"Now, putting aside the preconception with which we entered the cottage, was there really anything in the other two remarks? Were they not the type of simple, unreasoning questions which one may often hear from the mouth of a child of that age? 'What shall I learn from your books?' Well, it is the natural question of the ignorant child, who has no conception of the contents of books, no experience which would furnish material for his imagination." "Well?" "The second remark is more explicable still. It is a remark we all make in childhood, in some form or another. I remember quite well at the age of six or seven asking my mother: 'Which is me, my soul or my body?' I was brought up on the Church catechism. But you at once accepted these questions--which, I maintain, were questions possible in the mouth of a simple, ignorant child--in some deep, metaphysical acceptation. Don't you think, sir, we should wait for further evidence before we attribute any phenomenal intelligence to this child?" "Quite the right attitude to take, Lewes--the scientific attitude," replied Challis. "Let's go by the lane," he added, as they reached the entrance to the wood. For some few minutes they walked in silence; Challis with his head down, his heavy shoulders humped. His hands were clasped behind him, dragging his stick as it were a tail, which he occasionally cocked. He walked with a little stumble now and again, his eyes on the ground. Lewes strode with a sure foot, his head up, and he slashed at the tangle of last year's growth on the bank whenever he passed some tempting butt for the sword-play of his stick. "Do you think, then," said Challis at last, "that much of the atmosphere--you must have marked the atmosphere--of the child's personality, was a creation of our own minds, due to our preconceptions?" "Yes, I think so," Lewes replied, a touch of defiance in his tone. "Isn't that what you _want_ to believe?" asked Challis. Lewes hit at a flag of dead bracken and missed. "You mean...?" he prevaricated. "I mean that that is a much stronger influence than any preconception, my dear Lewes. I'm no pragmatist, as you know; but there can be no doubt that with the majority of us the wish to believe a thing is true constitutes the truth of that thing for us. And that is, in my opinion, the wrong attitude for either scientist or philosopher. Now, in the case we are discussing, I suppose at bottom I should like to agree with you. One does not like to feel that a child of four and a half has greater intellectual powers than oneself. Candidly, I do not like it at all." "Of course not! But I can't think that----" "You can if you try; you would at once if you wished to," returned Challis, anticipating the completion of Lewes's sentence. "I'll admit that there are some remarkable facts in the case of this child," said Lewes, "but I do not see why we should, as yet, take the whole proposition for granted."