large number of objects and persons and names he will begin to
rearrange his bits of knowledge into new combinations, and in this
way make a little world of his own. In this world, beasts and
furniture and flowers talk and have adventures. When the dew is on
the grass, "the grass is crying." Butterflies are "flying pansies."
Lightning is the "sky winking," and so on. This activity of the
child's mind begins at about two years, and reaches its height
between the ages of four and six. But it continues through life with
greater or less intensity, according to circumstances and original
disposition.

It is not only the poet and artist who need imagination, but all of
us in our everyday concerns. Do you realize that the person to whom
you like so much to talk about your affairs, because she is so
sympathetic, _is sympathetic_ because she has imagination? For
without imagination we cannot "put ourselves in the place of
another," and much of the misery in the relation between human
beings exists because so many of us are unable to do this. The happy
cannot realize the needs of the miserable, and the miserable cannot
understand why anyone should be happy--if they lack imagination.

The need for imagination, far from being confined to dreamers and
persons who dwell in the clouds, is of great _practical_
importance in the development of mind and character. Imagination is
a direct help in learning, and in developing sympathy. As one of our
great moral leaders, Felix Adler, has said, much of the selfishness
of the world is due, not to actual hard-heartedness, but to lack of
imaginative power.

We all know the classic example of Queen Marie Antoinette, who, when