In the Palace of Education which the great minds have designed and are designing, many stones will be needed—and so I bring the little stone I have hewn out and tried to shape, in the hope that it may fit into a corner of that great edifice. For if anything is to be done, it is necessary that all who have anything to give, shall give it. As Francis Bacon said:
"Nothing can so much conduce to the drawing down, as it were, from heaven a whole shower of new and profitable Inventions, as this, that the experiments of many ... may come to the knowledge of one man, or some few, who by mutual conference may whet and sharpen one another, so that by this ... Arts may flourish, and as it were by a commixture and communication of Rays, inflame one another.... This sagacity by literate experience may in the mean project and scatter for the benefit of man many rudiments to knowledge which may be had at hand."
And that is why I have left for a little while the telling of stories and set myself to write down something of what I know about children—know by the grace of memory and by the dreams of childhood, to me, thank God, persistent and imperishable.
CHAPTER III
Playthings
The prime instinct of a child at play—I do not mean a child at games—is to create. I use the word confidently. He will make as well as create, if you let him, but always he will create: he will use the whole force of dream and fancy to create something out of nothing—over and beyond what he will make out of such materials as he has to hand. The five-year-old will lay a dozen wooden bricks and four cotton reels together, set a broken cup on the top of them, and tell you it is a steam-engine. And it is. He has created the engine which he sees, and you don't see, and the pile of bricks and cotton reels is the symbol of his creation. He will silently borrow your best scissors and cut a serrated band of newspaper, which he will fasten round his head (with your best brooch, if he cannot find a pin), hang another newspaper from his shoulders, and sit in state holding the hearth-brush. He will tell you that he is a king—and he is. He has created crown, robes, sceptre, and kingship. The paper and the rest of it are but symbols.
HE HAS CREATED THE ENGINE.