But
he is not content with merely recording and analyzing his childish
impressions; he implies, or even asserts, that these "fancies from
afar are brought"--that the child's view of the world reveals to him
truths which the man with difficulty retains or recovers. This is
not the usual teaching of science, yet it would be hard to assert
that it is absolutely impossible. The child's instincts may well be
supposed to partake in larger measure of the general instincts of
the race, in smaller measure of the special instincts of his own
country and century, than is the case with the man. Now the feelings
and beliefs of each successive century will probably be, on the whole,
superior to those of any previous century. But this is not
universally true; the teaching of each generation does not thus sum
up the results of the whole past. And thus the child, to whom in a
certain sense the past of humanity is present,--who is living
through the whole life of the race in little, before he lives the
life of his century in large,--may possibly dimly apprehend something
more of truth in certain directions than is visible to the adults
around him.
But, thus qualified, the intuitions of infancy might seem scarcely
worth insisting on.
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