant activity, they will be accepted and
constitute a pattern for the entire life activity of this individual. And
the same is true _vice versa_.
The impressions thus received constitute the content of the imagination
and this content produces either well-being or ill-being (not to say
illness) in the individual so influenced.
§ 167
The inference that a wholesome erotic pattern must be provided for young
people, and adopted by older married persons, is therefore irresistible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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