There have never lacked authors who have assigned to children a great
group of defects. Ever since Lombroso it has been the custom in a
certain circle to find the worst crimes already foreshadowed in
children. If there are congenital criminals it must follow that there
are criminals among children. It is shown that the most cruel and most
unhuman men, like Nero, Caracalla, Caligula, Louis XI, Charles IX, Louis
XIII, etc., showed signs of great cruelty, even in earliest childhood.
Perez cites attacks of anger and rage in children; Moreau, early
development of the sense of vengeance, Lafontaine, their lack of pity.
Nasse also calls attention to the cruelty and savagery of large numbers
of children, traits shown in their liking for horror-stories, in the
topsy-turvy conclusion of the stories they tell themselves, in their
cruelty to animals. Broussais[285] says, “There is hardly a lad who
will not intentionally abuse weaker boys. This is his first impulse. His
victim’s cries of pain restrain him for a moment from further
maltreatment, if the love of bullying is not native with him. But at the
first offered opportunity he again follows his instinctive impulse.”
Even the power of training is reduced and is expressed in the proverb,
that children and nations take note only of their last beating. The time
about, and especially just before, the development of puberty seems to
be an especially bad one, and according to Voisin[286] and
Friedreich,[287] modern man sees in this beginning of masculinity the
cause of the most extraordinary and doubtful impulses. Since Esquirol
invented the doctrine of monomanias there has grown up a whole
literature, especially concerning pyromania among girls who are just
becoming marriageable, and Friedreich even asserts that all pubescent
children suffer from pyromania, while Grohmann holds that scrofulous
children are in the habit of stealing.
When this literature is tested the conclusion is inevitable that there
has been overbold generalization. One may easily see how. Of course
there are badly behaved children, and it is no agreement with the
Italian positivists to add, also, that a large number of criminals were
good for nothing even in their earliest youth. But we are here concerned
with the specific endowment of childhood, and it is certainly an
exaggeration to set this lower than that of maturity. If it be asked,
what influence nurture and training have if children are good without
it, we may answer at once, that these have done enough in having
supplied a counterbalance to the depraving influences of life,--the
awakening passions and the environment.
Children who are bad at an early age are easily noticeable. They make
noise and trouble as thousands of well-behaved children do not, and a
poor few of such bad ones are taken to be representative of all. What is
silent and not significant, goes of itself, makes no impression, even
though it is incomparably of greater magnitude. Individual and noisy
cases require so much attention that their character is assigned to the
whole class. Fortune-telling, dreams, forewarnings, and prophecies are
similarly treated. If they do not succeed, they are forgotten, but if in
one case they succeed, they make a great noise. They appear, therefore,
to seduce the mind into incorrectly interpreting them as typical. And
generally, there is a tendency to make sweeping statements about
children. “If you have understood this, you understand that also,”
children are often told, and most of the time unjustly. The child is
treated like a grown man to whom _this_ has occurred as often as _that_,
and who has intelligence enough and experience enough to apply _this_ to
_that_ by way of identification. Consider an exaggerated example. The
child, let us say, knows very well that stealing is dishonorable,
sinful, criminal. But it does not know that counterfeiting, treachery,
and arson are forbidden. These differences, however, may be reduced to a
hair. It knows that stealing is forbidden, but considers it permissible
to “rag” the neighbors’ fruit. It knows that lying is a sin, but it does
not know that certain lies become suddenly punishable, according to law,
and are called frauds. When, therefore, a boy tells his uncle that
father sent him for money because he does not happen to have any at
home, and when the little rascal spends the money for sweets, he may
perhaps believe that the lie is quite ugly, but that he had done
anything objectively punishable, he may be totally unaware. It is just
as difficult for the child to become subjective. The child is more of an
egoist than the adult; on the one hand, because it is protected and
watched in many directions by the adult; on the other, because, from the
nature of things, it does not have to care for anybody, and would go
ship-wreck if it were not itself cared for. The natural consequences are
that it does not discover the limits between what is permissible, and
what is not permissible. As Kraus says,[288] “Unripe youth shows a
distinct quality in distinguishing good and evil. A child of this age,
that is required to judge the action or relations of persons, will not
keep one waiting for the proper solution, but if the action is brought
into relation to its selfhood, to its own personality, there is a sudden
disingenuity, a twisting of the judgment, an incapacity in the child to
set itself at the objective point of view.” Hence, it is wrong to ask a
child: “Didn’t you know that you should not have done this thing?” The
child will answer, “Yes, I knew,” but it does not dare to add, “I knew
that other people ought not do it, but I might.” It is not necessary
that the spoiled, pampered pet should say this; any child has this
prejudiced attitude. And how shall it know the limit between what is
permitted it, and what is not? Adults must work, the child plays; the
mother must cook, the child comes to the laden table; the mother must
wash, the child wears the clean clothes; it gets the titbits; it is
protected against cold; it is forgiven many a deed and many a word not
permitted the adult. Now all of a sudden it is blamed because it has
gone on making use of its recognized privileges. Whoever remembers this
artificial, but nevertheless necessary, egoism in children will have to
think more kindly of many a childish crime. Moreover, we must not
overlook the fact that the child does many things simply as blind
imitation. More accurate observation of this well known psychological
fact will show how extensive childish imitation is. At a certain limit,
of course, liability is here also present, but if a child is imitating
an imitable person, a parent, a teacher, etc., its responsibility is at
an end.
All in all, we may say that nobody has brought any evidence to show that
children are any worse-behaved than adults. Experience teaches that
hypocrisy, calculating evil, intentional selfishness, and purposeful
lying are incomparably rarer among children than among adults, and that
on the whole, they observe well and willingly. We may take children,
with the exception of pubescent girls, to be good, reliable witnesses.