a definite purpose, which is never lost sight of until the image is complete. A child starts to build a house out of blocks. These are often changed and taken down many times, before the form in which they are built is such as to fix the growing, purposive image in the child’s mind. Before an architect builds a house, he must form successive images, which he alters whenever they conflict with the general plan of that special dwelling. An inventor often spends years in changing and recombining the images of parts of his machine, but he is all the while dominated by a Definite Purpose. The images must be altered until matter poured into their mold fulfills the aim of the inventor.”
We would here, however, caution you against harboring the idea that the Definite Purpose is a crystallized, fixed, unchangeable archetype which the inventor strives to represent as best he can in material, objective form. Rather, the Definite Purpose is an evolving, developing Idea, moving forward as do all living forms. It advances and, usually, gradually takes on new and better forms and details; also, it frequently discards as inefficient or impracticable some of the forms or details which it had accepted at the start.
As a writer has said: “The Creative Ideal arises in the inventor and proceeds through him. Its life is a ‘becoming’ process, and not an unchangeable fixed form. Its ‘fixed’ character consists of its Continuity and Definite Purpose. * * * If we liken creative imagination to physiological generation, this Creative Ideal is the ovum awaiting fertilization in order to begin its development. * * * The Creative Ideal is a creative image tending to become real.”
Before you may expect successfully to accomplish creative mental work, you must know, at least in a general way, just what you wish to create. You must select at least the general goal toward which you desire to journey. You must not be content to sing, in the words of the familiar ballad, “I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on the way.” You must sketch at least the general map of the country over which you wish to travel, and to indicate with at least a fair degree of definiteness the place at which you hope to arrive at your journey’s end.
We do not hold that you must necessarily work out a detailed map of that country—the details you may fill in as you proceed. Neither do we hold that you should necessarily make a mark at some particular part of the map to indicate the place at which you expect to settle down—you will be better able to do this when you arrive at that general part of the country toward which you are journeying. We do insist, however, that you should know the general direction in which you are headed. The early settlers of America knew that they were “Going West,” and most of them had a very fair idea as to just what particular section of the Far West most attracted their interest and held their attention. The matter of the precise, exact location of the place at which they expected to “take up land” was usually left to be determined when they arrived on the general scene, and had a chance to “look over” the places still open to them for settlement. This is about as much as we can ask for from you in the matter now under consideration.
All true exercise of the Constructive Imagination is inspired by a want, a lack, an obstacle, a problem, or a “thwarted purpose”—the latter being stated by an eminent psychologist to be “the occasion for all reasoning.” If your every want were satisfied; if you suffered no lack; if there were no problem requiring solution, no obstacles to be overcome, no “thwarted purposes” present in your experience; then you would never be called upon to exercise your powers of Constructive Imagination. Your want, your lack, your unsatisfied desire, your “thwarted purpose”; these call into activity the creative powers of your mind.
It may not be always quite dear to you what constitutes the prime factors of your want, desire, lack, problem, or “thwarted purpose”; you may find it necessary to “boil down” the thing, evaporating the excess fluid in which this essence is dissolved. You must get to the real essential elements of the problem—get “down to brass tacks.” Here, as in many other instances and cases, you will find it helpful to “think with your pencil,” i. e., to express in written words the essence of the somewhat hazy general idea which is present in your mind as representing your problem or want. Unless you have practiced this plan, you can have no adequate conception of its value to you in thinking and planning.
In “thinking with your pencil” for the purpose of discovering the prime factors or essential elements of your problem or purpose; you must strive to get down to the bottom of the subject—to reach the centre of the thing. Once having found this, you may work backward and forward in any direction from that focal point. The focal point may be discovered by determined “pencil thought” upon the following two questions, viz.: (1) “What is the obstacle which I wish to overcome; what is the nature of this ‘thwarted purpose’; what is the gist of the difficulty; and (2) What is the first and main factor or element of my purpose in this matter; what is it necessary for me to accomplish; what is the general end to be accomplished; what is ‘the big idea’ which I wish to make real?”
Continue the task of analyzing and dissecting the subject until you finally reduce it to its ultimate elements of Definite Purpose. That Definite Purpose is always there, though usually hidden by a mass of comparatively nonessential ideas. It is your work to clear away this mass of encumbering material of thought, so that you may bring into plain view the precious thing at the centre of the mass. Or, employing another figure, it is “up to you” to carve away the mass of stone which hides the figure of your ideal—that ideal which is crying for release from the encumbering material; just as the sculptor with his chisel releases the hidden form of his ideal creation.
Your Definite Purpose once discovered, it becomes your Definite Ideal—the focal point around which is built the entire structure of your creation. The Definite Ideal is like the grain of sand which exists at the centre of every pearl, and about which the pearly material has gathered. It is “the big idea” around which your Constructive Imagination builds, deposits, and accumulates its wealth of material. Your Definite Ideal represents your desire, need, want, purpose, plan, design—it is the vital germ of the entire future organism—it is the seed from which will spring the downwardpressing roots, and the upwardpressing stalk. Without it there would be no creative growth. In the degree of its strength, definiteness, and clearness of form, so will be the degree of perfection and vigor in that which springs from it.
The importance of discovering and uncovering the Definite Ideal is not confined to its effect upon your conscious mental activities; its effect upon your subconscious faculties and powers of imagination is even greater still. By a clear conception of your Definite Ideal, and by its repeated impression upon your subconscious mentality, the idea becomes firmly, deeply and clearly “set” in the substance of the latter; and, thereafter, the subconscious faculties work steadily toward the end of the successful accomplishment of the purpose and ideal thus impressed upon it. The importance of this is realized only when you stop to think that over eightyfive percent of the activities of the mind are performed below the levels or planes of your ordinary consciousness. The fifteen percent of the work performed by your conscious faculties is confined largely to the task of supplying the subconscious faculties with the proper materials for their work, and to adapting, shaping, testing, and applying the manufactured product of the subconscious workshop.
Once having discovered and uncovered your Definite Ideal, you should strive to make as clear and definite a mental picture of it as possible. Keep the general picture in mind—either directly in consciousness, or else “at the back of your head” so that you will know that it is there even when you are not looking at it. Keep the “big idea” always in mind, consciously, subconsciously, and superconsciously. Get the “fixed idea” and the “fixed feeling” so firmly “set” in your mind that it could not be dug out without breaking up the mind itself. This Definite Ideal—this “big idea”—must be the mental picture, the ideal form which your entire mental being is striving to make real, to materialize, to objectify. Let no other mental picture rob this “big idea” picture of its prominent position. Hang it in your mental picture gallery in such a position that it will catch your mental eye the first thing in the morning, and the last thing at night.
Having
