These ideas, moreover, like those of primitive races, will be found to be a crude attempt at a connected system. We must not, of course, expect too much here. The earliest thought of mankind about nature and the supernatural was very far from being elaborated into a consistent logical whole; yet we can see general forms of conception or tendencies of thought running through the whole. So in the case of this largely spontaneous child-thought. It will disclose to an unsparing critical inspection vast gaps, and many unsurmounted contradictions. Thus in the case of children, as in that of uncultured races, the supernatural realm is at first brought at most into only a very loose connexion with the visible world. All the same there is seen, in the measure of the individual child’s intelligence, the endeavour to co-ordinate, and the poor little hard-pressed brain of a child will often pluckily do its best in trying to bring some connexion into that congeries of disconnected worlds into which he finds himself so confusingly introduced, partly by the motley character of his own experiences, as the alternations of waking and sleeping, partly by the haphazard miscellaneous instruction, mythological, historical, theological, and the rest, with which we inconsiderately burden his mind. As was observed in dealing with children’s imaginative activity, this primitive child-lore, like its prototype in folk-lore, is largely a product of a naïve vivid fancy. In assigning the relations of things and their reasons, a child’s mind does not make use of abstract conceptions. It does not talk about “relation,” but pictures out the particular relation it wants to express by a figurative expression, as in apperceiving the juxtaposition of moon and star as mamma and baby. So it does not talk of abstract force, but figures some concrete form of agency, as in explaining the wind by the idea of somebody’s waving a big fan somewhere. This first crude attempt of the child to envisage the world is, indeed, largely mythological, proceeding by the invention of concrete and highly pictorial ideas of fairies, giants and their doings. The element of thought comes in with the recognition of the real as such, and with the application of the products of young phantasy to comprehending and explaining this reality. And here we see how this primitive child-thought, though it remains instinct with glowing imagery, differentiates itself from pure fancy. This last knows no restraint, and aims only at the delight of its spontaneous play-like movements, whereas thought is essentially the serious work of realising and understanding what exists. The contrast is seen plainly enough if we compare the mental attitude of the child when he is frankly romancing, giving out now and again a laugh, which shows that he himself fully recognises the absurdity of his talk, with his attitude when in gravest of moods he is calling upon his fancy to aid reason in explaining some puzzling fact.