You can bring the
spoon to the child, but three nurses cannot make him drink. This, then,
is the occasion of the ultimate resistance. He raises the standard of
revolution, and casts every tradition and every precept to the wind on
which it flies. He has his elders at a disadvantage; for if they pursue
him with a grotesque spoon their maxims and commands are, at the moment,
still more grotesque. He is committed to the wild novelty of absolute
refusal. He not only refuses, moreover, he disbelieves; he throws
everything over. Told that the medicine is not so bad, this nihilist
laughs.
Medicine apart, a minor ailment is an interest and a joy. "Am I unwell
to-day, mother?" asks a child with all his faith and confidence at the
highest point.
THE YOUNG CHILD
The infant of literature "wails" and wails feebly, with the invariability
of a thing unproved and taken for granted. Nothing, nevertheless, could
be more unlike a wail than the most distinctive cry whereon the child of
man catches his first breath. It is a hasty, huddled outcry, sharp and
brief, rather deep than shrill in tone. With all deference to old
moralities, man does not weep at beginning this world; he simply lifts up
his new voice much as do the birds in the Zoological Gardens, and with
much the same tone as some of the duck kind there. He does not weep for
some months to come.
Pages:
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63