736 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



It is only a step further in the same direction when the 

 " why " has to be met by supplying a general statement : for to 

 refer the particular to a general rule is a more perfect and sys- 

 tematic kind of assimilation. Now we know that children are 

 very susceptible to the authority of precedent, custom, general 

 rule. Just as in children's ethics customary permission makes a 

 thing right, so in their logic the fact that a thing generally hap- 

 pens may be said to supply a reason for any single thing happen- 

 ing. Accordingly, when the much-abused nurse answers the 

 child's question, " Why is the pavement hard ? " by saying, " Be- 

 cause pavement is always" hard," she is perhaps less open to the 

 charge of giving a woman's reason than is sometimes said.* In 

 sooth, the child's queries, his searchings for explanation are, as 

 already suggested, prompted by the desire for order and connect- 

 edness. And this means that he wants the general rule to which 

 he can assimilate the particular and as yet isolated fact. 



From the first, however, the " why " and its congeners have 

 reference to the causal idea, to something which has brought the 

 new and strange thing into existence and made it what it is. In 

 truth, this reference to origin, to bringing about or making, is ex- 

 ceedingly prominent in children's questionings. Nothing is more 

 interesting to a child than the production of things. What hours 

 and hours does he not spend in wondering how the pebbles, the 

 stones, the birds, the babies are made! This vivid interest in 

 production is to a considerable extent practical. It is one of the 

 great joys of children to be able themselves to make things, and 

 the desire to fashion things which is probably at first quite im- 

 mense, and befitting rather a god than a feeble child, naturally 

 leads on to know something about the mode of producing. Yet 

 from the earliest a true speculative interest blends with this prac- 

 tical instinct. Children are in the complete sense little philoso- 

 phers, if philosophy, as the ancients said, consists in knowing the 

 cause of things " causas rerum cognoscere." This is the com- 

 pleted process of assimilation, of the reference of the particular 

 to a general rule or law. Everything remains a mystery, looks 

 distant and foreign, until its history, its origin is ascertained, and 

 it can be classed with the known things whose existence is ac- 

 counted for. 



This inquisition into origin and mode of production starts 

 with the amiable presupposition that all things have been hand- 

 produced after the manner of household possessions. The world 

 is a sort of big house where everything has been made by some- 

 body, or at least fetched from somewhere. This application of 

 the anthropomorphic idea of fashioning follows the law of all 



* Cf. some shrewd remarks by Dr. Venn, Empirical Logic, p. 494. 



