Albion College - Albionian Yearbook (Albion, MI)

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It is by the imaginative, sympathetic study of foreign languages that we learn to grasp the full imagery of the Bible, not only through Hebrew and Greek but 'through as many languages as possible, the different versions being not infrequently the best commentaries. As children, our imagination is cultivated by the study of languages, in the little legends and tales our mothers read and tell to usg and later in life as students, our imagination carries us farther, and we are permitted to live with the Muses on Parnassus, with Ulysses in his wanderings, with Dante in his circles of the World to come, with Goethe in the wonderful career of Faust, with Shakespeare in his unsurpassed world of dramas. Withoiit going beyond the sphere of languages proper-for language is the vehicle of thought-let me close my illustrations. HENRY BENNER, Ph, D. O MANY who think the subject of mathematics an exceedingly uninteresting study, it may be a matter of great surprise to know that the imagination is an important faculty in the successful prosecution of the subiect. Bothbthe represen- tative and creative imagination play an important part in elementary as well as in advanced inaihematics, The most elementary processes in arithmetic furnish abundant means for cultivating this faculty. The child learns the fundamental operations by means of objects. It is, however, impossible to employ these all the time and then the imagination can be used and consequently cultivated. In the solution of problems in arithmetic and algebra the teacher frequently finds it necessary to aid the imagination by drawings and other devices so that the facts may be properly kept before the mind. And vet even with all these aids inaccurate conclusions are often drawn simply because the mind has been unable to hold before itself all the details of the problem proposed for solution. More urgent yet is the need of this faculty in the discussion of problems to see iust what effect variations in data and conditions have upon the final form of the result. - ' Perhaps in no other branch of mathematics is the imagination so much needed as in geometry. Ulmagination is only second to reason in the right study of geometry. We all know how much trouble some propositions in solid geometry make because the pupil cannot see the figure as he ought to see it. And what is true in elementary solid geometry is true to a still greater degree in descriptive geometry and in all advanced geometry. Geometry and algebra aid each other in discovering truths, and an examination of mathematical models made to illustrate higher geometric forms will convince any one that the power of imagination needed to study the subject is more than ordinary. The achievements and predictions of astronomy are marvelous, but to make them or eniov them we need both mathe- matics and imagination. Not in poetry alone but in applied mathematics also does imagination bodv forth the forms of things unknown and give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. ' R. CLYDE FoRD, Ph. M. MAGINATION is an element of aesthetic tone, and involves appreciation which is the n1easu1-Q gf msthetic tone Hoey appreciative is one of literature or art? The answer tells what the imagination is. . i Doubtless every one possesses, or has possessed, the germs of an imagination. Now the question is: How shall what is rudimentary become full grown, and from the seeds of an imagination come an active, healthy, developed iimufilmtionja At the outset we may say that the imagination is wilful, in no great debt to real experience, possessing aii, independent nature of its own, therefore, obviously, direct training will be too vigorous. The imagination, howeverigroizvs unconsciously by what it feeds on,-here is the opportunity. for its cultivation. ' ' f I. Guide its emotions, the feelings from which it springs, the ideals it employs. Learn to admire to see beauty to think beautyg. be kind, be. sympathetic, have a soul nature, be religious. i ' pi-fy-mIIis.fi'ff','f1e ifi?.ZlalhL'l.Wfl1f.'i..12iiifmfifis iltSiii3...1.ii..lS ..Tfll1Tii 'l1? 3flf3k'OXeZ.f0 lliilfllgf in flights, iv1.t.i1.,. vw are valuable. by s s 23- P . lZLWlllg',l11OClCll1l'lg, litelazy composition

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VQLY -3 gi Q smizeflurl M X S' JOHN P. ASHLEY, 5. T. B., Ph. D. E T i Q H HOW TO CULTIVATE THE lwmciuariou. 1 1 Imagination is the pictuiizing facultj of the soul, it is the powci which piesents ideas and forms combinations. There are several kinds of imagination, first, the scientific or con- by which the scientist is enabled to hypothesize results not yet actual from a study conditions. Then, there is the inventive or creative imagination, which manifests itself in new and modified structive imagination, of present facts -and usually in- practical time and labor saving inventions, and i11 which the reproductive and comparative pro- cesses work over their materials subject to theidea of the good. There is also an aesthetic imagination which Coleridge has divided into the epic imagination, the perfection of which is in Milton, and the di unatic, of which Shakespeare is the absolute master. In this form of the imagination the material is imagination. ' In developing any form of imagination, first, have at hand abundant material: second, be intimate with nature, third, picturize clearly, fourth, analyze fully, fifth, synthesize completely: sixth, idealize greatly, seventh, poetize abundantlyg eighth, 'travel extensively, ninth, originate daily: tenth, illustrate freely. The commonest experiences of our sense life, in leaf, flower, and shrub, the lights and shadows of 'tn ascending and descending sun, afford boundless material for every imagination. When our ears and eyes are open, the world is full of the thoughts and voices of God. Q Among the processes that weaken and limit imagination are. reading to no definite purpose, the absence of idealizing our life daily, the unwillingness to search for words which will not under-express or over-express the mental picture, our assumption that when we know a part it may 'stand for the whole. Day-dreaming and castle-building are both morally and mentally bad. To idealize should imply obligation to realize the ideal. FREDERICK LUTZ, A. M. N THE study of foreign languages many faculties come into play, among which the imagination is by no means the least. A language is, so to speak, the living history of a people, showing forth 'its make-up its customs, its inner life. And words also have histories. Now surely it requires imagination to enter into this spirit of a' language so that one is for the time being, following the great lights of all the departments of human knowledge by means of that language: so that one is thinking and living and playing in the thoughts of the great men that have benefited the race. It is by the flight of our imagination that we appreciate art, literature, science and history, in short S . Qi f on N W 3. I . ' mn 95 worked over subject to the idea of the true and the beautiful. Q We might discuss also ethical and religious E245 L Q h X . W 'N I .J j Q iii 5 the true life of the people. It is due to this trained- imagination that we enjoy the wealth that ancient art and literature so freely bequeathed to us. It is by poetic fancy that we can read, in translation at least, all that is noble and true and beautiful in any literature. -gg-

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III. Select wisely the raw material of knowledge which ministers to it. Get out of doors into the open, fall in love With forests and streams, grow geographical, become a vzrllurmensch, though not a savage. Make history vital, inspiring, idealistic. Live in th-e literature of the race, think and feel with the poets, come under the spell of the novelist. In this Way grows what money cannot buy, what is more valuable than bread-the imagination. Cuts. ELISHA BARR, A. M. ,IOLOGY appeals to the imagination in two ways:-First, pictoriallyg second, constructivelyg or, perhaps, it would be better to say, first, as presenting a mental image previously either seen or unseen and second, as presenting to the reason a group of conditions that should be arranged about a central fact as tributary or contributory to it. Of the former I shall have little to say, as it is of a relatively low order, and, though important in and of itself, it is shared by other subjects to quite as great an extent. It is to the biologist what the imagination is to the artist, in like manner enabling him to build up from visual remembrance, from verbal description or from constructive reflection a picture that he may hold so firmly before his mind that it may be represented as real. It also enables him to form an ideally simple con- cept of an object in itself often complex. In the other case many purely ideal conditions may be presented to the mind involving totally different points of approach to the central thought and it is only by so building these up or by so displaying their inner characteristics that they may be readily grasped as a whole that their real significance and interrelationships can be seen. Many of the problems of biology are physically indeterminate and it is only as their factors may be individually and col- lectively apprehended, as they may be so disposed as to give a mental perspective, as relative values may be weighed and measured, that we can hope for their solution. The value of biology lies largely in this:-That it compels this constructive ideation and the powers thus gained are of the highest and noblest that the reason can attain. Science, to be sure, deals with facts, but facts are but the pabulum on which the imagination feeds that it may build up the great body of truth to which science has given its name. As the food' is not the man, no more are facts science, but the grouping and utilizing of them, the comprehensive welding of them into theory, alone deserves the name. DWIGHT B. WALDO, PH, Nl. O SMALL is the space limit at my command that I shall not stop to define imagination or distinguish true imaginative processes from fancy, on the one side, or those constructive efforts involved in real scientific method on the other. Suffice it to say that neither day dreaming nor the creative synthetic work of the chemist, the physicist, the mathematician, as such, involve real imaginative effort of the kind I have in mind. Imagination, properly speaking, has, ordinarily, as its motive force, emotion, in greater or less degree. It may be developed by keen, critical study of nature. life and art and the interpretation thereof in other art form, either as sculpture, painting, architecture, music or literature. It is my purpose to suggest a single plan that appears to me a practical and practicable method for the students of Old Albion to develop and toughen the fibres of the imagination. It will be granted by readers of Western literature that Octave Thanet, Charles Egbert Craddock, Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Mrs. Catherwood are all gifted with this world-ruling faculty. In each of these cases the faculty of imagination has been stimulated and strengthened by proper mental food and exercise. Now, if Octave Thanet by long practice makes the laborers and employers, the politicians and police-officers of Arkansas and Iowa to steal into our affections, if Mrs. Murfree can read into the lives of the simple folk of the mountains of Tennessee, characters that -34.. A