[34]. De Guimp’s Life of Pestalozzi (Engl. trans.), p. 41.
[35]. Goltz, Das Buch der Kindheit, p. 276.
[36]. Quoted by Forster, Life of Charles Dickens, chap. i.
III.
THE DAWN OF REASON.
The Process of Thought.
To treat the child’s mind as merely a harbourer of fancies, as completely subject to the illusive spell of its bright imagery, would be the grossest injustice. It is one of the reputable characteristics of childhood that it manages to combine with so much vivacity and force of imagination a perfectly grave matter-of-fact look-out on the actual world.
And here I should like to correct the common supposition that children are imaginative or observant of their surroundings, but not both. I have no doubt that there are many children who show a marked preponderance of the one or of the other tendency: there is the fanciful and dreamy child, and the matter-of-fact child with a tenacious grasp on the realities of things. I have but little doubt, too, that in the case of children who show the two tendencies, the one or the other is apt to preponderate at a certain stage of development: many boys, for example, have their dreamy period, and then become almost stolidly practical. All that I am concerned to make out here is that the two tendencies do co-exist, and as a number of parents have assured me may co-exist each in a high degree of intensity in the same child; the really intelligent children, boys as well as girls, being dispassionate and shrewd inquirers into the make of the actual world while ardently engaged in fashioning a brighter one.
The two tendencies belong to two moods, one of which may be regent for days together, though they often alternate with astonishing rapidity. More particularly the serious matter-of-fact mood readily passes, as if in relief from mental tension, into the playful fanciful one, as when the tiny student, deep in the stupendous lore of the spelling-book, suddenly dashes off to some fanciful conceit suggested by the ‘funny’ look of a particular word or letter.
The child not only observes but begins to reflect on what he observes, and does his best to understand the puzzling scene which meets his eye. And all this gives seriousness, a deep and admirable seriousness, to his attitude. So much is this the case that if we were called on to portray the typical mental posture of the child we might probably do so by drawing the erect little figure of a boy, as with widely open eye he gazes at some new wonder, or listens to some new report of his surroundings from a mother’s lips. Hence, one may forgive the touch of exaggeration when Mr. Bret Harte writes: “All those who have made a loving study of the young human animal will, I think, admit that its dominant expression is gravity and not playfulness”.[[37]] We may now turn to this graver side of the young intelligence.
Here, again, I may as well say that I prefer to observe the phenomenon in its clearer and fuller manifestations, that is to say, to study the serious intelligence of the child in the most intelligent children, or at least in children whose minds are most active. This does not mean that we shall be on the look-out for precocious wisdom or priggish smartness. On the contrary, since it is childish intelligence as such that we are in search of, we shall take pains to avoid as far as possible any encounter with prodigies. By these I mean the unfortunate little people whose mental limbs have been twisted out of beautiful child-shape by the hands of those in whom the better instincts of the parent have been outweighed by the ambition of the showman. We shall seek more particularly for spontaneous openings of the mental flower under the warming rays of a true mother’s love, for confidential whisperings of child-thought to her ever-attentive and ever-tolerant ear.