Things more excellent than any image are expressed through images.
An unimaginative person can neither be reverent nor kind.
Few men have imagination enough for the truth of reality.
Science does not know its debt to the imagination.
The human race is governed by its imagination.
Every human being divides the world into two parts, the self and the not-self. It would not be right to say that he divides the world into two hemispheres, because self may occupy more space and engross more thought than all else in the universe.
The idea of self is complex. It includes our thoughts, emotions, and purposes. Kindred and friends, home and country, creed and occupation, dress and personal appearance, possessions and the work one has done,—in fact, all one has and is and does enters into the idea of self. When we lose a child, a manuscript, an investment, a position, we are apt to feel as if a part of ourselves had been lost. So closely are the things of self identified with the inner self, the self in the narrowest signification of the term, that the latter is oftentimes lost in the former; and the end of existence is sought in wealth, fame, honor, social position, erudition, and the thousand other things which intensify the feeling of self by giving it form and content.
An important element in the thought of self is the image of self that every man carries in his own mind. This image of self is derived from looking-glasses and photographs, from the sight of hands and feet and the other impressions of the physical organism which reach the mind through the senses. In the minds of many persons the image of self is ever present, it matters not whether they are eating or drinking, walking or talking, singing or thinking, posing or working. The perpetual presence of the image of self gives rise to vanity and pride, to avarice, ambition, and other detestable forms of selfishness.
It is the province of education to bring self and the things of self into proper relation with the not-self, with God and the universe. That this may be accomplished the images of sense and the idea of self must be made to take their proper place in the domain of thought and volition.
Not many years ago it was customary in certain quarters to define education as the process of unsensing the mind and unselfing the will. The definition never became popular. It contains a truth and an error, both deserving of careful consideration. The maxim may signify that by the process of education the soul is to be emancipated from the tyranny of the senses and from the domination of selfish desires. The mind may be hindered in its growth because it is under the thraldom of desire and appetite. Excess in eating and drinking, in sight-seeing, and in other pleasures which so easily ripen into dissipation may check the normal development of the higher faculties. The delight which some gifted natures find in beautiful colors and good music may prevent them from acquiring the power of abstract and abstruse thinking. The things of the mind may be sacrificed to the things of sense, the higher life of the soul may be stifled through the exaltation of self and the domination of selfish desires.