Without this power to summon pictures
of situations which at present are not, we should be exactly like the
things or brutes already described. For in the thing a determined
sequence follows every impulse. There is no ambiguous future
disclosed, no variety of possibilities, no alternatives. Present
things under definite causes have but a single issue; and if the
account given of the brute is correct, his condition is unlike that of
things only in this respect, that in him curious automatic springs are
provided which set him in appropriate motion whenever he is exposed to
harm, so enabling him suitably to face a future of which, however, he
forms no image. In both brutes and things there is entire limitation
to the present. This is not the case with a person. He takes the
future into his reckoning, and over him it is at least as influential
as the past. A person, through imagination laying hold of future
possibilities, has innumerable auxiliary forces at his command. Choice
appears. A depicted future thus held by attention for causal purposes
is no longer a mere idea; it becomes an ideal.
But in order to transform the depicted future from an idea to an
ideal, I must conceive it as rooted in my nature, and in some degree
dependent on my power. Attracted by the brilliancy of the crescent
moon, I think what sport it would be to hang on one of its horns and
kick my heels in the air.
Pages:
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80