4. Memory supplies the imagina tion in its constructive efforts is limited to the mate rials which memory can furnish. It creates no new images of any kind, no new states of consciousness. Imagination is a marvelous builder, but it can ac complish nothing without the aid of its faithful hod carrier, the memory.
It is clear, therefore, that the imagination of a man who has had little or no experience in business can build for him no new plans or visions that will be of much value. When such a man, not lmowing the limitations under which his imagination must work, plans great ventures in business, he fails time and again and is called a visionary. Colonel Sellers, Mark Twain's immortal visionary, had a scheme every few days and there were always "millions in it." He knew nothing about the details of business, yet he had superb confidence in his ability as a fortune builder. Colonel Sellers is still alive; you can find him in al most every town and on every street.
We may think of imagination as a Pegasus in harness, but the driver must be a man who knows every twist and turn of the road. In front of a green driver, this winged steed delights in a runaway and smash-up.
It is well for the young business man to know that the drudgery of the office, which is so distasteful to him, is essential to his development. As a routine worker be is storing his memory with facts or experi ences of which his imagination may make valuable use in later years.
5. Imagination in science.—The aim of science, as was explained in the Introduction, is knowledge or understanding. Of what possible use can imagina tion, the builder of air castles, be to the scientist? He is seeking for trutb and can, of course, get some aid from his memory, but, some reader may say, "Imag ination does not think or reason and can be of no help to him." As a matter of fact, the scientist who is exploring new realms of knowledge employs his imagination as much as he does his reason or judgment. When a man is seeking to explain a phenomenon, it is the imagination which constructs the necessary hypothesis.' It was Newton's imagination which dis covered the law of gravitation ; it was his reason which verified it and finally accepted the law as the truth.
The theory of evolution had been in existence for many years as a product of the imagination before the patient studies of Darwin and Wallace brought forth data which satisfied the reason. Copernicus, who is credited with the discovery of our planetary or solar system, undoubtedly in his imagination pictured the planets moving around the central sun, and the moon about the earth, before his reason and judgment had weighed and sifted all the phenomena and accepted as true the hypothesis which his imagination had created.
A student who is traversing fields of science that have already been explored, relies most upon his un derstanding and memory, but when he gets to the frontiers of truth he can go no farther without the aid of imagination. Let the reader use his own im agination and put himself in the place of the first geometer. That thinker saw at a glance the truth of propositions which we call axioms, but the theor ems now found in the textbooks were unlmown to him. It was his imagination which suggested that tbe angles opposite the two equal sides of a triangle must be equal. He hunted for evidence, and by a logical use of the axioms in his possession he convinced his reason of the truth of the proposition.
Imagination and memory have played their im portant parts in the demonstration of all mathematical truths. A man of weak imagination is never a really great mathematician. The arithmetical processes, multiplication and division, which are short processes of addition and subtraction, were suggested by the imagination of man thousands of years ago. Both algebra and geometry, -when properly taught, owe their charm almost entirely to the play they give to the student's imagination.
If imagination, a faculty apparently so irrational, can be made of so much use to the scientist, it would be strange, indeed, if it could not be drafted into the service of the business man.
6. The ideal.—Imagination constructs for men more or less definite ideas or pictures of the things which will give them greatest satisfaction. For a man whose chief joy is eating, his imagination plans a din ner which no cook ever sets before him. It is his ideal dinner, and he hopes to eat it when he gets to heaven.