392 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a living reality, he may be expected to act similarly with respect 

 to the fuller likeness of a picture. Vividness of imagination tends 

 in the child as in the savage, and indeed in all of us, to invest a 

 semblance with something of reality. We are able to control the 

 illusory tendency and to keep it within the limits of an aesthetic 

 semi-illusion ; not so the child. Is it too fanciful to suppose that 

 the belief of the savage in the occasional visits of the real spirit- 

 god to his idol has for its psychological motive the impulse which 

 prompts the child ever and again to identify his toys and even his 

 pictures with the realities which they represent ? 



As might be expected, this impulse to confuse representation 

 and represented reality shows itself very distinctly in the first 

 reception of dramatic spectacle. If you dress up as Father Christ- 

 mas, your child, even though he is told that you are his father, 

 will hardly be able to resist the illusion that your disguise so pow- 

 erfully induces. Cuvier relates that a boy of ten, on watching a 

 stage scene in which troops were drawn up for action, broke out 

 in loud protestations to the actor who was taking the part of the 

 general, telling him that the artillery was wrongly placed, and so 

 forth.* This reminds one of the story of the sailors who on a visit 

 to a theater happened to see a representation of a mutiny on board 

 ship, and were so excited that they rushed on the stage and took 

 sides with the authorities in quelling the movement. 



I believe that this same tendency to take art representations 

 for realities reappears in children's mental attitude toward stories. 

 A story by its narrative form seems to tell of real events, and chil- 

 dren, as we all know, are wont to believe tenaciously that their 

 stories are true. I think I have observed a disposition in imagi- 

 native children to go beyond this, and to give present actuality to 

 the scenes and events described. And this is little to be wondered 

 at when one remembers that even grown people, familiar with the 

 devices of art imitation, tend now and again to fall into this con- 

 fusion. Only a few days ago, as I was reading an account by a 

 friend of mine of a perilous passage in an Alpine ascent, accom- 

 plished years ago, I suddenly caught myself in the attitude of pro- 

 posing to shout out to stop him from venturing farther. A vivid 

 imaginative realization of the situation had made it for the mo- 

 ment a present actuality. 



Careful observations of the first attitudes of the child-mind 

 toward representative art are greatly needed. We should proba- 

 bly find considerable diversity of behavior. The presence of a 

 true art feeling would be indicated by a special quickness in the 

 apprehension of art semblance as such. 



In these first reactions of the young mind to the stimulus of 



* Quoted by Perez, op. cit., p. 216. 



