Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/783

Rh prevailing eye-mindedness of our times, together with some of its causes. A moment's observation of our own stream of thought will show us how largely it is made up of visual images. Any one may easily verify for himself what the experience of deaf-mutes has proved, that thought is both possible and common without language, though this has so often been denied. It is quite true that ear-minded people, with small visualizing power, carry on much of their thinking by the symbolic imagery of words. Most people doubtless do their more abstract thinking largely through these convenient media, though Galton suggests that abstract ideas are, after all, only generic images, composite photographs, as it were, of the various individual things of our experience. At any rate, if we examine our own minds we see that what goes on there is, for the most part, a ceaseless flow of images of concrete things, and that of these images the visual ones are in a vast preponderance over those of the other senses. Even the word image suggests a visual form, and imagination should mean derivatively the reproduction of such forms. In our abnormal mental states—such as dreams or the delirium arising from fever or drugs—our experiences are visions rather than sounds. In our dreams we see much and hear comparatively little, while it is still rarer to dream of tastes and odors. The congenitally blind are, of course, exceptions to this rule, while blind deaf-mutes, like Laura Bridgman, dream in terms of what senses they have, and there are other exceptions. There are "voices" occasionally as well as "visions," and ear-minded people dream less, no doubt, in visual terms. But the dreamer is the "seer," as our very language shows.

Now, there is, in the nature of mental life, no reason why our images should be drawn so largely from the sense of sight. It is an accidental circumstance, due to the fact that we use the eye more than any of the other organs. The difference is both quantitative and qualitative. Our ears, to be sure, are never closed, but if we note the character of our auditory perceptions, we see that little attention or intelligence is needed in this direction. The significance of what we hear bears no comparison with the significance of what we see. In every-day life the principal office of the ear is the apprehension of spoken language. The limited and ever-repeated vocabularies of our verbal symbols call for little discriminative use. Thus far the ear is a drudge, carrying lifeless symbols to be interpreted. Even the spoken word is by many persons mentally turned immediately into the visual image, either of the thing represented or the printed or written word. On the other hand, some people, in reading, mentally represent the spoken word, but it is the motor representation of the spoken word, not a sensory image of its sound. The intelligent hearing of music