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The Romeo Error – Lyall Watson

The development of a child's awareness of death seems to pass through several clearly defined phases. First of all very young children, less than five years old, do not recognize death at all. Everything is regarded as living. A child might bring home several pebbles at a time so that these should have company and not feel lonely, or perhaps turn a scarecrow round so that he should not always have to look at the same view. Children of this age assume a perfect continuity between all things, they make no attempt to differentiate between living and non-living bodies. This may be because they possess no criteria by which to make such distinctions, because they have not yet been taught the supposed differences, but it is very tempting to compare this primitive animism of the child with the new "cosmic consciousness". Knowing with what extraordinary clarity children often see the most complex things, I cannot help wondering how much truth there may be in this widespread early belief in universal life. When children from Hungary, China, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States all come up with the same notions, can we afford simply to dismiss them as childish ?