164 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



the period during which the human species has 

 existed in any kind of civilisation, making its own 

 conditions, is but a span compared with its long 

 life of simple barbarism, it would be strange indeed 

 if we did not find in the civilised child the 

 psychological representative > of primitive man. We 

 do not look for the emotions and inherited or 

 traditional habits proper to the adult. The higher 

 mental faculties, which have had their growth in a 

 developed social state, are latent in him. His 

 senses and lower mental faculties are, on the con- 

 trary, at their best: in the acuteness of his senses, 

 and the vividness and durability of the impressions 

 made on him by external stimuli; in his nearness 

 to or oneness with Nature, resulting from his 

 mythical faculty, and in the quick response of the 

 organism to every outward change, he is like the 

 animals. His world is small, but the bright mirror 

 of his mind has reflected it so clearly, with all it 

 contains, from sun and stars and floating clouds 

 above, to the floating motes in the beam, and the 

 grass blades and fine grains of yellow sand he 

 treads upon, that he knows it as intimately as if 

 he had existed in it for a thousand years. And 

 whatever is rare and strange, or outside of Nature's 

 usual order, and opposed to his experience, affects 

 him powerfully and excites the sense of mystery, 

 which remains thereafter associated with the object. 

 I remember that as a child, or small boy, I was 

 affected in this way on seeing mushrooms growing 

 in a chain of huge rings in a meadow; also by the 



