The training of the imagination

Presented to the

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
LIBRARY

by the

ONTARIO LEGISLATIVE
LIBRARY

1980

THE TRAINING OF
THE IMAGINATION

By the same Autlwr
OUT OF THE SILENCE

LONDON : JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK : JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMVIII

London : Printed by Wm, Clowes and Sons, Ltd

TO

THE MEMORY OF
EDWARD MALET YOUNG

GOT 2 9 1908

o;

PREFACE

JHE following address, was
written twenty-three years
ago, and read to members
of an essay-society con-
sisting exclusively of public school
masters. Shortly afterwards it
appeared in the columns of The
Journal of Education, to whose
Editor I am indebted for leave to
publish it in its present form. I do
so with some misgivings, at the
urgent solicitation of a few friends,
from whom perhaps modesty ought
to have saved me. It seems such a
tiny rush-light to contribute to the

PREFACE

vast illumination which is now en-
lightening or dazzling the darkness
of men's minds as to the true theory
of educational aims and methods.

Such as it is, I have made no
attempt to re -model or re- write it,
and must therefore ask indulgence
for certain colloquialisms and levities
of style, which render it, I fear, more
suitable to an audience of private
individuals, than to that larger and
more exacting public, to which it
has now the audacity to appeal.

HASLEMERE,

Jan. 19, 1908.

THE TRAINING OF
THE IMAGINATION

HEN first I was requested
to read a paper before
this august assembly, my
heart, I confess, so failed
me, that nothing seemed less attain-
able than the possession of sufficient
courage for the task. "And yet,"
said I to myself, "can it really be
that, after so many years' experience,
you have positively nothing to say
upon the art which you profess?"
For many days echo answered
" Nothing," and I wandered about
forlorn and miserable, and " tremb-
ling like a guilty thing surprised."
I tried indeed to console myself
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with the reflection that it is not
necessary to practical success that
one should have a theory to ad-
vance, or feel strongly about other
people's theories; that, after all, it
may be better to belong to the
great company of dumb workers,
better to dig in the gold mines of
silence than the silver mines of
speech ; that there was nothing to
blush for, if I had always proceeded
upon instinct, and, without pre-
conceived ideas, had trusted in
emergencies to draw my inspiration
from the " hour and the " boy. But
the straws of comfort which I thus
gleaned, ended, I felt, but in mil
dewed ears, from which could be
obtained no solid sustenance. My
despair deepened : I turned to Brad-
shaw, either with a view to flight,
or in the hope that he might guide
me to a parliamentary train — of
10

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thought ; but all was useless : " there
is nothing for it," I moaned, " but
to throw off the mask, to confess
that all these years you have been
an impostor, concealing your ignor-
ance, with more or less success,
from the British parent and confiding
chiefs ; better, far better, not to go
down into the vale of years with a
lie upon your lips, but having no-
thing to say upon the subject of
Education, to come forward like a
man and say it." With thus much
then, by way of introduction, I
proceed to say my " nothing " upon
the importance of training the
Imagination, satisfied that the sub-
ject itself is a great and pressing
one, and that, though the best
service one can render may be to
make original remarks and throw
new light upon obscure problems,
the next best is to clear the ground
ii

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for others, and earn their heartfelt
gratitudes by forestalling all the
platitudes. %

First, however, let me premise
that if in the present paper I shall
seem to ignore all the advantages
that are resulting from the increase
of the materials of knowledge on
the one hand, and the organization
of the means of acquiring it on the
other, and if I seem to pose in
some degree as a sceptic, or con-
servative, it is not that I am blind
to "the blessed light of Science,"
although'! may have ceased tobelieve
that it brings the millennium in its
train, but because I have a latent
fear, that where the gain is so enor-
mous in one direction, there must be
a corresponding loss in another,
that the very completeness of our
success may involve our failure,
that we may be so absorbed in
12

THE IMAGINATION

perfecting the means and instru-
ments of Education as to mistake
them for the end.

What, then, is the somewhat re-
actionary attitude which I venture
to assume? It is this, that there
is a possible bad side, a very real
peril, in all this increase of learning,
multiplication of subjects, systematiz-
ation of methods, cataclysm of
school-books — all the machinery
which has been brought into play
to aid us in our wild desire to know,
and to reduce the art of teaching to
an exact science. I hope you will
agree with me that the object of
education is not to know, but to
live. True it is that Browning's
" Grammarian " is held up for ad-
miration, because he "determined
not to live, but know:" but then
he existed in the dawn of the revival
of learning, and was an exceptional

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case, an intellectual pioneer ; ac-
cordingly, if you remember, he suf-
fered from baldness, tussis, calculus,
and died, first from the waist down,
and then altogether, at a compara-
tively early period of his career.
My contention then is that we are
in danger of trusting too much to
books and systems, too little to the
living influence of mind on mind;
too much to rapidity of learning,
too little to development of power ;
that we are in danger of organizing
the soul out of education, of making
it mechanical and therefore barren ;
of a tendency to look to the accumu-
lation of facts as an adequate result,
though they may lie like lead in the
brain that bears them; in a word,
of confounding the mere capacity
for housing mental goods with the
growth of the vital powers conferred
by education.

THE IMAGINATION

What is the meaning of all this
feverish desire to know ? What do
we gain by it ourselves that we should
so labour to roll the mighty snow-
ball on, a still increasing burden
to every generation ? Is it a mor-
bid appetite of the brain, destined
to grow with that which feeds it, till
it leaves us a race of monsters at
last, with bulbous heads and puny
frames ? If so, why all this haste
to inoculate our children with the
deadly lymph ? Or is it a veritable
boon ? — a thing which makes us
happier in its possession, or better ?
Not all the wise, at any rate, have
thought so. "He that increaseth
knowledge increaseth sorrow," said
a paragon of ancient learning. " Ah !
years may come, and years may
bring the truth that is not bliss,"
said Clough. " Knowledge comes,
but wisdom lingers," says Tennyson.
15

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" Nothing else will give you any
comfort, when you come to lie here,"
said the dying Scott, but he was not
referring to his intellectual store.
It does not, however, require the
authority of such opinions as these
to persuade us that knowledge may
bring sorrow, that she is not synony-
mous with bliss, that she is quite
a distinct personage from Wisdom,
and that she is of no service to us
on our dying-bed. When we meet
a learned man, it does not neces-
sarily occur to us to wish to be like
him, or to have him as our com-
panion upon a walking-tour : it does
not follow that he is also an admir-
able, or even a truly educated, man.
Learning, therefore, cannot be the
" summum bonum " of life : I doubt
if it be a " bonum " at all, except
when regarded as a means to a
" melius." Knowledge, indeed, or
16

THE IMAGINATION

rather the material of knowledge,
I conceive to be simply mental food
— that which, taken in moderation
and duly digested, enables the mind
to live and think and grow in its
own proper sphere, of which more
anon. To make knowledge an end
in itself, to live for it, is surely as
blind an act of folly as to live for
eating ; excess in the one case being
followed by the same results as in
the other. " Inconveniences," says
Sir Thomas Elyot, "always doe
happen by ingurgitation and ex-
cessive feedinges," and this is no
less true of the mind than of the
body. I do not know that a well-
informed man, as such, is more
worthy of regard than a well-fed
man. The brain, indeed, is a
nobler organ than the stomach, but
on that very account is the less to
be excused for indulging in reple-

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tion. The temptation, I confess, is
greater, because in the former case
the banquet stands ever spread
before our eyes, and is, unhappily,
as indestructible as the widow's
meal and oil. Only think what
would become of us if the physical
food, by which our bodies subsist,
instead of being consumed by the
eater, were passed on intact by
every generation to the next, with
the superadded hoards of all the
ages, the earth's productive power
meanwhile increasing year by year,
beneath the unflagging hand of
Science, till, as Comus says, " She
should be quite surcharged by her
own weight, and strangled with her
waste fertility " ! Should we then
attempt to eat it up, or even store
it ? Should we not rather pull down
our barns, and build smaller, and
make bonfires of what they would
18

THE IMAGINATION

not hold ? And yet, with regard to
knowledge, the very opposite of this
is what we do. We store the whole
religiously, and that, though not
twice alorie, as with the bees in
Virgil, but scores of times in every
year, is the teeming produce gathered
in. And then we put a fearful pres-
sure on ourselves and others to gorge
of it as much as ever we can hold.

I believe, if the truth were known,
men would be astonished at the
small amount of learning with which
a high degree of culture is compat-
ible. In a moment of enthusiasm I
ventured once to tell my English
set that if they could really master
the Ninth book of Paradise Lost, so
as to rise to the height of its great
argument, and incorporate all its
beauties in themselves, they would
at one blow, by virtue of that alone
become highly cultivated men ; and
19

THE TRAINING OF

surely so they would : more, and
more various learning might raise
them to the same height by different
paths, but could hardly raise them
higher. (A parent afterwards told
me that his son went home, and so
buried himself in the book that food
and sleep that day had no attractions
for him. Next morning, I need
hardly say, the difference in his
appearance was remarkable : he had
outgrown all his intellectual clothes.)
Yes, I am more and more con-
vinced, it is not quantity so much
that tells, as quality and thoroughness
of digestion. Now digestion, to be
thorough, must have time, and, to be
worth much, must get done by natural
means ; and therefore I doubt
whether our annotated school-texts^
though excellent in themselves, are
altogether wholesome, where every
mouthful almost of learning is as-
20

THE IMAGINATION

sisted by its own peculiar little pep-
sine pill of comment. This im-
proved system of aids may indeed
be necessary to meet the increased
pressure of requirement from with-
out ; still, it does not follow that we
are gainers on the whole. But to
return to the question of amount.
To myself personally, as an excep-
tion to the rule that opposites at-
tract, a very well-informed person
is an object of terror. His mind
seems to be so full of facts that you
cannot, as it were, see the wood for
the trees ; there is no room for per-
spective, no lawns and glades for
pleasure and repose, no vistas
through which to view some tower-
ing hill or elevated temple; every-
thing in that crowded space seems
of the same value ; he speaks with
no more awe of King Lear than of
the last Cobden prize essay ; he has
21

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swallowed them both with the same
ease, and got the facts safe into his
pouch; but he has no time to
ruminate, because he must still be
swallowing ; nor does he seem to
know what even Macbeth, with
Banquo's murderers then at work,
found leisure to remember, that
good digestion must wait on appe-
tite, if health is to follow both.

Shakspear himself, it seems, — I
quote from a recent review in the
Spectator, — " despite all that the
commentators, doctors, ornitholo-
gists, entomologists, botanists, and
other specialists find, or pretend to
find, in his Work, was anything but
a man of learning. He knew ' small
Latin and less Greek,' and had but
a smattering of French. Even of
English literature, other than what
was contemporary, he was no pro-
found student, though he seems to

22

THE IMAGINATION

lave read with some attention both
Chaucer and the older chroniclers

. But his mind assimilated the
rery marrow of the books he read.''

w, if a mind like Shakspear's
can be built up on such a slender
>asis, it follows that quantity in
earning is not a matter of the first
mportance. I speak under correc-
tion, but I suppose that Newton,
with the stock of learning which he
carried " into the silent land," could
not now-a-days win the senior
wranglership. And yet are any of
our senior wranglers his equals hither-
to? It was something other than
lis learning, then, that made Newton
Newton. You may say that, both in
lis case and in Shakspear's, it was
genius, and that this is incommuni-
cable. It may be so ; and yet can
we get much nearer to a definition
of genius than by naming it the
23

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power of assimilating in remarkable
degree all the influences which
radiate from the universe and man
— the power of so sympathising and
identifying itself with all outside it,
that the mind becomes surcharged
at last, and needs must out with its
burden and disclose its secret,
whether in song, or by the revela-
tions of science, or on canvass, or
with the sculptor's tool ?

Of course, in such supreme degree,
this power can be but for a few ; but
I maintain that intellects of ordinary
strength can be raised by education,
not indeed to create, as does the
artist, but through his creations to
reach and to enjoy the same exalted
pleasure, and absorb it into their
systems; that, till such absorption
begins, there is no true education;
that at this stage, and not before,
the mind begins to live and move
24

THE IMAGINATION

and have its being. Here then first
opens before the student's eyes what
I mean by the world of imagination,
[f any one is still awake, I will try
to describe it further.

Were I asked to sum up in a few
words, my ideal of education, I should
define it as the art of revealing to
the young or ignorant the existence
of an atmosphere above them and
about them of which they do not, or
but dimly, dream ; of teaching them
to desire and aspire to it ; of un-
locking for them one or more of all
its myriad gates — a world of thought
and law, of marvels and of mysteries,
of moral beauty and ideal truth,
beginning haply where they had
hoped all need of effort ended; a
glorious region, out of which conceit
or sloth may keep them, but which
besets them always and on every
side, and yet soars far above the
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foggy belt of highest man's attain-
ment. To give them the upward
glance, the initiated eye ; to let in
" the light that never was on sea
or land " ; to show that " heaven
lies about us," not only "in our
infancy"; to help dispel those
" shades of the prison-house " which
never ought to " close about the
growing boy," — if to do this for one
benighted mind thou hast been able,
" thou art among the best of the "
pedagogues ; if for many and many,
" thou art the non-pareil."

I care not what the subject we
may teach : Of all I ever heard of,
there is none that does not open
upwards to this paradise. For the
lover of science what a moment
must it be when he first feels the
beggarly elements are mastered, that
henceforth he is not merely soiling
hands and clothes with acids and
26

THE IMAGINATION

with fossils, but projecting himself
in spirit into the unknown past and
reading the secrets of the eternal
Master-builder ; that here is a realm
of inexhaustible delights, through
which his mind may roam at
pleasure, winged and free !

To the lover of mathematics what
scent and taste of ocean when he,
too, dares to push from shore into
those " strange seas of thought "
where Newton voyaged " alone " !
He need not make discovery of
continent or island, like the great
ones that have gone before; but
wafted with a breath of the same
spirit, in their track he sails : his
bark is nobly rigged; and, though
the light breeze may not bear him
far from land, he can lie at anchor
where he will, assured that, whether
cutting through the billows or be-
calmed upon their surface, he, at
27

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any rate, is rocked upon the bosom
of eternal truth. Not even to the
poet, I am told, is imagination a
more present help than to the
mathematician (and I can well
believe it, for my own knowledge of
mathematics exists almost entirely
in imagination), nor is there any
subject, I suppose, in which a boy,
who has been furnished by nature
with the requisite canoe, can sooner
or with more delight paddle out into
the great unknown.

For the lover of music, again,
what a door is opened, when his
enjoyment first ceases to be little
more than a mere sensual pleasure,
a soft shampooing of the soul, and
he gets a glimpse into the mysteries
of sound, and feels his whole being
swayed and thrilled by those mighty
laws that seem to lie at the founda-
tion of the universe, and to pervade
28

THE IMAGINATION

it ; whose operation reaches from the
whirring of an insect's wings to the
rolling of the thunder, and from lower
still to higher still, beyond the ear of
man, from the gurgling of the sap
within the tree to the rhythmic order
and orbits of the stars ! Yes, —

" Painter and poet are proud on the
artist- list enrolled :

" But here is the finger of God, a flash

of the will that can,
Existent behind all laws, that made

them, and lo they are !
And I know not if, save in this, such

gift be allowed to man,
That out of three sounds he frame,
not a fourth sound, but a star.

" Consider it well ; each tone of our

scale in itself is nought ;
It is everywhere in the world — loud,

soft, and all is said ;
Give it to me to use ! I mix it with

two in my thought,
And there ! Ye have heard and seen :
consider, and bow the head ! "
29

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When, I say, this door is first opened,
the wonder of the vision overpowers
him, and he knows himself a pigmy,
and burns his comic songs and
begins to read Mendelssohn's letters,
and thinks no more of the pattern
of his trousers.

And then, again, to the lover of
history what a field is there to roai
in and hold living converse, like

Landor, with the dead ! But,

lest your patience fail, I will imagine
myself interrupted by an objection :
" Yes," you may say, " all very fine.
To the lover of this and the lover of
that the revelation may come easily ;
but how to make lovers of those
who are not?" That is the ques-
tion ; and, if I could have answered
it satisfactorily, I should not have
kept you so long in doubt as to the
discovery.

But first, with regard to literature,
30

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what is the nature of the ideal realm
to which, through its medium, the
mind may rise ? It seems to me
that, the use of language being to
convey thoughts and emotions, the
chief end of learning any language is
to gain admission to those treasures,
and that this, therefore, should be
the main educational aim with regard
to language. Words are symbols,
just as coins are; and, when we
speak of words as coined and
current, we imply that in them-
selves they are mere counters, re-
presenting, but not constituting,
some form of real wealth and power.
I do not say, of course, that words
have no further value — they have —
but this is secondary, and curious,
perhaps, rather than elevating or
inspiring. They may be treated,
as coins are by the coin-collector,
as objects of historical and anti-
Si

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quarian interest ; but this is purely
an incidental and accessory, not an
inherent and essential use. To
treat them as if it were otherwise,
seems as little reasonable as to
amass money chiefly for the purpose
of numismatic research. To utilise
cash, indeed, we must know the
value of each piece ; but we need
not be acquainted with the date,
the reign, the mint where it was
struck, the depreciation caused by
man's clipping or the wear and tear
of time. Not that the comparison
is absolutely just. Words are of in-
finitely greater variety than coins, and
of infinitely deeper interest, being in
themselves, as it were, fossil frag-
ments of the human life of ages, and
yet having laws of development and
growth, which raise them almost to
the level of living things. Still, I
say, that the beauty of the laws of
32

THE IMAGINATION

language is a lower thing than
literary beauty, which depends partly
on the thought to be expressed and
partly on the fitness of the words
which express it ; just as beauty of
physical frame and feature is a lower
thing than that subtle combination
of physical with spiritual which we
term " expression of countenance."
A higher thing than the beauty
either of words, or of thought
clothed in words, is the pure thought
itself, which is thus conveyed to us
through the senses, just as what
we call soul or spirit is a higher
thing than either physical beauty or
beauty of expression. But, as
through the expression of a man's
countenance we can often read his
thoughts and feelings, and even his
character too, in proportion as it
has power to imprint itself on the
face, so through the medium of
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literary expression can we arrive at
the writer's thought and feeling, in
proportion as they have power to
stamp their likeness on the language
that he uses. In literature, there-
fore, the region that lies open to
the initiated rises heaven over
heaven. There is the lowest of the
three, that which deals with language
pure and simple, and is mainly of
historical and antiquarian interest ;
there is the second, the heaven of
incarnate thought, as it were —
thought clothed in language ; and,
thirdly, there is the heaven of dis-
embodied thought, to which from
the last is but a moment's flight,
and from which we must descend as
often as we would communicate it
to our fellows.

What, then, is the point in all
these studies where routine ends
and imagination begins? — Exactly
34

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where interest, where pleasure
begins : where the mind, instead of
being led blindly in a groove, begins
to act upon its own account, like a
living thing, and, having taken and
assimilated food, anon desires more,
and roams abroad to find it, and
makes that glorious region her
home. To grow by any study, we
must admire, be touched, perceive
the latent charm, not merely be able
to dissect and reconstruct the outer
framework. The works of nature or
of man must awaken in us emotions
corresponding to the divine or human
feeling or purpose that inspired them.
Then, and not till then, the mind
begins to feel her wings, and tries
her first flight into the ideal world —

" What poets feel not, when they make,

A pleasure in creating,
The world in its turn will not take
Pleasure in contemplating."

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And equally true it is that, till the
world feels that pleasure, it cannot
rise to the empyreal region from
which the poet sang.

Now, to take a passage from
Horace referring to M. Atilius
Regulus :

"(Atqui) And yet (sciebat) he
was all the time aware (quae) what
things (barbarus tortor) the foreign
executioner (pararet) was preparing
(sibi) for his entertainment," and so
on, — may be a very creditable trans-
lation for a member of the Lower
Fifth; and, when you have further
discovered that he knows why
"pararet" is subjunctive and im-
perfect, and that " sibi " does not
refer to the executioner, a man may
flatter himself that the lesson has
been well learned — and so it has.
But, for all that, the main thing is
yet to do. The learner with rope
36

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and axe, mechanically, has climbed
high enough to get some view of
the outward form; he cannot see
the passionate feeling of mingled
pity and admiration which inspired,
moulded, lies behind, that form ; his
imagination is not touched ; he little
dreams that a man might have much
ado to keep his voice steady while
reading the concluding stanzas of
that ode aloud; he has not the
faintest notion that they are electric
and alive for ever by virtue of their
inherent and undying charm. Little
by little then, even from the earliest
stages, to open their eyes to these
wonders ought, surely, to be our
aim, more gradually of course in
teaching a dead language, most
rapidly in teaching English ; to re-
veal the splendours of the realm of
genius, till at last the marvel of it
strikes them, and they feel " like
37

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some watcher of the skies when a
new planet swims into his ken," am
are amazed at the magic touc
which can take a handful of common
words, such as " blow," " winter,
"wind," "unkind," "ingratitude,
and, with a sprinkling of conjunc
tions, prepositions, and pronouns
transform them into a thing of per
feet beauty and immortal breath
Is this the wealth we desire to hav
for ourselves and our children — th
wealth, for instance, of the soul o
Shakspear, or the possession am
intimate knowledge of the coins tha
express, and the caskets that contain
it? Which is best to live by
Which would help us most from
ennui, disappointment, faint-hearted
ness, the spirit of " Blow, blow, thou
winter wind," and of "As you like
it" altogether, with its precious
" implaister of content," or an ac

38

THE IMAGINATION

curate acquaintance with the etymo-
logy of the words, the metrical,
peculiarities, redundant pronouns,
etc. ? I may be mistaken, but I
never can persuade myself that
Shakspear would have passed high
in a Civil Service examination-
paper on one of his own plays ; and
yet, I suppose, it would be our
ambition to produce minds that
should approximate to Shakspear's
mind, rather than to that of Wren's
most successful pupil.

But this approximation is only to
be attained by seeing, admiring,
loving. In his preface to the second
edition of Lyrical Ballads, Words-
worth says : — " We have no know-
ledge— that is, no general principles
drawn from the contemplation of
particular facts — but what has been
built up by pleasure, and exists in
us by pleasure alone " ; and again
39

THE TRAINING OF

taking an extreme instance to
illustrate his point, " However pain-
ful may be the objects, with which
the anatomist's knowledge is con-
nected, he feels that his knowledge
is pleasure ; and when he has no
pleasure, he has no knowledge."

It is clear then that the teacher,
unless he be a blind leader of the
blind, must first possess enthusiasm
for the beautiful himself. If this be
so, and if he do not hide his light
under a bushel, the battle is half
won already. He must lose no
chance of rousing his pupil's sym-
pathy for what is worthy of admira-
tion. It often surprises me to find
how boys are awed by a master's
feeling for what at present is above
their reach. Personally, whenever
in the lesson I can find a peg to
hang a poem on, I always hang it ;
and I have hardly ever felt myself
40

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unrewarded. When stirred himself
by the pathos or the grandeur of some
expression, thought, or deed, that
occurs in the course of teaching
boys, and when the ripple in his
own mind spreads, and sends a
thrill of emotion, or perhaps only of
awakening interest into theirs, it is
then, I think, a master feels that for
a moment he has touched "the
shining table-lands " of his profes-
sion.

Another aid, and one by no means
to be despised, is the possession and
cultivation of a sense of humour.
It would seem to be characteristic
of the same mind to appreciate the
beauty of ideas in just proportion
and harmonious relation to each
other, and the absurdity of the same
ideas when distorted or brought into
incongruous juxtaposition. The
exercise of this sense, no less than

41 G

THE TRAINING OF

of the other, compels the mind to
form a picture for itself, accompanied
by pleasurable emotion; and what
is this but setting the imagination to
work, though in topsy-turvy fashion ?
Nay, in such a case, imagination
plays a double part, since it is only
by instantaneous comparison with
ideal fitness and proportion that it
can grasp in full force the grotesque-
ness of their contraries. It is like a
man who, gazing out of window, sees
passing by some "phantom of
delight," destined indeed to be "a
moment's ornament" — the next, by
a faulty pane of glass caricatured,
and grimacing in unconscious de-
formity.

Yes, there is no other entrance to
the realm of which I speak but
through the folding gates of pleasure
and of wonder. It might almost be
said that, in teaching, the three
42

THE IMAGINATION

main faults to be avoided were : —
ist, dulness; 2nd, dulness; 3rd,
dulness. The things that boys will
forgive their masters well nigh
surpass men's understanding. Be
irascible, impatient, abusive, sar-
castic, exacting, severe; make bad
puns even, and they will forgive you
till 70 times 7, but not, if you be
dull : " out, out, vile spot ! " or all
the perfumes of Arabia will not
sweeten your teaching in the nostrils
of boys. Heavens and earth, what
a world to be dull in ! and what a
place and opportunity to choose,
with a score or so of minds about
you, each as dry and porous as a
sponge, and ready to drink in the
beauty and the wonder, if you could
but show it them ! You may say
such heights are altogether above
them, out of reach of the younger at
any rate ; that it is but teaching them
43

THE TRAINING OF

to fly badly, when they should be
learning to walk well; that they
lack imaginative power. There I
join issue : boys seem to me of
imagination almost compact : look
at their unquestioning faith, look at
the boldness of their sanguine
guesses, outsoaring the highest flight
of man's conjecture, look at their
devotion to the inseparable novel; see
how, during a sermon, the moment
such words as " I remember once "
herald the coming story, all cough-
ing, fidgeting, and shuffling ceases,
back into pocket flies the surrep-
titious watch ! you can almost hear
a pin lie still upon the floor. No,
they have imagination, and to spare ;
what it needs is wakening arid
directing. But this calmot be done
by insisting on the mastery of mei
facts alone. The most conscientiot
drudgery, though it may strengthen
44

THE IMAGINATION

the character, will not refine the
mind. You may set men to dig
through a mountain ; and chip, chip,
chip, into the darkness they will go ;
but they will not go far, unless they
feel that they are working towards
the air and light : you must let down
shafts into the tunnel, and open
heaven to them from above, or they
will sicken soon and drop. So too
must we irradiate the dreary chip,
chip, chip, through fact and com-
mentary with something of the breath
and brightness of the open sky. " It
is increasingly felt," says an ac-
complished scholar in the preface to
a recent translation of Sophocles,
" that a good translation is a com-
mentary of the best kind." This is a
hopeful sign ; for this lets in the soul
at once into the stiffened features of
a dead language, attracts, illumines,
stimulates.

45

THE TRAINING OF

One more practical hint occurs to
me to offer, and then I have almost
done. If so much depends upon
the teacher's quickening and modu-
lating power, it behoves him before
all things to keep his own mind vigor-
ous and in tune. Therefore, I would
say, avoid unwholesome diet both of
body and mind; avoid needless
worry; do not open long blue en-
velopes just before a lesson; 'do not
attempt to enter on an argument with
your wife; above all do not put
yourself at the mercy of your betters
and wisers by reading them papers
on educational subjects. These
things are fatal to that equilibrium
of nerve and temper, on which the
success of a schoolmaster so largely
depends.

Well, we started with the assump-
tion that the end of Education was
not to know, but live. It is only by the
46

THE IMAGINATION

application of ideas to life that man's
existence, even in the lowest sense,
is rendered capable of improvement.
So successful has the idea been in
dealing with material problems, in-
creasing man's outward happiness,
and ensuring his triumph over
nature, that the danger seems now
to be lest he should pause here, and
rest content with this meagre and
barren victory. Barren it is, and
meagre, because, in the stress of
life's extremities, the material does
not stand us in good stead : it turns
out to be illusory, unsatisfying, not
to be relied on. But in the realm
of thought there is "hope that
maketh not ashamed," consolation
ever ready to sustain us, friends that
cannot change or die. Therefore
Matthew Arnold thinks that "the
future of poetry is immense," and
that "in poetry, as time goes on,
47

THE IMAGINATION

our race will find a surer and evea
surer stay." — Yes, for the ideal mord
and more turns out to be the only reau
In religion, in politics, in the dailj
struggle of life, the more we lean on
the material, the more we find it fail
us. There is but one power thJ
seems alike proportioned to our high-
est aspirations and our deepea
needs. What it is, let Wordsworti
answer : —

" Imagination is that sacred power,
Imagination lofty and refined ;
'Tis hers to pluck the amaranthing

flower
Of Faith, and round the sufferer^

temples bind
Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest;

shower,
And do not shrink from sorrow's keeneal

wind."

48

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THOUGHT CULTURE, or THE
ART OF THINKING : An Ad-
dress with Examples. By Mrs.
EGERTON EASTWICK

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OUT OF THE SILENCE. By

JAMES RHOADES

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