STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 9 



twenty-one months, showed all the signs of fear when his nurse 

 carried him on her arm close to the sea.* The boy C- , on 

 being first taken near the sea at the age of two, was disturbed by 

 its noise. While, however, I have a number of well-authenticated 

 cases of such an instinctive repugnance to and something like 

 dread of the sea, I find that there is by no means uniformity in 

 children's behavior in this particular. A little boy who first 

 saw the sea at the age of thirteen months, exhibited signs not of 

 fear but of wondering delight, prettily stretching out his tiny 

 hands toward it as if wanting to go to it. Another child, who 

 also first saw the sea at the age of thirteen months, began to crawl 

 toward the waves. And yet another boy at the age of twenty- 

 one months, on first seeing the sea, spread his arms as if to em- 

 brace it. 



These observations show that the strange big thing affects 

 children very differently. C had a particular dislike to 

 noises, which was, I think, early strengthened by finding out that 

 his father had the same prejudice. Hence, perhaps, his hostile 

 attitude toward the sea. 



Probably, too, imaginative children, whose minds take in 

 something of the bigness of the sea, will be more disposed to this 

 variety of fear. A mother writes me that her elder child, an 

 imaginative girl, has not, even now at the age of six, got over her 

 fear of going into the sea; whereas her sister, fifteen months 

 younger and not of an imaginative temperament, is perfectly 

 fearless. She adds that it is the bigness of the sea which evi- 

 dently impresses the imagination of the elder. 



Imaginative children, too, are apt to give life and purpose to 

 the big, moving, noisy thing. This is illustrated in M. Pierre 

 Loti's graphic account of his first childish impressions of the sea, 

 seen one evening in the twilight. "It was of a dark, almost 

 black-green ; it seemed restless, treacherous, ready to swallow ; it 

 was stirring and swaying everywhere at the same time, with the 

 look of sinister wickedness." f 



There seems enough in the vast waste of unresting waters 

 to excite the imagination of a child to awe and terror. Hence 

 it is needless to follow M. Loti in his speculations as to an 

 inherited fear of the sea. He seems to base this supposition 

 on the fact that at this first view he distinctly recognized the 

 sea. But such recognition may have meant merely the objec- 

 tive realization of what had, no doubt, been before pretty fully 

 described by his mother and aunt, and imaginatively pictured by 

 himself. 



The opposite attitude that of the thoroughly unimaginative 



* Op. cit., p. 131. f Le Roman d'un Enfant. 



vol. xlvii. 2 



