326 MANAGEMENT OF CHILDREN. mination of peculiarities in temper and tastes, which furnishes the right key to move them. This, it is evident from all we have said, the unimaginative can possess only in a very limited degree; and thence it is that we not only see minds most fit to lead, utterly without influence, but with kind hearts and excellent tempers, causing a degree of irritation to others of a more sensitive temperament, which seems all the more difficult to bear as coming from them. They continue blind to it, being unable to conceive the sensitiveness or irritability which is so foreign to their own nature; and a perpetual jarring ensues, which effectually destroys domestic comfort, and undermines affection. Tact, also, the great peace-preserver of society, is only another exercise of this same power of entering into the feelings of others. The tact, indeed, of the mere tine lady, is the knowledge of conventional forms; of the established modes of acting, feeling, or thinking, in a certain class of society. Place her in a different position, where her accustomed rules of good-breeding are not recognised,-among foreigners, for instance, or her inferiors in rank,—and her acuteness will often seem to have deserted her but the tact which proceeds from a certain power and habit of mind, is at home wherever human character and feelings are exhibited, and it is as far above the former, as true kindness of heart is superior to the urbanity of mere conventional high breeding. All the qualities we have enumerated as belonging to the moral influence of imagination, are very essential in the management of children, a consideration never to be forgotten by women. Those little beings require not only liveliness of thought and feeling in those they live with, but also a ready apprehension of the dim uncertain glimmerings of infant reason or fancy, and the power to draw them out. It will be seen, accordingly, that those whom children love most (and they are those who manage them best) are always persons of an imaginative cast of mind. It is they also who, in advanced life, are still so eagerly sought, and so tenderly loved by the young. Imagination may then be less glowing and lively than at an earlier period; but it is often richer and more chastened from the accumulated observation and varied experience of years. However this may be with regard to the mental power only, it will assuredly be found that the effects of imagination on the character have remained strong as ever; that theirs is still the quick sympathy, the ready and warm interest in pursuits and hopes,-in feelings and pleasures unknown, or now lost to them; and herein lies the secret of their charm. It is another instance of what we may often remark-namely, how the moral influence of any quality or habit of the mind lives on and ILL-REGULATED IMAGINATION. 327 continues to gain strength, even when the mental quality itself may have passed away. As if the intellectual faculty had done its work when it has aided in fostering a new grace in the soul, and might cease from its labour, secure that its nobler fruit will live for ever. Women are rarely very deficient in imagination, and when we consider its importance to them in so many respects, this is just what the general analogy of other parts of our constitution would lead us to expect; since Providence has so distributed its gifts in proportion to our need of them, that the destiny of the human race may almost be deciphered from the nature of the moral and mental faculties, as clearly as the mode of existence of different tribes of animals is ascertained by their physical conformation. No natural gifts, however, bear for us their proper fruit without culture. Endowed as we are with reason, and the power of progressive improvement, it is the will of Providence that we make use of them in all things; or if we do not, that we should pay the penalty, by seeing the fairest promises of good turn to evil. Thus it is with imagination. In women generally that faculty is naturally active. We see this clearly with little children, among whom girls show the greater readiness, both in speaking and learning,-greater observation,-quicker feeling and apprehension of the feelings of others, many of those qualities, in short, which denote the imagination to be lively. Accordingly, also, the common defect of the female mind is the over-activity of this faculty, and of feeling, as compared with the judgment; a result which is caused by education having equally neglected both. It has taken no means to call forth and strengthen the reason, while at the same time allowing the more naturally active faculties to run wild, and therefore to lose in real power what they gain in wayward growth. The consequence is, that although reason is continually overborne by the sway of impulse and imagination, all the higher qualities of the latter suffer in equal proportion; and while the enthusiastic, the singular, the wild, and the bizarre, are unfortunately common, a fine high-toned imagination is as rare as well-disciplined reason. Still these are among the minor evils of a want of due culture and regulation of this faculty. We have noticed the moral deficiencies resulting from its absence, but the effects of its unbridled power bear a far greater stamp of evil; for they lead to the very subversion of reason and principle, and to the destruction of peace and happiness. The power of carrying out into action the impulses of a disordered fancy, is limited in women, whose outward liberty is restrained. They are forced by circumstances to exert greater self-control, and thence together with the greater purity of the female mind (whether owing to innate difference or to education), it results, that imagination less often attains with them the height of disorder, which has wrecked the prospects, the fame, and character of many a highly gifted man, and rendered him the scourge of that society, of which he should have been at once the ornament and the benefactor. Yet the instances are but too numerous, in which women have owed to the same cause the loss of virtue and happiness. These are perhaps more numerous than is usually supposed, for could we search the secret annals of many a victim of folly, or of vice, how often should we find that the first temptation came rather from within, than from without, and rather from the fancy, than the heart! How often should we be forced to conclude, that the dangers which finally closed around, and caused her ruin, were at first created by her own disordered mind, and owed all their force to the spell which a vitiated imagination had cast over them. When we speak of passion as a misleading power, we mean violent feeling overbearing the judgment; a strong natural impulse, which by silencing all other feelings for the time, seems to have centred in itself the strength of all. Such sway is wrong; but it is at least real. The passion may have a great mixture of evil, or be even altogether criminal, but it is earnest, not made up of vanity, or the "false show of things;" and thus we may easily distinguish it from the effects of ill-regulated imagination. But if we examine many a one who is pitied as the victim of passion, we shall find that she never knew the meaning of the word, that her heart was really silent, and she was misled by mere delusions of her own creating. Could such a one have paused for one moment,-for one moment have listened, we will not say to virtue but to common sense,—could she have appealed to memory to compare this wild fancy to which she was yielding, with some one true and earnest feeling, such as her heart had known in purer days, or knew perhaps even then if allowed to know itself again,-could she thus have paused, she would have felt, how made up of vain illusions was that impulse to which she was sacrificing peace, happiness, and virtue! One such moment and the evil spell might perhaps have been broken for ever. Just as the fancy at dead of night assembles spectres round some sick bed, and gives them more than the power of reality to sway the weakened brain of the patient, so in the night of the soul, when reason is exiled from her throne, the phantoms of imagination seem fearful realities to mislead and destroy the darkened mind; but all alike will vanish before one pure ray of Heaven's light. ILL-REGULATED IMAGINATION. 329 Though far short of such misery as this, the effects of disordered imagination are seen to undermine the happiness of life. While women are preserved from many temptations from without, they are exposed to those of idleness, and frivolity, perhaps as dangerous as any. Under their influence, evil may prey upon the mind, without any of those wholesome checks which a man receives in the course of his active career, among the realities and actual struggles of life. Thus while her peculiar mode of existence curtails liberty of action, it increases the wild freedom of fancy, by leaving the severer faculties unexercised. Nothing but the affections being actively called forth, can preserve women from suffering greatly in such circumstances; if head and heart are both unoccupied, there is small chance indeed of escape, the evil will only vary in its form, according to the various peculiarities of the minds affected. The peculiar position of women in early youth, to which we have so often before alluded, exposes them in a perilous degree to the influence of a morbid and sickly imagination. Depending for the decision of their fate on that very sentiment which is the groundwork of all romance, unable to form any schemes for the future, except such as regard their inner life and improvement, which their own efforts may forward or accomplish, the noblest projects and the wildest freaks of imagination are equally visionary to them; but the visions may be indulged in the silence of an inactive life, till tamer realities seem common-place and distasteful. No step can be taken towards realizing the most enchanting dream; but there is no active call for exertion to prevent its being fondly dwelt upon, till all else seems insipid and even sad. Then it will depend, as we said, on the natural constitution what form the further evil shall take. If that constitution be indolent, the mind may sink into a morbid melancholy, or if of a different turn, it may acquire a restless agitation, fretting against the restraints imposed on its outward action, and ending in settled contempt for all the real duties of its station, disguised under a longing for others of a nobler cast, and seemingly more congenial to its capaeities. But whether the ill-regulated imagination shows itself in languor or in excitement, it generally creates in both classes of minds dissatisfaction with the aetual, and a desire to live in a world of their own both alike are ready to sacrifice the useful and the true for the dazzling and romantic, and are therefore equally likely to be misled, whether in feeling, opinion, or action. Foster in one of his excellent essays thus describes the effect of this want of sober self-control :-"Imagination may be indulged till it usurp an entire ascendancy over the mind, and then every 330 UNCONTROLLED IMAGINATION. subject presented to that mind will be taken under the action of imagination instead of understanding; imagination will throw its colours where the intellectual faculty ought to draw its lines, will accumulate metaphors where reason ought to deduce arguments, images will take the place of thought, and scenes of disquisitions. The whole mind may become at length something like a hemisphere of cloud scenery, filled with an ever-moving train of changing melting forms of every colour, mingled with rainbows, meteors, and an occasional gleam of pure sunlight, all vanishing away-the mental like this natural imagery, when its hour is up, without leaving anything behind but the wish to recover the vision. And yet the while this series of visions may be mistaken for operations of thought, and each cloudy image be admitted in the place of a proposition or a reason; or it may even be mistaken for something sublimer than thinking. The influence of this habit of dwelling on the beautiful fallacious forms of imagination, will accompany the mind into the most serious speculations or rather musings on the real world, and what is to be done in it and expected, as the image from looking at any dazzling object still appears before the eye wherever it turns."* mind thus diseased, all the real pleasures of life are disenchanted, all its positive blessings of little value, all true and simple feeling cold and uninteresting. Great predominance of the affections is a constitutional peculiarity with women; and, consequently, in their case gives its own colour to the mental disease; whence a false sentiment—a morbid sensibility-too often result, and not only injure earnestness and strength of character, but prey upon the spirits, and frequently upon the health of their victims. Every annoyance then becomes a care, every care a misery. Visionary hopes having once been allowed to assume the shape of realities, cost, when torn away, all the pangs of a real affliction; and the lightest touch of disappointment will be sufficient to crush the heart, whose youthful vigour has sickened under the influence of morbid feeling. To a Enthusiasm is another form of ill-regulated imagination. This quality seems at first to throw an inexpressible charm over the character, enhancing all that makes the imaginative dear to us; and thence it has arisen that we are too much accustomed to attach a noble meaning to this term, to look upon the state of mind it expresses as something admirable and precious. So far, indeed, have we departed from its original meaning, that to say that a person is incapable of enthusiasm, seems to imply that he is of a cold, unimaginative nature,-a stranger to high and noble Essay on the Application of the Term "Romantic," p. 139, 15th ed., 1841. |