42 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



slight provocation, -with, an equally intense pleasure in trifles, a 

 great joy in brilliant and startling sense-impressions, a narrow 

 range of susceptibilities, with the self-centering emotions — espe- 

 cially fear, anger, jealousy, vanity — the more prominent. The 

 instability of the child's character hardly needs illustration ; it 

 depends largely on the limited range of memory and rational 

 expectation. A child in pain is appeased by a sugar-plum ; its 

 anger forgotten in a new picture-book. The entire attention is 

 given to one object ; this fills the mental horizon, much as the 

 hypnotized subject attends solely to the suggestion of the opera- 

 tor. Passionateness is a typically childish trait ; at two months 

 the characteristic pushing away of distasteful objects, screaming, 

 growing red in the face, appear and continue with increasing 

 vehemence until a wise surrounding gradually substitutes for 

 them a more rational procedure. Of childlike traits in savages 

 there are abundant illustrations. The Snake Indian is termed " a 

 mere child, irritated by and pleased with a trifle/' Of the tribes 

 of the Malayan Peninsula it is said that "like children their 

 actions seem to be rarely guided by reflection, and they almost 

 always act impulsively." The tears of the South Sea islanders, 

 " like those of children, were always ready to express any passion 

 that was strongly excited, and like those of children they also 

 appeared to be forgotten as soon as shed." Accompanying this 

 there is " a childish mirthf ulness— merriment not sobered by 

 thought of what is coming." Mr. Spencer thus comments upon 

 these facts : " The saying that a savage has the mind of a child 

 with the passions of a man (or, as it would be more correctly put, 

 has adult passions which act in a childish manner) thus possesses 

 a deeper meaning than appears. There is a genetic relationship 

 between the two natures, such that, allowing for differences of 

 kind and degree in their emotions, we may regard the co-ordina- 

 tion of them in the child as fairly representing the co-ordination 

 in the primitive mind." 



Similarities in intellectual traits lie close at hand ; the study 

 of language offers a number of pertinent illustrations. The prom- 

 inence of gesture, pantomime, facial and other expressions in 

 the primitive speech has been conclusively established, and is 

 equally typical of the child's language at certain stages of its 

 development. In both, speech partakes less of symbolism and 

 has a natural directness of meaning. When we are told that the 

 Bojesmans can not converse at night without a fire, because their 

 language is dependent upon explanatory gestures ; that the lan- 

 guage of a Ceylon tribe is composed largely of signs, grimaces, 

 and guttural sounds ; or that the Tasmanians observe no settled 

 order or arrangement of words in their sentences, we are at once 

 reminded of like characteristics in a child's babbling. Similari- 



