584. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



seems to me even more conclusive on the point : " I remember " 

 (writes a lady) " tliat one of my children, when about four, was 

 playing ' shops ' with the baby. The elder one was shopman at 

 the time when I came into the room and kissed her. She broke 

 out into piteous sobs ; I could not understand why. At last she 

 sobbed out, ' Mother, you never kiss the man in the shop.^ For 

 the time being her game was spoiled." The mother's kiss, 

 though sweet in itself, had here wrought a sudden disillusion. 



It is only right to say that this same lady adds that her chil- 

 dren varied considerably in this susceptibility to the play illu- 

 sion, and that she feels sure her second child, who is less intelli- 

 gent, would not have troubled about the kiss. 



Play may produce not only the vivid imaginative realization 

 at the time, but a sort of mild permanent illusion. Sometimes it 

 is a toy horse, in one case communicated to me it was a funny- 

 looking toy lion, more frequently it is the human effigy, the doll, 

 which, as the result of successive acts of imaginative vivification, 

 gets taken up into the relation of permanent companion and pet. 

 Clusters of happy association envelop it, endowing it with a fixed 

 vitality and character. A mother once asked her boy of two 

 years and a half if his doll was a boy or a girl. He said at first, 

 "A boy," but presently correcting himself added, " I think it is a 

 baby." Here we have a challenging of the inner conviction by a 

 question, a moment of reflection, and as a result of this, the unam- 

 biguous confession that the doll had its place in the living human 

 family. 



Here is a more stubborn exhibition on the part of another 

 boy of this lasting faith in the plaything called out by others' 

 skeptical attitude. " When " (writes a lady correspondent) " he 



was just over two years old, L began to speak of a favorite 



wooden horse (Dobbin) as if it was a real living creature. ' No 

 tarpenter (carpenter) made Dobbin,' he would say ; ' he is not 

 wooden, but kin (skin) and bones, and Dod (God) made him.' If 

 any one said ' it' in speaking of the horse his wrath was instantly 

 aroused, and he would shout indignantly : ' It ! You muttent tay 

 it, you mut tay lie' He imagined the horse was possessed of 

 every virtue, and it was strange to see what an influence this 

 creature of his own imagination exercised over him. If there 



was anything L particularly wished not to do, his mother had 



only to say, ' Dobbin would like you to do this,' and it was done 

 without a murmur." 



There is another domain of childish activity closely bordering 

 on that play where we may observe a like sufi:'usion of the world 

 of sense by imagination. I refer to pictures and artistic repre- 

 sentations generally. If in the case of adults there is a half illu- 

 sion, a kind of oneiratic trance condition, induced by a picture or 



