Now it may be asked whether all this analogical extension of images to what seem to us such incongruous objects involves a vivid and illusory apprehension of these as transformed. Is the eyelid realised and even _seen_ for the moment as a sort of curtain, the curtain-image blending with and transforming what is present to the eye? Are the pebbles actually viewed as living things condemned to lie stiffly in one place? It is of course hard to say, yet I think a conjectural answer can be given. In this imaginative contemplation of things the child but half observes what is present to his eyes, one or two points only of supreme interest in the visible thing, whether those of form, as in assimilating the piano-hammer to the owl, or of action, as the _falling_ of the leaf, being selectively alluded to: while assimilative imagination overlaying the visual impression with the image of a similar object does the rest. In this way the actual field of objects is apt to get veiled, transformed by the wizard touch of a lively fancy. No doubt there are various degrees of illusion here. In his matter-of-fact and really scrutinising mood a child will not confound what is seen with what is imagined: in this case the analogy recalled is distinguished and used as an explanation of what is seen—as when C. observed of the panting dog: ‘Dat bow-wow like puff-puff’. On the other hand when another little boy aged three years and nine months seeing the leaves falling exclaimed, “See, mamma, the leaves is flying like dickey-birds and little butterflies,” it is hard not to think that the child’s fancy for the moment transformed what he saw into these pretty semblances. And one may risk the opinion that, with the little thinking power and controlling force of will which a child possesses, such assimilative activity of imagination always tends to develop a degree of momentary illusion. There is, too, as we shall see later on, abundant evidence to show that children at first quite seriously believe that most things, at least, are alive and have their feelings. There is another way in which imagination may combine with and transform sensible objects, _viz._, by what is commonly called association. Mr. Ruskin tells us that when young he associated the name ‘crocodile’ with the creature so closely that the long series of letters took on something of the look of its lanky body. The same writer speaks of a Dr. Grant, into whose therapeutic hands he fell when a child. "The name (he adds) is always associated in my mind with a brown powder—rhubarb or the like—of a gritty or acrid nature.... The name always sounded to me gr-r-ish and granular."