If a healthy child be told to sit still for a long time at a stretch, the chances are that it will disobey the order at the end of the first two minutes.
Likewise, if a rhinoceros be placed in a soft-floored stable, the chances are that it will very soon plough up the whole of its place of captivity with its nasal horn.
Other examples can be thought of: the wallowing of ducks, unprovided with water, in dirty puddles and ditches; the nail exercise of the cat on the legs of our dining-room tables; and the gnawing away of wood by white mice in a manner that can in no way effect their escape.
Let me explain some of these examples:
A healthy child—a little boy—is told to sit still. What happens? The muscles and tissues of his body are well-nourished. In his constitution there is a reserve of strength which, like the power of a galvanic battery is seeking an outlet, a method of discharging itself. All his muscles tell him most emphatically that they want to be moving, that they want to be actively employed.
Now let us turn to the child’s consciousness and to his brain. Let us look to see what is happening there. These impatient messages that are constantly coming up from every nerve and tissue in his body are registered in the brain, but they do not enter consciousness in their original form. Consciousness receives only an interpretation of them. The child is not really aware of them at all. If you asked him when he first began to move or fidget: “What is the matter with you?” he would reply either “I don’t like sitting here” or “I want to go and play.” Not only is he unconscious of the fact that while he is sitting there his body is in a state of genuine distress, because of energy seeking to be discharged, but he would be utterly incapable of using the proper phraseology to explain his condition, even if he were aware of it. All he knows, all he is conscious of is this:
(1) Playing is good fun.
He does not know that the reason why his body insists on moving is that all his tissues are alive with energy that wants to be used.
(2) Sitting here is a hopeless bore.
He does not realize that sitting still to a live body in a state of energetic exuberance is actually painful, and even if he cries from sheer pain, on this account alone, his consciousness will still say: “I want to play,” “I don’t want to sit here.” He will never say, “I am in pain,” or “It hurts not to play.”