THE UNIVERSITY I GF CAUrOKWiA, SWi LA * THE CULTIVATION AND USE OF IMAGINATION BY THE RIGHT HON. GEORGE JOACHIM GOSCHEN, M.P. LONDON EDWARD ARNOLD 37 BEDFORD STREET, W. C. lisijer to tfje 5nWa ffice 1893 [All rights reserved] PREFACE HAVING been asked to sanction the re-publica- tion of the two addresses contained in this little volume, I have cheerfully consented to their being printed together, as in one sense, though deh'vered with an interval of many years between them, they form a connected whole. The first deals with the cultivation of the imagination, the second with its use in study and in life. Of course, however, they overlap ; and in the first address, as in the second, I discuss the use of imagination in many spheres of life. The theories in both will be found to be ab- solutely identical, but the form and style are very different. The address to the students of the Liverpool Institute is essentially a speech, rough and rhetorical, and redolent of VI PREFACE a more or less ex tempore treatment ; and I have not found it possible, or indeed desirable, to reduce it to essay form. The fervour of my convictions on the immense value of the de- velopment of the imaginative faculty affected the style, and must be the apology for its imperfections. In my Rectorial address, on the other hand, I was bound to observe a more academic tone, and, while following out a cognate line of thought, I attempted to give it a somewhat more scientific and elaborate treatment. But allowance being made for the difference in the occasions, and in the audiences which called forth those two addresses, I hope the reader may nevertheless find in them an identity of feeling reflecting my most earnest desire to promote the cultivation of one side of our human faculties, the neglect of which I con- sider would be most harmful both in social and national respects. G. J. G. April 1893. CONTENTS PAGE THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION, ... 9 THE USE OF IMAGINATION IN STUDY AND IN LIFE, . 51 THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION 1 THE wide scope of this Institute offers a tempt- ing choice of subjects to those who address its students at these annual gatherings, and speakers probably often take advantage of the occasion to ventilate some educational hobbies of their own. The presidents who have taken this chair in succession have certainly not all recommended the same kind of studies. I have read some of the addresses which have been delivered in previous years addresses uttered by gentlemen who could speak with an educational authority which I could not com- mand. Some have passed useful and practical 1 An Address delivered before the Members of the Liverpool Institute, Liverpool, November 29, 1877. Reprinted with altera- tions. 10 THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION criticisms on the books used by you and on special courses of intellectual study. Others, speaking with regard to Science and Art, have given most valuable advice in connection with those departments of this Institute which are connected with South Kensington. I propose a somewhat new departure ; I wish to speak to you this evening as a man of business, but I hope I may say as a man of business who knows what he owes to a public school and University education. I am about, then, to address you as a man of business, and, as I am speaking to the youth of this business city of Liverpool, and am bound to bear in mind that a great many of you are connected with business of one kind or another, I daresay you will expect that I am prepared to make a good business-like speech ; that I am about to recommend, in preference, the study of modern languages, of book-keeping, and of arithmetic ; and that I shall warn you against those studies of which many people say ' What is their use ? ' And perhaps you may think THE CULTIVATION OP THE IMAGINATION 1 1 that I shall wind up with some eloquent generalisations, speak of the danger of foreign competition with regard to our trade, point out to you that you must increase your taste and knowledge so as to be able to compete more successfully with foreign countries ; and finally appeal to you on behalf of technical education and sweeping reforms in your commercial schools. If you expect that such will be the course I shall adopt this evening, possibly you may be disappointed. I need not assure you that I am conscious of your local surroundings. I believe I know, or at least can imagine, the future which many of you intend to carve out for yourselves. I know the connection of Liverpool, and of Liverpool men, with business ; but, nevertheless, conscious as I am of these considerations, I shall not hesitate to place some opinions before you as regards certain educational ideas and certain sides of training, which may at first sight surprise you, but which I shall nevertheless very confidently ask you to lay to heart. 12 THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION I wish to bring out very clearly a point of view on which I have a strong feeling. I wish to warn you of the danger of a too utilitarian education, and to insist on other tests as to the value of the instruction you receive besides its direct and immediate bearing on your prospects in life. If your aim in connection with this Institute is mainly professional, even in the best sense of the word if it is directed less to your whole lives than to your careers if your exclusive object is to qualify yourselves for bread-winning a high and worthy object, but not the only object of education even to the poorest man ; if such are your aims, and the aims of those who influence you, possibly there will be some head-shaking over my address this evening. For I stand here to plead a different cause, though certainly not an antagonistic cause to what I have described. I have read many addresses on the subject of technical education speeches in which useless branches of study are denounced; and doubtless we have been behindhand in many respects. We know the THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION 13 splendid work done by many devoted friends of education who are determined that the produc- ing powers of this country shall not be ham- pered in the race by the want of that special knowledge and taste in which our neighbours may be apt to outstrip us. I honour them, and wish them ' God-speed ; ' but, at the same time, I wish to remember that there is another side yet to educational work. I hold that in intel- lectual matters, as well as in religious life, man cannot live on bread alone. I wish one of the key-notes of what I may say to you this even- ing to be that a livelihood is not a life. Education must deal with your lives as well as qualify you for your livelihoods. I think you will hold that education must do more for you than enable you to win your bread, outstrip your neighbours, increase your business, and enable you to marry and bring up a family. I want education to ennoble, to brighten, and to beautify your lives. I wish it to increase your pleasures and your powers of happiness. I wish it to multiply your resources. I wish 14 THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION education to do that for the life which lies beyond and outside of your own work which, by common consent, it must do for your work itself. And, therefore, while others plead on behalf of useful knowledge and mind, I sym- pathise with them as well I wish a hearing to be also given to another side of education which may not have an immediate marketable use, but which, nevertheless, you cannot afford to neglect. I wish to speak to-night on behalf of the cultivation of the imaginative faculties in the broadest sense of the term ; and I am not afraid to speak thus before a Liverpool audience and as a business man, because I will not admit an antagonism between business and cultivation : I will not admit that the cultivation of the imaginative faculties disqualifies men and women for the practical duties of life. Indeed, I hold that the cultivation of the imagination amongst all classes whom such an education can reach, is not only important to the young themselves as increasing their happiness, but important to THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION 15 the nation as qualifying them to become better citizens and fitting them to take a useful and noble part in our national duties. And I beg the most humble and poorest amongst you not to think I am going to talk over their heads to-night. I address these words in favour of the cultivation of the imagination to the poorest and most humble in the same way that I address them to the wealthiest and those who have the best prospects in life. I will try not to make the mistake which doctors commit when they recommend patients in receipt of 2 a week to have recourse to champagne and a short residence at the sea-side. In what sense, then, do I use the word ima- gination ? Johnson's Dictionary shall answer. I wish you particularly to note the answer Johnson gives as regards the meaning of ' imagination.' He defines it as ' the power of forming ideal pictures ; ' ' the power of repre- senting absent things to ourselves and to others.' Such is the power which I am going to ask you to cultivate in your schools, by your 16 THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION libraries, at home, by every influence which I can gain for the cause ; and I hope I shall be able to carry you with me, and show you why you should cultivate that power. I repeat, it is the power of forming ideal pictures, and of representing absent things to yourselves and to others. That is the sense in which I shall use the word Imagination in the course of my address. Now, follow out this thought, and I think I can make my meaning clear. Absent things ! Take history. History deals with the things of the past. They are absent, in a sense, from your minds that is to say, you cannot see them; but the study of history qualifies you and strengthens your capacity for under- standing things that are not present to you, and thus I wish to recommend history to you as a most desirable course of study. Then, again, take geography, travels in foreign coun- tries. Here, again, you have matters which are absent, in the physical sense, from you ; but the study of travels will enable you to realise things that are absent to your own minds. THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION 17 And as for the power of forming ideal pictures, there I refer you to poets, dramatists, and imaginative writers, to the great literature of all times and of all countries. Such studies as these will enable you to live, and to move, and to think, in a world different from the narrow world by which you are surrounded. These studies will open up to you sources of amuse- ment which, I think I may say, will often rise into happiness. I wish you, by the aid of the training which I recommend, to be able to look beyond your own lives, and have pleasure in surroundings different from those in which you move. I want you to be able mark this point to sympathise with other times, to be able to understand the men and women of other countries, and to have the intense enjoyment an enjoyment which, I am sure, you would all appreciate of mental change of scene. I do not only want you to know dry facts ; I am not only looking to a knowledge of facts, nor chiefly to that knowledge. I want the heart to be stirred as well as the intellect. I want you to B 18 THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION feel more and live more than you can do if you only know what surrounds yourselves. I want the action of the imagination, the sympathetic study of history and travels, the broad teaching of the poets, and, indeed, of the best writers of other times and other countries, to neutralise and check the dwarfing influences of necessarily narrow careers and necessarily stunted lives. That is what I mean when I ask you to culti- vate the imagination ! I want to introduce you to other, wider, and nobler fields of thought, and to open up vistas of other worlds, whence refreshing and bracing breezes will stream upon your minds and souls. I reject the theory which regards as ' stuff and nonsense ' all that does not really bear on the immediate practical duties of life. I struggle against the view which assails higher and deeper, ay, and more amusing studies with that shibboleth which we all know so well ' What is the use of all this to us practical men of business ? ' Mind, I do not decline that challenge. I will speak of the use by-and-by. THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION 19 I will show that the course of training I recom- mend is of the greatest possible practical use ; but meanwhile I lay in a protest that this is not the only result by which training can be tried. Its marketable use is not the only test, or even the chief test, to which we ought to look in education ; and I decline to have these courses of studies simply tried by the bearing they may have on the means of gaining a livelihood. And here I think you may fairly note the difference between what I am asking you to do and what many others ask you to do. While I want you to acquire the power of representing to yourselves absent things, many persons, with more authority to speak than I have, beseech you to study what lies around you. The pro- moters of physical science, for instance, entreat you not to neglect the phenomena which surround you on every side, and ask you to analyse Nature, to make use of Nature, to turn Nature to your purposes, to your greater comfort and power. It would be unjust if I 20 THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION were to omit to say that they also recommend the study of physical science for its ennobling and educational influence on the mind ; and I say all honour to these studies. But let another field of work not be neglected the cultivation of the power of forming ideal pictures and of representing things absent to yourselves and to others. Nor do I believe for one moment I am rather anxious on this point that the cultiva- tion of this faculty will disgust you or disqualify you for your daily tasks. I hold a very con- trary view. I spoke just now of mental change of scene ; and as the body is better for a change of scene and a change of air, so I believe that the mind is also better for occasional changes of mental atmosphere. I do not believe that it is good either for men or women always to be breathing the atmosphere of the business in which they are themselves engaged. You know how a visit to the seaside sometimes brings colour to the cheeks and braces the limbs. Well, so I believe that that mental change of THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION 21 scene which I recommend will bring colour into your minds, will brace you to greater activity, and will in every way strengthen both your intellectual and your moral faculties. I want you if I may use the phrase to breathe the bracing ozone of the imagination. And over what worlds will not fancy enable you to roam ? the world of the past, ideal worlds, and other worlds beyond your sight, probably brighter worlds, possibly more interesting worlds than the narrow world in which most of us are com- pelled to live ; at all events, different worlds, and worlds that give us change. And now let me answer an objection which I know is in all your minds, though you may be too complimentary to give audible expression to it. You are no doubt saying to yourselves, 'What in the name of common sense does Mr. Goschen mean I If he thinks that the cultiva- tion of the imagination be better than a know- ledge of facts if it be better to analyse absent things rather than study things present why, then, not leave imagination to do its work ? 22 THE CULTIVATION OP THE IMAGINATION Our lads and lasses may like this idle doctrine well enough, but why foist it on our business- like Institute ? ' I will attempt to grapple with this objection. But before I do so, I have got one more preliminary remark to make. I am so keen about the cultivation of the imagination- that I wish to' press into its service, not only the influence of an Institute like this, but home influences the influence which fathers and mothers may be able to bring to bear upon their children the influence of every one who has a library the influence of every one who can speak to the young even pulpit influence I would exhort to assist in this work, because the cultivation of the imagination is certainly on the side of religion and religious education. And I want to begin very early. Full of my wish to make all familiar with great worlds or little worlds differing from their own, I hold decided opinions even upon the subject of nursery and school-boy literature. The imagi- nation is roused even when children are very young, and often the first lessons given to young THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION 23 children are of great importance in their after lives. You will expect, perhaps, that, with that disregard of useful knowledge of which I may stand accused, I am in favour of indiscriminate story-books as appealing to the imagination, and that I preach up the merits of works of fiction promiscuously. This would not repre- sent my feeling in the least. Works of fiction, unfortunately, are frequently destitute of all imagination. Many is the three-volume novel which you can read through from beginning to end, while your mind will not be lit up with one spark of imagination. What do some of these writers do ? They do that against which I protest. I can bring out my hobby by enlarg- ing on this point. They photograph daily life. They do not introduce their readers to any- thing beyond daily life. In fact, what course do they take ? They describe characters pre- cisely similar to the people whom they see every day; they describe the very clothes worn by the people whom you meet every day; they describe the very words which may be addressed 24 THE CULTIVATION OP THE IMAGINATION to themselves ; the very smiles which may be smiled at themselves ; they describe the very love which they hope may be made to them- selves or to their sisters ; and then, at the end, they think they have written a novel ! Well, that may be fiction, but it is not imagination. Why, they have not ' the power to form ideal pictures/ or ' to represent to themselves or to others absent things/ They only deal with the present. Such novelists do not carry their readers to other worlds. They do not cultivate the imagination. What I want for the young are books and stories which do not simply deal with our daily life. I prefer ' Alice in Wonderland/ as a book for children, to those little stories of ' Tommies' and ' Freddies/ which are but little photographs of the lives of ' Tommies ' and ' Freddies ' who read the books. I like Grimm's ' Fairy Tales ' better than little nursery novelettes. I like the fancy even of little children to have some more stimulating food than images of their own little lives ; and I confess I am sorry for the children THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION 25 whose imaginations are not sometimes bright- ened by beautiful fairy tales, or by other tales which carry them to different worlds from those in which their future will be passed. Doubtless boys and girls like photographs of the sayings and doings of other boys and girls school life sketched with realistic fidelity and doubtless many young people like love-stories similar to those through which they may have to pass themselves. But there is little imagination in all this. The facts are fictitious, but the life is real. Do not misunderstand me. It is not that I wish to combine instruction with amuse- ment in what is often a hopeless alliance. I do not wish to stint young people of amusing books. But I will tell you what I do like for boys and girls. I like to see boys and girls amuse themselves with tales of adventure, with stories of gallant deeds and noble men, with stories of the seas, of mountains, of wars, with descriptions of scenes different from those in which they live. But I will make an exception. Sometimes 26 THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION contemporary stories are told with such genial nobleness of aim, and with such purity of spirit, that they are of high moral and mental value, and certainly I should be sorry that a boy should be denied the intense enjoyment of reading ' Tom Brown's School Days/ nor would I grudge a girl the deep pleasure and interest of reading the fortunes of ' The Heir of Kedclyffe.' No doubt stories of our daily lives may frequently be made to answer great and noble purposes, but still, as a general rule, and looking generally to the literature for the young, I hold that what removes them more or less from their daily life is better than what reminds them of it at every step. I like boys to read, for instance, the ' Last of the Mohicans ' to sail across the sea with Captain Marryat's tars. I like them to read the tales of the Crusades, or of our own Border wars books of travel in the North, the Arctic Regions, in the South, the East, and the West. I like them, in short, to read anything rather than realistic prose, or exaggerated or even faithful descriptions of their life of every THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION 27 day. Remember what I am driving at is the cultivation of the power of representing things different from those amongst which we live. But all this, you will say, is scarcely educa- tional. I maintain that it is. The books which are read in the leisure hours are often as educa- tional as those which are read in the tunes of study. But I will now apply myself to the studies over which this Institute has an influ- ence, and I will grapple boldly with my task. You will see that I have hitherto seemed to jumble up fairy tales and history travels and simple creations of the brain. To my mind they all do a certain work in common. But when I come to serious educational work, let me single out history for special remark. I am an enthu- siast for the study of history, and I entreat you to give it as much attention as you can at this place. You will see that my whole argument tends to the study of history and of general literature, not for the sake of facts alone, not for mere knowledge, but for their influence on the mind. 28 THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION History may be dry and technical if you con- fine yourself to the chronological order of facts if you study only to know what actually took place at certain dates. I am sure we have all suffered from the infliction of skeleton histories excellent tests of patience, but I am afraid as little exciting to the imagination as any other study in which any one can possibly engage. What I am looking to is rather the colouring of history the familiarity with times gone by, with the characters, the passions, the thoughts and aspirations of men who have gone before us. History with that life and colour and many historians of the present day write histories which fulfil these conditions history with that life and colour cultivates the imagination as much and better than many of the best ro- mances. When thus written, and when once the reader is fairly launched into it, history is as absorbing as a novel, and more amusing and interesting than many a tale. I will be quite candid with you. I am something of a novel reader myself. The fact is, there is one differ- THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION 29 ence between a novel and a history which is in favour of the former at the first start. In a his- tory the first fifty pages are often intolerably dull, and it is the opening which frightens off half the readers. You generally have some pre- liminary description of the state of Europe, for instance, or of the state of India, or the state of France, or some other country, at a given time. You don't come to the main point you don't come to what interests you at first sight ; and thus many persons are disheartened before they thoroughly get into the book, and they throw it aside, and characterise it as being very dull. Now, in a novel, enjoyment often begins at the very first page. Still, when I have taken up some interesting history for instance, lately I have been reading Kaye's ' History of the Sepoy War' and when I have got over the first few introductory pages, which are a little heavy, I ask myself, How is it possible that a man of sense can spend his time on reading novels when there are histories of this absorbing in- terest, which are so vastly more entertaining, 30 THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION so vastly more instructive, and so much better for the mind than any novel ? Believe me, an intelligent and a systematic study of history contains a vast resource of interest and amuse- ment to all those who will embark in it. Let me explain a little more. Histories, if you only look to chronological details, you may possibly find to be exceedingly like Bradshaw's ' Railway Guide ' very confusing, very uninter- esting in themselves, only useful sometimes in enabling you to know how to go from one period to another to make an historical journey. Or you might compare these general surveys of history of which I was speaking to a skeleton map of a country of which you know very little. You see the towns noted down. They are but uninteresting spots on the map. They convey nothing to you ; they don't interest you. But if you have travelled in that country, if you know the towns mentioned on the map, then you pore over the map with a very different interest. You feel real personal pleasure ; your mind and imagination recall the country itself. So you THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION 31 will find that the grand secret to enjoy history is to get beyond the outlines, to be thoroughly familiar with the particular period, to saturate yourself with the facts, the events, the circum- stances, and the personages which belong to a certain time in history. When you have done this, the men and women of that period become your personal friends ; you take an intense de- light in their society, and you experience a sense of pleasure equivalent to what is given by any novel. I heard yesterday an anecdote of a lady who had lived a great deal in political circles. She had received from a friend a book about Sir Thomas More. When she had read it, she wrote back and thanked the sender of the book, tell- ing him with what delight she had perused it, and adding, ' Sir Thomas More and Erasmus are particularly intimate friends of mine.' She was so well acquainted with that period, that all that was written about it came home to her heart she knew it, she had lived in it, it had a living interest for her. That is the mode and manner 32 THE CULTIVATION OP THE IMAGINATION in which I would recommend you to study his- tory. Let me be more precise. I would not gallop through histories any more than I would through a country if I wanted to explore it. I would take a particular period, and read every book bearing on that period which my library supplied me, and which I had time to read. Then I would read the poets who had written in the same period ; I should read the dramas relating to it, and thus I should saturate myself with everything which was connected with it. By that means I would acquire that power which I value, which I want you to acquire individually, and which I should like every English man and woman to possess as far as possible, namely, the power of being able to live in other tunes and sympathise with other tunes, and to sympathise with persons and races different from those amongst whom we move. And do not think that in such studies you lose your time. Are there fathers and mothers THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION 33 here who hold that it is a dangerous doctrine which I preach ? If so, I hope I may be able to reassure them ; for I hold that in all spheres and all classes, culture of this kind is of the highest value, and that it does not disqualify, but the reverse, for business life. Amongst the wealthier classes of business men, I rejoice to think that prejudice against culture as being dangerous to business is rapidly dying out, and that a Uni- versity education is no longer regarded with suspicion. ' What do men learn at Oxford and Cambridge that will fit them for business ! ' was formerly often asked ; but I do not think this question is put quite so often now. I will tell you what once occurred to myself in regard to this point. Some eight years ago I heard a dis- tinguished modern poet ask, ' What becomes of all the Senior Wranglers and of all the Oxford First Class men ? One does not hear of them in after life.' I ventured very modestly to reply that, not being a Cambridge man, I could not speak on behalf of Cambridge men ; but as to Oxford I was able to inform him that eight of c 34 THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION her First Class men were at that moment in Her Majesty's Cabinet. But you may say, * This is all very well for the greater affairs of life, but as regards the general rough-and-tumble of business life, why should you have this cultivation? Is it not dangerous, and does it not rather hamper a young man when he goes into business life ? ' Let me give you another illustration, and you will forgive me if it is somewhat of a personal character. It may come home to some of my younger listeners more forcibly than the most eloquent generalisation. My own father came over to England as a very young man, with one friend little older than himself, and with very little more money in his pocket than a great many of the students here, I dare say, possess. He has told me, half in joke and half in earnest, that he was obliged to found a firm because he wrote such a bad hand that no one would take him for a clerk. But he was steeped to the lips in intellectual culture. In his father's house, as a boy he had met the great literary men of the THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION 35 best period of German literature. He had heard Schiller read his own plays. He had listened to the conversation of great thinkers and great poets. He was a good historian, an acute critic, well versed in literature, and a fine musician to boot. But did this stand in his way as a young man coming over to London with a view to found a business ? Has it stood in his way of founding a firm of which I, as his son, am very proud ? No ! On the contrary, it aided his success ; and with this example before me, I hope you will understand that I am able to speak with affectionate conviction of the fact that culture will not interfere with the due dis- charge of the duties of business men in any sphere of business life. I will not add to what I have said about the great increase of happiness and amusement to be gained for your own leisure in after-life if you follow the studies I have named. It is most certainly for your happiness and advan- tage ; but you may remember that I used much stronger language than this. I said it was not 36 THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION only of advantage for the young themselves, but for the national advantage, that imagina- tive culture should be considered as one of the aims of education. I have still got to make this point good. Consider what are the duties of this country in which we live. Let me now take you away from Liverpool away even from England and ask you to look at our imperial duties at our colonies, at our vast empire, at our foreign relations and then I want you to ask yourselves whether it is important or not that Englishmen shall be able to realise to themselves what is not immediately around them, that they shall be able to transport themselves in imagination to other countries over which they rule. It is not sufficient for Englishmen to think only of their own sur- roundings. There was a time when the des- tinies of England used to be wielded by a few individual men, or by small coteries of trained statesmen. India was governed for years ex- ternally to the influence of public opinion. But that is past. Public opinion is stepping THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION 37 in ; and, if public opinion steps in, I wish that public opinion to be properly trained. Why, even ministers for foreign affairs now declare that they wait the behests of the public, their employers, before they take any decided step. If public opinion assumes these responsibilities, again I say, let us look to the formation of that public opinion, and see that the young genera- tion of Englishmen are trained properly for the discharge of these functions. Parliament is more and more sharing with the executive Government of the country the duties of ad- ministration, and the press and the public are more and more sharing this duty with Parlia- ment. Thus you will understand the import- ance I attach to the training of the coming generation, not only in useful knowledge, but in all that they ought to know, and ought to be able to feel and think, when they discharge imperial duties. And, I ask, by what power can this result be better obtained than by the intelligent study of history and of modes of thought which lie 38 THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION beyond our own immediate range ? It is no easy thing for democracies to rule wisely and satisfactorily self-governing colonies or subject races. Imagination, in its highest and broadest sense, is necessary for the noble discharge of imperial duties. The governing classes and we are all governing classes now should be able to ' represent to themselves absent things ' all the impulses, and sympathies, and passions of other races different from themselves. To ignore this condition, to be narrow-minded, is a very great national danger. Narrow- mindedness lost us in times past the American Colonies. Statesmen were not able to sym- pathise with, or throw themselves into, the position of these Colonies ; they could not represent to themselves absent things ; and they thought that this England of ours, with what they learned here, was sufficient for their guidance in the discharge of their imperial duties* It is not enough. We must look beyond our own local surroundings. The study of history will also enable you to fight the ignorance which THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION 39 may possibly prevail in many places with regard to our own past and our own colonial empire. What sentiment brings down the cheers of a popular audience more thoroughly than when a great statesman or popular orator exclaims, ' We are an historic people ' ? May I be per- mitted humbly to suggest that, if we are a great historic people, we may with advantage study and know our own history ? May I ask that, if we are an historic people, we may take advantage of our history as a lesson for the future ? and that, if we are an imperial people, we may study and lay to heart and master the conditions of some of the races and the colonies over which we rule ? I wonder how much many of us know of the way in which the Indian Empire was originally won and main- tained ! I dare say some of you reproach me in your hearts, and say, 'We know all about it;' and why ? because everybody at any rate, a great many people have read the Essays of Lord Macaulay on Olive and Warren Hastings ; but if these two essays had not been written, 40 THE CULTIVATION OP THE IMAGINATION I wonder how much would be known of the history of India ? I do not do wrong, then, I think, if I recommend the pupils of this Institute to push the study of our own national history, and to enter and throw themselves into that study with patriotism and alacrity. It is the duty of citizens to read and know their own past. I want to stimulate a habit of mind which is capable of apprehending and sympathising with a state of things different from that which surrounds us. I do not know whether it is apocryphal story or not that a distinguished statesman once de- clared a page of the Times to be more worth reading than the whole of Thucydides. If that was ever said, I should reply, ' No, a thousand times No/ That sentiment embodies the very- tone of mind against which I am contending. It suggests that it is important to give an exclusive study to what is surrounding us, and that we have little to do with the great past. Yes, if our duty and our pleasure were to deal only with matters that lie around ourselves THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION 41 if, for instance, in Parliament, we had only to pass gas and water bills, to improve tariffs, to deal with the material aspects of the present, and the growing resources which railroads and telegraphs bestow then the hasty survey of passing events which the daily journals supply might be more useful to us than the history of an Athenian war, even though that history were written with spirit-stirring eloquence and patriotism, and were full of sound political re- flections which remain true throughout eternal time. But if we have more to do than this, if we have not only to deal with English- men precisely like ourselves if British public opinion and British statesmen have not only to deal with Englishmen who are registered at their birth by an English Registrar-General, then vaccinated according to an English Act of Parliament, and sent, under another English Act of Parliament, through elementary schools, and dealt with for the remainder of their lives under English Acts of Parliament ; but if, be- sides, we have to deal with subject races who 42 THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION are more like the men described by Herodotus than average London or Liverpool men, then I hope you will understand how important it is that we should cultivate the capacity of under- standing what others think and do, and so be able to lift ourselves above the ordinary range of daily life. Men who know little of our previous history, and are feeble in their power to imagine that is, to represent to themselves the situations and views of other nations are what I consider a dangerous element in the formation of public opinion. Those men are still more dangerous if, because they know very little, and because they are somewhat local and narrow-minded, they fancy themselves to be practical men. I am often frightened when, upon some great question, I hear a man say, 'I am going to take a very business-like view of this question.' It is almost as bad as when a man, upon some question of propriety, says he is going to look at it ' as a man of the world.' I then always suspect the judgment he is going to give. THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION 43 When a man says, ' I am going to look at a great question as a business man/ it is ten to one he means, ' I am not going to be gulled by any of your grand generalisations ; I am not going to be misled by historical parallels, or seduced by any rhetorical phrases. I do not wish to be told what foreign nations are think- ing of, or are likely to do. I wish to judge of this as a sensible man of business. I know the effect such and such a line of policy will have on trade and on the funds, and that is enough for me.' Now, I have sometimes hoped that I might have claimed myself to be a business man, or a business-like man ; and most of you will consider yourselves the same ; and I declare that it is prostituting the name of ' business- like ' to confound it, as it is often done, with a narrow-minded view of imperial questions. It is not business-like at all ; it is very unbusiness- like. Call it by whatever name you will, whether narrow-mindedness or not, I consider that to judge from hand to mouth of all our great questions is a very dangerous tendency a 44 THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION tendency which is fostered by ignorance of the great principles of human action, and of the former teaching of the history of the world. Again, you will think me very persistent, but I say the study of history will correct these tendencies, and will mitigate the influ- ence of any narrow-minded judgment of passing events. Some newspapers, for instance I am speaking entirely hypothetically often take alarm, and begin to think they ought to write down the power of England. They begin to minimise our power, and say, ' What can Eng- land do ? Look at the size of our little island. Look at the statistical lists of our ships and guns, of our men and armies. What can we do ? After all, we are very small in numbers.' Now, I should like the public sometimes to be able, when it is asked, ' What can England do ? ' to check this appeal to contemporary statistics by an intelligent recollection of the statistics of the past. I do not say that I want England to do anything, but I do not want it to be laid down that England can not THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION 45 do anything. I rebel against this tendency of always writing down our own country, as if our powers were insufficient. Study history as I ask you, and you will be able to answer those who urge objections of this kind. Study the history of the past, and see what England has done at times when neither her population nor her wealth was such as it is at present, and you will wonder when you hear it said that ' Eng- land after all is a small country.' How many of you in this room know what the population of this country was in the great Napoleonic times, when Great Britain took the lead, and when newspapers did not point to the size of the island and the smallness of the population as compared with the population of other countries'? Our population at the pre- sent time is about 33,000,000, probably more. The population of Great Britain in 1801, when the census was taken, including the armies serving abroad, was under 11,000,000,* and I 1 The census of Ireland was not taken in 1801, so that the total population of Great Britain and Ireland at that date cannot be stated. 46 THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION ask you to remember the historical lessons which that great time teaches. Remember what England with that population was en- abled to do, and what weight her counsels had in Europe and throughout the world. To my mind, the teaching of history is this, that not- withstanding Krupp guns and Palliser shells; notwithstanding Martini and Chassepot rifles ; notwithstanding ironclads and torpedoes ; not- withstanding field telegraphs and balloons ; and notwithstanding that one great European Power has lost her influence, and another great Power has gained influence in Europe ; notwithstand- ing all this, the teaching of history is, that a great country of 33,000,000 of inhabitants, un- surpassed in wealth, has no business to depre- ciate her own power or minimise those great efforts which, if need be, but only if need be and if right be, she will venture to put forth. But perhaps some of you may think that I have been wasting my pains. You may think that, though I have been pleading in favour of the cultivation of the imagination amongst the THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION 47 English people, the results I aim at have been achieved to a very considerable extent already, and that we are highly imaginative because, as I admit, we are becoming a highly sentimental and susceptible people. I admit that it is very unfair on the part of foreigners continually to say, as they do say, that Englishmen are not prepared ever to make sacrifices for an idea. I consider that England, especially in late generations, has certainly been ready to make considerable sacrifices, not only on material grounds, but on moral grounds. For instance, take the abolition of the Slave Trade. That was an effort which England made from the sincerest and purest motives of conviction and morality ; but nearly all Continental writers disbelieve in the self- sacrificing nature of that great measure, and declare that we were guided by self-interest. They are entirely deceived. When the country's feelings have been touched, we have again and again been willing to make considerable sacri- fices, and we should again be prepared to make such sacrifices in the cause of right and morality. 48 THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION But I do not admit that susceptibility and sen- timent are at all equivalent to that imaginative capacity with which I have been dealing. I do not at all wish to stimulate further what I may call the susceptible side of English politics, because I think we have gone far enough in that direction. I prefer that manly and sturdy national character which I see written in many of the great histories I have recommended you to study, and I do not consider that the cultivation of the power of representing to yourselves absent things, and of being able to sympathise with, and to understand, the necessities of our colonies and of other countries, and to take generally that wider and broader view that I have recommended, is at all iden- tical with the development of a sentimental character in politics a tendency which I, for one, view with some alarm. Well, now, I am afraid that I have taken you a very long way. I began with the nursery, and I have launched you in the end into a very wide field indeed. I might have THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION 49 followed up my argument by showing the necessity, even for many serious domestic ques- tions, of cultivating the faculty to which I have alluded. I might almost venture to say that a House of Commons without imagination would, to my mind, be a bad House of Commons and a dangerous House of Commons. A church without imagination would be a church with- out life and without the power of retaining its hold upon its flocks. Imagination, in the sense which I have described, is necessary every- where, and perhaps we have too little of it now in a great many departments of life ; and I will tell you why. Because we are all too much oppressed with detail because, in the study of detail, and in the study of useful knowledge, we frequently too much ignore and too much forget the broader lines of study, and the more important generalisations which neither states- men nor electors, nor indeed any class, ought ever to lose sight of. Full of this conviction, I confidently ask you all to apply yourselves to these higher studies, both at home, in this D 50 THE CULTIVATION OF THE IMAGINATION Institute, in your public libraries, by every available means. Once more let me say to you that a livelihood is not a life, and, believe me, if you devote yourselves to such studies if you are able to cultivate that power which I have asked you to cultivate you will find that it will make you better citizens, more ardent patriots, and better and happier men and women. THE USE OF IMAGINATION IN STUDY AND IN LIFE 1 MY first duty is to express to the Students here assembled my grateful thanks for the honour they have done me in electing me to a post which has been filled by so many illustrious men, and which brings each successive holder of it into such friendly touch with this famous University. Let me assure you that the heavy pressure of political existence has not crushed out my academic instincts, and that to meet a large assembly of students, and to discourse to them of matters affecting University life, is a most welcome interlude in those other occupa- tions, unmentionable on this occasion, in which it is my fate to be engaged. The pleasure of 1 Rectorial Address delivered at Edinburgh University, Novem- ber 19th, 1891. Eeprinted with alterations. 52 THE USE OF IMAGINATION meeting you will be enhanced if I should be able to give a practical proof of my gratitude to you by any thoughts or suggestions which might help to forward the great work in which this University is interested. I see around me distinguished men to whom, in each of your special branches of learning or science, you look for guidance and help. I stand in the midst of men who have doubtless been the critics I hope the indulgent critics of successive Lord Rectors, the value of whose addresses on things in general they have been able, by the help of their deeper knowledge of things in particular, to submit to a very search- ing test. The diversity of your studies increases the embarrassment of a Rector, who would wish to address no single school, but to find some common ground of interest, some topic on which he might equally claim the attention of the students of the humanities, of medicine, of philosophy, of science, indeed of all the faculties. Clearly, he must search for that common ground, not in the subject, but in the method of study ; THE USE OF IMAGINATION 53 not in the material, but in the instrument by which the material must be moulded and mani- pulated. The discussion of methods of study has, I confess, always inspired me with particular interest. The choice of the method has often appeared to me almost equal in importance to the choice of the subject-matter of the study itself. To one method of study I propose to direct your minds to-day. I want to bespeak your attention to the use to which the faculty of imagination should be put, in the pursuits in which you are engaged. To another audience, on a previous occasion, I have spoken of the cultivation of the imagina- tion, of the sharpening of this instrument for use. To-day, I will assume the existence of this form of intellectual force. I will assume that the imagination has been already cultivated, that you all possess this precious faculty in a greater or less degree, and I will ask you to accompany me in an investigation of some of the occasions for its actual application. 54 THE USE OF IMAGINATION At the outset of this inquiry I must define what I mean, using the liberty, so often claimed, of more or less choosing my own definition. I need not say that I exclude the meaning which is sometimes attached to the phrase ' a lively imagination ; ' that is to say, a mental habit which, departing from fact, expatiates on what is contrary to fact, and scarcely escapes from untruth. The imagination which I have in view is the power of picturing absent things, of pre- senting to the mind's eye visions of the past or the future, of realising the mental attitude and thoughts of another person or of an alien race. This constructive imagination takes its start from facts, but it supplements them and does not contradict them. It is a faculty the con- ceptions of which probably present truer pictures than those afforded by knowledge of facts alone, vivid, truthful pictures, which knowledge of facts alone would not enable us to paint. It is employed sometimes retrospectively, when the aim proposed is to bring together and to depict conditions which no longer surround us, THE USE OF IMAGINATION 55 to lead our footsteps backwards through the ages; sometimes prospectively, by those who would lead us forward, who would ' Dip into the future far as human eye can see,' and construct for us a vision of the days to come, and of conditions which are not yet existent. Perhaps I may be best able to illustrate my meaning if I contrast this creative imagination, this power to construct or re-construct, with the faculty of analysis. The operation which I have in my mind is the very opposite of analysis. Analysis eliminates, separates, strips off, reduces. Analysis discards temporary con- ditions and surrounding circumstances, and reduces what is under examination to its simplest form. Analysis in Economics seeks to discover the general principle by what may be called the destructive process. It has, I admit, a fascination of its own. The function of constructive imagination, on the other hand, is to proceed in the opposite direction. Its work is, by an effort of the mind, 56 THE USE OF IMAGINATION to realise and depict what is not present to the sight or palpable to the touch. Take history, for example. Historical analysis will evolve a general law, common to all periods, to all generations of men,out of the complex conditions of a given age or ages. It will strip off the temporary, the accidental. Its work is elimina- tion. Historical imagination, on the other hand, will endeavour mentally to restore the picture of a past age, of which the colours have faded with time. It will not neglect details, for details are a great part of life. It will endeavour to restore the special character, the movement and the stir, which drier annals have failed to preserve. Take, again, the sciences which deal with animal life. The analytic method separates nerve from muscle, bone from tendon, limb from limb. It endeavours, so far as possible, to examine separately the function and constitu- tion of each vessel and member, of each com- ponent part of the organism, and to isolate it from the disturbing and sympathetic influences THE USE OF IMAGINATION 57 of other parts of the frame. Analysis may be necessary before synthesis can be applied ; but it is the synthetic, the imaginative method I venture to call it, which by use of the materials accumulated by analysis and observation, en- abled Charles Darwin to undertake that mighty reconstructive effort which embraces the past, the present, and the future, of animal life upon our globe. Deficient imagination is often found in the moral world. Often you find in men an absolute incapacity to realise an unfamiliar situation, to grasp conditions which are not immediately visible, to recognise facts which to others are a plain and patent element in their lives. That incapacity springs from a dull and uncultivated imagination. Suppose this incapacity, this want of power to understand the surroundings by which the motives, the characters, the influences of men different from ourselves are determined ; suppose it to characterise intellectual studies, and truth will suffer, knowledge will be impeded, education blighted, and interest lost. 58 THE USE OF IMAGINATION Students may be suffering from lack of imagi- nation without being conscious of their short- coming themselves. They read and they criticise. Theories seem preposterous to them, illustrations absurd. Unable to understand the spirit of a time in which they do not live, or to realise conditions with which they are not themselves familiar, they discard sound teaching simply because they have not sufficient imagina- tion to re-create in their minds the circum- stances under which the theory was composed, and the illustration adduced. I shall invite you to follow me presently into the field of Economics, where the want of pro- spective imagination has hampered the most famous writers, and the want of retrospective imagination has warped the views of some of the most distinguished critics. I shall ask you to follow me in the application of imagination to other studies. But you will, I think, be better able to grasp the full import of the bearing of my thesis upon your own actual intellectual work, if, in the first instance, I illustrate the THE USE OF IMAGINATION 59 operation of retrospective and prospective imagi- nation in the domain of literature. Let us begin, then, by examining to what extent the presence or absence of the exercise of that faculty, which I have called imagination, lifts or lowers the work of authors who attempt to reconstruct the past. Some there are whom you feel to be able to realise the conditions of vanished ages, to imagine the men and women of former generations, and the surroundings amidst which they moved, in such a manner as to convey to their readers a real and lifelike picture of the very form and spirit of the time. Others, who make the like attempt, seem merely to have collected facts with diligence and accuracy. The facts may be strung together on the thread of a fictitious story, but, because the life-giving breath of imagination is absent, the result is a handbook of antiquities and not a living picture of the past. Have any of you read Charicles or Gallus, the works of the learned Becker ? The author was a man of profound research. He had 60 THE USE OF IMAGINATION studied the habits and customs of the Greeks and Romans. He had wide knowledge of what had been written as to their dress, their educa- tion, and their laws. He was acquainted with every detail of their civic and private occupa- tions. And what is the result ? He produces the furniture but not the life, the outline of the pic- ture but not the colouring. Wanting in imagi- nation, he has not the power, perhaps not even the wish to reconstruct the past as a living whole. He puts the dry bones together, but he cannot put flesh upon them, or send the blood coursing through the veins. His accumulations are of great value, no doubt, but we feel as we read that we are walking in the valley of dry bones, and doubt, with the prophet, whether these dry bones can live. Or take a tragedy of Racine. His talent was undoubtedly great. We are no longer in the valley of dry bones. His heroes live and move with a stately and regal grace, but they move in a French atmosphere. He has imagination, but not the historical, the retrospective imagination, THE USE OF IMAGINATION 61 which is necessary for the true reproduction of the past. There is a French ring about the valour and passion of his Greeks, and Agamemnon walks with the air of the Grand Monarque. Goethe's Iphigenia stands to my mind on a higher level. I do not mean merely that the German poet has successfully adopted the outward form and method of Greek tragedy, but that the eternal, the vital part of human nature, that which is common to Greek and German, to classical and romantic times, speaks to us from his stately verse. But even here we feel no confidence as we follow his narrative that we are moving in a reconstructed past. But Shakespeare ? Have we not there more confidence ? Though he may be inaccurate his- torically, though he may abouud in anachronisms which may call a smile from superior persons, do we not feel that his splendid imagination has recalled to us real men and women of a long past generation, and breathed into them the spirit of a time in which they lived ? Caesar and Anthony may dress like Elizabethans, but in 62 THE USE OF IMAGINATION essentials they are true Romans. To me, I con fess, the reproduction of the spirit of the past, of the colouring, the flesh and blood of older generations, has a peculiar fascination, and a higher interest even than absolute historical accuracy as to facts. Here I may be treading on delicate ground. Is not absolute accuracy the first duty of the historian ? Should not the exposure of myths, the destruction of false stories, which have been handed down to us, have the first claim on our literary gratitude ? Alas ! that I should confess it, not on mine. Give me a historian who, with the faculty of realising conditions which have passed away, can paint us a general picture of a period which we wish to recall. Give me a historian who can make us feel as if the men and women of ancient times were moving in bodily shape before our eyes, surrounded by the circumstances of their own day, obedient to the standard of feeling and duty under which they were brought up, not speaking the language of to-day, not influenced by motives which were foreign to their time, THE USE OF IMAGINATION 63 and I shall feel that he is educating me more thoroughly in the science of history than if he had furnished any amount of tabulated informa- tion, any record of simple transactions, any acute analysis of individual characters. For my own part, true to this possibly heterodox creed, I love historical novels composed by a master hand, and I believe that a great multitude of readers sin in common with me. I believe that a large number of Scotchmen, ay ! and of Englishmen, have gained more real insight into the history of their country by the aid of a joyful course of Walter Scott, than by the stiffer study of learned historians, who lack the imagination without which, in my humble opinion, history cannot properly be written. I will not go so far as to say, before an audience of which erudite professors may form a part, that I have learnt as much of French history from Alexandre Dumas as I have from pro- fessional historians, but I shall not very deeply resent the charge if it should be brought against me. 64 THE USE OF IMAGINATION I have tried to convey to you what I mean by constructive imagination, and I have dealt with it thus far from the retrospective point of view, from the point of view of the efforts of authors to paint us pictures of the past. But other writers have undertaken a bolder task. From classical times downwards to the latest development of English and American romance, from Plato the philosopher, to William Morris in our own day, social reformers with literary powers and imaginative minds, have aspired to frame ideal states, ideal societies, and have employed their constructive faculty in the description of conditions removed from the ordinary experience of the times in which they lived, and of the ages of which history holds record. I will not speak now of the prophetic rhapsodies of poets, from the inspired visions of the Hebrew prophet, from Virgil ' Chanter of the Pollio glorying in the blissful years again to be, Summers of the snakeless meadow, nnlaborious earth and oarless sea ' to Tennyson, singer of the ' Golden Year,' and THE USE OF IMAGINATION 65 of the dream of progress in ' Locksley Hall.' I would invite your attention for the moment to the particular branch of literature which is devoted to the construction of Utopias, the examination of which has much attraction for me. The various accounts of Utopian com- munities, apart from their philosophic, their literary, their political interest, offer excellent materials for the study of various forms of imaginative labour. In no department of science or literature can we analyse with more advantage the various uses to which creative imagination may be put. With the celebrated Utopias of the past many of you are familiar. Plato, Sir Thomas More, Bacon, Harrington, have all exercised their imaginations in the creation of an ideal Republic, an Utopia, an Atlantis, or an Oceana, The creators of these older Utopias laid their fanciful communities in contemporary but dis- tant islands, or imagined them as having existed in their own country thousands of years ago. They described the ideals which existed in their E 66 THE USE OF IMAGINATION own minds, rather than their hopes of what, by revolutionary changes, existing societies might ultimately become. On the other hand, the latest specimens of this kind of literature deal with the future. The polities they create are laid a century or two hence. They are prophetical, they are evolutionary and revolutionary. The prophetic romance is indeed becoming a feature of the literature of to-day, but we must note that as a rule it is also propagandist romance. Imagination is pressed into the ser- vice of a zealous apostle of a particular creed. The creed may sometimes have but one article, the prophecy may be penned in illustration of a particular theory or to bring home some special professional point. Such was the case with the ' Battle of Dorking/ a fine specimen of a fore- cast in which all the conditions of an imaginary war were graphically and realistically worked out. The writer of that clever sketch has had many followers, and the prophetic brochure has become a recognised weapon in the armoury of THE USE OF IMAGINATION 67 the military, the naval, the sanitary, the muni- cipal reformer. These are efforts of imagination, but they cover but a limited area of thought. The con- ditions which are brought to notice do not involve any violent hypothesis. Different from them are the Socialist novels, which assume the entire subversion of existing institutions, and portray conditions resulting from the establish- ment of Society on what we should call a Utopian basis, though they are distinguished in many respects from the Utopia of More. Con- structive imagination has certainly been called into play in their production ; but, in most cases with which I am familiar, it has been a limited imagination, imagination harnessed to a theory and directed to work out particular results, not ordered to realise the natural effects which certain causes are likely to bring about when all conditions of the problem are taken into account. The premise of the Socialist Utopian writer is that all the evil passions by which human nature is now marred, all sin and 68 THE USE OF IMAGINATION crime, all misery and unhappiness, are due to our existing institutions ; and that if these institutions were swept away, and replaced by an ideal arrangement, under which the com- mercial system, the manufacturing system, the competitive system, with all their horrible accompaniments of money and exchange, buy- ing and selling, would no longer find a place, every man and woman would be sublimely happy, incomparably beautiful, iniperturbably virtuous, unutterably calm. Every human infirmity would disappear with the disappear- ance of money. There is but one exception one rift within the lute. William Morris admits that so long as the passion of love remains, the passion of jealousy would also survive. I have compared Morris's fanciful picture in ' News from Nowhere ' with the American Bellamy's ' Looking Backward.' There is much that is common to both of them. The leading idea of both is a Society where buying and selling have ceased, where goods are held in common, where there is no individual property THE USE OF IMAGINATION 69 and no money, and therefore no necessity for law, and no temptation to crime. In both, the underlying theory appears to be that it is the existence of our perverted social arrangements which has made men and women what they are. But in the constructive part of their work you find a fundamental difference. Bellamy paints a Society where the common stock of goods is replenished by carefully regulated labour, and distributed among the individual workers according to a minute and elaborate system, under which tickets and orders on State Stores take the whole place of individual possession. Every man, woman, and child is a part of a most complicated system, with a distinct place and function of their own. His Society represents the organisation of labour and distribution in the most complete form imaginable. Morris's system, on the other hand, is sim- plicity itself, for there is no organisation at all. Production and consumption, collection and distribution, labour and the enjoyment of the fruits of labour are to be left to adjust them- 70 THE USE OF IMAGINATION selves; and the author has an enviable con- fidence in their power to do so successfully. He assumes that production, free from all the disturbing elements of competition, free from the necessity of manufacturing articles which people do not really want, free from the draw- backs attending private enterprise and active commerce, will easily overtake consumption, and that thus supplies will be so abundant that everybody may have their fill without stint, and no human wants remain unsatisfied. Every one will love labour when he can choose freely the work which he likes, and when he is no longer compelled to work at all. The only fear which the writer feels is not that there would be a difficulty in providing food, clothing, houses, and adornments for the citizens of the rural paradise into which manufacturing Eng- land has been converted, but that all their wants would be so easily and abundantly sup- plied that there might be a deficiency of work for them to do, a deficiency of tasks to satisfy their keen appetite for labour. THE USE OF IMAGINATION 71 Though these works of fiction are in one sense clearly imaginative, it seems to me that these descriptions of the men and women, who gracefully people the re-organised world, are nevertheless lacking in imagination. The con- structive faculty has been architectural, not pictorial. The men and women are nearly all alike, alike among themselves, alike in the dif- ferent books. Naturally alike, the authors may say, because the endless diversity of existing types is due to the artificial disturbances of our form of civilisation. And yet would a true conception of the future of human beings repre- sent every member of human society as temperate, calm, passionless, industrious, and intelligent 1 ? Bellamy's Bostonians of the year 2000, are exactly like Morris's Arcadian villagers of the twenty-first century. Human nature is suppressed in both. Or is it I who am wanting in imagination? Is it I who, saturated with nineteenth-century notions, am unable to con- struct in my mind the natural results of a revolution in our existing social organism? I 72 THE USE OF IMAGINATION think not. These novelists have eliminated, discarded, dropped too much. But then they write with a purpose. I trust that none of my academic hearers have mentally quarrelled with me because I have lingered in the realms of poetry and fiction. Those who have followed me closely, and perhaps here and there have read between the lines, will have anticipated how I should apply the operations of constructive imagina- tion, as illustrated in Utopian fiction, to the sterner studies which are at present the business of your lives. The transition from such fantastic novels, from dreaming poets and speculative visions, to the hard problems of political eco- nomy, is easy and natural. At first sight, as you pore over the pages of Adam Smith, or John Stuart Mill, you may possibly think that you may let imagination lie dormant for a season. On the contrary, there is no branch of study where I would wish you to invoke it with more zeal. The want of imagination in writers and critics has, as I ventured to hint before, THE USE OF IMAGINATION 73 often led to profound misunderstandings. The present generation open such, a book as Adam Smith's ' Wealth of Nations.' They are startled at some of the doctrines ; more startled by the illustrations. They assume, accordingly, a criti- cal attitude. They cannot believe that wisdom and truth can exist in such surroundings. Call imagination to your aid. Endeavour to realise the conditions of the time in which the author lived. Study his theories, with a full under- standing of the history of those days, and you will still be charmed and edified by almost every page of his great work. And while you use your imagination in read- ing his writings, note the imaginative power, the wonderful imaginative power, which he himself exhibits. I once had the advantage of hearing a very able critic deliver an address on the ' Wealth of Nations/ ' I do not mean to say,' he declared, ' that Adam Smith had not a great command and a very great knowledge of history, of law, of philosophy, and of almost everything that can make an accomplished 74 THE USE OF IMAGINATION writer ; but he had, in addition to these, this peculiar quality the sagacity to enter into the minds of mankind ; and in dealing with the subjects with which he dealt, he had the faculty of anticipating and foreseeing what they would do under certain circumstances. This gave him the power of raising Political Economy to the dignity of a deductive science.' Lord Sher- brooke, Robert Lowe as he was then, in those words described the special quality of prospec- tive imagination. He proceeded : ' No doubt the attempt was made and a noble attempt it was by Mr. Bentham, Mr. Mill, and others to raise politics to a like eminence. They thought they could foresee what particular persons, or a particular class, would do under certain political conjunctures, and they attempted to raise a demonstrative and deductive science of politics, as Smith did a science of political economy; but I am bound to say that, as far as my own opinion goes, that effort, meritorious and great as it was, has failed, and the science of politics has still to be written.' Possibly other autho- THE USE OF IMAGINATION 75 rities may think that some of Adam Smith's predictions on political economy have shared the fate which Mr. Lowe assigned to those of Mill on politics ; but Mr. Lowe insisted on his point over and over again ; ' The test of science is pre- vision or prediction, and Adam Smith appears to me in the main to satisfy that condition.' ' I think that Adam Smith is entitled to the unique merit among all men who ever lived in this world of having founded a deductive and demonstrative science of human actions and conduct.' Yet what was one of the main bases on which Adam Smith's predictions were founded ? that every man would act according to his own interest as he understands it. This was treated by Mr. Lowe as an assumption which experience had shown to be universally true : the discovery of this law he looked on as ' unique in mental science, and entitling Adam Smith to the very- highest rank among those who have cultivated the more abstruse parts of knowledge/ Mr. Lowe could not imagine that this very law would, by many men, be held to be shaken to 76 THE USE OF IMAGINATION its very foundations in these later days ; men who would not admit with him ' that the prin- ciple and rules he had laid down have served for the guidance of mankind from Smith's time to the present, and will last as long as mankind shall seek after truth, or busy themselves with any intellectual study whatever.' Mill took a different view of the ' Wealth of Nations.' He praises Smith for what he calls his most characteristic quality, namely, that he invariably associates principles with their appli- cations. But he proceeds to say that the * Wealth of Nations ' is in many parts obsolete, and in all imperfect. Mill explains that he him- self is undertaking a work similar in its object and general conception to that of Adam Smith, but adapted to the more extended knowledge and improved ideas of the present age. ' No attempt,' he considered, ' had been made, since Adam Smith wrote, to combine his prac- tical mode of treating his subject with the in- creased knowledge since acquired of its theory ; or to exhibit the economical phenomena of THE USE OF IMAGINATION 77 society in the relation in which they stand to the best social ideas of the present time, as he did with such admirable success in reference to the philosophy of his century.' I object strongly to the use by Mill of the word ' obsolete/ in relation to the ' Wealth of Nations.' If Adam Smith is considered obso- lete, who knows whether Mill's great work itself may not before long be considered obsolete too ? Indeed, I have heard it whispered that that heresy has already been hateihed. Yes, that work would be obsolete to those who lack the faculty which I am urging you to bring to bear on all your studies. To those who make no attempt to reconstruct the past, to those to whom present conditions alone seem plausible, who cannot imagine how any other order of things can have existed before, or be likely to exist in the future, works which deal with con- temporary illustrations will alone be instructive and profitable. But for educational purposes, surely the progressive series of attempts to explain theories and principles by the pheno- 78 THE USE OF IMAGINATION mena of successive generations, is of more value than the study of such principles judged and tested by the phenomena of our own day alone. Your task in your studies is to re-vivify the apparently obsolete, and to realise to yourselves, if you can, the illustrations which are taken from a different age. A young economist has well expressed the system of investigation which accords with my contention that economic theo- ries must be judged and studied in relation to the times when they were evolved. Mr. Ashley says in his preface to ' Economic History ' : ' 1. Political Economy is not a body of abso- lutely true doctrines, revealed to the world at the end of the last and the beginning of the present century, but a number of more or less valuable theories and generalisations. * 2. Just as the history of Society, in spite of apparent retrogressions, reveals an ordinary development ; so there has been an orderly development in the history of what men have thought, and therefore in what they have thought concerning the economic side of life. THE USE OF IMAGINATION 79 ' 3. As modern economists have taken for their assumptions conditions which only in mod- ern times have begun to exist ; so earlier econo- mic theories were based, consciously or uncon- sciously, on conditions then present. Hence the theories of the past must be judged in relation to the facts of the past and not in relation to those of the present. ' 4. Modern economic theories are not univer- sally true. They are true neither for the past, when the conditions they postulate did not exist, nor for the future when, unless Society becomes stationary, the conditions will have changed.' Mill calls the ' Wealth of Nations ' obsolete. I had forgotten it ; but curiously enough it was while taking a holiday turn at Mill that the idea struck me how interesting a topic would be found in an examination of old theories tested by new conditions. The world moves fast ; and much has happened since Mill wrote which, to a dull understanding, might impair the value of some of his generalisations, and of many of his illustra- tions. His own imagination is often admirable. 80 THE USE OF IMAGINATION His power of realising other conditions than those under which he wrote seems to me most striking. But, nevertheless, the student of to- day will find much that in his haste he might think obsolete. Who could foresee forty years ago the attitude of our Australian Colonies on such a question as emigration ? Economists had in their minds the necessary welcome which young communities would give to the spare labour of the older hemisphere. The unwillingness of the working- classes in the Antipodes to allow the introduction of competing hands, seems now a matter of course. And, here in the old world, such has been the revulsion of feeling on ques- tions of labour, such have been the changes in public opinion as to fundamental points in our social organism, that the student of to-day, brought up in a new atmosphere and fed on new principles, will open his eyes with wonder at what writers of an earlier period described as absolute unvarying laws. The assertion of altru- ism, as an equally existent force with egoism, casts so changed a light over the study of THE USE OF IMAGINATION 81 Economics, that before long a sustained effort of reconstructive imagination may become re- quisite before the key to past writings will be found. I have shown you the capital necessity for the use of imagination in a science certainly not classified habitually as imaginative. Let me now examine the need for its presence in another region where you would least expect to find it ; I mean, in the sphere of the exact sciences. I must leave any detailed development of this part of my subject to those whose special studies qualify them to speak with authority upon it, but I hope that men of science and mathemati- cians will forgive me if I trespass for a moment upon their domain. Mathematics may seem at first sight to deal entirely with fact fact of the barest and least imaginative kind. What place has imagination, my hearers may say, in the multiplication table, or in a proposition of Euclid ? I would reply, that the whole study of geometry is an imaginative study. The lines with which geometry deals are not the imperfect F 82 THE USE OF IMAGINATION lines which are drawn upon the paper or slate, but the ideal lines which have length without breadth, and which, therefore, can exist only in the imagination. No man has ever seen or ever will see a circle or a square which complies with the definition of a circle or a square. The thing defined exists only in the imagination, and every proposition in geometry involves the exercise of that faculty. This use of the imaginative faculty is so much a part of our normal habits of thought, that we scarcely realise that our imagination is at work at all. But with some of the higher forms of mathematics it is far otherwise. You may re- member that a few years ago Professor Cayley, as President of the British Association, revealed to the world, so far as the world was capable of understanding them, some of the mysteries of space. I admit that my own imagination is bounded by the three Dimensions of space in which we live and move, and which fashion the mental conceptions of most of us. I have, there- fore, the greater admiration for the effort of THE USE OF IMAGINATION 83 mind which enables mathematicians, such as Professor Cayley, to transcend those conditions, and to form an imaginative conception of space of 4 or 5 or n dimensions, and for the science which enables them to ascertain, with absolute precision, the laws and conditions which would prevail in an imaginary universe. In those abstruse branches, too, of mathemati- cal or physical science which deal with the pro- blems of the ultimate constitution of matter, and of the nature and modus operandi of the forces which act upon it, it will hardly be denied that imagination is a powerful and even a neces- sary implement. When I think of your fellow- countryman, Sir William Thomson, engaged on atoms and molecules, piercing the secrets of the smallest entities, brooding over the mystic dance of ethereal vortices, while his magic wand summons elemental forces to reveal the nature of their powers to his scientific gaze, I forget the disciplined accuracy of the man of science, while lost in wonder at the imaginative inspira- tion of the poet. 84 THE USE OF IMAGINATION Few of you can hope to reach such eminence as his. Few, perhaps, can expect even to move upon the same plane of scientific inquiry. But in all physical research, I am convinced that no powerful instrument, no lens, no microscope is more essential to your equipment than a true imaginative mind. For the connexion between poetry and science I have the high authority of a great poet. Tennyson deeply felt the imaginative grandeur of science. Let him speak himself : What be those two shapes high over the sacred fountain, Taller than all the Muses, and huger than all the mountain ? * -3C- * * These are Astronomy and Geology, terrible Muses ! Muses ! yes. Not music alone, nor poetry, nor simply creative art, but the colossal forms of Astronomy and Geology are ranged by the side of the graceful goddesses, and dwell on the height of Parnassus beside the sacred fountain of imaginative inspiration. What shall I say of other sciences ? If I were to speak of them at length, I should pass THE USE OF IMAGINATION 85 the limits of your patience ; but few of them would be found able to dispense with imagina- tion. I have spoken metaphorically of imagina- tion clothing the skeleton of the past with flesh and blood ; but the Palaeontologist does more than this, not in metaphor, but in reality. It is his task, not from a whole skeleton, but, it may be, from a single bone, to re-create in imagination the extinct animal of myriads of years ago, and to tell us of his form and gait, of his habits and manner of life. But it is not in your studies alone that I urge upon you the exercise of this illuminating and stimulating faculty. When you go forth into the world, armed with the intellectual instruments which you have forged and sharpened during your University career, with your minds stored with acquired knowledge, and equipped with all the capacities for future accumulation, do not think that you can afford to discontinue its use. Its vigorous employment will check that intolerance which sometimes springs from the premature dogmatism of confident youth, 86 THE USE OF IMAGINATION sometimes from the fanaticism of its too enthusiastic beliefs. Intolerance and fanaticism can more satisfactorily be restrained by that wholesome imagination which vividly realises the thoughts and feelings of other men, than by that infusion of scepticism, which is one of the most pernicious drugs of the age. Let intolerance, which is the child of absolute personal conviction, be not simply checked by undermining that conviction through the nega- tion of the existence of positive truth, but let it be softened by the habit of studying and realising to ourselves the counter-theories of men who think differently from us. Again, there is something worse than intoler- ance, cruelty. Conduct which assumes various forms of cruelty may be due not simply to innate perversity or to a corrupt nature, but to an utter incapacity to understand feelings or conditions which are different from our own. The antidote is such a resolute effort of constructive imagination, as will vividly realise the effect of pain on organisations perhaps more delicate than THE USE OF IMAGINATION 87 those of which we have experience. Imagina- tion which enters into the feelings of others will increase the happiness of social life, will prevent a thousand asperities, will surround its possessor with that sympathy which he himself will exhale. You are going forth to various vocations, bearing with you varying ambitions and divers sorts of gifts. Some will become ministers of the Church, others physicians, others lawyers, others professors, teachers, authors, investigators all of you citizens and men. Apply, I entreat you, the general purport of what I have said each to your individual case. Future ministers of religion, what will the use of imagination be to you ? It will be the secret of your power over others, the spell by which you will win your way into the hearts of your flock. What will it avail you to thunder words from the pulpit which will strike the minds of your hearers, only to rebound from them, and will fail to gain an entrance through those intricate channels which a sympathetic imagination alone 88 THE USE OF IMAGINATION can map out for your guidance ? To you, above all, the power of realising the thoughts and feelings of others is the highest gift you can possess, the best faculty you can cultivate. Doubtless many among you look forward to a scholastic career. You will become school- masters, professors, teachers of various branches of knowledge to various classes. If, in entering upon your duties, you do not vigorously apply your imaginative faculties, you will be no better than mere machines, pouring out know- ledge but not pouring it in. How much talent, how much research, how much splendid work has been wasted, because it is carelessly poured over the side of the vessel which it was intended to fill ? No depth of learning, no fluency of speech will rescue the teacher from much barren work, if he lacks the capacity to place himself in touch with those whom he desires to instruct. And how can that magic bond be established except by the power to understand and feel that to which imagination must be our guide ? Do you think that experience will act as a substi- tute ? Scarcely ; though doubtless it renders THE USE OF IMAGINATION 89 invaluable help. But so infinite are the diversi- ties of the human organism, that the necessity for sympathetic insight can never be replaced. That is the one side, but do not forget the other. You must not only have this sympathetic in- sight yourselves, but you must aim at rousing the imaginations of your pupils ; and that, not only because, as I have endeavoured to show to-day, it is a faculty which will be of the highest value to them in study and in life, but also because it is through the imagination of the pupil that you may bring interest and fascina- tion into the weary round of tasks. How infinitely dull is geography as a study of names and numbers and outlines ; how thrilling when on the wings of imagination the learner is transported to the splendour and gloom of tropical forests, or to the palms and temples of the South ! But I resist the temptation to expand this topic, lest I should be led to stray from my theme of to-day, which is the uses to which imagination may be put, into the kindred theme of its cultivation, the subject of a former address. 90 THE USE OF IMAGINATION I need not follow out the application of my theories to all the professions which you are likely to enter. I must leave something to your imaginations. Let me simply declare that I cannot conceive the vocation, however simple, however humdrum, however tied down to the dullest prose of life, which does not afford ample scope for the exercise of that bright faculty, on the virtues of which I hope that you will not think that I have dilated with undue enthusiasm. Still, I cannot part from my sub- ject, or from you, without having said some- thing on its special use to every one of you as citizens and men. In these days none of you can escape from some responsibility in helping to shape the destinies of your country, and in influencing that current of changes in our social system which is sweeping along with a quick- ening course. Large issues of state policy or of social economy will, soon after the student is metamorphosed into the voter, be submitted to you in the discharge of your duties as citizens. On these questions above all exercise your faculty of transporting yourselves mentally to THE USE OF IMAGINATION 91 the point of view of your opponents ; on these questions above all bring a trained prospective imagination to bear. In the conflicts of classes, in the struggles of parties, the habit and the power of realising the standpoint of both sides is scarcely less important for the success of any cause of which you may be the champions, than the firm belief in the truth of your own convic- tions. And, with regard to questions of State, let your minds not "concentrate themselves too much on the circumstances of the moment. Carry them forward to the future. Endeavour mentally to realise the conditions under which the changes submitted to your judgment will have to work themselves out. I admit the extreme complexity of the task. Who can foresee with any degree of regulated accuracy the play even of the simpler forces of Nature under the slightest change of conditions ? The slaughter of insignificant animals, a check to the activity of the tiniest carriers of Nature's fertilising dusts, may have a far-reaching effect on the produce of vast areas of cultivated soil. 92 THE USE OF IMAGINATION Do you remember an instance of a very curious character which was adduced by Darwin ? The fertilisation of plants can in some cases only be effected by a particular species of insect. Bumble-bees are necessary in order to enable red clover to produce seed. Field-mice are the foes of bumble-bees, and destroy their nests underneath the ground. Cats are the enemies of field-mice, and thus, if cats should be deci- mated, either in consequence of penal taxation, often pressed upon the Chancellor of the Ex- chequer, or by any other scourge, there would be such an increase in the number of field-mice that bumble-bees would be exterminated, and fields of clover would lie in barren hopelessness, unable to produce a future crop. Or, again, are you acquainted with the result of the well- meant but ill-considered introduction of the rabbit to our Australian Colonies ? The gift became a curse under the changed conditions of animal and vegetable and human life at the Antipodes, and no parallel to a Hares and Rabbits Bill would serve to keep down the terrible pest. So again, in the vegetable world, THE USE OF IMAGINATION 93 the consequences of a single act can often not be gauged except Vy imaginative foresight. The man who carried watercresses to New Zea- land had not read ' Jack and the Bean-stalk.' Wallace tells us how this humble and tasty weed, transplanted to its new home, sheds its appetising qualities, and, growing with rampant vigour under changed conditions of climate and soil, forms stems twelve feet long, and blocks mighty rivers, 1 instead of filling the baskets of the industrious hawker. And if the fates of the lower animals, and of flowers and plants, with their simpler organisms acting under simpler laws, present such astounding and unexpected changes when transferred to new conditions ; if it is difficult to discern the end of the chain of causation which is set in motion by some ap- parently simple and self-contained change, what forethought, what careful prospective imagina- tion, what effort to realise future possibilities 1 Since the delivery of this address, the accuracy of Wallace's description of watercresses in New Zealand has been denied, so far as the ' blocking mighty rivers ' is concerned. Travellers cannot discover the phenomenon, but the extraordinary rapidity and luxuriance with which the plants spread are admitted. 94 THE USE OF IMAGINATION must we not summon to our aid, when we have to deal with complex, incalculable, powerful man man swayed by a thousand diversities of motive, man whose passionate organism science can scarcely classify, man who is master not only of his own fate, but of numberless forces of nature ! Nay, more ; if the probable action of a single man under changed conditions is a problem of the most complex kind, what shall we say of the complexity of the problem when we have to deal with men in the mass ? Yet problems dealing with men in the mass will inevitably be submitted to your judgment as citizens. You will not be able to serve them by the easy processes of the Utopian novelist. You will not be able, like them, to eliminate all human passions. Passions will not have been suppressed in your time. It will not be safe to rest the laws which you may be called on to enact, on the assumption of supernatural and unattainable goodness. Progress, we hope and know there will be ; but human infirmities will not have disappeared in your generation. You will still be bound to remember the teachings THE USE OF IMAGINATION 95 of Nature, and to reckon with a natural, though most complex, sequence of causes and effects. Let us put away from our thoughts present controversies, which, before the students of to- day enter the polling-booth as responsible house- holders, may possibly have been settled one way or another. Think of questions which the future may bring forth. I submit simply two or three illustrations ; your own ingenuity will suggest many others. Fancy a question as to trans- planting the sober growth of some British institution, the product of this temperate zone, to some tropical clime, to some more forcing soil. Remember the watercresses. Let your imagination realise in time how changes in con- ditions modify and falsify expected results. Or, fancy problems affecting the relations of some parts of the community to others. Fancy pro- posals by which the extermination or the para- lysis of some genus or species of the human social family might be brought about. Re- member the sudden barrenness of the field of clover, the result of suppression of the carriers of Nature's fertilising dusts. 96 THE USE OF IMAGINATION Questions of labour will be always with you, however the controversies of the day may end. Bear in mind the serious consequences which may ensue by the wellbeing of the vast organis- ation on which the prosperity of the people rests, by any miscalculation of the effects re- sulting from the neglect of some apparently insignificant cause. On all such issues, ay, and on all the problems which a governing people such as ours has to solve, the faculty of imaginative foresight will be your most faithful guide. You will not neglect the lessons of historical experience, but you will test those lessons and correct them, and amplify them, by the exercise of what I ask you to consider as one of the most precious faculties which Provi- dence has implanted in the human breast the faculty of wise, sympathetic, disciplined pro- spective imagination. THE END Edinburgh : T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty. /% /-\ " "'' 'I'l II University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 Box 951388 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed.