THE VANISHING GIFT
The unseen rulers of human destiny are, on the whole, very kindly Fates. They appear beneficently prone to give us mortals much more than we deserve. Gifts of various grace and value are showered upon us incessantly through our life’s progress,—gifts for which we are too often ungrateful, or which we fail to appreciate at their true worth. Apart from the pleasures of the material senses which we share in common with our friends and fellows of the brute creation, the more delicate and exquisite emotions of the mind are ministered to with unfailing and fostering care. Music—Poetry, Art in all its brilliant and changeful phases,—these things are offered for the delectation of our thoughts and the refinement of our tastes; but the most priceless boon of the Immortals is the talisman which alone enables us to understand the beauty of life at its highest, and the perfection of ideals at their best. I mean Imagination,—that wonderful spiritual faculty which is the source of all great creative work in Art and Literature. Some call it “Inspiration”; others, the Divine Fire; but whatever its nature or quality, there is good cause to think—and to fear—that it is gradually dwindling down and disappearing altogether from the world of to-day.
The reasons for this are not very far to seek. We are living in an age of feverish unrest and agitation. If we could picture a twentieth century Satan appearing before the Almighty under the circumstances described in the Book of Job, to answer the question, “Whence comest thou?”—the same reply would suit not only his, but our condition—“From going to and fro in the earth, and wandering up and down within it.” We are always going to and fro in these days. We are forever wandering up and down. Few of us are satisfied to remain long in the same place, among the same surroundings—and in this way the foundations of home life,—formerly so noble and firm a part of our national strength—are being shaken and disorganized. A very great majority of us appear to be afflicted with the chronic disease of Hurry, which generally breeds a twin ailment—Worry. We have no time for anything somehow. We seem to be always under the thrall of an invisible policeman, commanding us to “Move on!” And we do move on, like the tramps we are becoming. Moreover, we have decided that we cannot get over the ground quickly enough on the limbs with which Nature originally provided us—so we spin along on cycles, and dash about on motor cars. And it is confidently expected that by-and-by the mere earth will not be good enough for us, and that we shall “scorch” through the air—when a great change may be looked for in house accommodation. People will return, it is said, to the early cave dwellings, in order to avoid the massacre likely to be caused by tumbling air-ships over which the captains have lost control.
There is something humourous in all this modern hurry-skurry; something almost grotesque in this desire for swift movement—this wish to save time and to stint work;—but there is something infinitely pathetic about it as well. It is as if the present Period of the world’s civilization felt itself growing old—as if, like an individual human unit, it knew itself to be past its prime and drawing nigh to death, as if,—with the feeble restlessness of advancing age, it were seeking to cram as much change and amusement as possible into the little time of existence left to it. Two of the most notable signs of such mental and moral decay are, a morbid craving for incessant excitement, and a disinclination to think. It is quite a common thing nowadays to hear people say, “Oh, I have no time to think!”—and they seem to be more proud than ashamed of their loss of mental equilibrium. But it is very certain that where there is no time to think, there is less time to imagine—and where there is neither thought nor imagination, creative work of a high and lasting quality is not possible.
We, in our day, are fortunate in so far that we are the inheritors of the splendid work accomplished in the youth and prime of all that we know of civilization. No doubt there were immense periods beyond our ken, in which the entire round of birth, youth, maturity, age and death, was fulfilled by countless civilizations whose histories are unrecorded—but we can only form the faintest guess at this, through the study of old dynasties which, ancient as they are, may perhaps be almost modern compared to the unknown empires which have utterly passed away beyond human recovery. But if we care to examine the matter, we shall find among all nations, that as soon as a form of civilization has emerged from barbarism, like a youth emerging from childhood, it has entered on its career with a glad heart and a poetic soul,—full of ideals, and richly endowed with that gift of the gods—Imagination. It has invariably expressed itself as being reverently conscious of the Highest source of all creation; and its utterance through all its best work and achievement can be aptly summed up in Wordsworth’s glorious lines:—
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting—
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s star
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar,—
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come,
From God who is our home!
While these “trailing clouds of glory” still cling to the soul, the limits of this world,—the mere dust and grime of material things,—do not and cannot satisfy it; it must penetrate into a realm which is of its own idea and innate perception. There it must itself create a universe, and find expression for its higher thought. To this resentful attitude of the soul against mere materialism, we owe all art, all poetry, all music. Every great artistic work performed outside the needs of material and physical life may be looked upon as a spiritual attempt to break open the close walls of our earthly prison-house and let a glimpse of God’s light through.
As a matter of fact, everything we possess or know of to-day, is the visible outcome of a once imagined possibility. It has been very grandly said that “the Universe itself was once a dream in the mind of God.” So may we say that every scientific law, every canon of beauty—every great discovery—every splendid accomplishment was once a dream in the mind of man. All the religions of the world, with their deep, beautiful, grand or terrific symbols of life, death and immortality, have had their origin in the instinctive effort of the Soul to detach itself from the mere earthly, and to imagine something better. In the early days, this strong aspiration of humanity towards a greater and more lasting good than its own immediate interest, was displayed in the loftiest and purest conceptions of art. The thoughts of the “old-world” period are written in well-nigh indelible characters. The colossal architecture of the temples of ancient Egypt—and that marvellous imaginative creation, the Sphinx, with its immutable face of mingled scorn and pity—the beautiful classic forms of old Greece and Rome—these are all visible evidences of spiritual aspiration and endeavour,—moreover, they are the expression of a broad, reposeful strength,—a dignified consciousness of power. The glorious poetry of the Hebrew Scriptures—the swing and rush of Homer’s Iliad,—the stately simplicity and profundity of Plato,—these also belong to what we know of the youth of the world. And they are still a part of the world’s most precious possessions. We, in our day, can do nothing so great. We have neither the imagination to conceive such work, nor the calm force necessary to execute it. The artists of a former time laboured with sustained and tireless, yet tranquil energy; we can only produce imitations of the greater models with a vast amount of spasmodic hurry and clamour. So, perchance, we shall leave to future generations little more than an echo of “much ado about nothing.” For, truly, we live at present under a veritable scourge of mere noise. No king, no statesman, no general, no thinker, no writer, is allowed to follow the course of his duty or work without the shrieking comments of all sorts and conditions of uninstructed and misguided persons, and under such circumstances it is well to remember the strong lines of our last great poet Laureate:—
Step by step we gain’d a freedom, known to Europe, known to all,—
Step by step we rose to greatness,—through the tonguesters we may fall!
But our chief disablement for high creative work,—and one that is particularly noticeable at this immediate period of our history, is, as I have said, the “vanishing of the gift”—the lack of Imagination. To be wanting in this, is to be wanting in the first element of artistic greatness. The poet, the painter, the sculptor, or the musician must be able to make a world of his own and live in it, before he can make one for others. When he has evolved such a world out of his individual consciousness, and has peopled it with the creations of his fancy, he can turn its “airy substance” into reality for all time. For the things we call “imaginative” are often far more real than what we call “realism.” All that we touch, taste and see, we call “real.” Now we cannot touch, taste or see Honour—but surely it is real! We cannot weigh out Courage in a solidified parcel—yet it is an actual thing. So with Imagination—it shows us what we may, if we choose, consider “the baseless fabric of a vision”—but which often proves as real and practical in its results as Honour and Courage. Shakespeare’s world is real;—so real that there are not wanting certain literary imposters who grudge him its reality and strive to dispossess him of his own. Walter Scott’s world is real—so real, that a shrine has been built for him in Edinburgh, crowded with sculptured figures of men and women, most of whom never existed, save in his teeming fancy. What a tribute to the power of Imagination is the beautiful monument in the centre of Princes Street, with all the forms evoked from one great mind, lifted high above us, who consider ourselves “real” people! And now the lesser world of thought is waiting for the discovery of a Cryptogram in the Waverley Novels, which shall prove that King George the Fourth wrote them with the assistance of Scott’s game-keeper, Tom Purdie,—and that his Majesty gave Scott a baronetcy on condition that he should never divulge the true authorship! For, according to the narrow material limits of some latter-day minds, no one man could possibly have written Shakespeare’s Plays. Therefore it may be equally argued that, as there is as much actual work, and quite as many characters in the Waverley Novels as in the plays of Shakespeare, they could not all have emanated from the one brain of Sir Walter Scott. Come forward then with a “Waverley cryptogram,” little mean starvelings of literature who would fain attempt to prove a man’s work is not his own! There are sure to be some envious fools always ready to believe that the great are not so great,—the heroic not so heroic, and that after all, they, the fools, may be wiser than the wisest men!
In very truth, one of the worst signs of the vanishing of the gift of Imagination in these days is the utter inability of the majority of modern folk to understand its value. The creative ease and exquisite happiness of an imaginative soul which builds up grand ideals of life and love and immortality with less effort than is required for the act of breathing, seems to be quite beyond their comprehension. And so—unfortunately it often follows that what is above them they try to pull down,—and what is too large for them to grasp, they endeavour to bind within their own narrow ring of experience. The attempt is of course useless. We cannot get the planet Venus to serve us as a lamp on our dinner table. We cannot fit the eagle into a sparrow’s nest. But some people are always trying to do this sort of thing. And when they find they cannot succeed, they fall into a fit of the spleen, and revile what they cannot emulate. There is no surer sign of mental and moral decadence than this grudging envy of a great fame. For the healthy mind rejoices in the recognition of genius wherever or whenever it may be discovered, and has a keen sense of personal delight in giving to merit all its due. Hero-worship is a much finer and more invigorating emotion than hero-slander. The insatiate desire which is shown by certain writers nowadays, to pull down the great reputations of the past, destroy old traditions, and cheapen noble attainment, resembles a sudden outbreak of insane persons who strive to smash everything within their reach. It is in its way a form of Imagination,—but Imagination diseased and demoralized. For Imagination, like all other faculties of the brain, can become sickly and perverted. When it is about to die it shows—in common with everything else in that condition,—signs of its dissolution. Such signs of feebleness and decay are everywhere visible in the world at the present time. They are shown in the constant output of decadent and atheistical literature—in the decline of music and the drama from noble and classic forms to the repulsive “problem” play and the comic opera—in the splashy daubing of good canvas called “impressionist” painting—in the acceptance, or passive toleration, of the vilest doggerel verse as “poetry”—and in the wretched return to the lowest forms of ignorance displayed in the “fashionable” craze for palmistry, clairvoyance, crystal-gazing, and sundry other quite contemptible evidences of foolish credulity concerning the grave issues of life and death,—combined with a most sorrowful, most deplorable indifference to the simple and pure teachings of the Christian Faith. Even in the Christian Faith itself, its chosen ministers seem unable to serve their Divine Master without quarrelling over trifles,—which is surely no part of their calling and election.
Everywhere there is a lack of high ideals,—and all the arts suffer severely in consequence. Modern education itself checks and cramps the growth of imaginative originality. The general tendency is unhappily towards the basest forms of materialism, and a large majority of people appear to be smitten with a paralysing apathy concerning everything but the making of money. That art is pursued with a horrible avidity, to the exclusion of every higher and nobler pursuit. Yet it needs very little “imagination” to prophesy what the end of a nation is bound to be when the unbridled fever of avarice once sets in. History has chronicled the ruin of empires from this one cause over and over again for our warning; and as Carlyle said in his stern and strenuous way—“One thing I do know: Never on this earth was the relation of man to man long carried on by cash payment alone. If at any time a philosophy of Laissez-faire, Competition and Supply-and-Demand start up as the exponent of human relations, expect that it will soon end.”
Perhaps some will say that Imagination is not a “vanishing gift”—and that Idealism and Romance still exist, at any rate among the Celtic races, and in countries such as Scotland, for instance, the home of so much noble tradition, song and story. I wish I could believe this. But unhappily the proofs are all against it. If the Imaginative Spirit were not decaying in Scotland as elsewhere, should we have seen the wanton and wicked destruction of one of its fairest scenes of natural beauty—the Glen and Fall of Foyers? There, where once the clear beautiful cascade whose praises were sung by Robert Burns, dashed down in its thundering glory among the heather and bracken, there are now felled trees, sorrowful blackened stumps, withering ferns and trampled flowers, dirty car-tracks, and all the indescribable muck which follows in the wake of the merely money-grubbing human microbe. And where once the pulse was quickened to a sane and healthy delight in the grandeur of unspoilt Nature, and the mind was uplifted from sordid cares to high contemplation, we are now asked to buy an aluminium paper-knife for a shilling! Human absurdity can no further go than this. There can be little imagination left in the minds that could have tolerated the building of aluminium works where Foyers once poured music through the glen. And it is instructive to recall the action taken by the Belgian people—who are generally supposed to be very prosaic,—when some of their beautiful scenery on the river Amblève, was threatened with similar destruction. Mustering together, three to four thousand strong, they took a reduced model of the intended factory, burnt it on the spot, and threw its ashes into the river; performing such a terror-striking “carmagnole” of revolt, that the authorities were compelled to prohibit the erection of the proposed works, for fear of a general rising throughout the country. Would that such a protest had been offered by the people of Scotland against the destruction of Foyers!
And what of the pitiful ruin of Loch Katrine?—once an unspoilt gem of Highland scenery, doubly beloved for the sake of Sir Walter Scott’s “Lady of the Lake”? What of the submerging of “Ellen’s Isle”?—the ruthless uprooting of that “entangled wood”—
Where Nature scattered, free and wild.
Each plant or flower, the mountain’s child,—
Here eglantine embalmed the air,
Heather and hazel mingled there.
* * * * *
The wanderer’s eye could barely view
The summer heaven’s delicious blue—
So wondrous wild!—the whole might seem
The scenery of a fairy dream!
I have been assured on the very best authority that all the beauty of Loch Katrine could have been left undisturbed, had the Scottish people taken any actively determined measures towards preserving it. The increasing water-supply necessary for Glasgow could have been procured from Loch Vennachar, which is a larger loch, and quite as good for the purpose. Only it would have cost more money, and that extra cash was not forthcoming, even for Sir Walter’s sake! It is a poor return to make to the memory of him who did so much for the fame of Scotland, to mutilate the scene he loved and immortalized! The struggles and disasters of the Jacobite Cause, and the defeat at Culloden brought more gain than loss to Scotland, by filling the land with glorious song and heroic tradition,—the result of the noble idealistic spirit which made even failure honourable,—but the defacement of Loch Katrine, the scene of “The Lady of the Lake” is nothing but a disgrace to those who authorized it, and to those who kept silence while the deed was done.
But there are yet other signs and tokens of the disappearance of that idealistic and romantic spirit in Scotland, which has more than anything, helped to make its history such a brilliant chronicle of heroism and honour. There are “a certain class” of Scottish people who are ashamed of the Scotch accent, and who affect to be unable to read anything written in the Scotch dialect. I am told—though I would hope it is not true—that the larger majority of Scottish ladies object to Scotch music, and do not know any Scotch songs. If this is true of any “certain class” of Scottish people, I am sorry for them. They have fallen down a long way from the height where birth and country placed them! I should like to talk to any Scot, man or woman, who is ashamed of the Scotch accent. As well be ashamed of the mountain heather! I should like to interview any renegade son or daughter of the Celtic race, who is not proud of every drop of Celtic blood, every word and line of Celtic tradition,—every sweet song that expresses the Celtic character. Nothing that is purely national should be set aside or allowed to perish. It is a thousand pities that the old Gaelic speech is dying out in the Highlands, along with the picturesque “plaid” and “bonnet” of the Highland shepherds. The Gaelic language is a rich and copious one, and should be kept up in every Scottish school and University. Some of the Gaelic music, too, is the most beautiful in the world,—and many a so-called “original” composer has taken the theme for an overture or a symphony from an ancient, long-forgotten Gaelic tune. A fine spirit of romance and idealism is the natural heritage of the Celtic race;—far too precious a birthright to be exchanged for the languid indifferentism of latter-day London fashion, which too often makes a jest of noble enthusiasm, and which would, no doubt, call Sir Walter Scott’s fine novel of The Heart of Midlothian, “kailyard literature”—if it dared!
And who that understands anything about music is so foolish and ignorant as to despise a Scottish song? Where can we match, in all song literature, the songs of Robert Burns? What German “lied”—what French or Italian “canzonet” or “chansonette” expresses such real human tenderness as “Of a’ the airts” or “My Nannie O!”? And it should be remembered that the imaginative pathos of the Scottish song has its other side of imaginative humour—sly, dry humour, such as cannot be rivalled in any language or dialect of the world. And in spite of the incredible assertion that they are beginning to despise their native Doric, there are surely few real Scotsmen who, even at this time of day fail to understand the whimsical satire of the famous old Jacobite song:
Wha the deil hae we gotten for a king
But a wee, wee German lairdie,
An’ he’s brought fouth o’ foreign trash
An’ dibbled it in his yairdie,—
He’s pu’d the rose o’ England loons
An’ broken the harp o’ Irish clowns—
But our Scotch thistle will jag his thumbs!
The wee, wee German lairdie!
We shall not find anything of a bilious nature in a Scottish love-song. We shall not hear the swain asking his lady-love to meet him “in some sky,” or “when the hay is in the mow,” or any other vaguely indefinite place or period. The Scottish lover appears,—if we may judge him by his native song,—to be supremely healthy in his sentiments, and gratefully conscious of the excellence of both life and love. He takes even poverty with a light heart, and does not grizzle over it in trickling tears of dismal melody. No; he says simply and cheerily:
My riches a’ my penny fee,
An’ I maun guide it cannie O,—
But this world’s gear ne’er fashes me,—
My thoughts are a’ my Nannie O!
It will be a sad day indeed when this spirit of wholesome, tender and poetic imagination drifts away altogether from Scotland. We must not forget that the Scottish race has taken a very firm root in the New World Beyond Seas,—and that out in Canada and Australia and South Africa the memories and the traditions of home are dear to the hearts of thousands who call Scotland their mother. Surely they should be privileged to feel that in their beautiful ancestral land, the old proud spirit is still kept up,—the old legends, the old language, the old songs,—all the old associations, which—far away as they are forced to dwell—they can still hand down to their children and their children’s children. No king,—no statesman, can do for a country what its romancists and poets can,—for the sovereignty of the truly inspired and imaginative soul is supreme, and as far above all other earthly dominion as the fame of Homer is above the conquests of Alexander. And when the last touch of idealistic fancy and poetic sentiment has been crushed out of us, and only the dry husks of realism are left to feed swine withal, then may we look for the end of everything that is worth cherishing and fighting for in our much boasted civilization.
For with the vanishing gift, vanish many other things, which may be called in the quaint phrasing of an Elizabethan writer, “a bundle of good graces.” The chivalrous spirit of man towards woman is one of those “good graces” which is rapidly disappearing. Hospitality is another “good grace” which is on the wane. The art of conversation is almost a lost one. People talk as they ride bicycles—at a rush—without pausing to consider their surroundings. Elegant manners are also at a discount. The “scorching,” steaming, spasmodic motor man-animal does not inspire reverence. The smoking, slangy horsey, betting, woman-animal is not a graceful object. In the days of classic Greece and Rome, men and women “imagined” themselves to be descended from the gods;—and however extravagant the idea, it was likely to breed more dignity and beauty of conduct than if they had “imagined” themselves descended from apes. A nation rounds itself to an Ideal, as the clay forms into shape on a potter’s wheel. It is well, therefore, to see that the Ideal be pure and lofty, and not a mere Golden Image like that set up by King Nebuchadnezzar, who ended his days by eating grass,—possibly thistles. Some of our public men might perhaps be better for a little more Imagination, and a little less red tape. It might take them healthfully out of themselves. For most of them seem burdened with an absurd self-consciousness, which is apt to limit the extent of their view out on public affairs. Others again are afflicted by the hedge-hog quality of “stand-offishness” which they unfortunately mistake for dignity. And others affect to despise public opinion, and have a curious habit of overlooking the fact that it is the much-abused public which sets them in office and pays to keep them there. Their Ideal of public life and service partakes too much of Self to be nobly National.
What, after all, is Imagination? It is a great many things. It is a sense of beauty and harmony. It is an instinct of poetry and of prophecy. A Persian poet describes it as an immortal sense of memory which is always striving to recall the beautiful things the Soul has lost. Another fancy, also from the East, is that it is “an instinctive premonition of beautiful things to come.” Another, which is perhaps the most accurate description of all, is that it is “the Sun-dial of the Soul on which God flashes the true time of day.” This is true, if we bear in mind that Imagination is always ahead of Science, pointing out in advance the great discovery to come. Shakespeare foretold the whole science of geology in three words—“Sermons in stones,”—and the vast business of the electric telegraph in one line—“I’ll put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes.” One of the Hebrew prophets “imagined” the phonograph when he wrote “Declare unto me the image of a voice.” As we all know, the marks on the wax cylinder in a phonograph are “the image of a voice.” The air-ship may prove a very marvellous invention, but the imagination which saw Aladdin’s palace flying from one country to another was long before it. All the genii in the Arabian Nights stories were only the symbols of the elements which man might control if he but rubbed the lamp of his intelligence smartly enough. Every fairy tale has a meaning; every legend a lesson. The submarine boat in perfection has been “imagined” by Jules Verne. Wireless telegraphy appears to have been known in the very remote days of Egypt, for in a rare old book called The History of the Pyramids, translated from the Arabic, and published in France in 1672, we find an account of a certain high priest of Memphis named Saurid,—who, so says the ancient Arabian chronicler, “prepared for himself a casket wherein he put magic fire, and shutting himself up with the casket, he sent messages with the fire day and night, over land and sea, to all those priests over whom he had command, so that all the people should be made subject to his will. And he received answers to his messages without stop or stay, and none could hold or see the running fire, so that all the land was in fear by reason of the knowledge of Saurid.” In the same volume we find that a priestess named Borsa evidently used the telephone. For, according to her history, “She applied her mouth and ears unto pipes in the wall of her dwelling, and so heard and answered the requests of the people in the distant city.”
Thus it would seem that there is nothing new under the sun to that “dainty Ariel” of the mind, Imagination. It sees all present things at a glance, and foretells what is yet to come. It may well be called the Sun-dial of the Soul; but it is a Dial that must be kept sound and clean. There must be no crack in it,—it must not be allowed to get overgrown with the slimy mosses and rank weeds of selfishness and personal prejudice,—the index hand must be firmly set,—and none of the numeral figures must be missing! So, perchance, shall God flash the true time of day upon it, for such as will hold themselves free to mark the Hour according to His will. And for those who do thus hold themselves free,—for those who care to keep this precious Sun-dial clear and clean in their souls, there shall always be light and love,—and such clear reflections of divine beauty and peace as are described by the “Ettrick Shepherd” in his story of Kilmeny in Fairyland:
For Kilmeny had been, she knew not where,
And Kilmeny had seen what she could not declare;
But it seemed as the harp of the sky had rung,
And the airs of heaven played round her tongue!