STUDENT ESSAY
On Imagination
by Zoe Edwards
IMAGINATION , PASCAL ONCE SAID , is “ the part of the human being which dominates , this mistress of error and falsehood , and all the more treacherous because it is not consistently treacherous .” 1 That is , imagination is the opposite of reason , the enemy of the rational . You could say that the one who lets his imagination run free is a madman , for he is so lacking reason that one could almost say he lacks his mind . But he goes on ,
I am not speaking of mad people , I am speaking of the wisest , and it is among them that imagination has the overriding right to change their minds , reason may well complain , it can ’ t put a price on things … it ( imagination ) cannot make fools into wise men , but it can make ( emphasis mine ) them , unlike reason , which can only make its friends miserable . 2
The child ’ s imagination is a vision . It sparks missions and inspires real life .
At this point it is clear that imagination is being positioned opposite reason . And yet , for Pascal , imagination isn ’ t madness . Is it sanity then ? Then again , is reason sanity ?
A child ’ s imagination can be an example of a loss of reason that is not madness . What adult made a table into a house ? Or at least , what adult made a table into a house without being called a lunatic ? Yet children make houses out of tables and homes out of sofas and blankets . We encourage such things . Imagination in a child does indeed dominate , it takes over and creates a new world , yet a world like the real world . For children imagine themselves to be soldiers in battle , or mums with dinner to cook and a baby
1 Blaise Pascal , Pensées and Other Writings , trans . Honor Levi Oxford World ’ s Classics ( Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2008 ), 16 .
2 Ibid ., 16-17 .
14 THE COMMONS