constructive imagination if individual work is not to become narrowly
specialised and shut off from other divergent or parallel lines which
would illuminate it. The other day I was told of a great surgeon who
not only has six or seven assistants to help him in his immediate
tasks, but also, since he is too busy in the service of humanity to
have time for reading, has eight trained assistants whose business it
is to read in many languages what is being done all over the civilised
world in his own line, and keep him informed as to the development of
experience. A wonderful advance on the crystallisation of individual
method, this, and yet it needed but the imaginative projection upon
scientific work of what every business firm and every political unit
has long done.

To transfer to our own concerns a method developed elsewhere is one of
the most valuable services imagination can render. Almost all
educational reform comes about thus, most mechanical inventions, a
great part of economy and comfort in individual homes. Also, besides
these particular advantages, the incessant coming and going between
the different fields of activity, the circulation of attention which
this use of the imagination involves, tends to vitalise and enrich
not only the individuals who carry it out, but the whole social
organism of which they form part.

Upon the moral side not much need be said. "Put yourself in his place"
is a very old and respectable recipe for growing justice in one's
conduct, consideration in one's speech, sympathy in one's heart. As
employer or magistrate, as teacher or nurse, as customer or shopman,
as parent or husband or child we must all deal somehow with our
fellow-men: honestly and truthfully, we mean, kindly and helpfully, we
hope. But is it not the more or the less of our imagination that makes