IMAGES AND NAMES. 109 



being arranged in any variety of combination^ and not too ser- 

 vile and detailed copies of objects, so tbat they may not be 

 mere pictures, but symbols, wbicb a cliild can make to stand 

 for many objects with the aid of its imagination. 

 • In later years, and among highly educated people, the men- 

 tal process which goes on in a child playing with wooden sol- 

 diers and horses, though it never disappears, must be sought 

 for in the midst of more complex phenomena. Perhaps no- 

 thing in after life more closely resembles the effect of a doll 

 upon a child, than the effect of the illustrations of a tale upon 

 a grown-up reader. Here the objective resemblance is very 

 indefinite ; two artists would make pictures of the same scene 

 that were very unlike one another, the very persons and places 

 depicted are imaginary, and yet what reality and definiteness 

 is given to the scene by a good picture. But in this case the 

 direct action of an image on the mind complicates itself with 

 the deepest problems of painting and sculpture. The com- 

 parison of the workings of the mind of the uncivilized man, 

 and of the civilized child, is much less difficult. 



Mr. Backhouse one day noticed in Van Diemen^s Land a 

 native woman arranging several stones that were flat, oval, 

 and about two inches wide, and marked in various directions 

 with black and red lines. These he learned represented absent 

 friends, and one larger than the rest stood for a fat native 

 woman on Flinders Island, known by the name of Mother 

 Brown.^ Similar practices are found among far higher races 

 than the ill-fated Tasmanians. Among some North American 

 tribes, a mother who has lost a child keeps its memory ever 

 present to her by filling its cradle with black feathers and 

 quills, and carrying it about with her for a year or more. When 

 she stops anywhere, she sets up the cradle and talks to it as 

 she goes about her work, just as she would have done if the 

 dead baby had been still alive within it.^ Here we have no 

 image; but in Africa we find a rude doll, representing the 

 child, kept as a memorial. It is well known that over a great 



1 Backhouse, ' Narrative of a Visit to tlic Australian Colonies ; ' London, 1843, 

 p. lOi. 



- Catlin, vol. ii. p. 133. 



