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.

    43/544 (page 31)
    how dull it must be for the pebbles in the causeway to be obliged to lie still and only see what was round about. When I walked out with a little basket for putting flowers in I used sometimes to pick up a pebble or two and carry them on to have a change: then at the farthest point of the walk turn them out, not doubting that they would be pleased to have a new view.” 1 This is by no means a unique example of a quaint childish expression of pity for what we think the insen¬ tient world. Plant-life seems often to excite the feeling. Here is a quotation from a parent’s chronicle : “ A girl aged eight, brings a quantity of fallen autumn leaves in to her mother, who says, ‘ Oh ! how pretty, F.! ’ to which the girl answers : ‘Yes, I knew you’d love the poor things, mother, I couldn’t bear to see them dying on the ground ’. A few days afterwards she was found standing at a window over¬ looking the garden crying bitterly at the falling leaves as they fell in considerable numbers.” [ need not linger on the products of this vitalising and personifying instinct, as we shall deal with them again when inquiring int children’s ideas about nature. Suffice it to say that it is wondrously active and far-reaching, constitut¬ ing one chief manifestation of childish fancy. Now it may be asked whether all this analogical exten¬ sion of images to what seem to us such incongruous objects involves a vivid and illusory apprehension of these as trans¬ formed. Is the eyelid realised and even seen for the moment as a sort of curtain, the curtain-image blending with and transforming what is present to the eye? Are the pebbles actually viewed as living things condemned to lie stiffly in one place? It is of course hard to say, yet I think a conjectural answer can be given. In this imaginative con¬ templation of things the child but half observes what is present to his eyes, one or two points only of supreme 1 See her article, “The History of an Infancy,” Longman's Magazine, Feb., 1890.