196 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" When will she begin to get small ? " I have since obtained 

 corroboratory instances from parents and teachers of infant 

 classes. 



Here we seem to have to do with a pure product of the child- 

 ish brain. What does it mean ? By what quaint zigzag move- 

 ment of child-thought, by the use of what far-fetched analogy, was 

 the idea excogitated ? I can not learn that there is any idea like it 

 in primitive folklore. This at once suggests that it is the result 

 of the activity of the little brain as employed in deciphering the 

 words of older people. It has been suggested to me that the play- 

 ful way a nurse will sometimes adopt of speaking to the child 

 when she wants it to do something e. g., " When I'm a little girl 

 I shall be good and not mess my clothes " may be taken literally 

 by the serious mind of the child. I do not, however, think that 

 this will account for the frequency of the phenomenon. It seems 

 probable that other processes of childish interpretation assist. 

 Children often hear old people talked about as weak and silly. 

 Now, if there is one proposition of which the child is sure it is that 

 grown people are always able to do things and awfully knowing. 



C 's belief in the preternatural calculating powers of Goliath 



shows how strongly the child-mind associates size and intelli- 

 gence. Consequently, it is a shock to a child to overhear his 

 mother talking about grown people as stupid, just as it is a shock 

 to him to hear her characterizing them as bad or wicked. The 

 creed of infancy is that all such defects will disappear with com- 

 pletion of growth. Hence it may be that children who are in the 

 way of hearing old people spoken of as losing power and intelli- 

 gence carry over the thought of littleness, and imagine that they 

 must be getting small again. This tendency would, of course, be 

 greatly strengthened if the child happened to hear an old person 

 talked about as getting childish or passing into second childhood. 

 Indeed, I am disposed to think, from the frequency of the appear- 

 ance of the belief, that this reference to the childish condition of 

 old age is probably always co-operant in bringing the tendency 

 to the definiteness of a theory of senility. However the idea 

 arises, it is a curious and striking illustration of the fact that with 

 all our attempts to sujiply the young brain with our own ideas, it 

 manages to substitute a good many new and thoroughly original 

 ones. 



The origin of babies and young animals furnishes, as we know, 

 the child's brain with much food for speculation. Here the little 

 thinker is not often left to excogitate a theory for himself. His 

 inconvenient questionings in this direction have to be firmly 

 checked, and various and truly wonderful are the ways in which 

 the nurse and the mother are wont to do this. Any fiction is 

 supposed to be good enough for the purpose. Divine action is 



