Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/207

Rh fairies, on the one hand, and cruel giants, witches, and the like, on the other hand.

We may now pass to some of children's characteristic ideas about living things, more particularly human beings and the familiar domestic animals. The most interesting of these, I think, are those respecting growth and birth.

As already mentioned, growth is one of the most stimulating of childish puzzles. A child finds that things are in general made bigger by additions from without, and his earliest conception of growth is, I think, that of such addition. Thus plants are made to grow—that is, swell out—by the rain. The idea that the growth or expansion of animals comes from eating is easily reached by the childish intelligence, and, as we know, nurses and parents have a way of recommending the less attractive sorts of diet by telling children that they will make them grow. The idea that the sun makes us grow, often suggested by parents (who may be ignorant of the fact that growth is more rapid in the summer than in the winter), is probably interpreted by the analogy of an infusion of something into the body.

In carrying out my inquiries into this region of childish ideas I lighted quite unexpectedly on the queer notion that toward the end of life there is a reverse process of shrinkage. Old people are supposed to become little again. The first instance of this was supplied me by the Worcester collections of Thoughts. A little girl of three once said to her mother, "When I am a big girl, and you are a little girl, I shall whip you just as you whipped me now." At first one is almost disposed to think that this child must have heard of Mr. Anstey's amusing story Vice Versa. Yet this idea seems too improbable, and I have since found that she is not by any means the only one who has entertained this idea. A little boy that I know, whan about three years and a half old, used often to say to his mother with perfect seriousness of manner, "When I am big then you will be little; then I will carry you about and dress you and put you to sleep."

I happened to mention this fact at a meeting of mothers and teachers, when I received further evidence of this tendency of child-thought. One lady whom I know could recollect quite clearly that when a little girl she was promised by her aunt some valuables—trinkets, I fancy—when she grew up, and that she at once turned to her aunt and promised her that she would then give her in exchange all her dolls, as by that time she (the aunt) would be a little girl. Another case narrated was that of a little girl of three years and a half who, when her elder brother and sister spoke to her about her getting big, rejoined, "What will you do when you are little? "A third case mentioned was that of a child asking about some old person of her acquaintance,