A first book in psychology / by Mary Whiton Calkins.

  • Mary Whiton Calkins
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A first book in psychology / by Mary Whiton Calkins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ment or part of the ‘ novel ’ experience is new. Every instance of creative imagination illustrates this statement. In imagin¬ ing a centaur, one combines the image of a man’s head with that of a horse’s body; in inventing the telegraph, Morse prolonged in imagination the image of charged wire, and united it with that of vibrating lever and writing point. These are instances of the combination of images in themselves far from simple. The parts combined may, however, be much less complex — mere elements or very simple images. The forms of imagination thus provisionally illustrated must be more closely considered. Of creative imagination two main forms are ordinarily distinguished: the mechanical and the organic. The mechanical image is a complex, not of qualities, but of relative totals, of experiences complete in themselves, as if a painter were to paint a picture of Tuscan olive trees on a New England hillside. The organic image is a complex of single elements or of fragmentary aspects of different objects, which fuse into a new whole of organically related parts. Within the class of organic imagination one may distinguish, also, the fanciful from the universal imagi¬ nation, on the ground that the first lays stress on more or less bizarre and accidentally interesting characters, the second on essential, universally appealing qualities. Thus, Kipling’s description of the “Workers” includes a bold fancy: — “They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comet’s hair.” Miss Jewett employs a similar figure, but the wide appeal of it marks the more universal imagination: — “Madonna mia! if in truth Our Raphael from heaven’s palaces
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