Greatest gift to man. It finds him grovelling here a pithecoid
littleness.
The rough hair is gone from his body. His thumb has lost its
monkey smallness; he walks flat on his feet.
But beyond that he has naught else to thank material nature for.
All the rest comes to him from imagination. Marvellous work she
performs. She takes naked man with his low forehead, with his
gruntings and whistlings through his teeth, and makes of him what
man was meant to be.
Very slowly she works, but ceaselessly. Her task is not nearly
ended. At her first glimmerings man's real life begins. He
learns from her to add wood to a fire. No monkey ever did it.
That stamps him a man.
Soon, with her help, he leaves the earth and travels off ten
thousand million miles into space. He counts the suns in the
Milky Way; travels in the air, under the water; harnesses
lightning, controls nature. By IMAGINATION he is made
CAPTAIN of this earthen ship on which he travels through space.
IMAGINATION separates Archimedes, working at his problems in the
sunlight, from the vile soldier that slaughtered him.
Shakespeare rattling his ale pot and Johanna, the ape, shaking
her bars at the Zoo are alike, save for difference of
imagination.
SELF-CONTROL to balance you.
JUSTICE to guide you.
IMAGINATION to lend creative power.
"Equilibrium, Direction, Creation."