Part 21

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.

Some musicians, as I have explained, remember their pieces as if in their fingers; but some see the inner picture of the notes, and read them off as if from a real score. There is a story of a public speaker, who in the midst of his speech stopped, hesitated, went back and said something different. He explained afterwards, that while he never read his speeches from a real manuscript, he did always read them from an imaginary one which he saw before his mind’s eye. This time, the manuscript that wasn’t there had some words written in between the lines, so that he could not read them easily.

Possibly you have heard of the truly wonderful performances of some champion chess players. Chess is played on a board like checkers, only it is a vastly more complicated game, with six different sorts of “men” all moved in different ways. Nevertheless, many players can play about as well when they do not see the board at all, as when they do. They make a mental picture of the board, sit blindfolded, and as the game goes on, they keep track of every move, as they are told what it is, by altering their inner picture. Some of the best chess players have played ten, fifteen, and even twenty different games, all at the same time, blindfolded, and won them all against as many separate players, each playing one game and looking at the board. Such a champion player has to carry in his head the picture of ten, fifteen, or twenty different boards, each with sixteen men, scattered about over sixty-four squares, and all continually changing. Yet they do this without ever making a mistake; just by these inner pictures in the mind’s eye.

Some eye-minded people can see a picture on a blank sheet of paper so clearly that they can mark over it with a pencil, and in this way make most accurate and effective drawings. Some can picture to themselves all four sides of a room at once, and imagine what is behind them as easily as what is in front. Some do not even hear directly what is said to them; but as each word is uttered, see the same word printed before their mind’s eye, and then read it off. There are those who say that they cannot wake up in the night and think of the bright sun, without having their eyes dazzled!

Now it is a great advantage to be eye-minded. There is no easier way of learning one’s lessons than by seeing books and maps and charts and diagrams, whenever you want them, right in front of your eyes, so that all you have to do is to look and see. The difference between boys and girls who get their lessons almost without effort, and those who get them only with the greatest labor, and then promptly forget them again, is often in just this power of making mental pictures. Some people can remember a page so clearly that they can actually read off the first or last words of each line, or read the printing backwards. Naturally, lessons come pretty easy to such lucky people.

Then too, to be eye-minded is a great source of happiness. One sees in the course of his lifetime, all sorts of beautiful and interesting things. If he can, whenever he wishes, recall these as mental pictures, almost as vivid as the reality, it is like seeing the reality all over again. He always has with him a collection of pictures, which though he cannot show to another, he can at any time enjoy for himself.

The eye-minded person, moreover, has still another string to his bow. Not only can he recall what he has seen; he can also imagine things which he has not seen, and so tell in advance how they are going to look. The engineer about to build a bridge, the architect planning a house, the housekeeper deciding how she shall arrange a room or set a table, the girl considering a new dress, the boy laying out a ball field, all can work to vastly better advantage if they can see exactly how everything is going to look, before they do anything. It is a great deal easier to change things in one’s mind, than after they get into wood and iron and cloth. No one can possibly succeed as engineer, architect, designer, dress-maker, milliner, and the like, unless he can make these pictures in his mind’s eye, and see how things are going to be, before he wastes time and material on the reality, Fortunately, this eye-mindedness is easily cultivated. One has only to attend to his mental pictures, and try to see all there is in them, to have them grow sharper and more complete. In fact, children usually have so much of this faculty that if they only kept what they have, instead of letting it waste away from lack of use, they would be far better off when they grew up than most grown-ups are. As we get older, we get to thinking more in words, and we lose the knack of making pictures. All is, we simply mustn’t.

XXXIV

Ear Minds and Others

Some persons are ear-minded. If you say to them

BREAKFAST TABLE.

they don’t see any breakfast table at all. Instead they hear in their mind’s ear the sound of dishes, the murmur of conversation, and the clatter of knives and forks. When they have learned their lessons, and stand up to recite, they hear an inner voice telling them what to say. They cannot easily remember how places look on the map; but they remember the songs of birds, the different whistles and bells of their neighborhood, they like lectures and readings, and when they have heard a tune once, they know it again. Such people may find it hard to learn to read a foreign language, but they make it up by learning easily to understand it when spoken.

Musicians are apt to be ear-minded. Mozart, for example, could listen to a long piece of music, then go home and hear it over again as many times as he liked in his mind’s ear, and so write it down at his leisure. Beethoven, after he became stone deaf, used still to write his magnificent symphonies, that took hours to perform, making them up in his head and hearing them in his soul’s ear—violins, and trumpets and cymbals and drums, each in its proper place, long after his bodily ears had ceased to hear any noise.

Not many people are ear-minded; not nearly so many are as eye-minded. Those that are, can always hear sweet music and pleasant sounds, whenever they will, and recall the words and voices of their friends. Surely there is much happiness in being ear-minded. Whatever ear-mindedness one has, is well worth hanging on to and improving.

More people are muscle-minded. Think of a

BALL.

Do you see the ball in your mind’s eye? or do you hear the word ball in your mind’s ear? or do you feel the ball in your fingers, and the pull of your muscles as you throw? If the last, you are muscle, or motor-minded, and you probably found yourself saying to yourself the word ball.

Motor-mindedness, too, is a great convenience. It helps to make games come easy, and dancing, and all sorts of gymnastics; it makes it easy to carry oneself properly, to use tools, to be skillful with one’s fingers, to play musical instruments. Motor-minded people are apt to talk easily, and to learn readily to speak foreign languages. Anything, in short, comes easy to them which involves doing something.

Nearly all blind people are motor-minded. If they are also deaf, then of course, they have to be so. I have seen a blind man get off a street car, turn into his street, walk down the street as far as his own gate, and there turn in without the least pause or hesitation, any more than as if he could see. He couldn’t see. He simply felt that he had walked just far enough. And he had.

Do you want to know which of the three possible sorts of minds your mind happens to be? Then think of the street number of your house, or the year in which Columbus discovered America. Did you look for the figures, or listen for them, of try to say them to yourself? Did you see 1492 printed out somewhere, or did you hear something say it; or did you feel yourself saying it in your throat? In the first case you are eye-minded; in the second, ear-minded; in the third, motor-minded.

Most persons are mixed-minded. They have one principal sense, with which they do most of their thinking; but where that is not convenient to use, they employ another. Occasionally even, they use the third. I am myself motor-minded. To learn anything, I say the words over to myself. If anybody tells me anything, I cannot remember it, unless I first say it over; and whenever I think of anything, I say words about it to myself. I can Recognize tunes when I hear them, but I cannot recall a tune, unless I fit it to some words or sounds and think of myself as singing it. But I can think of how things look, or imagine how things will look, much more easily than I can think about how they sound; and I can, with some effort, think how things look without starting to say anything about them to myself in words. So I am also somewhat eye-minded.