STUDIES IN CHILD LIFE.

New Zealand Times, Volume LVIII, Issue 2726, 25 January 1896, Page 1 (Supplement)

STUDIES IN CHILD LIFE.

THE GOD OF THE TELEGRAPH POLE,

From Our Special Correspondent. London, December Gth, In, his "Studies of Childhood" (published by Messrs Longman’s) Professor Sully has given the world a hook that is at once a genuine contribution to psyolrology, and a running commentary on child lilo which all parents and lovers of children may road with profit and amusement. It is tho i-esult of most careful observations, some obtained first baud by tho writer, others supplied by parents, and some collected from published sources. Tho sections on language and on tho child as artist—the latter illustrated thoughout—are full of suggestions to students of philology and Aesthetics. The general reader will, perhaps, find most for his purpose iu tho chapters on " Tho Age of Imagination,” “The Dawu of Reason,” tho child’s sensibility and the development of his morality. Tho analysis of play in the first chapter 'is especially admirable. To speak of a child’s play as a conscious process of imitative acting is, Professor Sully insists, to misunderstand its essence. When at play, tho child is possessed with an idea, which ho is seeking to realise in visible action. Ho needs no audience, and an audience if present will introduce tho element of acting. The child dislikes to liavo anyone present who cannot rise to tho idea. By preference he will choose some " remote spot withdrawn from notice, where imagination suffers no let from tho interference of mother, nurse, or other member of tho real environment”—tho corner behind the curtains or under the table when the cloth hangs low. Tho solitary child will invent a companion and give him or her a name, rather than import an elderly person who cannot rise to its illusions. ' Or, failing that, ho will talk to such uncompromising things as a spouge in tho bath, a fireshovel, a clothos-prop in the garden. It is all tho more real to tho illusion, because it is so clearly a symbol. Hence it is that tho rude and ugly doll is often so much more cherished than tho latest wax model from Paris. The latter confines the imagination. Mrs Burnett relates that she once saw a dirty mite sitting on a step in a squalid London street, cuddling warmly a little bundle of hay tied round the middle by a string. Hero, surely, is a fine feat of imagination. How tho illusion may bo spoilt by tho outsider is well illustrated by a story, which Professor Sully tells, of how two little girls wore playing “ shop ” together. Tire elder (aged four) was shopman at the time, when her mother came into the room and kissed her. She burst into sobs, to the bewilderment of the mother. At last she sobbed out, " Mother, you never kiss the man in the shop.” The kiss had quite spoilt tho illusion.

THE CHILD’S VIEW OP THE WOELD. The child, as the Professor describes him, starts with an inextinguishable impulse to connect and simplify. Hero lies part of the pathos of childhood. It brings its naive prepossession of a regular, wellordered world, and finds itself confronted with an impenetrable jijnglo of disorder. It imagines that the world must bo regulated as the nursery is regulated, and by the same motives. It generalises in tho simplest manner. It has met a short person who is cross; it will say to tho next short person, “You must be cross because you are so short.” It imagines tbateverything must bo a tangible entity; it “ reifies ” all things, as the psychologists say. A little child of two speaks of " gathering sunshine in her hands and putting it on her face.” When those simple theories begin to break down there comes a volley of questions about all things from birth to death, and tho things beyond either. “ Where was I a hundred years ago ? Where was I before I was born ? Where is yesterday gone to ? Where Will to-morrow come from F Why doesn’t God kill the devil, and then there would bo no more wickedness iu the world."

THE CHILD’S THEOLOGY. Professor Sully notes the undisguised materialism of the child’s theology. While his fancy plays freely around fairy tales, toys and dolls, he seems to feel the necessity of reduoingtho idea of God to everyday experience. God is conceived as a sort of grand lord, with a house or mansion like the house that the child knows ;

“This is quaintly illustrated in the following prayer of a girl of seven, whose grandfather had just died :—‘Please, God, grandpapa has gone to you. Please take great care of him. Please always mind and shut the door, because ho can’t stand the draughts.’" What seems to impress the boy most in the Scriptural account of God is His power of making things. He fabricates all things from babies to money, and the angels work for Him :

“ A boy of throe years and ten months, on seeing a group of workingmen returning from their work, asked his astonished mother: ‘ Mamma, is these gods f’ ‘ Gods ?' retorted his mother, ‘ why ?’ ‘ Because,’ ho went on, ‘ they makes houses and churches, mamma, same as God makes moons, and people, and ickle dogs.’ Another child, watching a man repairing the telegraph wires that rested on a high polo at the top of a lofty house, asked if ho was God.’’ Children, Professor Sully thinks, take easily to the idea of God’s omniscience (they are apt to regard all elderly persons as omniscient), but they rebel against tho idea of His omnipresence. To the child, God lives in the sky, though He is quite capable of coming down, when Ho wishes or is politely asked to do so. But the notion of a diffused übiquitous existence can neither be squared in childish logic with the other idea, and is to most children exceedingly repugnant:—

" Miss Shinn, a oarefnl American observer of children, has written strongly, yet not too strongly, on tho repugnance of tlio child mind to this idea of an ever-spying eye. My observations fully confirm her conclusions here. Miss Shinn speaks of a little girl xvho, on learning that she was under this constant surveillance, declared that she 'would not be so tagged.’ A little English boy of three, on being informed by his older sister that God can see and watch us while we cannot see Him, thought awhile and then in an apologetic tone said, *l*m very sorry, dear, I can’t (b)elievo you,’ An American hoy of five, learning that God was in the room, and could see even if the shutters were closed, said, * X know, it’s jugglery."* The child’s idea of prayer is, Professor Sully thinks, mainly that of sending a message to some one atadutmee. Left to itself, tho child will generally cast its prayer into an epistolary form. To unsophisticated children God is mainly the friend in need, who can help them out of their difficulties in a hundred ways : “ Our small zoologist thanked God for making ‘ tho sea, tho holes with crabs in them, and the trees, the fields, and tho flowers/ and regretted that He did not follow up the making of tho animals wo eat by doing the cooking also. As their prayers show. He is ever ready to make nice presents —from a fine day to a toy gun —and will do them any kindness, if only they ask it prettily.” Wo only wish that at this moment, when the filling of the child's brain with formularies threatens to become the hotlypursued aim of a whole political party, certain leading controversialists could read and profit by this chapter. The puzzlings of tho child, his questionings, his brave attempts to reduce the chaos of his surroundings to order, are likely to be aggravated by any but the simplest theology.