And the pity of it is that this element of heredity, this reproduction of the fathers in the children, which might be used to redeem the new-forming personality from the heritage of past commonness or impurity, is simply left to take its course for the further establishing and confirmation of it.

Was there ever a group of school children who did not leave the real school to make a play school, setting up a box for one of their number to sit on and "take off" the teacher?
Was there ever a child who did not play "church," and force the improvised "papa" into the pulpit?
Were there ever children who did not "buy" things from fancied stalls in every corner of the nursery, after they had once seen an elder drive a trade in the market?
The point is this: the child's personality grows; growth is always by action; he clothes upon himself the scenes of the parent's life and acts them out; so he grows in what he is, what he understands, and what he is able to perform.
In order to be of more direct service to observers of games of this character, let me give a short account of an observation of the kind made some time ago--one of the simplest of many actual situations which my two little girls, Helen and Elizabeth, have acted out together.

It is a very commonplace case, a game the elements of which are evident in their origin; but I choose this rather than one more complex, since observers are usually not psychologists, and they find the elementary the more instructive.
On May 2 I was sitting on the porch alone with the children--the two mentioned above, aged respectively four and a half and two and a half years.

Helen, the elder, told Elizabeth that she was her little baby; that is, Helen became "mamma," and Elizabeth the "baby." The younger responded by calling her sister "mamma," and the play began.
"You have been asleep, baby.

Now it is time to get up," said mamma.
Baby rose from the floor--first falling down in order to rise!--was seized upon by "mamma," taken to the railing to an imaginary washstand, and her face washed by rubbing.