power of invention or imitation it can be understood. It is wrong however to apply it to deception, for a person must first be acted upon before his imagination can produce a phenomenon, otherwise it would apply equally to all operators, but to apply it to one phenomenon and not to another of the same kind is not right. I tell you a lie and you believe it, immediately your inventive power or imagination commences to create that which I have said. I explain the operation of a machine to you and your inventive power immediately creates it according as you understand it. This is imagination. In the first instance the world says your imagination has deceived you and there is nothing in it, but in the latter case you are right. This is a misuse of the word and you suffer from it. This power of forming ideas called imagination is one of the highest elements in the human mind, and it is the foundation of all true discovery. Yet like all scientific facts it is abused and misrepresented.
To give you a clearer idea of the misuse of this word I will illustrate it by a religious belief. Church members never use the word imagination in speaking of their belief and their religion. Do they mean to say that they believe without creating the image of their belief? If so then what they call the power that understands is really the power of imagination. The fact is that religious beliefs are founded in deception and the leaders deceive the people into them. At the same time outsiders are sceptical and apply the words “imagination” and “superstition” in derision. Every person wishing to deceive the masses calls everything imagination that does not coincide with his belief. The medical faculty have assumed to themselves the power of creating by imagination every idea based on wisdom. All ideas opposed to them are said to be false, and they say that the imagination that creates these ideas is a disgrace, and belongs to ignorance and superstition.
A physician, for instance, may tell you the most absurd falsehood that his imagination can invent, but it is “true” because it has the sanction of the faculty. If you believe him you use the power which if rightly applied is one of the best of faculties for the purpose of creating a disease which you have taken for a truth. There is no dispute or controversy about that. But if some outsider should deceive you
