to the child and to
the childlike in heart. But that is not quite the whole of the story. A
child by force of his imagination and capacity of feeling is able to
pass beyond the limits of material, and he lives in a world of
exhaustless play and happiness; for him objects are but means and
not an end. To transcend thus the bounds of matter imposed by the
senses and to live by the power of emotion is the first condition of
appreciation. The second condition of appreciation is to feel and
know it, to become conscious of ourselves in our relation to the
object. To _live_ is the purpose of life; to be aware that we are
living is its fulfillment and the reward of appreciation.

Experience has a double value. There is the instant of experience
itself, and then the reaction on it. A child is unconscious in his play;
he is able to forget himself in it completely. At that moment he is
most happy. The instant of supreme joy is the instant of ecstasy,
when we lose all consciousness of ourselves as separate and distinct
individualities. We are one with the whole. But experience does not
yield us its fullest and permanent significance until, having
abandoned ourselves to the moment, we then react upon it and
become aware of what the moment means. A group of children are
at play. Without thought of themselves they are projected into their
sport; with their whole being merged in it, they are intensely living.
A passer on the street stands and watches them. For the moment, in
spirit he becomes a child with them. In himself he feels the
absorption and vivid reality to them of what they are doing. But he
feels also what they do not feel, and that is, what it means to be a
child. Where they are unconscious he is conscious; and therefore he
is able, as they are not, to distill the significance of their play. This
recognition makes possible the extension of his own life; for the
man adds to himself the child. The reproach is sometimes brought
against Walt Whitman that the very people he writes about do not
read him. The explanation is simple and illustrates the difference
between the unconscious and the conscious reception of life. The
"average man" who is the hero of Whitman's chants is not aware of
himself as such. He goes about his business, content to do his work;
and that makes up his experience. It is not the average man himself,
but the poet standing outside and looking on with imaginative
sympathy, who feels what it means to be an a