STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 171 



he put away his old ones as before for the less fortunate children. 

 Every careful observer of children knows that they are apt to 

 proceed this way, to erect particular actions and suggestions into 

 precedents. This tendency gives something of the amusing prig- 

 gishness to the ways of childhood. 



There is little doubt, I think, that this respect for proper or- 

 derly behavior, for precedent and general rule, forms a vital ele- 

 ment in the child's submission to parental law. In fixing our 

 attention on occasional acts of disobedience and lawlessness we 

 are apt to overlook the ease, the absence of friction with which 

 normal children, if only decently trained, fall in with the larger 

 part of our observances and ordinances. 



That the instinct for order does assist moral discipline may be 

 seen in the fact that children are apt to pay enormous deference 

 to our rules. Nothing is more suggestive here than the talk of 

 children among themselves, the emphasis they are wont to lay on 

 the " must " and " must not." The truth is that children have a 

 tremendous belief in law : a rule is apt to present itself to their 

 imagination as a thing supremely sacred and awful before which 

 it prostrates itself. 



This recognition of the absolute imperativeness of a rule prop- 

 erly laid down by the recognized authority is seen in children's 

 jealous insistence on the observance of the rule in their own case 

 and in that of others. As has been observed by Preyer, a child of 

 two years and eight months will follow out the prohibitions of 

 the mother when he falls into other hands, sternly protesting, for 

 example, against the nurse giving him the forbidden knife at 

 table. Very proper children rather like to instruct their aunts 

 and other ignorant persons as to the right way of dealing with 

 them, and will rejoice in the opportunity of setting them right 

 even when it means a deprivation for themselves. The self- 

 denying ordinance, " Mamma doesn't let me have many sweets," 

 is by no means beyond the powers of such a child. One can see 

 here, no doubt, traces of a childish sense of self-importance, a 

 feeling of the much-waited-on little sovereign for what befits his 

 supreme worth. Yet, allowing for such elements, there seems 

 to me to be in this behavior a residue of genuine respect for pa- 

 rental law. 



These carryings out of the parental behest when intrusted to 

 other hands are instructive as suggesting that the child feels the 

 constraining force of the command when its author is no longer 

 present to enforce it. Perhaps a clearer evidence of respect for 

 the law as such, apart from its particular enforcement by the 

 parent, is supplied by children's way of extending the rules laid 

 down for their own behavior to that of others. This point has 

 already been illustrated in the tendency to universalize the observ- 



