STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 649 



rality than ours, divine intuitions brought from a loftier prenatal 

 existence. 



Such opposite views of the moral status and worth of a child 

 must spring not out of careful observation, but out of preposses- 

 sion, and the magnifying of the accidents of individual expe- 

 rience. A theologian who is concerned to maintain the doctrine 

 of natural depravity, or a bachelor who happens to have known 

 children chiefly in the character of little tormentors, may be 

 expected to paint childhood with black pigments. On the other 

 hand, the poet attracted by the charm of infancy may easily be 

 led to idealize its moral aspects. 



The first thing that strikes one in all such attempts to fix the 

 moral worth of the child is that they are judging of things by 

 wrong standards. The infant, though it has a nature capable of 

 becoming moral or immoral, is not as yet a moral being ; and 

 there is a certain impertinence in trying to force it under our 

 categories of good and bad, pure and corrupt. 



If, then, we would know what the child's "moral" nature is 

 like, we must be careful to distinguish. By " moral " we must 

 understand that part of its nature, feelings, and impulses which 

 have for us a moral significance ; whether as furnishing raw ma- 

 terial out of which education may develop virtuous dispositions, 

 or, contrariwise, as constituting forces adverse to this develop- 

 ment. It may be well to call the former tendencies favorable to 

 virtue, pro-moral, the latter unfavorable tendencies, contra-moral. 

 Our inquiry, then, must be : In what respects and to what extent 

 does the child show itself by nature apart from all that is meant 

 by education, pro-moral or contra-moral that is, well or ill fitted 

 to become a member of a good or virtuous community, and to 

 exercise what we know as moral functions ? 



Our especial object here will be, if possible, to get at natural 

 dispositions, to examine the child in his primitive nakedness, look- 

 ing out for those instinctive tendencies which, according to modern 

 science, are hardly less clearly marked in a child than in a puppy 

 or a chick. 



Now, there is clearly a difficulty here. How, it may be asked, 

 can we expect to find in a child any traits having a moral signifi- 

 cance which have not been developed by social influences and 

 education ? In the case of pro-moral dispositions more particu- 

 larly, as kindness or truthfuluess, we can not expect to get rid of 

 that molding effect of the combined personal influence and in- 

 struction of the mother which is of the essence of all moral 

 training. And even with regard to contra-moral traits, as rude- 

 ness or lying, it is evident that example is frequently a co-oper- 

 ating influence. 



The difficulty is, no doubt, a real one, and can not be wholly 



VOL. XLVII. 54 



