Better still, in the hardier race of children Nature has planted an impulse which not only disarms fear but turns it into a frolicsome companion. Many children, I feel sure, maintain a double attitude towards their terrors, the bogies, the giants and the rest. Moments of cruel suffering alternate with moments of brave exultation. Fear in children, even more than in adults, is an instinctive process into which but little thought enters. If the nerves are slack, and if the circumstances are eerie and fear-provoking, the sudden strange sound, the appearance of a black something, will send the swift shudder through the small body; if, on the other hand, the child is cooler and has the cheering daylight to back him, he may be bold enough to play with his fears, and to talk of them to others with the chuckle of superiority.[8] The more real and oppressive the fit of fear the more enjoyable is the subsequent self-deliverance by a perspicacious laugh likely to be. The beginnings of childish bravery often take the form of laughing away their fears. Even when the ugly phantoms are not wholly driven back they are half seen through, and the child who is strong enough can amuse himself with them, suffering the momentary compression for the sake of the joyous expansion which so swiftly follows. A child of two, the same that asked his mother, "Would you like to take hold of my hand?" was once taken out by her on a little sledge. Being turned too suddenly he was pitched into the snow, almost on his head; but on being picked up by his mother he remarked quite calmly: "I nearly tumbled off". Another child of six on entering an empty room alone, stamped his foot and shouted: "Go away everything that's here!" In such ways do the nerves of a strong child recover themselves after shock and tremor, taking on something of the steady pose of human bravery. [8] Mrs. Meynell gives an example of this in her volume _The Children_ ("The Man with Two Heads"). CHAPTER IX. GOOD AND BAD IN THE MAKING. Children have had passed on their moral characteristics the extremes of human judgment. By some, including a number of theologians, they have been viewed as steeped in depravity; by others, _e.g._, Rousseau, they have been regarded as the perfection of the Creator's workmanship. If we are to throw any light on the point in dispute we must avoid the unfairness of applying grown-up standards to childish actions, and must expect neither the vices nor the virtues of manhood. We must further take some pains to get, so far as this is possible, at children's natural inclinations so as to see whether, and if so how far, they set in the direction of good or of bad. _Traces of the Brute._