Dictionary

child-nature en · NOUN

Meanings

1. (uncountable) The natural behaviour and dispositions of children, as opposed to adults.
   • We all admit now that the Child does not come into the world with a mental tabula rasa of entire forgetfulness but on the contrary as the possessor of vast stores of sub-conscious memory, derived from its ancestral inheritances; we all admit that a certain grace and intuitive insight and even prophetic quality, in the child-nature, are due to the harmonization of these racial inheritances in the infant, even before it is born; and that after birth the impact of the outer world serves rather to break up and disintegrate this harmony than to confirm and strengthen it. 1920, Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., published 1921, page 173: