3+8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



thetically that we still need to learn from children themselves, by 

 talking to them and inviting their confidence when the fear of the 

 dark is first noticed, how they are apt to envisage it. 



When imagination becomes abnormally active, and the child 

 is haunted by alarming images, these, by recurring with greatest 

 force in the stillness and darkness of the night, will add to the 

 terrifying associations of darkness. This is illustrated in the 

 case of the boy Stevens, who was haunted by the specter of 

 "Cocky" at night. Dreams, especially the horrible nightmare 

 to which nervous children are subject, may invest the dark with 

 a new terror. A child suddenly waking up, and with open eyes 

 seeing the phantom-object of its dream against the dark back- 

 ground, may be forgiven for acquiring a dread of dark rooms. 

 Possibly this experience gives the clew to the observation already 

 quoted of a boy who did not want to sleep in a particular room 

 because there were so many dreams in it. 



If the above explanation of the child's fear of the dark is cor- 

 rect, Rousseau's prescription for curing it is not enough. Chil- 

 dren may be encouraged to explore dark rooms and, by touching 

 blindlike the various objects, rendered familiar with the fact 

 that things remain unchanged even when enveloped in darkness 

 that the dark is nothing but our temporary inability to see 

 things ; and this may, no doubt, be helpful in checking the fear 

 when reflection is possible. But a radical cure must go further, 

 must aim at checking the activity of morbid imagination and 

 here what Locke says about effects of the terrifying stories of 

 nurses is very much to the point and in extreme cases must set 

 about strengthening shaky nerves. 



I have probably illustrated children's fears at sufficient length. 

 Without trying to exhaust the subject I have, I think, shown 

 that fear of a well-marked and intense kind is a common feature 

 of the first years of life, and that it assumes a Protean variety of 

 shapes. 



Much more will, no doubt, have to be done in the way of me- 

 thodical observation, and more particularly statistical inquiry 

 into the comparative frequency of the several fears, the age at 

 which they commonly appear, and so forth, before we can build up 

 a theory of the subject. One or two general observations may, 

 however, be hazarded even at this stage. 



The thing which strikes one most, perhaps, in these early fears 

 is how little they have to do with any remembered experience of 

 evil. The child is inexperienced and, if humanely treated, knows 

 little of the acute forms of human suffering. It would seem at 

 least as if he feared, not because experience has made him appre- 

 hensive of evil, but because he is constitutionally and instinct- 

 ively nervous, and possessed with a feeling of insecurity. This 



