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CHAPTER VI. 



IMAGES AND NAMES. 



The trite comparison of savages to " grown-up childi'en/' is in 

 the main a sound one, tliough not to be carried out too strictly. 

 In the uncivilized American or Polynesian, the strength of body 

 and force of character of a grown man are combined with a 

 mental development in many respects not beyond that of a 

 young child of a civilized race. It has been already noticed 

 how naturally children can appreciate and understand such 

 dii-ect expressions of thought as the gesture-language and pic- 

 ture-writing. In like manner, the use of dolls or images as an 

 assistance to the operations of the mind, is familiar to all chil- 

 dren, though among those who grow up under the influences 

 of civilized society, it is mostly superseded and forgotten 

 in after life. Few educated Europeans ever thoroughly realize 

 the fact, that they have once passed through a condition of mind 

 from which races at a lower stage of civilization never fully 

 emerge ; but this is certainly the case, and the European child 

 playing with its doll, furnishes the key to several of the mental 

 phenomena which distinguish the more highly cultivated races 

 of mankind from those lower in the scale. 



When a child plays with a doll or plaything, the toy is com- 

 monly made to represent in the child's mind some imaginary 

 object which is more or less like it. Wooden soldiers, for in- 

 stance, or the beasts in a Noah's ark, have a real resemblance 

 which any one would recognize at once to soldiers and beasts. 



