THE FIRST SEVEN YEARS.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 2647, 16 May 1923, Page 9

THE FIRST SEVEN YEARS.

IMPRESSIONS GAINED IN CHILDHOOD. BASIS OF ALL CONVICTION. At last night's W.E.A. lecture, the speaker (Mr A. Ernest Mander) deait very emphatically with the paramount importance of the ideas we obtain in early childhood. "A belief or sentiment acquired during the first seven years of life gets woven into the very texture Of our being," he said, "and, whatever happens in after-Ike, it can never be total!/ destroyed. Even if we subsequently reason away fiOxU that first idea, it never complotely loses its influence over us. No belief which we may afterwards reach intellectually can ever carry that sense of unchallengeable certainty, of absolute conviction, which belongs to the belief which we obtained before we wore seven years old. If we acquired a certain belief befo> 3 we were seven, wo now feel that .t requires no explanation, no justification: the thing seems to us so obviously true that it admits of no argument whatever." There are, Mr Mander went on to say, a large number of ideas and sentiments which are passed on from generation to generation in this way; and these become the traditional beliefs and sentiments of the people. Each generation instils these ideas into the minds of its children; and so, as they grow up, they accept such ideas as a matter of course, and feel them to be so obviously true that it would be futile even to argue about them.

THE FINEST PEOPLE ON EARTH

"Perhaps the best example of a traditional herd belief is that of national superiority. The average New Zealander is absolutely convinced that, in all the things that really matter, the New Zealanders are the very linest people in the world. The truth of this seems perfectly obvious to him: there can be no possible doubt about it, and anyone who does doubt it must be blind to the facts. Physically, mentally, morally,, in initiative, in courage, the New Zealanders (in their own eyes) have no equals. The average Englishman, on the other hand, feels absolutely certain that the English people are infinitely superior to all others —including, of course, the colonial-born New Zealanders. The Scotsman is equally convinced that, though Englishmen and colonials may be fairly good people, the Scots are really the salt of the earth. The German likewise is absolutely sure that one fact is indisputable—the Germans are the finest people of all. The Frenohman smiles at all these other claims, because he knows —he sees it so clearly!—the French are head-and-shoulders above everyone else. So with Americans, Russians, Canadians, Australians, Irish! It would perhaps be a good thing if we could realise how absurd all such notions are. The 'New Zealanders are not by any means the finest people on earth —except in their own eyes. The English are not the salt of the earth —except in their own estimation. The Scots, the Germans, the Australians, the Cape Dutch, the French: it is true of them all. But this Idea of national superiority is absorbed so easily and so early in life that it comes to be held as a self-evident truth about which there is no possible room for argument; and so each one—New Zealanders, Englishman, Canadian or Italian —is convinced, right down to the depths of his being, that his own people, wherever they may be. arc slightly better than any others. But when we feel like saying it —let us laugh at ourselves instead!" A GRAVEYARD AT MIDNIGHT.

"Do we." asked the lecturer, "feel it as an obvious truth that the man is the natural head of the. family, the natural king of the castle? If so, it can only be because we gained that idea (without any other idea to conflict with it) in childhood. A child bied in a matriarchial form of coeiety would have the opposite inei, equally deeply-rooted. To him the idea of female supremacy would seem quite as obvious, quite as natural, quite as unnecessary to prove, as the traditional idea of our herd seems to us."

'Long before the. age of seven," Mr Mander continued, "the average child! has got firmly fixed in his min ' the idea that little boys mustn't cry., hut little girls ray. Now there aproars to be no physiological reason why girls and women should cry more readily than boys and men. But because most of us were bred to the idea, and because it was confirmed by our own observations in childhood, we accept it as a matter of course —and behave accordingly. There Is a great difference between an intellectual conclusion and a conviction which is the result only of our having acquired the idea in early childhood; and, generally, it is the latter which carries with it a sense of absolute certainty. Beliefs which have an irrational origin are much more deeply and strongly held than those which we have reasoned out. Most of us obtained in early childhood the idea that honesty is desirable and praiseworthy, and so we "feal it in our bones" that this is so. On the other hand, a man who never acquired that idea in childhood, but who arrived at it by reasoning later on, will never find that it takes so strong a hold upon him. If in early childhood we obtained the idea of ghosts, fairies, bogies, and spirits, we shall never afterward be able completely to shake it off. Even though we may come to repudiate the idea intellectually, still the old notion will retain some of its own power over us. The reasoning part of us may be satisfled that no such things exist; butj down in the depths of our subcoh-1 scious mind still lurks the idea im- 1 planted there in the days of our early i childhood. If you found yourself alone at midnight in a dark and shadowy graveyard, with the wind whistling through the trees and the branches swaying and creaking, with a dog howling mournfully in the distance, with all the shadows about you, and the silence broken only by these j 'uncanny sounds —well, you might be 1 rationally certain that there was no-

thing to fear . . . but wouldn't you be liable to catch yourself glancing uneasily over your shoulder from time to time? Most people would; and most people, unacquainted with the facts, might say that their trepidation was instinctive, inborn. But that is not true: it is the result only of the notion of ghosts and so forth having been instilled into their minds during the first' seven years of life." IMPROVING THE TRADITIONAL BELIEF.

•'Let me conclude," Mr Mander 'added, by saying once again what I have said so many times before, but what I cannot say too often or too emphatically. The idea and the sentiments we picked up in childhood (especially those picked up by unconscious imitation before the age of seven) form the basis of all our mental life. They can never afterwards, whatever happens, be wholly eradicated. Surely, then, we ought to be very careful indeed as to what ideas we do implant in the minds of the children with whom we have to deal. Real progress in public sentiment and general belief can be measured only by the improvements which occur, generation by generation, in the ideas which our children are 'allowed to absorb during the first seven years of life. Mr T. R. Hodder occupied the chair, 'and announced that the subject of hext Tuesday's lecture will be "The Psychology of Love and Marriage."