We never really possess an idea, a bit of knowledge, or a fact of experience until we get below the mind of it into the heart of it.

Now, sympathy in this sense is the imagination touched with feeling; it is the imagination bringing thought and emotion into vital relation.

In the process of culture, therefore, the imagination plays a great part; for culture, it cannot too often be said, is knowledge, observation, and experience incorporate into personality and become part of the very nature of the individual.

The man of culture is pre-eminently a man of imagination; lacking this quality, he may become learned by force of industry, or a scholar by virtue of a trained intelligence, but the ripeness, the balance, the peculiar richness of fibre which characterise the man of culture will be denied him.

The man of culture, it is true, is not always a man of creative power; but he is never devoid of that kind of creative quality which transforms everything he receives into something personal and individual.