STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 391 



flowers together, while she recognized the superiority of the for- 

 mer as the tangible and probably the odorous ones. The strong- 

 est evidence of recognition of pictorial function by children is, I 

 think, their ability to recognize the portrait of an individual. 

 But even this is not quite satisfactory. It is conceivable, at least, 

 that a child may look on a photograph of his father as a kind of 

 " double." The boy C took his projected photograph very seri- 

 ously as a kind of doubling of himself. The story of the dog, a 

 Dandy Dinmont terrier, that trembled and barked at a portrait 

 of his dead mistress,* seems to me to bear this out. It would 

 surely be rather absurd to say that the demonstrations of this 

 animal, whatever they may have meant, prove that he took the 

 portrait to be a memento likeness of his dead mistress. 



We are apt to forget how difficult and abstract a conception is 

 that of pictorial representation, how hard it is to look at a thing 

 as pure semblance having no value in itself, but only as standing 

 for something else. A like slowness on the part of the child to 

 grasp a sign, as such, shows itself here as in the case of verbal 

 symbols. Children will, quite late, especially when feeling is 

 aroused and imagination specially active, show a disposition to 

 transform the semblance into the thing. Miss Shinn herself 

 points out that her niece, who seems to have been decidedly 

 quick, was as late as the twenty- fifth month touched with pity by 

 a picture of a lamb caught in a thicket, and tried to lift the 

 painted branch that lay across the lamb. In her thirty-fifth 

 month, again, when looking at a picture of a chamois defending 

 her little one from an eagle, " she asked anxiously if the mamma 

 would drive the eagle away, and presently quite simply and un- 

 consciously placed her little hand edgewise on the picture so as 

 to make a fence between the eagle and the chamois." f Such 

 ready confusion of pictures with realities shows itself in the 

 fourth year and later. A boy nearly five was observed to strike 

 at the figures in a picture and to exclaim, " I can't break them." 

 The Worcester collection of observations illustrates the first con- 

 fused idea of a picture. " One day F , a boy of four, called on 



a friend, Mrs, C , who had just received a picture, representing 



a scene in winter, in which people were going to church, some on 



foot and others in sleighs. F was told whither they were going. 



The next day he came and noticed the picture, and looking at Mrs. 



C and then at the picture, said, ' Why, Mrs. C , them people 



haven't got there yet, have they ? ' " 



All this points, I think, to a slow and gradual emergence of the 

 idea of representation or likeness. If a child is capable in mo- 

 ments of intense imagination of confusing his battered doll with 



* Romanes, op. cit., p. 453. f Op. cit, ii, p. 104, 



