Every person knows that
the person who wishes to accomplish anything, or who expects to do good
work along any line, must first know what he wishes to accomplish. In the
degree that he is able to see the thing in his mind's eye--to picture the
thing in his imagination--in that degree will he tend to manifest the
thing itself in material form and effect.
Sir Francis Galton, an eminent authority upon psychology, says on this
point: "The free use of a high visualizing faculty is of much importance
in connection with the higher processes of generalized thought. A visual
image is the most perfect form of mental representation wherever the
shape, position, and relations of objects to space are concerned. The best
workmen are those who visualize the whole of what they propose to do
before they take a tool in their hands. Strategists, artists of all
denominations, physicists who contrive new experiments, and, in short, all
who do not follow routine, have need of it. A faculty that is of
importance in all technical and artistic occupations, that gives accuracy
to our perceptions and justice to our generalizations, is starved by lazy
disuse instead of being cultivated judiciously in such a way as will, on
the whole, bring best return. I believe that a serious study of the best
way of developing and utilizing this faculty, without prejudice to the
practice of abstract thought in symbols, is one of the pressing desirata
in the yet unformed science of education.
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