INTRODUCTION. WHAT is the imagination? Is it of any use? Can it be trained? Is it not a merely ornamental appendage to human nature, impractical and untruthful? Unfortunately, such questions are common, and indicate widespread misconception of the faculty. The relation of education to imagination has hitherto received slight attention at the hands of educators in general. The development of the imagination has been given little or no place in the courses of study in our schools, nor has it been regarded as worthy of any distinctive attention in college training. "In the curriculums of most of our higher institutions of learning in America and England," says Professor Charles Eliot Norton, no place is given to that instruction which has for its end the cultivation of the imagination and the sentiments, through the refining of the perceptions and the quickening of the love of beauty." Education, say some of our legislators, must give a man the means of making a living; our public schools must train up practical citizens; boys and girls must be educated in the practical arts of life; the ornamental has no place in the school-room. " Such views of education utterly fail to grasp the nature of the imagination and its relation to daily life. They overlook the need of securing the right action of all the faculties, and do not perceive that the harmonious development of the whole man is necessary to the adequate performance of the simplest and most practical business of life. Work without imagination is drudgery, but with it the humblest employment is lifted into the realm of beauty and art. Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well. The imagination is the source of all inspiration and interest in life; its activity creates beauty in the commonest objects of handicraft, and gives charm to the humblest home. But why should the imagination be trained? Because its perversion or abnormal action is one of the leading causes of the degradation of character, while its right use is one of the highest characteristics of the normal human being. It should be developed because it is the chief creative faculty. It is this which gives man taste and refinement; which raises him out of a narrow prison into communion with the universe; which lifts him from a. groove into relation with all things and all men; which develops the comprehension of universal principles; which prevents man from regarding Nature as a mere mechanical product, and enables him to feel it as a process, and consciously to follow that process in his own art. Imagination should be developed because all true appreciation of art and literature is dependent upon its exercise. Man can appreciate art only by the same faculty which creates it. That which is awake in the artist in the act of production must be awakened in the beholder, or there can be no genuine realization. In short, imagination not only creates all art, but it appreciates art. Without its presence there can be no genuine love of art; without it, the language of art is unintelligible, its voice unheard, its spirit unfelt. Imagination makes the individual a citizen of the world, an heir to all the ages; it enables him to appreciate not only the art of his own age and his own country, but that of all other lands and times. By its power he can become a Greek, and see as the Greeks saw, and feel as the Greeks felt. Imagination lies at the foundation of all altruistic instinct, whether of art or ethics. Unless it is developed, there can be Hittle improvement in the ideals of a man or a nation. No man has ever become great without an ideal, and the faculty which gives birth to ideals is imagination. This is the prophetic faculty of the soul, which gives hope, and which enables us to see a new and better world in the midst of the old, a new life in the midst of death, a new character in the midst of degradation. No man can ever rise higher than his ideal; but without an ideal, no man can ever rise at all. No age, no nation, no individual, can ever be elevated except by elevating its ideals. Imagination is the faculty which enables us to enter into sympathy with our fellow-men. By its power alone can we appreciate the point of view of those different from ourselves. Without imagination, each of us would be alone; each of us would be cold and selfish. Imagination gives us the power to penetrate to the heart of Nature; it is the faculty which sees beauty and loveliness; which discovers grace in the motion of the storm; that leans her ear in many a secret place," until "beauty born of murmuring sound shall pass into her face." Imagination is the faculty which enables man to realize eternity. The ordinary conceptions of the mind cannot embrace infinity, or God. Imagination alone enables man to transcend the fetters of time and space, to see the eternal through the temporal, the spiritual beneath the physical, the soul underlying all. It is imagination which penetrates through all seeming, through the wild whirlwind and storm which are part of every life and every human soul, to "the central peace existing at the heart of endless agitation." The imagination should be trained because the whole man should be trained, because it is the fountain-head of all noble feeling, and upon its discipline depends any true education of the emotions. Dramatic instinct has received even less recognition than imagination. All men more or less admire imagination, though they may not think of it as an object of education; but few persons regard dramatic power as a characteristic of a strong and noble human being. It is frequently considered an unnatural, if not an abnormal power. Nor do many consider it capable of education, but due to some accident of temperament peculiar to a few; while even those who regard its education as possible, look upon its development as on the same plane as the practice of sleight-of-hand. There are some exceptions, however, to this superficial view. A prominent judge, at a dinner of the alumni of his college, is reported to have said that if he were a rich man he would endow |