Some things are so important that one really has to know them. Did you ever think why girls like to play with dolls and boys do not? Why, on the other hand, boys can throw stones and girls cannot? Girls like to play with dolls, because when they grow up to be women and have real babies of their own, these babies have got to be dressed and fed and washed and tended and taken care of when they are sick. All this is very hard work indeed, about as hard and trying work as anybody ever has to do; so that if your own particular mama did not have a natural and instinctive love in her heart for all babies, she would not have jumped up at night every time you cried, no matter how cold and sleepy she was. If taking care of little babies were just plain work, to be done no better than other sorts of work are done, it would be pretty unpleasant for the babies. So women are made to love babies so much that even when they are little girls they like to play at taking care of doll babies, in default of real ones. But boys and men, they don’t count; so they do not have this taking-care-of-babies-and-dolls instinct.
But the boys and men can throw things, because before the invention of guns (which really was not very long ago) and before men lived in cities and planted crops, about the only way to get anything to eat was to get out and throw something at an animal and kill it. Then, too, when there was a war (and this often used to be most of the time) the fighting had to be done with spears and swords, which had to be thrown, or else used to strike and thrust with, which is pretty much the same thing as throwing. So it happened that for ages upon ages before our ancestors became civilized, while the women stayed at home and took care of the children, the men went out and threw things. And that is why today, girls like to play with dolls, but boys like to hunt and fish; and why boys can throw stones, and girls can’t.
Boys, then, are born with the throwing instinct. Throwing is as easy for them to learn as walking. But girls haven’t it. For them learning to throw is as hard as learning to walk on the hands. So we see how both with walking and throwing, the inborn instinct makes learning easy, tho it does not altogether take the place of practice.
XIII
Why We Like Certain Things
We have seen that the reason why all proper little girls like to play at taking care of dolls is that their mothers, and their grandmothers, and their great-grandmothers, and their great-great-grandmothers, and all other sizes of grandmothers for a thousand generations, and after that for another thousand, and after that nobody knows how many more, have all been taking care of real babies, until anything that looks like a baby has become about the most interesting and precious thing there is. We have seen also that boys learn to throw things easily, and like to throw things because all the while that their many times great-grandmothers have been taking care of the children, their many times great-grandfathers have been throwing spears and javelins at other people’s ancestors, or at things to eat running about on four legs.
Every proper boy likes to hunt and fish and camp out and play Indian because the most of mankind, up to a few centuries ago, have spent their entire time in hunting, fishing, living in huts, and generally playing Indians. Indians themselves, of course, play Indians all the time; and up to the beginning of the Christian era, our own ancestors, living in the wilds of northern Europe, were about as wild as Indians, and did little except play Indians all their lives. Who knows but that, a thousand years from now, after men have been civilized for a long while, and been getting their livings many years standing at benches or sitting at desks, all proper boys will think it great fun to study out of a book indoors? Perhaps they may; but I think it will be a long time first!
Every proper boy, too, when he gets old enough (and that is not so very old) likes to play at games. Now pretty much all these games, when you come to think of it, baseball, cricket, hockey, tennis, golf, I don’t know how many more, all involve hitting a ball with a stick. If we like to throw balls with our hands because our wild forebears threw javelins and spears with theirs, can you not guess at once that the reason why we like to strike balls with sticks is that these same wild forebears had for so many ages been striking things with clubs and swords? We like what our ancestors had to do. If we cannot cut and thrust and hack and throw and strike at wild animals in the chase or at other men in battle, at least we can do it with a ball. So bat and ball are the boy’s dolls. He plays with them for the same excellent reason that his sister plays with hers.
But why does every proper boy like to climb, and every proper girl too, if she has lived in the country and had a proper chance? About the first thing most of us did, as soon as we learned to creep, was to head for the nearest stairs, and try to climb up. When we get a little older, we cannot so much as set eyes on a fence or a shed roof without wanting to be on top of it; while as for trees, who of us, at a certain age, is satisfied until he has been to the top of every tree in the neighborhood. As for climbing mountains, that is one of the greatest games there is. So there is a climbing instinct in us, as well as a throwing instinct and a hit-something-with-a-bat instinct.
Now our wild ancestors who fished and hunted and played Indians for a living probably did not do much climbing. But long before their day we had certain still more ancient ancestors who were only half human and lived in the trees; and long before these, in turn, were still older ancestors who were not human at all, but regular apes who had hands in place of feet, and could climb like monkeys. These spent their lives in the trees; and in memory of them, each of us in turn, before he is quite old enough to play bat and ball games, is possessed to climb like a monkey, and climbs almost as surely and well.