Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/616

598 bent goes deep into human nature, and it is transmitted to our offspring; it reveals itself early in life, is a most valuable guide-mark to the educator, and plays a prominent rôle in the development of enthusiasm and of genius. It is one aspect of this important trait that is here to be treated—an aspect best described as "sensory apperception"—the part of our individual bent due to the relative intellectual importance of the several senses.

Man is a visual animal; as a race we are eye-minded. We regard "seeing as believing," and say we "see" when we comprehend. The language of every-day use, as well as the imagery of poetry, abounds in illustrations of the "pictorial" nature of thought. Primitive forms of "picture-writing" testify to the ease with which the eye takes the lead in expressing ideas; and modern civilization increases a hundred-fold this natural visual supremacy, which by some is regarded as originally due to the function of sight as a distance-sense ("anticipatory touch" of Spencer). The use of object-lessons, models, diagrams, the reduction of complex relations to the curves of the graphic system, and a host of similar devices, all show how firmly the eye is the apprehensive organ of mankind, and how generally its educational value is appreciated. While, as a genus, we are eye-minded (in the same sense in which we might call a dog smell-minded), certain portions of the genus homo possess this faculty to a greater degree than others. Women visualize more distinctly than men; children think more vividly than adults; the French are (or were) noted for the skill with which they can foresee the effect of dress combinations, festal decorations, and the like, and their phrase for "imagine" is "figurez-vous." Similar individual variations have been well brought out by the studies of Mr. Francis Galton. From the examination of a large number of answers to a long series of questions, he concluded that the brightness, vividness, and reality of the mental picture of a former experience varied in different persons from all absence of any pictorial element in the remembrance to a remembrance comparable to a colored photograph of the original scene. In describing their remembrance of the morning's breakfast-table, some saw it all bright, definite, and complete; the persons present, their costume, the dishes, the view—all stood out as in the actual scene. Another group could visualize only the main features; the picture lacked reality, omitted details, and was only fairly clear; while a third set could