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The word 'imaginative reason' which is found here and there in Matthew Arnold's and Walter Pater's essays has a significance that is peculiar to the modern ages, distinct from that of the Greek 'senses and understanding' and Medieval 'heart and imagination'. We moderns know that an individualistic 'temperament' invariably influences that activity of reasoning which is commonly considered as basic and universal. In reality, therefore, the objectively absolute truth is always beyond the perception and grasp of a particular person. But this very limitation offers scope for the further development of human understanding. The very relativity of our thoughts and transiency of our exitence can be the basis of our creative imagination and activity. For primitive men everything outside them was the object of fear and enmity, and this mental attitude led to the establishment of idolatry and authoritarian system of society, which was sublimated into Catholic culture in the Medieval ages. The modern spirit criticised the Medieval authoritarianism and developed its own attitude based upon science and humanism. But this does not mean that Medievalism is now dead and powerless, in either its creative or its destructive sense; on the contrary, scientific rationalism must be supplemented and supported by medieval emotionalism. The synthesis of 'senses' and 'imagination': this is the meaning implied in the word 'imaginative reason'. The principle of 'imaginative reason' in active life is the rule of love, not the sway of hatred. For men of imaginative reason all men are not enemies but brothers. To realize this sense of brotherhood is ultimately the goal of all human activities. All the spiritual geniuses in the history of mankind were sooner or later led to this problem. The solution of this problem lies, in my case, in the belief in God, whose existence is, as it were, the irreplaceable agency between myself and others.
- 東京女子大学の論文