STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 655 



cry, though she had imagined beforehand that she would. Even 

 in this case, then, where so much feeling was called forth, com- 

 miseration for the dead companion seemed to have been almost 

 wholly wanting. 



No one, I think, will doubt that, judged by our standards, 

 children are often profoundly and shockingly callous. But the 

 question arises here, too, whether we are right in applying our 

 grown-up standards. It is one thing to be indifferent with full 

 knowledge of suffering, another to be indifferent in the sense in 

 which a cat might be said to be indifferent at the spectacle of 

 your falling or burning your finger. We are apt to assume that 

 children know our sufferings instinctively, or at least that they 

 can always enter into them when they are openly expressed. But 

 this assumption is highly unreasonable. A large part of the 

 manifestation of human suffering is unintelligible to a little 

 child. He is not oppressed by our anxieties, our griefs, because 

 these are to a large extent beyond his sympathetic comprehension. 



We must remember, too, that there are moods and attitudes of 

 mind favorable and unfavorable to sympathy. None of us are 

 uniformly and consistently compassionate. It is wonderful how 

 insensible really kind-hearted people can show themselves on 

 occasion, as, for example, toward the afflictions of those whose 

 previous good fortune they have envied. Children are the sub- 

 ject of moods which are exclusive of sympathy. They are im- 

 pelled by their superabundant nervous energy to wild, romping 

 activity; they are passionately absorbed in their play; they are 

 intensely curious about the many new things they see and hear 

 of. These dominant impulses issue in mental attitudes which are 

 indifferent to the spectacle of others' troubles. 



Again, where an appeal to serious attention is given, a child 

 is apt to see something besides the sadness. The little girl al- 

 ready spoken of saw the prettiness of the death-room rather than 

 its mournfulness. A teacher once told her class of the death of a 

 classmate. There was, of course, a strange stillness, which one 

 little girl presently broke with a loud laugh. The child is said 

 to have been by no means unemotional, the laugh not a " nervous " 

 one. The odd situation the sudden hush of a class had affected 

 childish risibilities more than the distressing announcement. 



One other remark by way of saving clause here. It is by no 

 means true that children are always unaffected by the sad and 

 sorrowful things in life. The first acquaintance with death, as 

 we know from a number of published reminiscences, has some- 

 times shaken a child's whole being with an infinite nameless 

 sense of woe. But of this more, presently, after we have heard 

 the rest of the indictment. 



Children, says the niisopredist, are not only unfeeling when 



