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4o CHAPTER IV. THE SERIOUS SEARCHER. In a former chapter we dealt with a child's mind as a harbourer of fancies, as subject to the illusive spell of its bright imagery. Yet with this play of fancy there goes a respectable quantity of serious inquiry into the things of the real world. This is true, I believe, even of highly imaginative children, who now and again come down from their fancy-created world and regard the solid matter-of-fact one at their feet with shrewdly scrutinising eyes. For children, like some of those patients of whom the hypnotist tells us, live alternately two lives. The child not only scans his surroundings, he begins to reflect on what he observes, and does his best to understand the puzzling scene which meets his eyes. And all this gives seriousness, a deep and admirable seriousness, to his attitude; so that one may forgive the touch of exaggeration when Mr. Bret Harte writes: " All those who have made a loving study of the young human animal will, I think, admit that its dominant expression is gravity and not playfulness ". We may now turn to this graver side of the young intelligence. The Thoughtful Observer. This serious examination of things begins early.Most of us have been subjected to the searching gaze of an infant's eyes when we first made it overtures of friendship. How much this fixed gaze of a child of six months takes in nobody can say. What we find when the child grows and can give an account of his observations is that, while often surprisingly minute in particular directions, they are narrowly confined. Thus a child will sometimes be so impressed with the colour of an object as almost to ignore its form. A little girl of eighteen months,who knew lambs and called them "lammies," on seeing two black ones in a field among som...
