Part 27 (1/2)
”At a very early age the child becoh various processes that his own hand which he has seenacross his line of vision is a part of himself, and that he can move it himself He has discovered power He then enters upon his career The saovern his behaviour for the rest of his life comes into operation, and he wants to use this new-found power for some purpose that will increase his enjoyment of life Up to this time he has had only one pleasure, and that was to do with the co discovered power over his fist he therefore wants to put it in hisoes on working he learns that his power increases with effort, and now his motive is modified At first it was purely materialistic; he wanted to have his fist in his mouth Noants to put it there
His interest is in doing the thing rather than in having it
”This is the spiritual element in his present desire, and now co the behaviour of the child, has noticed his coue sets in, and,the motive of the child she helps him to put his fist in his mouth But that is just what the child did not want, and he protests violently against this interference with his purpose in life
”The ain makes a false analysis of the situation, and concludes that his protest is the result of his disappointives hi with the spiritual unrest of her child, and thus drugs his creative faculties”
I have said that the infant is an egoist If his egoise of life, the self-assertive stage, with a huge capacity for being altruistic This stage coe of six or seven But if the child has had parents who believe incharacter he will have had many severe lectures about his selfishness These lectures will not have cured his selfishness; they will have driven it underground for the moment The selfishness of adults is one result of the moral lecture in childhood, for no wish or ee of self-assertion is the rowdy age, and naturally it is now that father uses his authority The child is still ego-centric, but in a different way At the age of three he was the king of the world; at the age of seven he is the king of the other boys who play with hi with society, and he uses society as a background against which he may play the hero Thus be bleeds Jack's nose for no reason in the world other than that he thus asserts himself If he plays horses with the boy next door he insists upon being the driver
It is at this period that he should be free from authority If authority in the shape of father or teacher or policeman steps in to suppress his self-assertion the boy becomes an enemy of all authority and very often anti-social The ”rebel” in the Socialist caood specimen of the man whose self-assertive period was injured by authority, and I suspect that the truculent drunk is letting off the steaht
The third stage in the evolution of a child is the adolescent stage
For the first time the boy becomes a unit in society Hitherto he has played for his own hand; his gaames in which personal proas the desired aim Now he feels that he is one of a tea i_, gives ten to sixteen as the gang age
These divisions are purely arbitrary, and children differ eneral knowledge of these three phases I have often seen a school prescribe cricket or hockey for boys who are still in the self-assertive stage The result was that, having no teaame when the uirls of eight to eleven, and it was a tiresome business Quite often when a boy had been boith the first ball, he would thron the bat in disgust and refuse to give the other side an innings There was nothing wrong with the children; rong was that a tearoup
Duncan and two other doolf yarns I reood ones, and they all trotted out their favourites I liked Duncan's best
An oldishhis way to the tenth hole at St Andrews, and, when he ultimately holed out in nineteen, he turned to his caddie
”Caddie,” he cried in disgust, ”this is the worst game I ever played”
The caddie stared at him open-asped in amazement
Why are there no cricket or football stories, I wonder? Possibly because they are teaainst a crowd A crowd is an i I never heard of a joke about the ainst a nation, and a nation is a crowd? Take the joke about the Scot as brought up at Bow Street for being drunk and disorderly Thesentence, asked the accused if he had anything to say for himself
”Weel, a to London yesterday, and I got into bad company in the train”
”Bad coot into the train at Glesga Central I had twa bottles o' whuskey in , anda' the other men in ainst a long-suffering race, but is it so in reality? Make the traveller an 'Oodersfield' man on his way to see the Cup-tie Final at Chelsea, and it is not changed in essence Only it has become a convention that the Scot is a hard drinker It is the personal touch that h at
I presulishlishmen are mean themselves No joke appeals to a man unless it releases some repressed wish of his own No one expects a devout Roman Catholic to see the point of a joke about extreme unction The professional comedian to be a success reat huh at And that bringsthere are two types of man One is called an extrovert (Latin, to turn outwards); he identifies himself with the crowd, and he lives the life of the crowd Lloyd George and Horatio Bottomley are typical extroverts; they see, and unconsciously they speak and act as the croants them to speak and act dickens was another, and that is why he has so universal an appeal
The other type, the introvert type, turns inward They do not identify themselves with the crowd What the public wants does not concern theht to want This class includes the thinkers, the men who are in advance of their time An introvert is never popular with the crowd because the crowd never understands hiet away fro to the personal effect they have on himself Yet to the unconscious of the introvert crowd opinion is of the greatest importance