Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/617

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THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD.
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their parents. A little boy, staying for two or three months with his uncle, would show how his mother managed in reference to him, and cry and gesticulate if things were not done as she did them. He would himself follow the rule of conduct that he tried to impose upon others. "It is very bad to lie," said he; "that gives mamma much pain—that makes her cry." As for the rest, the moral sense is slowly modified, according to the circumstances in which the child is placed. Both sympathy and the desire to please play an important part in the development of the moral faculties. A little girl of forty months was greatly afflicted when her mother said to her, "I am angry with baby." She was, for the most part, indifferent to her father's scoldings, whom she was accustomed to hear cry out at her, and threaten her. The young Tiedemann, when he was two years and five months old, said, when he thought he had done something good, "Everybody will say that is a good little boy." When he was naughty, if he were told, "The neighbors will see you," he ceased immediately. The moral sense is one of the faculties most susceptible of modification by education.

The love of justice sometimes manifests itself. A little boy, the first time he told a lie, was shut in the closet, and when he was set free he cried out, struck with the importance attached to his fault, But, mamma, perhaps I am not punished enough for a fault so grave." Some children are open-handed to liberality; others, on the contrary, have the instinct of ownership strongly developed, the instinct of appropriation is also manifested, and sometimes becomes the instinct of stealing. Finally, almost all children are cruel; it is hard to prevent them from hurting animals. A little girl, two years old, very affectionate and caressing, passed three fourths of the day tormenting an old dog. The best children are betrayed into striking even those they fondly love.

Conclusion.—We find the germs of all the faculties in the little child, and sensations are the food upon which they grow. We may even say that the essential faculties are innate, since the nervous centers that manifest them are already organized at the moment of birth. The method followed by M. Perez is the scientific method; observation abounds in his work; perhaps, however, some inductions repose upon disputable interpretations. But, be this as it may, the book of M. Perez is full of interest, and can not fail to be of great utility in a study so important, so curious, and so long neglected as the psychology of infants.