Memory and Imagination

(Found here)

“[T]he soul stands midway between the past and the future. The light of the present falls for the moment upon it, but only for a moment; in an instant the present becomes the past. The past sinks into the darkness and cannot return; the future is shrouded in darkness and cannot be foreseen. But for the light of the passing moment, the soul’s life would seem to be surrounded on all sides with darkness, like the bird that flies through the lighted chamber coming from the night and returning to it again.

Yet man must look backward and forward. He cannot live in the fleeting present. Out of the past come the experiences, the warnings, the lessons that are to guide him, and if he cannot see some little way into the future, he will stand trembling upon the edge of the light of the present, too timid and fearful to press on. He must look backward and forward if he is to make the best use of the moment. The currents of the past must press him forward; the eager anticipations of the future must draw him onward.

God has given him two great powers: one that looks backward into the farthest past and stores up its treasures, the other that presses forward and lifts the veil overhanging the future. These two powers are memory and imagination.

. . . Thus we can look backward and forward and, in the wisdom of the past and the anticipation of the future, tread with head erect and wide-eyed vision the path that is set before us.”

~Basil Maturin