ons, 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.

We should probably come considerably nearer to the true conception of
things if we treated all grown-up persons, of all titles and types, with
precisely that dark affection and dazed respect with which we treat the
infantile limitations. A child has a difficulty in achieving the miracle
of speech, consequently we find his blunders almost as marvellous as his
accuracy. If we only adopted the same attitude towards Premiers and
Chancellors of the Exchequer, if we genially encouraged their stammering
and delightful attem