The fact that not all minds possess this imaging faculty in anything like equal

measure will have an important bearing on the public speaker's study of this

question. No man who does not feel at least some poetic impulses is likely to

aspire seriously to be a poet, yet many whose imaging faculties are so dormant

as to seem actually dead do aspire to be public speakers. To all such we say

most earnestly: Awaken your image-making gift, for even in the most coldly

logical discourse it is sure to prove of great service. It is important that you

find out at once just how full and how trustworthy is your imagination, for it

is capable of cultivation--as well as of abuse.

 

Francis Galton[29] says: "The French appear to possess the visualizing faculty

in a high degree. The peculiar ability they show in pre-arranging ceremonials

and fetes of all kinds and their undoubted genius for tactics and strategy show

that they are able to foresee effects with unusual clearness. Their ingenuity in

all technical contrivances is an additional testimony in the same direction, and

so is their singular clearness of expression. Their phrase _figurez-vous_, or

_picture to yourself_, seems to express their dominant mode of perception. Our

equivalent, of 'image,' is ambiguous."

 

But individuals differ in this respect just as markedly as, for instance, the

Dutch do from the French. And this is true not only of those who are classified

by their friends as being respectively imaginative or unimaginative, but of

those whose gifts or habits are not well known.