42 Education through Nature 



has obliterated physical human slavery; but there is 

 an intellectual slavery to the critic in that mental 

 attitude of dependence on authority which is hardly 

 less demoralizing. Beggars we will probably always 

 have with us; but the wise philanthropy seems to be 

 to so arrange matters that self-help may be obtained, 

 while independence and self-respect is cultivated. 



The Imagination in Nature Study. 



From visible and finite things, imagination carries 

 us to the invisible and the infinite. Most if not all 

 works of art are the results of conscious or unconscious 

 experience with nature. From a number of parts 

 we infer the whole; from a number of effects we infer 

 the cause ; and passing from the particular to the gen- 

 eral and from the general back to the particular, we 

 are aided by imagination not only to solve many 

 difficult problems, but we are able by it to rise, intel- 

 lectually, far above objects of sense, with which we 

 are immediately concerned. From the varied objects 

 of sense we abstract those essentials which conform 

 to our ethical and aesthetic sense, like fragrance dis- 

 tilled from roses, and recombine the various elements 

 thus abstracted into new ideal forms composite 

 pictures of many visible, real elements. The product 

 of the imagination is, therefore, a good index to the 

 purity of the human soul. The imagination is not only 

 often responsible for that peculiarity in children which 

 we designate by the terms dull and bright, but is often 

 the secret of the superior mental achievements of one 

 person over those of another. 



When the training of the imagination is spoken of, 

 many assume, with the old psychologists, that it is a 

 power or faculty of the mind. We know that it is 

 concerned with ideas, and that these ideas may be 

 derived consciously or unconsciously from experience. 

 In training the imagination, therefore, we shall have 



