We will feed the child’s instincts with the old myths if we wish to secure his lasting interest in nature.
A trifle more difficult for the story teller to meet is the child’s instinct for self preservation. In the case of the lower animals this instinct manifests itself in a perpetual warfare waged tooth and nail against its life enemies, with a result epitomized, always, in the survival of the stronger animal. Primitive man waged a similar warfare. With a peaceful civilization this condition of individual warfare has been done away with, but the instinct to fight for his rights, to preserve his _ego_, to keep selfishly for his own certain _things_ is a part of the child’s mental heritage from his forbears. The rhythm instinct, the _Nature_ instinct are the gold mine in child development. The _self_ instinct, while in a measure necessary in fitting a child for the life struggle, should be, to a certain extent, inhibited. This inhibition may be brought about through the medium of stories.
Selecting just the right ethical stories to tell a child having in mind making him unselfish is a delicate matter. Each story should present some problem in ethics that is likely to come up in the child’s life. Moreover, the moral of the story should be veiled but made so obvious by the suspensive treatment and climax of the story, that the child unconsciously makes it his own and applies the lesson to his own life. The moral of unselfishness is rather the _result_ of the story than a part of it as the children make its obvious application to their own lives.
The well-known folk tale of “The Little Red Hen” teaches a lesson of unselfishness. The selfish pig, cat and frog are deprived of their portion of the freshly baked loaf of bread because they had no share in its making. Kipling’s story, “How the Camel Got his Hump” in the “Just So Stories” has the same moral of forgetfulness of self. Laura E. Richards’ story, “The Coming of the King,” beautifully illustrates the type of story that inhibits the selfish instinct. It draws a wonderful word picture of the children’s garden made ready for the King and finally welcoming a beggar in ministering to whose needs, however, the children find joy.