IMAGINATION.
Nothing adds more to the brilliancy and effectiveness of oratory than
the royal faculty of imagination. This weird and glorious power deals
with truth as well as fiction and gives to its fortunate possessor the
creative, life-breathing spirit of poetry.
Listen to the description of natural scenery by a person of imagination,
and afterward by another destitute of that faculty! Each may be
perfectly accurate and refer to the same objects, even enumerating the
same particulars in the same order; but the one gives a catalogue, the
other a picture. In relating a story or enforcing an argument, the same
difference in the vividness of impression is apparent.
It is said of Henry Ward Beecher, who possesses a strong imagination,
that the people would listen with delighted attention if he only
described the mode in which a potato grew! He would see a thousand
beauties in its budding and blossoming, and paint the picture so vividly
as to command universal attention.
The Bible, which is the most popular of all books, is pre-eminently a
book of imagination. Nowhere is loftier or more beautiful imagery
employed, or wrought into more exquisite forms. A few short and simple
words paint pictures that the world looks upon with astonishment from
age to age. Paradise Lost, the most sublime imaginative poem in the
language of man, drew much of its inspiration from a few passages in
Genesis. Job and Isaiah are without rivals in the power of picturing by
means of words, sublime objects beyond the grasp of mortal vision.
While illustrations and comparisons flow principally from the reasoning
faculties, their beauty and sparkle come from imagination. Without its
influence these may explain and simplify, but they have no power to
interest the hearer or elevate the tenor of discourse.
How may imagination be cultivated? It is said that “Poets are born, not
made,” but the foundation of every other faculty also is in nature,
while all are useless, unless improved, and applied. Imagination will
increase in vigor and activity by proper use. Its function is to form
complete mental images from the detached materials furnished by the
senses. It gathers from all sources and mixes and mingles until a
picture is produced. The proper way to cultivate it lies in forming
abundance of just such pictures and in finishing them with all possible
care. Let the orator, on the canvas of the mind, paint in full size and
perfect coloring, every part of his speech which relates to material or
visible things. Illustrations also can usually be represented in
picturesque form. We do not now speak of outward representation, but of
viewing all objects in clear distinctness, through the eye of the mind.
It is not enough for the speaker, if he would reach the highest success,
to gather all the facts he wishes to use, to arrange them in the best
order, or even to premeditate the very form of words. Instead of the
latter process, he may more profitably strive to embrace all that can be
pictured in one mental view. If he can summon before him in the moment
of description the very scenes and events about which he is discoursing,
and behold them vividly as in a waking dream, it is probable that his
auditors will see them in the same manner. A large part of all
discourses may thus be made pictorial. In _Ivanhoe_, one of the
characters looks out through a castle window and describes to a wounded
knight within the events of the assault which was being made upon the
castle. Any person could describe the most stirring scene vividly and
well in the moment of witnessing it. A strong imagination enables a
speaker or poet to see those things he speaks of almost as accurately
and impressively as if passing before his bodily eyes, and often with
far more brightness of color. To make the effort to see what we write or
read will have a powerful effect in improving the imaginative faculty.
Reading and carefully pondering the works of those who have imagination
in high degree will also be helpful. The time devoted to the enjoyment
of great poems is not lost to the orator. They give richness and tone to
his mind, introduce him into scenes of ideal beauty, and furnish him
with many a striking thought and glowing image.
Most of the sciences give as full scope to imagination in its best
workings as poetry itself. Astronomy and geology are pre-eminent in this
particular. Everything about them is grand. They deal with immense
periods of time, vast magnitudes, and sublime histories. Each science
requires the formation of mental images and thus gives the advantages we
have already pointed out. It is possible for a scientific man to deal
exclusively with the shell rather than the substance of science, with
its technical names and definitions rather than its grand truths; but in
this case the fault is with himself rather than with his subject. The
dryness of scientific and even mathematical studies relates only to the
preliminary departments. A philosopher once said that success in science
and in poetry depended upon the same faculties. He was very nearly
right. The poet is a creator who forms new worlds of his own. The
greatest of their number thus describes the process by which imagination
performs its magic.
“The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination.”
Almost the same result must be reached in many departments of science,
with the aid of only a few scattered facts for a basis. The geologist
has some broken bones, withered leaves, and fragments of rock, from
which to reconstruct the primitive world. From the half-dozen facts
observed through his telescope, the astronomer pictures the physical
condition of distant planets. In every science the same need exists for
imagination in its highest, most truthful function, and the same
opportunity is, therefore, afforded for its cultivation.
An eminent elocutionist frequently urged his classes to employ all
pauses in mentally picturing the idea contained in the coming sentence.
He declared that by this means the expression of the voice was rendered
more rich and true. In uttering our own words this process is at once
more easy and more fruitful in varied advantages.