The case of destructive cruelty is somewhat different. Let me give a well-observed instance. A little boy of two years and two months, "after nearly killing a fly on the window pane, seemed surprised and disturbed, looking round for an explanation, then gave it himself: 'Mr. Fy dom (gone) to by by'; but he would not touch it or another fly again—a doubt evidently remained, and he continued uneasy about it." Here we have, I think, the instinctive attitude of a child toward the outcome of its destructive impulse. And this destructive impulse, which as we know becomes more clearly destructive when experience has taught what result follows, is not necessarily cruel in the sense of including an idea of the animal's suffering. Animal movement, especially that of tiny things, has something exciting and provoking about it. The child's own activity, and the love of power which is bound up with it, impel him to arrest the movement. This is the meaning, I suspect, of the fascination of the fly on the window pane, and other small capturable creatures, as later on of birds. The cat's prolonged chase of the mouse, into which something of a dramatic make-believe enters, owes its zest to a like delight in the realization of the captor's power.
Along with this love of power there goes often something of a child's fierce, untamable curiosity. A boy of four, finding that his mother was shocked at hearing him express a wish to see a pigeon which a dog had just killed, remarked: "Is it rude to look at a dead pigeon? I want to see where its blood is." I am disposed to think that the crushing of flies and moths and the pulling of worms to pieces, and so forth, are prompted by this curiosity. The child wants to see where the blood is, what the bones are like, how the wings are fastened in, and so forth.
A like combination of love of power and of curiosity seems to underlie other directions of childish destructiveness, as the breaking of toys and the pulling of flowers to pieces. In certain cases, as in C's destruction of a whole garden of peonies, the love of power or effect overtops and outlives the curiosity, becoming a sort of savage greed.[1]
I think, then, that we may give the little child the benefit of the doubt, and not assign its rough handling of sentient things to a wish to inflict pain, or even to an indifference to pain of which he is clearly aware. Wanton activity, the curiosity of the experimenter, and delight in realizing one's power and producing an effect, seem sufficient to explain most of the alleged cruelty of the
- ↑ Ruskin tells us that when a child he pulled flowers to pieces "in no morbid curiosity, but in admiring wonder" (Præterita, 88). Goethe gives an amusing account of his wholesale throwing of crockery out of the window, inspired by the delight of watching the droll way in which it was smashed on the pavement.
