their primitive elements in the child's consciousness, questions of
peculiar interest will arise. A problem which though having a venerable
antiquity is still full of meaning concerns the precise relation of the
higher forms of intelligence and of sentiment to the elementary facts of
the individual's life-experience. Are we to regard all our ideas, even
those of God, as woven by the mind out of its experiences, as Locke
thought, or have we certain "innate ideas" from the first? Locke thought
he could settle this point by observing children. To-day, when the
philosophic emphasis is laid not on the date of appearance of the
"innate" intuition, but on its originality and spontaneity, this method
of interrogating the child's mind may seem less promising. Yet if of
less philosophical importance than was once supposed, it is of great
psychological importance. There are certain questions, such as that of
how we come to see things at a distance from us, which can be approached
most advantageously by a study of infant movements. In like manner I
believe the growth of a moral sentiment, of that feeling of reverence
for duty to which Kant gave so eloquent an expression, can only be
understood by the most painstaking observation of the mental activities
of the first years.
There is, however, another, and in a sense a larger, source of
psychological interest in studying the processes and development of the
infant mind. It was pointed out above that to the evolutional biologist
the child exhibits man in his kinship to the lower sentient world. This
same evolutional point of view enables the psychologist to connect the
unfolding of an infant's mind with something which has gone before, with
the mental history of the race. According to this way of looking at
infancy the successive phases of its mental life are a brief _resume_ of
the more important features in the slow upward progress of the species.
The periods dominated successively by sense and appetite, by blind
wondering and superstitious fancy, and by a calmer observation and a
juster reasoning about things, these steps mark the pathway both of the
child-mind and of the race-mind.
This being so, the first years of a child, with their imperfect verbal
expression, their crude fanciful ideas, their seizures by rage and
terror, their absorption in the present moment, acquire a new and
antiquarian interest. They mirror for us, in a diminished distorted
reflection no doubt, the probable condition of primitive man. As Sir
John Lubbock and other anthropologists have told us, the intellectual
and moral resemblances between the lowest existing races of mankind and
children are numerous and close.
Yet this way of viewing childhood is not merely of antiquarian interest.
While a monument of his race, and in a manner a key to its history, the
child is also its product. In spite of the fashionable Weismannism of
the hour, there are evolutionists who hold that in the early manifested
tendencies of the child we can discern signs of a hereditary
transmission of the effects of ancestral experiences and activities. His
first manifestations of rage, for example, are a survival of actions of
remote ancestors in their life and death struggles. The impulse of
obedience, which is as much a characteristic of the child as that of
disobedience, may in like manner be regarded as a transmitted rudiment
of a long-practised action of socialized ancestors. This idea of an
increment of intelligence and moral disposition, earned for the
individual not by himself but by his ancestors, has its peculiar
interest. It gives a new meaning to human progress to suppose that the
dawn of infant intelligence, instead of being a return to a primitive
darkness, contains from the first a faint light reflected on it from the
lamp of racial intelligence which has preceded that instead of a return
to the race's starting point, the lowest form of the school of
experience, it is a start in a higher form, the promotion being a reward
conferred on the child for the exertions of his ancestors. Psychological
observation will be well employed in scanning the features of the
infant's mind in order to see whether they yield evidence of such
ancestral dowering.
So much with respect to the rich and varied scientific interest
attaching to the movements of the child's mind. It only remains to touch
on a third main interest in childhood, the practical or educational
interest. The modern world, while erecting the child into an object of
æsthetic contemplation, while bringing to bear on him the bull's eye
lamp of scientific observation, has become sorely troubled by the
momentous problem of rearing him. What was once a matter of instinct and
unthinking rule-of-thumb has become the subject of profound and
perplexing discussion. Mothers--the right sort of mothers that is--feel
that they must know to the core this wee speechless creature which they
are called upon to direct into the safe road to manhood. And
professional teachers, more particularly the beginners in the work of
training, whose work is in some respects the most difficult and the most
honourable, have come to see that a clear insight into child-nature and
its spontaneous movements must precede any intelligent attempt to work
beneficially upon this nature. In this way the teacher has lent his
support to the savant and the psychologist in their investigation of
infancy. More particularly he has betaken him to the psychologist in
order to discover more of the native tendencies and the governing laws
of that unformed child-mind which it is his in a special manner to form.
In addition to this, the growing educational interest in the spontaneous
behaviour of the child's mind may be expected to issue in a demand for
a _statistic_ of childhood, that is to say, carefully arranged
collections of observations bearing on such points as children's
questions, their first thoughts about nature, their manifestations of
sensibility and insensibility.
The awakening in the modern mind of this keen and varied interest in
childhood has led, and is destined to lead still more, to the
observation of infantile ways. This observation will, of course, be of
very different value according as it subserves the contemplation of the
humorous or other æsthetically valuable aspect of child-nature, or as it
is directed towards a scientific understanding of this. Pretty anecdotes
of children which tickle the emotions may or may not add to our insight
into the peculiar mechanism of children's minds. There is no necessary
connection between smiling at infantile drolleries and understanding the
laws of infantile intelligence. Indeed, the mood of merriment, if too
exuberant, will pretty certainly swamp for the moment any desire to
understand.
The observation which is to further understanding, which is to be
acceptable to science, must itself be scientific. That is to say, it
must be at once guided by foreknowledge, specially directed to what is
essential in a phenomenon and its surroundings or conditions, and
perfectly exact. If anybody supposes this to be easy, he should first
try his hand at the work, and then compare what he has seen with what
Darwin or Preyer has been able to discover.
How difficult this is may be seen even with reference to the outward
physical part of the phenomena to be observed. Ask any mother untrained
in observation to note the first appearance of that complex facial
movement which we call a smile, and you know what kind of result you are
likely to get. The phenomena of a child's mental life, even on its
physical and visible side, are of so subtle and fugitive a character
that only a fine and quick observation is able to cope with them. But
observation of children is never merely seeing. Even the smile has to be
interpreted as a smile by a process of imaginative inference. Many
careless onlookers would say that a baby smiles in the first days from
very happiness, when another and simpler explanation of the movement is
forthcoming. Similarly, it wants much fine judgment to say whether an
infant is merely stumbling accidentally on an articulate sound, or is
imitating your sound. A glance at some of the best memoirs will show how
enormously difficult it is to be sure of a right interpretation of these
early and comparatively simple manifestations of mind.
Things grow a great deal worse when we try to throw our scientific lasso
about the elusive spirit of a child of four or six, and to catch the
exact meaning of its swiftly changing movements. Children are, no doubt,
at this age frank before the eye of love, and their minds are vastly
more accessible than that of the dumb dog that can only look his ardent
thoughts. Yet they are by no means so open to view as is often
supposed. All kinds of shy reticences hamper them: they feel unskilled
in using our cumbrous language; they soon find out that their thoughts
are not as ours, but often make us laugh. And how carefully are they
wont to hide from our sight their nameless terrors, physical and moral.
Much of the deeper childish experience can only reach us, if at all,
years after it is over, through the faulty medium of adult
memory--faulty even when it is the memory of a Goethe, a George Sand, a
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Even when there is perfect candour, and the little one does his best to
instruct us as to what is passing in his mind by his "whys" and his "I
'sposes," accompanied by the most eloquent of looks, we find ourselves
ever and again unequal to comprehending. Child-thought follows its own
paths--roads, as Mr. Rudyard Kipling has well said, "unknown to those
who have left childhood behind." The dark sayings of childhood, as when
child asks, "Why am I not somebody else?" will be fully illustrated
below.
This being so, it might well seem arrogant to speak of any "scientific"
investigation of the child's mind; and, to be candid, I may as well
confess that, in spite of some recently published highly hopeful
forecasts of what child-psychology is going to do for us, I think we are
a long way off from a perfectly scientific account of it. Our so-called
theories of children's mental activity have so often been hasty
generalizations from imperfect observation. Children are probably much
more diverse in their ways of thinking and feeling than our theories
suppose. But of this more presently. Even where we meet with a common
and comparatively prominent trait, we are far as yet from having a
perfect comprehension of it. I at least believe that children's play,
about which so much has confidently been written, is but imperfectly
understood. Is it serious business, half-conscious make-believe, more
than half-conscious acting, or, no one of these, or all of them by
turns? I think he would be a bold man who ventured to answer this
question straight away.
In this state of things it might seem well to wait. Possibly by-and-by
we shall light on new methods of tapping the childish consciousness.
Patients in a certain stage of the hypnotic trance have returned, it is
said, to their childish experience and feelings. Some people do this, or
appear to do this, in their dreams. I know a young man who revives vivid
recollections of the experiences of the third year of life when he is
sleepy, and more especially if he is suffering from a cold. These facts
suggest that if we only knew more about the mode of working of the brain
we might reinstate a special group of conditions which would secure a
re-emergence of childish ideas and sentiments.
Yet our case is not so hopeless that we need defer inquiry into the
child's mind until human science has fathomed all the mysteries of the
brain. We can know many things of this mind, and these of great
importance, even now. The naturalist discusses the actions of the lower
animals, confidently attributing intelligent planning here and a germ of
vanity or even of moral sense there; and it would be hard were we
forbidden to study the little people that are of our own race, and are a
thousand times more open to inspection. Really good work has already
been done here, and one should be grateful. At the same time, it seems
to me of the greatest importance to recognize that it is but a
beginning: that the child which the modern world has in the main
discovered is after all only half discovered: that if we are to get at
his inner life, his playful conceits, his solemn broodings over the
mysteries of things, his way of responding to the motley show of life,
we must carry this work of noting and interpreting to a much higher
point.
Now, if progress is to be made in this work, we must have specially
qualified workers. All who know anything of the gross misunderstandings
of children of which many so-called intelligent adults are capable, will
bear me out when I say that a certain gift of penetration is absolutely
indispensable here. If any one asks me what the qualifications of a good
child-observer amount to, I may perhaps answer, for the sake of brevity,
"A divining faculty, the offspring of child-love, perfected by
scientific training." Let us see what this includes.
That the observer of children must be a diviner, a sort of clairvoyant
reader of their secret thoughts, seems to me perfectly obvious. Watch
half a dozen men who find themselves unexpectedly ushered into a room
tenanted by a small child, and you will soon be able to distinguish the
diviners, who, just because they have in themselves something akin to
the child, seem able at once to get into touch with children. It is
probable that women's acknowledged superiority in knowledge of
child-nature is owing to their higher gift of sympathetic insight. This
faculty, so far from being purely intellectual, is very largely the
outgrowth of a peculiar moral nature to which the life of all small
things, and of children more than all, is always sweet and congenial. It
is very much of a secondary, or acquired instinct; that is, an
unreflecting intuition which is the outgrowth of a large experience. For
the child-lover seeks the object of his love, and is never so happy as
when associating with children and sharing in their thoughts and their
pleasures. And it is through such habitual intercourse that there forms
itself the instinct or tact by which the significance of childish
manifestation is at once unerringly discerned.
There is in this tact or fineness of spiritual touch one constituent so
important as to deserve special mention. I mean a lively memory of one's
own childhood. As I have observed above, I do not believe in an exact
and trustworthy reproduction in later life of particular incidents of
childhood. All recalling of past experiences illustrates the modifying
influence of the later self in its attempt to assimilate and understand
the past self; and this transforming effect is at its maximum when we
try to get back to childhood. But though our memory of childhood is not
in itself exact enough to furnish facts, it may be sufficiently strong
for the purposes of interpreting our observations of the children we see
about us. It is said, and said rightly, that in order to read a child's
mind we need imagination, and since all imagination is merely
readjustment of individual experience, it follows that the skilled
decipherer of infantile characters needs before all things to be in
touch with his own early feelings and thoughts. And this is just what we
find. The vivacious, genial woman who is never so much at home as when
surrounded by a bevy of eager-minded children is a woman who remains
young in the important sense that she retains much of the freshness and
unconventionality of mind, much of the gaiety and expansiveness of early
life. Conversely one may feel pretty sure that a woman who retains a
vivid memory of her childish ideas and feelings will be drawn to the
companionship of children. After reading their autobiographies one
hardly needs to be told that Goethe carried into old age his quick
responsiveness to the gaiety of the young heart; and that George Sand
when grown old was never so happy as when gathering the youngsters about
her.
Yet valuable as is this gift of sympathetic insight, it will not, of
course, conduce to that methodical, exact kind of observation which is
required by science. Hence the need of the second qualification:
psychological training. By this is meant that special knowledge which
comes from studying the principles of the science, its peculiar
problems, and the methods appropriate to these, together with the
special skill which is attained by a methodical, practical application
of this knowledge in the actual observation and interpretation of
manifestations of mind. Thus a woman who wishes to observe to good
effect the mind of a child of three must have a sufficient acquaintance
with the general course of the mental life to know what to expect, and
in what way the phenomena observed have to be interpreted. Really fine
and fruitful observation is the outcome of a large knowledge, and
anybody who is to carry out in a scientific fashion the observation of
the humblest phase of a child's mental life must already know this life
as a whole, so far as psychology can as yet describe its
characteristics, and determine the conditions of its activity.
And here the question naturally arises: "Who is to carry out this new
line of scientific observation?" To begin with the first stage of it,
who is to carry out the exact methodical record of the movements of the
infant? It is evident that qualification or capacity is not all that is
necessary here; capacity must be favoured with opportunity before the
work can be actually begun.
It has been pointed out that the pioneers who struck out this new line
of experimental research were medical men. The meaning of this fact is
pretty apparent. The doctor has not only a turn for scientific
observation: he is a privileged person in the nursery. The natural
guardians of infancy, the mother and the nurse, exempt him from their
general ban on the male. He excepted, no man, not even the child's own
father, is allowed to meddle too much with that divine mystery, that
meeting point of all the graces and all the beatitudes, the infant.
Consider for a moment the natural prejudice which the inquirer into the
characteristics of the infant has to face. Such inquiry is not merely
passively watching what spontaneously presents itself; it is
emphatically experimenting, that is, the calling out of reactions by
applying appropriate stimuli. Even to try whether the new-born babe will
close its fingers on your finger when brought into contact with their
anterior surface may well seem impious to a properly constituted nurse.
To propose to test the wee creature's sense of taste by applying drops
of various solutions, as acid, bitters, etc., to the tongue, or to
provoke ocular movements to the right or the left, would pretty
certainly seem a profanation of the temple of infancy, if not fraught
with danger to its tiny deity. And as to trying Dr. Robinson's
experiment of getting the newly arrived visitor to suspend his whole
precious weight by clasping a bar, it is pretty certain that, women
being constituted as at present, only a medical man could have dreamt of
so daring a feat.
There is no doubt that baby-worship, the sentimental adoration of infant
ways, is highly inimical to the carrying out of a perfectly cool and
impartial process of scientific observation. Hence the average mother
can hardly be expected to do more than barely to tolerate this
encroaching of experiment into the hallowed retreat of the nursery. Even
in these days of rapid modification of what used to be thought
unalterable sexual characters, one may be bold enough to hazard the
prophecy that women who have had scientific training will, if they
happen to become mothers, hardly be disposed to give their minds at the
very outset to the rather complex and difficult work, say, of making an
accurate scientific inventory of the several modes of infantile
sensibility, visual, auditory, and so forth, and of the alterations in
these from day to day.
It is for the coarser fibred man, then, to undertake much of the earlier
experimental work in the investigation of child-nature. And if fathers
will duly qualify themselves they will probably find that permission
will little by little be given them to carry out investigations, short,
of course, of anything that looks distinctly dangerous to the little
being's comfort.
At the same time it is evident that a complete series of observations
of the infant can hardly be carried out by a man alone. It is for the
mother, or some other woman with a pass-key to the nursery, with her
frequent and prolonged opportunities of observation to attempt a careful
and methodical register of mental progress. Hence the importance of
enlisting the mother or her female representative as collaborateur or at
least as assistant. Thus supposing the father is bent on ascertaining
the exact dates and the order of appearance of the different articulate
sounds, which is rather a subject of passive observation than of active
experiment; he will be almost compelled to call in the aid of one who
has the considerable advantage of passing a good part of each day near
the child.[1]
As the wee thing grows and its nervous system becomes more stable and
robust more in the way of research may of course be safely attempted. In
this higher stage the work of observation will be less simple and
involve more of special psychological knowledge. It is a comparatively
easy thing to say whether the sudden approach of an object to the eye
of a baby a week or so old calls forth the reflex known as blinking: it
is a much more difficult thing to say what are the preferences of a
child of twelve months in the matter of simple forms, or even colours.
The problem of the order of development of the colour-sense in children
looks at first easy enough. Any mother, it may be thought, can say which
colours the child first recognizes by naming them when seen, or picking
them out when another names them. Yet simple as it looks, the problem is
in reality anything but simple. A German investigator, Professor Preyer
of Berlin, went to work methodically with his little boy of two years in
order to see in what order he would discriminate colours. Two colours,
red and green, were first shown, the name added to each, and the child
then asked: "Which is red?" "Which is green?" Then other colours were
added and the experiments repeated. According to these researches this
particular child first acquired a clear discriminative awareness of
yellow. Preyer's results have not, however, been confirmed by other
investigators, as M. Binet, of Paris, who followed a similar method of
inquiry. Thus according to Binet it is not yellow but blue which carries
the day in the competition for the child's preferential recognition.