It is natural to fear the unknown, the unfamiliar, especially when the unknown produces mysterious effects which command our questioning attention. Once the unknown is explained, the fear it once inspired departs. Thus, among many examples, our forefathers feared eclipses; the Northern lights were once considered symbolic of the wrath of the Gods. With knowledge these and similar fears were removed. A child is a small sized primitive man; it is ignorant of many things that we adults have learned by experience. And so it fears the unfamiliar, the unknown, as thunder, darkness, the howling of winds, dark places, as caverns, etc. But when childhood has passed, these fears should pass with it. Should they remain, they should be minor only. Yet we find many adults who are still preys of childhood fears; for example, a certain individual is anxious, afraid, unhappy with the approach of every summer, simply because of a dread of storms.

Not only would many adults be prevented from en-during fears that belong to childhood, but many children would be made more happy if the parent endeavoured to remove or lessen the fears the child manifests. For example, if the child is taught the meaning of night and day, and is told that the night is not a time when ghosts and other creatures of superstition revel, fear of the dark will be lost; if the nature of thunder and lightning is pointed out, and the general harmlessness of both emphasized, the fear of the elements will disappear. The wise parent will seek out the nature of the fears the child may display, and, instead of laughing at them, will explain them away in a language the child understands. But the parent should be mindful that unless she practises her teaching, the latter will not profit; children are more prone to do as they see others doing rather than as others say. If the parent manifests lack of self-control, gives way to fears of any kind, the child is apt to succumb to the contagion. Moreover, it is folly to try to remove a child's fears if we are injudicious of our conversation before the child. Yet the latest murder story, superstitious beliefs, family troubles, accidents, and other fear-inspiring topics are discussed, all of which the child absorbs consciously or unconsciously. If we must talk of the sordid world, the sensational happenings of the day, mysterious things of one kind or another, then let it not be in the presence of children.

Childhood is usually a happy season, but there are some children who, "old for their years," often take their parents' difficulties to heart and brood about them, secretly, even more than the parents. A good example is afforded by Janet.1 This concerned a girl, aged sixteen, who kept turning her right wrist and regularly raising and lowering her right foot. At night she had a sort of somnambulism, during which she tumbled and tossed in her bed, and repeated aloud: "I must work, I must work," accompanied by the peculiar movements of the hand and foot. The condition was found due to the child's overhearing her parents bewailing their poverty, their inability to pay the landlord, which affected her very much. The movements represented her trade, which was the peculiar one of making doll's eyes. At her work, she moved a lathe by treading a pedal with her foot and turning a fly wheel with her right hand. The lesson to be drawn from this is that domestic problems, as well as other problems pertaining to the world in general or the home in particular, should if possible not be discussed in the child's presence. Childhood should be play time: the world has plenty of problems but these belong to adult life. If they are allowed to enter childhood's realm it is doubtful if the child will ever be truly happy.

Such are a few of the many ways in which mental impressions may be sources of night terrors. It may be argued that it is unnecessary to bring the child up in so protected a manner. This may be true in many cases but we should remember that all children are not alike, and what one child quickly banishes from mind, another retains permanently. If the child had the ability to solve these mental problems like the adult no harm would be done, but it is the tendency of the child to magnify everything and to distort ideas that are out of the ordinary because of its immature reasoning powers. It is particularly the quiet or imaginative child that is in need of careful supervision. Usually the oddities and fears of the quiet child are laughed at, which causes him to become more secretive and more the victim of f ears and perplexities, originating solely in his imagination.

1 Major Symptoms of Hysteria, 1907, p. 127, The Macmillan Co.

It is not alone to ward off night terrors that the child should be guarded from fear, and that its mental problems should be adequately solved, but also because experiences in childhood are frequently the sources of many fears and worries of adult life. It is not at all hard to find adults who are terrorized by open places, closed places, who fear ships, trains, animals and countless other things. These fears seem to normal people to be absurd; so also do they to the afflicted, yet the latter are controlled by them, and are at a loss to explain why they should be slaves to their ideas.

We should constantly remember that everything we experience by way of the senses leaves some impression on the mind. Many of the impressions are indifferent, and occasion no future trouble. Others may have some emotional tone, trivial in nature, which may instigate certain peculiarities, as strong likes and dislikes, but none that produce mental pain. Others, because they were received when the nervous system was more impressionable than usual, as during a period of ill health, or because they were of a particularly vivid or personal nature make a very profound impression upon the mind, and manifest themselves in ways which interfere with the individual's success and happiness. As a rule, we are more likely to be unfavourably influenced by experiences of a painful nature than those which please us. As we all know, we like to return to places where we have had a good time, and we instinctively tend to avoid places where we have met with unpleasantness. But a more common, yet not generally understood example of the tenacity with which experiences cling to us is shown by the immediate like or dislike which we often feel toward a new acquaintance. We may give various rea-, sons for our like or dislike, but the real reason is that the new acquaintance reminds us, unconsciously, of some one we have met at a previous time who has caused us pleasantness or unpleasantness. The new acquaintance may have but one feature that stirs up in the unconscious mind the memory of a former experience; as a brogue, a way of laughing, a tilt of the nose, a certain gesture, etc. The unconscious mind never forgets, and, unknown to us, prompts us to be friendly or careful when we encounter an object which has made, or which resembles an object which has made a pronounced influence on us. The like or dislike which we have for certain ties, certain colours of hair or dresses, certain places, etc., may be explained in the same way; namely, if we like a certain thing very much it is because this thing has features which are associable with a former experience of pleasure; if we dislike, it is because the thing has unpleasant associations.