It is not the purpose of this chapter to recommend anger, even of the most approved sort; but if we will express the emotion at all, let us do it as well as we did in our infancy!

Channels so free as this would necessitate, would lessen our temptations to such expression; we, with mature intellects, would see it for what it is, and the next generation of babies would less often exercise their wonderfully balanced little bodies in such an unlovely waste.

Note the perfect openness of a baby throat as the child coos out his expression of happiness.  Could anything be more free, more like the song of a bird in its obedience to natural laws?  Alas, for how much must we answer that these throats are so soon contracted, the tones changed to so high a pitch, the voice becoming so shrill and harsh!  Can we not open our throats and become as these little children?

The same openness in the infant organism is the child’s protection in many dangers.  Falls that would result in breaks, strains, or sprains in us, leave the baby entirely whole save in its “feelings,” and often there, too, if the child has been kept in the true state mentally.

Watch a baby take its food, and contrast it with our own ways of eating.  The baby draws it in slowly and evenly, with a quiet rhythm which is in exact accord with the rhythmic action of its digestive organs.  You feel each swallow taken in the best way for repair, and for this reason it seems sometimes as if one could see a baby grow while feeding.  There cannot be a lovelier glimpse of innocent physical repose than the little respites from the fatigue of feeding which a baby often takes.  His face moist, with open pores, serene and satisfied, he views the hurry about him as an interesting phase of harmless madness.  He is entirely outside of it until self-consciousness is quite developed.

The sleep of a little child is another opportunity for us to learn what we need.  Every muscle free, every burden dropped, each breath carries away the waste, and fills its place with the needed substance of increasing growth and power.

In play, we find the same freedom.  When one idea is being executed, every other is excluded.  They do not think dolls while they roll hoop!

They do not think of work while they play.  Examine and see how we do both.  The baby of one year, sitting on the shore burying his fat hand in the soft warm sand, is for the time being alive only to its warmth and softness, with a dim consciousness of the air and color about him.  If we could engross ourselves as fully and with as simple a pleasure, we should know far more of the possible power of our minds for both work and rest.

It is interesting to watch normal children in these concentrations, because from their habits we may learn so much which may improve our own sadly different manner of living.  It is also interesting but pathetic to see the child gradually leaving them as he approaches boyhood, and to trace our part in leading him away from the true path.