ABSTRACT
The meaning o f ‘imagination’. In our last chapter we saw th a t the form ing of hypotheses to explain observed facts was an im portan t elem ent in constructive thinking. In such form ing of hypotheses we have som ething new dem anded of the m ind. I t is not m ere reproduction. W e need in fact w hat is usually called ‘constructive im agination’. (The reader m ay recall here or if necessary re-read the b rief paragraphs in C hapter I I I , dealing w ith the supposed ‘faculty’ o f im agination.) Psychologists now tend to speak ra ther of ‘originality o f ideas’ or of ‘facility in educing novel correlates’ ra ther than of im agination. M uch of w hat was term ed ‘im agination’ has been shown to be really dependent on general intelligence, though there is evidence of certain m ental factors which do correspond to some extent to the popular conception o f im agination, which we shall study shortly.
