STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 323 



STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 



L THE AGE OF IMAGINATION. 



BY JAMES SULLY, M. A., LL. D., 



GROTE PROFESSOR OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND AND LOGIC AT THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, 



LONDON. 



ONE of the few things we seemed to be certain of with respect 

 to child nature was that it is fancy-full. Childhood, we all 

 know, is the age for dreaming, for decking out the as yet un- 

 known world with the gay colors of imagination, for living a life 

 of play or happy make-believe. So that nothing seems more child- 

 like in the " Childhood of the World " than the myth-making im- 

 pulse, the overflow of fancy to hide the nakedness of things. 



Yet even here, perhaps, we have been content with loose gen- 

 eralization in place of careful observation and analysis of facts. 

 For one thing the play of infantile imagination is probably much 

 less uniform than is often supposed. There seem to be matter-of- 

 fact children who can not rise buoyantly to a bright fancy. Mr. 

 Ruskin, of all men, has recently told us that when a child he was 

 incapable of acting a part or telling a tale ; that he never knew a 

 child " whose thirst for visible fact was at once so eager and so 

 methodic." * We may accept the report of Mr. Ruskin's memory 

 as proving that he did not idle away his time in day dreams, but 

 by long and close observation of running water and the like laid 

 the foundations of that fine knowledge of the appearances of Na- 

 ture which everywhere shines through his writings. Yet one 

 may be permitted to doubt whether a writer who shows not only 

 so rich and graceful a style but so truly poetic an invention could 

 have been in every respect an unimaginative child. 



Perhaps the truth will turn out to be the paradox that most 

 children are at once matter-of-fact observers and dreamers, pass- 

 ing from the one to the other as the mood takes them and with a 

 facility which grown people may well envy. My own observa- 

 tions go to show that the prodigal output of fancy, the reveling 

 in myth and story, are often characteristic of a period of child- 

 hood only. We are apt to lump together such different levels 

 of experience and capacity under that abstraction " the child." 

 The wee mite of three and a half years, spending more than half 

 its day in trying to realize all manner of pretty, odd, startling 

 fancies about animals, fairies, and the rest, is something vastly 

 unlike the boy of six or seven whose mind is now bent on under- 

 standing the make and go of machines and of that big machine 

 the world. 



* Praeterita, p. 76. 



