I know a child not yet quite three, who, by the maddeningly persistent interrogations characteristic of his age, has succeeded in extracting from a pair of gardening elders an explanation of the difference between weeds and flowers, and who has been so struck by this information that he has, entirely of his own volition, enlisted himself in the army of natural-born reformers. With the personal note of very little children, who find it so impossible to think in terms at all abstract, he has constructed in his baby mind an exciting drama in the garden, unfolding itself before his eyes; a drama in which he acts, by virtue of his comparatively huge size and giant strength, the generous rôle of _deus ex machina_, constantly rescuing beauty beset by her foes. He throws himself upon a weed, uproots it, and casts it away with the righteously indignant exclamation, “Horrid old weed! Stop eating the flowers’ dinner!”
I do not think that it can be truthfully said that there are no moral elements in his life. He is a baby Sir Galahad, with roses for his maidens in distress. He has felt and exercised and strengthened the same impulse that drove Judge Lindsey to his battle for the children of Denver against the powers of graft. He has recognized spontaneously his duty to aid the good and useful against their enemies, the responsibility into which he was born when he opened his eyes upon the world of mingled good and evil.
All this is not a fanciful literary flight of the imagination. It is not sentimentality. It is calling things by their real names. Because the little child’s capacity for a genuine moral impulse is small and has, like all his other capacities, little continuity, is no reason why we should not think clearly about it and recognize it for what it is--the key to the future. Because he “makes a play” of his good action and is not priggishly aware of his virtue is all the more reason for us to be thankful, for that is a proof of its unforced existence in his spirit. Just as the child “makes a play” out of his geometric insets, and is not pedantically aware that he is acquiring knowledge, so, to take an instance from the Casa dei Bambini, the little girls who set the tables and bring in the soup are only vastly interested in the fun of “playing waitress.” It is their elders who perceive that they are unconsciously and painlessly acquiring the habit of willing and instinctive service to others, which will aid them in many a future conscious and painful struggle against their own natural selfishness and inertia.
