To see what is there

We must invoke the most wild and soaring sort of imagination; the imagination to see what is there.

Those are the words of Mr. G. K. Chesterton, and they are found very early on in his book The Everlasting Man. I am endeavoring to read it as I spend a few days this weekend in northern Michigan.

To see what is there. We are told quite often that imagination consists of, basically, the creation of we know not what. Creation is to come out of little or nothing; the truly and completely new is to have no connection with the world as we know it. It is to be entirely novel, and without compare. Yet if it is without compare, how may we know its value? How might we rank it? How might we even find it, with no clue as to its existence, beyond the norms of human pale?

I rather believe, and I am quite early in the reading of his book so I may be interpreting it wrongly, that I get his meaning. It stems from another statement of his which I quite like, and which says, and please excuse what may be a paraphrase, There is nothing which it takes more courage to speak than a truism. For truth, perhaps, consists in affirming nothing more than what any good conscience would already know. In this world of undue consideration and deference, that is strength indeed.

All I know this second is, I look forward with great anticipation Chesterton's imagination.