The Play of the Imagination
It is interesting to study the personality of a man whose work is invested
with freshness, charm, and individuality, because such a study invariably
makes us aware of that subtle and elusive skill in the use of all
materials which is not technical but vital. That skill is impossible
without special training, but it is not the product of training; it is not
dexterity; it is not facility; it has the ease and grace of a harmonious
expression of all that is distinctive and original in the man. No one
thinks of technical skill in that moment of revelation which comes when
one stands for the first time in the presence of a noble work; later one
may study at length and with delight the perfection of workmanship
disclosed in solidity of structure and in harmony of detail; but in the
moment of revelation it is the essential and interior truth and beauty,
which shine from form and colour and texture as the soul shines in a human
face, which evoke a thrill of recognition in us.
Now, this higher skill which dominates and subordinates the technical
skill, this skill of the spirit which commands and uses the skill of the
body, is born in the soul of the worker and is the ultimate evidence and
fruit of his mastership. It is conditioned on the free play of the
imagination through all the material which the worker uses. It involves
that fusion of knowledge, intelligence, facility, and insight which can be
effected only by the constant use of the imagination. In statesmanship
Burke and Webster are examples of this highest type of worker; men who not
only command the facts with which they are called upon to deal, but who so
organise and vitalise those facts that, in their final presentation, they
possess the force of irresistible argument, and are illumined and clothed
with perennial beauty as works of art. In like manner, in the pulpit,
Chrysostom, Fenelon, Newman, and Brooks not only set religious truth in
impressive order, but gave it the appealing power of a noble and enduring
beauty.
It is impossible to do a great piece of work unless one can form an image
of it in advance, unless one can see it as it will finally appear. If one
were limited in vision to the detail actually in hand, the whole would
never be completed; that which makes the perfection of the whole possible
is the ability of the worker to keep that whole before him while he deals
with the detached parts. Without that power the worker is a mechanical
drudge, whose work has no quality save that of dogged fidelity to the
task. Now, this power of keeping the whole before the mind while dealing
with the parts, of seeing the completed machine while shaping a pin or a
cog, of getting the complete effect of the argument while elaborating a
minor point, resides in the imagination. It is the light which must shine
upon all toil that has in it intelligence, prevision, and freshness; and
its glow is as essential in mechanical as in purely artistic work.
Whenever, in any kind of work dealing with any kind of material, there is
any constructive quality, any fitting of part with part, any adjustment of
means to ends, there must be imagination.
Work which is done without imagination is so rudimentary that, at the
best, its highest use is to save some one else a little drudgery. This
elementary kind of work is often done by those students of literature who
confuse the study of grammatical construction with style, and those
students of the Bible who think they are illustrating the truths of
religion by purely textual study. Theology has suffered many things at the
hands of those who have attempted to explain the divine mysteries without
the light which alone penetrates these mysteries. To do the commonest work
with sincerity and force; to understand the simplest character; to perform
the simplest services of friendship; to enter into another's trial and to
give the balm of sympathy to one who is smitten and bruised; to conduct a
campaign by foreseeing the movements of an adversary, or to carry on
successfully a great enterprise by forecasting its probable development;
to make any invention or discovery; to be a really great preacher,
physician, lawyer, teacher, mechanic;--to do any of these things one must
have and one must use the imagination.
The charm with which the imagination invests childhood is due to its
habitual and unconscious use by children, and is suggestive of the methods
by which this faculty may be made the inspirer of all tasks and toil. The
child makes vivid images of the ideas which appeal to it; it gives reality
to those ideas by identifying them with the objective world; it clothes
all things with which it plays with life. In his autobiography Goethe
describes the door in the wall of a certain garden in Frankfort within
which many marvellous things happened; a true romance of incident and
adventure which became as real to the romancer as to his eager and
credulous listeners. De Quincey created an imaginary kingdom, peopled with
imaginary beings whom he ruled with benignant wisdom, amid universal
prosperity and peace, until, in an unlucky hour, he admitted his brother
into a partnership of authority; and that brother, unable to withstand the
temptation of absolute power, became a remorseless tyrant. And De Quincey
feelingly describes the reality of his anguish when, to protect his
innocent subjects from a tyrant's rapacity, he was compelled to destroy
his imaginary kingdom. The imaginative boy turns a vacant lot into an
African jungle, and hunts wild beasts in constant peril of his life; the
imaginative girl carries on social intercourse with her dolls as seriously
as with her most intimate playmates. Everything is real and alive to a
child, and the world of ideas has as much substance as the world of
matter.
These characteristics of a child in its play throw clear light on the true
methods of the man in his work; for the play of childhood is prophetic of
the work of maturity; it is the prelude in which all the great motives are
distinctly audible. The man who gives his work completeness and charm must
conceive of that work, not as a detached and isolated activity, but as
part of the great order of life; a product of the vital forces as truly as
the flower which has its roots in the earth. To the growth of the flower
everything contributes; it is not limited to the tiny plot in which it is
planted: the vast chemistry of nature in soil, atmosphere, and sky nourish
it. In like manner a man must habitually think of his work, not as a mere
putting forth of his technical skill, but as the vital product of all the
forces which sustain him. A real poem grows out of all that is deepest in
a man's nature; to its making in spiritual conception, structure, form,
and style his body, his mind, and his soul contribute; its metre adjusting
itself to his breathing, its ideas taking direction and significance from
his thought, and its elusive suggestiveness and beauty conveying something
of his mysterious personality. A true sermon is never what is sometimes
called a pulpit effort; it is always the product of the preacher's
experience; he does not and cannot make it; it must grow within him. A
great oration has the same vital relationship with the orator, the
occasion, the theme, and human experience. It is never a bit of detached
brilliancy; it is always, like Lincoln's address at Gettysburg, the
summing up and expression of a vast and deep movement of the human spirit.
In its form it reveals the man who makes it; in its content it is seen to
be inevitable. It lies in the consciousness of a race before it rises into
the consciousness of the orator and takes flight on the wings of immortal
speech.
To think habitually of one's work as a growth and not a thing made out of
hand, as a product of all the forces of one's nature and not a bit of
skill, as alive in the sense in which all things are alive in which spirit
and life express themselves,--to conceive of one's work in this large and
vital way is to keep the imagination playing through and inspiring it.