The grown-up
is bursting to explain, and ought to be humoured; or else he obviously
doesn't know, and ought to be shown up.
But these would not be my motives if the editor of _The Children's
Encyclopaedia_ took me for a walk and allowed me to ask him questions.
The fact that light travels at so many hundred thousand miles an hour
does not interest me; I should accept the information and then ask him
my next question, "How did they find out?" That is always the
intriguing part of the business. Who first realized that light was not
instantaneous? What put him up to it? How did he measure its velocity?
The fact (to take another case) that a cricket chirps by rubbing his
knees together does not interest me; I want to know why he chirps. Is
it involuntary, or is it done with the idea of pleasing? Why does a
bird sing? The editor is prepared to tell me why a parrot is able to
talk, but that is a much less intriguing matter. Why does a bird sing?
I do not want an explanation of a thrush's song or a nightingale's,
but why does a silly bird go on saying "chiff-chaff" all day long?
Is it, for instance, happiness or hiccups?
Possibly these things are explained in some other volume than the one
which fell to me.
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