Children's Ways / Being selections from the author's "Studies of childhood," with some additional matter

by James Sully

We note, further, that when later on he makes fuller acquaintance with his social surroundings, his first attitude has in it much of the hostility of the Ishmaelite. The removal of the feeding bottle before full satisfaction has been attained is, as we know, the occasion for one of the most impressive utterances of the baby's "will to live," and of its resentment of all human checks to its native impulses. Here we have the first rude germ of that opposition of will which makes the Ishmaelite look on others as his foes.

The same attitude of isolating hostility is apt to show itself towards other children. In the matter of toys, for example, the natural way of a child is very frequently not only to make free with other children's property when he has the chance, but to show the strongest objection to any imitation of this freedom by others, sometimes indeed to display a dog-in-the-manger spirit by refusing to lend what he himself does not want.

The same vigorous egoism inspires the whole scale of childish envies and jealousies, from those having to do with things of the appetite to those which trouble themselves about the marks of others' good-will, such as caresses and praises.

In this wide category of childish egoisms we seem to be near the level of animal ways. Out of all this fierce pushing of desire whereby the child comes into rude collision with others' wishes, there issue the storms of young passion. The energy of these displays of wrath as the imperious little will feels itself suddenly pulled up has in spite of its comicality something impressive. We all know the shocking scene as the boy Ishmaelite gives clearest and most emphatic utterance to his will by hitting out with his arms, stamping and kicking, throwing things down on the floor and breaking them, and accompanying this war-dance with savage howlings and yellings. The outburst tends to concentrate itself in a real attack on somebody. Sometimes this is the offender, as when Darwin's boy at the age of two years and three months would throw books, sticks, etc., at any one who offended him. But almost anybody or anything will do as an object of attack. A child of four on having his lordly purpose crossed would bang his chair, and then proceed to vent his displeasure on his unoffending toy lion, banging him, jumping on him, and, as anti-climax, threatening him with the loss of his dinner. Hitting is in many cases improved upon by biting.

Such fits of temper, as we call them, vary in their manner from child to child. Thus, whereas one little boy would savagely bite or roll on the floor, his sister was accustomed to dance about and stamp. They vary greatly too in their frequency and their force. Some children show in their anger little if anything of savage furiousness. It is to be added, that with those who do show it, it is wont in most cases to appear only for a limited period.

The resemblance of this fierce anger to the fury of the savage and of the brute can hardly fail to be noticed. Here indeed, as is illustrated in the good hymn of our nursery days, which bids us leave biting to the dogs, we see most plainly how firmly planted an animal root lies at the bottom of our proud humanity. Ages of civilisation have not succeeded in eradicating some of the most characteristic and unpleasant impulses of the brute.

At the same time a child's passionateness is more than a brute instinct. He suffers consciously; he realises himself in lonely antagonism to a world. This is seen in the bodily attitude of dejection which often follows the more vigorous stage of the fit, when the little Ishmaelite, growing aware of the impotence of his anger, is wont to throw himself on the floor and to hide his head in solitary wretchedness. This consciousness of absolute isolation and hostility reaches a higher phase when the opposing force is distinctly apprehended as human will. A dim recognition of the stronger will facing him brings the sense of injury, of tyrannous power.

Now this feeling of being injured and oppressed is human, and is fraught with moral possibilities. It is not as yet morally good; for the sense of injury is capable of developing, and may actually turn by-and-by into, hatred. Yet, as we shall see, it holds within itself a promise of something higher.

This predominance of self, this kinship with the unsocial brute, which shows itself in these germinal animosities, seems to be discoverable also in the unfeelingness of children. A common charge against them from those who are not on intimate terms with them, and sometimes, alas, from those who are, is that they are heartless and cruel.

That children often appear to the adult as unfeeling as a stone, is, I suppose, incontestable. The troubles which harass and oppress the mother may leave her small companion quite unconcerned. He either goes on playing with undisturbed cheerfulness, or he betrays a momentary curiosity about some trivial circumstance of her affliction which is worse than the absorption in play through its tantalising want of any genuine feeling. If, for example, she is ill, the event is interesting to him merely as supplying him with new treats. A little boy of four, after spending half an hour in his mother's sick-room, coolly informed his nurse: "I have had a very nice time, mamma's ill!" The order of the two statements is significant of the common attitude of mind of children towards others' sufferings.