"Never forget that the key to the situation lies in the will and not in the imagination"
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Underhill’s line lands like a gentle rebuke to anyone who mistakes vivid inner life for actual change. As a writer best known for work on Christian mysticism, she isn’t dismissing imagination so much as demoting it. Imagination can generate consoling pictures of holiness, purpose, or transformation; the will is the unglamorous engine that turns those pictures into disciplines, decisions, and character. The subtext is almost therapeutic in its clarity: inspiration is cheap, and interior drama can become a substitute for obedience, practice, or courage.
The phrasing matters. “Key to the situation” suggests a lock-and-door problem, not an abstract ideal. There is something stuck: a moral impasse, a spiritual dryness, a life that feels inwardly rich but outwardly stalled. Underhill implies the solution is not another round of mental rehearsal, not more aestheticized longing, not a more elaborate story about who you might become. It’s the will: choosing, refusing, returning, doing the same small act again when the mood has evaporated.
Read in early 20th-century context, it also feels like a critique of the era’s flirtations with escapist spiritualities and self-improvement fantasies: the temptation to treat the inner world as the real world. Underhill’s intent is corrective and bracing. She’s defending a spirituality grounded in action, where imagination serves as a lantern, not a vehicle. The will drives; imagination only lights the road.
The phrasing matters. “Key to the situation” suggests a lock-and-door problem, not an abstract ideal. There is something stuck: a moral impasse, a spiritual dryness, a life that feels inwardly rich but outwardly stalled. Underhill implies the solution is not another round of mental rehearsal, not more aestheticized longing, not a more elaborate story about who you might become. It’s the will: choosing, refusing, returning, doing the same small act again when the mood has evaporated.
Read in early 20th-century context, it also feels like a critique of the era’s flirtations with escapist spiritualities and self-improvement fantasies: the temptation to treat the inner world as the real world. Underhill’s intent is corrective and bracing. She’s defending a spirituality grounded in action, where imagination serves as a lantern, not a vehicle. The will drives; imagination only lights the road.
Quote Details
| Topic | Self-Discipline |
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