108 IMAGES AND NAMES. 



and all tliat tlie cMld lias to do is to suppose them bigger, 

 and alive, and to consider tlieni as walking of themselves when 

 they are pushed about. But an imaginative child will be con- 

 tent with much less real resemblance than this. It will bring 

 in a larger subjective eleraent, and make a dog do duty for a 

 horse, or a soldier for a shepherd, till at last the objective re- 

 semblance almost disappears, and a bit of wood may be dragged 

 about, representing a ship on the sea, or a coach on the road. 

 Here the likeness of the bit of wood to a ship or a coach is 

 very slight indeed ; but it is a thing, and can be moved about 

 in an appropriate manner, and placed in a suitable position 

 with respect to other objects. Unlike as the toy may be to 

 what it represents in the child's mind, it still answers a pur- 

 pose, and is an evident assistance to the child in enabling it to 

 arrange and develope its ideas, by working the objects and 

 actions and stories it is acquainted with, into a series of dra- 

 matic pictures. Of how much use the material object is in set- 

 ting the mind to work, may be seen by taking it away and leav- 

 ing the child to play, with nothing to play with. 



At an early age, children learn more from play than from 

 teaching ; and the use of toys is very great in developing their 

 minds by giving them the means of, as it were, taking a scene 

 or an event to pieces, and putting its parts together in new 

 combinations, a process which immensely increases the defi- 

 niteness of the children's ideas and their power of analysis. It 

 is because the use of toys is principally in developing the sub- 

 jective side of the mind, that the elaborate figures and models 

 of which the toy-shops have been full of late years are of so 

 little use. They are carefully worked out into the nicest de- 

 tails ; but they are models or pictures, not playthings, and 

 children, who know quite well what it is they want, tire of 

 them in a few hours, unless, indeed, they can break them up 

 and make real toys of the bits. What a child wants is not one 

 picture, but the means of making a thousand. Objective know- 

 ledge, such as is to be gained from the elaborate doll's houses 

 and grocer's shops, with their appurtenances, may be got in 

 plenty elsewhere by mere observation ; but toys, to be of value 

 in early education, should be separate^ so as to allow of their 



