FEELING 57
structive power of one s imagination. It is true that ordi narily the primary sensational experiences evoke a keener feeling than the images, the secondary and representative experiences ; but this is not by any means always the case. In any case the advantage is all with the person who pos sesses a wealth of ideas. His primary experiences will not be the fewer on account of his intellectual culture; and the higher organization of the mind which is developed in the building up of an extensive system of ideas implies the in creasing activity of those inhibitive processes which are the condition of more intense feeling-tones in these experiences. In addition, the numerous mental images at the disposal of his memory and imagination afford the opportunity for a correspondingly large number of emotional experiences, which may be of moderate or strong intensity according to conditions. The practical value of this resource for the en richment of the life of feeling is incalculable. We have but to recall John Bunyan in the Bedford jail to realize how, even with a comparatively limited range of ideas, a vivid and constructive imagination could convert a filthy dungeon life into a pilgrim s march to glory. The invalid shut up within four walls with no out-look upon the world save that af forded by the window-casement, may yet by means of abundant knowledge live a life of infinitely more varied emotional interest than the most busy participant in the world s activity, if the latter s mind is an ignorant waste, barren of ideas. It is, perhaps, the saddest of the many sad penalties of ignorance that it restricts so narrowly the range of emotional stimuli and thus limits so disastrously the interest of life. Life becomes, comparatively speaking, a Sahara of meaningless routine, with only here and there a bubbling spring of feeling in the midst of a narrow oasis of palms. A great thinker picks up a pebble on the beach, and as he examines it trains of ideas are started which lead him to exclaim in a transport of holy joy, " O God, I think thy thoughts after thee ! " The ignoramus treads that peb ble under his feet without a remote suggestion of an emo-
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