universe, and astonishment at the universe is not mysticism, but a transcendent common-sense.  The fascination of children lies in this:  that with each of them all things are remade, and the universe is put again upon its trial.  As we walk the streets and see below us those delightful bulbous heads, three times too big for the body, which mark these human mushrooms, we ought always primarily to remember that within every one of these heads there is a new universe, as new as it was on the seventh day of creation.  In each of those orbs there is a new system of stars, new grass, new cities, a new sea.

There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything.  Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse.  This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end.  Maturity, with its endless energies and aspirations, may easily be convinced that it will find new things to appreciate; but it will never be convinced, at bottom, that it has properly appreciated what it has got.  We may scale the heavens and find new stars innumerable, but there is still the new star we have not found—­that on which we were born.

But the influence of children goes further than its first trifling effort of remaking heaven and earth.  It forces us actually to remodel our conduct in accordance with this revolutionary theory of the marvellousness of all things.  We do (even when we are perfectly simple or ignorant)—­we do actually treat talking in children as marvellous, walking in children as marvellous, common intelligence in children as marvellous.  The cynical philosopher fancies he has a victory in this matter—­that he can laugh when he shows that the words or antics of the child, so much admired by its worshippers, are common enough.  The fact is that this is precisely where baby-worship is so profoundly right.  Any words and any antics in a lump of clay are wonderful, the child’s words and antics are wonderful, and it is only fair to say that the philosopher’s words and antics are equally wonderful.

The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right, and our attitude towards grown-up people that is wrong.  Our attitude towards our equals in age consists in a servile solemnity, overlying a considerable degree of indifference or disdain.  Our attitude towards children consists in a condescending indulgence, overlying an unfathomable respect.  We bow to grown people, take off our hats to them, refrain from contradicting them flatly, but we do not appreciate them properly.  We make puppets of children, lecture them, pull their hair, and reverence, love, and fear them.  When we reverence anything in the mature, it is their virtues or their wisdom, and this is an easy matter.  But we reverence the faults and follies of children.