In the first place then, it seems to me simply extraordinary that so little heed is paid in education to the using and controlling of what is one of the most potent instinctive forces of the mind.  We take careful thought how to strengthen and fortify the body, we go on to spending many hours upon putting memory through its paces, and in developing the reason and the intelligence; we pass on from that to exercising and purifying the character and the will; we try to make vice detestable and virtue desirable.  But meanwhile, what is the little mind doing?  It submits to the drudgery imposed upon it, it accommodates itself more or less to the conditions of its life; it learns a certain conduct and demeanour for use in public.  Yet all the time the thought of the boy is running backwards and forwards in secrecy, considering the memories of its experience, pleasant or unpleasant, and comforting itself in tedious hours by framing little plans for the future.  I remember my old schoolmastering days, and the hours I spent with a class of boys sitting in front of me; how constantly one saw boys in the midst of their work, with pen suspended and page unturned, look up with that expression denoting that some vision had passed before the inward eye—­which, as Wordsworth justly observes, constitutes “the bliss of solitude”—­obliterating for a moment the surrounding scene.  I do not mean that the thought was a distant or an exalted one—­probably it was some entirely trivial reminiscence, or the anticipation of some coming amusement.  But I do not think I exaggerate when I say that probably the greater part of a human being’s unoccupied hours, and probably a considerable part of the hours supposed to be occupied, are spent in some similar exercise of the imagination.  What a confirmation of this is to be found in the phenomena of sleep and dreams!  Then the instinct is steadily at work, neither remembering nor anticipating, but weaving together the results of experience into a self-taught tale.

And then if one considers later life, it is no exaggeration to say that the greater part of human happiness and unhappiness consists in the dwelling upon what has been, what may be, what might be, and, alas, in our worst moments, upon what might have been “My unhappiest experiences,” said Lord Beaconsfield, “have been those which never happened”; and again the same acute critic of life said that half the clever people he knew were under the impression that they were hated and envied, the other half that they were admired and loved;—­and that neither were right!

The imaginative faculty then is a species of self-representation, the power of considering our own life and position as from the outside; from it arise both the cheerful hopes and schemes of the sound mind, and the shadowy anxieties and fears of the mind which lacks robustness.  It certainly does seem singular that this deep and persistent element in human life is left so untrained and unregarded, to range at will, to feed upon itself.  All that the teacher does is to insist as far as possible on a certain concentration of the mind on business at particular times, and if he has ethical purposes at heart, he may sometimes speak to a boy on the advisability of not allowing his mind to dwell upon base or sensual thoughts; but how little attempt is ever made to train the mind in deliberate and continuous self-control!