[121]. The Invisible Playmate, p. 35.
[122]. The other form of the word, ‘craw-fish,’ seems a still more ingenious example of folk-etymology.
[123]. These last are taken from a good list of children’s punnings in Dr. Stanley Hall’s article, “The Contents of Children’s Minds”.
[124]. That is, I take it, the majority, viz., Italians and English.
[125]. Both of these are given by Paola Lombroso in the work already quoted.
VI.
SUBJECT TO FEAR.
Children’s Sensibility.
In passing from a study of children’s ideas to an investigation of their feelings, we seem to encounter quite another kind of problem. A child has the germs of ideas long before he can give them clear articulate expression; and, as we have seen, he has at first to tax his ingenuity in order to convey by intelligible signs the thoughts which arise in his mind. For the manifestation of his feelings of pleasure and pain, on the other hand, nature has endowed him with adequate expression. The states of infantile discontent and content, misery and gladness, pronounce themselves with a clearness and an emphasis which leave no room for misunderstanding.
This full frank manifestation of feeling holds good more especially of those states of bodily comfort and discomfort which make up the first rude experiences of life. It is necessary for the child’s preservation that he should be able to announce by clear signals the oncoming of his cravings and of his sufferings, and we all know how well nature has provided for this necessity. Hence the fulness with which infant psychology has dealt with this first chapter of the life of feeling. Preyer, for example, gives a full and almost exhaustive epitome of the various shades of infantile pleasure and pain which grow out of this life of sense and appetite, and has carefully described their physiological accompaniments and their signatures.[[126]]
When we pass from these elementary forms of pleasure and pain to the rudiments of emotion proper, as the miseries of fear, the sorrows and joys of the affections, we have still, no doubt, to do with a mode of manifestation which, on the whole, is direct and unreserved to a gratifying extent. A child of three is delightfully incapable of the skilful repressions, and the yet more skilful simulations of emotion which are easy to the adult.[[127]] Yet frank and transparent as is the first instinctive utterance of feeling, it is apt to get checked at an early date, giving place to a certain reserve. So that, as we know from published reminiscences of childhood, a child of six will have learnt to hide some of his deepest feelings from unsympathetic eyes.