That many children have a genuine delusion about their dolls seems evident. That is to say when they talk to them and otherwise treat them as human they imaginatively realise that they can understand and feel. The force of the illusion, blotting out from the child's view the naked reality before its eyes, is a striking illustration of the vividness of early fancy. Perhaps, too, this intensity of faith comes in part of the strength of the impulses which commonly sustain the doll-passion. Of these the instinct of companionship, of sympathy, is the strongest. A lady tells me she remembers that when a child she had a passionate longing for a big, big doll, which would give her the full sweetness of cuddling. The imitative impulse, too, prompting the child to carry out on the doll actions similar to those carried out on itself by mother and nurse, is a strong support of the delusion. A doll, as the odd varieties selected show, seems to be, more than anything else, something to be dressed. Children's reasons for preferring one doll to another, as that it can have its face washed, or that it has real hair which can be combed, show how the impulse to carry out nursery operations sustains the feeling of attachment. A girl (the same that wanted the big doll to fondle) had dolls of the proper sort; yet she preferred to make one out of a little wooden stool, because she could more realistically act out with this odd substitute the experience of taking her pet out for a walk, making it stand, for example, when she met a friend. Of course, the child's faith, like other faith, is not always up to the height of perfect ardour. A child of six or seven, when the passion for dolls is apt to be strong, will have moments of coolness, leaving "poor dolly" lying in the most humiliating posture on the floor, or throwing it away in a sudden fit of disenchantment and disgust. Scepticism will intrude, especially when the hidden "inside" comes to view as mere emptiness, or at best as nothing but sawdust. Children seem, as George Sand says, to oscillate between the real and the impossible. Yet the intrusion of doubt does not, in many cases at least, interfere with an enduring trust. Dr. Stanley Hall tells us that "long after it is _known_ that they are wood, wax, etc., it is _felt_ that they are of skin, flesh, etc.". Yes, that is it; the child, seized with the genuine play-mood, _dreams_ its doll into a living child, or living adult. How oddly the player's faith goes on living side by side with a measure of doubt is illustrated in the following story. A little girl begged her mother not to make remarks about her doll in her (the doll's) presence, as she had been trying all her life to keep that doll from knowing that she was not alive.[4] [4] From an article on "The Philosophy of Dolls," _Chambers' Journal_, 1881.