The Defendant by G.K. Chesterton

The two facts which attract almost every normal person to children are, / first, that they are very serious, and, secondly, that they are in / consequence very happy. They are jolly with the completeness which is / possible only in the absence of humour. The most unfathomable schools / and sages have never attained to the gravity which dwells in the eyes of / a baby of three months old. It is the gravity of astonishment at the / universe, and astonishment at the universe is not mysticism, but a / transcendent common-sense. The fascination of children lies in this: / that with each of them all things are remade, and the universe is put / again upon its trial. As we walk the streets and see below us those / delightful bulbous heads, three times too big for the body, which mark / these human mushrooms, we ought always primarily to remember that within / every one of these heads there is a new universe, as new as it was on / the seventh day of creation. In each of those orbs there is a new system / of stars, new grass, new cities, a new sea.

There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion / teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand / the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we / have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the / stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is / the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and / which will support it to the end. Maturity, with its endless energies / and aspirations, may easily be convinced that it will find new things to / appreciate; but it will never be convinced, at bottom, that it has / properly appreciated what it has got. We may scale the heavens and find / new stars innumerable, but there is still the new star we have not / found -- that on which we were born.