Very  young  children,  if  normal,  will  never  fail  to  be  very
curious  about  the  advent  of  a  new  infant  stranger  in  their
family.    Here  it  would  seem  that  certain  provisional  answers


Il8  CHILD  LIFE  AND  EDUCATION

to  their  inevitable  questions  are  necessary  for  years  too  tender
either  to  understand  or  to  respect  reserves  that  society
demands.  Their  questions,  however  phrased,  call  for  but
little  in  the  way  of  answer,  and  it  would  be  mere  pedantry
and  affectation  to  deluge  a  three-year-old  child  with  physio-
logical explanations  in  detail.  It  is,  however,  essential  that
the  myth  should  be  such  as  to  give  some  impression  that  the
mystery  is  something  sweet  and  sacred,  and  if  we  had  a  com-
plete collection  of  answers,  —  the  milkman,  the  stork,  the
doctor,  the  gardener,  God,  the  angels,  etc.,  as  bringers  of
the  new  baby,  —  we  should  find  very  great  differences  not
usually  sufficiently  recognized  and  respected.  To  do  this,
and  to  devise  a  mythic  answer  that  is  true  to  the  heart,
instincts,  and  needs  of  the  child  in  this  brief  period,  is  a
pedagogical  problem  still  open  for  solution.  Certain  it  is
that  these  highly  sensitized  juvenile  minds  can,  by  eight
years  of  age,  be  so  told  of  the  modes  of  fertilizing  flowers
that  some  of  them  will  begin  to  divine  analogies  with  the
animal  world.  The  phenomena  in  the  latter  probably  ought
to  be  taught  for  the  simpler  forms  first  rather  than  the
higher,  and  the  indirect  psychic  functions  of  love  and  the
meaning  of  marriage  are  modes  of  approach  which  may
give  due  sacredness  and  solemnity  to  this  instruction.
