Imagination and Authority

Jack London’s To Build A Fire brings up to interesting thoughts concerning the nature of man. The first relating humanity to imagination and the second relating humanity to authority. The question is: can humanity survive without at least one or both of these?

London writes: “the trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances.” The man is aware that the weather is cold, but he does not see the significance in this coldness. The weather signifies the frailty of man. He cannot survive in this weather on his own. The dog can survive, but he cannot.

The man is caught up in the particulars of himself and his surroundings, but does not allow himself to relate these particulars to abstracts. He does not even have time to think. He computes, but he does not comprehend or even contemplate. Reality has lost significance to him and it results in the loss of his very existence.

Besides ignoring his imaginative faculties, the man ignores authority. “The old timer had been very serious in laying down the law that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below. Well, here he was; he had had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself.” He thought. The man is so confident in himself and his faculties that he ignores the words of authority. He ignores the wisdom of age. This is his ultimate downfall, and he realizes it in the end. “‘you were right, old hoss; you were right,’ the man mumbled to the old-timer of Sulphur Creek.”

Imagination would have helped the man realize his own insignificance. He was helpless to survive alone; he needed another man. Even if he had not used his imagination he should have listened to the advice of one who had come before him. The dog did not ignore the advice of the ages: “the dog knew; all its ancestry knew, and it had inherited the knowledge.” Man does not have this natural inheritance, but he must inherit it somehow. He must be taught.

If man must be taught to use his imagination and to respect authority, then it seems that much of the education today is not truly educating. Children are taught that history is ever evolving; they are the future and the truth. They are taught principles undermining the very authority which teaches them. If instead they were taught to use their imaginations, they might realize their own frailty and dependency. They cannot not exist apart from their elders. They are founded in the past and cannot separate themselves from it.

Education must be tied to both imagination and authority. If it is not children will grow up to find themselves as helpless as the man who perished for want of a fire.