Children's Ways: Being selections from the author's "Studies of childhood," with some additional matter — John Shaqi
Children's Ways: Being selections from the author's "Studies of childhood," with some additional matterSully, James
Science
Children's Ways: Being selections from the author's "Studies of childhood," with some additional matter
Sully, James
Child development; Child psychology
There is one new field of investigation which is illustrating in a
curious way the wizard influence wielded by childish imagination over
the things of sense. It is well known that a certain number of people
habitually "colour" the sounds they hear, imagining, for example, the
sound of a particular vowel or musical tone to have its characteristic
tint, which they are able to describe accurately. This "coloured
hearing," as it is called, is always traced back to the dimly recalled
age of childhood. Children are now beginning to be tested as to their
possession of this trick of fancy. It was found in the case of a number
of school-children that nearly 40 per cent. described the tones of
certain instruments as coloured. There was, however, no agreement among
these children as to the particular tint belonging to a given sound:
thus whereas one child mentally "saw" the tone of a fife as pale or
bright, another saw it as dark.
I have confined myself here to what I have called the _play_ of
imagination, the magical transmuting of things through the sheer
liveliness of childish fancy. The degree of transmutation will of course
vary with the intensity of the imagination. Sometimes when a child
dwells on the fancy it may grow into a momentary illusion. A little girl
of four, sitting by the side of her mother in the garden, picked up a
small pink worm and said: "Ah! you do look nice; how a thrush would like
you!" and thereupon, realising the part of the fortunate thrush,
proceeded, to her mother's horror, to eat up the worm quite composedly.
The momentary illusion of something nice to eat, here produced by a
lively realisation of a part, may arise in other cases from strong
feeling, more especially fear, which, as we shall see, has so large a
dominion over the young mind.
This witchcraft of the young fancy in veiling and transforming the
actual surroundings is a good deal restrained by the practical needs of
every-day life and by intercourse with older and graver folk. There are,
however, regions of child-life where it knows no check. One of these is
child's play, to be spoken of presently: another is the filling up of
the blank spaces in the visible world with the products of fancy. We
will call these regions on which the young wing of fancy is wont to
alight and rest, fancy's resting-places.
_Fancy's Resting-places._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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