ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a certain amount of light on the development of the notion of air. To the child, air is simply impetus or movement sub-stantified, or, as Sully puts it, " reified". The chapter provides the origin of air leads us quite naturally to two of the most spontaneous of children's beliefs about air: ideas about the formation of wind, and explanations about the mechanism of breathing. The wind is made "of water", and these clouds are closely connected with rain and bad weather. As to dreams in which breathing is regarded as an adjuvant to sleep, would seem to show that the child's identification of dreams with air is not an entirely verbal matter. According to Jones, whose thesis has been very ably summarised and discussed by Larguier des Bancels, the comparison made by the Ancients between soul and breath arises solely from childish ideas about intestinal flatulence.
