ABSTRACT
When Ellen Key prophesied that the 20th century would be the century of the child she little knew in what sense her prophecy would be true. She thought it would be the epoch when children would be given their rights at last, be studied as true individuals having interests different from those of adults and satisfied as such. Children, lacking reason, rely on phantasy and like the savage have no power of grasping facts for what they are. Shadows are not the interception of light but ghosts, spectres, portents, things to fear and frighten others with. Every substitute for democracy is similar; each is anti-intellectualistic. The logic of persuasion is the logic of the brute, and the child is of course as close to the animal as any human being other than an idiot can get. Extremism is typical of the child-mind, which believes in the universal applicability of the law of the excluded middle.
