Studies of childhood / by James Sully.

  • James Sully
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Studies of childhood / by James Sully. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    37/544 page 25
    II. THE AGE OF IMAGINATION. Why we call Children Imaginative. One of the few things we seemed to be certain of with respect to child-nature was that it is fancy-full. Childhood, we all know, is the age for dreaming, for decking out the world as yet unknown with the gay colours of imagination ; for living a life of play or happy make-believe. So that nothing seems more to characterise the ‘ Childhood of the World ’ than the myth-making impulse which by an over¬ flow of fancy seeks to hide the meagreness of knowledge. Yet even here, perhaps, we have been content with loose generalisation in place of careful observation and analysis of facts. For one thing, the play of infantile imagination is probably much less uniform than is often supposed. There seem to be matter-of-fact children who cannot rise buoyantly to a bright fancy. Mr. Ruskin, of all men, has recently told us that when a child he was incapable of acting a part or telling a tale, that he never knew a child “whose thirst for visible fact was at once so eager and so methodic T1 We may accept the report of Mr. Ruskin’s memory as proving that he did not idle away his time in day-dreams, but, by long and close observation of running water, and the like, laid the foundations of that fine know¬ ledge of the appearances of nature which everywhere shines through his writings. Yet one may be permitted to doubt 1 Prater it a, p. 76.
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