What the Mind Was Made to Do

Ourselves, Charlotte Mason Volume 4 ( Part II The House Of Mind); Chapter 2. My Lord Intellect (Part 1)

“I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

Albert Einstein

The mind is always at work, whether we notice it or not. It gathers and synthesises knowledge from different sources, drawing connections and making meaning. Science is one of those sources. We tend to think of Science as a school subject. But really, it’s a vast realm; one that includes the stars, the oceans, the wind, the flowers and so much more. The more we learn within it, the more it keeps expanding. And behind it all is the mind, quietly making Science possible.

The mind is also the seat of the imagination. It wonders about what could be and reaches back to consider what once was, long before we were born. We imagine how people lived — what they wore, what they ate, how they spoke; all from the scattered accounts we read. We can almost sense what their personalities were like. Their grace, their kindness, their cruelty, their hesitation. We begin to see how the children played, how hard the farmer worked, what struggles they faced, what they feared. And in all of it, we realise that we’re not so different. We share many of the same emotions.

Through these imagined glimpses, history comes alive. We see patterns repeat. We notice that the heroes we read about weren’t born heroic. They didn’t set out with some grand design to be remembered. They simply made decisions, again and again. Their decisions made them heroes.

Imagination lets us walk for a moment in another person’s world. It permits us to re-enact lives in our mind’s eye. Even without being there, we can experience other time periods.

So let your mind be stirred by Science and energised by History. Let it ask, “what if” and “what then.” Let’s take it all in and create something new from it. Because that, in the end, is what the mind is meant to do.

Best Regards,

Olufunmike