[The Imagination: its Functions and its Culture, p.1-42]
p.2 To inquire into what God has made is the main function of the imagination.
It is aroused by facts, is nourished by facts, seeks for higher and yet higher laws in those facts; but refuses
to regard science as the sole interpreter of nature, or the laws of science as the only region of discovery.
p.2 The word itself [imagination] means an imaging or a making of likenesses. The imagination
is that faculty which gives form to thought - not necessarily uttered form, but form capable of being uttered in
shape or sound, or in any mode upon which the senses can lay hold. It is, therefore, that faculty in man which is likest to
the prime operation of the power of God, and has, therefore, been called the creative faculty, and its exercise creation.
p.5 For what are the forms by means of which a man may reveal his thoughts? ... The man has but
to light the lamp within the form: his imagination is the light, it is not the form. Straightway the shining thought makes
the form visible, and becomes itself visible through the form.
p.6-7 the human imagination... does put thought into form... we must expect to find it
operative in every sphere of human activity. Such is, indeed, the fact, and that to a far greater extent than is commonly
supposed.
p.11 There were no imagination without intellect... in finding out the works of God [JLJ - the main function
of the imagination in MacDonald's philosophy, from page 2], the Intellect must labour, workman-like, under the direction
of the architect, Imagination. [JLJ - perhaps this implies that our search efforts in problem solving are steered
by our imagination. For a machine playing a game, we would need to find an equivalent for imagination. ]
p.12 "But the facts of Nature are to be discovered only by observation and experiment." True. But how does
the man of science come to think of his experiments? Does observation reach to the non-present, the possible, the
yet unconceived? ... will observation reveal to you the experiments which might be made?
p.12 It is the far-seeing imagination which beholds what might be a form of things, and says to
the intellect: "Try whether that may not be the form of these things;" which beholds or invents a harmonious
relation of parts and operations, and sends the intellect to find out whether that be not the harmonious relation
of them - that is, the law of the phenomenon it contemplates.
p.13 Lord Bacon tells us that a prudent question is the half of knowledge [JLJ - the actual quote from Bacon:
"A prudent question is one-half of wisdom." ]. Whence comes this prudent question? we repeat. And we answer, From the imagination.
It is the imagination that suggests in what direction to make the new inquiry - which, should it cast no
immediate light on the answer sought, can yet hardly fail to be a step towards final discovery... Every experiment
has its origin in hypothesis; without the scaffolding of hypothesis, the house of science could never arise. And
the construction of any hypothesis whatever is the work of the imagination. The man who cannot invent will
never discover. The imagination often gets a glimpse of the law itself long before it is or can be ascertained
to be a law.
p.14 The region belonging to the pure intellect is straitened: the imagination labours to extend
its territories, to give it room. She sweeps across the boarders, searching out new lands into which she may guide
her plodding brother. The imagination is the light which redeems from the darkness for the eyes of the understanding. Novalis
says, "The imagination is the stuff of the intellect" -affords, that is, the material upon which the intellect works.
p.15 Coleridge says that no one but a poet will make any further great discoveries in mathematics;
and Bacon says that "wonder," that faculty of the mind especially attendant on the child-like imagination, "is the seed of
knowledge." The influence of the poetic upon the scientific imagination is, for instance, especially present in the
construction of an invisible whole from the hints afforded by a visible part; where the needs of the part, its uselessness,
its broken relations, are the only guides to a multiplex harmony, completeness, and end, which is the whole.
p.16 to perceive the vital motions... to construct from a succession of broken indications
a whole accordant with human nature; to approach a scheme of the forces at work... to illuminate all... this is the
province of the imagination.
p.17 It is the forces at work in time that produce all the changes; and they are history.
p.26 It is more imagination we need.
p.28 Indeed it [imagination] must, in most things, work after some fashion, filling the gaps after some
possible plan, before action can even begin.
p.28 In very truth, a wise imagination... is the best guide that man or woman can have; for
it is not the things we see the most clearly that influence us the most powerfully; undefined, yet vivid
visions of something beyond, something which eye has not seen nor ear heard, have far more influence than any logical sequences
whereby the same things may be demonstrated to the intellect. It is the nature of the thing, not the clearness
of its outline, that determines its operation.
p.30 Seek not that your sons and daughters should not see visions, should not dream dreams; seek that they
should see true visions, that they should dream noble dreams. Such out-going of the imagination is one with aspiration
p.36 But if we speak of direct means for the culture of the imagination, the whole is comprised in two words
- food and exercise... Feed your imagination with food convenient for it, and exercise it, not in the contortions
of the acrobat, but in the movements of the gymnast.
p.37-38 the best beginning, especially if the child be young, is an acquaintance with nature... where this
association with nature is but occasionally possible, recourse must be had to literature... the best must be set before the
learner... the finest products of the imagination are of the best nourishment for the beginnings of that imagination... the
teacher... must seek to show excellence rather than talk about it, giving the thing itself, that it may grow into
the mind, and not a eulogy of his own upon the thing
p.40 Speaking of true learning, Lord Bacon says: "It taketh away vain admiration of anything, which
is the root of all weakness."
[A Sketch of Individual Development, 1880, p.43-76]
p.43-44 with regard to our past as well as our future, imagination and faith must step into the
place vacated of knowledge... Looking back we can but dream, looking forward we lose ourselves in speculation; but
we may both speculate and dream, for all speculation is not false, and all dreaming is not of the unreal.
[The History and Heroes of Medicine, p.236-244]
p.243 The need of man, in physics as well as in higher things, is the guide to truth.
