A Man's Value to Society Part 5

"The imagination is the very secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith. The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope."--_Beecher._

"In such natures the imagination seems to spire up like a Gothic cathedral over a prodigiously solid crypt of common sense, so that its lightness stands secure on the consciousness of an immovable basis."--_Lowell._

"Man's reason is overhung by the imagination. It rains rich treasures for fertilizing the barren soul."--_Anon._

"By faith Abraham went forth, not knowing whither he went."--_Hebrews._

VII

THE IMAGINATION AS THE ARCHITECT OF MANHOOD

Measured by whatsoever standard, Moses was the one colossal man of antiquity. It may be doubted whether nature has ever produced a greater mind. When we consider that law, government and education took their rise in his single brain; when we remember that the commonwealths of to-day rest upon foundations reared by this jurist of the desert; when we recall his poetic and literary skill, Moses stands forth clothed with the proportions and grandeur of an all-comprehending genius. His intellect seems the more t.i.tanic by reason of the obstacles and romantic contrasts in his career. He was born in the hut of a slave, but so strikingly did his genius flame forth that he won the approbation of the great, and pa.s.sed swiftly from the slave market to the splendor of Pharaoh's palace.

Fortunately, his youth was not without the refinements and accomplishments of the schools. For then Egypt was the one radiant spot upon earth. At a time when Greece was a den of robbers and Rome was unheard of, Memphis was gloriously attractive. Schools of art and science stood along the banks of the Nile. From Thebes Pythagoras carried mathematics into Greece. From Memphis Solon derived his wise political precepts. In Luxor, architecture and sculpture took their rise. From Cleopatra's kingdom men stole the obelisks now in New York and London. Moses' opportunities were fully equaled by his energy and ambition to excel. Even in his youth he must have been renowned for his administrative genius.

But his moral grandeur exceeded his mentality. When events compelled a choice between the luxury of the court and the love of his own people, he did not hesitate, for he was every inch a hero. In that crisis he forsook the palace, allied himself with his enslaved brethren, and went forth an exile of the desert. Nor could any event be more dramatic than the manner of his return to Pharaoh's palace.

Single-handed, he undertook the emanc.i.p.ation of a nation. Our leaders, through vast armies, achieved the freedom of our slaves; this soldier, single-handed, freed three millions of bondsmen. Other generals, with cannon, have captured castles; this man beat castles down with his naked fists. And when he had achieved freedom for his people he led them into the desert, and taught the crude and servile slaves the principles of law, liberty and government. Under his guidance the mob became an army; the slaves became patriots and citizens; the savages were clothed with customs and inst.i.tutions. His mind became a university for millions. And from that day until now the columns of society have followed the name of Moses, as of old the pilgrims followed the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night.

Greater name history does not hold, save only the Name that is above every name.

Wise men will ask, where were the hidings of this man's power? Whence came his herculean strength? Moses was the father of a race of giants.

He was the representative of brave men in every age, who have laid foundations upon which others have builded; he was the prototype of n.o.ble leaders who have scattered everywhere the seeds of civilization, and left others to reap the harvests; he was the forerunner of innumerable reformers and inventors, to whom it was never given to enter into the fruit of their labors; of soldiers and heroes who perished on the scaffold that others might be emanc.i.p.ated; of men like Huss and Cranmer, whose overthrow and defeat paved the way for others'

victories. Dying, no other man has left behind influences that have wrought so powerfully or so continuously through the centuries. But when we search out the springs of his power we are amazed at his secret. We are told that he endured his tremendous burdens and achieved the impossible through the sight of the invisible. The sense of future victory sustained him in present defeat. Through the right use of the vision faculty he conquered.

Imagination was the telescope by which he saw victory afar off.

Imagination was the tool with which he digged and quarried his foundations. Imagination was the castle and tower under which he found refuge from the storms, attacks and afflictions of life. No wing ever had such power for lifting, no spring ever had such tides for a.s.suaging thirst. He bore with savages, because afar off he saw the slaves clothed with the qualities of patriots. He endured the desert, because imagination revealed a fruitful land flowing with milk and honey. He survived lawlessness, because he foresaw the day of law and liberty. He bore up under weight of cares, discouragements and responsibilities heavy enough to have crushed a score of men, because he foresaw the day of final triumph. Of old, when that legendary hero was in the thick of his fight against his enemies, an invisible friend hovered above the warrior, handing forth spear and sword as they were needed. So for the great jurist imagination reached up even into the heavenly armory and plucked such weapons as the hero needed.

Our intellectual tread will be firmer if we define the imagination and consider its uses. The soul is a city; and the external senses are gateways through which sweep all the caravans of truth and beauty.

Through the eye gate pa.s.s all faces, cities and landscapes. Through the ear gate pa.s.s all sweet sounds. But when the facts of land and sea and sky have reported themselves to the soul, reason sweeps these intellectual harvests into the granary of memory for future sowing.

But these harvests must be arranged. In the Orient the merchant who keeps a general store puts the swords and spears upon one shelf; the tapestries and rugs upon another; the books and ma.n.u.scripts upon a third; and each thing has its own shelf and drawer. So judgment comes in to sort knowledges, and puts things useful into one intellectual shelf, things beautiful upon another shelf, and puts things true apart by themselves.

Afterward when the under-servant, called reason, has acc.u.mulated the materials, when memory has taken care of them, and judgment has cla.s.sified all, then the constructive imagination comes in to create new objects. Working in iron and steel, the imagination of Watt organizes an engine; working midst the colors beautiful, the imagination paints pictures; working upon marble it carves statues; working in wood and stone it rears cathedrals; working in sound it creates symphonies; working with ideas it fashions intellectual systems; working in morals it constructs ethical principles; working toward immortality, it bids all cooling streams, fruitful trees, sweet sounds, all n.o.ble friendships, report themselves beyond the grave. For faith itself is but the imagination allied with confidence that G.o.d is able to realize man's highest ideals. Imagination therefore is a prophet. It is a seer for the soul. It toils as artist and architect and creator. It plants hard problems as seeds, rears these germs into trees, and from them garners the ripe fruit. It wins victory before battles are fought. Without it, civilization would be impossible. What we call progress is but society following after and realizing the visions, plans and patterns of the imagination.

Now our busy, bustling age is inclined to under-estimate the imagination. Men cavil at castle-building. The pragmatist jeers at reveries. Men believe in stores, and goods in them; in factories, and wealth by them; men believe in houses and horses, but not in ideals.

Nevertheless, thoughts and dreams are the stuff out of which towns and cities are builded. We may despise the silent dreamer, but in the last a.n.a.lysis he appears the real architect of states! Immeasurable the practical power of the vision faculty! The heroes of yesterday have all been sustained--not by swords and guns, but by the sight of the invisible!

Here is the old hero in his dungeon in Florence. While he dozed, the night before he was to be burned, the jailer saw a rare, sweet smile upon his face. "What is it?" the guard asked. "I hear the sounds of falling chains, and their clangor is like sweet music in my ears."

Then, with smiling face he went to his martyrdom. And here is Michael Angelo. Grown old and blind, he gropes his way into the gallery of the Vatican, where with uplifted face his fingers feel their way over the torso of Phidias. Lingering by him one day the Cardinal Farnese heard the old sculptor say: "Great is this marble; greater still the hand that carved it; greatest of all, the G.o.d who fashioned the sculptor. I still learn! I still learn!" And he too went forward sustained by his vision of perfect beauty.

And here is John Huss, looking between the iron bars of his prison upon an army of pikes and spears, ma.s.sed before his jail; but the martyr endured his danger by the foresight of the day when the swords then wielded for repression of liberty of thought would flash for its emanc.i.p.ation. And here is Walter Scott ruined by the failure of his publishers, just at the hour when nature whispered that he had fulfilled his task and earned his respite. But he girded himself anew for the battle, and sustained his grievous loss through the foresight of the hour when the last debt would be paid and his again would be a spotless name. And here is that youth, Emerson, looking out upon a world full of noise and strife, full of the cries of slaves and the warfare of zealots. He was sustained by the foresight of a day when G.o.d would breathe peace o'er all the scene. With hope shining in his face, he began to "take down men's idols with such reverence that it seemed an act of worship." And what shall we more say? By the sight of the invisible, Dante endured his scaffold; the heroes, hunted like partridges upon the mountains, endured their caves and the winter's cold; martyrs endured the scourge and f.a.got. In every age, the great, by the sight of the invisible, have been lifted into the realms of tranquillity. Outwardly, there may have been the roar and boom of guns, but inwardly men were lutes with singing harps. As the householder sitting by his blazing hearth thinks not of the sleet and hail falling on the roof of slate, so the soul abides in peace over which has been reared the castle and covert of G.o.d's presence.

How signal a place does the imagination hold in the realm of science and invention! Reason itself is only an under-servant. It has no creative skill. Memory makes no discoveries. But the imagination is a wonder-worker. One day, chancing upon a large bone of the mammoth in the Black Forest, Oken, the German naturalist, exclaimed: "This is a part of a spinal column." The eyes of the scientist saw only one of the vertebrae, but to that one bone his imagination added frame, limb and head, then clothed the skeleton with skin, and saw the giant of animals moving through the forest. In that hour the imagination wrought a revolution in the science of anatomy. Similarly, this creative faculty in Goethe gave botany a new scientific basis. Sitting in his favorite seat near the castle of Heidelberg one day, the great poet was picking in pieces an oak leaf. Suddenly his imagination transformed the leaf. Under its touch the central stalk lifted itself up and became the trunk of the tree; the veins of the leaf were extended and became boughs and branches; each filament became a leaf and spray; the imagination revealed each petal and stamen and pistil, as after the leaf type, and gave a new philosophy to the science of herbs and shrubs. When a pistachio tree in Paris with only female blossoms suddenly bore nuts, the mind of a scientist suggested that some other rich man had imported a tree with male flowers, and careful search revealed that tree many miles away.

And in every department of science this faculty bridges over chasms between discovered truths. Even Newton's discovery was the gift of imagination. When the eyes of the scientist saw the falling apple it was his vision faculty that leaped through s.p.a.ce and saw the falling moon. When the western trade winds, blowing for weeks, had cast the drift wood upon the sh.o.r.es of Spain, Columbus' eyes fell not only upon the strange wood but also upon a pebble caught in the crevice. But his imagination leaped from the pebble to the Western continent of which the stone was a part, and from the tree to the forest in which it grew.

This faculty has performed a similar work in the realm of mechanics.

Watt tells us that his engine worked in his mind years before it worked in his shop. In his biography, Milton recognizes the beauty of the trees and flowers he culled from earth's landscapes and gardens, but in his "Paradise Lost," his imagination beheld an Eden fairer than any scene ever found on earth. Napoleon believed that every battle was won by the imagination. While his soldiers slept, the great Corsican marshaled his troops, hurled them against the enemy, and won the victory in his mind the night before the battle was fought. Even the orator like Webster must be described as one who sees his argument in the air before he writes it upon the page, just as Handel thought he heard the music falling from the sky more rapidly than his hand could fasten the notes upon the musical bars. Thus every new tool and picture, every new temple or law or reform, has been the imagination's gift to man.

Nor has the case been different with men in the humbler walks of life.

Mult.i.tudes are doomed to delve and dig. Three-fourths of the race live on the verge of poverty. The energies of most men are consumed in supporting the wants of the body. It is given to mult.i.tudes to descend into the coal mine ere the day is risen, to emerge only when night has fallen. Other mult.i.tudes toil in the smithy or tend the loom. The division of labor has closed many avenues for happiness and culture.

The time was when the village cobbler was primarily a citizen, and only incidentally a shoemaker. In the old New England days the cobbler owned his garden and knew the orchard; owned his horse and knew the care of animals; had his special duties in relation to school and church, and, therefore, was a student of all public questions. But tending a machine that clinches tacks, cabins and confines the soul.

The man who begins as a citizen ends an appendage to a wheel. The life of many becomes a treadmill existence. Year in and year out they tend some spindle. Now this drudgery of modern life threatens happiness and manhood. Therefore it was ordained that while the hand digs the mind may soar.

While Henry Clay's hands were hoeing corn in that field in Kentucky, through his imagination the young orator was standing in the halls of Congress. What orations he wrote! What arguments he fashioned! Each time his hoe cut down a weed, his mind with an argument hewed down an opponent. Never was there a tool for hoeing corn like unto the imagination! Christine Nilsson tells that once she toiled as a flower girl at the country fairs in Sweden. But all the time she delved she was dreaming, and by her very dreams making herself strong against the day when she would charm vast audiences with celestial music. What battles the plowboys have fought in dreams! What orations they have p.r.o.nounced! What reforms they have achieved! What tools invented! What books written! What business reared! Thus the imagination shortens the hours of labor and sweetens toil. While the body tires, the soul soars and sings.

This young foreigner newly arrived in our city digs downward with his spade, but his imagination works upward into the realm of the invisible. He endures the ditch and the spade through foresight of the day when his playmate will come over the sea; when together they will own a little house, and have a garden with vines and flowers, with a little path leading down to "the spring where the water bubbles out day and night like a little poem from the heart of the earth;" when they will have a little competence, so that the sweet babe shall not want for knowledge. By that dream the youth sustains his loneliness and poverty; by that dream he conquers his vices and pa.s.sions; at last through that dream he is lifted up to the rank of a patriot and worthy citizen. Nor shall you find one hard-worked man caught to-morrow in life's swirl who does not endure the strife, the rivalry and the selfishness of the street with this gift divine. It is the n.o.blest instrument of the soul. Thereby are the heavens opened. Imagination is the poor man's friend and saviour. Imagination is G.o.d whispering to the soul what shall be when time and the divine resources have accomplished their work upon man.

And when imagination has achieved for man, his progress, happiness, and culture, it goes on to help him to gain personal worth and character. Above every n.o.ble soul hangs a vision of things higher, better and sweeter. It causes the best men even in their best moods to feel that better things still are possible. By sweet visions it tempts men upward, just as of old the bees were lured onward by the honey dropped through the hunter's hands. The vision of a higher manhood discontents men with to-day's achievement and takes the flavor out of yesterday's victory. In such hours it is not enough that men have bread and raiment, or are better than their fellows. The soul is filled with nameless yearnings and longings. The deeper convictions, long hidden, begin to stir and strain, even as in June the seed aches with its hidden harvest.

Though the youth still pursues, he never overtakes his ideal. In the process of trans.m.u.tation into life the ideal is injured and dwarfed.

Just as the poet's vision is transcendently more beautiful than the song he writes upon the page; as the artist's dream is a glorious-creation, but his picture is only a photograph thereof; as the musician's song or symphony is but an echo of the ethereal music he heard in his soul, so every purpose and ideal is marred in the effort to give it expression and embodiment.

These children of aspiration hold the secret of all progress for society. Just as of old artists drew the outline of glowing and glorious pictures, and then with bits of colored gla.s.s and precious stones filled up the mosaic, causing angels and seraphs to stand forth in l.u.s.trous beauty, so imagination lifts up before the youth its glowing plans and purposes, and asks him to give himself to the details of life in filling it up and perfecting a glorious character.

The patterns of life are only given upon that holy mount where, midst clouds and darkness, dwell G.o.d and the higher imagination.

But if the imagination has its use, it has its abuse also. If visions of truth and beauty can exalt, visions of vice can debase and degrade.

In that picture where Faust and Satan battle together for the scholar's soul, the angels share in the conflict. Plucking the roses of Paradise, they fling them over the battlements down upon the heads of the combatants. When the roses fall on Faust they heal his wounds; when they fall on Satan they turn into coals of fire. Thus the imagination casts inspirations down upon the pure, but smites the evil into the abyss. The miseries of men of genius like Burns are perpetual warnings to youth against the riotings of imagination. There are poems, also novels and lurid scenes in the city, hanging pictures before the imagination and scorching the soul like flames of fire. For as of old so now, what a man imagineth in his heart that he is. For not what a man does outwardly, but what he dreams inwardly, determines his character.

Most men are better than we think, but some men are worse. As steam in the boiler makes itself known by hisses, so the evil imaginings heave and strain, seeking escape. Many forbear vice and crime through fear; their conscience is cowardice; if they dared they would riot through life like the beasts of the field; if all their inner imaginings were to take an outward expression in deeds, they would be scourges, plagues and pests. In the silence of the soul they commit every vice.

But they who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind; the revealing day will come when the films of life shall be withdrawn, and the character shall appear faithful as a portrait, and then all the meanness and sliminess shall be seen to have given something to the soul's picture. Oh, be warned against these dreams, all ye young hearts! The indulgence of the imagination is like the sultriness of a summer's day; what began so fair ends with sharp lightnings and thunder. How terrible is this word to evil-doers! "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."

It is also given to this vision faculty to redeem men out of oppression and misfortune, and through its intimations of royalty to lend victory and peace. Oft the days are full of storms and turbulence; oft events grow bad as heart can wish; full oft the next step promises the precipice. There are periods in every career when troubles are so strangely increased that the world seems like an orb let loose to wander widely through s.p.a.ce. In these dark hours some endure their pain and trouble through dogged, stoical toughness. Then men imitate the turtle as it draws in its head and neck, saying to misfortune: "Behold the sh.e.l.l, and beat on that." But, G.o.d be thanked!

victory over trouble has been ordained. In the blackest hour of the storm it is given to the vision faculty to lift man into the realm of tranquillity. As travelers in the jungle climb the trees at night and draw the ladder up after them, and dwell above the reach of wild beasts and serpents, so the soul in its higher moods ascends into the realms of peace and rest. In that dark hour just before Jesus Christ entered into the cloud and darkness, and fronted His grievous suffering, He called His disciples about Him and uttered that discourse beginning: "Let not your hearts be troubled." Strange wonder words; words of matchless genius and beauty.

Moreover, the vision faculty furnishes man his idea and picture of G.o.d. Many suppose that all that is necessary to understand the divine nature is that it should be stated distinctly in language. Greater error there could not be. There can be no language for causing a little child to understand the larger truths of heroism, art or government. The unripe cannot understand the mature. Each mind must paint its own picture of G.o.d. Nature itself is but a palette upon which G.o.d draws her portrait. Reason furnishes the materials and truths about G.o.d, and the imagination unites them in some n.o.ble conception of His all-helpful nature. Everything in nature that has power or beauty or benefit has received it from G.o.d. Moving along the Alpine valleys the traveler sees huge bowlders lying in the stream, and, looking to the mountain side, his eye rests upon the very cliff from which the bowlder fell. Thus discerning the n.o.ble qualities in mother or patriot, in hero or friend, we trace their beautiful qualities back to G.o.d, from whom all n.o.ble souls borrow their excellence. In the largest sense all the elements of power in sea and sky and sun, all the beauty of the fields and forests, of summers and winters, are letters in nature's alphabet for spelling out the name of G.o.d. As a diamond has many facets, and every one reflects the sun, so the universe itself is a gem whose every facet reflects the mind and genius of G.o.d.

When reason has culled out of life and nature everything that excites awe or admiration, everything that represents bounty and beauty, then imagination lifts up all these ideals and sweeps them together and melts them into one glowing and glorious conception of the G.o.d of power, wisdom and love. But even then the heart whispers: "He is that, and infinitely more than that, even as the sun is more than the little taper man has made." But if the reason and memory, through misuse, furnish but few of the truths about G.o.d, and if the imagination has been weakened in its power, then how poor the picture the soul paints!

What scant, feeble portraits of G.o.d some men have! What can an Eskimo, whose highest conception of summer is a stunted bush, know of tropical orchards, of luscious peach, pear and plum? If the student has seen only the broken fragments of Phidias, what can he know of the Parthenon as it once stood in the zenith of its perfection, in the splendor of its beauty? But if man's reason can cull out all the l.u.s.trous facts of nature and history, and if his imagination has strength and skill to bring them all together, then how beautiful will be the face and name of G.o.d! That name will fill his soul with music.

That thought will set his heart vibrating with tumultuous joy. If all the air were filled with invisible bells, and angels were the ringers, and music fell in waves as sweet as melted amethyst and pearl, we should have that which would answer to the sweetness that by day and night rains down upon the hearts of those who approach G.o.d--not through the eye nor ear, not through argument nor judgment, but through the heart, through the imagination, as they endure, beholding Him who is invisible.

THE ENTHUSIASM OF FRIENDSHIP

"He that walketh with wise men shall be wise."--_Solomon._

"The only way to have a friend is to be one."--_Emerson._

"A talent is perfected in solitude; a character in the stream of the world."--_Goethe._

"It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught as men take diseases, one of another; therefore let men take heed of their company."--_Shakespeare._