who deal chiefly with life's practicalities,
to think of imagination as having little value in comparison with direct
thinking. They smile with tolerance when Emerson says that "Science does
not know its debt to the imagination," for these are the words of a
speculative essayist, a philosopher, a poet. But when Napoleon--the
indomitable welder of empires--declares that "The human race is governed
by its imagination," the authoritative word commands their respect.

Be it remembered, the faculty of forming _mental images_ is as efficient
a cog as may be found in the whole mind-machine. True, it must fit into
that other vital cog, pure thought, but when it does so it may be
questioned which is the more productive of important results for the
happiness and well-being of man. This should become more apparent as we
go on.

I. WHAT IS IMAGINATION?

Let us not seek for a definition, for a score of varying ones may be
found, but let us grasp this fact: By imagination we mean either the
faculty or the process of forming mental images.

The subject-matter of imagination may be really existent in nature, or
not at all real, or a combination of both; it may be physical or
spiritual, or both--the mental image is at once the most lawless and the
most law-abiding child that has ever been born of the mind.

First of all, as its name suggests, the process of imagination--for we
are thinking of it now as a process rather than as a faculty--is memory
at work. Therefore we must consider it primarily as

_1. Reproductive Imagination_

We see or hear or feel or taste or smell something and the sensation
passes away. Yet we are conscious of a greater or lesser ability to
reproduce such feelings at will. Two considerations, in general, will
govern the vividness of the image thus evoked--the strength of the
original impression, and the reproductive power of one mind as compared
with another. Yet every normal person will be able to evoke images with
some degree of clearness.

The fact that not all minds possess this imaging faculty in anything
like equal measure will have an important bearing on the public
speaker's study of this question. No man who does not feel at least some
poetic impulses is likely to aspire seriously to be a poet, yet many
whose imaging faculties are so dormant as to seem actually dead do
aspire to be public speakers. To all such we say most earnestly: Awaken
your image-making gift, for even in the most coldly