STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 733 



presence among the instructors he could, as opportunity offered, 

 with timely words, fend off those sad mistakes which worthy gen- 

 tlemen of the best intentions sometimes make in their dealings 

 with "boys mistakes of which I think I am justified in saying 

 that Yale has not often been guilty in the past fifteen years. The 

 director would earn his salary if he did faithfully what his hand 

 found to do. 



If such men were appointed by all the colleges, and if joint 

 action by the colleges at any time seemed desirable, these men 

 would be best fitted to deal with questions which might arise, 

 and would discover solutions of existing difficulties without rec- 

 ommending unpractical and impossible plans. 



STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 



III. THE QUESTIONING AGE. 



BY JAMES SULLY, M.A.,LL.D., 



GROTE PROFESSOR OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND AND LOGIC AT THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, 



LONUON. 



child's first vigorous effort to understand the things about 

 him may be roughly dated at the end of the third year, and 

 it is noteworthy that this synchronizes with the advent of the 

 questioning age. The first putting of a question occurred in the 

 case of Preyer's boy in the twenty-eighth month, in that of Pol- 

 lock's girl in the twenty-third month. But the true age of in- 

 quisitiveness, when question after question is fired off with won- 

 drous rapidity and pertinacity, seems to be ushered in with the 

 fourth year. 



A common theory peculiarly favored by ignorant nurses and 

 mothers is that children's questioning is a studied annoyance. 

 The child has come to the use of words, and with all a child's 

 "cussedness" proceeds to torment the ears of those about him. 

 There are signs, however, of a change of view on this point. The 

 fact that the questioning follows on the heels of the reasoning 

 impulse might tell us that it is connected with the throes which 

 the young understanding has to endure in its first collision with 

 a tough and baffling world. The question is the outcome of igno- 

 rance coupled with a belief in a possible knowledge. It aims at 

 filling up a gap in the child's knowledge, at getting from the 

 fuller knowledge of another some light on the scrappy, unsatis- 

 fying information about things which is all that his own obser- 

 vation can gather, or all that others' half-understood words have 

 managed to communicate. It is the outcome of intellectual crav- 

 ing a demand for food. But it is much more than an expression 



