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!