characteristics of the feelings in Early Childhood?

They center about self, and instinctive feelings, such as hunger and
thirst, pain and pleasure, fear, pride and anger, are strongest. Love
is present in its first stages, not the self sacrificing sort, but love
given in response to love and attention. The child's feelings are easily
aroused, fleeting, and usually more or less superficial. Abstractions,
such as beauty, duty, responsibility, and relationships in general have
but slight effect upon his soul, and the lack of feeling in these
directions is commonly expressed by saying that the higher feelings are
not yet developed.

The child's feelings in response to religious truth can not, therefore,
be those of the adult. He will feel love for God as he feels it for his
mother, because of His love, provision and care for him. God's power and
the mystery that envelops Him will awaken a response of awe and wonder
in his soul, and absolute confidence that He can do anything. But this
same power and majesty, carelessly presented, may call out fear, not the
godly sort that is afraid of grieving Him by sin, but the physical fear
that casts out love. He does not have the sense of moral obligation to
God, for that again goes into the abstraction of thought. His religious
life begins in feeling, pure and simple, and his creed is in I John, "We
love Him because He first loved us."

Most interesting lines of discussion open out from the subject, but they
are not pertinent to the chosen theme of this book. The only legitimate
question is, "What is the work of nurture in connection with the
feelings?"

Before this can be answered, the purpose of the feelings in character