For Good or Ill, Imagination Rules the World

“The human heart’s desires may not be holy, and the imagination born of these unholy desires may even be demonic. After all, it was the tyrant Napoleon who hauntingly declared, ‘Imagination rules the world’ . . . Where there is no real moral imagination, itself a form of vision, the people will become captives of corrupt and corrupting forms of imagination, for while imagination as such may be an innate human capacity, it needs proper nurture and cultivation. If the tea rose is not properly attended it withers and the thistle grows in its place. If the moral imagination is not fed by religious sentiment and supported by reason, it will wither and be replaced by corrupt forms of imagination” (Vigen Guroian, Rallying the Really Human Things, pp. 49-50).