Explore "Christmas Tide" by Charles Dickens on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
All little children are poets if not marred by the prosaic parent or teacher who unintentionally dulls the imaginative faculties by insisting upon their minds dwelling exclusively on _facts_ which can be verified by the five senses.
Much innocent pleasure as well as much development of intellectual power is lost by this misapprehension of a child's needs. _All great truth must come to the immature mind in an embodied form_ or by means of a symbol. In fact, we of more mature culture still cling to the sacred symbols of the church by means of which communion with the Divine and the regenerating power of the spirit of God are expressed. The spire of a church, the flag of our nation, the medal with which we decorate the breast of a hero, are but a few of the symbols with which we are all familiar. Indeed, if symbols were banished from our daily lives much of pleasure and beauty would be lost.