THE BATTLE WITH FEARS: (_a_) THE ONSLAUGHT.
It is often asked whether children have as lively, as intense feelings
as their elders. Those emotions of childhood which are wont to break out
into violent expression, such as angry disappointment and gladness, may
not, it is said, be in themselves so intense as they look. In order to
get more data for settling the question we must try to reach their less
demonstrative feelings, those which they are apt to hide from view out
of shame, or some other impulse. Of these none is more interesting than
fear, and it so happens that a good deal of inquiry has of late been
directed to this feeling.
That we must not expect too much knowledge here seems certain. Fear is
one of the shyest of the young feelings. A little fellow of two coming
out of his grandpapa's house one evening into the darkness with his
mother, asked her: "Would you like to take hold of my hand, mammy?" His
father took this to mean the beginning of boyish determination not to
show fear. Still, with the help of observations of parents, and later
confessions and descriptions of childish fear, we may be able to get
some insight into the dark subject.
That fear is one of the characteristic feelings of children needs, one
supposes, no proving. In spite of the wonderful stories of Horatio
Nelson, and of their reflections in literature, _e.g._, Mr. Barrie's
"Sentimental Tommy," I entertain the gravest doubts as to the existence
of a perfectly fearless child. Children differ enormously, and the same
child differs enormously at different times in the intensity of his
fear, but they all have the characteristic _disposition_ to fear. It
seems to belong to these wee, weakly things, brought face to face with a
new strange world, to tremble. They are naturally timid, as all that is
weak and ignorant in nature is apt to be timid.
I have said that fear is well marked in the child. Yet, though it is
true that a state of "being afraid" when fully developed shows itself by
unmistakable signs, there are many cases where it is by no means easy to
say whether the child experiences the feeling. People are apt to think
that every time a child starts it is feeling afraid of something, but as
we shall presently see, being startled and really frightened are two
experiences, which, though closely related, must be carefully
distinguished. A child may, further, show a sort of aesthetic repugnance
to certain sounds, such as those of a piano; to ugly forms, _e.g._, a
hunch-back figure; to particular touches, such as that of fur or velvet,
without having the full experience of fear. Observers of children are by
no means careful to distinguish true fear from other feelings which
resemble it.
Fear proper shows itself in such signs as these, in the stare, the grave
look, the movement of turning away and hiding the face against the
nurse's or mother's shoulder, or of covering it with the hands. In the
severer forms, known as terror, it leads to trembling and to wild
shrieking. Changes of colour also occur, the child's face turning
white, or possibly in some cases red. When frightened by anything an
older child will commonly run from the object of his fear, though the
violence of the feeling may sometimes paralyse the limbs and chain the
would-be fugitive to the spot. This often happens, I fancy, with a
sudden oncoming of dread at discovering oneself alone in the dark.
_The Battery of Sounds._
As is well known, sudden and loud sounds, such as that of a door
banging, will give a shock to an infant in the first weeks of life,
which though not amounting to fear is its progenitor. A clearer
manifestation occurs when a new and unfamiliar sound calls forth the
grave look, the trembling lip, and possibly the fit of crying. Darwin
noticed these in one of his own boys at the age of four and a half
months, when he produced the new sound of a loud snoring.
It is not every new sound which is thus disconcerting to the little
stranger. Sudden sharp sounds of any kind seem to be especially
disliked, as those of a dog's bark. A little girl burst out crying on
first hearing the sound of a baby rattle; and she did the same two
months later on accidentally ringing a hand bell. Children often show
curious caprices in their objections to sounds. Thus a little girl when
taken into the country at the age of nine months took a liking to most
of the animals she saw, but on hearing the bleating of the sheep showed
a distinct germ of fear by sheltering herself against her nurse's
shoulder.
So disturbing are new sounds apt to be to the young child that even
musical ones are often disliked at first. The first hearing of the tones
of a piano has upset the comfort of many a child. A child of five and a
half months conceived a kind of horror for a banjo, and screamed if it
were played or only touched.
Animals may show a similar dread of musical sounds. I took a young cat
of about eight weeks into my lap and struck some chords not loudly on
the piano. It got up, moved uneasily from side to side, then bolted to a
corner of the room and seemed to try to get up the walls. Many dogs,
too, certainly appear to be put out, if not to be made afraid, on
hearing the music of a brass band.
Fear of nature's great sounds, more especially the wind and thunder,
which is common among older children, owes its intensity not merely to
their volume, which seems to surround and crush, but also to the mystery
of their origin. We should remember too that sounds are, for the child
still more than for the adult, expressive of feeling and intention.
Hence religious ideas readily graft themselves on to the noisy
utterances of wind and thunder. Wind is conceived of, for example, as
the blowing of God when angry, and thunder, as we have seen, as his
snoring, and so forth.
I am far from saying that all children manifest this fear of sounds.
Many babies welcome the new and beautiful sounds of music with a joyous
greeting. Even the awful thunder-storm may gladly excite and not
frighten. Children will sometimes get through the first months without
this fear, and then develop it as late as the second year.
I think, then, that in these disturbing effects of sound we have to do
with something more than a mere nervous shock or a start. They involve a
rudiment of the feeling of uneasiness at what is unexpected and
disturbing, and so may be said to be the beginning of true childish
fears. This element of anxiety becomes more clearly marked where the
sound is not only disturbing but mysterious, as when a toy emits a
sound, or water produces a rushing noise in some hidden pipe.
There is another kind of disturbance which shows itself also in the
first year, and has a certain analogy to the discomposing effect of
sound. This is the feeling of bodily insecurity which appears very early
when the child is awkwardly carried, or when in dandling it, it is let
down back-foremost. One child in her fifth month was observed when
carried to hold on to the nurse's dress as if for safety. And it has
been noticed by more than one observer that on dandling a baby up and
down in one's arms, it will on descending, that is when the support of
the arms is being withdrawn, show signs of discontent in struggling
movements. This is sometimes regarded as an inherited fear; yet it seems
possible that, like the jarring effect of noise on the young nerves, it
is the result of a rude disturbance. A child accustomed to the support
of its cradle, the floor, or somebody's lap, might be expected to be put
out when the customary support is withdrawn wholly or partially. The
sense of equilibrium is disturbed in this case.
Other senses, more particularly that of touch, may bring their
disturbing elements, too. Many children have a strong repugnance to cold
clammy things, such as a cold moist hand, and what seems stranger, to
the touch of something that seems altogether so likable as fur. Whether
the common dislike of children to water has anything to do with its soft
yieldingness to touch I cannot say. This whole class of early
repugnances to certain sensations seems to stand on the confines between
mere dislikes and fears, properly so called. A child may very much
dislike touching fur without being in the strict sense afraid of it,
though the dislike may readily develop into a true fear.
_The Alarmed Sentinel._
We may now pass to the disconcerting and alarming effects to which a
child is exposed through his sense of sight. This, as we know, is the
intellectual sense, the sentinel that guards the body, keeping a
look-out for what is afar as for what is anear. The uneasiness which a
child experiences at seeing things is not, like the uneasiness at
sounds, a mere effect of violent sensation; it arises much more from a
perception of something menacing.
Among the earliest alarmers of sight may be mentioned the appearance of
something new and strange, especially when it involves a sudden
abolition of customary arrangements. Although we are wont to think of
children as loving and delighting in what is new, we must not forget
that it may also trouble and alarm. This feeling of uneasiness and
apparently of insecurity in presence of changed surroundings shows
itself as soon as a child has begun to grow used or accustomed to a
particular state of things.
Among the more disconcerting effects of a rude departure from the
customary, is that of change of place. When once an infant has grown
accustomed to a certain room it is apt to find a new one strange, and
will eye its features with a perceptibly anxious look. This sense of
strangeness in places sometimes appears very early. A little girl on
being taken at the age of four months into a new nursery, "looked all
round and then burst out crying". Some children retain this feeling of
uneasiness up to the age of three years and later. Here, again, clearly
marked differences among children disclose themselves. On entering an
unfamiliar room a child may have his curiosity excited, or may be amused
by the odd look of things, so that the fear-impulse is kept under by
other and pleasanter ones.
What applies to places applies also to persons. A child may be said to
combine the attachment of the dog to persons with that of the cat to
localities. Any sudden change of the customary human surroundings, for
example, the arrival of a stranger on the scene, is apt to trouble him.
During the first three months, there is no distinct manifestation of a
fear of strangers. It is only later, when recurring forms have grown
familiar, that the approach of a stranger, especially if accompanied by
a proposal to take the child, calls forth clear signs of displeasure and
the shrinking away of fear. Professor Preyer gives between six and seven
months as the date at which his boy began to cry at the sight of a
strange face.
Here, too, curious differences soon begin to disclose themselves, some
children showing themselves more hospitable than others. It would be
curious to compare the ages at which children begin to take kindly to
new faces. Professor Preyer gives nineteen months as the date at which
his boy surmounted his timidity.
One strange variety of the fear of strangers is the uneasiness shown in
presence of some one who is only partially recognisable. One little boy
of eight months moaned in a curious way when his nurse returned home
after a fortnight's holiday. Another boy of about ten months is said to
have shown a marked shrinking from an uncle who strongly resembled his
father. Such facts, taken with the familiar one that children are apt to
be frightened at the sight of a parent partially disguised, suggest that
half-stranger half-friend may be for a child's mind worse than
altogether a stranger.
The uneasiness which comes from a sense of being in a new room or face
to face with a stranger may perhaps be described as a feeling of what
the Germans call the "unhomely". The little traveller has lost his
bearings, and he begins to feel that he himself is lost. This effect of
homelessness is, of course, most marked when a child finds himself in a
strange place. Much of the acuter fear of children probably has in it
something of this dizzy sickening sense of being lost. A little girl
between the ages of seven and ten used to wake up in a fright crying
loudly because she could not think where she was. Many a child when
exploring a new and dark room, or still more venturesomely wandering
alone out of doors, has suddenly woke up to the strange homeless look of
things. I once saw a wee girl at a children's party who appeared to
enjoy herself well enough up to a certain point, but was then suddenly
seized by this sense of being lost in a new room among new faces, so
that all her older sister's attempts to reassure her failed to stay the
paroxysm of grief and terror.
We may see a measure of this same distrust of the new, this same
clinging to the homely, in many of children's lesser fears, as, for
example, that of new clothes. An infant has been known to break out into
tears at the sight of a new dress on its mother, though the colour and
pattern had, one would have supposed, nothing alarming. The fear of
black clothes, of which there are many known examples, probably includes
further a special dislike for this colour.
Here, again, we may see two opposed impulses at work, of which either
one or the other may be uppermost in different children, or at different
times in the same child. The dread of new clothes has its natural
antagonist in the love of new clothes, which is often supported in
children of a "subjective" turn by a feeling of something like disgrace
at having to go on wearing the same clothes so long. Sometimes the love
of novelty becomes a passion. The boy Alfred de Musset at the age of
four, watching his mother fitting on his feet a pair of pretty red
shoes, exclaimed: "Depeche-toi, maman, mes souliers neufs vont devenir
vieux".
Some other fears closely resemble that of new clothes insomuch as they
involve an unpleasant transformation of a familiar object, the human
figure, the mainstay of a child's trust. Possibly the alarming effect of
making faces, which is said to disturb a child within the first three
months, illustrates the effect of shock at the spoiling of what is
getting familiar and liked. The donning of a pair of dark spectacles, by
extinguishing the focus of childish interest, the eye, will produce a
like effect of the uncanny. Children show a similar dislike and fear at
the sight of an ugly doll with features greatly distorted from the
familiar pattern.
The fear of certain big objects contains, I think, the germ of this
feeling of uneasiness in the presence of strange surroundings. One of
the best illustrations of this is produced by a first sight of the sea.
Some children clearly show signs of alarm, nestling towards their nurses
when they are carried near the edge of the water. Yet here, again, the
behaviour of the childish mind varies greatly. A little boy who first
saw the sea at the age of thirteen months exhibited signs not of fear
but of wondering delight, prettily stretching out his tiny hands towards
it as if wanting to go to it.
I am disposed to think that imaginative children, whose minds take in
something of the bigness of the sea, are more susceptible of this
variety of fear. This conjecture is borne out by the case of two
sisters, of whom one, an imaginative child, had not even at the age of
six got over her fear of going into the sea, whereas the sister, who was
comparatively unimaginative, was perfectly fearless. The supposition
finds a further confirmation in the descriptions given by imaginative
writers of their early impressions of the sea, for example, that of M.
Pierre Loti in his volume _Le Roman d'un Enfant_.
The fear of an eclipse of the moon and other celestial phenomena, owes
something of its force and persistence to their unknown and
inaccessible character. A child is easily annoyed at that great white
thing, which seems like a human face to look down on him, and which
never comes a step nearer to let him know what it really is. It may be
conjectured too that a child's fear of clouds, when they take on uncanny
forms, is supported by their inaccessibility; for he cannot get near
them and touch them. It seems, however, according to some recent
researches in America, that children's fear of celestial bodies,
especially the moon and clouds, is connected with the thought that they
may fall on them. The idea of these strange-looking objects above the
head, having no visible support, and often taking on a threatening mien,
may well give rise to fear in a child's breast akin to the superstitious
fear of the savage.
Self-moving objects, which are not manifestly living things, are apt to
excite a feeling of alarm in children, as indeed to some extent in the
more intelligent animals. Just as a dog will run away from a leaf
whirled about by the wind, so children are apt to be terrified by the
strange and quite irregular behaviour of a feather as it glides along
the floor or lifts itself into the air. A girl of three, who happened to
pull a feather out of her mother's eider-down quilt, was so alarmed at
seeing it float in the air that she would not come near the bed for days
afterwards. Shrewd nurses know of this weakness, and have been able
effectually to keep a child in a room by putting a feather in the
keyhole. The fear here seems to be of something which simulates life and
yet is not recognisable as a familiar living form. It was, I suppose,
the same uncanny suggestion of life which made a child of four afraid
at the sight of a leaf floating on the water of the bath-tub. Fear of
feathers is, I believe, known among the superstitions of adults.
This simulation of life by what is perceived to be not alive probably
takes part in other forms of childish dread. Toys which take on too
impudently the appearance of life may excite fear, as, for example, a
toy cow which "moved realistically when it reared its head," a
combination which completely scared its possessor, a boy about the age
of one and a half years. A child can itself _make_ its toy alive, and so
does not want the toy-maker to do so.
The fear of shadows, which appears among children as among superstitious
adults, seems to arise partly from their blackness and eerie forms,
partly from their uncanny movements and changes of form. Some of us can
recall with R. L. Stevenson the childish horror of going up a staircase
to bed when,
... all round the candle the crooked shadows come,
And go marching along up the stair.
One's own shadow is worst of all, doggedly pursuing, horribly
close at every movement, undergoing all manner of ugly and weird
transformations.