Imagination · “Feel It Real”
Willed Imagination Building
Build mental images and imagined sensations vividly under deliberate will — then use that power to forecast the motives and consequences of decisions.
In a quiet room, build images vividly under will: one rose’s scent, then a hill of roses; a remembered landscape “as real as life”; a never-seen creature; a machine taken apart and reassembled in the mind. Then aim it at judgment: replay a past mistake to see the motives and consequences you missed; for a real decision, imagine each course through to its outcomes, write every pro and con, weigh them as lawyer-and-judge. Never drift into reverie — “this is downright work.”
What it is
The closing chapter of Power of Will, and the one most unlike the popular New Thought of his day. Haddock does not teach imagining wealth into existence. He teaches imagination as a disciplined faculty of judgment: “willing involves motives and consequences, and the mind requires ability to see motives and consequences clearly, vividly, and in proper relation.” So the drills run two stages — first build imagined sensations and scenes as vivid as life under deliberate will; then turn that trained vividness onto real decisions, “forepicturing of consequences” before you act.
His warning against drifting is constant (“Do not fall into reverie. This is downright work”), and his prize is the deliberating mind: “Many Wills are like guns set with hair-triggers — they go off before good aim can be taken.”
The Method
- Imagined sensations, then magnified (Ex. 1). “Recall a single rose, and imagine its fragrance. Now place yourself in mind before a hill of roses, and imagine the air to be heavy with their fragrance.” Repeat with a drop, then a lake, of musk; with one song-bird, then a forest full. “Make the imagination as strong and distinct as possible. Repeat until the imaginary sensations become as vivid as in life.”
- Analyze then reconstruct a real soundscape (Ex. 2). By a stream or waterfall, attend to the one combined sound, then break it into component notes; magnify each in turn; then in a quiet place “recall, first the general harmony, and then its individual sounds.”
- Rebuild a remembered landscape (Ex. 3). “Recall to memory some distant and real landscape. The difficulty will consist in bringing up the details, but these must be supplied. By a supreme effort make the mental picture as real as life,” reinstating the original mood, until you “can summon a vivid picture of real scenery with the greatest ease.”
- Construct the never-seen (Ex. 5-7). “Construct imaginary pictures, such as you have never seen — of a bird, grotesque and unreal; of a building, magnificent yet mysterious.” Give a horse wings; take a standard author’s vivid sentence (“a root-fence stretched up its bleaching antlers”) and “will into the mind the complete picture suggested.”
- Take a machine apart in your head (Ex. 8-9). Study a simple machine, then “close your eyes and summons it before the mind. mentally take it to pieces. Then mentally put the parts together,” and imagine improvements — training “constructive imagination.”
- Replay a real mistake to learn deliberation (Ex. 10). “Recall one of your great mistakes. review carefully, intensely, the various motives which appealed to you at that time. Then review all the consequences of your then choice. In what respect. ought you to have proceeded differently?” Do this for every remembered mistake — to install the habit of weighing motives and consequences in advance.
- The full decision rehearsal (Ex. 16). For a momentous, real decision (his worked example: whether to move house and business), imagine yourself “entering upon one course of procedure, passing through possible consequent experiences and reaping ultimate outcomes.” Write every objection and every advantage; play “lawyer and judge”; weigh the wholes; strike out reasons that cancel; if the balances disagree, “set the matter aside for future consideration.” Conduct these “in a quiet room,” bringing “the Will to bear with great power,” always “strongly conscious of the willing sense.”
Source & Lineage
Power of Will (1907), Chapter XXII “Exercises in Imagination,” the final chapter of Part III. Haddock frames imagination ethically and practically — quoting Upham, James (“a great part of every deliberation consists in the turning over of all the possible modes”), and Lowell — and ends on “Where the Will is healthy the vision must be correct.” Frank Channing Haddock (1853-1915). → (haddock frank channing).
Common refinements
Reverie. His single most repeated caution: this is willed construction, not daydreaming. Drifting voids it.
- Vague half-images. Push for detail “as vivid as in life”; supply missing detail deliberately.
- Dwelling on imaginary ills. From his practice-principles: “Rigidly exclude. all imaginary ills.” Don’t let the mistake-replay become rumination — extract the lesson, then stop.
- Using it to picture outcomes without weighing both sides. Ex. 16 demands every objection and advantage; one-sided imagining is the failure he’s correcting.