Do children when left to themselves work out a theory of another life,
that of the soul away from the dead deserted body? It is of course
difficult to say, all children receiving some instruction at least of a
religious character respecting the future. One of the clearest
approaches to spontaneous child-thought that I have met with here is
supplied by the account of the Boston children. "Many children (writes
Professor Stanley Hall) locate all that is good and imperfectly known in
the country, and nearly a dozen volunteered the statement that good
people when they die go to the country—even here from Boston." The
reference to good people shows that the children are here trying to give
concrete definiteness to something that has been said by another. These
children had not, one suspects, received much systematic religious
instruction. They had perhaps gathered in a casual way the information
that good people when they die are to go to a nice place. Children pick
up much from the talk of their better-instructed companions which they
only half understand. In any case it is interesting to note that they
placed their heaven in the country, the unknown beautiful region, where
all sorts of luxuries grow. One is reminded of the idea of the happy
hunting grounds to which the American Indian consigns his dead chief. It
would have been interesting to examine these Boston children as to how
they combined this belief in going to the country with the burial of the
body in the city.
In the case of children who pick up something of the orthodox religious
creed the idea of going to heaven has somehow to be grasped and put side
by side with that of burial. How the child-mind behaves here it is hard
to say. It is probable that there are many comfortable and stupid
children who are not troubled by any appearance of contradiction. As we
saw in the remark of the American child about the deacon, the child-mind
may oscillate between the native idea that the man lives on in a sense
underground, and the alien idea that he has passed into heaven. Yet
undoubtedly the more thoughtful kind of child does try to bring the two
ideas into agreement. The boy C. attempted to do this first of all by
supposing that the people who went to heaven (the good) were not buried
at all; and later by postponing the going to heaven, the true entrance
being that of the body by way of the tomb. Other ways of getting a
consistent view of things are also hit upon. Thus a little girl of five
years thought that the _head_ only passed to heaven. This was no doubt a
way of understanding the communication from others that the ‘body’ is
buried. This inference is borne out by another story of a boy of four
and a half who asked how much of his legs would have to be cut off when
he was buried. The legs were not the ‘body’. But the idea of the head
passing to heaven meant more than this. It pretty certainly involved a
localisation of the soul in the crown of the body, and it may possibly
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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