Chapter 7, How to Choose Our Hypotheses, part 1

The faculties by means of which we get our positive data are called the senses (sight, hearing, etc.). The faculty by means of which we get our hypothetical data is called the Imagination. Some persons are prone to warn young people against what they call an excessive exercise of the imagination. Of course, to say that “excessive” anything is too much is a mere truism, but nobody knows yet what is the proper amount of use for the imagination. What we do know is that there is a good deal of excessive mis-use of the imagination, by which I mean that there is a frightful amount of using it contrary to the laws of its normal action. A kind of use of it, such as, when we find a child doing it with its eyes, we say, “Do not learn the habit of squinting”; or if it does the analogous thing with its legs, we say, “Go and run about, or do some gymnastics; do not stand there lolloping crooked against the wall.” Squinting and lolloping crooked are things that it is best to avoid doing much of with any part of one's self. Moreover, it is bad to spend too many hours over either a microscope or a telescope, or in gazing fixedly at some one-distance range. The eyes need change of focus. So does the imagination. There has been in modern Europe a shocking riot in mis-use of the imagination. The remedy is to learn to use it. But the same kind of people who would like to bandage a child's eyes lest it should learn to squint, like to bandage the imagination lest it should wear itself out by squinting. In a school which professes to be conducted on hygienic principles, we have nothing to do with that sort of pessimistic quackery. We use the imagination as freely as the hands and eyes.