CHAPTER IVFEAR

Inthe following chapters, I propose to deal with various aspects of moral education, especially in the years from the second to the sixth. By the time the child is six years old, moral education ought to be nearly complete; that is to say, the further virtues which will be required in later years ought to be developed by the boy or girl spontaneously, as a result of good habits already existing and ambitions already stimulated. It is only where early moral training has been neglected or badly given that much will be needed at later ages.

I suppose that the child has reached the age of twelve months healthy and happy, with the foundations of a disciplined character already well laid by the methods considered in the preceding chapter. There will, of course, be some children whose health is bad, even if parents take all the precautions known to science at present. But we may hope that their number will be enormously diminished as time goes on. They ought, even now, to be so few as to be statistically unimportant, if existing knowledgewere adequately applied. I do not propose to consider what ought to be done with children whose early training has been bad. This is a problem for the schoolmaster, not for the parent; and it is especially to the parent that this book is addressed.

The second year of life should be one of great happiness. Walking and talking are new accomplishments, bringing a sense of freedom and power. Every day the child improves in both.[5]Independent play becomes possible, and the child has a more vivid sense of “seeing the world” than a man can derive from the most extensive globe-trotting. Birds and flowers, rivers and the sea, motor-cars and trains and steamers all bring delight and passionate interest. Curiosity is boundless: “want to see” is one of the commonest phrases at this age. Running freely in a garden or a field or on the seashore produces an ecstasy of emancipation after the confinement of crib and baby-carriage. Digestion is usually stronger than in the first year, food is more varied, and mastication is a new joy. For all these reasons, if the child is well cared for and healthy, life is a delicious adventure.

But with the greater independence of walkingand running there is apt to come also a new timidity. The new-born infant can easily be frightened; Dr. J. B. and Mrs. Watson found that the things which alarm it most are loud noises and the sensation of being dropped.[6]It is, however, so completely protected that it has little occasion for the rational exercise of fear; even in real dangers it is helpless, so that fear would not be of any use to it. During the second and third year, new fears develop. It is a moot point how far this is due to suggestion, and how far it is instinctive. The fact that the fears do not exist during the first year is not conclusive against their instinctive character, since an instinct may ripen at any age. Not even the most extreme Freudian would maintain that the sex instinct is mature at birth. Obviously children who can run about by themselves have more need of fear than infants that cannot walk; it would therefore not be surprising if the instinct of fear arose with the need. The question is of considerable educational importance. If all fears arise from suggestion, they can be prevented by the simple expedient of not showing fear or aversion before a child. If, on the other hand, some of them are instinctive, more elaborate methods will be required.

Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, in his book “TheChildhood of Animals”, gives a large number of observations and experiments to show that there is usually no inherited instinct of fear in young animals.[7]Except monkeys and a few birds, they view the age-long enemies of their species, such as snakes, without the slightest alarm, unless their parents have taught them to feel fear of these animals. Children well under a year old seem never to be afraid of animals. Dr. Watson taught one such child to be afraid of rats by repeatedly sounding a gong behind its head at the moment when he showed it a rat. The noise was terrifying, and the rat came to be so by association. But instinctive fear of animals seems quite unknown in the early months. Fear of the dark, also, seems never to occur in children who have not been exposed to the suggestion that the dark is terrifying. There are certainly very strong grounds for the view that most of the fears which we used to regard as instinctive are acquired, and would not arise if grown-up people did not create them.

In order to get fresh light on this subject, I have observed my own children carefully; but as I could not always know what nurses and maids might have said to them, the interpretation of the facts was often doubtful. So faras I could judge, they bore out Dr. Watson’s views as to fear in the first year of life. In the second year, they showed no fear of animals, except that one of them, for a time, was afraid of horses. This, however, was apparently due to the fact that a horse had suddenly galloped past her with a very loud noise. She is still in her second year, and therefore for later observation I am dependent on the boy. Near the end of his second year, he had a new nurse who was generally timid and especially afraid of the dark. He quickly acquired her terrors (of which we were ignorant at first); he fled from dogs and cats, cowered in abject fear before a dark cupboard, wanted lights in every part of the room after dark, and was even afraid of his little sister the first time he saw her, thinking, apparently, that she was a strange animal of some unknown species.[8]All these fears might have been acquired from the timid nurse; in fact they gradually faded away after she was gone. There were other fears, however, which could not be accounted for in the same way, since they began before the nurse came, and were directed to objects which no grown-up person would find alarming. Chief of these was a fear of everything that moved in a surprising way, notably shadows and mechanicaltoys. After making this observation, I learned that fears of this sort are normal in childhood, and that there are strong reasons for regarding them as instinctive. The matter is discussed by William Stern in his “Psychology of Early Childhood”, p. 494 ff, under the heading “Fear of the Mysterious”. What he says is as follows:

The special significance of this form of fear, particularly in early childhood, has escaped the notice of the older school of child psychologists; it has lately been established by Groos and by us. “Fear of the unaccustomed seems to be more a part of primitive nature than fear of a known danger” (Groos, p. 284). If the child meets with anything that does not fit in with the familiar course of his perception, three things are possible. Either the impression is so alien that it is simply rejected as a foreign body, and consciousness takes no notice of it. Or the interruption of the usual course of perception is pronounced enough to attract attention but not so violent as to effect disturbance; it is rather surprise, desire for knowledge, the beginning of all thought, judgment, enquiry. Or, lastly, the new suddenly breaks in upon the old with violent intensity, throws familiar ideas into unexpected confusion without a possibility of an immediate practical adjustment; then follows a shock with a strong affective-tone of displeasure, the fear of the mysterious (uncanny). Groos now has pointed out with keen insight that this fear of the uncanny is also distinctly founded on instinctive fear; it corresponds to a biological necessity which works from one generation to the next.

Stern gives many instances, among others fear of a suddenly opened umbrella and “the frequent fear of mechanical toys”. The former, by the way, is very strong in horses and cows: a large herd can be driven into headlong flight by it, as I have verified. My own boy’s terrors, under this head, were just such as Stern describes. The shadows that frightened him were vague quickly-moving shadows thrown into a room by unseen objects (such as omnibuses) passing in the street. I cured him by making shadows on the wall and the floor with my fingers, and getting him to imitate me; before long, he felt that he understood shadows and began to enjoy them. The same principle applied to mechanical toys: when he had seen the mechanism he was no longer frightened. But when the mechanism was invisible the process was slow. Some one gave him a cushion which emitted a long melancholy whine after being sat upon or pressed. This alarmed him for a long time. In no case did we entirely remove the terrifying object: we put it at a distance, where it was only slightly alarming; we produced gradual familiarity; and we persisted till the fear completely ceased. Generally the same mysterious quality which caused fear at first produced delight when the fear had been overcome. I think an irrational fear should never be simply let alone, but should be graduallyovercome by familiarity with its fainter forms.

We adopted an exactly opposite process—perhaps wrongly—in the case of two rational fears which were wholly absent. I live half the year on a rocky coast where there are many precipices. The boy had no sense whatever of the danger of heights, and would have run straight over a cliff into the sea if we had let him. One day when we were sitting on a steep slope that ended in a sheer drop of a hundred feet, we explained to him quietly, as a merely scientific fact, that if he went over the edge he would fall and break like a plate. (He had lately seen a plate broken into many pieces by being dropped on the floor.) He sat still for some time, saying to himself “fall”, “break”, and then asked to be taken further from the edge. This was at the age of about two and a half. Since then he has had just enough fear of heights to make him safe while we keep an eye on him. But he would still be very rash if left to himself. He now (three and nine months) jumps from heights of six feet without hesitation, and would jump twenty feet if we would let him. Thus the instruction in apprehension certainly did not produce excessive results. I attribute this to the fact that it was instruction, not suggestion; neither of us was feeling fear when the instruction was given. Iregard this as very important in education. Rational apprehension of dangers is necessary; fear is not. A child cannot apprehend dangers withoutsomeelement of fear, but this element is very much diminished when it is not present in the instructor. A grown-up person in charge of a child should never feel fear. That is one reason why courage should be cultivated in women just as much as in men.

The second illustration was less deliberate. One day when I was walking with the boy (at the age of three years and four months) we found an adder on the path. He had seen pictures of snakes, but had never before seen a real snake. He did not know that snakes bite. He was delighted with the adder, and when it glided away he ran after it. As I knew he could not catch it, I did not check him, and did not tell him that snakes are dangerous. His nurse, however, from that time on, prevented him from running in long grass, on the ground that there might be snakes. A slight fear grew up in him as a result, but not more than we felt to be desirable.

The most difficult fear to overcome, so far, has been fear of the sea. Our first attempt to take the boy into the sea was at the age of two and a half. At first, it was quite impossible. He disliked the cold of the water, he was frightened by the noise of the waves, and they seemedto him to be always coming, never going. If the waves were big, he would not even go near to the sea. This was a period of general timidity; animals, odd noises, and various other things, caused alarm. We dealt with fear of the sea piecemeal. We put the boy into shallow pools away from the sea, until the mere cold had ceased to be a shock; at the end of the four warm months, he enjoyed paddling in shallow water at a distance from waves, but still cried if we put him into deep pools where the water came up to his waist. We accustomed him to the noise of the waves by letting him play for an hour at a time just out of sight of them; then we took him to where he could see them, and made him notice that after coming in they go out again. All this, combined with the example of his parents and other children, only brought him to the point where he could benearthe waves without fear. I am convinced that the fear was instinctive; I am fairly certain there had been no suggestion to cause it. The following summer, at the age of three and a half, we took the matter up again. There was still a terror of going actually into the waves. After some unsuccessful coaxing, combined with the spectacle of everybody else bathing, we adopted old-fashioned methods. When he showed cowardice, we made him feel that we were ashamed of him; when he showed courage, we praisedhim warmly. Every day for about a fortnight, we plunged him up to the neck in the sea, in spite of his struggles and cries.[9]Every day they grew less; before they ceased, he began to ask to be put in. At the end of a fortnight, the desired result had been achieved: he no longer feared the sea. From that moment, we left him completely free, and he bathed of his own accord whenever the weather was suitable—obviously with the greatest enjoyment. Fear had not ceased altogether, but had been partly repressed by pride. Familiarity, however, made the fear grow rapidly less, and it has now ceased altogether. His sister, now twenty months old, has never shown any fear of the sea, and runs straight in without the slightest hesitation.

I have related this matter in some detail, because, to a certain extent, it goes against modern theories for which I have much respect. The use of force in education should be very rare. But for the conquest of fear it is, I think, sometimes salutary. Where a fear is irrational and strong, the child, left to himself, will never have the experiences which show that there is no ground for apprehension. When a situation has been experienced repeatedly without harm,familiarity kills fear. It would very likely be useless to give the dreaded experienceonce; it must be given often enough to become in no degree surprising. If the necessary experience can be secured without force, so much the better; but if not, force may be better than the persistence of an unconquered fear.

There is a further point. In the case of my own boy, and presumably in other cases too, the experience of overcoming fear is extraordinarily delightful. It is easy to rouse the boy’s pride: when he has won praise for courage, he is radiantly happy for the rest of the day. At a later stage, a timid boy suffers agonies through the contempt of other boys, and it is much more difficult then for him to acquire new habits. I think therefore that the early acquisition of self-control in the matter of fear, and the early teaching of physical enterprise, are of sufficient importance to warrant somewhat drastic methods.

Parents learn by their mistakes; it is only when the children are grown up that one discovers how they ought to have been educated. I shall therefore relate an incident which shows the snares of overindulgence. At the age of two and a half, my boy was put to sleep in a room by himself. He was inordinately proud of the promotion from the night-nursery, and at first he always slept quietly through thenight. But one night there was a terrific gale, and a hurdle was blown over with a deafening crash. He woke in terror, and cried out. I went to him at once: he had apparently waked with a nightmare, and clung to me with his heart beating wildly. Very soon his terror ceased. But he had complained that it was dark—usually, at that time of year, he slept all through the dark hours. After I left him, the terror seemed to return in a mitigated form, so I gave him a night-light. After that, he made an almost nightly practice of crying out, until at last it became clear that he was only doing it for the pleasure of having grown-up people come and make a fuss. So we talked to him very carefully about the absence of danger in the dark, and told him that if he woke he was to turn over and go to sleep again, as we should not come to him unless there was something serious the matter. He listened attentively, and never cried out again except for grave cause on rare occasions. Of course the night-light was discontinued. If we had been more indulgent, we should probably have made him sleep badly for a long time, perhaps for life.

So much from personal experience. We must now pass on to a more general consideration of methods for eliminating fear.

After the first years, the proper instructors inphysical courage are other children. If a child has older brothers and sisters, they will stimulate it both by example and by precept, and whatever they can do it will attempt. At school, physical cowardice is despised, and there is no need for grown-up teachers to emphasize the matter. At least, that is the case among boys. It ought to be equally the case among girls, who should have precisely the same standards of courage. In physical ways, fortunately, school-girls are no longer taught to be “lady-like”, and their natural impulses towards physical prowess are allowed a fair amount of scope. There is still, however, some difference between boys and girls in this respect. I am convinced there ought to be none.[10]

When I speak of courage as desirable, I am taking a purely behaviorist definition: a man is courageous when he does things which others might fail to do owing to fear. If he feels no fear, so much the better; I do not regard control of fear by the will as the only true courage, or even as the best form of courage. The secret of modern moral education is to produce results by means of good habits which were formerly produced (or attempted) by self-control and will-power. Courage due to the will produces nervous disorders, of which “shell-shock” afforded numerous instances. The fearswhich had been repressed forced their way to the surface in ways not recognizable to introspection. I do not mean to suggest that self-control can be dispensed with entirely; on the contrary, no man can live a consistent life without it. What I do mean is, that self-control ought only to be needed in unforeseen situations, for which education has not provided in advance. It would have been foolish, even if it had been possible, to train the whole population to have, without effort, the sort of courage that was needed in the war. This was an exceptional and temporary need, of so extraordinary a kind that all other education would have had to be stunted if the habits required in the trenches had been instilled in youth.

The late Dr. Rivers, in his book on “Instinct and the Unconscious”, gives the best psychological analysis of fear with which I am acquainted. He points out that one way of meeting a dangerous situation is manipulative activity, and that those who are able to employ this method adequately do not, at least consciously, feel the emotion of fear. It is a valuable experience, which stimulates both self-respect and effort, to pass gradually from fear to skill. Even so simple a matter as learning to ride a bicycle will give this experience in a mild form. In the modern world, owing to increaseof mechanism, this sort of skill is becoming more and more important.

I suggest that training in physical courage should be as far as possible given by teaching skill in manipulating or controlling matter, not by means of bodily contests with other human beings. The kind of courage required for mountaineering, for manipulating an aeroplane, or for managing a small ship in a gale, seems to me far more admirable than the sort required in fighting. As far as possible, therefore, I should train school-children in forms of more or less dangerous dexterity, rather than in such things as football. Where there is an enemy to be overcome, let it be matter rather than other human beings. I do not mean that this principle should be applied pedantically, but that it should be allowed more weight in athletics than is the case at present.

There are, of course, more passive aspects of physical courage. There is endurance of hurts without making a fuss; this can be taught to children by not giving too much sympathy when they have small mishaps. A great deal of hysteria in later life consists mainly of an excessive desire for sympathy: people invent ailments in the hope of being petted and treated softly. This disposition can usually be prevented from developing by not encouraging children to cry over every scratch and bruise.In this respect, the education of the nursery is still much worse for girls than for boys. It is just as bad to be soft with girls as with boys; if women are to be the equals of men, they must not be inferior in the sterner virtues.

I come now to the forms of courage that are not purely physical. These are the more important forms, but it is difficult to develop them adequately except on a foundation of the more elementary kinds.

The fear of the mysterious has been already touched upon, in connection with childish terrors. I believe this fear to be instinctive, and of immense historical importance. Most superstition is due to it. Eclipses, earthquakes, plagues, and such occurrences arouse it in a high degree among unscientific populations. It is a very dangerous form of fear, both individually and socially; to eradicate it in youth is therefore highly desirable. The proper antidote to it is scientific explanation. It is not necessary that everything which is mysterious at first sight should be explained: after a certain number of explanations have been given, the child will assume that there are explanations in other cases, and it will become possible to say that the explanation cannot be given yet. The important thing is to produce, as soon as possible, the feeling that the sense of mystery is only due to ignorance, which can be dispelledby patience and mental effort. It is a remarkable fact that the very things which terrify children at first by their mysterious properties delight them as soon as fear is overcome. Thus mystery becomes an incentive to study, as soon as it ceases to promote superstition. My little boy, at the age of three and a half, spent many hours in absorbed solitary study of a garden syringe, until he had grasped how the water came in and the air came out, and how the converse process occurred. Eclipses can be explained so as to be intelligible even to very tiny children. Whatever either terrifies or interests the child should be explained if it is at all possible; this transforms fear into scientific interest by a process which is entirely along the lines of instinct and repeats the history of the race.

Some problems, in this connection, are difficult, and require much tact. The most difficult is death. The child soon discovers that plants and animals die. The chances are that somebody he knows will die before he is six years old. If he has at all an active mind, it occurs to him that his parents will die, and even that he will die himself. (This is more difficult to imagine.) These thoughts will produce a crop of questions, which must be answered carefully. A person whose beliefs are orthodox will have less difficulty than a person who thinks thatthere is no life after death. If you hold the latter view, do not say anything contrary to it; no consideration on earth justifies a parent in telling lies to his child. It is best to explain that death is a sleep from which people do not wake. This should be said without solemnity, as if it were the most ordinary thing imaginable. If the child worries about dying himself, tell him it is not likely to happen for many, many years. It would be useless, in early years, to attempt to instil a Stoic contempt for death. Do not introduce the topic, but do not avoid it when the child introduces it. Do all you can to make the child feel that there is no mystery about it. If he is a normal healthy child, these methods will suffice to keep him from brooding. At all ages, be willing to talk fully and frankly, to tell all that you believe, and to convey the impression that the subject is rather uninteresting. It is not good either for old or young to spend much time in thinking about death.

Apart from special fears, children are liable to a diffused anxiety. This is generally due to too much repression by their elders, and is therefore much less common than it used to be. Perpetual nagging, prohibition of noise, constant instruction in manners, used to make childhood a period of misery. I can remember, at the age of five, being told that childhood was the happiest period of life (a blank lie, in thosedays). I wept inconsolably, wished I were dead, and wondered how I should endure the boredom of the years to come. It is almost inconceivable, nowadays, that any one should say such a thing to a child. The child’s life is instinctively prospective: it is always directed towards the things that will become possible later on. This is part of the stimulus to the child’s efforts. To make the child retrospective, to represent the future as worse than the past, is to sap the life of the child at its source. Yet that is what heartless sentimentalists used to do by talking to the child about the joys of childhood. Fortunately the impression of their words did not last long. At most times, I believed the grown-ups must be perfectly happy, because they had no lessons and they could eat what they liked. This belief was healthy and stimulating.

Shyness is a distressing form of timidity, which is common in England and China, and parts of America, but rare elsewhere. It arises partly from having little to do with strangers, partly from insistence upon company manners. As far as is convenient, children should, after the first year, become accustomed to seeing strangers and being handled by them. As regards manners, they should, at first, be taught the bare minimum required for not being an intolerable nuisance.It is better to let them see strangers for a few minutes without restraint and then be taken away, than to expect them to stay in the room and be quiet. But after the first two years it is a good plan to teach them to amuse themselves quietly part of the day, with pictures or clay or Montessori apparatus or something of the kind. There should always be a reason for quiet that they can understand. Manners should not be taught in the abstract, except when it can be done as an amusing game. But as soon as the child can understand he should realize that parents also have their rights; he must accord freedom to others, and have freedom for himself to the utmost possible extent. Children easily appreciate justice, and will readily accord to others what others accord to them. This is the core of good manners.

Above all, if you wish to dispel fear in your children, be fearless yourself. If you are afraid of thunderstorms, the child will catch your fear the first time he hears thunder in your presence. If you express a dread of social revolution, the child will feel a fright all the greater for not knowing what you are talking about. If you are apprehensive about illness, so will your child be. Life is full of perils, but the wise man ignores those that are inevitable, and acts prudently but without emotion as regards those that can be avoided. You cannot avoiddying, but you can avoid dying intestate; therefore make your will, and forget that you are mortal. Rational provision against misfortune is a totally different thing from fear; it is a part of wisdom, whereas all fear is slavish. If you cannot avoid feeling fears, try to prevent your child from suspecting them. Above all, give him that wide outlook and that multiplicity of vivid interests that will prevent him, in later life, from brooding upon possibilities of personal misfortune. Only so can you make him a free citizen of the universe.

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