Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/394

380 on account of the muscular action involved, a necessary accompaniment of joy, noticeably 'Arry on a bank holiday; while in some cases expletives are symptomatic of joy and not of anger. All these outward signs have had their origin in that nerve excitation inducing muscular action which is a heritage from ancestors who, impelled by hunger, by love, or by war, led more active lives and thereby obtained a desire for motion as a second nature. Children and young lambs are very familiar examples; and so strongly will the latter pursue their gambols and racings that a broken heart is sometimes a cause of death in the middle of a sudden gallop. If children have to be still, it is torture to them—positive torture in some cases and grown-up people are unaware how much, or they would not thoughtfully inflict it on young children. Muscular ache, the fidgets, growing-pain in the limbs, are all the result of enforced inactivity in children. It is similar with athletes: their muscular excitement is so strong that movement is pleasure, stillness means pain, and they are noted for restlessness.

Another "animal" relic which exists in children is an instinctive desire for stealing, especially for stealing fruit, which, however hard and unripe, seems to give the child pleasure. Stealing certainly points to the time when every animal had to depend on its own exertions for what food it got, and when the readiest method of obtaining such food was to appropriate without question whatever it might come across. The capacity for hard and unripe fruit indicates a necessity which would be incidental to monkeylike life—to times of scarcity, when anything in the shape of fruit, no matter what it might be, was gladly welcomed as food.

With the above another childish trait may advantageously be compared—namely, the habit of taking things to bed, especially such articles as the child may be attached to; but there is also a desire to take things for fear of other children obtaining them; and when a child takes off to bed such articles as a collection of clothes brushes, or an array of old boots, it seems like taking for taking's sake. Thus, one boy was found in bed with sundry drawer handles, unscrewed for the occasion, several pieces of old iron, two hair brushes, and a tobacco tin. Many causes have contributed to form this habit. First, there is the earlier inheritance of the maternal instinct; the mother taking her young to sleep with her, in order to feed and comfort it, would give the idea of taking to bed anything exciting fondness—dolls, toys, etc. Then there is the food instinct—the dragging-food-into-the-lair idea—with which may be associated a particular fondness of children for something to eat when they are in bed; and then there is the proprietary idea, arising from the feeling that to keep possession of