The commonwealth. (Scotland Neck, N.C.) 1896-1929, 1899-10-05
The Practical Value Of Dreamers.

The Practical Value Of Dreamers.
Frank Crane, in Saturday ening Post.
Few realize the immense effect OF
the imagination upon the material re-
alities Of life. Not only those who fol-
low fads, those who are subject to su-
perstitIons, those who suffer fancied
ailments, and those who are healed by
faith, but ell the rest of the world, even
the most matter of-fact men and wo-
men, owe their progress Or their degra
dation, and the main portion of their
joys and sorrows, to their imaginative
faculty. The ideal moulds US all.
The best OF life is its illusions. If
we could only gee what is to be seen, if
our love and desire had no food but
facts, if the rsinbows OF the ideal did
not always hoyer oyer the dull actuali
ty, no soldier would enlist, no man
would labor a life time to lay up a
competence, no mother could endure
to rear her children, no lover would be
enamored of his mistress face !; indeed,
the race would sink in the despair of
drudgery, and the lamp of human JOY
would be extinguished.
The ideal is the best part Of our
work. No sermon is SO good as the one
that escaped the preacher in his study.
No painting is so fine as the one whose
evanescent colors the artist could never
catch upon his canvas, though they
swung as ghosts of clouds in the sky of
his mind. Every great musical COM
position Is but a compromise between
the ravishing sounds that flood the
composers soul and the stubborn in
struments that fret under the harness
of metal and wood and string. The
sweetest, the grandest thing in our life
is the illusion which hangs constantly
before us. which we never can seize
and which, as we die, we still look to-
ward and sigh tor. trusting that in az
other world we can reach 1t.
In taking an inventory of our age
we should reckon our dreams, and the
dreamers of them, as our best posses
sion; for they are the suretles OF the
future. What the age to come will be
is determined by what this age dreams.
The institutions OF to-day are the fruit
of the aspirations OF yesterday. The
ebulllent writer's of the days of the
French Revolution did not put forth
their brilliant theories in vain, nor
were those theories quenched by the
violence of their time nor smothered
by the age of reaction that followed ;
but now hundred years afterward the
civilized world has quietly moved up,
attempting to occupy, by institutional
and governmental reality, what was
once deemed the cloudland of 'sliberty
equality and fraternity" Had the
young Galilean not gone about doing
good; had He not spoken those para.
bles and apothegms that idealize frater'
nifty, altruism and sanctity of human
life, there would be no vast church
benevolences, no missions, no democ'
racy, no Christian civilization.
Every optimist belongs to the asset'
of the race; every pessimist is dead
loss. All honor to those who in sweat
and pain OF labor build the walls O
our civilization but let us not forget
those who sing songs to them as they
toll: for where there is no song, labor
ia cursed. "Where there is no yisior
the people perish" Orpheus built th'
walls of Thebes with the music OF hi
lute. it Is said; and it is true certainly
that no great work of society has eve
!, risen in glory and majesty except th'
poet and the prophet brought dowr
fire from Heaven to warm the heart
OF the workers.
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