586 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



his cheeks, and he was in such an agony of grief that his grand- 

 mother had to take the picture from him and try to divert his 

 thoughts." 



Here, it is pretty evident, we have to do with a degree of illu- 

 sion which equals if it does not surpass that of the most absorb- 

 ing play. We must remember that a detailed pictorial represen- 

 tation, especially if it is colored, gives to the eye a full present- 

 ment of a scene and so favors a particularly clear and vivid 

 imaginative realization. It is probable, too, that the abstract 

 mode of representation in pictorial art, as compared, say, with 

 that of the stage, hardly counts for the child's perception. Even 

 the ordinary adult, innocent of artistic aims and methods, is wont, 

 when gazing upon a painting, to lose all count of the picture as 

 such, his consciousness being focused for the intense imaginative 

 realization of its meaning. 



I do not, of course, mean that all realization of form by the 

 young mind is of this illusory intensity. One striking character- 

 istic of children's fancy is to interpret rapidly the boldest hints 

 of a representation of a familiar form, more especially that of 

 man and of animals. All observers of imaginative children can 

 testify as to the quickness with which they detect the semblance 

 of a human or animal form in the irregular lines of a cracked 

 ceiling, in the veining of marble, or in the lineal design of a 

 carpet, not to speak of slight and imperfect pictorial sketches. 

 They are apt, as already remarked, to show this imaginative 

 facility with respect to the forms of letters. Here is an example : 

 The pen of a little boy, well on in his fourth year, when tracing a 

 letter L, happened to slip, so that the horizontal limb formed an 

 angle upward, thus : U,. He instantly saw the resemblance to the 

 bent knee of the human form, and said, " Oh, he's sitting down." 

 Similarly, when he made an F turn the wrong way, and then put 

 the correct form to the left, thus, F ^, he exclaimed, " They're 

 talking together." Here, it is to be presumed, illusion is less 

 complete, fancy amusing itself, so to speak, with the form and 

 making it suggestive and representative. And probably the same 

 applies to some of the earliest and clumsiest of children's attempts 

 to draw men and horses, and so forth ; only that here we have to 

 do with a pre-existing idea and an artistic intention to give outer 

 embodiment to this idea a circumstance which tends to make 

 the process of imaginative realization steadier and more domi- 

 nant. 



I have here dealt with children's play and kindred forms of 

 activity as the outcome of a strong bent to imaginative realiza- 

 tion, to the vivid, half-illusory picturing out of things. At the 

 same time it is to be noticed that, in the forms in which this im- 

 aginative impulse works itself out, we see a good deal more of the 



