natural tendency on the part of a child, if not
interfered with, to think and to expand its faculty of imagination. This
tendency is not shared to an equal extent by all children; there are, of
course, dissimilarities caused by varying degrees of intelligence. But
it is there, in however rudimentary and undeveloped a stage; and the
more backward it appears to be, the more care should be taken not to
destroy it or to check its natural growth.

Now, the whole machinery of education is brought to bear, from the
moment the child is of an age to receive any instruction, to strangle
the development of the thinking and imaginative faculties. That process
will be described presently. What I wish to point out first is that,
long before the school or the governess commences this operation, the
parents of the child, or those to whom they have delegated the duty of
taking charge of it during the tenderest and most momentous years of its
existence, are generally engaged in doing everything they can to bring
about the same pernicious result.

Of course the evil is committed in sheer ignorance. But it has been bred
for so many generations that individual judgment and common sense must
every day be becoming more rare. Therefore the evil spreads, and people
blame the introduction of railways and other mechanical improvements for
the diminishing supply of artistic and creative genius, whilst they are
in reality themselves busily employed in stifling its development.

There are two ways in which this unhappy result is brought about. In
the first place, there is the invariable custom of giving young children
toys which, far from stimulating the imagination, only serve to impress
upon their minds the commonplace facts of everyday life. It is really,
only in a different form, a part of the process by which, later on, the
education system drives out ideas and crams in facts.

To take a concrete instance, a doll is the plaything usually given to
little girls. At first sight nothing can appear more charming or
instructive than the gift to a little girl, who will one day be a wife
and a mother, of the miniature representation of a baby. There will be a
bath provided, in which she may learn to wash it. Everything will be
complete--soap, sponge, loofah, puff-box, and powder. The present will
be accompanied by a _layette_, so that the child may learn to dress her
infant and to change its clothes. Hair-brushes will teach her to keep
the doll's h