mportant and most difficult lessons to learn is that of
attention. We know only what we are conscious of, and we are conscious
only of that to which we give heed. If we but hold the mind to any
subject with perseverance, it will deliver its secret. The little
knowledge we have is often vague and unreal, because we are heedless,
because we have never taught ourselves to dwell in conscious communion
with the objects of thought. The trained eye sees innumerable beauties
which are hidden from others, and so the mind which is taught to look
right sees truths the uneducated can never know. We may be taught to
judge as well as to look. Indeed, once we have learned to see things as
they are, correct opinions and judgments naturally follow. All faculty
is the result of education. Poets, orators, philosophers, and saints
bring not their gifts into the world with them; but by looking and
thinking, doing and striving, they rise from the poor elements of
half-conscious life to the clear vision of truth and beauty. Natural
endowments are not equal; but the chief cause of inequality lies in the
unequal efforts which men make to develop their endowments. The lack of
imagination in the multitude makes their life dull, uninteresting, and
material, and it is assumed that we are born with, or without,
imagination, and that there is no remedy for this misery. And those who
admit that imagination is subject to the law of development, frequently
hold that it should be repressed rather than strengthened. Doubtless the
imagination can be cultivated, just as the eye or the ear, the judgment
or the reason, can be cultivated; and since imagination, like faith,
hope, and love, helps us to live in higher and fairer worlds, an
educator is false to his calling when he leaves it unimproved. The
classics, and especially poetry, are the great means of intellectual
culture, because more than anything else they have power to exalt and
ennoble the imagination. To suppose that this faculty is one which only
poets and artists need, is to take a shallow and partial view. The
historian, the student of Nature, the statesman, the minister of
religion, the teacher, the mechanic even, if they are to do good work,
must possess imagination, which is at once an intellectual, a moral, and
a religious faculty. It is the mother and mistress of faith, hope, and
love. It is the source of great thoughts, of high aspirations, and of
heavenly dreams. Without it the illimitable