The United Co-operative/Volume 1/Number 2/On Imagination

Imagination is a word too delicate and elusive in meaning, and too strictly definable, for when all definitions have been exhausted, much must be left to—Imagination.

Thus the following definitions are but partial truths:

“The representation of an individual thought.”

“A lively conception of objects... ...distinguished from conception as a part from the whole.”

“The will working on the materials of memory, but these ‘materials’ are more pleasing, more terrible, or more awful than has ever been presented in the ordinary course of nature.”

Much might be said of the last-quoted definition, for imagination is frequently imagery of memory on the mind, which imagery reflects the impressions of the heart and soul.

Imagination comes unsought, yet meditation assists its creation. It does not owe its real origin to material things, yet these colour it. Thus beautiful surroundings aid the higher kinds of imagination, for in the consideration of time’s shadowy glories one obtains a glimpse of what the Eternal Celestial Beauty will be. The sea speaks to the imagination; indeed, imagination is like the sea, for it has its “crystal waves” of thought, its shoals and quicksands, pearls and pebbles, and fathomless deeps. It seems boundless, too, and has shores never seen or touched. Upon its surface men sail their gay boats of hope, and their phantom ships of fancy. But this sea of imagination is peculiarly liable to storms, and the boats must be well built, and guided by firm hands, else instead of skimming gaily along and mastering the elements, they will themselves be mastered, and their precious freight lost.

Just as beautiful Surroundings aid the higher kinds of imagination, so does a squalid environment aggravate its lower forms. The misery of the body often gives a reflected misery to the mind, and an evil atmosphere suggests evil thought; hence though imagination is in reality a gift to mankind, capable of acting quite independently of outward circumstances, it is too often a perverted gift.

Imagination can indeed be the sunset of reason, or the sunrise of thought. The imaginative person tastes the dregs of sorrow, is tormented by awful fears, suffers pain in anticipation as well as realisation, carries phantom cares, and is afflicted by strange depression. Yet there are also times when the cup of joy overflows for him; fears and cares take wings, he is gladdened by visions of a blissful future, and rises to heights never scaled by the unimaginative. Though it is true that some ​of his joys may prove elusive and delusive, yet it is also true that he sometimes tastes the pure, delicious waters of one of the tributaries of the river of truth. This kind of imagination reveals to men another fact, for it proves that imagination can be not only a reflection of the past and present, but a prophecy of the future and the eternal. Then it is a spiritual vision and presents a “beauty the eye cannot see” and a “music only heard in silence.” That man is a poet who can explain this beauty and convey this music to others. Of course, some so-called poets content themselves with merely describing “the images of day-desires,” but their imagination is not of much service to mankind, for it is a fleeting, not an eternal thng. Real poets give to the world the immortal ideas drawn from their spiritual insight, and these ideas are fruits of their imagination—which imagination, in its highest sense, is indeed a gft destowed by Eternal Wisdom.

It must not be forgotten, however, that just as “our music, our poetry, our language itself are not satisfactions, but suggestions,” so is imagination itself, even in its noblest form, but a suggestion of what is boundless and Eternal.