M. “I hope so, dear.”
C. “Well, what is God good for if he won’t take us to heaven when we die?”[[328]]
Sixth Year.
The sixth year, the last with which the diary attempts to deal, is very meagrely represented. The observation was plainly becoming intermittent and lax. I have, however, thought it worth while to complete this sketch of a child’s mental development by a reference to this fragmentary chapter.
The child continued to be observant of the forms of things. He began to attend the Kindergarten at the beginning of this year, and this probably served to develop his visual observation. We have, however, no very striking illustrations of his perceptual powers. It might interest the naturalist to know that he compared the head of Mr. Darwin, which he saw in a photograph, to that of an elephant, and being asked why he thought them like one another, answered: “Because it is so far from the top of the head to the ear”. Perhaps admirers of our great naturalist may be ready to pardon the likening of their hero’s head to that of one of the most intelligent of the large animal family which he showed to be our kinsfolk.
Another remark of his at about the same date seems to show that he still entertained a particularly gross form of the animistic conception that things are double, and that there is a second filmy body within the solid tangible one. He was looking at the pictures in Darwin’s Descent of Man, and came on some drawings of the human embryo. His mother asked him what they looked like, and he replied: “Why, like the inside of persons of course”. Asked to explain this he pointed to the head, the eye, the stomach, and so forth.
He spontaneously began to talk (middle of eighth month) about opposition of colours. He was looking at his coloured soldiers and talking to himself in this wise: “Which colour is most opposite colour to blue?” He said that red was its opposite, not yellow as suggested by his father, in which opinion he probably has a good many older people on his side. He also observed to his father at the same date: “I tell you, papa, what two colours are very like one another, blue and green”. The father remarks, however, that he was now mixing pigments and using them, and that the knowledge so gained probably made him bring blue and green nearer to one another than he used to do.
An opportunity of testing his memory occurred at the beginning of the sixth month. He met a gentleman who had been kind to him during that memorable visit to the sea-side village D—— just three and a half years before, and whom he had not seen since. His father asked the child whether he knew Mr. S. He looked at him steadily, and answered yes. Asked where he had seen him, he answered: "Down at ——". He had forgotten the name of the place. On his father further asking him what he remembered about him he said: “He made me boats and sailed them in a pool”. This was quite correct. So far as the father can say the fact had not been spoken of to him since the time. If this is so, it seems worth recording that a child of five and a half should recall such distinct impressions of what had occurred when he was only just two.
Fancy, the old frisky, wonder-working fancy, was now getting less active. At least, we meet this year with none of the pretty fairy-myths of earlier years. So far as the journal tells us, it was only in sleep that C. entered the delightful region of wonderland. Here is a quaint dream of his (end of fifth month). It was Christmas time, and he had been seeing a huge prize-ox, a shaggy Highland fellow with big head and curled horns. He had taken a violent fancy to it and wanted his father to draw it for him. A morning or two afterwards he told his father that he had had a funny dream. Both his father and his mother were turned into oxen, and it was a “very nice dream”.
For the rest, the brain of our little Kindergärtner was being engrossed with the business of getting knowledge, and, as a result of this fancy, was being taken in hand by sober understanding and drilled to the useful and necessary task of discovering truth.