6 Colorado College Studies. 



The atfcc'tions and the imagination, then, are the powers 

 which dominate the child nature. Let us revert to what w^e 

 said about literature: "Imagination and feeling are the final 

 tests of literature." Imagination and emotion, the chief traits 

 of childhood; imagination and emotion, the chief tests of 

 literature — the two were evidently made for one another. 



It is singularly interesting that three of the greatest 

 classics of childhood were not written for children at all. 

 " Pilgrim's Progress " was a new type of sermon written by 

 the tinker preacher in his prison cell at Bedford; " Robinson 

 Crusoe " was a pseudo-history from the pen of one of the first 

 great English realists; " Gulliver's Travels " was a political 

 satire by the greatest of English satirists. The same thing 

 is true of the stories of the Bible, of the " Arabian Nights," 

 of the folk lore which strikes a sympathetic chord at once in 

 the child's nature. The truth is that the childlike is the 

 eternal. Goethe said at the close of his "Faust" that the 

 Eternal Womanly is to lead us on. Has not our age, by rea- 

 son of its more intimate knowledge of human life, come to 

 the profounder truth that it is the Eternal Childlike which is 

 to lead the world to its final perfection? At this season the 

 Christ from His manger cradle sways the world, and the 

 heart of child is always the best standard of religion, charac- 

 ter, art, literature. Except ye be converted and become as 

 little children ye cannot enter the kingdom of painting or of 

 books any more than the kingdom of God and His Christ. 



Child study, then, reveals the fact that the child nature is 

 the counterpart of what is best in books, that children can 

 appreciate literature. Bat do the conclusions of the psycho- 

 logical laboratory find themselves sustained in the practical 

 experience of those wdio have had to deal with children? You 

 remember that beautiful story from the pen of Laura E. 

 Richards, " Ca^atain January " — one of those books of recent 

 times which at once reveal the fact that they are literature. 

 The red dory M'as just about to set out for the lighthouse 

 home when the captain was hailed by an old friend with the 

 same title. The conversation drifted straight to the topic 

 always uppermost in the lighthouse keeper's mind, his " little 



