[163]. L’Evolution intell. et mor. de l’Enfant, chap. xiv., ii.
[164]. See for example Perez, The First Three Years of Childhood, p. 66 ff.; and L’Education dès le berceau, chap. vi.
[165]. Darwin notes that all his boys did this kind of thing, whereas his girls did not (Mind, ii., p. 288). My own observations agree with this. A small boy has more of savage attack than a small girl.
[166]. The One I Knew Best, chap. x.
[167]. Cf. Paola Lombroso, op. cit., p. 84 f.
[168]. See, for example, the record of the impression produced by a parent’s death left by Steele in the Tatler, and George Sand in her autobiography. No doubt, as Tolstoi’s reminiscences tell us, a good deal of straining after emotion and vain affectation may mingle with such childish sorrow.
[169]. Notes on the Development of a Child, pt. ii., p. 149 f.
[170]. L’Art et la Poésie chez l’Enfant, p. 60.
[171]. Ruskin tells us that when a child he pulled flowers to pieces ‘in no morbid curiosity, but in admiring wonder’ (Præterita, 88). Goethe gives an amusing account of his wholesale throwing of crockery out of the window inspired by the delight of watching the droll way in which it was smashed on the pavement.
[172]. A pretty example of such childish consolation is given by P. Lombroso, op. cit., p. 94.