Not merely in such
objects as the pebble, whose history I have so hastily, but I must
add faithfully, sketched; but in the tiniest piece of mould on a
decayed fruit, the tiniest animalcule from the stagnant pool, will
imagination find inexhaustible wonders, and fancy a fairy-land. And
I beg my elder hearers not to look on this as light praise.
Imagination is a valuable thing; and even if it were not, it is a
thing, a real thing, a faculty which every one has, and with which
you must do something. You cannot ignore it; it will assert its own
existence. You will be wise not to neglect it in young children;
for if you do not provide wholesome food for it, it will find
unwholesome food for itself. I know that many, especially men of
business, are inclined to sneer at it, and ask what is the use of
it? The simple answer is, God has made it; and He has made nothing
in vain. But you will find that in practice, in action, in
business, imagination is a most useful faculty, and is so much
mental capital, whensoever it is properly trained. Consider but
this one thing, that without imagination no man can possibly invent
even the pettiest object; that it is one of the faculties which
essentially raises man above the brutes, by enabling him to create
for himself; that the first savage who ever made a hatchet must have
imagined that hatchet to himself ere he began it; that every new
article of commerce, every new opening for trade, must be arrived at
by acts of imagination; by the very same faculty which the poet or
the painter employs, only on a different class of objects; remember
that this faculty is present in some strength in every mind of any
power, in every mind which can do more than follow helplessly in the
beaten track, and do nothing but what it has seen others do already:
and then see whether it be not worth while to give the young a study
which above all others is fitted to keep this important and
universal faculty in health.
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