And that youthful audience? A rather too common mistake is made in
allowing overmuch for the creative imagination of the normal child. It is
not creative imagination which the normal child possesses so much as an
enormous credulity and no limitations. If we consider for a moment we see
that there has been little or nothing to limit things for him, therefore
anything is possible. It is the years of our life as they come which
narrow our fancies and set a bound to our beliefs; for experience has
taught us that for the most part a certain cause will produce a certain
effect. The child, on the contrary, has but little knowledge of causes,
and as yet but an imperfect realisation of effects. If we, for instance,
go into the midst of a savage country, we know that there is the chance of
our meeting a savage. But to the young child it is quite as possible to
meet a Red Indian coming round the bend of the brook at the bottom of the
orchard, as it is to meet him in his own wigwam.
The child is an adept at make-believe, but his make-believes are, as a
rule, practical and serious. It is credulity rather than imagination which
helps him. He takes the tales he has been _told_, the facts he has
observed, and for the most part reproduces them to the best of his
ability. And "nothing," as Stevenson says, "can stagger a child's faith;
he accepts the clumsiest substitutes and can swallow the most staring
incongruities.
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