I could not see yourself at all”.
A Child’s Garden of Verse, xxv.
[46]. See P. Lombroso, op. cit., p. 26 ff.
[47]. See the article on “The Contents of Children’s Minds” already referred to.
[48]. The Invisible Playmate, pp. 27, 28.
[49]. That this is not the complete explanation is suggested by a story told by Perez. His nephew, over four years, on meeting a little old man said to his uncle: “When I shall be a little old man, will you be young?” (L’Enfant de trois à sept ans, p. 219).
[50]. Perhaps, too, our way of playfully calling children little old men and women favours the supposition that they are old people turned young again.
[51]. Egger quotes a remark of a little girl: “I shall carry Emile (her older brother) when he gets little”. This may, as Egger suggests, have been merely a confusion of the conditional and the future. But the idea about old people’s shrinking cannot be dismissed in this summary way (see Perez, First Three Years of Childhood, p. 224).
[52]. For the facts see Preyer, op. cit., cap. xxii.; Tracy, The Psychology of Childhood, p. 47.
[53]. See the very full account of the mirror experiment in Preyer’s book, p. 459 seq.