since the reasoning that prompts them is too searching. A little boy
shocked and vexed his grandmother, who was trying to teach him the
elements of theology, by asking "Who made God?" It is very likely
that every normal child has asked the same question in one form or
another. This attempt to reach back to the very beginning of causes
resembles in many ways the speculations of the mediaeval
metaphysicians, and should certainly not be discouraged. We need
not, on the other hand, make the effort to answer every question a
child may ask, for at a certain stage in his development he will get
the habit of asking questions without really caring for the answers.
But the questions are worth hearing, in most cases, just to help us
understand how the child _does_ reason. Some of the questions
indicate a great deal of reasoning of a very valuable kind. When the
little boy asks, "Why don't I see two things with my two eyes?" or
when the little girl looks up from her dolls and asks, "Am I real,
or just pretend, like my doll?" they show that they have been
thinking. When a child has passed through the metaphysical stage of
reasoning, he will be more interested in animals and other objects
of Nature; and his questions will have to do more with the operation
of processes--how he grows, and how fishes breathe in the water, and
how birds fly. Later, he wants to know how things work, what makes
the locomotive go, how the noise goes through the telephone, how the
incubator makes chickens come out of eggs. The reasoning of the
child may lead to weird conclusions, but it is real reasoning, and
can be improved not by being ridiculed, nor by being suppressed, but
by being sympathetically understood and encouraged.

Perhaps the most serious phase of the peculiarities of children's
reasoning appears with older children when it comes to reasoning
about right and wrong conduct. Professor Swift, of Washington