Social Moods.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 414, 21 April 1904, Page 7

Social Moods.

■ | ?'£.* THE WHIMS OP CHILDEEN.

30PB; LOMBBOBC has just contrijlrW buted to i]xe Italian journal tauK) *Nuova Antologia/ a'most interesting paper on .'The Moods and Fancies 3t 6HiioTren.» 4 jgHe has an excellent term to describe the remarkable tenacity withwhich children adhere v <io lihat-which they have accustomed .to-;- He calls it misoaeismus, which means ' a dislike of that which is new.' *lt is characteristic/ he gpes ©a to say, 'of children ofcthslmosfr tender age. 'lt-shews! itself in *the ,perßistency,..j?ith which th|y repeat some'wbrd? unknown'io' them, jirhich they have heard, or which,.ia their efforts to taik, they have, as it were, and^wLich,,,they, r continue to apply in a certain"sense even after they have been taught and fully understand the meaning ?os' the proper word or expression for it.:■>: Once a child expresses a thought, Jn,a certain waj, or has acquired the practice of "a certaingesture, then it instinctively makes use of the same word and thei same gesture in all analogous cases. %

I 'This adherence to acquired 'customs' explains how it is that children are so fond of hearing the same story read over and over again to them; and) moreover, expecting that story to be told in exactly the same form. Every parent aad nurse ißust hate noticed. that a child at once corrects even the slightest deviation from the usual way in whioh a fairy tale is told. They like, also, to hear the same lullaby. A nurse finds it easy to get a child to go to sleep if she hums some soft melody which the little one is well acquainted with; but if she singß anything new the ohild in all probability remains, -wide awake.' |' These fancies,' says the professor, in, another part of his essay, 'do not is any way call for anxiety; for the dbiike cf=that which is new i 3 a normal physiological trait of childhood. This di.liko gradually declines as the child gets more and more accustomed to the multiplicity aad great variety of the outside stimulations.' ...

Very interesting and instructive are Professor,; Lombroso's references to abnormal children and their physical char, acterietics. His theories are of a too highly 'scientific and academic character for popular exposition;, but it ie interest-, ing to note that, according to the anther, there are! a great many children, quite normal and respect; both, mentally and physically/who give way at times to fits of rage. Some of the greatest of men, it would appear, were quite uncontrollable on certain occasions, This was the; case with Goethe, Heine, and Virchow, and it is said of theu iastuamed that his parents, almost despairing of what would become of him,i sent? him :to a bearding v school, mainly with the object of plaoingihim under strict control. Alfred deMussetwas another of these troublesome children. One day, says his brother, Paul de Moaset, while; describing the earlier part of his life, he broke, with a billiard ball, all the large mirrors of his

parents' drawing-room j then he cut the new .curtains with a pair of scissors rjind spots of red sealing wax His mother hesitated, to scold him, for she knew that he behaved in this way really against his will, being then, as he was unfortunately in later years, a viotim of sudden attacks 6t nfeivoufnesser mental aberration. ■y '" i», ,~- -\. .;':' ~' ''-;■> /"'- , *• . .' '. '•"■ .