Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/271

Rh considerable scientific support for the conjecture that the children of to-day reflect in their mental growth the stages of the mental growth of their race, but we have the direct testimony of competent observers to the childlike character of many of the lower races, so that we may reasonably expect to have some light thrown upon the psychological state of the lower races by an examination of the psychology of our own children. The conditions too under which the inquiry is made are of the most favourable character. There is no lack, nor is likely to be, of children; and capable observers can be trained in any number. Moreover, both observers and observed live in the same social environment and speak the same tongue, so that the facilities for intercourse are as complete as they can well be, aiid, if the experiments are made on a sufficient scale, the probability of error in the results will be very small. We shall, of course, use the results with discretion, and not look on them as an infallible standard of early man's development, though to do that would be better than to take the standard from our own developed intellect.

Now it happens that considerable progress has already been made in the collection of psychological facts about children, and Professor Stanley Hall permits me to quote somo from a forthcoming paper of his in the Princeton Review, giving the results of an inquiry into the ideas of some school-children at Boston, U.S.A. I shall quote them without comment. Every anthropologist will see that they bear a remarkable analogy to various reported beliefs of the lower races, and will form his own conclusions as to the bearing the former have on the interpretation of the latter. As regards the sun:

"Some thought the sun went down at night into the ground or just behind certain houses, and went across on or under the ground to go up out of or off the water in the morning, but forty-eight per cent, of all thought that at night it goes or rolls or flies, is blown or walks, or God pulls it up higher out of sight. He takes it into heaven, and perhaps puts it to bed, and even takes off its clothes, and puts them on in the morning, or again it lies under the trees, where the angels