Children's Ways / Being selections from the author's "Studies of childhood," with some additional matter

by James Sully

It is sometimes said that children are artists in embryo, that in their play and throughout their activity they manifest the germs of the art-impulse. It seems worth while to examine the saying.

There is no doubt that in much of the first spontaneous activity there is a trace of æsthetic feeling and the impulse to produce something pretty. Yet the feeling is in most children weak and vacillating, and is wont to be mixed with other and less noble ones.

One of the lower and mixed forms of artistic activity, in the case of the child and of the race alike, is personal adornment. The impulse to study appearances appears to reach far down in animal life. Two impulses seem to be at work here: to frighten or overawe others, as seen in the raising of feathers and hair so as to increase size, and to attract, which possibly underlies the habit of trimming feathers and fur among birds and quadrupeds. The same two impulses are said to lie at the root of the elaborate art of personal adornment developed by savages.

In the case of children brought up in the ways of civilisation where personal cleanliness and adornment are peremptorily enforced in the face of many a tearful protest, it seems at first vain to look for the play of instinctive tendencies. Yet I think if we observe closely we shall detect traces of a spontaneous impulse towards self-adornment. Children, like uncultured adults, are wont to prize a bit of finery in the shape of a string of beads or of daisies for the neck, a feather for the hat, and so forth. Imitation of the ways of their elders doubtless plays a part here, but it is aided by an instinct for adornment. Little girls perhaps represent the attractive function of adornment: they like to be thought pretty. Little boys when decking themselves out with tall hat and monstrously big clothes seem to be trying to put on an alarming aspect.

Since children are left so little free to deck themselves, it is of course hard to study the development of æsthetic taste in this domain of their activity. Yet their quaint attempts to improve their appearance throw an interesting side-light on their æsthetic preferences. While in general they have in their hearts almost as much love of glitter, of gaudy colour, as uncivilised adults, they betray striking differences of feeling; some developing, for example, a bent towards modest neatness and refinement, and this, it may be, in direct opposition to the whole trend of home influence.

Another domain of childish activity which is akin to art is the manifestation of grace. A good deal of the charm of movement, of gesture, of intonation, in a young child may be unconscious, and as much a result of happy physical conditions as the pretty gambols of a kitten. Yet one may commonly detect in graceful children the rudiment of an æsthetic feeling for what is nice, and also of the instinct to please. There is, indeed, in these first actions, such as the kissing of the hand to other children in the street, something of the simple grace and dignity of the more amiable of those uncivilised races which we dishonour by calling them savages. This feeling for pleasing effect in bodily carriage and movement, in the use of speech and gesture, is no doubt far from being a pure art-activity. Traces of self-consciousness, of vanity, are often discernible in it; yet at least it attests the existence of a certain appreciation of what is beautiful, and of something akin to the creative impulse of the artist.

A true art-impulse is characterised by a pure love of doing something which, either in itself as an action or in the material result which it produces, is beautiful. Into this there enters, at the moment at least, no consciousness of self. Now there is one field of children's activity which, as was suggested in an earlier chapter, is marked by just this absorption of thought in action for its own sake, and that is play.

To say that play is art-like has almost become a commonplace. Like art it is inspired and sustained by a pure love of producing. Like art, too, on its representative side, play aims at producing an imitation or semblance of something. The semblance may be plastic, residing in the material product of the action, as in making things such as castles out of cardboard or sand; or it may be dramatic and reside in the action itself, as in much of the childish play already described.

The imitative impulse prompting to the production of the semblance of something appears very early in child-life. A good deal of the imitation which occurs in the second half year is the taking on, under the lead of another's example, of actions which are more or less useful. This applies, for example, to such actions as waving the hand in sign of farewell, and of course to vocal imitation of others' verbal sounds. At an early date we find, further, a perfectly useless kind of imitation which is more akin to that of art. A quite young child will, for example, pretend to do something, as to take an empty cup and carry out the semblance of drinking. The imitation of the sounds and movements of animals, which comes early too, may be said to be imitative in the more artistic sense, inasmuch as it has no aim beyond that of mimetic representation.

Later on, towards the third year, this simple type of imitative action grows more complex, so that a prolonged make-believe action may be carried out. A child, for example, occupies himself with pretending to be an organ-grinder's monkey, going duly and in order through the action of jumping down from his seat, and taking off his cap by way of begging for the stranger's contribution. Here, it is evident, we get something closely analogous to histrionic performance. This play-like performance, again, gradually divides itself into a more serious kind of action, analogous to serious drama, and into a lighter representation of some funny scene, which has in it something akin to comedy.