this rapidly developing imagination is significant from several related points of view. For one thing it marks a movement in the direction of mental as contrasted with purely physical control. However, in this period the image is not felt to be distinct from the act. Image and act are not discriminated, but are aspects of one emotional whole. Again, a part of the wonderful activity of the imagination during this period can be interpreted as the inevitable consequence of the exercise of a new power. There is always pleasure in the exercise and control of a new function. The activity of the imagination in its early stages of development is its own stimulus and its own reward.

(4) Enlargement of field of control.

The activity of the imagination enlarges the field of control. During this period the child is preeminently seeking to enlarge his experience. The present moment is not an isolated fact. Through memory and imagination it becomes a part of a larger whole. The absent features of this larger whole may be supplied to the intense emotional satisfaction of the mind. The common objects of play thus become centers for the condensation of limitless possibilities of experience which the child could not realize in any other way than through play. Time and space become soluble and his sphere of control is indefinitely enlarged. The fact that the fire engine passed an hour ago and is now miles away does not remove it from the sphere of the child's activities and the exercise of his control. The chair becomes the fire engine and the interesting experience is prolonged and repeated in the absence of the particular thing which originated it. In imaginative play everything in heaven above and earth beneath is brought under the control of the child and is manipulated by him. He is monarch of all he surveys, and time and space furnish no limitations to his empire. There is nothing which the child cannot have, if he will,-drums, stores, soldiers, wild animals from the desert and jungle, etc. There is nothing

that he may not be from the coal man or baker to the king. Everything yields to his control. The world is free and plastic, to be moulded at his will. In imagination he can satisfy to the full the natural impulse for power and control.

(5) Unification of experience through imagination.

The nature myth appeals to the child, as to the primitive man, largely for the reason that the interpretation which it gives of the facts of nature brings them within the world of his experience and makes more intelligible to him the sun, the moon, the stars, wind, thunder, lightning, the echo,

In the myth they cease to confront him in all their mysterious isolation and out-there-ness. Through his imagination they have been brought into his experience and have been made emotionally congruent with the other facts of his experience. By means of the myth gaps in the imagination, as it seeks to grasp related facts as one whole, are filled and the tension of the mind due to these gaps is relieved. Take for example the experience of primitive man with the sun. He sees it rise in the east and set in the west. It then vanishes from his view, reappearing in the east the following morning. But the imagination is not satisfied with this break, or gap, in the experience; the mind seeks to fill it in. The formation of the myth that the sun is carried around the rim of the disk-shaped earth in a boat from the west to the east fills in that gap and gives unity to the otherwise isolated facts of experience. The myth serves the same function for the child as for the primitive man. Through its agency discordant elements of nature are woven together into a system, and a fundamental impulse toward unity is satisfied through the activity of the rapidly developing imagination. This unity may dissolve again at various points and have to be reconstructed, but it is nevertheless significant that a system of relations has been set up at all. The existence of such systems of relationships, crude and even erroneous though

they may be, is a necessary prelude to the emergence and development of the thinking process. [Thinking does not in the first place set up relationships, but it works within a system to define and reconstruct and make explicit relationships within that system and to take advantage of them in consciously determining modes of action in problematic situations.

Through play, myth, and fairy story the imagination of the child is called forth and exercised. It is given flexibility and power. It receives practice in the organization and use of imagery, which is important for every phase of the higher psychical processes. The first mental wholes are built up which serve as the basis for further analyses and syntheses on which higher development depends. But the characteristic of the imaginative activity of this period is that it is dominantly a process of enlarging and knitting together the child's experience through the building up of mental wholes which are more emotional and personal than intellectual.

(6) Lack of reflective element.

That the intellectual or reflective element is not characteristic of this period, at least until toward its close, is seen in several phenomena of child life. One of these is the lack of organization in games. The small child, for example, enjoys playing hide-and-seek, but he is scarcely hid before he comes running out to be found. The pleasure of the game is in large part the activity itself and the excitation of the imagination. Some of the so-called lies of children are undoubtedly to be explained on the basis of the lack of the reflective element and the predominance of the emotional in the imagination. The distinction between that which is in the mind and that which corresponds to external reality has not been fully made. We adults have had so much practice in distinguishing between our percepts and our images that we rarely go wrong in the matter. But when the imagination is developing very rapidly and its

phenomena are more or less new, untrained, and undisciplined, this distinction may not be so evident. How should the child know anyway in advance of abundant experience that what his eyes give him is more reliable than what his imagination gives him? As immediate experiences both are equally real, only one stands further tests better than the other. Because of this fact we have become accustomed to note the difference between the two experiences and to distinguish them. And it is all simpler to us than to the child.

(7) Distinction between means and ends felt rather than conceived.

In this golden era of the imagination characterized by spontaneous play, the image and its expression are integral parts of a relatively undifferentiated whole. To have the image is practically the same as responding to it. Process and product of activity merge and interpenetrate. There is not a separate value in consciousness for each. The process has not become subordinate and the product primary. That is why we call the activity play. The distinction between means and ends is not intellectual, though it may be emotionally felt. Without this distinction there can be no clear recognition of a problem, nor can there be any such thing as conscious adjustment of means to ends. This is not saying that there is no thinking at all in this period of childhood, but merely that the thinking process is not strikingly characteristic. A two-year-old child lost his ball in the capacious seat of the Morris chair. He tried to reach it from the front of the chair. Then he tried to get it from one side. Failing in both these attempts, he stopped and looked carefully, after which he went directly to the point of nearest approach and seized the ball at once. Was there not a thinking process of some sort involved here? Did not the child consciously adjust means to an end? (8) Thinking not the characteristic type of consciousness. In the abundant play activities of the child there must be

numerous occasions for the conscious adjustment of means to ends. We are more likely to underestimate than to overestimate the amount of thinking that is done by the small child. Yet thinking is not the characteristic type of consciousness in this period. The distinctive thing is the freer, more spontaneous, and emotionally toned imagination [Thinking cannot receive rapid development without being preceded by a sufficient exercise and development of the imagination to make easy and natural the distinction between means and ends. Much can be done in the plays and occupations of the kindergarten to prepare for and to introduce this distinction. The function of thinking has already begun to be performed in a crude way quite early in the life of the child. [In this period of rapid development and efflorescence of the imagination, the forward movement in the development of thinking is in the direction of bringing to consciousness the distinction between means and ends. Yet this should not be unduly hastened. It may be that the stimulation and development of the imagination will be found to be the more important.

4. THIRD PERIOD,-CHILDHOOD.

(1) Development of conscious distinction between means and ends.

In the second period the child has gotten considerable freedom of control over the larger muscular coördinations. The third period is characterized on the physical side as one in which he is getting control of the finer muscular coördinations. At the close of this period the boy is pretty compact and well knit, with excellent control over his physical powers. In running, leaping, wrestling, climbing, etc., he is nimble and skilful and flexible. As the child's power of manipulation and motor control have been increased through bringing into subjection the finer muscles, he has been led in the increased variety and complexity of his reaction processes to distinguish more sharply between