Statistics of mental imagery / by Francis Galton.
- Galton, Sir Francis, 1822-1911.
- Date:
- [1880]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Statistics of mental imagery / by Francis Galton. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![testimony to the fact from correspondents of unquestionable accuracy. Here are cases from the returns:— I seem to see the whole room as though my eye was everywhere. I can see all around objects that I have handled. I can see three walls of a room easily, and with an effort the fourth. I can see all the faces of a die and the whole globe, but die and globe seem transparent. [An eminent mineralogist told me that familiarity with crystals gave him the power of mentally seeing all their facets simultaneously.] This subject is of interest to myself on account of a weird nightmare by which I am occasionally plagued. In my dream, a small ball appears inside my eye. I speak in the singular, because the two eyes then seem fused into a single organ of vision, and I see by a kind of touch-sight all round the ball at once. Then the ball grows, and still my vision embraces the whole of it; it continues growing to an enormous size, and at the instant when the brain is ready to burst, I awake in a fright. Now, what I see in an occasional nightmare, others may be able to represent to themselves when awake and in health. From the foregoing statistical record it will be seen that in one quarter of the cases, that is to say, in the last quartile and in all below, the field of mental view is decidedly contracted. The Charterhouse returns (A and B combined) give a higher ratio. They show that in at least 74 out of the 172 cases, or in 43 per cent, of them, it is so; indeed, the ratio may be much larger, as I hardly know what to say about 51 cases, owing to insufficient description. I am inclined to believe that habits of thought render the mental field of view more comprehensive in the man than in the boy, though at the same time it causes the images contained in it to become fainter. A few of the boys’ answers are much to the point. I append some of them:— The part I look at is much smaller than reality, with a haze of black all round it. It is like a small picture. I have to fix my eyes on one spot in my imagination, and that alone is fairly defined. I cannot see anything unless I look specially at it, which is not the case with my real eyes. I have to move my mental eyes a good deal about. The objects are not defined at the same time, but I think of them one at a time ; also, if I am thinking of anything, as a map for instance, I can only imagine one name at a time. The next question that I put referred to the apparent position of the image. It was as follows:— “ Distance of images.—Where do mental images appear to be situated ? within the head, within the eye-ball, just in front of](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22462375_0019.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
