Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/56

 42 w. H. WINCH: term "stiff" is not so universally applicable. How do we differ from the child ? His mind, we find from this extract, confuses imagination with perception, image with sensation, and possesses more -intimate connexions than ours between some, at least, of the senses. Let us note the " vividness of the images in coloured hearing which, in certain cases, ap- proximate to sense-perceptions ". Now, without any serious dispute as to the facts, let us ask what interpretation we can give which will enable us to systematise them. Can we do so on an association basis at all ? On this explanation we have sense elements which become compounded subsequently. But colour and hearing are now compounded by the child, though later they will be disjoined. We have again, still on the associationist method, perception compounded of image and sensation ; vivid images, it is said, which are confounded with sensations. Would not the facts be better explained by supposing that the sensational centres at this stage are not so differentiated and specialised ? Why not suppose that the sound stimulus has a direct effect upon colour vision, without the intervention of images at all ? I venture to suggest that this conception accords better with our notions of biological development than the diminished-adult view of early life. Imagination, at the outset, remains almost indistinguishable from sensa- tion, and only gradually acquires its own proper nature. "Imagination drawing from past experience supplies the interpretation " of a new sense experience. Our own ex- perience doubtless supplies us with many such instances ; but have we no interpretations of new sense-experiences prior to imagination altogether ? And after its development, to perceive the relatively new is easier to us than to image the past which helps us to interpret it. The point is that the elements of the sensational complex modify each other. A valuable illustration of this position is found in the way in which names are regarded. Shake- speare may say : What's in a name 1 A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But savages, children, and successful advertisers think dif- ferently. The great importance attached to the name by primitive minds was first brought to my notice by a street altercation in a London slum between two boys about eight years of age. One had dropped a paper on which he had been writing at school. His antagonist, leaving the point at issue, ejaculated : " Yah, I've picked up your writing paper ".