i88 THE POPULAR SCIEA'^CE MONTHLY. 



these the more important is the impulse to think of what is far 

 off, whether in space or time, and so unobservable as like what is 

 near and observed. Along with this tendency, or rather as one 

 particular development of it, there goes the disposition, already 

 illustrated, to vivify Nature, to personify things and so to assimi- 

 late their behavior to the child's own, and to explain the origin 

 of things by ideas of making and aiming at some purpose. Since 

 at the same time that these tendencies are still dominant the child 

 by his own observation and by such instruction as he gets is 

 gaining insight into the "how," the mechanism of things, we find 

 that his cosmology is apt to be a quaint jumble of the scientific 



and the mythological. The boy C tried to conceive of the 



divine creation of men as a mechanical process with well-marked 

 stages, the fashioning of the stone men, iron men, and then real 

 men. In many cases we can see that Nature-myth comes in to 

 eke out the deficiencies of mechanical insight. Thus the produc- 

 tion of thunder and other strange and inexplicable phenomena is 

 referred, as by the savage and even by many so-called civilized 

 men and women, to the direct interposition of a supernatural 

 agency. The theological idea with which children are supplied 

 shapes itself into that of a capricious and awfully clever demiurgos 

 who not only made the world-machine, but alters its working as 

 often as he likes: for miracle is of the essence of the child's 

 "Naturanschauung." Contradictions are not infrequent, the 

 mythological impulse sometimes alternating with a more distinct- 

 ly scientific impulse to grasp the mechanical process, as when 

 wind is sometimes thought of as caused by a big fan, and some- 

 times e. g., when heard moaning in the night endowed with 

 life and feeling. In many cases, too, the impulses combine, as 

 when thunder is conceived of as God's action, but effected by 

 mechanical means, such as shooting bricks on to the floor of 

 heaven. 



I shall make no attempt to give a methodical account of chil- 

 dren's thoughts about Nature. I suspect that a good deal more 

 material will have to be collected before a complete description 

 of these thoughts is possible. I shall content myself with giving 

 a few samples of their ideas so far as my own observations and 

 those of others have thrown light on them. 



With respect to the make or substance of things, children are 

 disposed to regard all that they see as having the resistant quality 

 of solid material substance. Just as the infant wants to touch pic- 

 tures, the reflected sunlight dancing on the wall, and the shadows 

 of objects, so later on the child continues to attribute the resistant 

 quality of body to clouds or other inaccessible contents of the visi- 

 ble scene. Air at rest is of course not perceived by the child, but 

 when in motion as wind it seems, so far as I can ascertain, to be 



