Whence come all the marvellous ideas that people the brain of a mere baby of two or three years? Is it that it has descended but a step or two down the staircase and still has a mind to some extent untrammelled by human limitations and the hard dry facts of earth? Or is it that, possessed of a keenly receptive power, it has not learnt to control or arrange the multitudes of facts that present themselves daily to its senses? This wonderful imagination is no doubt closely allied with the early powers of memory of which mention has been made, and may also have something at least to do with the early propensity to untruthfulness. Many a child has suffered at the hands of an unimaginative parent for words which have been ruthlessly called lies though they have been so strongly prompted by a vivid imagination that they have seemed as true to the utterer as much that is unintelligible but has to be accepted.
Arrangement of the Numerals.
The Circle of the Months.
A moment’s thought will show at what an early age imagination came into play with most people. By far the greater number have by its aid clothed certain abstract ideas in definite concrete forms, and have done this when so young that it is impossible for them to remember the time when these things first took shape. For instance, most people have a definite arrangement of the numerals. A common form for this to take is that of the numbers one to twelve appearing to run slightly upwards and towards the right, those from twelve to twenty taking a downward turn in the same direction. At the number twenty a sharp turn is taken to the left, and from that point to one hundred they run uphill with an increasing steepness. Many other directions and shapes are discovered by questioning people on this subject, but it is very rare to find an example of the numerals being nothing but an abstract idea. The same thing occurs with the months. To most people they appear in a circle, winter being in some cases at the top, and summer in others. In one case a person imagines them in a semicircle, and in another (the strangest yet met with) they are in a zig-zag, three months running up, and three down, and so on, the form being like that of a rather straggling M.
Effects of Colour.
Colour also is occasionally imagined, and there is no doubt that children are specially susceptible to its influence at a very early age. A writer in the eighteenth century to whom allusion has been made in Chapter I makes the following observation: “There are some children so tenderly organised that many kinds of sounds are harsh to their Infant Ears and apt to fright them, and some colours strike them with too great and quick a Glare and have the same Effect till by Custom they are made familiar to their Organs.”
Colour of the Days.
It is certain at all events that colour has played an important part in the imagination of many people from their earliest years. A lady declares that all her life long the days of the week have appeared to her to be of certain definite colours. Thus, Sunday is brick red, Monday the same, Tuesday lilac, Wednesday white, Thursday dark brown, Friday grey, and Saturday mauve and yellow. All this imagining took place so near the start of her life that the colour, form, etc., of the days appear to this lady to be facts dating from the beginning of time itself. It should be noted that in these and all similar instances the imagination is apparently independent of outside influences such as pictures or descriptions which might be supposed to have affected a little child.
The Imaginary Child-Friend.
It is possible to go further than this and to say that the most vivid imaginings are as a rule those which a child produces absolutely and apart from the suggestion of others. Under this head comes the imaginary child-friend called into existence in most cases by one who has no playmate of similar age. The grown-up people in the house know nothing of this imaginary friend until the real child is overheard talking to it and calling it by name. It is remarkable to notice how nothing seems to disturb the commonplace reality of the whole thing in the mind of the child. When the imaginary friend is in the room his or her presence is never for a moment forgotten, and plans are gravely made to suit the convenience not of one only but of both the children.