It is not the role of imagination to rule the mind or to make decisions. It sows the seed of desire, creates energy and fires the enthusiasm, all of which incite the will, thus setting in force powers of the greatest importance in achievement. Like any other natural faculty, imagination can be directed. It is creative. It is powerful. We automatically move in the direction of what we imagine, so we cannot be too careful of what we imagine, either for ourselves or for other persons.

We think in pictures, not words. It is important to form clear mental pictures. As you progress in your idea development, see every phase sharply in mind. This specific quality, this accuracy, will be of immense help. The images are the mental reproductions of things previously observed and experienced. They are the raw material of all intellectual work. To have enough of them available, we must have been good observers; more on this presently.

Our sensory powers also enable us to make sharp psychological observations since we can frequently recognize a person’s thoughts from their expressions and realize their state of emotions from their tone of voice. Imagination lets us bring to our minds the pictures of things separated from us by time or space, greatly enlarging the scope of our intellectual activities.

Middle class minds recognize only those relationships that are immediate, obvious and direct. Imagination enables a thinker to discern more inconspicuous analogies as when Newton had his first glimmering of the law of gravitation on noting an apple drop from its twig to the ground. Man, strictly speaking, creates nothing. He can only rearrange and transform elements that already exist. All processes of manufacture presuppose the existence of raw material. Raw material in idea production depends strongly upon imagination, which in turn relies upon observation for its validity.

Before your imagination can produce practically, it is necessary to proceed with a high degree of observation. Otherwise imagination will turn to fantasy and will not jibe with the requirements of reality.

Very few persons know what it is to observe. It isn’t a passive condition of letting your eyes rest upon whatever happens to fall within the limits of your vision. Observation is a highly mental process, requiring intense concentration and exercise of your mental processes. Dr. H. B. Brown has reported in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, for instance, how he experimented by having a plumber come into a classroom while class was being conducted, and tinker with the radiator in plain view of the entire class. A couple of weeks later the hundred and seventeen students in the class were asked to pick this plumber out of a group of six “suspects” who were lined up before them. About one third of the students picked the wrong man. It is fortunate that this was only an experiment and not a criminal trial, or else the wrong identification, based on poor observation, might have convicted the wrong person. But that tragic mistake has happened many times and innocent men and women have been sent up for a term of years, or sacrificed their lives by being wrongly testified against by witnesses who were poor observers.