"Marconi has imagination without being a dreamer."
Thus Mr. Serviss gave an explanation of material achievement and
material success on big lines.
WITHOUT imagination a man may prosper relatively. He may live
comfortably and die contented.
But at best such a man will only follow in beaten paths. He will
only do what others have done before him.
He will not receive any of the great rewards which humanity
offers to those whose IMAGINATION opens for the benefit of all
new fields of thought, of successful material effort. ----
In material achievement there are two elements--executive force
(which may be sub-divided into an indefinite number of
classifications) and the great creative power, IMAGINATION.
Imagination enabled Marconi to see the possibility of sending
electric messages without wires.
Had he been a dreamer, had he allowed his imagination to wander
on indefinitely into notions of talking to other planets, the
power of his imagination might have been in vain.
His imagination enabled him to SEE the possibility, and the
lack of the dreamer's quality enabled him to REALIZE it.
There were many men centuries ago who, in an abstract kind of
way, knew that the earth was round. Their imaginations led them
to the discovery of facts--and long before Galileo's recantation
many men knew vaguely the truth of what he taught.
It took Galileo, a man of great imagination, not a dreamer, to
demonstrate his truth to all the world.
It took Columbus, with imagination and courage, but none of the
dreamer about him, to sail around the world to America and prove
practically what is now known to every child.
Wherever you see great material success on a new line, you see
imagination without dreaming. It took real power of imagination
in Rockefeller to conceive and execute the construction of the
Standard Oil monopoly.
It took the financial imagination of Morgan to conceive the idea
of taking $500,000,000 worth of steel mills and welding them into
the Steel Trust--no dreamer could have done this thing.
Many a dreamer had foreseen the steam engine, the steamboat and
other great inventions, without result. At the right moment
a man of imagination like Fulton came along and did the actual
work that the dreamer could not do.
If you want to succeed in the world, cultivate your imagination.
And if you want your children to succeed encourage them in the
development of their imaginations.
But let your imaginings and the imaginings of your children stop
this side of dreamland.
Your brain's activity is divided into the conscious and
sub-conscious departments. The conscious side of your mentality
puts you into communication with the world, enables you to meet
and to cope with conditions and individuals.
If you are to succeed materially the conscious mind must control,
direct and limit the activities of the sub-conscious mind with
which the imagination does its work.
If your sub-conscious brain, in the departments of abstract
thought, imagination and dreaming, be allowed to run away with
the practical side, you may be a very great man in the
far-distant future, but you may be sure that you will not succeed
now. ----