The teaching of civics, as it is called, may be of
some use in this direction, as showing a boy his points of contact
with society. But no instruction in the constitution of society is
profitable, unless somehow or other the dutiful motive is kindled,
and the heroic virtue of service made beautiful.
When then I speak of the training of the imagination, I really mean
the kindling of motive; and here again I claim that this must be based
on a boy's own experience. He understands well enough the possibility
of feeling emotion in relation to a small circle, his home and his
immediate friends. But he is probably, like most young creatures, and
indeed like a good many elderly ones, inclined to be suspicious of all
that is strange and foreign, and to anticipate hostility or
indifference. What he would willingly share with a relation or friend,
he eagerly withholds from an outsider. To cultivate his imaginative
sympathy, to give him an insight into the ways and thoughts of other
men, to show to him that the same qualities which evoke his trust and
love are not the monopoly of his own small circle--this is just what
must be taught, because it is exactly what is not instinctively
evolved.
The training of the imagination then is a deliberate effort to
persuade the young to believe in the real nobility and beauty of life,
in the great ideas which are moulding society and welding communities
together.
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