The English word doll, under the most widespread version, is formed from Greek eidolon (idol).

The first stage of relations of the person and a doll — a stage of idols. The thought on turning a doll, say, in a sexual rag and to try to play in "daughter-mother", or about, say, to put a doll a head in a toilet bowl in the course of game in the water-nymph, would seem V - VI century BC same blasphemous, what blasphemous the thought would seem to us to do today all the same with the live baby.

By the way, with live babies of business then were absolutely differently: the baby, generally, was created without intention, value by itself, with rare exception, did not represent, and the baby quite could sacrifice to gods, the senior members of a family or spirits of the died ancestors.

The doll became intentionally and embodied the important occult idea: in a doll there could live spirit of the died ancestor, — and to put such doll anywhere a head it would seem, to put it mildly, gesture strange and unreasonable.

On this theme it is possible to argue long, recollecting and those dolls, for which malicious fairies substituted the kid stolen from a cradle, and dolls, which Tatars buried during heavy illness to deceive death, and "pack" — a log in the lady's wears, sacrificed to gods instead of the live lying-in woman.

Idea of independent will, malicious or kind "spirit" in a doll little body on the former it is kept, and ability of a doll to "substitute" the person we see in a large quantity the pagan rites which have remained to this day. And dolls-idols — true — still exist, and not somewhere in wild tribes, and in each European city, yes that there — hardly probable not in each quarter. Even the awkward touch to these perfectly executed, bright, remembered creatures appears blasphemy.

And still ourselves, own imagination have given to this doll a certain set of qualities and even if to turn a doll in cellophane and on tens years to put in a church cellar to wait the best times, we again will see before ourselves not a doll, but Maiden Maria. However fall a doll into hands the people not familiar with symbols of Christianity, — and in ten days on a head at a doll the straw hat will flaunt, in prayerfully combined hands there will be a dandelion, and mournful lips will be brought by mum's lipstick — a doll as a doll.

This ability to allocate a doll human qualities also creates all our history of relations with dolls, moreover — explains the fact of their existence, degree of their importance in our life.