We may now pass to some of children's characteristic thoughts about living things, more particularly human beings, and the familiar domestic animals. The most interesting of these, I think, are those respecting growth and birth.
As already mentioned, the growth of things is one of the most stimulating of childish puzzles. Led no doubt by what others tell him, a child finds that things are in general made bigger by additions from without, and his earliest conception of growth is, I think, that of such addition. Thus, plants are made to grow, that is, swell out, by the rain. The idea that the growth or expansion of animals comes from eating is easily reached by the childish intelligence, and, as we know, nurses and parents have a way of recommending the less attractive sorts of diet by telling children that they will make them grow. The idea that the sun makes us grow, often suggested by parents (who may be ignorant of the fact that growth is more rapid in the summer than in the winter), is probably interpreted by the analogy of an infusion of something into the body.
A number of children, I have found, have the queer notion that towards the end of life there is a process of shrinkage. Old people are supposed to become little again. One of the American children referred to, a little girl of three, once said to her mother: "When I am a big girl and you are a little girl I shall whip you just as you whipped me now". At first one is almost disposed to think that this child must have heard of Mr. Anstey's amusing story, Vice Versâ. Yet I have collected a number of similar observations. For example, a little boy that I know, when about three and a half years old, used often to say to his mother with perfect seriousness of manner: "When I am big then you will be little, then I will carry you about and dress you and put you to sleep". And one little girl asked about some old person of her acquaintance: "When will she begin to get small?" Another little girl asked her grown-up cousin who was reading to her something about an old woman: "Do people turn back into babies when they get quite old?"
Another interesting fact to be noted here is that some children firmly believe that persons after dying and going to heaven will return to earth as little children. An American lady writes to me that two of her boys found their way independently of each other to this idea. Thus one of them speaking of a playmate who had been drowned, and who was now, he was told, in heaven, remarked: "Then God will let him come back and be a baby again".
What, it may be asked, is the explanation of this quaint childish thought? I think it probable that it is suggested in different ways. One must remember that as a child grows taller grown-ups may seem by comparison to get shorter. Again old people are wont to stoop and so to look shorter; and then children often hear in their stories of "little old" people. I suspect, however, that in some cases there is a more subtle train of thought. As the belief of the two brothers in people's coming back from heaven suggests, the idea of shrinkage is connected with those of birth and death. May it not be that the more thoughtful sort of child reasons in this way? Babies which are sent from heaven must have been something there; and people when they die must continue to be something in heaven. Why, then, the "dead" people that go to this place are the very same as the babies that come from it. To make this theory "square" with other knowledge, the idea of shrinkage, either before or after death, has to be called in. That it takes place before death is supported by what was said above, and probably also by the information often given to children that people when they die are carried by angels to heaven just as the babies are said to be brought down to earth by the angels.
The origin of babies and young animals furnishes the small brain, as we have seen, with much food for speculation. Here the little thinker is not often left to excogitate a theory for himself. His inconvenient questionings in this direction have to be firmly checked, and thus arise the well-known legends about the doctor, the angel and so forth. With the various lore thus collected, supplemented by the pretty conceits of Hans Andersen and other writers of fairy stories, the young inquirer has to do his best.
How the child-thinker is apt to go to work here is illustrated in a collection of the thoughts of American school-children. Some of these said that God drops babies for the women and doctors to catch them, others that he brings them down to earth by means of a wooden ladder, others again, that mamma, nurse, or doctor goes up and fetches them in a balloon. They are said by other children to grow in cabbages, or to be placed by God in water, perhaps in the sewer, where they are found by the doctor, who takes them to sick folks that want them. Here we have delicious touches of childish fancy, quaint adaptations of fairy and Bible lore, as in the use of Jacob's ladder and the legend of Moses placed among the bulrushes, this last being enriched by the thorough master-stroke of child-genius, the idea of the dark, mysterious, wonder-producing sewer.
Not all children, by any means, elaborate even this crude sort of theory. The less speculative and more practical kind of child accepts what he is told and proceeds to apply it, sometimes oddly enough. Thus the Lancet recently contained an amusing letter from some children, the eldest of whom was seven, addressed to a doctor asking for a baby for their mother's next birthday. It was to be "fat and bonny, with blue eyes and fair hair"—a perfect doll in fact; and a characteristic postscript asked: "Which would be the cheaper—a boy or a girl?"
These ideas of children about babies partly communicated by others, partly thought out for themselves, are naturally enough made to account for the beginnings of animal life. This is illustrated in the supposition of the little boy, already quoted, who thought that God helps pussy to have "'ickle kitties," seeing that she hasn't any kitties in eggs given her to sit upon.