STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 361 



talk with his mother, impiously sought to tone down the doctrine 

 of omniscience this way : " I know a ickle more than Kitty, and 

 you know a ickle more than me ; and God knows a ickle more 

 than you, I s'pose ; then he can't know so very much after all." 



Another of the divine attributes does undoubtedly shock the 

 childish intelligence I mean God's omnipresence. It seems in- 

 deed amazing that the so-called instructor of the child should talk 

 to him almost in the same breath about God's inhabiting heaven and 

 his being everywhere present. Here, I think, we see most plainly 

 the superiority of the child's mind to the adult's, in that it does 

 not let contradictory ideas lie peacefully side by side, but makes 

 them face one another. To the child, as we have seen, God lives 

 i Q the sky, though he is quite capable of coming down to earth 

 when he wishes, or when he is politely asked to do so. Hence he 

 rejects the idea of a diffused ubiquitous existence. The idea apt 

 to be introduced early as a moral instrument, that God can always 

 see the child, is especially resented by that small, sensitive, proud 

 creature, to whom the ever-following eyes of the portrait on the 

 wall seem a persecution. Miss Shinn, a careful American ob- 

 server of children, has written strongly, yet not too strongly, on 

 the repugnance of the child-mind to this idea of an ever-spying 

 eye.* My observations fully confirm her conclusions here. Miss 

 Shinn speaks of a little girl who, on learning that she was under 

 this constant surveillance, declared that she "would not be so 

 tagged." A little English boy of three, on being informed by his 

 older sister that God can see and watch us, while we can not see 

 him, thought awhile, and then in an apologetic tone remarked, 

 " I'm very sorry, dear, I can't (b) elieve you." What the sister 

 aged fifteen thought of this is not recorded. 



When the idea is accepted odd ideas are excogitated for the 

 purpose of making it intelligible. Thus one child thought of God 

 as a very small person who could easily pass through the keyhole. 

 The idea of God's huge framework illustrated above is probably 

 the result of an attempt to figure the conception of omnipresence. 

 Curious conclusions, too, are sometimes drawn from the supposi- 

 tion. Thus a little girl, of three years and nine months, one day 



said to her mother in the abrupt childish manner : " Mr. C " (a 



gentleman she had known who had just died) " is in this room." 

 Her mother, naturally a good deal startled, answered, " Oh, no ! " 

 Whereupon the child resumed : " Yes, he is. You told me he is 



with God, and you told me God was everywhere ; so, as Mr. C 



is with God, he must be in this room." With such trenchant 

 logic does the child's intelligence cut through the tangle of incon- 

 gruous ideas which we try to pass off as methodical instruction. 



* Overland Monthly, January, 1894, p. 12. 



