328 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lid, are selectively attended to ; and assimilative imagination, the 

 overlaying of the visual impression with an image called up by 

 similarity or analogy, does the rest. In this way the actual field 

 of visible objects is apt to get veiled, its appearance being trans- 

 formed by the wizard touch of a lively childish fancy. 



No doubt there are various degrees of illusion here. In its 

 matter-of-fact and really scrutinizing mood a child will not con- 

 found what is seen with what is imagined ; in this case the 

 analogy recalled is distinguished and used as an explanation of 

 what is seen as when a child observed of a panting dog, " Dat 

 bow-bow like puff-puff/' On the other hand, when another little 

 boy aged three years and nine months, seeing the leaves falling 

 exclaimed, " See, mamma, the leaves is flying like dickey-birds 

 and little butterflies ! " it is hard not to think that the child's 

 fancy for the moment transformed what he saw into the pretty 

 pictures. And one may risk the opinion that, with the little 

 thinking power and controlling force of will which a child pos- 

 sesses, the chances are that such assimilative activity of imagi- 

 nation always tends in the young brain to develop a degree of 

 momentary illusion. 



It may be added that abundant evidence goes to show that 

 children at first quite seriously believe that all things are alive 

 and feel. A child starts from himself as the model of a thing, and 

 mentally fashions other things like himself. He has slowly to 

 learn the distinction between the living and the lifeless, the sen- 

 tient and the insentient. No parent who has lived with his chil- 

 dren could, I think, doubt this. Dr. Stanley Hall's inquiries have, 

 among other curious results, shown that out of forty-eight little 

 ones just attaining the school age, twenty believed the moon and 

 stars to be alive, fifteen thought a doll and sixteen thought flow- 

 ers would suffer pain if burned. Perhaps a good many more had 

 a secret belief to the same effect, but through shyness and a 

 shrewd half-guess of the drift of the question declined to be drawn 

 into a categorical statement. The animism of children is apt to 

 get laughed at, and as soon as that begins they become reserved 

 and secretive of the " contents " of their minds. 



There is another way in which imagination may combine with 

 and transform sensible objects, viz., by what is commonly called 

 association. Mr. Ruskin tells us that when young he associated the 

 name crocodile with the creature so closely that the long series of 

 letters took on something of the look of the lanky creature. The 

 same writer in his Prseterita tells of a Dr. Grant into whose thera- 

 peutic hands he fell when a child. "The name" he adds, "is 

 always associated in my mind with a brown powder rhubarb or 

 the like of a gritty or acrid nature. . . . The name always sound- 

 ed to me gr-r-ish and granular." 



