Chapter 4. Imagination And Observation

Most persons whose lives fall short of their great possibilities do so for lack of imagination. Imagination is the power of the mind to create mental images of objects previously perceived; the power to reconstruct or recombine the materials furnished by direct apprehension; the power to recombine the materials furnished by experience or memory. It should be for the accomplishment of a worthy purpose; the power of conceiving and expressing the ideal. Producing ideas is an art. But an art is a waste of effort if it spends itself on the production, no matter how skillful, of something not worth doing. The human mind is not limited to the present by means of perception, nor to the past by means of memory, but can anticipate the future by means of imagination.

Man's imagination enables him to think things out before he does them. Therefore if he perceives an error, he need not actually commit the error. He can discard the process before making the error and use his imagination to avert it and try another method.

The ability to produce ideas relies heavily upon imagination. Imagination is the source from which arise the mental pictures, which are essential to the functioning of intelligence. It is the inspiration of all creative production.

It has led scientists to all their great discoveries and is the starting point for all new inventions. It is indeed the driving force and guide of all our activity.

Imagination, obviously, is imaging or picturing. It is the power that enables us to record on our minds, to remember, to recall at will, pictures of previous experiences, and to recombine these into different forms and impressions. The mind draws the mental pictures it makes from external objects. These pictures can only be created through our own perception and feelings. Each of our senses conveys the picture appropriate to it to the brain. Through the eyes we form visual images composed of line, form, light and color. Our ears provide images of sound in its infinity of combinations. The senses of taste and smell bring us pictures of flavor and perfume while the sense of touch presents to our mind such tactile sensations as heat, cold, damp, rough, sharp, soft, smooth, and so on.

Everyone has the ability to see pictures in his mind. Imagination is well named a plan making department. There is no limit to your ability to use imagination. People do not generally use it very efficiently but it is there and can be developed. You can take an idea or the memory of an experience and join it with other ideas and memories. You have the power to associate ideas and think through to a logical conclusion, thereby coming up with a new idea.

Other things being equal, the person who has the greatest store of concepts or mental images concerning the general subject of his definite purpose; and who has that material the most thoroughly classified and indexed, either in his memory or mechanically; that person will manifest the highest degree of success in his work of constructive imagination.

"That man", says Thomas Carlyle, "is most original who can adapt from the greatest number of sources."

Creation generally consists in the shifting of attributes from one thing to another. In other words, we give the thing with which we are working some new quality or characteristic or attribute heretofore applied to something else.

You not only can see such pictures in the mind of past memories and experiences, but you can create pictures, patterns and plans in your mind which were not there. Life, being responsive, flows over these plans and patterns, creating in reality what you have depicted in your mind. Everyone has imagination and everyone uses it, either to make plans for what he wants or for what he doesn't want. The action is automatic. This is why it is so important to imagine only what you want, not what you fear or don't want. You must be the engineer.

It is not the role of imagination to rule the mind or to make decisions. It sows the seed of desire, creates energy and fires the enthusiasm, all of which incite the will, thus setting in force powers of the greatest importance in achievement. Like any other natural faculty, imagination can be directed. It is creative. It is powerful. We automatically move in the direction of what we imagine, so we cannot be too careful of what we imagine, either for ourselves or for other persons.

We think in pictures, not words. It is important to form clear mental pictures. As you progress in your idea development, see every phase sharply in mind. This specific quality, this accuracy, will be of immense help. The images are the mental reproductions of things previously observed and experienced. They are the raw material of all intellectual work. To have enough of them available, we must have sufficient perceptions stored away in our minds. That means we must have been good observers. More on this; presently.

Our sensory powers also enable us to make sharp psychological observations, since we can frequently recognize a person's thoughts from his expression and realize the state of his emotions from the tone of his voice. Imagination lets us bring to our minds the pictures of things separated from us by time or space, greatly enlarging the scope of our intellectual activities.

Middleclass minds recognize only those relationships that are immediate, obvious and direct. Imagination enables a thinker to discern more inconspicuous analogies as when Newton had his first glimmering of the law of gravitation on noting an apple drop from its twig to the ground. Man, strictly speaking, creates nothing. He can only rearrange and transform elements that already exist. All processes of manufacture presuppose the existence of raw material. Raw material in idea production depends strongly upon imagination, which in turn relies upon observation for its validity.

Before your imagination can produce practically, it is necessary to proceed with a high degree of observation. Otherwise imagination will turn to fantasy and will not jibe with the requirements of reality.

Very few persons know what it is to observe. It isn't a passive condition of letting your eyes rest upon whatever happens to fall within the limits of your vision. Observation is a highly active process, requiring intense concentration and exercise of your mental processes. Dr. H. B. Brown has reported in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, for instance, how he experimented by having a plumber come into a classroom while class was being conducted, and tinker with the radiator in plain view of the entire class. A couple of weeks later the one hundred and seventeen students in the class were asked to pick this plumber out of a group of six "suspects" who were lined up before them. About one third of the students picked the wrong man. It is fortunate that this was only an experiment and not a criminal trial, or else wrong identification, based on poor observation, might have convicted the wrong person. But that tragic mistake has happened many times and innocent men and women have been sent up for a term of years, or sacrificed their lives by being wrongly testified against by witnesses who were poor observers.

Observation is perception with a purpose. You can be responsive to sensations without either perceiving or observing. This is usually called thoughtlessness, wool gathering or mind wandering. As has been well said, "Every normal creature has seen the lightning flash, but Benjamin Franklin observed it." Extend your eyes and your ears into unfamiliar matters and consider continually how some idea 'learned from one of these fields can be put to use by you on your own project. Listening, too, which is much more than keeping your mouth shut, should be cultivated observantly with a view to accuracy and precision.

Observation depends on two things. First, trained senses, and second, organized information on the subject of the observation. There is some question whether a keen judge of human nature with indifferent senses can judge a person better than a keen-sensed person who has indifferent knowledge of human nature. The only lesson to take from this debate is to realize that the ideal is to combine keen senses with expansive knowledge of a subject. With limited sense raining you'd lack accurate material to combine with your past experience. With limited knowledge you might be so engulfed in details of observation that you couldn't stand back and view the situation as a whole and give the detail meaning.

Many of the traits we discuss herein, if cultivated, have values beyond helping you to get ideas. Observation is surely one of these. It is to your interest in every way t cultivate your power of observation. The sense of observation may be defined as attention applied not only to your usual occupation but also to every circumstance of lift Far too common is it for us to go on living, year after year, without learning anything from what happens all around us. It is wise, when you look at a thing, to see it Train yourself to observe not only accurately but quickly This is at the foundation of making contrasts, similarities, additions, eliminations, and proceeding with all the processes involved in the search for ideas.

Observation is necessary to anyone who wishes to progress at all in the field of ideas. It forms the basis of success in art, literature, science, business, government, persons' relations and any endeavor. An artist is able to put life into his work because he has observed the subject he wishes to represent on his canvas. Playwrights or novelists succeed according to the accuracy of their psychological observations. Knowledge of the human heart requires a sum c experience, which can only be gained through extensive observation. The businessman must be a keen observer to evaluate the people with whom he deals, the goods or services with which he is involved.

First hand knowledge based on personal observation makes for confidence, originality, leadership, memory, imagination, purpose, achievement. The basis of all detective work is keen observation and accurate interpretation. Will anyone say a good detective is not an idea producer? Observation and accurate interpretation are the basis of all hidden opportunities.

A young man walked into a store to buy a necktie. The blank, bare wall behind the tie counter depressed him. What would fill it attractively and increase sales? Why not giant photographic enlargements? He experimented with his camera and darkroom, produced an enlargement more than ten feet long and sold it to the clothing store. He had started an entirely new business idea, now called Photo Murals that paid him handsomely.

One single observation or interpretation of a sensation has been the turning point of a person's life in thousands of cases. One single observation has built fortunes, won wars and achieved in any number of cases, which confront us all the time.

The higher mental processes-reasoning, reflection, memory, imagination, and so on, are of no value unless the material composing them-sensations-are accurate. Interpretations of the sensation can be no more accurate than the observation thereof. So spare no effort to be a competent observer.

Imagination is not the same as fancy, though they are different exercises of the same plastic or creative faculty. Fancy employs the laws of association capriciously and without purpose. Imagination aims at definite and useful results. Fancy is a passive, drifting affair, while imagination is active and guided. It is subject to control, and the more intelligent and planned its control, the more effective its results in creative achievement.

"I never thought of it", is a common remark in many a post-mortem analysis of a situation when someone asks "Why didn't you do so and so?" In such a case the creative intelligence did not work. The failure was one of imagination, for it is the imagination, which looks ahead, supplies, plans, solves, and originates ideas.

Ordinarily when a person is confronted with some disagreeable task, which could be made easy by an improved method, he grumbles, "Why doesn't somebody do something about this?" Rarely the victim of such a condition happens to be a person who asks himself, "Why don't I do something about this?" The substitution of I for somebody makes all the difference in stimulating the imagination. It gives you an open minded, active approach, in which you may strike something that will be effective and rewarding. At least this cannot happen just by doing nothing and waiting for someone else to find a solution.

Do something. Look around where you are, at home, at work, at mealtime, while traveling. Select any object, or any method. Consider it carefully and see if it can be changed or improved. Stop taking everything for granted as final. Start analyzing in view of today's different needs and new techniques. Lightweight luggage for airplanes. Vitamin-enriched foods. Remote control for TV.

The constructive imagination does not merely recall images from the memory of experience in their original form. It rearranges, recombines and readapts the factors into a different form. It associates things or ideas in new ways. This is the basis for invention, for artistic creative-ness. It is essential for improvement of any kind, for the discovery of new relationships, for adapting old things to new uses. It is at the foundation of the idea-producing process.

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