You suspect that I am “pushing the claims of the Imagination so far as
to deprive the Reason or Understanding[3] of its rights;” and you ask me
whether I dispute the universal belief that the former is an “illusive
faculty.” As for your suspicion, I will endeavour to show that it is
groundless. As for your question, I admit that the Imagination is
“illusive,” but I must add that it also leads us to truth. It constructs
the hypotheses, as well as the illusions, which, when tested by
experience, guide us towards Knowledge.
Imagination is the “imaging” faculty of the mind. It does not, strictly
speaking, create, any more than an artist, strictly speaking, creates.
But as an artist combines lines, colours, shades, sounds, and thoughts,
each one of which by itself is familiar to everybody, in such new
combinations as to produce effects that impress us all as original and
unprecedented, so does the Imagination out of old fragments make new
existences and unities.
Attention impresses upon us the present; Memory recalls the past; but
the Imagination is never content simply to reproduce the past or
present. It sums up the past of Memory (sometimes perhaps also the
present of Attention) and combines it with a conjectured future in such
a way as to produce a whole. It is always seeking for likenesses,
orderly connections, regular sequences, beautiful relations, suggestions
of unity in some shape or other, so as to reduce many things into one
and to obtain a satisfying picture.
For example, suppose a large mill-wheel at rest to be almost hidden from
my eyes by intervening trees so that, even if it were moving, I could
only see one spoke at a time; and at present I am not aware that it is
close before me. Something begins to move. I look up. Attention tells me
that I see before me, moving from left to right, something like a plank
or pole: it passes and I see nothing; but then comes another similar
object moving similarly; then a third, rather quicker; then a fourth,
quicker still. The mind at once sets to work to find the cause. The
Memory tells me that I have seen simply a number of poles or planks
moving from left to right with quickened motion; the Attention tells me
that I see one now; but the Imagination, taking in the isolated reports
of Memory and Attention, includes them in a larger hypothesis of her
own, in which, if I may so express it, the constituent elements, the
spokes, are subordinated, and the explanatory unity, the wheel, is
brought into prominence; and thus the motion from left to right, which
explained nothing, is replaced, in my mind, by the motion of revolution,
which explains everything.
It is on the basis of the Imagination, aided by Experience and Reason,
that we establish our conviction of the permanence of the simplest Laws
of Nature. This I have touched on in one of my previous letters. The
Memory, recalling the sight of many stones falling to the ground, comes
perhaps to the aid of Attention, as a child notes a particular stone
falling to the ground, and suggests to the child’s imitative nature an
experimental attempt to make a stone fall to the ground. The child does
it once and again, as often as he likes. Then, as a result of this
unvarying experience, there springs up in the child’s mind a picture in
which he sees reproduced an apparently endless vista of his sensations
as to stone-falling and its antecedents, a picture not confined, like
the pictures of Memory, to past time, but including future as well as
past and present; and thus the childish thought leaps upwards all at
once to the conception of that sublime word “always,” and dares to
promulgate its first universal proposition, and attains to the definite
certainty of a Law of Nature.
But you say that the Imagination is “illusive.” It is; it rarely
conducts us to truth without first leading us through error. Its
business is to find likenesses and connections and to suggest
explanations, not to point out differences, and make distinctions, and
test explanations; these latter tasks are to be accomplished not by
Imagination but by Reason with the aid of enlarged experience. The
Imagination suggests to the child that every man is like his father,
every woman like his mother; that the motion of the sea is like the
motion of water in the washing basin; that the thunder is caused by the
rolling of barrels or discharge of coals up above; that a clock goes on
of itself for ever; and a multitude of other illusions all arising from
the same healthy imaginative conviction in every young mind that “What
has been will be,” and “The whole world is according to one pattern.”
The conviction is based on a profound general truth, but the particular
shapes which it assumes are often erroneous. It is only after a course,
and sometimes a very long course, of experience and experiment, that the
child, or perhaps the man, eliminates with the aid of Reason those ideas
which will not work, and confirms those that will work, till the latter
become at last strong and inherent and quasi-instinctive convictions.
None the less, if the Imagination did not first suggest the ideas on
which the Reason is to operate, we should never obtain anything worth
calling knowledge.
We might express all this by saying that Imagination is the mother of
working-hypotheses; and this is true of all working-hypotheses, those of
the observatory and laboratory as well as those of the nursery. No one
who grasps this truth will henceforth deny the debt of science to
Imagination. Knowledge is not worth calling knowledge till it is reduced
to Law; and Law, as I have shown you above, is a mere idea of the
Imagination. I do not deny the subsequent value of Reason; but
Imagination must come first. It was from the Imagination that there
first flashed upon the mind of Newton the vision of the
working-hypothesis by which the apple’s fall and the planet’s path might
be simultaneously explained. Then came in Reason, with experiment,
testing, comparing, prepared to detect discrepancies, unlikelihoods, and
any want of harmony between the new theory and the old order of things.
Finally, the once-no-more-than-working-hypothesis, having been found to
harmonize with countless past and present phenomena and having enabled
us to predict countless future phenomena, is now called a Law, and we
are practically certain that it will act. The approval of this Law we
owe to Reason, but for the suggestion of it we are indebted to
Imagination. On the debt owed to Imagination by Mathematics—the
foundation of all science—I will not add anything to what has been said
in a recent letter.
Next as to the work of Imagination in art. Poets and artists, as well as
astronomers, must be, so to speak, _ex analogia Universi_; that is to
say, they must be in harmony with that order of things which they long
to reveal to their fellow-men; they must see Law and Unity where others
fail to see it; they must have inherited or received capacities and
intuitions which give them an intense sympathy with the deep-down-hidden
rhythms and abysmal motions which regulate atoms and sounds and hues and
shapes, and the thoughts and feelings of men. An artist who wishes to
paint a hill-side, or a wave, or a face, must have a vision of it. He
must see it not only exactly as it is, but how it is: he sympathizes, as
it were, with every cleft and runlet and hollow and projection of the
hill, with every turn and fold and shade and hue of the ever-varying
wave: he realizes the secret of Nature’s working. Shall we make a
distinction between the secret in the one case and the other? Shall we
say the “spirit” of the face, but the “law” of the hill and the “law” of
the wave? Or will not the intuition into this complex combination of
multitudinous forces, apparently free and conflicting yet all guided and
controlled into one harmonious result, be better expressed by saying
that he enters into the “spirit” in all cases, the “spirit” of the hill,
the wave, and the face? In proportion as he has this power, a great
artist will be less likely to speak about it, and less able to explain
it: but have it he must; and it is a power really not dissimilar, though
apparently most different, from the scientific Imagination. It is, in
both cases, a power of recognizing Order and Unity. The test also of the
artistic, is (roughly speaking) the same as that of the scientific
Imagination. Those ideas are right which “work.” Does a scientific idea
open, like a key, the secrets of Nature? Then it “works,” and is, so
far, right. So in art: to imagine rightly is to imagine powerfully so as
to sway the minds of men. Those artistic imaginations are wrong which
fail to fit the wards of the complicated human lock and to stir the
inmost thoughts. There are obvious objections to this definition of what
is artistically right; what stirs the Athenian may not stir the
Esquimaux. But, roughly speaking, we may say that the test has held
good. What has stirred the Athenian has stirred the great civilising
races of the world. There may be a better and a higher test hereafter;
but, for the present at all events, prolonged experience of its
“working” is the test of artistic Imagination.
But the Imagination plays, perhaps, its most important part in our
conceptions of human emotions and human character. These things cannot
be exactly defined, like triangles or circles; nor can they or their
results be predicted like the results of chemical action or the
instinctive motions of irrational animals. Yet the Imagination helps us,
after a sympathetic contemplation of what a friend _has_ done and said
and wished, to complete the picture by taking as it were a bird’s-eye
view of his past, present and future, so as to be able in some measure
to realize and predict what he _will_ do and say and wish. This mental
“imagination,” “image,” or “idea” of our friend we might describe as the
“law” of his being, so far as it was grasped by us: but so much more
subtle and variable than any known “law” are the sequences of human
thought and conduct, that we generally prefer the phrase which we just
now used to describe the intuition of the artist; and so we speak of
“entering into the spirit” of a man. It is usual to say that we do this
by “sympathy;” but sympathy is only one form of Imagination tinged with
love, the power of imagining the joys and sorrows of others and of
realizing them as one’s own. Imagination, without love, might realize
the sorrows of an enemy to gloat over them: love, if it could be without
Imagination—which it cannot be, since love implies at least some
imagination of what the beloved would wish—would be a poor lifeless
sentiment doing nothing, or nothing to the purpose. But imaginative
love, or sympathy, gives us the key to the knowledge of all human
nature, and is the foundation of all domestic and social unity and
order.
As to the test of Imagination when brought to bear upon human nature,
you will remember, I dare say, that it was determined to be the success
with which it “worked” human nature, or, in other words, made men do
“what they are intended to do.” But I was then speaking of the way in
which the great prophets, lawgivers, and founders of religions have
influenced great masses of mankind, and in which almost every mother
influences her children, by idealizing them. I might have added, and I
will now add, a word on the manner in which an imaginary ideal of human
nature proves its truth experimentally to the imaginer, by “working”
_him_, that is, by making _him_ capable of doing “the work he was
intended to do.” It is the more necessary to do this because the
illusions of Imagination are nowhere so strong and so lasting as in the
study of human Nature; and there is a danger that we may be deterred by
the thought of them from steadily pursuing the truth. The cynic tells us
with a sneer that babies, and none but babies, think men and women
better than they are, and that, the older one grows, the more one is
disillusionised about the virtue of human nature. But that is not true,
or only a half truth. If we, as children, imagine the men and women
about us to be perfections of power, wisdom, and virtue, one reason is,
that we have, as children, a most inadequate standard of physical,
mental, and moral excellence. As our standard rises, our sense of
inadequacy increases; but the reason why, as we grow older, we cease to
think people perfect, is, very often, not that we think worse of human
beings, but that we think better of human possibilities.
But in some minds defect of Imagination combines with other causes to
induce the repeatedly disillusionised man to give up the search after
the truth that lies beneath the illusion and to cast away all trust, all
thought, of any ideal of humanity. Those who do this make shipwreck of
their own lives. Their low ideal or no-ideal of conduct does not “work;”
that is to say, it does not fit them to do the work they were intended
to do. Even for the purposes of their own happiness their life is a
failure. So far as the spiritual side of their nature is concerned, a
dull and stagnant self-satisfaction is the highest prize they can hope
to acquire: they have none of the keen joys of spiritual aspiration, of
failures redeemed, of gradual progress, and of deeper insight into the
glorious possibilities of human nature. But those who, while not
rejecting the sobering admonitions of Experience and Reason, can
nevertheless so far obey the promptings of Imagination as to retain in
their hearts an ever fresh and expansive and healthful Ideal of life,
find themselves led on by it from hope to nobler hope, from effort to
more arduous effort, until life and effort end together.
Let this suffice as my protest against the popular fallacy that the
Imagination is an abnormal faculty, limited to poets and painters and
“artists,” mostly illusive, and always to be subordinated in the search
after truth. I maintain, on the contrary, that it lies at the basis of
all knowledge; that it is no less necessary for science, for morals, and
for religion, than for artistic success; and that the illusions of
Imagination are the stepping-stones to Truths.
Now to speak of Reason, or, as some would call it, Understanding. While
dealing with Imagination, we recognized that the work of Reason is
mostly negative and corrective: but let us come to detail. Reason is
commonly said to proceed by two methods; (i) by Induction, wherein, by
“inducing,” or introducing, a number of particular instances (_e.g._ “A,
B, C, &c., are men and are mortal”), you establish a general conclusion
(“all men are mortal”); (ii) by Deduction, wherein, from two previous
statements called Premises, you deduce a third, called a Conclusion.
(i) As regards Induction, surely you must admit that the initial part of
the task falls not upon the Reason but upon the Imagination; which sees
likenesses and leaps to general conclusions, mostly premature or false,
but all containing a truth from which the falsehood must be eliminated.
Thus, a child imagines, by premature Induction, that all men are (1)
like his father; (2) black haired; (3) between five and six feet high;
(4) white-skinned, and so on. Then comes Reason afterwards, comparing
and contrasting these imaginative premature conclusions with a wider and
contradictory experience and widening the conclusion accordingly. Hence
it is the part of Reason to suggest those varied experiments which are a
necessary part of scientific Induction; and this is generally done by
pointing out to us some neglected difference: “You say you had a Turkish
bath three times, and each time caught a cold: but were the antecedents
of these three colds quite alike? If not, how did they differ? Did you
not on the first occasion sit in a draught at a public meeting? on the
second, forget to put on your great coat? on the third, let the fire out
though it was freezing? Consider therefore, not the single point of
likeness, the Turkish bath, but the points of _unlikeness_ also, in the
antecedents of your three colds; and try the Turkish bath again,
omitting these antecedents, before you say ‘A Turkish bath always gives
me cold.’”
You see then that in Induction the positive and suggestive part of the
work is done by the Imagination; the negative and eliminative part by
Reason.
(ii) As regards Deduction, the business of Reason is to ascertain that
the Premises are not only true but also connected in such a way that a
conclusion can be drawn from them. But even here Imagination plays a
part: for the conclusion of every syllogism (roughly speaking) depends
upon the following axiom: “If _a_ is included in _b_, and _b_ is
included in _c_, then _a_ is included in _c_; in other words, if a watch
is in a box, and the box is in a room, then the watch is in the room.”
Now this general proposition, like all general propositions, is arrived
at with the aid of the Imagination, so that we may fairly say that the
Imagination, helps to lay the foundation of the Syllogism. When
therefore you bear in mind that in every Syllogism the Premises are
often the result of an Induction in which Imagination has played a part,
and that the conclusion always depends upon an axiom of the Imagination,
you must admit that even Deductive Reasoning by no means excludes the
Imagination.
(iii) Practically, errors seldom arise, and truth is seldom discovered,
from mere Deductive Reasoning. Any one can see his way through a logical
Syllogism, and almost any one can lay his finger on the weak point in an
illogical one. But the difficulty is to start the Reasoning in the right
direction and to begin the Logical Chain with an appropriate Syllogism.
For example, suppose we wish to prove that “every triangle which has two
angles equal, has two sides opposite to them equal”: how can our Reason,
our discriminative faculty, help us here? At present, not at all. We
must first call to our aid the Imagination, which says to us, “_Imagine_
the triangle with two equal angles to have two unequal sides opposite to
them, and see what follows.” And every one who has done a geometrical
Deduction knows that we frequently start by “imagining” the conclusion
to be already proved, or the problem to be already performed, and then
endeavouring to realise, among the many consequences that would follow,
which of those consequences would harmonize with, or be identical with,
the data to which we are working back.
The same process is common in the reasoning that deals with what is
called Circumstantial Evidence. Thus, it is asserted by A that he saw B
commit a murder in the midst of a field, five minutes before midnight,
on the first day of last month: how can we test the truth of A’s
assertion? The negative faculty of Reason cannot answer the question.
But once more Imagination steps in and says, “_Imagine_ the story to be
true; _imagine_ yourself to be in A’s place; _imagine_ the circumstances
which would have surrounded him, the hidden place from which he saw the
murder, the light which enabled him to see it, the precise sight that he
saw, the voices or sounds that he heard, and, in a word, all the details
of a _likely_ and coherent narrative.” When the Imagination has done
this and “imagined” the place—perhaps a hedge—the light—moonlight, and
so on, Reason steps in, and corroborates or rejects, by shewing that
there was, or was not, a hedge whence the deed could have been
witnessed; that there was a full moon or no moon on the night in
question; that, if there had been a moon, the place in question was open
to the moonlight, or in deep shadow: and thus Imagination and Reason
(aided by experience of the place and knowledge of the time) arrive at a
conclusion, the former making a positive, the latter a negative
contribution. Hence it appears that even in those questions which are
called pre-eminently “practical”—for what can be more “practical” than a
trial in a law-court for life or death?—the Imagination plays so great a
part that without its aid the reason could effect little or nothing.
Here I must break off; but I hope I have said enough to satisfy you that
the imaginative faculty, though it needs the constant test of Reason and
Experience, is far more intimately connected with what we call
knowledge, than is commonly supposed. But if this be so, we ought not (I
think) to be surprised if a careful analysis of our profoundest
religious convictions should reveal that for these also we are indebted,
and intended by God to be indebted, to the Imagination far more than to
the Reason.
Footnote 3:
“Reason” is used, in these letters, in a sense for which Coleridge (I
believe) preferred to use “Understanding.” But as long as we have a
verb “reason,” commonly used of mathematical, logical, and ordinary
processes of arguing, so long it will be inexpedient, in a popular
treatise, to use the word in any but its popular sense. Perhaps some
might give the name of “higher Reason” to what I call Imagination.
VII
THE CULTURE OF FAITH