One does not need to have much knowledge of children to know that as a
rule, children are more honest and straightforward than adults. They are
good observers, more disinterested and hence unbiased in giving
evidence, but because of their weakness, more subject to the influence
of other people. Apart from intentional influences there is the
tremendous influence of selected preconceptions. If a child is an
important witness we can never get the truth from him until we discover
what his ideals are. It is, of course, true that everybody who has
ideals is influenced by them, but it is also true that children who have
adventurous, imaginative tendencies are so steeped in them that
everything they think or do gets color, tone, and significance from
them. What the object of adventure does is good, what it does not do is
bad, what it possesses is beautiful, and what it asserts is correct.
Numerous unexplainable assertions and actions of children are cleared up
by reference to their particular ideals, if they may be called ideals.
As a rule, we may hold that children have a certain sense of justice,
and that they find it decidedly unpleasant to see anybody treated
otherwise than he deserves. But in this connection it must be considered
that the child has its own views as to what a person’s deserts are, and
that these views can rarely be judged by our own. In the same way it is
certain that, lacking things to think or to trouble about, children are
much interested in and remember well what occurs about them. But, again,
we have to bear in mind that the interest itself develops from the
child’s standpoint and that his memory constructs new events in terms of
his earlier experiences. As a rule, we may presuppose in his memory only
what is found already in his occupations. What is new, altogether new,
must first find a function, and that is difficult. If, now, a child
remembers something, he will first try to fit it to some function of
memory already present and this will then absorb the new fact, well or
ill, as the case may be. The frequent oversight of this fact is the
reason for many a false interpretation of what the child said; he is
believed to have perceived falsely and to have made false restatements,
when he has only perceived and restated in his own way.
As children have rarely a proper sense of the value of life, they
observe an undubitable death closely without much fear. This explains
many an unbelievable act of courage or clear observation in a child in
cases where an adult, frightened, can see nothing. It is, hence, unjust
to doubt many a statement of children, because you doubt their
“courage.” “Courage” was not in question at all.
Concerning the difference between boys and girls, Löbisch[282] says
rightly, that girls remember persons better, and boys, things. He adds,
moreover: “The more silent girl, who is given to observe what is before
her, shows herself more teachable than the spiteful and also more
imaginative boy who understands with difficulty because he is intended
to be better grounded and to go further in the business of knowing. The
girl, all in all, is more curious; the boy, more eager to know. What he
fails in, what he is not spurred to by love or talent, he throws
obstinately aside. While the girl loyally and trustfully absorbs her
teachings, the boy remains unsatisfied without some insight into the
_why_ or _how_, without some proof. The boy enters daily more and more
into the world of concepts, while the girl thinks of objects not as
members of a class, but as definite particular things.”