Imagination
TO the child, from the beginning, life is the unfolding of one vast
mystery; to him our stalest commonplaces are great news, our dullest
facts prismatic wonders. To the baby who has never seen a red ball, a
red ball is a marvel, new and magnificent as ever the golden apples were
to Hercules.
You show the child many things, all strange, all entrancing; it sees, it
hears, it touches; it learns to co-ordinate sight and touch and hearing.
You tell it tales of the things it cannot see and hear and touch, of men
"that it may never meet, of lands that it shall never see"; strange
black and brown and yellow people whose dress is not the dress of mother
or nurse--strange glowing yellow lands where the sun burns like fire,
and flowers grow that are not like the flowers in the fields at home.
You tell it that the stars, which look like pin-holes in the floor of
heaven, are really great lonely worlds, millions of miles away; that
the earth, which the child can see for itself to be flat, is really
round; that nuts fall from the trees because of the force of
gravitation, and not, as reason would suggest, merely because there is
nothing to hold them up. And the child believes; it believes all the
seeming miracles.
Then you tell it of other things no more miraculous and no less; of
fairies, and dragons, and enchantments, of spells and magic, of flying
carpets and invisible swords. The child believes in these wonders
likewise. Why not? If very big men live in Patagonia, why should not
very little men live in flower-bells? If electricity can move unseen
through the air, why not carpets? The child's memory becomes a
store-house of beautiful and wonderful things which are or have been in
the visible universe, or in that greater universe, the mind of man. Life
will teach the child, soon enough, to distinguish between the two.
But there are those who are not as you and I. These say that all the
enchanting fairy romances are lies, that nothing is real that cannot be
measured or weighed, seen or heard or handled. Such make their idols of
stocks and stones, and are blind and deaf to the things of the spirit.
These hard-fingered materialists crush the beautiful butterfly wings of
imagination, insisting that pork and pews and public-houses are more
real than poetry; that a looking-glass is more real than love, a viper
than valour. These Gradgrinds give to the children the stones which they
call facts, and deny to the little ones the daily bread of dreams.
Of the immeasurable value of imagination as a means to the development
of the loveliest virtues, to the uprooting of the ugliest and meanest
sins, there is here no space to speak. But the gain in sheer happiness
is more quickly set forth. Imagination, duly fostered and trained, is to
the world of visible wonder and beauty what the inner light is to the
Japanese lantern. It transfigures everything into a glory that is only
not magic to us because we know Who kindled the inner light, Who set up
for us the splendid lantern of this world.
[Illustration: THE TREE LIKE A MAN.]
But Mr. Gradgrind prefers the lantern unlighted. Material facts are good
enough for him. Until it comes to religion. And then, suddenly, the
child who has been forbidden to believe in Jack the Giant Killer must
believe in Goliath and David. There are no fairies, but you must believe
that there are angels. The magic sword and the magic buckler are
nonsense, but the child must not have any doubts about the breastplate
of righteousness and the sword of the Spirit. What spiritual reaction do
you expect when, after denying all the symbolic stories and legends, you
suddenly confront your poor little Materialist with the Most Wonderful
Story in the world?
If I had my way, children should be taught no facts unless they asked
for them. Heaven knows they ask questions enough. They should just be
taught the old wonder-stories, and learn their facts through these. Who
wants to know about pumpkins until he has heard Cinderella? Why not tell
the miracle of Jonah first, and let the child ask about the natural
history of the whale afterwards, if he cares to hear it?
And one of the greatest helps to a small, inexperienced traveller in
this sometimes dusty way is the likeness of things to each other. Your
piece of thick bread and butter is a little stale, perhaps, and bores
you; but, when you see that your first three bites have shaped it to the
likeness of a bear or a beaver, dull teatime becomes interesting at
once. A cloud that is like a face, a tree that is like an old man, a
hill that is like an elephant's back, if you have things like these to
look at, and look out for, how short the long walk becomes.
[Illustration: POPPY DOLL.]
And in the garden, when the columbine is a circle of doves, with spread
wings and beaks that touch, when the foxglove flower is a little Puck's
hat which will fit on your finger, when the snapdragon is not just a
snapdragon, but a dragon that will snap, and the poppies can be made
into dolls with black woolly hair and grass sashes--how the enchantment
of the garden grows. The child will be all the more ready to hear about
the seed vessels of the columbine when he has seen the doves, and the
pollen of the poppy will have a double interest for her who has played
with the woolly-haired dolls. Imagination gives to the child a world
transfigured; let us leave it that radiant mystery for the little time
that is granted.
[Illustration: DOVES AND DRAGON.]
I know a child whose parents are sad because she does not love
arithmetic and history, but rather the beautiful dreams which the
Gradgrinds call nonsense. Here are the verses I wrote for that child:
FOR DOLLY
WHO DOES NOT LEARN HER LESSONS
You see the fairies dancing in the fountain,
Laughing, leaping, sparkling with the spray.
You see the gnomes, at work beneath the mountain,
Make gold and silver and diamonds every day.
You see the angels, sliding down the moonbeams,
Bring white dreams, like sheaves of lilies fair.
You see the imps scarce seen against the noonbeams,
Rise from the bonfire's blue and liquid air.
All the enchantment, all the magic there is
Hid in trees and blossoms, to you is plain and true.
Dewdrops in lupin leaves are jewels for the fairies;
Every flower that blows is a miracle for you.
Air, earth, water, fire, spread their splendid wares for you.
Millions of magics beseech your little looks;
Every soul your winged soul meets, loves you and cares for you.
Ah! why must we clip those wings and dim those eyes with books?
Soon, soon enough, the magic lights grow dimmer,
Marsh mists arise to veil the radiant sky.
Dust of hard highways will veil the starry glimmer;
Tired hands will lay the folded magic by.
Storm winds will blow through those enchanted closes,
Fairies be crushed where weed and briar grow strong. . . .
Leave her her crown of magic stars and roses,
Leave her her kingdom--she will not keep it long!
[Illustration: THE ASTROLOGER'S TOWER.]