THE SERIOUS SEARCHER.
In a former chapter we dealt with a child's mind as a harbourer of
fancies, as subject to the illusive spell of its bright imagery. Yet
with this play of fancy there goes a respectable quantity of serious
inquiry into the things of the real world. This is true, I believe, even
of highly imaginative children, who now and again come down from their
fancy-created world and regard the solid matter-of-fact one at their
feet with shrewdly scrutinising eyes. For children, like some of those
patients of whom the hypnotist tells us, live alternately two lives.
The child not only scans his surroundings, he begins to reflect on what
he observes, and does his best to understand the puzzling scene which
meets his eyes. And all this gives seriousness, a deep and admirable
seriousness, to his attitude; so that one may forgive the touch of
exaggeration when Mr. Bret Harte writes: "All those who have made a
loving study of the young human animal will, I think, admit that its
dominant expression is _gravity_ and not playfulness". We may now turn
to this graver side of the young intelligence.
_The Thoughtful Observer._
This serious examination of things begins early. Most of us have been
subjected to the searching gaze of an infant's eyes when we first made
it overtures of friendship. How much this fixed gaze of a child of six
months takes in nobody can say.
What we find when the child grows and can give an account of his
observations is that, while often surprisingly minute in particular
directions, they are narrowly confined. Thus a child will sometimes be
so impressed with the colour of an object as almost to ignore its form.
A little girl of eighteen months, who knew lambs and called them
"lammies," on seeing two black ones in a field among some white ones
called out, "Eh! doggie, doggie!" The likeness of colour to the black
dog overpowered the likeness in form to the other lambs close by. We
shall find further examples of this one-sided observation when we come
to consider children's drawings.
The pressure of practical needs tends, however, to develop a fuller
examination of objects. A lamb and a dog, for example, have to be
distinguished by a number of marks in which the supremely interesting
detail of colour holds a quite subordinate place. Individual things,
too, have to be more carefully distinguished, if only for the purpose of
drawing the line between what is "mine" and "not mine," for example,
spoons and picture-books. The recognition of the mother, say, exacts
this fuller inspection, for she cannot always be recognised by her
height alone, for example, when she is sitting, nor by her hair alone,
as when she has her hat on, so that _a group_ of distinctive features
has to be seized.
When once the eye has begun to note differences it makes rapid progress.
This is particularly true where the development of a special interest
leads to a habit of concentration on a particular kind of object. Thus
little boys when the "railway interest" seizes them are apt to be finely
observant of the differences between this and that engine and so forth.
A boy aged two years and eleven months, after travelling over two
railways, asked his mother if she had noticed the difference in the make
of the rails on the two lines. Of course she had not, though she
afterwards ascertained that there was a slight difference which the
boy's keener eyes had detected.
The fineness of children's distinguishing observation is well
illustrated in their recognition of small drawings and photographs, as
when one child of two instantly picked out the likeness of his father
from a small _carte de visite_ group.
In truth, children's observation, when close and prolonged, as it is apt
to be under the stimulus of a really powerful interest, is often
surprisingly full as well as exact. The boy, John Ruskin, could look for
hours together at flowing water, noting all its subtle changes. Another
little boy, when three and a half years old, received a picture-book,
_The Railway Train_, and inspected the drawings almost uninterruptedly
for a week, retaining the treasure even at meals. "At the end of this
time (writes his mother) he had grasped the smallest detail in every
picture."
Along with this serious work of observing things there often goes a
particularly bright and exact recollection of them and their names.
Feats of memory in the first three years are, I suspect, a common theme
of discourse among admiring mothers. Here is a sample of many stories
sent me. A little girl only nine months old when taken out for a walk
was shown some lambs at the gate of a field. On being taken the same
road three weeks later she surprised her mother by calling out just
before arriving at the gate, "Baa, baa!" Later on children will remember
through much longer intervals. A little boy of two years on seeing a
girl cousin who lived in the country where he had visited five months
before, at once asked whether her dog "Bruce" barked. Another boy aged
two years and ten months on revisiting his mother's paternal home in
Italy after four or five months remembered small details, _e.g._, how
the grapes were cut, and how the wine was made.
Nor does the busy brain of the child stop at observing and recalling
what lies about him. He begins at an early age to compare this thing
with that, and to note the relations and connections of things, how he
is almost as tall as the table, for example, and a good deal taller than
pussy, how he has a spoon while his elders have knives and forks, and so
forth. And all the while he is trying to get at the general rule or law
which obtains in this and that realm of things.
The first attempts of a child to grasp the causal connections of things
are apt to be quaint enough. Professor Preyer tells us that his little
boy, having been told to blow on his hand which had been hurt, proceeded
afterwards when he had struck his head against something "to blow of his
own accord, supposing that the blowing would have a soothing effect,
even when it did not reach the injured part".[6]
[6] _The Development of the Intellect_ (Appleton & Co.), p. 155.
Since the little searcher in trying to piece his facts together in their
proper connections must, as all of us do, make use of such experiences
as he happens to have, he will pretty certainly fall into the error of
"hasty generalisation," as we call it, taking things to be really
connected which accidentally occur together, it may be in a single
instance only. An American boy of ten who had happened to have a teacher
who was short and cross, and a second who was tall and very kind, said
to his new teacher, who struck him as short, "I'm afraid you'll make a
cross teacher". Yet while we smile at such simplicity ought we not to
remember that older people, too, sometimes commit similar blunders, and
that after all the impulse to reason can only work itself into a good
sound faculty by risking such blunders?
_The Pertinacious Questioner._
The effort of the child to understand the things about him grows
noteworthy somewhere near the end of the third year, and about the same
time there comes the questioning "mania," as we are apt to regard it.
The first question was put in the case of a boy in the twenty-eighth
month, in the case of a girl in the twenty-third month. But the true age
of inquisitiveness when questions are fired off with wondrous rapidity
and pertinacity seems to be ushered in with the fourth year.
A common theory peculiarly favoured by ignorant nurses and mothers is
that children's questioning is one of the ways in which they love to
plague their elders. We shall see presently how much truth there is in
this view. It may be enough here to say that a good deal of this first
questioning is something very different. A child asks you what this
thing is you wear on your watch-chain, why you part your hair in the
middle, or what not, because he feels that he is ignorant, and for the
moment at any rate he would like to get his ignorance removed. More than
this, his question shows that he thinks you can satisfy his curiosity.
Questioning may take various directions. A good deal of the child's
catechising of his long-suffering mother is prompted by a more or less
keen desire for fact. The typical form of this line of questioning is
"What?" The motive here is commonly the wish to know something which
will connect itself with and complete a bit of knowledge already gained.
"How old is Rover?" "Where was Rover born?" "Who was his father?" "What
is that dog's name?" "What sort of hair had you when you were a little
girl?" This kind of questioning may spring out of pure childish
curiosity, or out of some practical need, as that of acting out a part
in play. Thus a Kindergarten teacher was wont to be besieged with
questions of this kind from her small boys when playing at being
animals: "Do walruses swim fast or slow?" "Do lions climb trees?"
One feature in this pursuit of fact is the great store which a child
sets by names of things. It has been pointed out by a French writer that
the form of question: "What is this?" often means, "What is it called?"
A child is apt to think that everything has its own name. One little boy
explained to his mother that he thought all the frogs, the mice, the
birds and the butterflies had names given to them by their mothers,
just as babies have. Perhaps children when they find out the name of a
new thing feel that they know it, that they have been introduced to it,
so to speak.
Another motive in this early questioning is the desire for an
explanation of what is seen or heard about the reason and the cause of
things. It takes the well-known forms, "Why?" "Who made?" and so forth.
Who that has tried to instruct the small child of three or four does not
know the long shrill whine-like sound of this question?
Nothing perhaps in child utterance is better worth interpreting, hardly
anything more difficult to interpret, than this simple-looking little
"why?"
Let us in judging of this pitiless "why?" try to understand the
situation of the small searcher confronted by so much that is strange
and puzzling in nature, and in human life alike. Just because he is born
a thinker he must try at least to bring the strange thing into some
connection with his familiar world. And what is more natural than to go
to the wise lips of the grown-up for a solution of the difficulty?
The demand for the reason or explanation of a thing may be satisfied by
a bare reference to some other thing which is similar and so fitted to
throw the light of familiarity on what is new and strange. For example,
you may sometimes still a child's questioning as to why pussy has fur by
telling him that it is pussy's hair. A child may find an appeasement,
too, of his logical appetite in learning that what is new and strange to
him comes under a general rule, that, for example, many other animals
besides pussy have fur.
Nevertheless, I suspect that a child's "why?" aims farther than this;
that it is only fully appeased by a knowledge of what we older folk call
a reason, that is to say of the cause which originates a thing, and of
the purpose which it serves. It is easy to see, indeed, that this
questioning curiosity of the little ones is largely directed to the
subject of origins or makings. What hours and hours do they not spend in
wondering how the pebbles, the stones, the birds, the babies are made!
The inquiry into origin starts with the amiable presupposition that all
things have been produced by hand-craft after the manner of household
possessions. The world is a sort of big house where everything has been
made by somebody, or at least fetched from somewhere. And this is
perhaps natural enough, for of the things whose production the child
sees are not the larger number fashioned by human hands? He himself
makes a considerable number of things, including these rents in his
clothes, messes on the tablecloth, and the like, which he gets firmly
imprinted on his memory by the authorities. And, then, he is wont to
watch with a keen interest the making of things by others, such as
puddings, clothes, houses, hay-ricks. To ask, then, who made the
animals, the babies, the wind, the clouds, and so forth, is for him
merely to apply the type of causation which is familiar to him.
The demand for a reason takes on a more special meaning when the idea of
purpose becomes clear. The search now is for the use of a thing, the end
which the maker had in view when he fashioned it. When, for example, a
child asks, "Why is there such a lot of dust?" he seems to be seeking
the purpose which the maker of dust had in mind, or in other words the
use of dust. Similarly when things are endowed with life and their own
purpose, as in asking, "Why does the wind blow?" Here the child thinks
of nature's processes as if they were a kind of human action which we
can understand by seeing into its aim.
Here are some curious observations which seem to illustrate this
childish idea of how nature's processes originate. A little girl whom we
will call M., when one year eleven months old, happened to be walking
with her mother on a windy day. At first she was delighted at the strong
boisterous wind, but then got tired and said: "Wind make mamma's hair
untidy, Babba (her own name) make mamma's hair tidy, _so wind not blow
adain_ (again)". About three weeks later the same child being out in the
rain with her mother said: "Mamma, dy (dry) Babba's hands, _so not rain
any more_". This little inquirer seems clearly to have conceived of the
wind and rain as a kind of naughty child who can be got to behave
properly by effacing the effects of its naughtiness.
We may notice something more in this early form of questioning. Children
are apt to think not only that things behave in general after the manner
of people, that their activity is motived by some aim, but that this aim
concerns us human creatures. The wind and the rain came and went in our
little girl's nature-theory just to vex and not to vex "mamma" and
"Babba". A little boy of two years two months sitting on the floor one
day in a bad temper looked up and saw the sun shining and said
captiously, "Sun not look at Hennie," and then more pleadingly, "Please,
sun, not look at poor Hennie". Such observations show that children,
like savages, and possibly, too, some persons who would not like to be
called savages, are inclined to look at nature's doings as specially
designed to injure or benefit themselves.
There is reason to think that the idea of use is prominent in the first
conceptions of things. A French inquirer, M. Binet, has brought this
fact out by questioning a considerable number of children. Thus, when
asked what a hat is, one child answered, "Pour mettre sur la tete".
Similarly children asked by other inquirers, "What is a tree?" answered,
"To make the wind blow," "To sit under," and so forth.
Later on a more scientific form of questioning arises. The little
searcher begins to understand something about the processes of nature,
and tries by questioning his elders to get a glimpse into their manner
of working. This quest of a natural explanation of things marks the
transition to the level of thought of the civilised man.
Here, again, the small investigator finds much hard work to be got
through, for nature's doings are apt to be varied and rather complex. A
child, for example, finds that when he dips his hand into sand, clay, or
what not, he makes a hole. But when he puts it into water no hole is
left behind. Hence we can understand one little fellow asking his
father, "How _is_ it that when we put our hand into the water we don't
make a hole in it?"
Here we have not mere curiosity; we have perplexity at what looks
contradictory to the usual run of things. The same thing is illustrated
in the question of another little boy, "Can they (the fish) breathe with
their moufs under water?"
Among the things which are apt to puzzle the young inquirer is the
disappearance of things. He can as little understand this as the
beginning of things, and so he will ask: "Where does the sea swim to?"
or "Where does the wind go to?" or "Where does the wet (_e.g._, on the
pavement after rain) go to?"
As the view of things begins to widen and embrace the absent and the
past new puzzles occur and prompt to a more philosophical kind of
questioning. Sometimes it is the mere vastness of the world, the
multitude of things, which oppresses and confuses the young
understanding. "Mother," asked a small boy of four, "why _is_ there such
a lot of things in the world if no one knows all these things?" A little
girl about three and a half years old asked her mother, "Mamma, why do
there be any more days, why do there? and why don't we leave off eating
and drinking?" It is hard for us older folk to get behind questions like
this so as to understand the source of the childish bewilderment.
The subject of origins is, as we all know, apt to be a sore puzzle for
the childish mind. The beginnings of living things are, of course, the
great mystery. "There's such a lot of things," remarked the little
zoologist I have recently been quoting, "I want to know, that you say
nobody knows, mamma. I want to know who made God, and I want to know if
pussy has eggs to help her make ickle (little) kitties." Finding that
this was not so, he observed: "Oh, then, I s'pose she has to have God to
help her if she doesn't have kitties in eggs given her to sit on".
Another little boy, five years old, found his way to the puzzle of the
reciprocal genetic relation of the hen and the egg, and asked his
mother: "When there _is_ no egg where does the hen come from? When there
_was_ no egg, I mean, where _did_ the hen come from?" Another little
fellow was puzzled to know how the first child was suckled, or, as a
little girl of four and a half years put it: "When everybody was a
baby--then who could be their nurse--if they were all babies?"
In this bold sweep of inquiry a child is apt to go back to the absolute
beginnings of things, as when he asks, "Who made God?" or, "What was
there before God?" The idea that God has _always_ been seems to be
particularly perplexing and even oppressive to a child's mind.
Sometimes the questioning takes on a still clearer ring of metaphysics,
startling and shocking perhaps the patient listener. A little boy of
three once put the poser: "If I'd gone upstairs, could God make it that
I hadn't?" Or as another boy of eight put it to a distinguished
biologist, "Mr. --, Mr. --, if God wanted me to be good, and I wouldn't
be good, who would win?" Needless to say that this young philosopher was
a Britisher.
With many children confronted with the mysteries of God and the devil
this questioning often reproduces the directions of theological
speculation. Thus the problem of the necessity of evil is clearly
recognisable in the question once put by an American boy under eight
years of age to a priest who visited his home: "Father, why don't God
kill the devil and then there would be no more wickedness in the
world?"
The different lines of questioning here briefly illustrated are apt to
run on concurrently from about the end of the third year, a fit of eager
curiosity about animals or other natural objects giving place to a fit
of theological inquiry, this again being dropped for an equally eager
inquiry into the making of clocks, railway engines, and so on. Yet,
through these alternating bouts of questioning we can recognise laws of
progress. Thus children will ask first about the things which first
interest them, as, for example, animals and babies. Again the
questioning grows gradually more intelligent, more reasonable,
accommodating itself, often after much suffering, to the adamantine
limits of human knowledge.
While I have here regarded children's questioning seriously as the
expression of a genuine desire for knowledge, I am well aware that this
cannot be said of all of it. The hard-pressed mother knows that a
child's "why?" is often used in a sleepy mechanical way with no real
desire for knowledge, any semblance of answer being accepted without an
attempt to put a meaning into it. A good deal of the more reckless kind
of children's asking, when one question is followed by another with an
irritating pertinacity, appears to be of this formal and lifeless
character. Some of it, indeed, as when a little American asked her
mother: "Mamma, why ain't Edna Belle (her baby sister) me, and why ain't
I Edna Belle?" comes alarmingly near the rage of questioning observed in
certain forms of mental disease, and may perhaps be a symptom of an
over-wrought brain.
To admit this, however, is far from saying that we ought to treat all
this questioning with a mild contempt. The little questioners flatter
us by attributing superior knowledge to us, and good manners should
compel us to treat their questions with some attention. And if now and
then they torment us with a string of random reckless questioning, in
how many cases, one wonders, are they not made to suffer, and that
wrongfully, by having perfectly serious questions rudely cast back on
their hands?