When an apostle seeks to win a soul to religion, where man may plant his faltering feet on a rock, he appeals to understanding, not to imagination, for he knows that his task is not to create something, but to call aloud to that which is slumbering in the depths of the heart. He knows that he must shake off the torpor from a feeble life as he would shake the snow from a living body buried in a drift, not build up a puppet of ice which will melt under the rays of the sun.
It is true that fantastic imagination penetrates religion, but in the guise of error. In the Middle Ages, for instance, epidemics were ascribed with great simplicity, to a direct act of divine chastisement; to-day they are attributed to the direct action of microbes. Papin's steam machines suggested diabolical intervention. But these are precisely the kind of prejudices which, like all fantasies, swarm in the void of ignorance.
All religion is not thus constructed like a fantastic castle erected on a basis of ignorance. Otherwise we should see savage peoples religious and civilized peoples without religion; whereas savages have a frail and fantastic religion, mainly constructed upon the terror inspired by the mysterious activities of Nature, and civilized peoples have a positive religion, which becomes stronger as it becomes purer, while the science of truth, penetrating into Nature, serves to exalt and illustrate its mysteries.
And, above all, to-day, when there is a movement in favor of eliminating religion altogether from the school, can we propose to introduce it by cultivating fable? It is such a simple matter to open the door directly to religion itself and allow its radiance to penetrate, warming and invigorating life.
But it should enter like the sun into creation, not like the Befana from the chimney-top.
Fable could prepare to some extent for pagan religion, which split up the divinity into innumerable minor gods, symbolizing the external world; this, being apprehended by the senses, may lend itself to illusion; but fable could certainly never prepare for Christianity, which brings God into contact with the inner life of man, "one and indivisible," and teaches the laws of a life which is "felt" by men. If the positive sciences be extraneous to religion, it cannot be said that it is the study of reality in itself which alienates us therefrom. Hitherto the positive sciences have studied the "external world" in its analytical details, and if they could have made a "sympathetic," religion that religion might be the pagan creed. Indeed, so far science has brought a very perceptive breath of paganism among us. But when it shall have succeeded in penetrating the inner man, and there making manifest the laws of life and the realities of existence, a great Christian light will surely shine upon men; and maybe children, like the angels over Bethlehem, will sing the hymn invoking peace between science and faith.
Saint John in the desert "made straight the way of the Lord" and purged men of the grossest errors. And thus a method which gives internal equilibrium and disperses the grossest errors which suffocate the spiritual energies, makes ready for the reception of truth and the recognition of the "way of life."
The education of the imagination in schools for older children.—What is the method adopted in the ordinary elementary schools for the education of the imagination?
The school is, in most cases, a bare, naked place where the gray color of the walls and the white muslin curtains over the windows preclude any alleviation for the senses. The object of this depressing environment is to prevent the distraction of the scholar's attention by stimuli, and concentrate it upon the teacher who speaks. The children, seated, listen motionless hour after hour. When they draw, they have to reproduce another drawing exactly. When they move, it is in obedience to an order given by another person. Their personalities are appraised solely by the standard of passive obedience; the education of their wills consists of the methodical renunciation of volition.