So in general, the animals haven’t different senses from ours, nor on the whole better ones. But they use them differently; and cultivate some senses which we let go to waste. For the most part, the animals depend on smell far more than we. Smell is apt to be their principal sense, as sight is ours. Because they don’t use their eyes as much as we do, they notice and remember more of what they learn thru their sense of direction and their muscular sense. But a man who tries hard can usually beat any animal at his own game. The fact is, I suppose, that we, men and beasts and birds alike, have all the senses there are, all that any sort of creature could have anyway. Then each, according to his nature and habits, uses one more than the rest, to think and remember with. XXXIII Seeing In The Mind’s Eye Not all us human beings use our eyes, ears, and noses in the same way, as a simple experiment will show. Shut your eyes and think of the name of some familiar thing, like BREAKFAST TABLE. What did you see in your mind’s eye? Some people see that breakfast table just as clearly as if they were in the dining room with the table itself before them. They see the cloth and the plates and the food, the people at their places, the walls of the room, the furniture, all just as sharp and bright and natural as if they were looking at the things themselves. Others, more commonly, see the room and table dimly. They do indeed have an inner picture, but it is more like the picture one gets of things far round at the side of the head, out of the corner of the eye. They have a general impression, right as far as it goes; but they can’t see the patterns on the plates, nor the position of each fork and spoon. Still other persons, though there are not many of these, and children are almost never this way, cannot see any mental picture at all. They have no mind’s eye. They cannot see anything unless it is actually there. People who can make such inner pictures are said to be eye-minded. Children are especially this way. Sometimes, indeed, they have difficulty in telling the difference between what they actually see, and what they dream or imagine. Then sometimes, they get punished for telling fibs. Some people have this gift for making mental pictures to an extraordinary degree. If they have a lesson to learn, they see the page of the book before their inner eyes, and simply read off what it says. I knew of a type-setter in a printing office, who was a crack speller. He could spell anything. Give him a hard word, and he simply saw in his mind’s eye his composing stick with the word set up in type in it, upside down and backwards, as type is set by hand. Then he simply read off the letters, and always got it right.