While children have this organic predisposition to fear, the sufferings introduced by what we call human experience begin at an early date to give definite direction to their fears. How much it does this in the first months of life it is difficult to say. In the aversion of a baby to its medicine glass, or its cold bath, one sees, perhaps, more of the rude germ of passion or anger than of fear. Some children, at least, have a surprising way of going through a good deal of physical suffering from falls, cuts and so forth, without acquiring a genuine fear of what hurts them. It is a noteworthy fact that a child will be more terrified during a first experience of pain, especially if there be a visible hurt and bleeding, than by any subsequent prospect of a renewal of the suffering.
Even where fear can be clearly traced to experience it is doubtful whether in all cases it springs out of a definite expectation of some particular kind of harm. When, for example, a child who has been frightened by a dog betrays signs of fear at the sight of a kennel, and even of a picture of a dog, may we not say that he dreads the sight and the idea of the dog rather than any harmful act of the animal?
In these fears, then, we seem to see much of the workmanship of Nature, who has so shaped the child's nervous system and delicately poised it that the trepidation of fear comes readily. According to some she has done more, burdening a child's spirit with germinal remains of the fears of far-off savage ancestors, to whom darkness and the sounds of wild beasts were fraught with danger. That, however, is far from being satisfactorily demonstrated. We can see why in the case of children, as in that of young animals, Nature tempers a bold curiosity of the new by mingling with it a certain amount of uneasiness, lest the ignorant helpless things should come to grief by wandering from parental shelter and supplies. This, it seems to me, is all that Nature has done. And in so doing has she not, with excellent economy, done just enough?
The extent of suffering brought into child-life by the assaults of fear is hard to measure. Even the method of questioning young people about their fears, which is now in vogue, is not likely to bring us near a solution of this problem. And this for the good reason that children are never more reticent than when talking of their fears, and that by the time the fears are surmounted few can be trusted to give from memory an accurate report of them. One thing seems pretty clear, and the new questioning of children which is going on apace in America seems to bear it out, viz., that, since it is the unknown which is the primary occasion of these childish fears, and since the unknown in childhood is almost everything, the possibilities of suffering from this source are great enough.
Alike the Good, the Ill offend thy Sight,
And rouse the stormy sense of shrill affright.
(c) Recovery from the Onslaught.
Nevertheless it is quite possible here to go from one extreme of indifference to another of sentimental exaggeration. Even allowing what George Sand says, that fear is "the greatest moral suffering of children," the suffering may turn out to be less cruelly severe than it looks.
To begin with, then, if children are sadly open to the attacks of fear on certain sides they are completely defended on other sides by their ignorance. This is well illustrated in the pretty story of the child Walter Scott, who was found out of doors lying on his back during a thunderstorm, clapping his hands and shouting, "Bonnie! bonnie!" at each new flash.
Again, if, as we have supposed, children's fears are mostly due to a feeling of insecurity in view of the unknown, they may be said to correct themselves to a large extent. By getting used to the disturbing sound, the ugly black doll, and so forth, a child, like a dog, tends to lose its first fear. One must say "tends," for the well-known fact that many persons carry with them into later life their early fear of the dark shows that when once the habit of fearing has got set no amount of familiarity will suffice to dissolve it.
Not only are the points of attack thus limited; the attack when it does take place may bring something better than a debasing fear. A child may, it is certain, suffer acutely when it is frightened. But if only there is the magic circle of the mother's arms within reach may it not be said that the fear is more than counterbalanced by the greatest emotional luxury of childhood, the loving embrace? It is the shy fears, breeding the new fear of exposure to unloving eyes and possibly to ridicule, which are the tragedy of childhood.