Part 1 (1/2)
A Dish Of Orts.
by George MacDonald.
PREFACE.
Since printing throughout the t.i.tle _Orts_, a doubt has arisen in my mind as to its fitting the nature of the volume. It could hardly, however, be imagined that I a.s.sociate the idea of _worthlessness_ with the work contained in it. No one would insult his readers by offering them what he counted valueless sc.r.a.ps, and telling them they were such.
These papers, those two even which were caught in the net of the ready-writer from extempore utterance, whatever their merits in themselves; are the results of by no means trifling labour. So much a man _ought_ to be able to say for his work. And hence I might defend, if not quite justify my t.i.tle--for they are but fragmentary presentments of larger meditation. My friends at least will accept them as such, whether they like their collective t.i.tle or not.
The t.i.tle of the last is not quite suitable. It is that of the religious newspaper which reported the sermon. I noted the fact too late for correction. It ought to be _True Greatness_.
The paper on _The Fantastic Imagination_ had its origin in the repeated request of readers for an explanation of things in certain shorter stories I had written. It forms the preface to an American edition of my so-called Fairy Tales.
GEORGE MACDONALD.
EDENBRIDGE, KENT. _August 5, 1893._
THE IMAGINATION: ITS FUNCTIONS AND ITS CULTURE.
[Footnote: 1867.]
There are in whose notion education would seem to consist in the production of a certain repose through the development of this and that faculty, and the depression, if not eradication, of this and that other faculty. But if mere repose were the end in view, an unsparing depression of all the faculties would be the surest means of approaching it, provided always the animal instincts could be depressed likewise, or, better still, kept in a state of constant repletion. Happily, however, for the human race, it possesses in the pa.s.sion of hunger even, a more immediate saviour than in the wisest selection and treatment of its faculties. For repose is not the end of education; its end is a n.o.ble unrest, an ever renewed awaking from the dead, a ceaseless questioning of the past for the interpretation of the future, an urging on of the motions of life, which had better far be accelerated into fever, than r.e.t.a.r.ded into lethargy.
By those who consider a balanced repose the end of culture, the imagination must necessarily be regarded as the one faculty before all others to be suppressed. ”Are there not facts?” say they. ”Why forsake them for fancies? Is there not that which, may be _known_? Why forsake it for inventions? What G.o.d hath made, into that let man inquire.”
We answer: To inquire into what G.o.d 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.
We must begin with a definition of the word _imagination_, or rather some description of the faculty to which we give the name.
The word itself 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 in 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 G.o.d, and has, therefore, been called the _creative_ faculty, and its exercise _creation_. _Poet_ means _maker_. We must not forget, however, that between creator and poet lies the one unpa.s.sable gulf which distinguishes--far be it from us to say _divides_--all that is G.o.d's from all that is man's; a gulf teeming with infinite revelations, but a gulf over which no man can pa.s.s to find out G.o.d, although G.o.d needs not to pa.s.s over it to find man; the gulf between that which calls, and that which is thus called into being; between that which makes in its own image and that which is made in that image. It is better to keep the word _creation_ for that calling out of nothing which is the imagination of G.o.d; except it be as an occasional symbolic expression, whose daring is fully recognized, of the likeness of man's work to the work of his maker. The necessary unlikeness between the creator and the created holds within it the equally necessary likeness of the thing made to him who makes it, and so of the work of the made to the work of the maker.
When therefore, refusing to employ the word _creation_ of the work of man, we yet use the word _imagination_ of the work of G.o.d, we cannot be said to dare at all. It is only to give the name of man's faculty to that power after which and by which it was fas.h.i.+oned. The imagination of man is made in the image of the imagination of G.o.d. Everything of man must have been of G.o.d first; and it will help much towards our understanding of the imagination and its functions in man if we first succeed in regarding aright the imagination of G.o.d, in which the imagination of man lives and moves and has its being.
As to _what_ thought is in the mind of G.o.d ere it takes form, or what the form is to him ere he utters it; in a word, what the consciousness of G.o.d is in either case, all we can say is, that our consciousness in the resembling conditions must, afar off, resemble his. But when we come to consider the acts embodying the Divine thought (if indeed thought and act be not with him one and the same), then we enter a region of large difference. We discover at once, for instance, that where a man would make a machine, or a picture, or a book, G.o.d makes the man that makes the book, or the picture, or the machine. Would G.o.d give us a drama? He makes a Shakespere. Or would he construct a drama more immediately his own? He begins with the building of the stage itself, and that stage is a world--a universe of worlds. He makes the actors, and they do not act,--they _are_ their part. He utters them into the visible to work out their life--his drama. When he would have an epic, he sends a thinking hero into his drama, and the epic is the soliloquy of his Hamlet.
Instead of writing his lyrics, he sets his birds and his maidens a-singing. All the processes of the ages are G.o.d's science; all the flow of history is his poetry. His sculpture is not in marble, but in living and speech-giving forms, which pa.s.s away, not to yield place to those that come after, but to be perfected in a n.o.bler studio. What he has done remains, although it vanishes; and he never either forgets what he has once done, or does it even once again. As the thoughts move in the mind of a man, so move the worlds of men and women in the mind of G.o.d, and make no confusion there, for there they had their birth, the offspring of his imagination. Man is but a thought of G.o.d.
If we now consider the so-called creative faculty in man, we shall find that in no _primary_ sense is this faculty creative. Indeed, a man is rather _being thought_ than _thinking_, when a new thought arises in his mind. He knew it not till he found it there, therefore he could not even have sent for it. He did not create it, else how could it be the surprise that it was when it arose? He may, indeed, in rare instances foresee that something is coming, and make ready the place for its birth; but that is the utmost relation of consciousness and will he can bear to the dawning idea. Leaving this aside, however, and turning to the _embodiment_ or revelation of thought, we shall find that a man no more _creates_ the forms by which he would reveal his thoughts, than he creates those thoughts themselves.
For what are the forms by means of which a man may reveal his thoughts?
Are they not those of nature? But although he is created in the closest sympathy with these forms, yet even these forms are not born in his mind. What springs there is the perception that this or that form is already an expression of this or that phase of thought or of feeling.
For the world around him is an outward figuration of the condition of his mind; an inexhaustible storehouse of forms whence he may choose exponents--the crystal pitchers that shall protect his thought and not need to be broken that the light may break forth. The meanings are in those forms already, else they could be no garment of unveiling. G.o.d has made the world that it should thus serve his creature, developing in the service that imagination whose necessity it meets. The man has but to light the lamp within the form: his imagination is the light, it is not the form. Straightway the s.h.i.+ning thought makes the form visible, and becomes itself visible through the form. [Footnote: We would not be understood to say that the man works consciously even in this.
Oftentimes, if not always, the vision arises in the mind, thought and form together.]
In ill.u.s.tration of what we mean, take a pa.s.sage from the poet Sh.e.l.ley.
In his poem _Adonais_, written upon the death of Keats, representing death as the revealer of secrets, he says:--
”The one remains; the many change and pa.s.s; Heaven's light for ever s.h.i.+nes; earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many coloured gla.s.s, Stains the white radiance of eternity, Until death tramples it to fragments.”
This is a new embodiment, certainly, whence he who gains not, for the moment at least, a loftier feeling of death, must be dull either of heart or of understanding. But has Sh.e.l.ley created this figure, or only put together its parts according to the harmony of truths already embodied in each of the parts? For first he takes the inventions of his fellow-men, in gla.s.s, in colour, in dome: with these he represents life as finite though elevated, and as an a.n.a.lysis although a lovely one.
Next he presents eternity as the dome of the sky above this dome of coloured gla.s.s--the sky having ever been regarded as the true symbol of eternity. This portion of the figure he enriches by the attribution of whiteness, or unity and radiance. And last, he shows us Death as the destroying revealer, walking aloft through, the upper region, treading out this life-bubble of colours, that the man may look beyond it and behold the true, the uncoloured, the all-coloured.