G. Stanley Hall was one of the leading figures in the North American Child Study Movement. In this book, the questions of arts education and imagination are central to the child's education. Here we will focus on the dangers deposited in the child with an excessive imagination.
"The child in reverie believes, yet at the same time knows that his dreameries are false. He makes believe so much that he is not so. How little there is in common between these often beautiful lies of the imagination and the denial by a child of its most palpable wrong deed to escape punishment, or in the lie of the hysterical who finds exultation in inventing a train of incidents on purpose to mislead or work mischief, or is fascinated by being able to look at black and solemny swear that it is white, or asseverates that any whim or fancy that pops up in a disorganized brain is objective fact!"
Lies were related to an unleashed imagination, and this was especially true in girls. Hall gives several examples of a diseased imagination in girls that echoes the Renaissance fear of female imagination.
CM