PERSONAL POWER (Complete 12 Volume Edition). William Walker AtkinsonЧитать онлайн книгу.
image, or mental picture, of a familiar image magnified to almost any size. You can easily imagine giants whose beards brush the clouds. Gulliver’s Travels can be read by you and easily accompanied by your own illustrative images. The gigantic figures of ancient mythology are not beyond the powers of your Imagination. Likewise, you have no trouble in imagining a world a thousand times larger than our own, with all the familiar objects of our world magnified in like proportion. Jack’s marvelous Beanstalk, rising to the skies, is an easy task for your lively Imagination, particularly in childhood.
In the same way, you can construct a new imaginative image, or mental picture, of a familiar image diminished almost to any size. Fairies, elves, gnomes, midgets, dwarfs—all are familiar to the eyes of your Imagination. You can imagine an oaktree capable of being covered by a thimble. Gulliver’s Travels can be illustrated by your own mental pictures of the Lilliputians. The mushroom throne and acorn coach of the fairies are quite
easily imagined. Elephants as small as mice, whales as small as minnows, worlds as small as grains of mustardseed—all these are easily created by a lively Imagination. The scientific Imagination of today sees each atom as a tiny solar system composed of revolving planets—scientific fancy can easily picture each of these electronicplanets as being inhabited, and as being like our own planet in every way.
Size is comparative to the Imagination, and may be varied at will. You can imagine objects as being as large as you please, or as small, without regard to objective reality. The laws of the Imagination are very liberal in respect to size.
(3) VARIATION OF POSITION, FORM, AND COLOR. You can construct imaginative images, or mental pictures, of familiar objects changed in Position, Form, or Color, or all these combined, without any difficulty. Here also the laws of the Imagination are very liberal.
You can imagine the familiar object in almost any new position. Thus, you may place a fountain in the middle of a valley; place a prairie on a hillside; terrace a mountain into plains; plant a garden in a desert; combine hills, valleys, streams, rocks, in a fantastic manner having no correspondence in Nature. You can imagine men with their noses at the back of their heads, their arms and legs exchanging places, ears on their knees. In short, the Imagination can vary the positions of objects, or parts of objects, at will.
You can imagine new shapes for familiar animals, trees, features of the landscape. You can imagine willows as straight as a pine, or spruce trees with branches like those of an oak. You can imagine roses with triangular petals; cubic eggs; octagonal oranges; cows as fleetfooted as a gazelle; crows as graceful as hummingbirds; and rhinoceroses as softfooted and sinuous as a cat. In short, the Imagination can vary the forms of objects, or parts of objects, at will. As a writer says: “The forms of objects are as flexible in the hands of the Imagination, as the clay in the hands of the potter.”
You can imagine a green or red sky, blue fields of grain, red leaves on trees, white vegetation in the garden, black snow on the mountain tops. The Imagination can vary the color of objects, or parts of objects, at will. As a writer says: “The imagination can make the eye as dark as midnight, or give it a heavenly hue; paint the evening sky with golden colors, and robe the summer landscape with all the splendors of autumn.”
(4) RECOMBINED IMAGES. You can construct imaginative images, or mental pictures, in which the separated elements of several dissociated things are combined in new arrangements. Thus, you can imagine the head and trunk of a man combined with the body of a horse—here you have created a Centaur. You can imagine the body and head of a man combined with the horns, legs and hoofs of a goat, the wings of a bat, the tail of an ox—here you have Satan. You can imagine the body of a goat combined with the head of a lion, and the tail of a dragon—here you have the ancient Chimaera. You can imagine a monster with the body of a dog, with three heads—here you have Cerberus. You can imagine the head of a maiden, the body of a vulture, and the claws of the eagle—here you have a Harpy. You can imagine a woman with serpents serving for her locks of hair—here you have the Medusa. Mythology is rich in illustrations of this kind. The patient in delirium frequently “sees” pink elephants with batwings, dragontails, and eagleclaws, floating around the room. Our dreams sometimes acquaint us with similar monstrosities, when we have been unwise in choosing the elements of our late dinners. There is practically no limit to this exercise of the Imagination—the possible combinations are almost infinite in variety.
(5) IDEALIZATION. You can construct imaginative images, or mental pictures, in which the actual images of experience are given a more perfect, more beautiful, or more nearly an ideal form. Thus, you can picture a perfect circle, though you never have found one in Nature; a more beautiful woman than you ever have seen; a more perfectly formed horse than has ever been observed by you. The artist exercising this form of Imagination often pictures that which Nature seems to be striving to manifest. You can also imagine ideal events—pictures of dramatic beauty; also ideal characters representing the full development of qualities which are merely partially represented, or even merely hinted at, in real life.
The poets, great prose writers, and the dramatists, manifest this form of idealistic Imagination. Homer, Virgil, Dickens, Thackeray, Scott, Milton, and above all, Shakespeare, furnish us with typical illustrations. Shakespeare has created characters which seem even more real to us than many of the actual characters of our experience. The great composers of music drew upon this phase of their Imagination and have given us harmonies and melodies never heard in nature. Artists of all kinds depend upon this idealistic Imagination for their inspiration; then they attempt to express in outward form—in painting, in sculpture, in poem, in drama, in story, in musical composition—that which they have formed first as mental images.
(6) INVENTION. You can also construct imaginative images, or mental pictures, of familiar objects adapted to new uses and ends, or of new objects adapted to familiar uses and ends. Thus the inventor imagined electricity being adapted to the business of transmitting messages, running machinery, producing heat and light, etc. Likewise, he imagined sewing, washing, weaving, reaping, binding, plowing, being performed by power machinery instead of by hand. The entire history of inventions is but the history of the employment of the inventive Imagination. As we have previously stated, the progress of man from savagery to civilization has been along the path of invention. Every tool, every instrument, every appliance of any kind—anything made by the hand of man in order to accomplish a new end, or an old end in a new way—is the result of the activities of his inventive Imagination.
(7) PLANNING. You can construct imaginative images, or mental pictures of the plans according to which you intend to proceed in your picture work. The general plans his battles, the architect plans his building; the business man plans his campaign of manufacture, sale, or other work. The clearer and the more definite the plan, the truer will be the result, all being equal. The mechanic, if he be a good one, will plan out in his mind the work which he expects to perform with his hands. Every work of construction, building, or general action contemplated by man, is planned and worked out in his Imagination before it assumes material form. The subjective form must always precede the objective form.
(8) INDUCTION. You can make constructive imaginative images, or mental pictures, of the probable causes of a number of particular events or happenings, along the general lines of induction. The great triumphs of scientific induction have been made in this way. The scientist groups together the mental images of a number of events or happenings seemingly operating under the same general law, or from the same general causes (the latter being unknown); he then seeks to discover the missing law or cause, and in doing so he sets into operation his inductive Imagination, He “makes scientific guesses” in this way, and then proceeds to test out the several hypotheses so obtained. Many of the great discoveries of science relating to physical laws have been made clear with the assistance of this form of Imagination.
All, or nearly all, of the observed processes of Constructive Imagination will be found to fit into one or more of the above categories without undue strain. The list, however, is not intended to be exhaustive, but is rather merely suggestive as a loose classification.
MECHANICAL CONSTRUCTION AND PURPOSIVE CONSTRUCTION. Psychologists note a certain distinction between the different classes of the images of Constructive Imagination, i. e., of those imaginative images which do not represent