Yet our case is not so hopeless that we need defer inquiry into the
child's mind until human science has fathomed all the mysteries of the
brain. We can know many things of this mind, and these of great
importance, even now. The naturalist discusses the actions of the lower
animals, confidently attributing intelligent planning here and a germ of
vanity or even of moral sense there; and it would be hard were we
forbidden to study the little people that are of our own race, and are a
thousand times more open to inspection. Really good work has already
been done here, and one should be grateful. At the same time, it seems
to me of the greatest importance to recognize that it is but a
beginning: that the child which the modern world has in the main
discovered is after all only half discovered: that if we are to get at
his inner life, his playful conceits, his solemn broodings over the
mysteries of things, his way of responding to the motley show of life,
we must carry this work of noting and interpreting to a much higher
point.
Now, if progress is to be made in this work, we must have specially
qualified workers. All who know anything of the gross misunderstandings
of children of which many so-called intelligent adults are capable, will
bear me out when I say that a certain gift of penetration is absolutely
indispensable here. If any one asks me what the qualifications of a good
child-observer amount to, I may perhaps answer, for the sake of brevity,
"A divining faculty, the offspring of child-love, perfected by
scientific training." Let us see what this includes.
That the observer of children must be a diviner, a sort of clairvoyant
reader of their secret thoughts, seems to me perfectly obvious. Watch
half a dozen men who find themselves unexpectedly ushered into a room
tenanted by a small child, and you will soon be able to distinguish the
diviners, who, just because they have in themselves something akin to
the child, seem able at once to get into touch with children. It is
probable that women's acknowledged superiority in knowledge of
child-nature is owing to their higher gift of sympathetic insight. This
faculty, so far from being purely intellectual, is very largely the
outgrowth of a peculiar moral nature to which the life of all small
things, and of children more than all, is always sweet and congenial. It
is very much of a secondary, or acquired instinct; that is, an
unreflecting intuition which is the outgrowth of a large experience. For
the child-lover seeks the object of his love, and is never so happy as
when associating with children and sharing in their thoughts and their
pleasures. And it is through such habitual intercourse that there forms
itself the instinct or tact by which the significance of childish
manifestation is at once unerringly discerned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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