650 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



got rid of. We can not completely eliminate the influence of the 

 common life in which the good and bad disposition alike may be 

 said to grow up. Yet we may distinguish. Thus we may look 

 out for the earliest spontaneous, and what we may call original, 

 manifestations of such dispositions as affection and truthfulness, 

 so as to eliminate the direct action of instruction and example, 

 and thus reduce the influence of the social medium on the child to 

 a minimum. Similarly, in the case of brutal and other unlovely 

 propensities, we may, by taking pains, get rid of the influence of 

 bad example. 



Let us see, then, how far the indictment of the child is a just 

 one. Do children tend spontaneously to manifest the germs of 

 vicious dispositions, and, if so, to what extent ? Here, as I have 

 suggested, we must be particularly careful not to read wrong in- 

 terpretations into what we see. It will not do, for example, to 

 say that children are born thieves because they show themselves 

 at first charmingly indifferent to the distinction of meum and 

 tuum, and are inclined to help themselves to other children's toys, 

 and so forth. To repeat, what we have to inquire is whether 

 children by their instinctive inclinations are contra-moral that 

 is, predisposed to what, if persevered in with reflection, we call 

 immorality or vice. 



Here we can not do better than touch on that group of feelings 

 and dispositions which can be best marked off as antisocial, since 

 they tend to the injury of others, such as anger, envy, and cruelty. 



The most distant acquaintance with the first years of human 

 life tells us that young children have much in common with the 

 lower animals. Their characteristic passions and impulses are 

 centered in self and the satisfaction of its wants. What is better 

 marked, for example, than the boundless greed of the child, his 

 keen desire to appropriate and enjoy whatever presents itself, and 

 to resent others' participation in such enjoyment ? For some 

 time after its birth the child is little more than an incarnation of 

 appetite which knows no restraint, and only yields to the under- 

 mining force of satiety. 



The child's entrance into social life through a growing con- 

 sciousness of the existence of others is marked by much fierce 

 opposition to their wishes. His greed, which at the outset was 

 but the expression of a vigorous nutritive instinct, now takes on 

 more of a contra-moral aspect. The removal of the bottle by 

 another before full satisfaction has been attained is, as we know, 

 the occasion for one of the most impressive utterances of the 

 baby's " will to live," and of its resentment of all human checks 

 to its native impulses. In this outburst we have the first rude 

 germ of that defiance of control and of authority of which I shall 

 have to say more by and by 



