profane, may yet be permitted to kiss the hem of a seamless garment. Oh, the searching, the far-reaching insight of the epigram, "If there be no God, man must invent one!" Invention, conception, imagination, creation, are synonymous, and in one sense convertible terms.[1]
The pleasures of the imagination—if so slight an expression may hint at a meaning, the fullness of which is rapture or transport—are manifold, and too manifest to require subtilty of discrimination for their recognition and explanation. These are among the things of blessed memory, of blissful hope, and among those the reality and universality of which are confirmed by all experience. Even those who cuddle the bantlings of their fancy, in the fond delusion that they nurture the offspring of the fertile mother, feel somewhat of the charm indescribable. What, then, the serenity, what the majestic repose, of the creators of thought after their labor, we may only faintly imagine.
What of the pangs and penalties now—what of the price to be paid for this power? To bring forth in travail was not the sentence of one-half the human race alone. There have been those, indeed, like Raphael, who have wrought the miracles of imagination in the sunshine of the heart, to sweet music of the soul; but oh, so few escape the throes of thought-birth! Physiologists tell us of a certain mental process they call "unconscious cerebration." The operation of the imagination unconscious of labor is better known by another name—inspiration; its expression is revelation; its mouth-piece the seer. But rare clay, and only the finest, incases such spirits; men must work in the storm, in sorrow and suffering, each to his measure of creative ability. Let us never forget, in the terrible struggle for expression, that it is given to lips which press the sword of pain to speak to fellow-men the words "Go thou up higher!"
I crave your indulgence for one other thought. Authority and responsibility go hand-in-hand with equal pace. The measure of creative ability is the measure of accountability for its exercise, and the measure of the penalty which perversion of the godlike faculty entails. Like every other energy in Nature, the imagination is equally potent for good and for evil. Let the bravest man tell me he never shudders when he looks within, at the possibilities there disclosed. There is power to make this earth seem nearer heaven or hell. Whose rebellious imagination conceived it were better to reign below than to serve above? Sound is as full of discord as of harmony. Light may blind us, or guide us on our way. Heat constructs and heat destroys. The dual nature of every force wars with its opposite. The imagination is equally potent to sanctify and to pollute. Guard, then, this gift with fear and trembling; great issues depend upon this most powerful, most perilous, and most precious endowment of the intellect. Not like the victor in history need we sigh for other
- ↑ "In seinen Göttern malet sich der Mensch."—Goethe.
