stories, his ideal widens, and his knowledge of the problems of life is
enlarged. This is the raw material of morality, for out of his answers
to these problems he builds up standards of conduct and of judgement. He
projects himself into his own ideal, and he projects himself into the
experiences of other people: he lives in both: this is imagination of
the highest kind, it is often called sympathy, but the term is too
limited, it is rather imaginative understanding.
There is another side of life grasped by means of this new world of
experience, and that is, the spiritual side that lies between conduct
and ideals; children have always accepted the supernatural quite readily
and it is not to be wondered at, for all the world is new and therefore
supernatural to them. Magic is done daily in children's eyes, and there
is no line between what is understandable and what is not, until adults
try to interpret it for them.
They are curious about birth and death and all origins: thunder is
terrifying, the sea is enthralling, the wind is mysterious, the sky is
immense, and all suggest a power beyond: in this the children are
reproducing the race experience as expressed in myths, when power was
embodied in a god or goddess. Therefore the fairy world or the giant
world, or the wood full of dwarfs and witches' houses, is as real to
them, and as acceptable, as any part of life. It is their recognition of
a world of spirits which later on mingles itself with the spiritual life
of religion. That life is behind all matter, is the main truth they
hold, and while it is difficult here to disentangle morality from
religion, it is supremely evident that a very great and significant side
of a child's education is before us.
It is by means of the divine gift of imagination, probably the most
spiritual of a child's gifts, that he can lay hold of all that the world
of literature has to offer him. Because of imagination he is independent
of poverty, monotony, and the indifference of other people; he has a
world of his own in which nothing is impossible. Edwin Pugh says of a
child of the slums who was passionately fond of reading cheap
literature:--"It was by means of this penny passport to Heaven that she
escaped from the Hell of her surroundings. It was in the maudlin fancies
of some poor besotted literary hack maybe, that she found surcease from
the pains of weariness, the carks and cares of her miserable estate."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account