A very nice Distinction.

A mother, for example, takes her little son, four or five years old, into her lap to amuse him with a story.  She begins:  “When I was a little boy I lived by myself.  All the bread and cheese I got I laid upon the shelf,” and so on to the end.  The mother’s object is accomplished.  The boy is amused.  He is greatly interested and pleased by the wonderful phenomenon taking place within him of curious images awakened in his mind by means of sounds entering his ear—­images of a little boy living alone, of his reaching up to put bread and cheese upon a shelf, and finally of his attempting to wheel a little wife home—­the story ending with the breaking and downfall of the wheelbarrow, wife and all.  He does not reflect philosophically upon the subject, but the principal element of the pleasure afforded him is the wonderful phenomenon of the formation of such vivid and strange images in his mind by means of the mere sound of his mother’s voice.

He knows at once, if any half-formed reflections arise in his mind at all, that what his mother has told him is not true—­that is, that the words and images which they awaken in his mind had no actual realities corresponding with them.  He knows, in the first place, that his mother never was a boy, and does not suppose that she ever lived by herself, and laid up her bread and cheese upon a shelf.  The whole story, he understands, if he exercises any thought about it whatever—­wheelbarrow catastrophe and all—­consists only of words which his mother speaks to him to give him pleasure.

By-and-by his mother gives him a piece of cake, and he goes out into the garden to play.  His sister is there and asks him to give her a piece of his cake.  He hesitates.  He thinks of the request long enough to form a distinct image in his mind of giving her half of it, but finally concludes not to do so, and eats it all himself.

When at length he comes in, his mother accidentally asks him some question about the cake, and he says he gave half of it to his sister.  His mother seems much pleased.  He knew that she would be pleased.  He said it, in fact, on purpose to please her.  The words represented no actual reality, but only a thought passing through his mind, and he spoke, in a certain sense, for the purpose of giving his mother pleasure.  The case corresponds in all these particulars with that of his mother’s statement in respect to her being once a little boy and living by herself.  Those words were spoken by her to give him pleasure, and he said what he did to give her pleasure.  To give her pleasure! the reader will perhaps say, with some surprise, thinking that to assign such a motive as that is not, by any means, putting a fair and proper construction upon the boy’s act.  His design was, it will be said, to shield himself from censure, or to procure undeserved praise.  And it is, no doubt, true that, on a nice analysis of the motives of the act, such as we, in our maturity,