FEAR
In the following chapters, I propose to deal with various aspects
of moral education, especially in the years from the second to the
sixth. By the time the child is six years old, moral education ought
to be nearly complete; that is to say, the further virtues which
will be required in later years ought to be developed by the boy or
girl spontaneously, as a result of good habits already existing and
ambitions already stimulated. It is only where early moral training has
been neglected or badly given that much will be needed at later ages.
I suppose that the child has reached the age of twelve months healthy
and happy, with the foundations of a disciplined character already well
laid by the methods considered in the preceding chapter. There will,
of course, be some children whose health is bad, even if parents take
all the precautions known to science at present. But we may hope that
their number will be enormously diminished as time goes on. They ought,
even now, to be so few as to be statistically unimportant, if existing
knowledge were adequately applied. I do not propose to consider what
ought to be done with children whose early training has been bad.
This is a problem for the schoolmaster, not for the parent; and it is
especially to the parent that this book is addressed.
The second year of life should be one of great happiness. Walking and
talking are new accomplishments, bringing a sense of freedom and power.
Every day the child improves in both.[5] Independent play becomes
possible, and the child has a more vivid sense of “seeing the world”
than a man can derive from the most extensive globe-trotting. Birds
and flowers, rivers and the sea, motor-cars and trains and steamers
all bring delight and passionate interest. Curiosity is boundless:
“want to see” is one of the commonest phrases at this age. Running
freely in a garden or a field or on the seashore produces an ecstasy of
emancipation after the confinement of crib and baby-carriage. Digestion
is usually stronger than in the first year, food is more varied, and
mastication is a new joy. For all these reasons, if the child is well
cared for and healthy, life is a delicious adventure.
But with the greater independence of walking and running there is
apt to come also a new timidity. The new-born infant can easily be
frightened; Dr. J. B. and Mrs. Watson found that the things which alarm
it most are loud noises and the sensation of being dropped.[6] It
is, however, so completely protected that it has little occasion for
the rational exercise of fear; even in real dangers it is helpless,
so that fear would not be of any use to it. During the second and
third year, new fears develop. It is a moot point how far this is
due to suggestion, and how far it is instinctive. The fact that the
fears do not exist during the first year is not conclusive against
their instinctive character, since an instinct may ripen at any
age. Not even the most extreme Freudian would maintain that the sex
instinct is mature at birth. Obviously children who can run about by
themselves have more need of fear than infants that cannot walk; it
would therefore not be surprising if the instinct of fear arose with
the need. The question is of considerable educational importance. If
all fears arise from suggestion, they can be prevented by the simple
expedient of not showing fear or aversion before a child. If, on the
other hand, some of them are instinctive, more elaborate methods will
be required.
Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, in his book “The Childhood of Animals”, gives
a large number of observations and experiments to show that there is
usually no inherited instinct of fear in young animals.[7] Except
monkeys and a few birds, they view the age-long enemies of their
species, such as snakes, without the slightest alarm, unless their
parents have taught them to feel fear of these animals. Children well
under a year old seem never to be afraid of animals. Dr. Watson taught
one such child to be afraid of rats by repeatedly sounding a gong
behind its head at the moment when he showed it a rat. The noise was
terrifying, and the rat came to be so by association. But instinctive
fear of animals seems quite unknown in the early months. Fear of the
dark, also, seems never to occur in children who have not been exposed
to the suggestion that the dark is terrifying. There are certainly
very strong grounds for the view that most of the fears which we used
to regard as instinctive are acquired, and would not arise if grown-up
people did not create them.
In order to get fresh light on this subject, I have observed my own
children carefully; but as I could not always know what nurses and
maids might have said to them, the interpretation of the facts was
often doubtful. So far as I could judge, they bore out Dr. Watson’s
views as to fear in the first year of life. In the second year, they
showed no fear of animals, except that one of them, for a time, was
afraid of horses. This, however, was apparently due to the fact that
a horse had suddenly galloped past her with a very loud noise. She is
still in her second year, and therefore for later observation I am
dependent on the boy. Near the end of his second year, he had a new
nurse who was generally timid and especially afraid of the dark. He
quickly acquired her terrors (of which we were ignorant at first);
he fled from dogs and cats, cowered in abject fear before a dark
cupboard, wanted lights in every part of the room after dark, and was
even afraid of his little sister the first time he saw her, thinking,
apparently, that she was a strange animal of some unknown species.[8]
All these fears might have been acquired from the timid nurse; in
fact they gradually faded away after she was gone. There were other
fears, however, which could not be accounted for in the same way,
since they began before the nurse came, and were directed to objects
which no grown-up person would find alarming. Chief of these was a
fear of everything that moved in a surprising way, notably shadows and
mechanical toys. After making this observation, I learned that fears
of this sort are normal in childhood, and that there are strong reasons
for regarding them as instinctive. The matter is discussed by William
Stern in his “Psychology of Early Childhood”, p. 494 ff, under the
heading “Fear of the Mysterious”. What he says is as follows:
The special significance of this form of fear, particularly in early
childhood, has escaped the notice of the older school of child
psychologists; it has lately been established by Groos and by us.
“Fear of the unaccustomed seems to be more a part of primitive nature
than fear of a known danger” (Groos, p. 284). If the child meets
with anything that does not fit in with the familiar course of his
perception, three things are possible. Either the impression is so
alien that it is simply rejected as a foreign body, and consciousness
takes no notice of it. Or the interruption of the usual course of
perception is pronounced enough to attract attention but not so
violent as to effect disturbance; it is rather surprise, desire
for knowledge, the beginning of all thought, judgment, enquiry.
Or, lastly, the new suddenly breaks in upon the old with violent
intensity, throws familiar ideas into unexpected confusion without
a possibility of an immediate practical adjustment; then follows
a shock with a strong affective-tone of displeasure, the fear of
the mysterious (uncanny). Groos now has pointed out with keen
insight that this fear of the uncanny is also distinctly founded on
instinctive fear; it corresponds to a biological necessity which
works from one generation to the next.
Stern gives many instances, among others fear of a suddenly opened
umbrella and “the frequent fear of mechanical toys”. The former, by
the way, is very strong in horses and cows: a large herd can be driven
into headlong flight by it, as I have verified. My own boy’s terrors,
under this head, were just such as Stern describes. The shadows that
frightened him were vague quickly-moving shadows thrown into a room
by unseen objects (such as omnibuses) passing in the street. I cured
him by making shadows on the wall and the floor with my fingers, and
getting him to imitate me; before long, he felt that he understood
shadows and began to enjoy them. The same principle applied to
mechanical toys: when he had seen the mechanism he was no longer
frightened. But when the mechanism was invisible the process was slow.
Some one gave him a cushion which emitted a long melancholy whine after
being sat upon or pressed. This alarmed him for a long time. In no case
did we entirely remove the terrifying object: we put it at a distance,
where it was only slightly alarming; we produced gradual familiarity;
and we persisted till the fear completely ceased. Generally the same
mysterious quality which caused fear at first produced delight when
the fear had been overcome. I think an irrational fear should never be
simply let alone, but should be gradually overcome by familiarity with
its fainter forms.
We adopted an exactly opposite process--perhaps wrongly--in the case
of two rational fears which were wholly absent. I live half the year
on a rocky coast where there are many precipices. The boy had no sense
whatever of the danger of heights, and would have run straight over
a cliff into the sea if we had let him. One day when we were sitting
on a steep slope that ended in a sheer drop of a hundred feet, we
explained to him quietly, as a merely scientific fact, that if he went
over the edge he would fall and break like a plate. (He had lately seen
a plate broken into many pieces by being dropped on the floor.) He
sat still for some time, saying to himself “fall”, “break”, and then
asked to be taken further from the edge. This was at the age of about
two and a half. Since then he has had just enough fear of heights to
make him safe while we keep an eye on him. But he would still be very
rash if left to himself. He now (three and nine months) jumps from
heights of six feet without hesitation, and would jump twenty feet
if we would let him. Thus the instruction in apprehension certainly
did not produce excessive results. I attribute this to the fact that
it was instruction, not suggestion; neither of us was feeling fear
when the instruction was given. I regard this as very important in
education. Rational apprehension of dangers is necessary; fear is not.
A child cannot apprehend dangers without _some_ element of fear, but
this element is very much diminished when it is not present in the
instructor. A grown-up person in charge of a child should never feel
fear. That is one reason why courage should be cultivated in women just
as much as in men.
The second illustration was less deliberate. One day when I was walking
with the boy (at the age of three years and four months) we found an
adder on the path. He had seen pictures of snakes, but had never before
seen a real snake. He did not know that snakes bite. He was delighted
with the adder, and when it glided away he ran after it. As I knew he
could not catch it, I did not check him, and did not tell him that
snakes are dangerous. His nurse, however, from that time on, prevented
him from running in long grass, on the ground that there might be
snakes. A slight fear grew up in him as a result, but not more than we
felt to be desirable.
The most difficult fear to overcome, so far, has been fear of the sea.
Our first attempt to take the boy into the sea was at the age of two
and a half. At first, it was quite impossible. He disliked the cold
of the water, he was frightened by the noise of the waves, and they
seemed to him to be always coming, never going. If the waves were big,
he would not even go near to the sea. This was a period of general
timidity; animals, odd noises, and various other things, caused alarm.
We dealt with fear of the sea piecemeal. We put the boy into shallow
pools away from the sea, until the mere cold had ceased to be a shock;
at the end of the four warm months, he enjoyed paddling in shallow
water at a distance from waves, but still cried if we put him into deep
pools where the water came up to his waist. We accustomed him to the
noise of the waves by letting him play for an hour at a time just out
of sight of them; then we took him to where he could see them, and made
him notice that after coming in they go out again. All this, combined
with the example of his parents and other children, only brought him
to the point where he could be _near_ the waves without fear. I am
convinced that the fear was instinctive; I am fairly certain there had
been no suggestion to cause it. The following summer, at the age of
three and a half, we took the matter up again. There was still a terror
of going actually into the waves. After some unsuccessful coaxing,
combined with the spectacle of everybody else bathing, we adopted
old-fashioned methods. When he showed cowardice, we made him feel that
we were ashamed of him; when he showed courage, we praised him warmly.
Every day for about a fortnight, we plunged him up to the neck in the
sea, in spite of his struggles and cries.[9] Every day they grew less;
before they ceased, he began to ask to be put in. At the end of a
fortnight, the desired result had been achieved: he no longer feared
the sea. From that moment, we left him completely free, and he bathed
of his own accord whenever the weather was suitable--obviously with the
greatest enjoyment. Fear had not ceased altogether, but had been partly
repressed by pride. Familiarity, however, made the fear grow rapidly
less, and it has now ceased altogether. His sister, now twenty months
old, has never shown any fear of the sea, and runs straight in without
the slightest hesitation.
I have related this matter in some detail, because, to a certain
extent, it goes against modern theories for which I have much respect.
The use of force in education should be very rare. But for the conquest
of fear it is, I think, sometimes salutary. Where a fear is irrational
and strong, the child, left to himself, will never have the experiences
which show that there is no ground for apprehension. When a situation
has been experienced repeatedly without harm, familiarity kills fear.
It would very likely be useless to give the dreaded experience _once_;
it must be given often enough to become in no degree surprising. If the
necessary experience can be secured without force, so much the better;
but if not, force may be better than the persistence of an unconquered
fear.
There is a further point. In the case of my own boy, and presumably in
other cases too, the experience of overcoming fear is extraordinarily
delightful. It is easy to rouse the boy’s pride: when he has won praise
for courage, he is radiantly happy for the rest of the day. At a later
stage, a timid boy suffers agonies through the contempt of other boys,
and it is much more difficult then for him to acquire new habits. I
think therefore that the early acquisition of self-control in the
matter of fear, and the early teaching of physical enterprise, are of
sufficient importance to warrant somewhat drastic methods.
Parents learn by their mistakes; it is only when the children are grown
up that one discovers how they ought to have been educated. I shall
therefore relate an incident which shows the snares of overindulgence.
At the age of two and a half, my boy was put to sleep in a room
by himself. He was inordinately proud of the promotion from the
night-nursery, and at first he always slept quietly through the night.
But one night there was a terrific gale, and a hurdle was blown over
with a deafening crash. He woke in terror, and cried out. I went to
him at once: he had apparently waked with a nightmare, and clung to me
with his heart beating wildly. Very soon his terror ceased. But he had
complained that it was dark--usually, at that time of year, he slept
all through the dark hours. After I left him, the terror seemed to
return in a mitigated form, so I gave him a night-light. After that, he
made an almost nightly practice of crying out, until at last it became
clear that he was only doing it for the pleasure of having grown-up
people come and make a fuss. So we talked to him very carefully about
the absence of danger in the dark, and told him that if he woke he was
to turn over and go to sleep again, as we should not come to him unless
there was something serious the matter. He listened attentively, and
never cried out again except for grave cause on rare occasions. Of
course the night-light was discontinued. If we had been more indulgent,
we should probably have made him sleep badly for a long time, perhaps
for life.
So much from personal experience. We must now pass on to a more general
consideration of methods for eliminating fear.
After the first years, the proper instructors in physical courage
are other children. If a child has older brothers and sisters, they
will stimulate it both by example and by precept, and whatever they
can do it will attempt. At school, physical cowardice is despised, and
there is no need for grown-up teachers to emphasize the matter. At
least, that is the case among boys. It ought to be equally the case
among girls, who should have precisely the same standards of courage.
In physical ways, fortunately, school-girls are no longer taught to
be “lady-like”, and their natural impulses towards physical prowess
are allowed a fair amount of scope. There is still, however, some
difference between boys and girls in this respect. I am convinced there
ought to be none.[10]
When I speak of courage as desirable, I am taking a purely behaviorist
definition: a man is courageous when he does things which others might
fail to do owing to fear. If he feels no fear, so much the better; I
do not regard control of fear by the will as the only true courage, or
even as the best form of courage. The secret of modern moral education
is to produce results by means of good habits which were formerly
produced (or attempted) by self-control and will-power. Courage due to
the will produces nervous disorders, of which “shell-shock” afforded
numerous instances. The fears which had been repressed forced their
way to the surface in ways not recognizable to introspection. I do
not mean to suggest that self-control can be dispensed with entirely;
on the contrary, no man can live a consistent life without it. What I
do mean is, that self-control ought only to be needed in unforeseen
situations, for which education has not provided in advance. It would
have been foolish, even if it had been possible, to train the whole
population to have, without effort, the sort of courage that was
needed in the war. This was an exceptional and temporary need, of so
extraordinary a kind that all other education would have had to be
stunted if the habits required in the trenches had been instilled in
youth.
The late Dr. Rivers, in his book on “Instinct and the Unconscious”,
gives the best psychological analysis of fear with which I am
acquainted. He points out that one way of meeting a dangerous situation
is manipulative activity, and that those who are able to employ this
method adequately do not, at least consciously, feel the emotion of
fear. It is a valuable experience, which stimulates both self-respect
and effort, to pass gradually from fear to skill. Even so simple a
matter as learning to ride a bicycle will give this experience in a
mild form. In the modern world, owing to increase of mechanism, this
sort of skill is becoming more and more important.
I suggest that training in physical courage should be as far as
possible given by teaching skill in manipulating or controlling matter,
not by means of bodily contests with other human beings. The kind of
courage required for mountaineering, for manipulating an aeroplane, or
for managing a small ship in a gale, seems to me far more admirable
than the sort required in fighting. As far as possible, therefore,
I should train school-children in forms of more or less dangerous
dexterity, rather than in such things as football. Where there is an
enemy to be overcome, let it be matter rather than other human beings.
I do not mean that this principle should be applied pedantically, but
that it should be allowed more weight in athletics than is the case at
present.
There are, of course, more passive aspects of physical courage. There
is endurance of hurts without making a fuss; this can be taught to
children by not giving too much sympathy when they have small mishaps.
A great deal of hysteria in later life consists mainly of an excessive
desire for sympathy: people invent ailments in the hope of being petted
and treated softly. This disposition can usually be prevented from
developing by not encouraging children to cry over every scratch and
bruise. In this respect, the education of the nursery is still much
worse for girls than for boys. It is just as bad to be soft with girls
as with boys; if women are to be the equals of men, they must not be
inferior in the sterner virtues.
I come now to the forms of courage that are not purely physical. These
are the more important forms, but it is difficult to develop them
adequately except on a foundation of the more elementary kinds.
The fear of the mysterious has been already touched upon, in connection
with childish terrors. I believe this fear to be instinctive, and
of immense historical importance. Most superstition is due to it.
Eclipses, earthquakes, plagues, and such occurrences arouse it in a
high degree among unscientific populations. It is a very dangerous
form of fear, both individually and socially; to eradicate it in
youth is therefore highly desirable. The proper antidote to it is
scientific explanation. It is not necessary that everything which is
mysterious at first sight should be explained: after a certain number
of explanations have been given, the child will assume that there are
explanations in other cases, and it will become possible to say that
the explanation cannot be given yet. The important thing is to produce,
as soon as possible, the feeling that the sense of mystery is only due
to ignorance, which can be dispelled by patience and mental effort.
It is a remarkable fact that the very things which terrify children
at first by their mysterious properties delight them as soon as fear
is overcome. Thus mystery becomes an incentive to study, as soon as
it ceases to promote superstition. My little boy, at the age of three
and a half, spent many hours in absorbed solitary study of a garden
syringe, until he had grasped how the water came in and the air came
out, and how the converse process occurred. Eclipses can be explained
so as to be intelligible even to very tiny children. Whatever either
terrifies or interests the child should be explained if it is at all
possible; this transforms fear into scientific interest by a process
which is entirely along the lines of instinct and repeats the history
of the race.
Some problems, in this connection, are difficult, and require much
tact. The most difficult is death. The child soon discovers that plants
and animals die. The chances are that somebody he knows will die before
he is six years old. If he has at all an active mind, it occurs to him
that his parents will die, and even that he will die himself. (This
is more difficult to imagine.) These thoughts will produce a crop of
questions, which must be answered carefully. A person whose beliefs
are orthodox will have less difficulty than a person who thinks that
there is no life after death. If you hold the latter view, do not say
anything contrary to it; no consideration on earth justifies a parent
in telling lies to his child. It is best to explain that death is
a sleep from which people do not wake. This should be said without
solemnity, as if it were the most ordinary thing imaginable. If the
child worries about dying himself, tell him it is not likely to happen
for many, many years. It would be useless, in early years, to attempt
to instil a Stoic contempt for death. Do not introduce the topic, but
do not avoid it when the child introduces it. Do all you can to make
the child feel that there is no mystery about it. If he is a normal
healthy child, these methods will suffice to keep him from brooding.
At all ages, be willing to talk fully and frankly, to tell all that
you believe, and to convey the impression that the subject is rather
uninteresting. It is not good either for old or young to spend much
time in thinking about death.
Apart from special fears, children are liable to a diffused anxiety.
This is generally due to too much repression by their elders, and is
therefore much less common than it used to be. Perpetual nagging,
prohibition of noise, constant instruction in manners, used to make
childhood a period of misery. I can remember, at the age of five, being
told that childhood was the happiest period of life (a blank lie, in
those days). I wept inconsolably, wished I were dead, and wondered
how I should endure the boredom of the years to come. It is almost
inconceivable, nowadays, that any one should say such a thing to a
child. The child’s life is instinctively prospective: it is always
directed towards the things that will become possible later on. This
is part of the stimulus to the child’s efforts. To make the child
retrospective, to represent the future as worse than the past, is to
sap the life of the child at its source. Yet that is what heartless
sentimentalists used to do by talking to the child about the joys of
childhood. Fortunately the impression of their words did not last
long. At most times, I believed the grown-ups must be perfectly happy,
because they had no lessons and they could eat what they liked. This
belief was healthy and stimulating.
Shyness is a distressing form of timidity, which is common in England
and China, and parts of America, but rare elsewhere. It arises partly
from having little to do with strangers, partly from insistence upon
company manners. As far as is convenient, children should, after the
first year, become accustomed to seeing strangers and being handled by
them. As regards manners, they should, at first, be taught the bare
minimum required for not being an intolerable nuisance. It is better
to let them see strangers for a few minutes without restraint and then
be taken away, than to expect them to stay in the room and be quiet.
But after the first two years it is a good plan to teach them to amuse
themselves quietly part of the day, with pictures or clay or Montessori
apparatus or something of the kind. There should always be a reason for
quiet that they can understand. Manners should not be taught in the
abstract, except when it can be done as an amusing game. But as soon as
the child can understand he should realize that parents also have their
rights; he must accord freedom to others, and have freedom for himself
to the utmost possible extent. Children easily appreciate justice, and
will readily accord to others what others accord to them. This is the
core of good manners.
Above all, if you wish to dispel fear in your children, be fearless
yourself. If you are afraid of thunderstorms, the child will catch
your fear the first time he hears thunder in your presence. If you
express a dread of social revolution, the child will feel a fright all
the greater for not knowing what you are talking about. If you are
apprehensive about illness, so will your child be. Life is full of
perils, but the wise man ignores those that are inevitable, and acts
prudently but without emotion as regards those that can be avoided.
You cannot avoid dying, but you can avoid dying intestate; therefore
make your will, and forget that you are mortal. Rational provision
against misfortune is a totally different thing from fear; it is a part
of wisdom, whereas all fear is slavish. If you cannot avoid feeling
fears, try to prevent your child from suspecting them. Above all, give
him that wide outlook and that multiplicity of vivid interests that
will prevent him, in later life, from brooding upon possibilities of
personal misfortune. Only so can you make him a free citizen of the
universe.