The effort of the imagination of each person must be directed not so much to getting a correct mental picture of what the words employed describe, as to getting a correct picture of what the person using the words desires them to describe.

Any person who has had experience in discussions of this character knows what an effort this is, even if he is talking with persons whom he has known for years, and with whose mental and lingual characteristics he is well acquainted: and he also knows how much more difficult it is when he is talking with persons whom he knows but slightly.
It may here be pointed out how greatly the imaginations of men differ, and how little account is taken of this difference in every-day life.

In poetry and fiction imagination is recognized; and it is also recognized to some extent in painting, inventing, and, in general, in "the arts." But in ordinary life, the difference among men in imagination is almost never noticed.

Yet a French proverb is "point d'imagination, point de grand general"; and Napoleon indicated a danger from untrained imagination in his celebrated warning to his generals not to make "pictures" to themselves of difficulties and disasters.
The difference in imagination among men is shown clearly by the difference--and often the differences--between inventors and engineers, and the scarcity of men who are both inventors and engineers.

Ericsson repudiated the suggestion that he was an inventor, and stoutly and always declared he was an engineer.