Children's Ways Part 5

There is some evidence to show that a thoughtful child, when he begins to grasp the truth that dreams are only unreal phantasms, becomes confused, and wonders whether the things too which we see when waking are not unreal. Here is a quaint example of this transference of childish doubt from dreamland to the every-day world. A little boy five years old asked his teacher: "Wouldn't it be funny if we were dreaming?"

and being satisfied by the reply elicited that it would be funny, he continued more explicitly: "Supposing every one in the whole world were dreaming, wouldn't _that_ be funny? They might be, mightn't they?"

Receiving a slightly encouraging, "Perhaps they might," he wound up his argument in this fashion: "Yes, but I don't think we are--I'm sure we are not. Perhaps we should wake up and find _every one_ gone away." This is dark enough, but suggests, I think, that doubt as to the bright beautiful forms seen in sleep is casting its shadow on the real world, on the precious certainty of the presence of those we love. A little girl about six and a half years old being instructed by her father as to the making of the world remarked: "Perhaps the world's a fancy". The doubt in this case too was, one may conjecture, led up to by the loss of faith in dreamland.

_Birth and Growth._

We may now pa.s.s to some of children's characteristic thoughts about living things, more particularly human beings, and the familiar domestic animals. The most interesting of these, I think, are those respecting growth and birth.

As already mentioned, the growth of things is one of the most stimulating of childish puzzles. Led no doubt by what others tell him, a child finds that things are in general made bigger by additions from without, and his earliest conception of growth is, I think, that of such addition. Thus, plants are made to grow, that is, swell out, by the rain. The idea that the growth or expansion of animals comes from eating is easily reached by the childish intelligence, and, as we know, nurses and parents have a way of recommending the less attractive sorts of diet by telling children that they will make them grow. The idea that the sun makes us grow, often suggested by parents (who may be ignorant of the fact that growth _is_ more rapid in the summer than in the winter), is probably interpreted by the a.n.a.logy of an infusion of something into the body.

A number of children, I have found, have the queer notion that towards the end of life there is a process of shrinkage. Old people are supposed to become little again. One of the American children referred to, a little girl of three, once said to her mother: "When I am a big girl and you are a little girl I shall whip you just as you whipped me now". At first one is almost disposed to think that this child must have heard of Mr. Anstey's amusing story, _Vice Versa_. Yet I have collected a number of similar observations. For example, a little boy that I know, when about three and a half years old, used often to say to his mother with perfect seriousness of manner: "When I am big then you will be little, then I will carry you about and dress you and put you to sleep". And one little girl asked about some old person of her acquaintance: "When will she begin to get small?" Another little girl asked her grown-up cousin who was reading to her something about an old woman: "Do people turn back into babies when they get quite old?"

Another interesting fact to be noted here is that some children firmly believe that persons after dying and going to heaven will return to earth as little children. An American lady writes to me that two of her boys found their way independently of each other to this idea. Thus one of them speaking of a playmate who had been drowned, and who was now, he was told, in heaven, remarked: "Then G.o.d will let him come back and be a baby again".

What, it may be asked, is the explanation of this quaint childish thought? I think it probable that it is suggested in different ways. One must remember that as a child grows taller grown-ups may seem _by comparison_ to get shorter. Again old people are wont to stoop and so to look shorter; and then children often hear in their stories of "little old" people. I suspect, however, that in some cases there is a more subtle train of thought. As the belief of the two brothers in people's coming back from heaven suggests, the idea of shrinkage is connected with those of birth and death. May it not be that the more thoughtful sort of child reasons in this way? Babies which are sent from heaven must have been something there; and people when they die must continue to be something in heaven. Why, then, the "dead" people that go to this place are the very same as the babies that come from it. To make this theory "square" with other knowledge, the idea of shrinkage, either before or after death, has to be called in. That it takes place before death is supported by what was said above, and probably also by the information often given to children that people when they die are carried by angels to heaven just as the babies are said to be brought down to earth by the angels.

The origin of babies and young animals furnishes the small brain, as we have seen, with much food for speculation. Here the little thinker is not often left to excogitate a theory for himself. His inconvenient questionings in this direction have to be firmly checked, and thus arise the well-known legends about the doctor, the angel and so forth. With the various lore thus collected, supplemented by the pretty conceits of Hans Andersen and other writers of fairy stories, the young inquirer has to do his best.

How the child-thinker is apt to go to work here is ill.u.s.trated in a collection of the thoughts of American school-children. Some of these said that G.o.d drops babies for the women and doctors to catch them, others that he brings them down to earth by means of a wooden ladder, others again, that mamma, nurse, or doctor goes up and fetches them in a balloon. They are said by other children to grow in cabbages, or to be placed by G.o.d in water, perhaps in the sewer, where they are found by the doctor, who takes them to sick folks that want them. Here we have delicious touches of childish fancy, quaint adaptations of fairy and Bible lore, as in the use of Jacob's ladder and the legend of Moses placed among the bulrushes, this last being enriched by the thorough master-stroke of child-genius, the idea of the dark, mysterious, wonder-producing sewer.

Not all children, by any means, elaborate even this crude sort of theory. The less speculative and more practical kind of child accepts what he is told and proceeds to apply it, sometimes oddly enough. Thus the _Lancet_ recently contained an amusing letter from some children, the eldest of whom was seven, addressed to a doctor asking for a baby for their mother's next birthday. It was to be "fat and bonny, with blue eyes and fair hair"--a perfect doll in fact; and a characteristic postscript asked: "Which would be the cheaper--a boy or a girl?"

These ideas of children about babies partly communicated by others, partly thought out for themselves, are naturally enough made to account for the beginnings of animal life. This is ill.u.s.trated in the supposition of the little boy, already quoted, who thought that G.o.d helps p.u.s.s.y to have "'ickle kitties," seeing that she hasn't any kitties in eggs given her to sit upon.

CHAPTER VI.

FIRST THOUGHTS: (_b_) SELF AND OTHER MYSTERIES.

We may now pa.s.s to some of the characteristic modes of child-thought about that standing mystery, the self. As our discussion of the child's ideas of origin, growth and final shrinkage suggests, a good deal of his most earnest thinking is devoted to problems relating to himself.

_The Visible Self._

The date of the first thought about self, of the first dim stage of self-awareness, probably varies considerably in the case of different children according to the rapidity of the mental development and to the character of the surrounding circ.u.mstances. The little girl, who was afterwards to be known as George Sand, may be supposed to have had an exceptional development; and the blow which she received as a baby in arms, and to which she ascribes the first dawn of self-consciousness, was, of course, exceptional too. There are probably many robust and unreflective children, knowing little of life's misery, who get on extremely well without any consciousness of self.

The earliest idea of children about "myself" is a mental picture of the body. They come to learn that their body is different from other objects of sense by a number of experiences, such as grasping the foot, striking the head, receiving soft caresses, kisses, and so forth. Such experiences may suffice to develop even during the first year the idea that their body is "me" in the sense that it is the living seat of pain and pleasure.

The moving limbs are, of course, a specially interesting part of this bodily self. Yet there is reason to think that children regard the trunk as the most important and vital part of themselves. Thus one small boy who, when put to bed, could not get into a comfortable posture, said queerly: "I can't get my hands out of the way of myself". This may be because they learn to connect the impressive experiences of aches and pains with the trunk, and because they observe that the maimed can do without arms and without legs. It is interesting to note that in the development of the idea of the soul by the race its seat was placed in the trunk, _viz._, the heart, long before it was localised in the head.

Children are probably confirmed in this view of the supreme importance of the trunk by our way of specially referring to it when speaking of the "body".

About this interesting trunk-body, what is inside it, and how it works, the child speculates vastly. The experience of bleeding has suggested to some children that it is filled with blood. When later on the young thinker hears of the stomach, bones and so forth, he sets about theorising on these mysterious matters. Odd twistings of thought occur when the higher anatomy is talked of in his hearing. A six-year-old girl, of whom Mr. Canton writes, thus delivered herself with respect to the brain and its functions: "Brain is what you think with in your head, and the more you think the more crinkles there are". The growth of the folds was understood, with charming childish simplicity, as the immediate effect of thought, like the crinkling of the skin of the forehead.

At a later stage of the child's development, no doubt, when he begins to grasp the idea of a conscious thinking "I," the head will become a princ.i.p.al portion of the bodily self. Children are quite capable of finding their way, in part at least, to the idea that the mind has its lodgment in the head. But it is long before this thought grows clear.

This may be seen in children's talk, as when a girl of four spoke of her dolly as having no sense in her _eyes_. Even after a child has learned from others that we think with our brains he may go on supposing that our thoughts travel down to the mouth when we speak.

Very interesting in connection with the first stages of development of the idea of self is the experience of the mirror. It would be absurd to expect a child when first placed before a gla.s.s to recognise his own face. He will smile at the reflection as early as the tenth week, though this is probably merely an expression of pleasure at the sight of a bright object. If held when about six months old in somebody's arms before a gla.s.s a baby will at once show that he recognises the image of the familiar face of his carrier by turning round to the real face, whereas he does not recognise his own. He appears at first and for some months to take it for a real object, sometimes smiling to it as to a stranger and even kissing it, or, as in the case of a little girl (fifteen months old), offering it things.

An infant will, we know, take a shadow to be a real object and try to touch it. Some children on noticing their own and other people's shadows on the wall are afraid as at something uncanny. Here, too, in time, as with young animals, _e.g._, kittens, the strange appearance is taken as a matter of course.

Some children seem to follow out in part the line of thought of uncivilised races, and take reflections and shadows for a kind of "double" of the self. One of Dr. Stanley Hall's correspondents writes to him that he used to have small panics at his own shadow, trying to run away from it, and to stamp on it, thinking it might be his soul. We find another ill.u.s.tration of this doubling of the self in the autobiography of George Sand, which relates that when a child, reflecting on the impressive experience of the echo, she invented a theory of her double existence. We know, too, that the boy Hartley Coleridge distinguished among the "Hartleys" a picture Hartley and a shadow Hartley. To one little boy the idea of being photographed seemed uncanny, as if it were a robbing himself of something and the making of another self. But much more needs to be known about these matters.

The prominence of the bodily element in a child's first idea of himself is seen in the tendency to regard his sameness as limited by unaltered bodily appearance. A child of six, with his shock of curls, will, naturally enough, refuse to believe that he is the same as the hairless baby whose photograph the mother shows him. One boy who had attained to the dignity of knickerbockers used to speak of his petticoated predecessor as a little girl.

_The Hidden Self._

In process of time, however, what we call the conscious self, that which thinks and suffers and wills, comes to be dimly discerned. It is probable that a real advance towards this true self-consciousness takes place towards the end of the third year, when the difficult forms of language, "I," "me," "mine," commonly come to be used with intelligence.

This is borne out by the following story: A little girl of three lying in bed shut her eyes and said: "Mother, you can't see me now". The mother replied: "Oh, you little goose, I can see you but you can't see me". To which she rejoined: "Oh, yes, I know you can see _my body_, mother, but you can't see _me_". The "me" here was, I suppose, the expression of the inner self through the eyes. The same child at about the same age was concerned as to the reality of her own existence. One day playing with her dolls she asked her mother: "Mother, am _I_ real, or only a pretend like my dolls?"

The first thought about self as something existing apart from all that is seen is apt to be very perplexing to the thoughtful child. As one lady puts it, writing to me of her childish experience: "The power of feeling and acting and moving about myself, under the guidance of some internal self, amazed me continually".

As may be seen by this quotation, the first thought about self is greatly occupied with its action on the body. Among the many things that puzzled one much-questioning little lad already quoted was this: "How do my thoughts come down from my brain to my mouth: and how does my spirit make my legs walk?" A girl in her fifth year wanted to know how it is we can move our arm and keep it still when we want to, while the curtain can't move except somebody moves it.

_The Unreachable Past._

Very curious are the directions of the first thought about the past self. The idea of what we call personal ident.i.ty does not appear to be fully reached at first; the little boy already quoted who referred to his past self by saying, "when I was a little girl," must have had a very hazy idea of his sameness with that small petticoated person. It would seem, indeed, as if a child found it easy to dissociate his present self from his past, to deny all kinship with it.

The difficulty to the child of conceiving of his remote past, is surpa.s.sed by that of trying to understand the state of things before he was born. The true mystery of birth for the child, the mystery which fascinates and holds his mind, is that of his beginning to be. This is ill.u.s.trated in the question of a little boy: "Where was I a hundred years ago? Where was I before I was born?" It remains a mystery for all of us, only that after a time we are wont to put it aside.

Even when a child begins to take in the fact that there was a time when he was not, he is unable to think of absolute non-existence. A little girl of three being shown a photograph of her family and not seeing her own face in the group asked: "Where is me?" Being duly instructed that she was not here, or indeed anywhere, she asked: "Was I killed?"

It is curious to note the differences in the att.i.tude of children's minds towards this mystery, "before you were born". A child accustomed to be made the centre of others' interest may be struck with the blank in the common home life before his arrival. A little girl of three, on being told by her mother of something which happened long before she was born, asked in amazement: "And what did you do without H.? Did you cry all day for her?"

Sometimes again, in the more metaphysical sort of child, the puzzle relates to the past existence of the outer world. We have all been perplexed by the thought of the earth and sky, and other folk existing before we were, and going on to exist after we cease to be; though here again we are apt to "get used" to the puzzle. Children may be deeply impressed with this apparent contradiction. Jean Ingelow in the interesting reminiscences of her childhood writes: "I went through a world of cogitation as to whether it was really true that anything had been and lived before I was there to see it". A little boy of five who was rather given to saying "clever" things, was one day asked by a visitor, who thought to rebuke what she took to be his conceit: "Why, M., however did the world go round before you came into it?" M. at once replied: "Why, it _didn't_ go round. It only began five years ago." This child, too, had probably felt little Jean Ingelow's difficulty.

A child will sometimes try to escape from this puzzle by way of the supernatural ideas already referred to. If of quick intelligence he will see in the legend of babies brought from heaven to earth a way of prolonging his existence backwards. The same little boy that was so concerned to know what his mother had done without him, happened one day to be pa.s.sing a street pump with his mother, when he stopped and observed with perfect gravity: "There are no pumps in heaven where I came from". He had evidently worked out the idea of heaven-sent babies into a theory of pre-natal existence.

In thinking of their past, children have to encounter that terrible mystery, time. They seem at first quite unable to think of time as we think of it, in an abstract way. "To-day," "to-morrow" and "yesterday"

are spoken of as things which move. A girl of four asked: "Where is yesterday gone to?" and "Where will to-morrow come from?"

Another difficulty is the grasping of great lengths of time. A child is apt to exaggerate greatly a short period. The first morning at school has seemed an eternity to some who have carried the recollection of it into middle life. Even the minutes when, as Mrs. Maynell writes, "your mother's visitor held you so long at his knee, while he talked to her the excited gabble of the grown-up," may have seemed very, very big.

Possibly this sense of the immeasurable length of certain experiences of childhood gives to the child's sense of past time something of an aching vastness which older people can hardly understand. Do not the words "long, long ago," when we use them in telling a child a story, still carry with them for our ears a strangely far-off sound?

Again, children find it hard to map out the divisions of time, and to see the relations of one period to another. One little boy about five and a half finding that something had happened before his father was born, asked whether it was in the time of the Romans. His historical perspective had, not unnaturally perhaps, set the "time of the Romans"

just before the life of the oldest of his household.

_The Supernatural World._

A child's first acquaintance with the supernatural is frequently made through the medium of fairy-story or other fiction. And, as has been suggested in an earlier chapter, he can put a germ of thought into the tradition of a fairy-world. It is, however, when something in the shape of theological instruction supervenes that the supernatural becomes a problem for the young intellect. He is told of these mysterious things as of certainties, and in the measure in which he is a thinker, he will try to get a clear intelligent view of things.

Like the beginning of life, its ending is one of the recurring puzzles of early days. A child appears better able to imagine others dying than himself; this seems to be suggested by a story published by Stanley Hall of a little girl who from six to nine feared that all other people would die one by one, and that she would be left alone on the earth.

The first recoil from an inscrutable mystery soon begins to give place to a feeling of dread. A little girl of three and a half years asked her mother to put a great stone on her head, because she did not want to die. She was asked how a stone would prevent it, and answered with perfect childish logic: "Because I shall not grow tall if you put a great stone on my head; and people who grow tall get old and then die".