Such a defect means obtuseness in manners and morals,
sterility in arts and science, blundering in the general conduct of life.
Children are often accused of having too much imagination, but in reality
that is hardly possible. The imagination may run riot, and, growing by
what it feeds upon, come dangerously near to untruthfulness,--the store of
facts may have been too small. But the remedy is not to cripple or kill
the imagination; it is rather to provide the needed equipment of facts and
to train the imagination to work within the limits of truth and
probability. The unimaginative man is exceedingly dull company. From the
moment he opens his eyes in the morning until he closes them at night, he
is prone to the sins of both omission and commission. No matter how good
his intentions, he constantly offends. No matter how great his industry,
he fails to attain. One can trace many immoralities, from slight breaches
of manners to grave criminal offenses, to a simple lack of imagination.
The offender failed to see,--he was, to all intents and purposes, blind.
At its best, imagination is insight. It is the direct source of most of
our social amenities, of toleration, charity, consideration,--in a word,
of all those social virtues which distinguish the child of light." Another
fertile writer says: "Many a child has been driven with a soul-wound into
corroding silence by parents who thought they were punishing falsehood
when they were in reality repressing the imagination--the faculty which
master-artists denote as the first and loveliest possession of the
creative mind."

Some of our boys will be farmers but, if they lack imagination, they will
be dull fellows, at the very best, and, relatively speaking, not far above
the horse that draws the plow. The girls will be able to talk, but if they
lack imagination they can never become conversationalists. The person who
has imagination can cause the facts of the multiplication table to
scintillate and glow. The person who lacks imagination is unable to invest
with interest and charm even the mountain, the river, the landscape, or
the poem. The gossip, the scandal-monger, or the coarse jester proves his
lack of imagination and his consequent inability to hold his own in real
conversation. We hope, of course, that some of our pupils may become
inventors, but this will be impossible unless they possess imagination. A
sociologist states the case in this fashion: "Wealth, the transient, is