62 MOBAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 



But trailing clouds of glory do we come 

 From God, who is our home: 



Heaven lies about us in our infancy ; 

 Shades of the prison house begin to close 



Upon the growing boy, 

 But he beholds the light and whence it flows. 



He sees it in his joy ; 



The youth whom daily farther from the east 

 Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, 

 And by the vision splendid 

 Is on his way attended ; 

 At length the man perceives it die away ; 

 And fade into the light of common day." 



(Wordsworth: "Ode to Immortality," V.) 



The uncritical, no doubt, assume that a child 

 is born with a rational spirit and may lift their 

 eyebrows in astonishment that such a position 

 could ever be questioned. But such persons would 

 be at their wits J end if they should be asked when 

 the spirit became identified with the child's body. 

 Was it when it was a single cell? Was it when 

 it was in the fish stage 1 or in the reptilian stage ? 

 or the simian stage? Did it come to it at its first 

 gasp for breath ? Did its first cry become the an- 

 guish of a human spirit? I fancy that it would 

 be rather difficult to reply affirmatively to any 

 of these questions, and I, at least, will not have 

 the temerity to reply negatively. If we reason 

 from the analogy of the origin of the body, and 

 suppose that the spirit is not the product of any 

 one moment of time, and that only its germinal 

 potentiality is given in birth, and that this poten- 

 tiality in no wise functions as it does in its com- 

 plete manifestation, we may best account for all 



