734 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of need. Just as the child's articulate demand for food implies 

 that he knows what food is, and that it is obtainable, so the ques- 

 tion implies that the little questioner knows what he needs, and 

 in what direction to look for it. The simplest form of question 

 e. g., What is this flower, this, insect ? shows that the child, by 

 a half -conscious process of reflection and reasoning, has found 

 his way to the truth that things have their qualities, their belong- 

 ings, their names. 



Questioning may take various directions. A good deal of the 

 child's catechising of his long-suffering mother is prompted by 

 thirst for fact.* The typical form of this line of questioning is 

 " What ? " The motive here is to gain possession of some fact 

 which will connect itself with and supplement a fact already 

 known. How old is Rover ? Where was Rover born ? Who 

 was his father ? What is that dog's name ? What sort of hair 

 had you when you were a little girl ? These are samples of the 

 questioning activity by the help of which the little inquirer tries 

 to make up his connected wholes to see things with his imagi- 

 nation in their proper attachment and order. And how greedily 

 and pertinaciously the small people will follow up their question- 

 ing, flying, as it often looks, wildly enough from point to point, 

 yet gathering from every answer some new contribution to their 

 ideas of things ! A boy of three years and nine months would 

 thus attack his mother: "What does frogs eat, and mice, and 

 birds, and butterflies ? and what does they do ? and what is their 

 names ? What is all their houses' names ? What does they call 

 their streets and places ? " etc. 



Such questions easily appear foolish because, as in the case 

 just quoted, they are directed by quaint childish fancies. The 

 child's anthropomorphic way of looking out on the world leads 

 him to assimilate animal to human ways. Hence one value of 

 these questionings as showing which way the current of the 

 child's thought is setting. Hence, too, it would appear that not 

 every child's question is to be answered. We may, however, set 

 aside, or rather correct, the form of a child's question without 

 treating it with an ill-deserved and quite inappropriate contempt. 



One feature in this fact-gleaning kind of question is the great 

 store which the child sets by the name of a thing. M. Compayre 

 has pointed out that the form of question, " What is this ? " often 

 means " What is it called ? " The child's unf ormulated theory 

 seems to be that everything has its own individual name. The 

 little boy just spoken of explained to his mother that he thought 

 all the frogs, the mice, the birds, and the butterflies had names 



* The first question put by Preyer's boy was, " Where is mamma ? " That is an inquiry 

 as to fact. 



