The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine by Various
page 24 of 322 (07%)
page 24 of 322 (07%)
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produces that intoxicating 'toddy' and nothing else!" Yet all the
while food and clothing and shelter and travel and learning are all wrapped up in it, if only we were not too ignorant to guess, or too idle to seek. We talk as if the poet and painter had need of imagination, but not the student, the doctor, the philanthropist, the business man, whereas none of these can do work at a really human standard without imagination that is living, penetrating, active and yet trained and disciplined. A recent illuminating address to a body of students pointed out that Germany's immense industrial strides have been made possible by an education which draws men's minds out of narrow old grooves, and helps them to see and grasp wider possibilities. But the same speaker went on to point out that the English worker has far more real initiative and imagination than the German, and that in our own country we have not even to make elaborate plans for developing these qualities, but rather to release them in our administrators so far as to prevent actually checking them in the children now growing up. Imagination in business, for instance, means new possibilities, fresh sources of supply and fresh markets to demand, economy of working and better adjustment of work to worker, so as to have less waste of our greatest capital, human time and power. America has taught us something in these respects; what we must do is to take what new light she has developed, while keeping our long-grown, well-earned skill which she has not had the chance to make. In research work, again, we need perpetually the synthetic and |
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