STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. n 



dren are apt to be terrified by the strange and quite irregular 

 behavior of a feather as it glides along the floor or lifts itself 

 into the air.* 



In these cases we may suppose that we have to do with a germ 

 of superstitious fear which seems commonly to have its starting 

 point in the appearance of something exceptional and uncanny 

 that is unintelligible, and so smacking of the supernatural. The 

 fear of feathers as uncanny objects plays, I am told, a consider- 

 able part in the superstitions of folklore. Such apparently self- 

 caused movement, so suggestive of life, might easily give rise to 

 a vague sense of a mysterious presence or power possessing the 

 object, and so lead to a crude form of a belief in supernatural 

 agents. 



In other cases of unexpected and mysterious movement the 

 fear is slightly different. A little boy, when a year and eleven 

 months, was frightened when visiting a lady's house by a toy ele- 

 phant which shook its head. The same child, writes his mother, 

 " at one year and seven months was very much scared by a toy 

 cow which mooed realistically when its head was moved. This 

 cow was subsequently given to him at about two years and three 

 months. He was then still afraid of it, but became reconciled 

 soon after, first allowing others to make it moo if he was at a 

 safe distance, and at last making it moo himself." 



There may possibly have been a germ of the fear of animals 

 here ; but I suspect that it was mainly a fear of the signs of life 

 (movement and sound) appearing when they are not expected and 

 have an uncanny aspect. The close simulation of a living thing 

 by what is known to be not alive is disturbing to the child as to 

 the adult. He will make his toys alive by his own fancy, but re- 

 sent their taking on the full semblance of reality. In this sense 

 he is a born idealist and not a realist. More careful observations 

 on this curious group of child-fears are to be desired. 



Concerning an African idea of the origin of monkeys or chimpanzees, Mr. 

 Herbert Ward relates a fable of the natives of Balangi and adjacent tribes of the 

 upper Congo, to the effect that many generations ago a tribe of natives who 

 lived on the banks of the Congo River, near Bolobo, fell into a condition of debt 

 and difficulties with their neighbors. In order to escape the persecutions of their 

 wrathful creditors, they retired into the great forest. Time passed, but they still 

 remained poor. Forest life degenerated them. Flair grew upon their bodies. 

 They arranged to forego speech, lest they should be recognized. They are still in 

 the forest, and are known as BaJeewa, or monkey men. Upon being asked if they 

 ate chimpanzees, a member of the Balangi tribe replied : " No ; we are not can- 

 nibals ! " 



* See The Pedagogical Seminary, i, No. 2, p. 220. 



