Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/130

120 board walls on the sides and erecting a roof over the top. They also made arrangements for a chimney and for at least two rooms, and fully expected to sleep in it at night. Although the boy is regarded even by his father as having an aversion to work of any kind, he went to work with such enthusiam that the digging was completed in a few days. Several tons of earth were removed and part of it wheeled some distance from where it was dug. His sister also worked at it, and he pressed as many of his companions into the service as he could but, nevertheless, the bulk of the work was done by the boy. He persisted from day to day until the digging was completed. His plans are elaborate and the problems which he will have to solve before completing it will be many and complex.

It is very evident that the interest in these semi-cave-houses leads boys to do a great amount of labor, planning and devising. The educational value of this is by no means unimportant. It brings them face to face with practical difficulties and problems and gives them a chance to use their inventive genius. From this point of view what might ordinarily seem to be sheer nonsense and a waste of time and energy becomes a means of development that can hardly be equalled in any other way. These activities should therefore receive the most careful consideration by adults. Here, as elsewhere, the great gap between youth and maturity must constantly be kept in mind if the right attitude is to be maintained towards these activities of children and youth.

The house-building propensities of children with blocks and then a little later by digging into the earth, and also into the snow, as will be seen later in this paper, indicates pretty clearly a deep-seated basis for these constructions. Imitation seems hardly sufficient to account for them; for many of the structures are widely different from any which the children have seen. It might be argued that since children are immature both physically and mentally we should expect them to build just such structures as they construct and as savages might build. But this fails to account for the universal and intense interest in this form of activity. We are almost forced to conclude that it is the expression of the psychic tendency formed not only in early man but in many of the higher animals to build some sort of habitation.

Another prominent interest of children is shown in their desire to bury things. Nearly all the children mentioned in the returns were at some time much interested in this. Among the objects buried were broken dolls, birds, chickens, cats, dogs, mice, grasshoppers, marbles, knives, books. In most of these cases the burial is for the purpose of disposing of the dead body of the animal. The burials are generally conducted