The Cool Web Life, Consciousness, and Existence Quotes

When Graves says that children can't say how hot the day is, he's also saying that children feel the heat of the day in a way that might be unbearable to adults. This is because children aren't able to compare a hot day to all of the other hot days they've experienced, because they don't have the language necessary to think in terms of hot days and cold days. So every hot day they experience hits them with the weight of the hottest day ever.

But no only are children unable to talk about how hot the day is. They also can't explain to adults how dreadful it is to see soldiers drumming by. This could mean one of two things. The children either find the soldiers scary and are unable to talk about it, or they don't find the soldiers scary because they don't understand the fact that these men are trained to go kill other people.

According to Graves, our ability to talk is capable of warping our mind and actually changing our physical experience of the world. For example, imagine if you are out on an 80-degree day. Now that's probably pretty hot. But if you think about it as the hottest day you've ever experienced, you might quickly remember that there was a 100-degree day only a week earlier, which makes the current day not seem too bad. Children wouldn't be able to reason their way through an experience like this, since they don't have language (or thermometers).