The highest beauty—beauty that is far superior to mere regularity of features—is within the reach of everybody. I know girls who have dwelt upon what they consider their unfortunate plainness so long that they have seriously exaggerated it. They are not half so plain as they think they are; and were it not for the fact that they have made themselves very sensitive and self-conscious about it, others would not notice it at all. In fact, if they could get rid of their sensitiveness and be natural, they could, with persistent effort, make up in sprightliness of thought, in cheerfulness of manner, in intelligence, and in cheery helpfulness what they lack in grace and beauty of face.
I have known a girl whose extreme plainness of features and awkwardness of manner so pained her as she approached womanhood that she almost despaired of ever making anything of herself, and even contemplated suicide. She was so convinced that she was a target for cruel remarks, and became so impressed with the conviction that she was not wanted anywhere, and that she was continually being insulted, that she resolved to make one supreme effort to redeem herself from her handicap. She resolved that she would make people love her, that she would attract them instead of repelling them; that she would take such an unselfish interest in them that they could not help loving her, She determined to develop those beautiful heart qualities which would more than compensate for mere physical beauty. She began to sympathize with people and to take thought of their welfare. Wherever she went, if she saw any one who was ill at ease or looked troubled or friendless, she immediately took such a deep interest in him that she won his friendship at once. She began to cultivate her mind in every possible way in order to make herself interesting, bright, cheerful, and hopeful. She cultivated optimism, and she was soon surprised to see how the young people who formerly shunned her flocked around her, and began to love her; and she not only succeeded in compensating for her physical deformity, which she thought was fatal to her pleasure and her usefulness, but she also developed a soul beauty that did not pass with years, and which was infinitely superior to that beauty which comes from regularity of features and beauty of form. She seemed to radiate good cheer from every pore. So popular did she become that the so-called pretty girls envied her.
Chapter XVIII.
The Power Of Imagination
“Imagination precedes and is the cause of all achievement.”
WE owe the improvement of the world, the climb to civilization, largely to the imagination. We should still be living as savages in caves and huts but for those who could imagine and were determined to have better things.
Indeed, the men and women who have rendered the greatest service to the world have done so by seeing in their imaginations something infinitely better than actually existed, and then working to make this real.
It was because Morse saw in his imagination a better way of communication than by post that he was enabled to give the telegraph to the world. It was because Bell could imagine something better even than the telegraph that we have the telephone. It was because Field could see in his imagination a better way of communicating across the ocean than by ship that continents are tied together with cables. It was because Marconi saw even a better way of communicating than anything that had gone before that we have the wireless telegraph which enables a passenger when in mid-ocean to engage his hotel room and order a cab to meet the steamer.
An unknown Greek sculptor gave us in the Venus of Milo a suggestion of possible beauty of proportion and magnificence of pose up to which the race has not yet measured. But it gave us a model toward which we are still struggling, and toward which the race has made a great advance.
What does the world not owe to the magnificent imagination of Michael Angelo, who, in that wonderful statue of Moses, gave a glimpse of the possible godlike man.
It was the imagination of great composers that gave us our masterpieces in music.
It was because merchants imagined a hundred kinds of business under one roof that we have great department stores where people can buy almost anything they need.
It is because teachers could see in imagination a chance for infinite improvement in the human race that we have our schools and our colleges. Indeed, what do we not owe to the imagination? The men who see things only a6 they are, who have no imaginations, plod along in the same old ruts. It is the man with imagination that improves things, that advances, that substitutes the palace cars for the stage-coach, the ocean greyhound for the sailing ship.
It is because our great artists saw something better in imagination than actually existed in nature that we have some of our greatest masterpieces. It is not enough to see nature as she is; it is infinitely higher to see her, in the imagination, as she is capable of becoming; to see her possibilities as realities.
The average person thinks the imaginative person amounts to nothing. He is called a crank. Dreamers are looked upon as impractical people, mere theorists; but oftentimes our dreamers have proved infinitely more practical than those who have laughed at them, for the world’s dreamers have given us the most practical things we have. The dreamers have ameliorated the hard conditions of the race, have lifted us above commonness and emancipated us from drudgery.
Oh, what does the world not owe to its dreamers, to its cranks, to its theorists?
Great characters have been made possible because men and women saw greater men and women in themselves than actually existed. It was their struggle to bring out the possible man or the possible woman that advanced civilization. It is because fathers and mothers can see in their imagination human beings higher than themselves, more perfect, and more complete, that they are able to lift their children above themselves.
The time will come when we shall realize what a tremendous subjective power the imagination has upon life; what a tremendous factor it can be made in education, in forming ideals, in influencing the career, and in promoting health and happiness.
The pictures of the mind are not given to mock us or to entertain us, but to show us that they can be made realities, that there is a reality that imagines them; that these are but the outlines or the suggestions, the shadows of the realities themselves.
They make us real seers of the possible future, and are given us to whet our ambition, to spur us on, to make us dissatisfied with the commonness in which we are living by giving us glimpses of something infinitely better.
We are beginning to see that imagination is not mere fantasy of the brain, but that in it lives the ideal, in it are generated the great models and the potencies which make their realization possible.
If the imagination of a child can be rightly directed, its future happiness and success can be assured; but a perverted imagination may bring misery and gloom untold.
The training of the imagination of a child so as to form the habit of producing beautiful pictures instead of hideous ones, perpetually inspiring images instead of demoralizing ones, and thus harmony instead of discord, would be of more value to him than to give him a fortune.
Chapter XIX.