meant when he characterized genius as "the transcendent capacity for
taking trouble" This is what Hogarth meant when he said, "Genius is
nothing but labor and diligence." For concrete exemplification of this
truth we need only turn to the autobiographies of great writers. In
this passage from "John Barleycorn," Jack London describes his methods:

"Early and late I was at it--writing, typing, studying grammar,
studying writing and all forms of writing, and studying the writers who
succeeded in order to find out how they succeeded. I managed on five
hours' sleep in the twenty-four, and came pretty close to working the
nineteen waking hours left to me."

By saying that the novel effects of imagination come by way of
industry, we do not mean to imply that one should strain after novelty
and eccentricity. Unusual and happy combinations will come of
themselves and naturally if one only makes a sufficient number.

There are laws of combination, known as the psychological laws of
association, by which images will unite naturally. The number of
possible combinations is infinite. By industriously making a large
number, you will by the very laws of chance, stumble upon some that are
especially happy and striking.

In summarizing this discussion, we may conclude that an active fertile
imagination comes from crowding into one's life a large number of
varied and vivid experiences; storing them up in the mind in the form
of images; and industriously recalling and combining them in novel
relationships. Mental images occur in other mental processes besides
Imagination. They bulk importantly in memorizing, as we shall see in
Chapters VI and VII; and in reasoning, as we shall see in Chapter IX.