ith
the sensations--that is, the impressions made through the organs of sense;
and that the maintaining of these mental organs, so to speak, in action,
involves a certain expenditure of some form of physical force, the source
of this force being in the food that is consumed in the nourishment of the
body.

There is certainly no apparent reason why there should be any antecedent
presumption against the supposition that the soul performs the act of
remembering or of conceiving an imaginary scene through the instrumentality
of a bodily organ, more than that it should receive a sensation of light or
of sound through such a channel. The question of the independent existence
and the immateriality of the thinking and feeling principle, which takes
cognizance of these thoughts and sensations, is not at all affected by any
inquiries into the nature of the instrumentality by means of which, in a
particular stage of its existence, it performs these functions.

_Phenomena explained by this Principle_.

This truth, if it be indeed a truth, throws great light on what would
be otherwise quite inexplicable in the playful activity of the
mental faculties of children. The curious fantasies, imaginings, and
make-believes--the pleasure of listening to marvellous and impossible
tales, and of hearing odd and unpronounceable words or combination of words
--the love of acting, and of disguises--of the impersonation of inanimate
objects--of seeing things as they are not, and of creating and giving
reality to what has no existence except in their own minds--are all the
gambollings and frolics, so to speak, of the embryo faculties just becoming
conscious of their existence, and affording, like the muscles of motion, so
many different issues for the internal force derived from the food. Thus
the action of the mind of a child, in holding an imaginary conversation
with a doll, or in inventing or in relating an impossible fairy story, or
in converting a switch on which he pretends to be riding into a prancing
horse, is precisely analogous to that of the muscles of the lamb, or the
calf, or any other young animal in its gambols--that is, it is the result
of the force which the vital functions are continually developing within
the system, and which flows and must flow continually out through whatever
channels are open to it; and in thus flowing, sets all the various systems
of machinery into play, each in its own appropriate manner.

In any other vi