Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young — 19 - The Imagination of Children, Part 1

THE IMAGINATION IN CHILDREN.

The reader may, perhaps, recollect that in the last chapter there was an intimation that a portion of the force which was produced, or rather liberated and brought into action, by the consumption of food in the vital system, expended itself in the development of thoughts, emotions, and other forms of mental action, through the organization of the brain and of the nerves.

_Expenditure of Force through the Brain.

_ The whole subject of the expenditure of material force in maintaining those forms of mental action which are carried on through the medium of bodily organs, it must be admitted, is involved in great obscurity; for it is only a glimmering of light which science has yet been able to throw into this field.

It is, however, becoming the settled opinion, among all well-informed persons, that the soul, during the time of its connection with a material system in this life, performs many of those functions which we class as mental, through the medium, or instrumentality, in some mysterious way, of material organs, just as we all know is the case with the sensations--that is, the impressions made through the organs of sense;

and that the maintaining of these mental organs, so to speak, in action, involves a certain expenditure of some form of physical force, the source of this force being in the food that is consumed in the nourishment of the body.

There is certainly no apparent reason why there should be any antecedent presumption against the supposition that the soul performs the act of remembering or of conceiving an imaginary scene through the instrumentality of a bodily organ, more than that it should receive a sensation of light or of sound through such a channel.

The question of the independent existence and the immateriality of the thinking and feeling principle, which takes cognizance of these thoughts and sensations, is not at all affected by any inquiries into the nature of the instrumentality by means of which, in a particular stage of its existence, it performs these functions.

_Phenomena explained by this Principle_.

This truth, if it be indeed a truth, throws great light on what would be otherwise quite inexplicable in the playful activity of the mental faculties of children.

The curious fantasies, imaginings, and make-believes--the pleasure of listening to marvellous and impossible tales, and of hearing odd and unpronounceable words or combination of words --the love of acting, and of disguises--of the impersonation of inanimate objects--of seeing things as they are not, and of creating and giving reality to what has no existence except in their own minds--are all the gambollings and frolics, so to speak, of the embryo faculties just becoming conscious of their existence, and affording, like the muscles of motion, so many different issues for the internal force derived from the food.

Thus the action of the mind of a child, in holding an imaginary conversation with a doll, or in inventing or in relating an impossible fairy story, or in converting a switch on which he pretends to be riding into a prancing horse, is precisely analogous to that of the muscles of the lamb, or the calf, or any other young animal in its gambols--that is, it is the result of the force which the vital functions are continually developing within the system, and which flows and must flow continually out through whatever channels are open to it; and in thus flowing, sets all the various systems of machinery into play, each in its own appropriate manner.

In any other view 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 power.

These mental organs, so to speak--that is, the organs of the brain, through which, while its connection with the body continues, the mind performs its mental functions--grow and thrive, as the muscles do, by being reasonably kept in exercise.

It is evident, from these facts, that the parent should be pleased with, and should encourage the exercise of these embryo powers in his children;

and both father and mother may be greatly aided in their efforts to devise means for reaching and influencing their hearts by means of them, and especially through the action of the imagination, which will be found, when properly employed, to be capable of exercising an almost magical power of imparting great attractiveness and giving great effect to lessons of instruction which, in their simple form, would be dull, tiresome, and ineffective.

Precisely what is meant by this will be shown more clearly by some examples.

_Methods exemplified_.

One of the simplest and easiest modes by which a mother can avail herself of the vivid imagination of the child in amusing and entertaining him, is by holding conversations with representations of persons, or even of animals, in the pictures which she shows him.

Thus, in the case, for example, of a picture which she is showing to her child sitting in her lap--the picture containing, we will suppose, a representation of a little girl with books under her arm--she may say, "My little girl, where are you going?

--I am going" (speaking now in a somewhat altered voice, to represent the voice of the little girl) "to school.

--Ah!

you are going to school.

You don't look quite old enough to go to school.

Who sits next to you at school?

--George Williams.

--George Williams?

Is he a good boy?

--Yes, he's a very good boy.

--I am glad you have a good boy, and one that is kind to you, to sit by you.

That must be very pleasant."

And so on, as long as the child is interested in listening.

Or, "What is your name, my little girl?

--My name is Lucy.

--That's a pretty name!

And where do you live?

--I live in that house under the trees.

--Ah!

I

see the house.

And where is your room in that house?

--My room is the one where you see the window open.

--I see it.

What have you got in your room?

--I have a bed, and a table by the window; and I keep my doll there.

I

have got a cradle for my doll, and a little trunk to keep her clothes in.

And I have got--" The mother may go on in this way, and describe a great number and variety of objects in the room, such as are calculated to interest and please the little listener.

It is the pleasurable exercise of some dawning faculty or faculties acting through embryo organs of the brain, by which the mind can picture to itself, more or less vividly, unreal scenes, which is the source of the enjoyment in such cases as this.

A child may be still more interested, perhaps, by imaginary conversations of this kind with pictures of animals, and by varying the form of them in such a way as to call a new set of mental faculties into play; as, for example, "Here is a picture of a squirrel.

I'll ask him where he lives.

'Bunny!

bunny!

stop a minute; I want to speak to you.

I want you to tell me where you live.

--I live in my hole.

--Where is your hole?

--It is under that big log that you see back in the woods.'

Yes" (speaking now to the child), "I see the log.

Do you see it?

Touch it with your finger.

Yes, that must be it.

But I don't see any hole.

'Bunny' (assuming now the tone of speaking again to the squirrel), 'I don't see your hole.

--No, I did not mean that any body should see it.

I made it in a hidden place in the ground, so as to have it out of sight.

--I wish I could see it, and I wish more that I could look down into it and see what is there.

What is there _in_ your hole, bunny?

--My nest is there, and my little bunnies.

--How many little bunnies have you got?'

"--And so on, to any extent that you desire.

It is obvious that conversations of this kind may be made the means of conveying, indirectly, a great deal of instruction to young children on a great variety of subjects; and lessons of duty may be inculcated thus in a very effective manner, and by a method which is at the same time easy and agreeable for the mother, and extremely attractive to the child.

This may seem a very simple thing, and it is really very simple; but any mother who has never resorted to this method of amusing and instructing her child will be surprised to find what an easy and inexhaustible resource for her it may become.

Children are always coming to ask for stories, and the mother often has no story at hand, and her mind is too much preoccupied to invent one.

Here is a ready resort in every such emergency.

"Very well," replies the mother to such a request, "I'll tell you a story;

but I must have a picture to my story.

Find me a picture in some book."

The child brings a picture, no matter what.

There is no possible picture that will not suggest to a person possessed of ordinary ingenuity an endless number of talks to interest and amuse the child.

To take an extreme case, suppose the picture is a rude pencil drawing of a post, and nothing besides.

You can imagine a boy hidden behind the post, and you can call to him, and finally obtain an answer from him, and have a long talk with him about his play and who he is hiding from, and what other way he has of playing with his friend.

Or you can talk with the post directly.

Ask him where he came from, who put him in the ground, and what he was put in the ground for, and what kind of a tree he was when he was a part of a tree growing in the woods; and, following the subject out, the conversation may be the means of not only amusing the child for the moment, but also of gratifying his curiosity, and imparting a great amount of useful information to him which will materially aid in the development of his powers.

Or you may ask the post whether he has any relatives, and he may reply that he has a great many cousins.

He has some cousins that live in the city, and they are called lamp-posts, and their business is to hold lamps to light people along the streets; and he has some other cousins who stand in a long row and hold up the telegraph-wire to carry messages from one part of the world to another; and so on without end.

If all this may done by means of a rude representation of a simple post, it may easily be seen that no picture which the child can possibly bring can fail to serve as a subject for such conversations.

Some mothers may, perhaps, think it must require a great deal of ingenuity and skill to carry out these ideas effectively in practice, and that is true; or rather, it is true that there is in it scope for the exercise of a great deal of ingenuity and skill, and even of genius, for those who possess these qualities; but the degree of ingenuity required for a commencement in this method is very small, and that necessary for complete success in it is very easily acquired.