George MacDonald. A Dish of Orts : Chiefly Papers on the Imagination, and on Shakespeare
PREFACE
THE IMAGINATION: ITS FUNCTIONS AND ITS CULTURE
A SKETCH OF INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT
ST. GEORGE’S DAY, 1564
THE ART OF SHAKSPERE, AS REVEALED BY HIMSELF
THE ELDER HAMLET
ON POLISH
BROWNING’S “CHRISTMAS EVE”
ESSAYS ON SOME OF THE FORMS OF LITERATURE
THE HISTORY AND HEROES OF MEDICINE
WORDSWORTH’S POETRY
SHELLEY
A SERMON
TRUE CHRISTIAN MINISTERING
THE FANTASTIC IMAGINATION
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[Footnote: 1867.]
There are in whose notion education would seem to consist in the production of a certain repose through the development of this and that faculty, and the depression, if not eradication, of this and that other faculty. But if mere repose were the end in view, an unsparing depression of all the faculties would be the surest means of approaching it, provided always the animal instincts could be depressed likewise, or, better still, kept in a state of constant repletion. Happily, however, for the human race, it possesses in the passion of hunger even, a more immediate saviour than in the wisest selection and treatment of its faculties. For repose is not the end of education; its end is a noble unrest, an ever renewed awaking from the dead, a ceaseless questioning of the past for the interpretation of the future, an urging on of the motions of life, which had better far be accelerated into fever, than retarded into lethargy.
.....
Nature answers with dying echoes, sinking in the midst of her splendour into a sad silence.
Not so with human nature. The echoes of the word of truth gather volume and richness from every soul that re-echoes it to brother and sister souls.
