As might be expected this impulse to confuse representation and represented reality shows itself very distinctly in the first reception of dramatic spectacle. If you dress up as Father Christmas, your child, even though he is told that you are his father, will hardly be able to resist the illusion that your disguise so powerfully induces. Cuvier relates that a boy of ten on watching a stage scene in which troops were drawn up for action, broke out in loud protestations to the actor who was taking the part of the general, telling him that the artillery was wrongly placed, and so forth.[216] This reminds one of the story of the sailors who on a visit to a theatre happened to see a representation of a mutiny on board ship, and were so excited that they rushed on the stage and took sides with the authorities in quelling the movement. ----- Footnote 216: Quoted by Perez, _op. cit._, p. 216. ----- I believe that this same tendency to take art-representations for realities reappears in children’s mental attitude towards stories. A story by its narrative form seems to tell of real events, and children, as we all know, are wont to believe tenaciously that their stories are true. I think I have observed a disposition in imaginative children to go beyond this, and to give present actuality to the scenes and events described. And this is little to be wondered at when one remembers that even grown people, familiar with the devices of art-imitation, tend now and again to fall into this confusion. Only a few days ago, as I was reading an account by a friend of mine of a perilous passage in an Alpine ascent, accomplished years ago, I suddenly caught myself in the attitude of proposing to shout out to stop him from venturing farther. A vivid imaginative realisation of the situation had made it for the moment a present actuality. Careful observations of the first attitudes of the child-mind towards representative art are greatly needed. We should probably find considerable diversity of behaviour. The presence of a true art-feeling would be indicated by a special quickness in the apprehension of art-semblance as such.