The psychology of youth / by Edgar James Swift.

  • Swift, Edgar James, 1860-1932.
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The psychology of youth / by Edgar James Swift. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    children and men do not have the same timidity; the instinctive fear of wild animals and harmless reptiles; fear of high winds, even among those who have never experienced cyclones or tornadoes; and agoraphobia, an inexplicable fear on any other basis than as a survival of the time when exposure in the open meant death. Water also has played a tremendously important part among primitive people in their conceptions of life, as well as in folk literature, in philosophic speculation, and in religious cults. Professor Bol¬ ton1 has collected a large amount of data showing the curious attitude of children toward water. All of it is rich in racial memories. The play of children again offers strong prima facie evidence of the irresistible influence of this racial heritage. Investigations of the sports of primitive people always impress one with the fact that certain games are perennial. They are modi¬ fied from age to age, but they are always the same old games. Spinning tops, archery, guessing games, hidden-ball, dice, ball and racket (in which the racket is strikingly like that used to-day in tennis), shinny, foot-ball, quoits, and cat’s cradle are a few of those pictured by Mr. Stewart Culin2 in his 1 American Journal of Psychology, vol. io, p. 169. 2 “Twenty-fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1902-03.” See also “The Study of Man,” by Alfred C. Haddon.