登陆注册
5240900000046

第46章 CHAPTER Imagination(4)

Coleridge's distinction does very well to separate, empirically, certain kinds of imaginative concepts from certain others; but it has no real foundation in fact. Nor presumably did he mean it to have. But it serves, not inaptly, as a text to point out an important scientific truth, namely, that there are not two such qualities of the mind, but only one. For otherwise we might have supposed the fact too evident to need mention. Imagination is the single source of the new, the one mainspring of psychical advance; reason, like a balance-wheel, only keeping the action regular.

For reason is but the touchstone of experience, our own, inherited, or acquired from others. It compares what we imagine with what we know, and gives us answer in terms of the here and the now, which we call the actual. But the actual is really nothing but the local.

It does not mark the limits of the possible.

That imagination has been the moving spirit of the psychical world is evident, whatever branch of human thought we are pleased to examine. We are in the habit, in common parlance, of making a distinction between the search after truth and the search after beauty, calling the one science and the other art. Now while we are not slow to impute imagination to art, we are by no means so ready to appreciate its connection with science. Yet contrary, perhaps, to exogeric ideas on the subject, it is science rather than art that demands imagination of her votaries. Not that art may not involve the quality to a high degree, but that a high degree of art is quite compatible with a very small amount of imagination. On the one side we may instance painting. Now painting begins its career in the humble capacity of copyist, a pretty poor copyist at that. At first so slight was its skill that the rudest symbols sufficed.

"This is a man" was conventionally implied by a few scratches bearing a very distant relationship to the real thing. Gradually, owing to human vanity and a growing taste, pictures improved.

Combinations were tried, a bit from one place with a piece from another; a sort of mosaic requiring but a slight amount of imagination. Not that imagination of a higher order has not been called into play, although even now pictures are often happy adaptations rather than creations proper. Some masters have been imaginative; others, unfortunately for themselves and still more for the public, have not. For that the art may attain a high degree of excellence for itself and much distinction for its professors, without calling in the aid of imagination, is evident enough on this side of the globe, without travelling to the other.

Take, on the other hand, a branch of science which, to the average layman, seems peculiarly unimaginative, the science of mathematics.

Yet at the risk of appearing to cast doubts upon the validity of its conclusions, it might be called the most imaginative product of human thought; for it is simply one vast imagination based upon a few so-called axioms, which are nothing more nor less than the results of experience. It is none the less imaginative because its discoveries always accord subsequently with fact, since man was not aware of them beforehand. Nor are its inevitable conclusions inevitable to any save those possessed of the mathematician's prophetic sight. Once discovered, it requires much less imagination to understand them. With the light coming from in front, it is an easy matter to see what lies behind one.

So with other fabrics of human thought, imagination has been spinning and weaving them all. From the most concrete of inventions to the most abstract of conceptions the same force reveals itself upon examination; for there is no gulf between what we call practical and what we consider theoretical. Everything abstract is ultimately of practical use, and even the most immediately utilitarian has an abstract principle at its core. We are too prone to regard the present age of the world as preeminently practical, much as a middle-aged man laments the witching fancies of his boyhood. But, and there is more in the parallel than analogy, if the man be truly imaginative he is none the less so at forty-five than he was at twenty, if his imagination have taken on a more critical form; for this latter half of the nineteenth century is perhaps the most imaginative period the world's history has ever known. While with one hand we are contriving means of transit for our ideas, and even our very voices, compared to which Puck's girdle is anything but talismanic, with the other we are stretching out to grasp the action of mind on mind, pushing our way into the very realm of mind itself.

History tells the same story in detail; for the history of mankind, imperfectly as we know it, discloses the fact that imagination, and not the power of observation nor the kindred capability of perception, has been the cause of soul-evolution.

The savage is but little of an imaginative being. We are tempted, at times, to imagine him more so than he is, for his fanciful folk-lore. The proof of which overestimation is that we find no difficulty in imagining what he does, and even of imagining what he probably imagined, and finding our suppositions verified by discovery. Yet his powers of observation may be marvellously developed. The North American Indian tracks his foe through the forest by signs unrecognizable to a white man, and he reasons most astutely upon them, and still that very man turns out to be a mere child when put before problems a trifle out of his beaten path.

And all because his forefathers had not the power to imagine something beyond what they actually saw. The very essence of the force of imagination lies in its ability to change a man's habitat for him. Without it, man would forever have remained, not a mollusk, to be sure, but an animal simply. A plant cannot change its place, an animal cannot alter its conditions of existence except within very narrow bounds; man is free in the sense nothing else in the world is.

同类推荐
  • 饮膳正要

    饮膳正要

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • He Fell In Love With His Wife

    He Fell In Love With His Wife

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 共城从政录

    共城从政录

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 阿唎多罗陀罗尼阿噜力经

    阿唎多罗陀罗尼阿噜力经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • Utilitarianism

    Utilitarianism

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 穿越诸天万界

    穿越诸天万界

    一花一世界,一叶一菩提,水浒三国,聊斋白蛇,蜀山斗破,遮天,封神洪荒,诸天万界……穿梭诸天万界,我为世界之主!qq群:487,914,153,欢迎大家。(已有二百万完本作品《武侠仙侠世界里的道人》,请放心收藏!)
  • 世纪三部曲(全9册)

    世纪三部曲(全9册)

    全球读者平均3个通宵读完的超级小说。火遍全球的20世纪人类史诗“世纪三部曲”!横扫全球榜单!我亲眼目睹,每一个迈向死亡的生命都在热烈地生长。从充满灰尘和危险的煤矿到闪闪发光的皇室宫殿,从代表着权力的走廊到爱恨纠缠的卧室,来自美国、德国、苏俄、英国和威尔士的五大家族,他们迥然不同又纠葛不断的命运逐渐揭晓,波澜壮阔地展现了一个我们自认为了解,但从未如此真切感受过的20世纪。
  • 安迪密恩的觉醒

    安迪密恩的觉醒

    统治全人类的教皇将号召教会的全部力量,展开以“圣战”为名的血腥屠杀,而伊妮娅,是唯一能与之对抗的人。永生的代价是什么?残存的内核,又有什么样的险恶动机和秘密?移走地球的“神秘人”是谁?这些问题的答案只有伊妮娅知晓。而谜一般的伯劳——是怪兽、天使,还是杀人机器——也将最终显露出它身上悬而未决的两大谜题:它的起源和目的。
  • 囧囧娇妻:燕归君不归

    囧囧娇妻:燕归君不归

    唐小古本来以为,上有大哥罩着,下有个小酒楼靠着,这辈子就可以好吃懒做的小掌柜。可没想到天要下雨哥要娶媳妇,当了十三年的小少爷居然要被未来嫂子当小妞嫁出去——是可忍孰不可忍,想抢我的饭碗,我就抢你的男人!喵喵的诱兄计划,这辈子就是要吃定你!这辈子就是要吃、定、你——
  • 造梦师

    造梦师

    他以做梦为职业,以盗梦为爱好,然后通过这种猥琐的方式做着自诩为神圣的事情。多年以后,当他被众人追捧,他只是淡淡地宣布——请叫我造(dao)梦师!
  • 月亮镇奇遇

    月亮镇奇遇

    亲爱的小读者,课堂上的书本是你学习认识的必备,但课外读物的充实更是不能或缺的。或许,家长与老师的孜孜教诲,是你们成长道路上的奠基石。而丰富多彩的课外读物是点缀花园的美丽花朵。在这本书中,作者用简洁、明快的话语,生动活泼的小插图,讲述了关于小朋友毛丫丫在成长中的一个个小故事。相信本书一定会成为你们课余生活的良伴。
  • 二货茜茜萌宠记

    二货茜茜萌宠记

    二货少女茜茜,穿越古代,误入青楼,好不容易遇见个男神,谁知被人赎身,男神跟别人跑了。代替小姐竞选太子侧妃,谁知道太子就是男神。哦哟!我的天……【情节虚构,请勿模仿】
  • 靠运气不如长志气

    靠运气不如长志气

    纵观古今内外,凡建功立业者,皆非运气使然;凡全凭运气者,皆平庸一生。之所以如此,是因为运气中包含着太多的不稳定因素。运气带有偶然性,会随机降临到任何人的头上,所以偶然幸运一次是有可能的,但不可能次次都幸运。所以,靠运气不如长志气。《靠运气不如长志气》从当立志、立大志、重学问,勤思索、敢行动、借外力、迎苦难、调心态、巧做人九个方面具体讲述了成就事业的方法与技巧,希望能抛砖引玉,给每一个不甘平庸者以启迪和辅助。
  • 佛说十八臂陀罗尼经

    佛说十八臂陀罗尼经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 语言和谐艺术论:广播电视语言传播的品位与导向

    语言和谐艺术论:广播电视语言传播的品位与导向

    播音主持艺术的改革,肇始于1980年年初,从以阶级斗争为纲转变为以经济建设为中心,我国进入了改革开放的历史阶段。广播电视改革,是以新闻改革作为突破口的,播音主持艺术的改革势在必行。