I have tried to show that children seek to bring meaning, and a
consistent meaning, into the jumble of communications about the unseen
world to which they are apt to be treated. I agree with Miss Shinn that
children about three and four are not disposed to theologise, and are
for the most part simply confused by the accounts of God which they
receive. Many of the less bright of these small minds may remain
untroubled by the incongruities lurking in the mixture of ideas, half
mythological or poetical, half theological, which is thus introduced.
Such children are no worse than many adults, who have a wonderful power
of entertaining contradictory ideas by keeping them safely apart in
separate chambers of their brain. The intelligent thoughtful child on
the other hand tries at least to reconcile and to combine in an
intelligible whole. His mind has not, like that of so many adults,
become habituated to the water-tight compartment arrangement, in which
there is no possibility of a leakage of ideas from one group into
another. Hence his puzzlings, his questionings, his brave attempts to
reduce the chaos to order. I think it is about time to ask whether
parents are doing wisely in thus adding to the perplexing problems of
early days.
V.
THE LITTLE LINGUIST.
_Prelinguistic Babblings._
No part of the life of a child appeals to us more powerfully perhaps
than the first use of our language. The small person’s first efforts in
linguistics win us by a certain graciousness, by the friendly impulse
they disclose to get mentally near us, to enter into the full fruition
of human intercourse. The difficulties, too, which we manage to lay upon
the young learner of our tongue, and the way in which he grapples with
these, lend a peculiar interest, half pathetic, half humorous, to this
field of infantile activity. To the scientific observer of infancy,
moreover, the noting of the stages in the acquisition of speech is of
the first importance. Language is sound moulded into definite forms and
so made vehicular of ideas; and we may best watch the unfoldings of
childish thought by attending to the way in which the word-sculptor
takes the plastic sound-material and works it into its picturesque
variety of shapes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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