ew of the subject than this, many of the phenomena of
childhood would be still more wonderful and inexplicable than they are.
One would have supposed, for example, that the imagination--being, as
is commonly thought, one of the most exalted and refined of the mental
faculties of man--would be one of the latest, in the order of time, to
manifest itself in the development of the mind; instead of which it is,
in fact, one of the earliest. Children live, in a great measure, from the
earliest age in an ideal world--their pains and their pleasures, their joys
and their fears being, to a vast extent, the concomitants of phantasms and
illusions having often the slightest bond of connection with the realities
around them. The realities themselves, moreover, often have far greater
influence over them by what they suggest than by what they are.

Indeed, the younger the child is, within reasonable limits, the more
susceptible he seems to be to the power of the imagination, and the more
easily his mind and heart are reached and influenced through this avenue.
At a very early period the realities of actual existence and the phantasms
of the mind seem inseparably mingled, and it is only after much experience
and a considerable development of his powers, that the line of distinction
between them becomes defined. The power of investing an elongated bag of
bran with the attributes and qualities of a thinking being, so as to make
it an object of solicitude and affection, which would seem to imply a high
exercise of one of the most refined and exalted of the human faculties,
does not come, as we might have expected, at the end of a long period of
progress and development, but springs into existence, as it were, at once,
in the very earliest years. The progress and development are required to
enable the child to perceive that the rude and shapeless doll is _not_ a
living and lovable thing. This mingling of the real and imaginary worlds
shows itself to the close observer in a thousand curious ways.

The true explanation of the phenomenon seems to be that the various embryo
faculties are brought into action by the vital force at first in a very
irregular, intermingled, and capricious manner, just as the muscles are
in the endless and objectless play of the limbs and members. They develop
themselves and grow by this very action, and we ought not only to indulge,
but to cherish the action in all its beautiful manifestations by every
means in our