tion and imagination--unchecked
by dolls or toy locomotives--there will be neither absurdity nor
exaggeration in what I have written.

Toys in themselves are harmless and unobjectionable things, though every
observant person who has had much to do with young children will readily
concede how superfluous they are as a means of amusement. The average
child will treasure up a button or a shell long after it has destroyed,
or maybe forgotten the existence of, the most elaborate and expensive
toy. That is a commonplace of the nursery. But it does not seem to
convey either meaning or moral to the majority of parents.

The second way in which the thinking and imaginative faculties are
impeded in their development is by the discouragement of, or by the
injudicious answers given to, the questions asked by children. At a
certain age the latter become inquisitive about everything in the
universe. They ply their elders with perpetual questioning; and it must
be acknowledged that many of their interrogations are highly
inconvenient and unanswerable.

It is very difficult for the average person to reply offhand to
elementary questions such as, Why does the sun shine? What makes the
wind blow? How does a seed grow into a tree? and so forth. Few people
have the patience to answer the numerous inquiries of an intelligent
child; and sooner than expose their ignorance, parents will generally
quench this thirst for knowledge at the outset by a flat prohibition.
The selfish desire for peace prompts them to refuse the solicited
information altogether, or, worse still, to return answers calculated to
kill imaginative ideas or to impress the child's mind with a bare and
prosaic materialism.

They do not stop to think of the immense harm that may be done to the
child by throwing cold water upon its first attempts at research.
Children, it must be remembered, do not possess the perseverance and
determination which often come to the rescue of original genius at a
later period. However active their minds may be, they are also timid,
and shrink back quickly under the influence of unsympathetic treatment.

The fact should be patent to everybody that children strive constantly
to use the brains with which Nature has endowed them. Being naturally
imaginative and original, these faculties only need ordinary
encouragement to develop and flourish. Yet the entire method of bringing
up children, from the cradle to the school bench, is directed towards