^earning anb ^abor. 
 
 , LIBRARY 
 
 r 
 
 University of Illinois. 
 
 CLASS. BOOK. VOLUME. 
 
 L„l,'=i V. 
 
 Accession No. 
 
 
M32 
 
fs'o 
 
 kn "b 
 
 i 
 
 
|nl£ntalt0nal Stxm 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 WILLIAM T. HARKIS, Ph. D., LL. D. 
 
 Volume XXXV, 
 
INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES. 
 
 12 mo, cloth, uniform binding. 
 
 'piIE INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES was projected for the piir- 
 pose of briiminp: to^^ether in orderly arrangement the bcHt writingH, new and 
 old, upon educational eubjects, and presenting a coni])lete courHe of reading and 
 training for teacherfl j^enerally. It is edited by William T. Hakuih, LL. D., 
 United States Commissioner of Education, who has contributed for the different 
 volumes in the way of introduction, analysis, and commentary. The volumes aie 
 tastefully and substantially bound in uniform style. 
 
 VOLUMES NOW READY. 
 
 1. The Philosophy of Kducatlon. By Johann K. F. Rosenkranz, Doc- 
 
 tor of Theology and Professor of Philosophy, University of KOnigslx*rg. 
 Translated by Anna C. Brackett. Second edition, revised, with Com- 
 mentary and complete Analysis. $1.50. 
 
 2. A History of Education. By F. V. N. Painter, A.M., Professor of 
 
 Modern Languages and Literature, Roanoke College, Va. $1.50. 
 
 8 The Kise and Early Constitution of Universities. With a Sur- 
 vey OF Medijejval Education. By S. S. Laurie, LL. D., Professor of 
 the Institutes and History of Education, University of Edinburgh. $1.50. 
 
 4. The Ventilation and Warming of School Huildings. By Gilbert 
 
 B. Morrison, Teacher of Physics and Chemistry, Kansas City High School. 
 
 $ 1 . 00 . 
 
 5. The Education of Man. By Friedrich Froebel. Translated and an- 
 
 notated by W. N. Hailmann, A. M., Superintendent of Public Schools, 
 La Porte, Ind. $1.50. 
 
 6. Elementary Psychology and Education. By Joseph Baldwin^ 
 
 A. M., LL. D., author of ‘‘ The Art of School Management.” $1.50. 
 
 7. The Senses and the Will. (Part I of “The Mind op the Child.”) 
 
 By W. Preyer, Professor of Physiolo^ in Jena. Translated by II . W. 
 Brown, Teacher in the State Normal School at Worcester, Mass. $1.50. 
 
 8. Memory: What it is and How to Improve it. By David Kat, 
 
 F. R. G. S., author of “Education and Educators,” etc. $1.50. 
 
 9. The Development of the Intellect. (Part II of “ The Mind op the 
 
 Child.”) By W. Preyer, Professor of Physiology in Jena. Translated by 
 H. W. Brown. $1.50. 
 
 10. How to Study Geography. A Practical Exposition of Methods and 
 
 Devices in Teaching Geography which apply the Principles and Plans of 
 Ritter and Guyot. By Francis W. Parker, Principal of the Cook County 
 (Illinois) Normal School. $1.50. 
 
 11. Education in the United States : Its History from the Earliest 
 
 Settlements. By Richard G. Boone, A.M., Professor of Pedagogy, 
 Indiana University. $1.50. 
 
 12. European Schools ; or. What I Saw in the Schools op Germany, 
 
 France, Austria, and Switzerland. By L. R. Klemm, Ph. D., Principal 
 of the Cincinnati Technical School. Fully illustrated. $2.00. 
 
 13. Practical Hints for the Teachers of Public Schools. By George 
 
 Howland, Superintandent of the Chicago Public Schools. $1.00. 
 
 14. Pestalozzi : His Uife and Work. By Roger de Guimps. Authorized 
 
 Translation from the second French edition, by J. Russell, B. A. With an 
 Introduction by Rev. R. H. Quick, M. A. $1.50. 
 
 15. School Supervision. By J. L. Pickard, LL. D. $1.00. 
 
 16. Higher Education of Women in Europe. By Helene Lange, Berlin 
 
 Translatedand accompanied by comparative statistics by L. R. Klemm. $1.00. 
 
 17. Essays on Educational Reformers. By Robert Herbert Quick, 
 
 M. A., Trinity College. f''ambridge. Only authorized edition of the Vvork cW 
 rewritten in 1890. $1.50. 
 
 18. A Text-Book in Psychology. By Johann Friedrich Hebbart. Trans- 
 
 lated by Maugar^jt xv. Smith. $1.00. 
 
THE INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES.— (Continued.) 
 
 19. Psychology Applied to the Art of Teaching. By Joseph Baldwin, 
 
 A. M.,LL.D. $1.50. 
 
 20. Rousseau’s Rmile; or, Treatise on Education. Translated and an- 
 
 notated by W. H. Payne, Ph. D., LL. D. $1.50. 
 
 21. The Moral Instruction of Children. By Felix Adler. $1.50. 
 
 22. Rnglish Education in the Rlementary and Secondary SchoolSo 
 
 By Isaac Sharpless, LL. D., President of Haverford College. $1.00. 
 
 23. Education from a National Standpoint. By Alfred Fouillee. $1.50. 
 
 24. Mental Development of the Child. By W. Preyer, Professor of 
 
 Physiology in Jena. Translated by H. W. Brown. $1.00. 
 
 25. How to Study and Teach History. By B. A. Hinsdale, Ph. D., LL. D., 
 
 University of Michigan. $1.50. 
 
 26. Symbolic Education. A Commentary on Froebel’s “ Mother-Play.” 
 
 By Susan E. Blow. $1.50. 
 
 27. Systematic Science Teaching. By Edward Gardnier Howe. $1.50. 
 
 28. The Education of the Greek People. By Thomas Davidson. $1.50. 
 
 29. The Evolution of the Massachusetts Public-School System. By 
 
 G. H. Martin, A. M. $1.50. 
 
 30. Pedagogics of the Kindergarten. By Friedrich Froebel. 12mo. $1.50. 
 
 31. The Mottoes and Commentaries of Freidrich Froebel’s Mother-- 
 
 Play. By Susan E. Blow and Henrietta R. Eliot. $1.50. 
 
 32. The Songs and Music of Froebel’s Mother-Play. By Susan E. 
 
 Blow. $1.50. 
 
 33. The Psychology of Number, and its Application to Methods of 
 
 Teaching Arithmetic. By James A. McLellan, A.M., and John 
 Dewey, Ph. D. $1.50. 
 
 34. Teaching the language- Arts. Speech, Reading, Composition. By 
 
 B. A. Hinsdale, Ph. D., I<L. D. $1.00. 
 
 85. The Intellectual and Moral Development of the Child. Part I. 
 Containing Chapters on Perception, Emotion, Memory, Imagination, 
 and Consciousness. By Gabriel Compayre. Translated from the 
 French by Mary E. Wilson. $1.50. 
 
 36. Herbart’s A B C of Sense-Perception, and Introductory Works 
 
 By William J. Eckoff, Ph. D., Pd.D. $1.50. 
 
 37. Psychologic Foundations of Education. By William T. Harris. 
 
 A. M , LL. D. $1.50. 
 
 88. The School System of Ontario. By the Hon. George W.^oss, LL. D., 
 
 Minister of Education for the Province of Ontario. $1.00. ^ 
 
 89. Principles and Practice of Teaching. By James Johonnot. $1.50. 
 
 40. School Management and School Methods. By Joseph Baldwin. 
 
 $1.50. 
 
 41. Froebel’s Educational Daws for all Teachers. By James L. 
 
 Hughes, Inspector of Schools, Toronto. $1.50. 
 
 42. Bibliography of Education. By Will S. Monroe, A. B. $2.00. 
 
 43. The Study of the Child. By A. R. Taylor, Ph. D. $1.50. 
 
 44. Education by Development. By Friedrich Froebbl. Translated by 
 
 Josephine Jarvis. $1.50. 
 
 45. Eetters to a Mother. By Susan E. Blow. $1.50. 
 
 46. Montaigne’s The Education of Children. Translated by L. E. Rec- 
 
 tor, Ph. D. $1.00. 
 
 47. The Secondary School System of Germany. By Frederick E. 
 
 Bolton. $1.50. 
 
 OTHER VOLUMES IN PREPARATION. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 
 
INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES 
 
 THE 
 
 INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL DEVELOPMENT 
 OF THE CHILD 
 
 PART I 
 
 CONTAINING THE CHAPTERS ON PERCEPTION, E5IOTION, 
 
 MEMORY, IMAGINATION, AND CONSaOUSNESS • 
 
 BY 
 
 GABRIEL COMPAYRE 
 
 BECTEUE OP THE ACADEMY OP POITIERS 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH 
 
 By MARY E. WILSON 
 
 B. L. SMITH COLLEGE 
 
 MEMBER OP THE GRADUATE SEMINARY IN CHILD STUDY, 
 UNIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 1900 
 
Copyright, 1896, 
 
 By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 
 
 Electrotyped and Printed 
 AT THE Appleton Press, U. S. A. 
 
V ^ X‘t liettiurg* ' ^ ^ 
 
 EDITOE’S PEEFACE. 
 
 I 
 
 iP 
 
 o 
 
 O 
 
 Ip 
 
 The present volume contains the first half of 
 the translation of the work of Professor Gabriel 
 Compayrd, entitled L"E volution Intellectuelle et 
 Morale de hEnfant/" The object of the work is 
 to bring together in a systematic pedagogical 
 form what is known regarding the development 
 of infant children so far as the facts have any 
 bearing upon early education. 
 
 As a field of investigation and original re- 
 search, physiological psychology, anthropology, 
 or the study of man as an object of natural his- 
 tory, and, quite recently, the specialization of in- 
 quiry, limiting it to the still narrower field which 
 includes the child in his stages of infancy and 
 boyhood or girlhood, have attracted an increas- 
 ing number of students. 
 
 A few years ago the department of folklore 
 began to be studied as one of the minute subdi- 
 visions of anthropology. This led to an investi- 
 gation of children's games, and much light was 
 thrown upon the mode in which the childish 
 mind mimics for itself the manners and cere- 
 monies as well as the serious occupations of the 
 grown-up people about it. It is even found that 
 
 V 
 
 V ^ 4' 
 
VI 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD. 
 
 these games in some cases (for instance, in the 
 counting-out rhymes) point back to the dreadful 
 rites of human sacrifice, the slaughtering of pris- 
 oners by the Druids and others who offered them 
 to their gods. The selection of these victims de- 
 voted to sacrifice by counting-out rhymes bor- 
 rowed from the poems of The Edda * is long 
 since faded out of history, but there is a refiection 
 of it come down to us in the plays of the children. 
 Perhaps, too, all of these personal experiences of 
 the race are impressed upon the brain and nerve 
 cells, and a sort of physiological memory still 
 exists in each person, and on occasions arouses 
 an instinct or dread or some form of natural preju- 
 dice in the presence of some thing or event. 
 
 The present widespread study in this country 
 of the child in school and in the family is due, 
 more than to any one else, to the enthusiastic 
 efforts of Dr. G. Stanley Hall. The study has be- 
 come so general and is so wisely managed at 
 various centres, especially the pedagogical chairs 
 in universities, that new harvests of observations 
 are reaped annually or semiannually. I mention 
 these facts in order to explain that a summary of 
 what is discovered to-day may not do justice to 
 
 * The reader will think of the list of the dwarfs in the Voluspa, 
 commencing with the eleventh strophe, and there will come be- 
 fore his mind little- children standing around the solemn cere- 
 mony that was to determine the fate of the prisoners, and he will 
 fancy how these children, going away from the ceremony, would 
 mimic its counting out, converting the solemn ceremonial into 
 some game of tag, the tag signifying symbolically the blow by 
 which the enemy is killed or the prisoner captured. 
 
EDITOR’S PREFACE. 
 
 Vll 
 
 what will have been discovered five years hence. 
 This is especially true in regard to pathological 
 facts — that is to say, facts which relate to ab- 
 normal development and diseases. As regards 
 the normal development of the child and his edu- 
 cation, it must be admitted on all hands that the 
 results of the new studies do not change very 
 much the theories already a long time in exist- 
 ence. 
 
 The theory of education rests on two pillars. 
 One is the study of the ideals of civilization and 
 the demands of the institutions in which the 
 future man or woman is to live his or her life ; 
 the other is the study of the child in order to dis- 
 cover in him what rudimentary tendencies there 
 are, favourable or unfavourable to culture, and 
 to ascertain the best methods of encouraging the 
 right tendencies and suppressing the wrong ones. 
 
 It naturally happens that some of the most 
 enthusiastic investigators would persuade them- 
 selves that child study is all that is necessary to 
 furnish full data for the founding of a complete 
 theory of education. Such persons borrow from 
 other investigators — or oftener from the cur- 
 rent practice about them — their opinions regard- 
 ing the branches of study, their co-ordination or 
 subordination, and they borrow, moreover, from 
 the teachers who have taught the traditional 
 branches in school for the most part the methods 
 which have been discovered to teach effectively 
 these branches. A little consideration will lead 
 one of them to the conviction that the course of 
 study, the needs of civilization, and the art of 
 
viii THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD. 
 
 teaching should require new investigations made 
 with the same thoroughness and persistence that 
 now characterize the exploration of the field of 
 child-study. 
 
 It is a gross error to suppose that an inspec- 
 tion of the childish mind alone will give one all 
 the data needed to fix the course of study and the 
 methods of instruction. It gives only one factor, 
 only one of the essential data. On the other 
 hand, it would be quite as absurd to suppose that 
 the determining of the other datum — namely, the 
 contents of civilization and the methods of edu- 
 cating the child into the future citizen — would 
 suffice without the datum derived from child- 
 study. Without special child-study educational 
 writers have depended on the stock of general 
 experience. It is of course true enough that 
 human experience contains very much knowl- 
 edge regarding children, but scientific research is 
 the only thing that will widen this knowledge 
 and make it precise. I have already said, in an- 
 other place:* ^^The characteristics of accuracy 
 and precision which make science exact are de- 
 rived from quantity. Fix the order of succession, 
 the date, the duration, the locality, the environ- 
 ment, the extent of the sphere of influence, the 
 number of manifestations, and the number of 
 cases of intermittence, and one has an exact 
 knowledge of a phenomenon. When stated in 
 quantitative terms each one’s experience is useful 
 to other observers. It is easy to verify it or to 
 
 * Vol. vii of this series, p. vi. 
 
EDITOR’S PREFACE. 
 
 IX 
 
 add an increment. By quantification science 
 grows and grows continually without retrograde 
 movements.^^ 
 
 In America Prof. Compayrd is already one of 
 the best-known writers on the subject of educa- 
 tion through the translations of his excellent His- 
 tory of Pedagogy,* and his works on educational 
 psychology and methods of instruction. 
 
 The remaining chapters of this work (from X 
 to XVI) will follow in a second volume. The 
 subjects of these chapters are: X, Judgment and 
 Reasoning; XI, Learning to Talk; XII, Volun- 
 tary Activity — Walking and Play; XIII, Devel- 
 opment of the Moral Sense; XIV, Weak and 
 Strong Points of Character ; XV, Morbid Tend- 
 encies; XVI, The Sense of Selfhood and Per- 
 sonality. 
 
 Miss Wilson, the translator, joins the editor 
 in acknowledging the valuable assistance given 
 by Prof. Elmer E. Brown in reading the manu- 
 script and making suggestions leading to a more 
 faithful rendering of the text of the author. 
 
 W. T. Harris. 
 
 Washington, D. C., June 20, 1896, 
 
 * Published by Messrs. D. C. Heath & Co. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 Introduction 1 
 
 I. — The newborn child .... o . 28 
 
 II. — Movements the first forms of activity . , 61 
 
 III. — Development of sight ,96 
 
 IV. — Hearing, taste, smell, and touch . . . 136 
 
 V. — The first emotions and their expression. , 165 
 
 VI. — Memory before and after the acquisition of , 
 
 LANGUAGE 209 
 
 VII. — The different forms of imagination . . . 239 
 
 VIII. — Consciousness. — Attention. — Association of 
 
 IDEAS . . . 265 
 
THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD, 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The child has always been loved, caressed, 
 and flattered by mothers; poets have sung his 
 praises, and have extolled the grace of his smile : 
 
 II est si beau, I’enfant, avec son doux sourire, 
 
 Sa douce bonne foi, sa voix qui veut tout dire, 
 
 Ses pleurs vite apaises ! 
 
 Painters have depicted with great compla- 
 cency his little pink, well-rounded body, giving 
 him, almost to deify him, the wings of love. In 
 every age, too, the child has been cared for, 
 trained, instructed, watched over by hygienists, 
 scolded and lectured by pedagogues. But with 
 all this care and vigilance, with all this worship 
 of which he has been the object, people seem to 
 have forgotten until now to study him, to ob- 
 serve him in himself, in the humble beginnings 
 of his intellectual and moral life, and psycholo- 
 gists even have hardly concerned themselves 
 with him. People have tried only to load him 
 down with lessons, never thinking that in him 
 
 1 
 
2 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD. 
 
 lay the power, by virtue of his unvaried sim- 
 plicity, of giving us at least our first lesson in 
 psychology. 
 
 But things have changed now. In Germany, 
 in England, in France, numerous works have 
 brought ^Ghe psychology of the child into 
 vogue. Fathers and mothers, especially young 
 philosophers, have begun with laudable earnest- 
 ness to keep a journal of the actions and move- 
 ments of their children. The observations are 
 multiplying on every side. Among all the new 
 fields of investigation which modern science has 
 opened, there is none more inviting,^^ says James 
 Sully, than that of child study. * We shall be 
 pardoned for having yielded to this charm, and 
 for trying, by publishing our thoughts and our 
 personal experiences, to contribute our part to 
 the progress of a class of studies whose success 
 is henceforth assured, f 
 
 How, indeed, can one help taking hold of such 
 a subject ? How fail to comprehend its interest ? 
 
 * James Sully, Introduction' to the English translation of 
 Perez’s book, Les trois premieres annees de I’enfant. 
 
 f The work in hand dates back several years. In 1878-’79, 
 when on the faculty of letters of Toulouse, I devoted all my 
 public lectures to the study of childhood, and the Revue phi- 
 losophique for May, 1880, said : “ Our co-worker, G. Compayre, 
 is preparing a work on the Psychology of the Child for publi- 
 cation.” Circumstances caused the work to remain in embryo, 
 and the rule of Horace, the “ nonnumque prematur in annum,” 
 was forced upon me. I do not regret this, since, thanks to the 
 delay in the final edition of my book, I have been able to profit 
 by numerous and interesting works which have appeared on this 
 same subject during the last ten years. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 3 
 
 If childhood is the cradle of humanity, the study 
 of childhood is the natural and necessary intro- 
 duction to all future psychology. More than one 
 obscure question of general philosophy may be 
 cleared up, or at least simplified, by the revela- 
 tions with which the history of the first years of 
 life furnish us. It is there, for example, that we 
 must look for the solution of those commonplaces 
 of philosophical controversy, the question of the 
 origin of ideas, and that of the origin of language. 
 
 We do not understand childhood,^^ wrote Rous- 
 seau ; and in deploring our ignorance on this 
 point he made it responsible for so many vain 
 systems of education, works of senseless imagina- 
 tion constructed on the a priori basis of religious 
 dogmas or of philosophical hypotheses. There is 
 no doubt but that we must attribute to the same 
 cause, to the same ignorance, many errors spread 
 abroad by the systems of philosophy on the na- 
 ture of man. The exaggerations of those who 
 declare themselves to be in favour of the theory 
 of absolutely innate ideas and sensations, or of 
 those who refer everything to experience, can not 
 hold their ground when we confront them with 
 the child. A few facts borrowed from the pro- 
 gressive evolution, from the spontaneous devel- 
 opment of children's faculties, will be sufficient 
 to silence the idealist's conception of a soul com- 
 pletely formed, possessed of all its attributes at 
 the outset, as well as the theory of the realist, 
 which presents the mind as inert, passive, de- 
 prived of all activity in itself, and a slave to sen- 
 satioru 
 
 2 
 
4 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OP THE CHILD. 
 
 It is this fact that Reid has so clearly grasped. 
 The Scotch psychologist did not hesitate to draw 
 a parallel between the profit to be derived from 
 child study and the results of the systematic 
 speculations of philosophers ; he even placed 
 child study in advance of philosophical specula- 
 tions.* If it were possible/" he said, to get a 
 clear and complete record of all that goes on in 
 the mind of a child, from the beginning of his 
 life and of his sensations to the moment when 
 he uses his reason, a record from which we might 
 learn how our infant faculties worked, how they 
 produced and developed all the ideas and all the 
 sensations that we find in ourselves when we 
 have arrived at the age of reflection, this would 
 be a treasure in natural history which would 
 probably shed more light on the faculties of man 
 than all the systems of philosophy that have 
 been written on this subject from the beginning 
 of the world."" t 
 
 But it is not alone a care for the progress of 
 
 * Eeid, Inquiry into the Human Mind, Introduction. To be 
 sure, Reid did not believe in the possibility of these researches, 
 which, he said, “ Nature has not put within our power.” 
 
 f If the psychology of the child is called upon to render real 
 service to general psychology, we must not forget that, on the 
 other hand, the psychology of the child would not be possible, 
 except in the light of general psychology and of the revelations 
 which the latter owes to the adult consciousness. “ The idea of 
 motion, of variation, of evolution,” said Paul Janet recently, 
 “ will be introduced more and more into psychology, either from 
 the point of view of time, from the point of view of the history 
 of societies, or from the point of view of abnormal changes ; 
 these comparative studies, however, do not exclude, but even 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 5 
 
 philosophical speculations that should recom- 
 mend and bring into repute what might be called 
 paidoscopy* * There are other practical and posi- 
 tive results to be hoped for from the study of the 
 child. I remember hearing Marion, in one of his 
 lectures at the Sorbonne, on the psychology of 
 the child, lay stress upon the sesthetic interest of 
 his subject. Children,'^'’ he said, ^^are the men 
 of to-morrow ; they will see what we can only 
 predict, what we can not even predict ; they will 
 participate as witnesses, as actors, in events which 
 we do not even suspect.'’^ Hence the dramatic 
 charm, so to speak, which makes the actions of 
 the child so poetical, the charm produced by a 
 drama just begun, when one does not know the 
 ending. But what is still more interesting and 
 important than the poetry of childhood is the 
 help which a minute analysis of the child^s fac- 
 ulties brings to psychological and moral studies ; 
 these are the gains and benefits of the educator 
 and of the moralist. If it is true that children 
 carry the future of humanity in their little hands, 
 it is no less true that in developing their mental 
 and moral faculties more perfectly we may modi- 
 fy this future and improve the moral destinies 
 of the human race. But how are the principles 
 and rules of this better education and this more 
 
 demand a unity, a basis of comparison, which is the normal and 
 fully developed man.” (Revue des Deux Mondes, July, 1892.) 
 
 * We risk this barbarism, in imitation of Emile Faguet, who 
 invented neaniascopie to signify the investigation undertaken 
 by so many of our contemporaries, on the state of the soul of 
 French youth. 
 
6 THE DEVELOPMENT OP THE CHILD. 
 
 effective moralization to be established, if we 
 have not tried to penetrate the secrets of the 
 child^s nature, and to clear up the mysteries of 
 the evolution of the soul ? 
 
 Listen to the child ! He cries out with all his 
 might that he needs help and support, that he can 
 do nothing by himself ; that, like the animals, he 
 would not know how to do without his parents. 
 
 While herds, meantime, and beasts of various name 
 Flourish at ease ; no rattles they require, 
 
 No broken lullaby of dandling nurse . , . 
 
 Earth and Nature boon. 
 
 To each according every latent wish.* 
 
 This Nature boon provides for the child, too, 
 but only on the condition that she be sought and 
 upheld. This book will show on every page the 
 insufficiencies of a spontaneity which, though 
 real, is nevertheless unable to accomplish its 
 work by itself, without the co-operation of edu- 
 cators. And, at the same time that it is making 
 us understand the necessity of interfering in one 
 way or another in the development of Nature, 
 the psychology of the child shows us the means 
 for directing this interference with precision 
 and with efficacy. Physicians do not hesitate to 
 state that, in order to ameliorate the race, from 
 a physical point of view, it is necessary to use 
 the teachings of embryogeny, and to examine 
 thoroughly the laws of the anatomical and physi- 
 ological evolution of the human body, to the end 
 
 * Lucretius, Do Natura Rerum, J. M. Good’s translation, 
 Book V. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 7 
 
 that they may deduce from them the prescription 
 of hygiene adapted to the case. Practical phi- 
 losophers who wish to form and direct the mind 
 will be convinced more and more that their ef- 
 forts would be vain if they had not begun to 
 learn at the child^s cradle in what paths educa- 
 tion should be led, in order to aid Nature while 
 following it, to govern without cramping it, and 
 to what spontaneous forces they must give free 
 scope, to what weaknesses bring aid. 
 
 The trouble is, that the construction of an 
 infant psychology is not less difficult than it is 
 necessary. The difficulties of research of this 
 sort are so great that people even deny its pos- 
 sibility ; the character of it is so delicate that 
 they question its legitimacy. 
 
 We might name a distinguished philosopher 
 of our own time who, in the timid sensitiveness 
 of his religious faith, will not hear infant psy- 
 chology spoken of. The genesis of the soul is, in 
 his eyes, an act of the creative power which it 
 behooves us to respect, a mystery of Nature which 
 is profaned by almost sacrilegious indiscretion 
 when we pretend to tear away the veil that covers 
 it. Is it necessary to say that this kind of mod- 
 esty seems unintelligible to us, that it is, to say 
 the least, antiscientific, and that, before denying 
 to philosophers the study of the beginnings of the 
 intellectual and moral life, it would be necessary 
 to have first refused physicians the right of as- 
 certaining the laws of generation, and even of 
 practising the obstetric art ? 
 
 The objections that bear, not on the propriety 
 
8 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OP THE CHILD. 
 
 of our studies, but on the difficulties in carrying 
 them out, are more serious. 
 
 Let us see,'’^ people say to us, what means 
 of information you have at your disposal. The 
 psychology of the adult rests essentially on the 
 consciousness of the self which is prolonged in 
 the memory. This instrument is lacking in the 
 psychology of the child. You have nothing to 
 expect from inner observation, from personal re- 
 flection. You pretend to know the child, and the 
 child does not know himself ! Nothing remains 
 in your memory of what you did, or thought, or 
 felt, during the first years of your existence. Of 
 the characters which daily action or experience 
 inscribes on the consciousness of the child, as 
 soon as he has a consciousness, no trace remains ; 
 a deep oblivion hides them. You can not regain 
 possession of your childhood, and you are re- 
 duced to conjecture from without what takes 
 place within the consciousness of the child whom 
 you are observing. This external observation, 
 the only possible, you will easily recognise, has 
 all the faults, all the uncertainty of an interpre- 
 tation, of a translation. You do not read in the 
 soul of the child, except through its material cov- 
 ering. His motions, his gestures — later, when he 
 can speak, his words — are only signs to which 
 you attribute by analogy with the phenomena of 
 your own consciousness a meaning which per- 
 haps is not always exact. You are obliged to 
 confess, yourself, that the signs of expression of 
 a child are often disproportionate to the real in- 
 tensity of the feeling that they express, that he 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 9 
 
 gesticulates more than he feels, that he talks 
 more than he thinks, that in his apparently most 
 intelligent discourse there is sometimes nothing 
 hut the chattering of the paroquet, which repeats 
 words without understanding them. Admit, then, 
 that your methods of investigation are uncertain, 
 that the greater part of your conclusions are hy- 
 pothetical, that they leave you exposed to inex- 
 actness and to error. 
 
 Besides, it is not only your process of obser- 
 vation that will bring disappointment to your 
 good intentions. Other difficulties spring from 
 the very nature of the object you are trying to 
 analyze. At first, the phenomena that you study 
 are unconscious, in part, if not in whole ; in order 
 to know them, it would be necessary to rob the 
 invisible vibrations of the nerves of their secret. 
 They are performed in the depths of an organism 
 which your glance can not penetrate. And when 
 they have become conscious, when a ray of intel- 
 ligence vague and undefined lightens them, they 
 are none the less difficult to grasp ; for they 
 change and are modified incessantly. They are 
 the most variable, the most fugitive things in the 
 world.* 
 
 The faculties of the adult having been devel- 
 oped and fixed in their definite forms for a long 
 time, are, so to speak, in repose ; you have leisure 
 in which to consider them in all their aspects. 
 
 * “ Everything is so fleeting, so vague in the child, that the 
 observer who would try to fix his uncertain features would soon 
 be overcome as by vertigo.” (Mine. Necker de Saussure, L’Edu- 
 cation progressive, Book II, chap, i.) 
 
10 THE DEVELOPMENT OP THE CHILD. 
 
 But in the case of the child one phenomenon has 
 no sooner shown itself than it gives place to an- 
 other, which not only differs from it, but which 
 is often its very opposite ; what was unconscious 
 yesterday is conscious to-day ; in a flash of time 
 an instinctive action has become a voluntary one. 
 The child's soul shows the most diverse colours 
 in a few moments. Everything in it is change, 
 perpetual evolution. How could you build any- 
 thing solid on this moving foundation ? How 
 evolve a fixed and durable image from a sight 
 that is renewed at every instant ? As well try to 
 photograph the flight of birds or the march of an 
 army! You can, at most, by your successive 
 observations, gather together a series of instan- 
 taneous views, from which it is very difficult to 
 deduce fixed laws and general truths." 
 
 We do not conceal from ourselves the import 
 and force of these objections ; but they are not 
 of a nature to arrest efforts or to discourage the 
 hopes of the psychologists who would study the 
 child. They ought to make them cautious, dis- 
 trustful, eager to surround themselves with every 
 precaution in verifying, in registering their ob- 
 servations unceasingly, and in drawing inferences 
 with prudence. They point out real obstacles, 
 but these obstacles, however difficult they may 
 make the attainment of the object sought, do not 
 make it impracticable. 
 
 In the first place, it would be wrong to sup- 
 pose that external facts directly observed in the 
 child have not in themselves a psychological 
 value. The life of the mind is not concentrated 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 11 
 
 entirely in the consciousness. A psychic act, in 
 its complete development, contains three ele- 
 ments : an antecedent in the nerves, an internal 
 act of consciousness, and an outward movement. 
 But this series of three terms is not always com- 
 plete ; with the exception of the first term, which 
 is the indispensable condition, it is either the sec- 
 ond or the third that may be lacking. In the 
 unconscious phenomena which exist in minds of 
 all ages, but which, above all, the obscure begin- 
 nings of the child's life present, the gap results 
 from a lack of consciousness. In the life of the 
 adult, when the habit of reflection is fixed, when 
 the current of inner thought is permanently es- 
 tablished, it is the third element, the outward 
 manifestation, which is most often wanting. The 
 phenomenon ends with the consciousness ; noth- 
 ing reveals it to the outside world. But the child 
 hardly knows these inhibitions, this staying of 
 the thought and feeling turned in upon them- 
 selves. The slightest pulsations of his mind, so 
 to speak, reflect themselves upon his physiog- 
 nomy. His expressive and, as it were, trans- 
 parent consciousness flashes forth, at first in ges- 
 tures, later in his babbling. Hence the particular 
 interest which the observation of his outward 
 movements offers, the sincere expression of his 
 mental activity. Besides, these motions which 
 we can follow and note with exactness — however 
 slight may be the attention we give them — are 
 in themselves psychic facts ; and only to have 
 described and analyzed them, without going back 
 to their source, would be psychology in itself. 
 
12 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD. 
 
 We should not look with disdain, then, upon this 
 study of the child from without, even if it should 
 be denied all introspective import as to the inte- 
 rior of his mind, and if it should not serve as an 
 inductive instrument for getting at the hidden 
 operations of his consciousness. 
 
 It is true that the external observation of the 
 child^s actions could not in any case acquaint us 
 with the nature of the phenomena of the nerves 
 and muscles, on which depend the intellectual 
 and moral phenomena. But if that were a se- 
 rious argument against the possibility of the 
 psychology of the first years, the same argument 
 would hold against all psychology. Is not inter- 
 nal observation, the instrument of adult psychol- 
 ogy, also powerless in revealing to us the depths 
 of consciousness ? And yet the most conscious, 
 the most thoughtful acts of the mature man, car- 
 ried on in the full light of the inmost reason, 
 have their roots, or at least their* antecedents, in 
 the foundations of the nervous organism quite as 
 much as the half-conscious sensations and emo- 
 tions of the newborn child. From this point of 
 view, the psychology of the child may be entered 
 upon with no greater handicaps than the psy- 
 chology of the adult. In both cases it is to an- 
 atomy, to physiology, that the psychologist must 
 resort, in order to complete his information of the 
 nature of the facts that he observes. 
 
 There remains, it is true, this obvious disad- 
 vantage — namely, that the child^s consciousness, 
 impenetrable in a sense, like all consciousness, is 
 neither distinct enough nor rcfiective enough to 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 13 
 
 study itself and to account to itself for its acts. 
 Induction alone permits us to explore this invisi- 
 ble world. But are these inductions, then, so rash 
 that we should hesitate to make use of them ? We 
 have to fear neither dissimulation nor disguises 
 in the child. Nothing changes the perfect trans- 
 parency of his sincerity. His eyes are indeed the 
 mirror of his soul. He is all unconstraint, all 
 trust; he would not know how to have secrets 
 from the scrutinizing gaze of his observer. 
 
 A pleasing writer, Anthoine, has called atten- 
 tion to this fact. I have heard it said that a 
 psychology of the child has not been framed. 
 Why ? Is the child more difficult to fathom than 
 the man ? If I may judge from my own recollec- 
 tions, I should say ^ No." As a child I lived with 
 a mother and sister from whom I never could 
 hide anything ; they read me as they would read 
 a book opened wide. I should have tried in vain 
 to conceal anything from them ; they would have 
 discovered my little tricks and ruses very quickly ; 
 when they fixed their eyes upon mine (oh ! that 
 clear gaze — after so many years have passed I 
 see it and feel it still), I was conquered imme- 
 diately. I gave myself up. They knew me better 
 than I knew myself ; how many times have they 
 compelled me to go back over the course of my 
 inward deliberation, to find, beneath the pretexts 
 with which I pretended to satisfy others and my- 
 self, the true motive for my conduct, the one that 
 had determined it."" * 
 
 — ^ 
 
 * M. Anthoine, A travers nos ecoles, souvenirs posthumes. 
 
 ^ Paris, Hachette, 1887, p. 16. 
 
14 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD. 
 
 Anthoine continues his informal account, lay- 
 ing stress, and rightly, upon the power of pene- 
 tration that a mother’s eye acquires, fixed with a 
 sweet determination upon one she loves. The 
 force of the tenderness creates between the par- 
 ents and the child relations so close, a moral in- 
 timacy so deep, that the faintest heart beats of 
 the child re-echo in the ears of those that love 
 him. Paternal and maternal love carry with 
 them a sort of divination. How easily we divine 
 the slightest thoughts, the most fieeting sensa- 
 tions of these little creatures, always followed 
 step by step by the sympathy of the mother. 
 Mme. de Sevign^ said to her daughter, in a burst 
 of tenderness, I suffer in your lungs.’’ A father 
 and a mother, affectionate and attentive, can al- 
 most say to their child, I feel your emotions ! 
 I am conscious of your thought.” 
 
 We feel that the best psychologists of child- 
 hood are those who have followed carefully, from 
 hour to hour, the moral development of their own 
 children ; but we do not mean to exclude bache- 
 lors from taking part in these researches, nor to 
 deny them success. If we had the slightest desire 
 to do this the results already obtained would rise 
 in contradiction. One example will suffice, that 
 of Bernard Perez. He has observed only the chil- 
 dren of others, but has, nevertheless, written some 
 interesting and instructive books on this subject. 
 The child’s consciousness does not shield itself 
 from the observer, whoever he may be. There is 
 no necessity for violence in order to penetrate 
 into his soul, open to every comer, and offering 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 15 
 
 itself, so to speak, without resistance, to all indis- 
 cretions. 
 
 If the journals kept by a mother * or a father, 
 in which a careful hand registers from day to day 
 the smallest incidents of the child’s existence, are 
 really the most precious sources of observation, 
 all information, wherever it comes from, is wel- 
 come. Indeed, there is no subject which, by the 
 complexity of the questions which it raises, de- 
 mands more imperiously a variety of experiments, 
 each completing and controlling the others. The 
 psychology of the child is a complicated work, 
 whose success can not be attained unless many 
 workers take hold of the subject. Individual 
 observations, however minute and methodical 
 they may be — for instance, those of Preyer, on 
 his son Axel — apart from the fact that they 
 may be perverted by prejudices, are necessarily 
 incomplete, and at some point inexact, because 
 they apply to only a single individual. The evo- 
 lution of the child’s faculties is, moreover, too 
 rapid for a single observer to be able to take ac- 
 count of all of its steps at one observation. How 
 often, in observing our own children, we have 
 succeeded in establishing only the impotence of 
 our own efforts ! The phenomenon we were try- 
 ing to understand had disappeared before it was 
 possible for us to grasp it. A question was stated, 
 and we thought we were on the point of answer- 
 
 * Mme. Necker de Saiissure recommended them fifty years 
 ago : “ I strongly urge young mothers,” she said, ‘‘ to keep an 
 accurate record of the development of their children.” 
 
IG THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD. 
 
 ing it ; but time had followed its course, the stage 
 of the development corresponding to the question 
 to be solved had passed, and our observations 
 having advanced more slowly than Nature, the 
 evolution, whose mystery we had hoped to take 
 by surprise, was closed before our solution was 
 found. In order to achieve our purpose, it would 
 have been necessary to have another living exam- 
 ple at hand, laid hold of at the point where our 
 investigation had to stop — where the first subject 
 failed us. But our library did not contain an- 
 other volume, and we were compelled to apply 
 elsewhere. That is why a constant renewal of 
 the same observation is necessary in the psychol- 
 ogy of the child ; the studies begun by one can 
 not be finished except by others, and the suc- 
 cessive shades of a perpetual growth can not be 
 noted in their details nor comprehended in their 
 entirety except when patiently examined in a 
 number of individuals. 
 
 Can the observer resort to experiment in his 
 examination of the child ? The successful efforts 
 in this direction of Preyer and Binet, to mention 
 no others, permit us to answer in the affirmative. 
 But these little tests to which the child is sub- 
 jected could have no bearing on any but the very 
 limited and very superficial parts of human de- 
 velopment — for instance, the perception of col- 
 ours or the appreciation of distances. They could 
 not reach the inmost and essential foundations 
 of the mental evolution. The only truly decisive 
 experiment would be to isolate a child, to separate 
 him from all social environments, to let him grow 
 
INTRODUCTIOX. 
 
 17 
 
 by himself, without help of any sort, as Herodo- 
 tus tells us a king of Egypt had conceived of 
 doing. We could see then just what Nature 
 might do when thrown on her own resources, and 
 could draw the line sharply between the influence 
 of education, social suggestions, and the sponta- 
 neous action of heredity or of inborn tendencies. 
 But who would allow such violence to the natural 
 order of things to be committed on his child ! If 
 child study should undertake to carry out the 
 work along this line, it would then indeed justify 
 the anger of those who consider it a profanation 
 of the holy works of Nature, and almost a crime 
 of high treason against childhood. 
 
 Permissible and possible experiment, then, 
 can not go beyond certain limits, which are con- 
 trolled by consideration for the child, a fear of 
 encroaching on the rights of a nascent person- 
 ality. And under these conditions it is evident 
 that experiment can afford us but a very feeble 
 increase of light. It must be noted, moreover, 
 that even when carried on with discretion and 
 propriety, experiment presents a serious incon- 
 venience, in that it modifies the subject to which 
 it is applied to the point of changing and even 
 perverting the regular course of Nature. In the 
 case of a child that has been subjected from his 
 birth to a continuous system of experiments, on 
 the visual operations, for instance, the vision will 
 certainly develop more rapidly than in children 
 upon whom no experiments have been performed. 
 Preyer confesses this. Having found that his 
 son's eyes followed a bright object on the twenty- 
 
18 THE DEVELOPMENT OP THE CHILD. 
 
 fourth day, when usually the faculty of fixing and 
 of removing the glance did not appear till later, 
 he writes : I had made, it is true, almost daily 
 
 experiments on this point from the first day, and 
 these experiments perhaps hastened in Axel the 
 formation of the mechanism of the convergence 
 of the eyes.""^ 
 
 Certainly the best experiments are those which 
 Nature herself has instituted, in offering us, in 
 the diversity of temperaments and of individual 
 types, different forms, some rapid, some slow, of 
 the same evolution. These natural experiments 
 are still more significant, more instructive, when 
 a gap, a lesion of the organism, a constitutional 
 weakness, any cause whatever of disturbance, as 
 it were, maiming the human soul, impeding the 
 scope of the faculties, lets us see the consequences 
 of the abortion of an organ, of the atrophy of a 
 sense, or else, by arresting the development, ren- 
 ders a transient stage of normal evolution perma- 
 nent. We shall have to resort to the psychology 
 of idiots and imbeciles, and to that of maniacs, for 
 more than one piece of useful information. De- 
 cidedly abnormal states of maturity are often 
 but the exact representation of one of the periods 
 of transition, one of the fleeting states through 
 which the child passes in his regular growth. 
 And, in the same way, animals, whose history, it 
 has been said, was that of thought before man, 
 and which are, as it were, Nature^s first outlines 
 of psychic organization, will help us, by compari- 
 son, to understand some of the child^s actions. 
 The admirable works of Romanes, Animal Intel- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 19 
 
 ligence and Mental Evolution in Animals, con- 
 tain more than one suggestive consideration by 
 which we have profited. 
 
 With these manifold sources of information 
 we should not despair of succeeding some day, 
 after numerous repetitions and incessant revi- 
 sions, not only in describing exactly, but in ex- 
 plaining with certainty, the evolution of the 
 child’s faculties. Clever essays, and even works 
 of considerable extent, have already appeared. 
 The best proof that the subject is an attractive 
 one, and that the work is practicable, is that 
 child study is the order of the day ; that physi- 
 ologists and psychologists everywhere have un- 
 dertaken it, have boldly opened the way, and 
 have approached, if not reached, the goal.* 
 
 It would hardly be fitting for us, about to un- 
 dertake a work of a similar character, to point 
 out the ways in which the efforts of those who 
 have gone before us have failed, efforts that have 
 
 * The most important works on this subject are : A Memoir 
 by Thierry Tiedemann, translated into French by Michelin, dat- 
 ing from 1781 ; A Biographical Sketch of an Infant, by Darwin 
 (Mind, July, 1877) ; E. Egger, Observations et reflexions sur le 
 developpement de rintelligence et du langage chez les enfants, 
 Paris, 1878 ; Bernard Perez, Les trois premieres annees de I’en- 
 fant (translated into English by James Sully) ; Preyer, Die Seele 
 des Kindes (translated into English by H. W. Brown, and pub- 
 lished in two volumes. The Senses and the Will, and Develop- 
 ment of the Intellect) ; also. Studies on the Language of Chil- 
 dren, published by Pollock, in Mind, July, 1878 ; Taine’s article 
 on L’Acquisition du langage, in the Revue philosophique (vol. i, 
 No. 1), and the Observations of Ferri, in the Filosofla delle 
 scuole italiane, October, 1879 and 1880. 
 
20 the development of the child. 
 
 rendered our own comparatively easy. We would 
 ratlier call attention to their merits and to what 
 they have accomplished. Any one that has read 
 the biographical sketch in which Darwin has 
 summed up his observations on his son Doddy 
 will realize that it is not possible to condense 
 into a few lines a large number of striking and 
 distinct facts^ and that the illustrious English 
 naturalist could have written the history of the 
 origin of the soul with more certainty and more 
 confidence than that of the origin of species. 
 Egger, in interpreting the marks of family, has 
 shown how philological knowledge can serve to 
 throw light on the study of the progress of lan- 
 guage, and consequently of intelligence. Taine, 
 in a few pages, too brief, but very rich and very 
 full, has successfully applied the method de- 
 scribed in these words : Little facts, well chosen, 
 
 important, significant, fully substantiated, and 
 minutely noted — that is the material for all sci- 
 ence to-day.* We bow before Preyer^s book as 
 a monument of Germanic patience, the richest 
 collection of observations that we possess thus 
 far.f And finally Perez, with his abundance of 
 anecdotes, collecting on all sides everything that 
 concerns the life of children, on their way home 
 from school, in the squares where nurses take the 
 babies for airing, even in the newspapers, has 
 done much to spread abroad, to popularize the 
 
 * Taine, LTntelligence, preface. 
 
 f Preyer observed his son for three years every day, morn- 
 ing, noon, and night.’’ (See preface.) 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 21 
 
 studies to which he has devoted himself with 
 persevering and passionate ardour.^^ 
 
 But it is not only in special and, so to speak, 
 teclinical works that we must look for material 
 for our work. Let us not say that child study is 
 an entirely new thing. The elements, some ele- 
 ments at least, have existed for a long time in 
 most works on the education of childhood, nota- 
 bly those like the memorable works of Locke and 
 Rousseau,* that have sprung from a philosophic 
 mind. Every educator worthy of the name has 
 been compelled by the needs of his subject to 
 say a few words at least on the nature of the 
 child. In the same way memoirs and autobiog- 
 raphies are useful sources of information. It 
 must be borne in mind, however, in this connec- 
 tion, first, that the imagination of the mature ( 
 man, when he returns in thought to his child- \ 
 hood, is inclined to embellish, to transfigure the \ 
 vague remembrances of his first years ; in the sec- 
 ond place, that it is only great writers who have 
 conceived the idea of recounting the beginnings 
 of their lives, the exploits of their young days, 
 and that consequently in accepting their accounts 
 to the letter we should probably gain an exag- 
 gerated idea of human nature, and might know 
 in the end only the psychology of prodigies. 
 
 If there is still some indecision on the ques- 
 tion of methods to be employed, there surely can 
 
 * What is the Emile of Rousseau if not, as Maine de Biran 
 has already remarked, “ a sort of practical psychology in all that 
 concerns the successive order of the development of our intel- 
 lectual and moral faculties ” ? 
 
22 the development of the child. 
 
 be none on that of the end to be attained. It 
 is not a question merely of drawing children's 
 moral portraits, like those we find in Dui^anloup's 
 L'Enfant, portraits of the poetic or humorous 
 imagination, such as Champfleury and Gustave 
 Droz have sketched in their books on the child, or 
 Gavarni in his legends of the Enfants Terribles. 
 It is a question of drawing a complete picture of 
 human nature in its beginnings and of its evolu- 
 tion. One of the founders of infant psychology, 
 Tiedemann, attached great importance to the 
 question of dates : the child followed a light with 
 his eyes and distinguished objects on the thirty- 
 sixth day; he smiled or cried the sixteenth or 
 seventeenth week. A psychological chronology, 
 certainly, has its importance. But Tiedemann 
 himself recognises that it is impossible to estab- 
 lish general and absolute rules on such a subject. 
 There is such a difference between one child and 
 another with respect to precocity * that we do 
 not learn much when told that Doddy " made 
 his first sound, as though trying to speak, on the 
 hundredth day ; Axel took his first step at fifteen 
 months. By multiplying experiments one might, 
 at the most, arrive at an average which would 
 not be without value, f 
 
 * Pollock calls attention to this fact in his paper on the 
 progress of language : “ Children differ so much in forwardness 
 that the^time of particular acquisition seems of little impor- 
 tance as compared with their order.” (Mind, July, 1878.) 
 
 f It is well to add, moreover, that even in an individual ex- 
 istence it would be useless to try to establish an exact date for 
 the appearance of such and such a faculty; the faculties, far 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 23 
 
 But what has altogether a different interest 
 from the question of dates, is to determine under 
 what circumstances the smile or the tears ap- 
 peared, under what conditions and what forms 
 the first words and the first steps were produced ; 
 it is, in a word, to determine the order of devel- 
 opment of psychological acts, an order whose 
 course can be quickened or slackened, but which 
 in itself, in the succession and connection of the 
 phenomena which compose it, is always the same, 
 and remains invariable from individual to indi- 
 vidual.* * Evidently there are laws of Nature 
 which govern the birth of faculties ; the whole 
 question is to determine these laws. 
 
 What is the limit, what is the final point at 
 which our research shall end in the investigation 
 upon which we are about to enter ? We do not 
 go beyond the age of from six to seven years ; 
 six the school age, seven the theologic age, the 
 age when sins count.'’^ Egger carries his obser- 
 vations to the tenth year, and if he does not go 
 farther still it is because, as he says, from this 
 time on, the number and variety of. the operations 
 the child has learned constantly restrain the free 
 and natural play of the faculties.'’^ This reason. 
 
 from having a sudden birth, always require a long, slow prepa- 
 ration, 
 
 * “ One child develops rapidly, another slowly. Very consid- 
 erable differences are found even in children having the same 
 parents ; but these differences concern time and degree more 
 than the order of succession, and of the appearance of the differ- 
 ent phenomena of development, for the essence of these phe- 
 nomena is identical in all.” (Preyer, Preface.) 
 
24 the development of the child. 
 
 were it the only one, would be enough, it seems 
 to us, to cause us to stop much earlier — at the 
 latest, when the child enters school. First child- 
 hood is usually considered to extend to the sev- 
 enth year.* But from the point of view that in- 
 terests us, childhood proper, the formation pe- 
 riod, ends a little earlier. It is the first three 
 or four years that are most important to those 
 studying the evolution of the different psycho- 
 logical functions. At four years the child is, 
 doubtless, still one of the most frail of creatures, 
 very ignorant, and void of reason. Nevertheless, 
 he is already in possession of all of the essen- 
 tial elements of his future activity. He has ac- 
 quired the use of all of his senses, and the out- 
 side world is opened to him. Locomotion and 
 language have put him in direct communication 
 with material things as well as with his fellows. 
 The different forms of intelligence, from percep- 
 tion to reasoning, have made a beginning in his 
 consciousness ; and the baby not yet admitted to 
 school already knows how to judge and reason in 
 his own way : with inexact premises, and often 
 with ridiculous conclusions ; never mind, he has 
 a logic of. his own. Neither selfish passions nor 
 warm-hearted emotions are strangers to him, and 
 his little will makes itself known, be it only in 
 his caprices, the battles which the budding inde- 
 pendence of his character wages against the will 
 of grown people. All sides of human nature, in 
 a word, are represented in this soul of four years. 
 
 * “ Infantia primos septem annos a3tatis habet,” said Stahl. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 25 
 
 The different paths of activity are sketched out. 
 The child has but to advance with a firmer step 
 each day, under the action of education, more 
 and more effective and decisive as time goes on. 
 And that is why our observations cease as soon 
 as he begins to learn to read and to write, at the 
 moment when the pupil succeeds the child. 
 
 The facts that we have gathered together from 
 others, as well as those borrowed from our own 
 personal experience, have been distributed and 
 classified under the ordinary heads and divisions 
 adopted by general psychology. All that can be 
 said further in favour of this traditional distri- 
 bution of material is that no other is possible. 
 We were inclined at the outset to adopt a general 
 division in two distinct parts : we would have 
 studied the child before he can speak,^^ and the 
 child while learning and after he has learned to 
 speak.""^ But the difficulties in carrying out this 
 plan obliged us to give it up, although doubt- 
 less it would have had its interest. We should 
 have had to return to two considerations of the 
 same faculties — to consider, for instance, memory 
 or imagination before and after the acquisition 
 of language — and would have doomed ourselves 
 to constant repetitions. Whatever influence lan- 
 guage may have on the development of thought, 
 it does not constitute a sharp line of division. 
 
 To tell the truth, it would be better to have 
 no divisions at all. What a contrast there is be- 
 tween the reality and the image we are trying to 
 make of it, between the model and the copy, be- 
 tween the child in his living unity, developing 
 
26 the development of the child. 
 
 harmoniously and simultaneously all his powers 
 of body and of soul, and the piecemeal, fragmen- 
 tary studies to which the needs or wants of anal- 
 ysis reduce us ! But this is a fault common to 
 all scientific research. And these necessities are 
 perhaps more imperative, just as the inconven- 
 iences resulting from them are more apparent 
 when the question is one of the history of the 
 child — that is to say, of a being that is not yet 
 wholly formed, whose faculties are being organ- 
 ized, in whom the different phenomena, one ob- 
 scuring and effacing the other, constitute, as it 
 were, the successive texts of a palimpsest, written 
 one over the other. We are far, therefore, from 
 having reached the period of complete differen- 
 tiation which will characterize maturity. We 
 assist in a sort of fermentation, in which every- 
 thing is mingled and confused. So that, in order 
 to know where we are, it is so much the more 
 necessary to multiply the distinctions, the divis- 
 ions of the analysis, and to apportion out in the 
 compartments of a dry nomenclature facts which 
 Nature, ever active, has united and associated. 
 You will complain, perhaps, of finding too many 
 little things, too many trifles, in this work. But 
 the psychology of the child can not be more 
 than a collection of little acts, so small that we 
 sometimes ask ourselves where we shall find 
 words discriminating enough to describe them. 
 These little things are great, moreover, because 
 of their results, inasmuch as they contain the 
 germs of the future soul, and of all development 
 of the human personality. Finally, they partake 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 27 
 
 of tlie charm that is attached to the beginnings 
 of everything, and more particularly to the be- 
 ginnings of what the poet calls a frail hope of 
 the soul” We shall be satisfied, for our part, 
 if we succeed in investing the pages of this book 
 with something of the sweet charm of the child, 
 and in communicating to our readers a little of 
 the pleasure which we have foun^ in studying 
 him. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE NEWBORN CHILD. 
 
 I. The observation of the child should begin at birth. — Differ- 
 ent reasons for the necessity of determining exactly the 
 state of the newborn child. — Is there a psychology of the 
 foetus ? — To what are the psychical phenomena of the intra- 
 uterine life reduced ? To a few tactile sensations and a few 
 motions. — Frariere’s Education anterieure. — Malebranche’s 
 opinion on the communication between the mother’s brain 
 and that of the child.— Cabanis’s opinion. II. Infant psy- 
 chology does not begin before birth. — The starting point of 
 the psychic life is almost zero. — The automatic and in- 
 stinctive life of the first days. — Development of hereditary 
 germs. — The normal child and the idiot. — Particular char- 
 acteristics of instinct in the little child. — Compared with the 
 instinct of young animals. — The child’s weakness. — At what 
 moment does consciousness begin f — Painful sensations ex- 
 ceed the agreeable sensations at first. — Observers have laid 
 stress on the child’s sufferings. — There is another side to this 
 question, and Nature has provided the child with some im- 
 pressions of pleasure. 
 
 I. 
 
 I HARDLY know how to say, without being 
 commonplace, that there is no more interesting 
 moment to study in the life of the child than 
 that in which he comes into the world, when his 
 little body, like a ripe fruit, is detached from 
 that of his mother. ^^The child is born when 
 
 28 
 
THE NEWBOEN CHILD. 
 
 29 
 
 liis body is prepared for an independent organic 
 life.^^ * Being adequately equipped by Nature, in 
 spite of the weakness and delicacy of his organs, 
 to live henceforth his own physical life, and to 
 face the struggle for existence, the newborn 
 child, who is about to breathe, to be nourished — 
 in a word, to perform the different functions of 
 the material life — is already, in some ways, in ad- 
 dition to this, a sentient being. A principle of 
 spiritual animation exists in him from the very 
 first, and shows itself in distinguishable ways. It 
 is not too soon, then, to question this newcomer, 
 who appears on the scene, to play in his turn and 
 in his own way the role which so many millions 
 of creatures have played or will play in the 
 course of time. And we can not but recommend 
 to the imitation of psychologists the example of 
 the diligent and eager observers, like Mr. Preyer, 
 who lose no time, who do not wait even till the 
 child has had five minutes of existence before 
 taking him to the window to see what effect the 
 light of day exercises upon his eyes ; who do still 
 better than this, even, since they anticipate the 
 complete birth, and profit by the fact that the 
 child^s head appears first, to experiment upon the 
 force of his instinct of suction by putting the end 
 of his finger in his mouth. 
 
 Under what conditions, with what apparent 
 germs of his future faculties does the child take 
 possession of existence ? What badges does he 
 wear upon his forehead to announce his destina- 
 
 Roger de Guimps, Le Livre des meres, 1862, p. 17. 
 
30 the development of the child. 
 
 tion in advance ? Has he any vague conscious- 
 ness of the life that is just beginning ? Are his 
 senses organized and ready to act ? Is his feel- 
 ing, of which he gives undeniable proofs at the 
 outset, shut up in a circle of painful impressions 
 and of suffering ? Or is it already accessible to 
 comfort, to pleasure ? In a word, what is his 
 moral state, if the word is not too ambitious for 
 a poor little, almost unconscious being who will 
 have for a time but two occupations, eating and 
 sleeping ? 
 
 Such are the many questions to be considered, 
 which doubtless can not be exactly solved except 
 by an analytic study of the different kinds of 
 phenomena, but at which it is necessary to glance, 
 as a whole, before taking them up in detail. And 
 that for two reasons, drawn, one from the child^s 
 future, the other from his past, for he has a past 
 even now ; from his future, since it would be im- 
 possible to follow the subsequent evolution of his 
 faculties with precision, if we did not begin by 
 forming a clear idea of his starting point ; from 
 his past, since only an exact appreciation of the 
 natural gifts that he possesses at his birth can 
 assist us in clearing up, within the range of the 
 possible, the obscure history of the nine months 
 of gestation, and in judging of the value of the 
 suppositions and fancies which the imagination 
 of some dreamers has been pleased to venture on 
 the characteristics of the intra-uterine life. 
 
 Let us begin by establishing the fact that the 
 first days — at least the first hours — of life consti- 
 tute a period of crisis, and a change of condition 
 
THE NEWBORN CHILD. 
 
 31 
 
 which has profound reverberations in the body 
 and in the mind of the child. The independent 
 life of the newborn child is evidently not a con- 
 tinuation, with the same characteristics, of the 
 foetal life. When a river that has been subter- 
 ranean finally comes to flow above the surface, 
 its waters, although they now reflect the rays 
 of the sun, preserve, nevertheless, with the new 
 flashes of light, the same system and the same gait. 
 It is different in the case of the child, for whom 
 birth is equivalent to a veritable metamorphosis. 
 He has changed from a parasite to a personal 
 human being ; he has become individualized ; he 
 lives by himself.* His heart, which a short time 
 ago was beating a double time, now beats triple 
 time. His lungs, up to this time inactive, are be- 
 ginning the seesaw motion that ends only when 
 life ends. On the other hand, his senses, which 
 have been shielded from the action of the outside 
 world, are exposed from this time on to continual 
 solicitations ; a flood of impressions of every sort 
 bursts upon the frail creature, threatening to 
 bruise his delicate organs, and to provoke those 
 momentary troubles called convulsions. His 
 body, which has been surrounded by an equal 
 heat, sheltered from the air, is now exposed to 
 the variations of temperature, to the influence of 
 cold, which, if too intense, will cause a peculiar 
 
 * “ The first sleep of the newborn child forms a transition 
 between the intra-uterine existence, which is closely bound to 
 that of the maternal organism, and a mode of existence rela- 
 tively more independent.” (D’Ammon, Livre d’or de la jeune 
 femme, Paris, 1891.) 
 
32 the development op the child. 
 
 malady which the French call silerine. His 
 limbs, which were almost immovable in the nar- 
 row prison that inclosed them, stretch themselves 
 ont comfortably and test their power of unre- 
 stricted motion. There is in all these changes, in 
 this general transformation, in this adaptation to 
 a new medium, a process full of difficulties and 
 of dangers, a period of transition, possessing its 
 own characteristics. In view of this fact phy- 
 sicians divide first infancy into two periods : the 
 period of the newborn babe and the period of the 
 child at the breast. 
 
 If it is important that the psychologist’s ob- 
 servation should be directed first toward the 
 threshold of life, it is because the child, as we 
 have said, when studied and observed from the 
 very first hour, tells us in a certain degree, al- 
 though confusedly, what has taken place in the 
 intra-uterine life, what the child has felt from 
 the very beginning of his existence. In any 
 case, it teaches us at what point the anterior 
 psychic development was definitely arrested, if 
 there can have been a development of this 
 kind. 
 
 According to certain philosophers, there would 
 be a psychology of the foetus, and the first page 
 of the book of the child — that is to say, the one 
 containing the description of the newborn babe 
 — would itself require an introduction, a preface 
 of some length, in which the psychological secrets 
 of the period before birth would be disclosed. It 
 was an idealist, strange to say, that advanced this 
 opinion. Malebranche did not hesitate, as he says 
 
THE NEWBORN CHILD. 
 
 33 
 
 himself, to consider the child^s brain in the moth- 
 er's womb before examining what happens to it 
 after birth ; * and he admitted that there is a 
 wonderful communication between the mother’s 
 brain and that of the child — a communication 
 from which would follow, according to him, the 
 particular dispositions of the imagination in each 
 one of us.f The same discussion has been taken 
 up in a comparatively recent work, I’Education 
 Anterieure, by de Frariere.J It is the mother, in 
 this account, who would be responsible above all 
 for the nature of the child, and maternal influ- 
 ence would appear in a wholly new light. 
 
 But they go still farther. They are not con- 
 tent to advance the theory that in an unconscious 
 way, and. by mysterious relations, the brain of 
 the foetus feels the influence of the mother’s 
 brain ; they attribute a real mental life to the 
 child before birth. Ribot, while declaring that 
 the senses are in a state of torpor in the foetus — 
 which is perhaps saying too little, for the truth 
 is that they are not even completely organized — 
 makes bold to affirm in explicit terms, after Ca- 
 banis, that the child before birth has already 
 thought and willed ; he gives only an insufficient 
 
 * This is the subject of Chapter VII of the second book of 
 the Recherche de la verite. 
 
 t Malebranche believed this intercerebral communication to 
 be powerful enough to produce deformed children in conse- 
 quence of a mother’s disordered imagination. 
 
 t Education anterieure, influence maternelle pendant la 
 gestation sur les predispositions morales et intellectuelles des 
 enfants, Paris, Didier, 1863. 
 
34 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD. 
 
 proof of this, namely, that in the last stages of 
 gestation the embryo moves.* A German author, 
 Kussmaul, goes so far as to say that the intelli- 
 gence begins to develop from the intra-uterine 
 life ; he adds, it is true, that it develops only 
 very imperfectly. Perez, who cites Kussmaul, 
 claims in his turn that the soul of the foetus, 
 half formed, half active, is perhaps vaguely con- 
 scious, f He says in another place, speaking more 
 positively, that direct experiments upon either 
 the embryo or the child prematurely born indi- 
 cate, at least for the last stages of gestation, a 
 remarkable ensemble of faculties already quali- 
 fied to enter upon their work.J 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say that the facts 
 cited in support of these hypotheses, of these 
 exaggerations of statement, fall far short of justi- 
 fying them. And Perez himself, in making a 
 resume of PreyePs book on the Special Physi- 
 ology of the Embryo,* does it in these words : 
 ^^We can not deny that the foetus in the last 
 stages of gestation may have, in point of common 
 sensations, a feeling of pleasure and of pain, the 
 muscular sense, and also hunger ; there is the 
 whole balance sheet of uterine psychology.^^ || 
 These are meagre results, you will say ; and for 
 all that it seems to us difficult, in spite of the 
 wonders expected from new experiments, plans 
 
 * Ribot, De I’Heredite, first edition, p. 315. 
 f Perez, Les troi^ premieres annees de I’enfant, p. 3. 
 X Perez, Revue philosophiqiie, June, 1887, p. 585. 
 
 Special Physiology of the Embryo. 
 
 I Revue philosophique, 1887, p, 586, 
 
THE NEWBORN CHILD. 
 
 35 
 
 for which are still to be discovered to go much 
 farther than that. 
 
 It is with the elaboration of the material or- 
 ganism that Nature is silently occupied during 
 the long months of gestation. The physiology 
 of the embryo will consequently have interesting 
 work before it to establish how the brain of the 
 foetus is developed little by little, how the organs 
 of the senses are' formed materially.* But psy- 
 chology proper has almost nothing to gather 
 from this obscure period when life is being pre- 
 pared for, not only because it is difficult to find 
 out what is going on, but because, from the men- 
 tal point of view, nothing, or almost nothing, is 
 going on. It was allowable for Malebranche 
 (thanks to the hypothesis of a soul completely 
 formed, so to speak, in the very beginning) to 
 believe that the child in the womb of his mother 
 has the same feelings and the same impressions 
 as his mother, t But when one is convinced, as 
 we all are to-day, that the intellectual principle 
 can not be developed, and can not act until it is 
 provoked by excitations from without, that it re- 
 mains inert in the state of a germ until the day 
 when, like a ray of sun putting life into the grain 
 
 * On the development of the brain, see Charlton Bastien’s 
 Le Cerveau organ de la pensee (Paris, G-ermer Bailliere, 1882, 
 vol. ii), chap, xix, of the fourth book, Developpement du cerveau 
 humain pendant la vie uterine. 
 
 t According to Malebranche, the soul is not generated by 
 the mother, but, absolutely independent of the brain, just as* 
 reason is independent of experience, it finds itself in full pos- 
 session of itself at the very first. 
 
 4 
 
36 the development of the child. 
 
 sown in the earthy the sensation comes to vivify 
 it, to set it going, to give it the initial movement, 
 then one can not deceive one's self as to the pre- 
 tended thoughts and volitions of the foetal brain. 
 
 We must not forget that the foetus is plunged 
 in a deep sleep, in a lethargic state ; and the proof 
 of this is that the newborn child seems to find 
 difficulty in shaking off this torpor, that, after 
 having satisfied his hunger, he falls back peri- 
 odically into sleep and lethargy. The psychic 
 life is so little developed before birth that the 
 awakened life does not yet exist. Some vague 
 sensations, doubtless analogous to those felt by 
 one in a dream, succeed with great difficulty in 
 penetrating through the accumulated obstacles 
 to the child. But to what do they reduce them- 
 selves ? There can be no question of luminous 
 sensations in the dark dungeon in which the 
 child is confined ; not even of acoustic sensations, 
 whatever Cabanis may have thought about it.* 
 
 * Cabanis says : “ It is necessary to call attention to the fact 
 that the foetus may not be an entire stranger to two kinds of 
 sensations, whose proper organs, however, are not in full activity 
 until after birth : I mean the sensations of light and of sound. 
 Many psychological and pathological facts show that the action 
 of external light is not indispensable in order that the cerebral 
 centre and even the immediate organ of sight should receive 
 luminous impressions.” Cabanis consents to conclude on this 
 point, however, that the foetus can have no idea of the light of 
 day, nor of colours. As to hearing, he claims that “the foetus 
 may have received impressions of sound, that it may at least 
 have heard confused noises, and that it is difficult to conceive 
 that these impressions are not frequently renewed during the 
 time of gestation.” VVe are sorry not to agree with this opinion, 
 
THE NEWBORN CHILD. 
 
 37 
 
 If the newborn child is deaf — and he certainly 
 is in the first hours of life — how can it be seri- 
 ously held that he has perceived sonorous vibra- 
 tions when the causes of obstruction were greater 
 and the conditions of penetration less favour- 
 able ? The uniformity of the medium — every 
 sensation presupposing a diversity of impres- 
 sions, a "differentiation,^^ as they say to-day — 
 prevents also the possibility of the child^s having 
 gustatory and olfactory sensations, washed on all 
 sides as he is by the liquid that surrounds him. 
 There remains, then, no possibility of sensations 
 other than those of the tactile and cutaneous sen- 
 sibility ; and still how limited ! for the reason 
 just indicated — that is to say, the uninterrupted 
 continuity, the uniform and therefore insensible 
 action of the same surrounding medium. 
 
 Moreover, what can these rare tactile sensa- 
 tions be ? In the first place, they are never pro- 
 duced until the hundredth day. Luys says : " We 
 can see from the fourth month that the nervous 
 system begins to react, and to reveal the vitality 
 of the different phenomena which compose it. 
 We know, indeed, that from this time on the 
 foetus is sensible to the action of cold, that its 
 spontaneous motions can be developed by laying 
 a cold hand upon the body of the mother ; we 
 
 but we think, not only, as Cabanis finally acknowledges, that 
 “ the education of the ear is not yet very far advanced,’’ but 
 that it has not begun at all. It is interesting to find that 
 the realist Cabanis and the idealist Malebranche agree in their 
 conclusions : the one imagines a soul perfect and complete, the 
 other a brain fully organized before birth. 
 
38 the development op the child. 
 
 know, too, that it makes spontaneous motions to 
 shield itself from a pressure that disturbs it and 
 brings its sensibility into play There seems 
 to us to be some inaccuracy, in expression at least, 
 in the passage just cited ; the motions that Luys 
 speaks of could not be called spontaneous,""" 
 since they are caused by a disturbing contact or 
 by a sudden impression of cold. Their existence 
 is not to be doubted, but they are purely reflex, 
 analogous to those produced in a baby when we 
 tickle his foot with a feather. Besides these re- 
 flex motions there are also muscular contrac- 
 tions, doubtless, even in the foetus, which are 
 spontaneous, the first flutterings of the being 
 that lives and is beginning to move.f These mo- 
 tions usually become perceptible to the mother 
 between the seventh and the ninth month of ges- 
 tation. So that there have already appeared be- 
 fore birth, in a very rudimentary form, the two 
 essential operations of all mental evolution : on 
 one side, the excitation from without producing 
 a reaction of the interior force ; on the other, the 
 spontaneity, the inner vitality showing a tendency 
 to act for itself. 
 
 These movements, whether reflex or sponta- 
 neous, presuppose at least a rudimentary organi- 
 
 * Luys, Le Cerveau et ses fonctions, Paris, 1876, p. 100. 
 t “ If the child kicks during the last part of gestation, if he 
 moves uneasily, more impetuously and more continually as well 
 as with more force, it is not because he finds himself hemmed 
 in and is uncomfortable, but his limbs have acquired a certain 
 degree of strength, and he feels the need of exercising them.” 
 (Cabanis, Rapports du physique et du moral de rhornme.) 
 
THE NEWBORN CHILD. 
 
 39 
 
 zation of the nervous and of the muscular system, 
 together with the exercise of these phenomena 
 proportionate to their development. But the 
 question is one of determining whether these 
 phenomena are plunged absolutely in the dark- 
 ness of the unconscious, remaining exclusively 
 material, or whether, on the contrary, they al- 
 ready have a right side and a wrong side, the 
 two aspects, one material, the other spiritual, of 
 all psychic facts ; finally, whether a flash of con- 
 sciousness accompanies them and lights them 
 up enough to produce infinitesimal sensations of 
 pain or of pleasure. We incline toward the sec- 
 ond hypothesis — although it is impossible to es- 
 tablish its reality — at least for the last months of 
 gestation, when the motions are so frequent that 
 the almost continuous shock excites at least a 
 faint fluttering of consciousness. Persuaded — 
 and it is impossible not to be — that conscious- 
 ness permits of many degrees, that it resembles 
 day succeeding night,* after all the shades of 
 dawn and early morning have passed away, we 
 see no difficulty in admitting a priori that the 
 first stakes of this slow evolution are set before 
 birth.* What tends to confirm this supposition 
 is that the child shows himself prepared for 
 pleasure and for pain as soon as he appears. 
 We are permitted to conjecture and infer what 
 
 * This is the opinion of most psychologists. However, let 
 us note a statement to the contrary. “ In the last months of 
 gestation the human foetus is susceptible only to motility ; it 
 moves, reacts under a shock, but unconsciously,’- (Letourneau, 
 la Sociologie, Paris, IdSO, p. 526.) 
 
40 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD. 
 
 has gone on behind the scenes as soon as the 
 curtain is raised, from the actions and gestures 
 of the actor before us. Now, the cries of the 
 child could not be interpreted as absolutely me- 
 chanical and unconscious acts. The cries, his 
 first salute to life, which express suffering, or at 
 the least a disagreeable impression produced by 
 the surprise of a new medium, and which cer- 
 tain philosophers have translated thus, I suffer, 
 therefore I exist'’'’ — these cries are evidence at 
 least of a beginning of sensibility, which must 
 have been prepared and exercised to a certain 
 extent in the intra-uterine life. 
 
 But however indulgent we may be in our 
 judgments, and while granting even extreme fa- 
 vour to the conjectures on the state of the em- 
 bryo, it seems impossible to grant that it is any- 
 thing more than a muscular automatism, whose 
 commotions are felt more or less in the nervous 
 system ; nothing in any case that resembles intel- 
 ligence, clear and distinct perception.* Nature, 
 doubtless, has not remained inactive. She has 
 made and adjusted the instruments. All the es- 
 sential parts of the machine are in their place 
 ready for work. The different organs of the 
 nervous system, and of the brain itself, have al- 
 ready attained an advanced degree ‘of develop- 
 opment. And still everything remains to be 
 done that shall cause the intellectual and moral 
 
 * Nothing, above all, that resembles the consciousness of self, 
 which Cabanis attributes to the foetus, under the pretext that it 
 has already received the first impressions of which the idea of 
 resistance and the idea of strange bodies arc composed. 
 
THE NEWBORN CHILD. 
 
 41 
 
 germs transmitted by heredity to pass from a 
 state of passive power to one of action. 
 
 Is it true, moreover, as the author of L^Edu- 
 cation antdrieure claims, that these germs are 
 transmitted to the embryo in part by a myste- 
 rious communication proceeding from the brain 
 of the mother ? De Frariere, with his complacent 
 imagination, magnifies a few insignificant facts, 
 attributes to them an import which they do not 
 possess, and concludes that he has discovered a 
 new idea whose development, so he says, will 
 warrant anticipations of the most happy conse- 
 quences for the future of humanity.* Indeed, if 
 it depended upon the mother to fashion in her 
 image, by the thoughts and feelings with which 
 she occupies her own mind, the little being which 
 she carries, we should have almost discovered the 
 secret of making artists at will, and from a moral 
 point of view of making good men. It is upon 
 the communication of musical impressions that 
 De Frariere particularly insists. To explain the 
 wonderful talent of such and such a musician of 
 genius, it would be enough to remember that his 
 mother performed or heard a great deal of music 
 during her gestation, f But this is not all ; the 
 influence of impressions received while in the 
 mother's womb would extend to all the child's 
 faculties. 
 
 We shall first observe that De Frarifere's the- 
 ory, which he believes to be new, is but the re- 
 publication of the reveries of Malebranche, who 
 
 De Frariere, L’Education anterieure, p. 1. f Ibid., p. 69. 
 
42 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OP THE CHILD. 
 
 also imagined, as we have already said, that the 
 brain of the mother modelled in its own likeness, 
 physically and morally, the brain and body of 
 the child. The author of the Recherche de la 
 V^rite even recounted improbable tales on this 
 subject, for instance, the story of a mother who 
 looked too attentively at the head of St. Peter, 
 and, in consequence, was delivered of a child 
 whose face was that of an old man.* But the 
 fact of its not being new does not make the fancy 
 of anterior education any the more trustworthy. 
 The moral and physical health of the mother 
 does assuredly exercise an indirect effect upon 
 the embryo ; and that is why physicians multi- 
 ply their prescriptions in recommending to young 
 mothers all sorts of precautions in their physical 
 and moral regime. A material imprudence, an 
 excess of any kind, as well as a moral commotion, 
 a nervous crisis, may cost the life of the child by 
 causing a premature birth, or may inflict upon it 
 an organic defoi^ity or a constitutional malady 
 that will never be outgrown. But no one thinks 
 of claiming that a feeling of sweet content, a calm 
 and serenity of mind which are the conditions 
 of happy gestation, can transmit the same dispo- 
 sitions directly to the child, f 
 
 It is not in a mysterious exchange performed 
 
 * Recherche de la Verite, Book III, chap. vii. 
 f Cabanis, however, accepted this strange hypothesis. See 
 the passage in Rapports dii physique et du moral (dixieme me- 
 moire) beginning thus : “ 1 shall not speak of the sympathetic 
 alTections generated in the foetus by the close relations with the 
 mother,” etc. 
 
THE NEWBORN CHILD. 
 
 43 
 
 during the double life of a pregnant mother, nor 
 is it, in spite of the popular expression, by suck- 
 ing the mother's milk, that the child acquires the 
 tastes, the hidden inclinations, the instinctive 
 tendencies that sleep in the embryo and awaken 
 but slowly in the newborn child. It is generation, 
 not less mysterious, it is true, that, together with 
 life, causes the universal qualities of humanity 
 with certain peculiarities of race and of family 
 to appear in the being begotten and conceived. 
 Montaigne knew that generation transmits to us 
 not only the bodily form, but the cast of mind 
 and the inclinations of our fathers.* If there is 
 one fact established to-day, although it may be 
 inexplicable, it is that, thanks to heredity, men- 
 tal and physical traits pass from ancestor to 
 descendant. 
 
 But, to be sure, nothing in the uterine life 
 betrays the existence of hereditary dispositions ; 
 it is only after birth that these germs can open 
 themselves out. It was in vain that Cabanis said 
 that the foetus, before seeing the light of day, 
 has already received many different impres- 
 sions, from which have resulted long series of 
 volitions ; that it has contracted habits, that it 
 feels appetites and has inclinations, f The appe- 
 tites and inclinations are not shown until the 
 
 * Montaigne, Essais, Book II, chap, xxxvii. Montaigne re- 
 minds us that, according to Aristotle, among certain tribes of 
 antiquity, in which the institution of marriage did not exist, 
 children were assigned to their fathers by resemblance. 
 
 t Cabanis, Rapports du physique et du moral, dixieme me- 
 moire. 
 
44 the development OF THE CHILD. 
 
 child is born ; they exist by Nature, not by reason 
 of anterior impressions. The habits reduce them- 
 selves to dispositions in the management of the 
 limbs, and they result from the position in which 
 the child^s body was placed ; he will keep his legs 
 in a more or less bent position, in the form of a 
 sabre, and when he is put into a bath will try to 
 bring the soles of his feet together. As to the 
 ^^long series of volitions,^^ that is a mere fancy, 
 and what Cabanis ambitiously calls the ideo- 
 logical state of the foetus is equivalent, so to 
 speak, to zero. The child just born is tabula rasa, 
 not only in regard to the external world, which 
 he has not yet perceived, but relatively to ante- 
 rior impressions, which, supposing that they may 
 have existed, and that they may have called forth 
 a vague beginning of consciousness, have at least 
 left no trace behind them, no remembrance, and 
 have passed away as shadows. 
 
 II. 
 
 Infant psychology begins only with birth. 
 From this time on the work of adaptation, of 
 accommodation of the little human being to the 
 medium in which he is called to live, will pro- 
 ceed slowly. The nervous system, as far as it is 
 formed at this time, and in the proportion that it 
 will develop further, will respond to the inces- 
 sant excitations of external objects. The brain, 
 which gains every day in consistency, physically 
 speaking, will become little by little the regu- 
 lator of the child^s actions and the seat of con- 
 
TnE NEWBORN CHILD. 
 
 45 
 
 sciousness.* Instincts will be exercised from the 
 beginning, preparing imperceptibly, for the ap- 
 pearance of the conscious life. Sensations will 
 succeed sensations, growing clearer and more de- 
 fined, determining by their repeated impressions 
 an internal sense, so to speak, an individual con- 
 sciousness ; an intermittent consciousness at first, 
 which is formed and dissolved, which makes and 
 unmakes itself continually, with the alternation 
 of sleeping and of waking, and which can hardly 
 be completely formed as long as sleep absorbs 
 the greater part of infantine existence. In a 
 word, the psychological woof is going to weave 
 itself thread by thread, slowly, it seems, if we fol- 
 low the daily acquisitions step by step, but with 
 marvellous facility when we consider the noth- 
 ingness of the starting point. 
 
 It must not be forgotten that the starting 
 
 * See Parrot’s observations, “ Sur le developpement du cer- 
 veau chez les enfants du premier %e,” in the Archives de physi- 
 ologie normale et pathologique, 1879, Nos. 5 and 6. The result of 
 his research is that the brain, soft, semitransparent, friable, very 
 aqueous, of an almost uniform tint and homogeneous appear- 
 ance at first, is condensed little by little, becomes more solid, 
 and two colourations appear. From month to month the prog- 
 ress becomes mqre marked. One fact important to notice is 
 that the development of the right side appears before that of 
 the left side. And in this connection Parrot calls to mind the 
 fact that the right hand is controlled by the left hemisphere, 
 that the organ of articulate language has its seat in the left 
 hemisphere. “But,” he says, “it must be remarked that the 
 predominance of the right hand, as well as the power of speak- 
 ing, does not manifest itself until some time after birth — that is 
 to say, after a long period of improvement.” 
 
46 the development op the child. 
 
 point of the mental development of the child is 
 almost at zero. J ust as we do not accept the illu- 
 sions of poets and of mothers — maternal love is 
 the most deceiving of poets — who would see a 
 marvel of beauty in the newborn babe, in this 
 little, red, wrinkled, squinting thing, as Gustave 
 Droz says,* so we shall not invest the poor little 
 creature with sensations and emotions of which 
 its moral destitution will not permit. ‘^^At the 
 same time that he leaves darkness and sees light 
 for the first time,^^ said Malebranche,f the cold- 
 ness of the outside air strikes upon him ; the 
 most caressing touch of the woman that receives 
 him hurts his delicate organism ; all exterior ob- 
 jects surprise him ; they are all objects of fear to 
 him, because he does not known them yet, and 
 because he has no means of defence or of fiight. 
 The tears and cries with which he consoles him- 
 self are infallible signs of his troubles and of his 
 terrors, for they are the prayers which Nature 
 offers for him, asking those who care for him to 
 defend him from the ills that he suffers and from 
 those he fears.'''’ This is undoubtedly a tempting 
 conception, which poetizes the first days of life 
 by imagining a child capable of feeling astonish- 
 ment, fright, and pain. How dramatic the en- 
 trance upon existence would be if the newcomer 
 should see the world opening out before him for 
 the first time with the eyes of an intelligent 
 and sensible spectator ! But for these emotions. 
 
 * Gustave Droz, L’Enfant, Paris, 1885, p. 20. 
 f Malebranche, Recherche dc la vcrite, Book II, chap. viii. 
 
THE NEWBORN CHILD. 
 
 47 
 
 whether terrifying or soothing, to be possible, it 
 wonld be necessary for the newborn child to be 
 considered as being somebody; and the trouble 
 is, that as yet nobody is there. It is Nature, it is 
 not yet the individual, that manifests itself in the 
 first motions and the first cries of the child. His 
 senses, with the exception of touch, do not enter 
 immediately into activity. He is deaf, he is 
 blind ; he is mute also in spite of his cries, for 
 he is mute who can not put significance into the 
 sounds he makes. His movements are purely 
 reflex, totally lacking in conscious intention, de- 
 termined, at the most, by a mechanical instinct. 
 Let us give up looking for a little man where 
 there is still only an automaton. 
 
 Although the child has left his mother^s womb, 
 and will henceforth live an independent life, still 
 there is as yet nothing of the individual or per- 
 sonal. The first days help us only in the devel- 
 opment of hereditary germs, and do not show us 
 anything that resembles a distinct mental physi- 
 ognomy. We may say of the child what natural 
 scientists say of the animal : The psychic activi- 
 
 ty of the animal has nothing personal in it ; it is 
 transmitted without change of form from gener- 
 ation to generation ; here we have hereditary in- 
 stinct and nothing more. But as soon as con- 
 sciousness develops intelligence appears ; it grows 
 with the consciousness ; a personal psychic ac- 
 tivity is combined at every step with the heredi- 
 tary activity ; intelligence is brought to bear 
 upon the instinct, modifies it, and transforms it 
 in a thousand ways ; the original canvas is cov- 
 
48 the development op tee child. 
 
 ered with embellishments.'’^ * The original can- 
 vas in the case of the child reduces itself to a 
 few instincts, whose evolution consists of con- 
 stant reappearance nnder the same forms. Jnst 
 as medals come forth from a crucible, one by 
 one, bearing the same impression and the same 
 effigy, so the successive generations of human- 
 ity repeat the same role from age to age, or, so 
 to speak, spell the same alphabet in their begin- 
 nings of life. If it is true, as anatomists declare, 
 that the embryos of the most diverse animal 
 species, including the human species, have a very 
 marked trace of family ties, not very flattering 
 to our vanity, it is not less certain that all new- 
 born creatures resemble each other, trait for 
 trait, in their instinctive actions. Inneity (in- 
 neite, innateness or inborn nature) — I mean the 
 personal nature with its original characteristics 
 — inneity, this first antagonist of heredity (edu- 
 cation will be the second), does not show itself 
 yet. It is the impetus of heredity, it is the life 
 of the species that triumphs, not having met, as 
 yet, whether in the circumstances of a special 
 medium or in the appearance of particular incli- 
 nations, in the development of what physicians 
 call the idiosyncrasy, the conflicting forces that 
 will modify it later. We can not conceal the fact 
 that if the life of the newborn child is at first ex- 
 clusively instinctive and automatic, it is because 
 there is not as yet a centre of action and of direc- 
 
 * Edmond Perrier, in the preface, upon mental evolution in 
 the French translation of Romanes’ book. Animal Intelligence. 
 
THE NEWBORN CHILD. 
 
 49 
 
 tion organized in the brain. The activity of the 
 child will show itself at first in local operations, 
 so to speak, responding to the needs or the sen- 
 sibility of each organ in itself ; not co-ordinate 
 movements of the limbs, but set movements, de- 
 termined by the instinct of nutrition, first impres- 
 sions of the senses. The newborn child is really, 
 as Virchow defined it, a purely spinal being 
 and there is some point in the comparison that 
 has been made between the newborn child and a 
 decapitated animal. 
 
 One proof that intelligence proper, even in the 
 lowest forms, is still lacking, is the significant 
 fact that children destined by Nature to be idiots 
 appear the same in the beginning as those that 
 afterward become intelligent. 
 
 For instance, this is how Espinas describes a 
 child studied from the first minute of his exist- 
 ence : * March 12, normal birth, male sex, nor- 
 mal constitution, medium weight. From the first 
 day a certain number of definite motions refer- 
 ring to the function of nutrition. Buccal prehen- 
 sion of the finger when presented to him. In 
 yawning, bends the head toward the breast of the 
 person holding him, trying, doubtless, to nurse. 
 Motions of the arms not co-ordinate ; strikes his 
 face with his fingers.^^ 
 
 Let us place by the side of this portrait of a 
 normal child, predestined to acquire all his facul- 
 ties regularly, an observation made by Bourne- 
 
 * M. A. Espinas, Observations sur un nouveau-ne in the An- 
 nales de la Faculte des lettres de Bordeaux, 1883, p. 383. 
 
50 the development op the child. 
 
 ville on a little girl doomed to idiocy: Birth 
 
 one month late. During the first six months the 
 child was like other children. From that time 
 her motions diminished almost to the point of 
 immobility of the limbs. The physiognomy, 
 which expressed the vivacity and other charac- 
 teristics common to children of that age, changed. 
 She took on an air of imbecility, which she still 
 keeps.'’^ * 
 
 So, in the animal life of the first days, as well 
 as in the vegetative life of the uterus, nothing as 
 yet betrays the future man ; and it is not always 
 possible to tell in advance whether one has to do 
 with normal or abnormal children.! 
 
 The instinctive life of the little child, more- 
 over, has characteristics of its own which should 
 be noted. The human instinct does not seem to 
 be endowed in the same degree as is the animal 
 instinct with that spontaneity, that infallibility, 
 which distinguishes the movements and actions 
 of little animals, and as a result of which the es- 
 tablishment of instinctive operations becomes in 
 the twinkling of an eye an accomplished fact. 
 In man, even in the case of the instincts, there 
 
 * Dr. Bourneville, Association frangaise pour I’avancement 
 des sciences, 1889, second part, p. 821. The minute and pre- 
 cise observations which Dr. Bourneville has made for fifteen 
 years, at the Salpetriere and at Bicetre, on idiotic children will 
 be found very useful and profitable in the study of the ques- 
 tions with which we are concerned. 
 
 t We must state, however, that this is the exception, and 
 that more often the idiot gives evidence of his misfortune from 
 the very beginning. 
 
THE NEWBORN CHILD. 
 
 51 
 
 are, so to speak, preparations, gradations, and pe- 
 riods. It* we examine different animals at the 
 time of their birth,^^ said Bichat, we shall see 
 that special instincts in each one of them direct 
 the execution of particular motions. Young quad- 
 rupeds go to their mothers for nourishment ; birds 
 of the gallinaceous order lose no time in seizing 
 the grain which is their appointed food ; while 
 the young carnivorous birds only open their 
 beaks to receive the nourishment brought to the 
 nest by the parent birds. The development of 
 instinct in the child is much slower. Nurses 
 know well from experience that it is necessary 
 to take all sorts of precautions and care in induc- 
 ing nurslings to take the breast, to place them in 
 a particular position, which they are incapable of 
 finding for themselves ; a sort of apprenticeship, 
 veritable tactics are necessary. In the human 
 race the newborn is passive ; the activity is all 
 on the mother's side." * 
 
 What a difference there is between the little 
 animal which walks as soon as it is born, knows 
 how to find its mother, to run after its food, and 
 to get itself out of trouble, and the poor little hu- 
 man being who can not do anything by himself, 
 and would surely perish if his parents did not 
 come to his aid ! "" The young bird or mammifer 
 
 comes into the world with a quantity and a pre- 
 cision of ancestral knowledge that is truly aston- 
 ishing. Little chickens, from the very first day, 
 follow the motions of insects with their eyes. 
 
 * Dictionnaire de m4decine, Dr. Jaccoud, article Allaitement. 
 5 
 
52 the development op the child. 
 
 turning their heads with as much precision as a 
 grown fowl. They pick up crumbs or insects, 
 showing that they have instinctive perception 
 of distances, and also the faculty of measuring 
 them with almost infallible exactness. They do 
 not try to touch objects out of their reach, as 
 children do when they stretch out their arms to 
 the moon, and we may say that they always 
 reach any object aimed at ; they never miss it 
 by more than a hair’s breadth, even when the 
 point in view is no larger and no more visible 
 than the dot of an V * And observations of the 
 same sort show us as much instinctive precocity 
 in the young of mammifers, without its being 
 possible to explain, either by a rapid education 
 or by an unconscious imitation, the perfection of 
 their activity, f 
 
 A very different sight is presented by the 
 weakness of the child, who can not hold his 
 head erect nor control his limbs for prehension or 
 for walking; who can not perceive objects, and 
 still less appreciate distances. An appeal to the 
 principle that the more elevated the functions of 
 a being, the longer and more painful his evolu- 
 tion, will not suffice to explain this state of infe- 
 riority ; it will not apply here, except in the case 
 of functions common to animals and men. NTo, 
 the real reason is that the child at the moment 
 of birth has not attained the same degree of ma- 
 
 * Romanes, Mental Evolution in Animals, 
 f See, for example, Charlton Bastian, Le cerveau organo de 
 la pensee, vol. i, p. 177. 
 
THE NEWBORN CHILD. 
 
 53 
 
 turity and advancement in his organism that the 
 young of animals have reached. 
 
 Instinct is a natural tendency to perform cer- 
 tain actions, a nisus, a spontaneous stimulus, but 
 appropriate instruments are necessary to its ex- 
 ercise ; it presupposes a certain development of 
 physical parts, and particularly of the nervous 
 system. Hence the tardy appearance even in the 
 animal species of certain instincts — for instance, 
 of the faculty of flying, which naturally will not 
 show itself until the young birds have feathers. 
 Hence, also, the hesitations, the gropings of in- 
 stinct in the child. Suppose, for a moment, that 
 the newborn child were far enough advanced in 
 point of nervous excitability and muscular force 
 to hold his head erect, and, above all, to control 
 and direct his legs and to walk ; and you would 
 see him run to his wet-nurse with the same im- 
 petuosity that young mammifers run to their 
 mothers for nourishment.* One fact, among 
 others, that shows well the relations between the 
 exercise of instinct and the degree of strength of 
 the organs, is that a child born too soon is inca- 
 pable of grasping its mother^s nipple, f 
 
 At what moment does consciousness begin in 
 this pitiable creature, whose activity is so re- 
 strained ? The problem, stated in this absolute 
 form, can not be solved. J There can be no ques- 
 
 * “ Who knows but that, in ages to come, children may be 
 born able to walk alone?” (Dauriac, L’Ame du nouveau-ne, 
 dans la critique philosophique, 1886, vol. ii, p. 356. 
 
 t Dictionnaire de medecine, Dr. Jaccoud, article Allaitement. 
 
 X This is a question of the same sort as that which has occu- 
 
54 the development of the child. 
 
 tion of consciousness, properly speaking, in the 
 beginnings of life — that is to say, of this feeling 
 of the self, which permits us to judge of our ex- 
 istence. It may be said of the child as of the 
 animal : 
 
 “ Vivit et est vitas nescius ipse suas.” 
 
 But if there is not yet consciousness of the 
 self, there certainly are impressions from the 
 very first day which are vaguely felt, and, in 
 
 pied theologians and scholastics for so long : “ When and how 
 is the soul introduced into the human body ? ’’ Two contrary 
 opinions on this point have successively prevailed : One, tradu- 
 cianism or generationism, admits that the soul is transmitted 
 from father to son. This is the opinion of Tertullian, of Saint 
 Jerome, and of the majority of the early doctors of the Church. 
 Luther adopted this view, and Leibnitz seems to have accepted 
 it also. “ I am inclined to believe that the souls that will one 
 day be human souls have existed in the seed in the ancestors 
 back to Adam.” (Essais de theodicee, first part, section 91.) 
 Leibnitz added that these souls, purely sensitive or animal, do 
 not become reasonable until the moment of the generation of 
 the individuals to whom they are to belong. The other opinion 
 has become the official doctrine of theologians ; it is creationism^ 
 according to which all souls are created directly by God. “ The 
 formula by means of which the schools of theology define it is 
 very simple : God creates souls, and infuses them into the body 
 while it is in the mother’s womb, when the body is ready for 
 animation.” (Jean Reynaud, Terre et ciel, p. 154.) Saint Thom- 
 as wrote : “ Hereticum est dicere quod anima intellectiva tra- 
 ducatur cum semine.” These are the different objections which 
 this theory of the infusion of souls into the body raises, the time 
 of the infusion not being determined, and hence left A^ague — 
 objections which are turned to account by the Neoplatonists, 
 like Jean Reynaud, in order to justify their dreams on the pre- 
 existence of the soul, on their migration from planet to planet, 
 from body to body. 
 
THE NEWBORN CHILD. 
 
 consequonco, conscious of themselves.* If we 
 were asked what is the first act of consciousness 
 so understood, we should not hesitate to reply 
 that it is an act of suffering, of physical pain. 
 The child feels himself suffer,'' says Dauriac, 
 therefore he knows that he suffers." The con- 
 clusion is false, and not warranted by the prem- 
 ise; but the premise is true, if understood to 
 mean simply that there are little sensations of 
 pain which are felt immediately, if they are only 
 those resulting from shocks to the sense of touch, 
 the only sense that enters into activity at once. 
 
 There is no doubt but that in the first weeks 
 of life the painful sensations overbalance the 
 pleasurable ones ; and if a decisive proof of this 
 were desired, it could be drawn from the fact 
 that the mortality of newborn children is notably 
 higher than the average mortality. How many 
 children succumb almost immediately in the 
 struggle between their frail organisms and Na- 
 ture ! For how many are the first and last breath 
 separated by only a few months or a few days ! 
 The proportion of mortality during the first year 
 is a quarter of the children born. From one to 
 six years, it is still fifteen or sixteen per cent ; in 
 the period of six to fourteen it falls to two or 
 three per cent.f I know that the ignorance and 
 
 * It is the result of an effort to give an account of the many 
 different phenomena commonly understood in the word “ con- 
 sciousness ” that certain writers have risked the barbarism 
 “ consciosity,” which would be to consciousness what velleity 
 is to will. 
 
 f Dr. D’ Ammon, Livre d’or de la jeune femme, p. 242. 
 
56 the development of the child. 
 
 carelessness of parents are in great part respon- 
 sible for this evil. We nmst blame clumsy rear- 
 ing rather than an improvident Nature for the 
 fact that children are called into existence only 
 to be immediately given up to death. But, nev- 
 ertheless, it is true that the act of beginning life, 
 and the work of accommodation to external cir- 
 cumstances constitute in themselves a period of 
 crisis, when the assaults of disease are particu- 
 larly numerous and formidable. How many 
 doors there are open to functional disorders, and 
 what a morbid opportunity, so to speak ! writes 
 a physician.* The most delicate, the least cared 
 for, die from attacks of physical sickness ; but 
 all, even the most healthy, the best cared for, are 
 affected by it ; all have to suffer more or less in 
 their first attempts to use their organs, from heat 
 or from cold, from difficulties of alimentation, 
 from the harshness of the medium, finally, from 
 the adaptation of their nerves and muscles to the 
 conditions of life. 
 
 So it is a picture of the chikTs sufferings that 
 most observers have been pleased to give us. 
 From Pliny or Lucretius, down to our own times, 
 it has been repeated : 
 
 “ Then the poor babe, too, like a seaman wrecked. 
 
 Thrown from the waves, lies naked o’er the ground, 
 Weakly, and void of every vital aid. 
 
 When Nature first, amid his mother’s pangs. 
 
 Casts the young burden on the realms of light. 
 
 Dr. Lorain, article Ages, in Dr. Jaccoud’s Dictionnaire de 
 medecine. 
 
THE NEWBORN CHILD. 
 
 57 
 
 And leaves to pine full sore, as well he may, 
 
 That e’er the suffering lot of life were his.” * 
 
 Modern writers also have preferred to consider 
 the painful side of the life of the newborn child. 
 Mme. Necker de Saussure says : Pain intro- 
 
 duced man to the world. A throng of tumultuous 
 sensations assail the soul at its first appearance. 
 The air forces its entrance into the child's lungs 
 like a rapid torrent and irritates them. The 
 light dazzles his eyes through the transparent 
 veils that cover them. Suffering, amazement, 
 dizziness — this is what comes to the soul at the 
 mysterious moment when it is plunged into the 
 whirlpool of life." 
 
 There is some exaggeration in these sombre 
 pictures, as well as the pessimism of prejudice.! 
 To say nothing of the pleasures which compen- 
 sate in a measure for the child's suffering in the 
 first stages of his life, it is not well to take the 
 suffering itself too tragically. It is moderate 
 and vague, and the state of semiconsciousness, 
 of semisensibility, in which the child is still 
 plunged, if it denies him clear perceptions and 
 definite pleasures, also shields him from too acute 
 
 * Lucretius, De Natura Rerum, J. M. Good’s translation. 
 Book V. 
 
 f The general opinion seems to be that the child suffers 
 without compensation : “ The newborn child, at the moment 
 of birth, is manifestly susceptible to painful impressions” 
 (Letourneau, La Sociologie, p. 526), and the author does not 
 tell us that there is any manifestation of agreeable impres- 
 sions. “ The newborn child seems to me to express, by all his 
 attitudes, ‘ the fear of living ’ ” (Dauriac). 
 
58 the development op the child. 
 
 STiJffering. We must not believe bis cries; tbe 
 sign of expression in tbe child is always dispro- 
 portionate to tbe thing signified. The first im- 
 pressions made on the child's sensibility have not 
 the brutal harshness which people pretend. It is 
 by gradual transitions and with infinite caution 
 that Nature conducts the blind and deaf just 
 born to the full possession of sight and of hear- 
 ing. And if it pleases poets to represent to us, 
 in their conventional fictions, a blind and wicked 
 power willing to cast a naked child upon a bare 
 earth, reality shows us, on the contrary, a far- 
 seeing Nature, everywhere present and active, 
 which has prepared for the child's rest and 
 nourishment in the soft pillow of the mother's 
 breast, with its comforting warmth and its gen- 
 tle touch. 
 
 During the first months of life," says Dr. 
 Sikorski, the positive or agreeable feelings, re- 
 sulting in contentment and good humour, are 
 maintained by a great number of sensations ; the 
 action of sucking, the tepid bath, a warm bed, a 
 soft light, sweet sounds, a moderate muscular 
 activity. Being given these enjoyments in pro- 
 fusion, the child offers, ordinarily, the aspect of 
 serenity ; he is quiet, patient, cheerful ; he makes 
 many motions; his face wears an agreeable ex- 
 pression, his eyes are opened wide, his cheeks are 
 chubby." * It would be hard to see in this pict- 
 ure the image of a suffering and unhappy being 
 condemned by Nature to a life of pain. 
 
 * Revue pliilosophique, vol. xix, p. 244. Le developpement 
 psyehique de I’enfant. 
 
THE NEWBORN CHILD. 
 
 59 
 
 But we can not push these preliminary studies 
 further without encroaching upon the detailed 
 analysis which we shall devote, in the course of 
 this work, to each one of the forms of mental 
 activity. Let us confine ourselves to recalling 
 the fact that the child at birth has only the ap- 
 pearance of a completed being. Even from the 
 physical point of view he is still only a sketch, 
 a rough outline. His muscles, his nerves, his 
 organs, are made of milk, so to speak."^^ His 
 limbs not merely have to grow ; even consistency 
 and solidity are lacking in them. With his tiny 
 stature, so light in weight, he is still but the epit- 
 ome of a man, an abridgment, whose lines are 
 merely sketched and vaguely drawn. The re- 
 markable part of it, moreover, is that there will 
 be a correspondence between his physical growth 
 and his intellectual evolution. The dwarfishness 
 of idiots has often been proved. A mother, whose 
 daughter had shown evident signs of intellectual 
 atrophy from the time she was five or six months 
 old, said, ^^From this time on the child never 
 grew.^^ But what is lacking, above all, in the 
 newborn child is what depends upon the mental 
 faculties. Truly, his soul is not yet born ; * it 
 will separate itself, little by little, from the re- 
 peated shock of sensible impressions, from the 
 play of actions and reactions caused by the con- 
 
 * To be sure, we do not take the word “ soul ” in its meta- 
 physical sense as a synonym of an immaterial principle. In 
 these studies of pure observation we have nothing to do with 
 questions of substance and of essence. The soul, for us, is sim- 
 ply the ensemhle of the intellectual and moral phenomena. 
 
60 the development of the child. 
 
 stant relation of the excitations of the external 
 worlds and of a nervous organism more and more 
 developed as time goes on. Nature is contented 
 with organizing what is absolutely indispensable 
 to a minimum of material life, and this even on 
 one condition, namely, that parents shall lend 
 their aid to the work. All the rest is the free 
 field of experience ; the perceptions, emotions, 
 ideas, choices — in a word, the conscious acts as a 
 whole, will result from daily acquisitions and a 
 slow evolution. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 MOVEMENTS THE FIRST FORMS OF ACTIVITY. 
 
 I. Movements the first manifestations of life. — Initial period 
 one of torpor. — Extreme motor activity of the child. — The 
 vivacity and regularity of motions correspond in a certain 
 degree to intellectual dispositions. — Counter-proof in the ob- 
 servations made on idiots. — Psychological value of move- 
 ments. — Classification of movements. II. There are not only 
 refiex movements in the child. — Spontaneous movements, 
 which reveal the inner energy. — Automatic and instinctive 
 movements. — Character of automatic movements ; they are 
 without purpose; they are not co-ordinate. — These move- 
 ments do not disappear with childhood. — Purely refiex move- 
 ments ; more complicated than automatic movements. — Why 
 is refiex action limited and sluggish in the beginning? — 
 Sneezing a type of refiex action.— Other reflex actions. — On 
 what part of the nervous system do they depend ? III. In- 
 stinctive motions. — Two extremes ; of those who see instinct 
 in everything, and of those who do not recognise it at all. — 
 The action of sucking a type of instinctive movement. — 
 Instinct precedes all external excitation. — Remarkable pre- 
 cision of the first movements of sucking. — Rapid modifica- 
 tion of instincts. — Consciousness and desire. — The evolution 
 of the motor phenomena precedes the evolution of conscious 
 representations. IV. Other movements of the child. — Cries. 
 — Different interpretations of cries. — Partly spontaneous, 
 partly reflex. — At first they have no moral significance. — 
 The prehension of objects. 
 
 I. 
 
 Movement is one of tlie first manifestations 
 of life in the child — the first, indeed, to speak 
 
 61 
 
62 the development of the child. 
 
 exactly, the primary mode of activity — for the 
 cries, sneezing, tears, are movements also. The 
 internal force which later will be sensation, re- 
 flection, thought, does not betray itself in the 
 beginning, except in little muscular tensions. 
 Everything in the child^s consciousness is still 
 asleep, and already the activity of the living be- 
 ing reveals itself in an extraordinary profusion 
 of motions — in a multitude of grimaces, contor- 
 tions, gestures of every sort ; later, when the 
 child can walk, in leaps and gambols. There is, 
 doubtless, a flrst period, when it seems as though 
 the deep sleep of the intra-uterine life were pro- 
 longed in a sort of habitual torpor and of endless 
 drowsiness.* 
 
 The child is dull and almost inert. But the 
 time soon comes when, according to the popular 
 expression, he does nothing but kick. One sees 
 not only determined and useful movements, such 
 as the motion of the lips in sucking, and that of 
 the eyelids in protecting the eyes from too strong 
 a light, but a great number of immoderate and 
 irregular motions. When he is not asleep, when 
 
 * According to Preyer’s observations, the child sleeps sixteen 
 hours a day during the firs^ month, fourteen hours during the 
 third month. The difference between the sleep of the intra- 
 uterine life and that of the newborn child results principally, 
 as Dr. Sikorski states, from the fact that in the former the ap- 
 paratus of the organs of the senses are sheltered from all exter- 
 nal excitation, while in the newborn child sleep comes from the 
 fatigue which the sensitive organs in their state of weakness feel 
 very soon. The work of the muscles of respiration, work which 
 does not exist in the foetal life, seems to be one of the greatest 
 sources of the fatigue felt by the child. 
 
MOVEMENTS THE FIRST FORMS OF ACTIVITY. 63 
 
 he is neither tired nor ill, the child a few months 
 old is all motion ; his arms and his hands, his 
 legs and his feet, his eyes, lips, head, the whole 
 body — everything in motion.* 
 
 Rabelais is wrong when he says that the child 
 divides his existence between eating, drinking, 
 and sleeping ; he forgets at least one of his essen- 
 tial occupations, that which consists in motion — 
 motion sometimes without purpose and by a sort 
 of automatic play of the muscles, sometimes for 
 a definite end, conforming to his needs. 
 
 This extreme motor activity, which is the 
 characteristic of childhood, will not end, more- 
 over, with the awakening and the progress of in- 
 telligence. Even when the child is capable of 
 governing his attention motion remains as the 
 necessary accompaniment of his little intellectual 
 efforts. A little girl consented to take her read- 
 ing lesson on one condition, namely, that she 
 should be permitted to have her fingers occu- 
 pied at the same time, and that she might draw 
 her needle in and out while saying the letters 
 of the alphabet. t And when the movements are 
 not voluntary, concerted, as in the preceding ex- 
 ample, there are incoherent, irregular motions 
 
 * “ When my little girl was about three months and a half 
 old she was placed on a rug in the open air in the garden, where 
 she would lie on her stomach or on her back for an hour at a 
 time, moving her arms and legs.” (Taine, Revue philosophique, 
 vol. i, p. 5. 
 
 f “ When children learn to write,” says Darwin, “ they often 
 twist their tongues about in the most laughable fashion while 
 following the motions of their fingers.” 
 
C4: the development of the child. 
 
 which, so to speak, accompany and aid the begin- 
 nings of attention. Go into a kindergarten — not 
 during recreation time, when all the children are 
 skipping about, but when the teacher is giving a 
 lesson — see how this little world is going on, how 
 it flutters, how it recovers from the relative im- 
 mobility that has been imposed upon it while 
 seated, by all sorts of forbidden movements; 
 glances are directed now to the right, now to the 
 left ; lips pucker ; fingers contract or extend ; 
 heads swing from side to side. 
 
 The study of movement, then, constitutes one 
 of the important chapters of the psychology of the 
 child. And this study, interesting in itself, will 
 offer more attractions still when we consider that 
 there is a close connection between the particular 
 evolution of the motor faculty and the develop- 
 ment of all the intellectual and moral faculties at 
 the Childs’s disposal. As a rule, the vivacity and 
 the regularity of the motions of the newborn 
 child are not only a sign of present physical 
 health, they are a token of future intellectual 
 activity. The motions of the normal child pre- 
 sent this double characteristic, that they are 
 very numerous, very varied, and also that by the 
 spontaneous development of a sound nature, not 
 less than by the action of education, they pass 
 quickly enough from the disorder and chaos of 
 the first days to a state of progressive co-ordina- 
 tion. In the idiotic child, on the contrary, ob- 
 servers notice either inactivity, obstinate immov- 
 ability, or an absolute lack of co-ordination in 
 movements that are as irregular as they are 
 
MOVEMENTS THE FIRST FORMS OF ACTIVITY. G5 
 
 abundant. The poor little creature who will 
 never manifest any intelligence or any will 
 shows the weakness and defects of his nature 
 from the first years, either by the scarcity or by 
 the confused excess of his motions ; either he 
 does not stir, is sickly and dull, seated on a chair 
 or lying on his bed, or — and this is ordinarily the 
 case — he gives himself up to a veritable drunk- 
 enness of motion; he moves without truce or rest.* 
 The different parts of the machine, deprived of 
 the regulator, fly about in every direction. 
 
 Motions, then, possess a real psychological 
 value ; but, apart from their importance, they 
 have this advantage over all the other phenome- 
 na of the child's life, that they are apparent, that 
 they come directly under the grasp of observa- 
 tion. While waiting for the child to learn to 
 speak, they are, as Marion says, the only pos- 
 sible signs of what is going on within him."t 
 There is interest, then, in studying them at the 
 beginning, since it is through the movements that 
 we are able to reach the phenomena of the inner 
 life, and particularly of the first emotions. These 
 are the only actions of the child that teach us 
 what he is. 
 
 * See on this point Dr. Sollier’s Psychologie de I’idiot et 
 de Timbecile, Paris, Alcan, 1891, p. 87 ; also Romanes’s Mental 
 Evolution in Animals (p. 178). “ One fact,” he says, “ that must 
 strike any one visiting an asylum for idiots is the extraordinary 
 character and variety of the useless and thoughtless movements 
 one sees all about one.” 
 
 f Revue scientifique, vol. xvi, p. 769 et seq., Marion’s article, 
 Les mouvements de I’enfant. 
 
66 the development of the child. 
 
 Moreover, we are not to occupy ourselves pri- 
 marily with the material mechanism of the move- 
 ments. It is the business of the anatomist or of 
 the physiologist to describe the organs or to ex- 
 plain the functions of the motor faculty. What 
 comes within our domain, on the contrary, is the 
 search for the hidden origins, the principles of 
 motion — principles sometimes obscure, in any 
 case diverse, but whose very diversity permits 
 phenomena, uniform in appearance, to be classed 
 in a certain number of distinct categories.* Mo- 
 tions in themselves, indeed, are never more than 
 a nervous excitation followed by a muscular 
 contraction, but they differ greatly as to their 
 causes. 
 
 In the psychology of the fully developed man 
 the work of classifying the motions seems simple 
 enough ; we are contented, in general, with dis- 
 tinguishing two great classes : the voluntary 
 movements and those that are not voluntary, 
 these last arising in almost all cases from 
 habit. 
 
 In the case of the child there can be no doubt 
 but that the movements, in their first appearance, 
 
 * Hartley, who was the first to attempt a classification of 
 motions from the point of view of the mental state preceding 
 them, distinguished only two lands of movements, automatic 
 and voluntary — the first depending on sensations, the second on 
 ideas. Hartley did not recognise automatic movements, that 
 are owing to impressions not felt. Sensation is not the neces- 
 sary antecedent of every involuntary motion. And, on the other 
 hand, automatic movements may have much more than a sensa- 
 tion as their condition — an idea, for instance, in the laugh called 
 forth by a comical idea. 
 
MOVEMENTS THE FIRST FORMS OF ACTIVITY. 67 
 
 are all involuntary : no idea^ no intellectual rep- 
 resentation^ no choice concurs in producing them. 
 But under this common characteristic the diver- 
 sities of origin appear. There are different forms 
 of the involuntary as there are different forms 
 of the unconscious. Among the motions of the 
 child^ some are owing to an excitation from with- 
 out, to an impression, we dare not say to a sensa- 
 tion ; we shall call these reflex motions.* The 
 others give evidence, on the contrary, of an in- 
 nate vitality, an inner impetus ; these are spon- 
 taneous motions. But these spontaneous move- 
 ments in their turn are of different kinds : on the 
 one hand they are undetermined, without pur- 
 pose, depending only on an automatic activity; 
 others, on the contrary, are very definite, very 
 co-ordinate, show deep instincts, needs that de- 
 mand satisfaction and find immediate means of 
 obtaining it; whence two other categories, that 
 of purely automatic motions and that of instinc- 
 tive movements. 
 
 It is these primary classes of motion that 
 
 We limit intentionally the sense of the word “ reflex.’’ 
 The reflex actions, according to Bain, are characterized by the 
 absence of the distinguishing feature of the voluntary actions 
 — namely, the stimulus of a controlling sentiment. In this 
 sense every involuntary action would be reflex. Littre defines 
 reflex action in the same way when he says that it is that which, 
 independently of the will, succeeds either sensations or uncon- 
 scious phenomena of the sensibility. We wish, in the interest 
 of clearness, to limit still further the sense of the word reflex. 
 We shall employ it to designate only the movements that are, 
 as it were, responses of the organism to an excitation produced 
 at the periphery, and resulting from an external cause. 
 
 6 
 
G8 the development op the child. 
 
 should be studied in the beginning ; the study of 
 voluntary movements * should be delayed, since 
 it is necessary but to define their conditions to 
 understand that they can not be found in the 
 beginnings of the child^s life. The voluntary 
 movements, indeed, correspond to a much more 
 advanced period of psychic evolution, since they 
 presuppose in very different degrees the intel- 
 lectual representation of the end to be attained, 
 as well as that of the action suited to this end. 
 Preyer determined the perfect type of volun- 
 tary movement with rigorous precision when he 
 brought down its essential conditions to four : 
 first, an idea which precedes it and its cause; 
 second, the preliminary knowledge of the move- 
 ment to be accomplished ; third, a definite end ; 
 fourth, the faculty of being arrested, inhibited,^^ 
 by other ideas at the moment when it is about to 
 be accomplished, f 
 
 II. 
 
 There is a natural temptation to believe that 
 all the movements of the newborn child are 
 purely and simply of reflex origin ; that they are 
 always provoked by a peripheric excitation ; that 
 the little child, in a word, does not move of his 
 own accord, but that he is moved, so to speak, by 
 external causes. This theory may flatter the pre- 
 sumptions of the opponents of inneity, innateness 
 
 * See Chapter XII. 
 
 t Preyer, The Senses and the Will, p. 192. 
 
MOVEMENTS THE FIRST FORMS OF ACTIVITY. 69 
 
 or inbornness, but it is contradicted by the facts. 
 There is, undoubtedly, something of the sponta- 
 neous in the motor activity of the suckling. Its 
 acts often depend upon internal causes, and the 
 inneity of movements is, as it were, the prelude 
 to the inneity of emotions. Here, as every- 
 where, outward influences must be considered, 
 but the greatest weight must assuredly be 
 placed upon the action from within. We should 
 be able to account for only a very small part 
 of the child’s motor faculty if we considered 
 only purely reflex motions. The excitation of 
 light, for instance, which, when too bright, 
 wounds the delicacy of the eye, may be sufficient 
 to explain the fact that the eyelids close, but 
 it does not explain why the eyelids open, why 
 the muscles of the eye, when the organ has 
 acquired strength enough, raise, of their own 
 accord, the curtain that has hidden from the 
 child the light and the sight of things about 
 him. 
 
 This innate activity, this natural tendency to 
 motion, shows itself, above all, before we come to 
 voluntary motions, in the definite, regulated mo- 
 tions that may be considered instinctive motions 
 — the act of sucking, for instance ; but it shows 
 itself also, and that from the first day, in a num- 
 ber of motions which, though not regular nor 
 determined enough to be attributed to veritable 
 instincts, are at the same time too spontaneous to 
 be classed with purely reflex actions, and which 
 testify already, in their way, to the inner energy. 
 These are the movements which Bain calls spon- 
 
70 the development of the child. 
 
 taneous/^ * Preyer impulsive/^ f and which^ with 
 Marion, we shall call automatic.'^'’ 
 
 The characteristic of automatic movements is 
 that they forestall all sensation; that in every 
 case they are produced without sensations ; that 
 they do not presuppose in any way a previous 
 excitation of the nerves of sight or of the other 
 organs of the senses ; that they arise wholly from 
 the depths of the organism, whose energy acts 
 through the motor nerves. The better the child^s 
 health, the better he is fed, the more activity he 
 has to dispense, the more numerous will these 
 motions be. It is motions of this kind that are 
 produced in the foetus, in concurrence with the 
 reflex motions which a touch or a pressure may 
 provoke. It is easy enough to recognise them in 
 the child, and to distinguish them from all oth- 
 ers ; they have no distinct purpose, and they are 
 not co-ordinate. Such are the movements of the 
 extension and bending of the arms and legs — su- 
 perfluous, luxurious motions, so to speak — which 
 are produced incessantly, even when the child is 
 asleep. From the very first day we see the child 
 striking his face with his hands or kicking his 
 feet about. One might be tempted to assert that 
 these are but the first awkward gropings of an 
 
 * Bain, Senses and Intellect, chap. i. Sully calls them “ un- 
 prompted and random movements.” (Outlines of Psychology, 
 p. 533.) 
 
 f Preyer says that the impulsive motions are distinguished 
 from all others by the fact that they arc produced without pre- 
 vious peripheric excitation, and that their cause lies exclusively 
 in the organic processes, nutritive, etc. 
 
MOVEMENTS THE FIRST FORMS OF ACTIVITY. 71 
 
 instinctive impulse (for instance^ in the cases 
 cited, of the instinct of prehension and of walk- 
 ing), the instincts themselves not tending at 
 first, in the case of man at least, to a perfect pre- 
 cision in the actions that they determine. We 
 believe, however, that in the spontaneous motor 
 activity of the child there is something more 
 than the preparation and awkward trial of the 
 instinctive activity. There is, as Bain says, the 
 result of a too copious energy, which is discharg- 
 ing itself for the first time, blindly and at ran- 
 dom.* There is the breaking out of a force 
 which has not yet found its channel, a current 
 which has not been directed into canals. 
 
 What serves to corroborate this opinion is 
 that these random movements,^^ as Sully has 
 ingeniously called them, do not disappear with 
 childhood. Even in the adult, when the will 
 
 * “ I look upon the early movements of infancy as in great 
 part due to the spontaneous action of the centres. The mobility 
 displayed in the first stage of infant existence is known to 
 be very great, and can be attributed only to one of three causes. 
 It may arise from the stimulus of sensation, it may be owing to 
 emotions, or, lastly, the cause may be spontaneous energy. The 
 two first named infiuences — external sensation and inward emo- 
 tion — are undoubted causes of active gesticulation and move- 
 ment, but I do not believe that they explain the whole activity 
 of childhood. If there be times of active gesticulation and ex- 
 ercise that show no connection with the sights or sounds or 
 other infiuences of the outer world, and that have no peculiar 
 emotional character of the pleasurable or painful kind, we can 
 ascribe them to nothing but the mere abundance and exuber- 
 ance of self-acting muscular and cerebral energy, which rises 
 and falls with the vigour and nourishment of the general sys- 
 tem.” (Bain, Senses and Intellect, chap, i.) 
 
72 the development of the child. 
 
 and habit have taken possession of the mus- 
 cles, the spontaneous motor faculty still exer- 
 cises its rights. Let us glance for a moment at 
 our ordinary life, and we shall find that under 
 the impulse of organic stimuli we give ourselves 
 up to numberless motions without purpose and 
 definite characteristics : we extend our arms, we 
 fidget in our seats, we stretch our legs, and these 
 movements have nothing in common, either with 
 the actions that we voluntarily perform, or even 
 with any muscular habits that we have con- 
 tracted. There is a multitude of parasitic move- 
 ments about our determined and willed move- 
 ments, just as we find a vegetation of weeds about 
 the cultivated plants in a field. When a child 
 learns to write, Lewes has observed, it is impos- 
 sible for him to move only his hands ; he keeps 
 his tongue, the muscles of his face, and even his 
 feet, all going at the same time.* Time and the 
 advance of age will diminish these useless mo- 
 tions, but will not entirely suppress them. It is 
 after sleep, above all, when the motor forces have 
 been refreshed by rest, that this automatic ges- 
 ticulation is particularly active. Is it not natural 
 that, in the morning of life, when the vitality is 
 in its prime, and when the governing rules of 
 action have not yet imprisoned the muscles in 
 the chains of habit, the motor force should play 
 spontaneously and freely in all parts of the mus- 
 cular system ? 
 
 But although the reflex movements are not 
 
 * Lewes, Problems of the Mind, third series, p. 37. 
 
MOVEMENTS THE FIRST FORMS OF ACTIVITY. 73 
 
 the only ones produced, they have nevertheless 
 a great importance during the first period. As- 
 sailed by excitations from without, the little be- 
 ing finds at first in these external impressions 
 only an occasion for a large number of motions, 
 where later he is to gather the material for his 
 ideas. It is to be remarked, however, that the 
 refiex operation, however mechanical it may be, 
 however simple it may appear, is not as easy as 
 the impulsive operation. In the automatic move- 
 ments the impulse comes from the motor centres, 
 and spreads, by means of the nerves, to the mus- 
 cles ; there is, so to speak, only one current of 
 action, there is only one descending path to 
 travel. In the reflex motion there are prelimi- 
 naries ; an impression from without must excite 
 the sensitive nerves, and this impression ascends 
 to the motor centres, whence it will return to 
 follow the road just travelled. In other words, 
 as Preyer precisely says, a complete series of 
 operations, including sensitive impressions, cen- 
 tripetal, intercentral, and centrifugal processes, 
 is necessary in order that the motion should take 
 place under these conditions. Note, moreover, 
 that in the child, at least during the first days, 
 the impressions from without are somewhat rare. 
 If the reflex action is relatively weak, slow, slug- 
 gish, it is not, as Dr. Sikorski afl&rms, that the 
 irritability of the motor nerves is too slight ; * it 
 is not, as Marion claims, that the vitality is less. 
 
 * See 'Revue philosophiqne, vol. xix, p. 533, article by Dr. 
 Sikorski, Le developpement psychique de Tenfant. 
 
74 the development op the child. 
 
 nor because these motions, like all the rest, are 
 perfected by habit ; it is rather, we believe, that 
 the sensitive nerves are still dull, the sensibility 
 hardly born. W e shall see, moreover, that, thanks 
 to this torpor of the sensibility, the child is not 
 entirely at the mercy of the too pressing solicita- 
 tions of the ontside world, but is protected, as it 
 were, from the brutality of an abrupt revelation 
 of the sensible world.* In proportion as the sen- 
 sibility is developed the occasions for the pro- 
 duction of reflex action will multiply. But, on 
 the other hand, the development of the sensibility 
 will result in the progress of ideas, and the prog- 
 ress of ideas, in its turn, will tend to the suppres- 
 sion, to the annihilation, of reflex motions, which 
 can not exist, by virtue of their fatal and me- 
 chanical character, except in the absence of ideas. 
 
 There are, nevertheless, numerous and impor- 
 tant reflex actions in the case of the newborn 
 child. Reflex action, as we shall soon see, doubt- 
 less plays a part even in the development of 
 instinctive motions and of voluntary motions 
 themselves. But it appears alone and unalloyed 
 in phenomena like sneezing, coughing, hiccough, 
 yawning, crying, and even, according to Darwin 
 — who, however, is deceived on this point — in the 
 action of sucking, f 
 
 Sneezing, which is often the child^s first act 
 on his entrance to the world, presents the type of 
 
 * See Chapter III. 
 
 f “ During the first seven days my child performed several 
 reflex actions, such as sneezing, hiccough, yawning, stretching, 
 and, naturally, sitckiyuj and crying.’* 
 
MOVEMENTS THE FIRST FORMS OF ACTIVITY. 75 
 
 reflex action in all its purity ; it is but the imme- 
 diate reply of the challenged organism. It is 
 determined mechanically in the infant by an im- 
 pression of cold, by the abrupt invasion of the 
 lungs by the air. Later it may result from very 
 different causes. On the thirty - eighth day/^ 
 says Preyer, I saw sneezing produced by some 
 drops of lukewarm water that trickled over the 
 forehead ; on the forty-third day I saw that par- 
 ticles of witchmeal caused sneezing ; on the one 
 hundred and seventieth day mere blowing on the 
 child had the same effect. Adults do not readily 
 show such sensibility.'’^’ * 
 
 Another very clear example of reflex action is 
 cited by Darwin : The seventh day I touched 
 
 the sole of Doddy^s foot with a piece of paper ; 
 he quickly withdrew his foot, and at the same 
 time bent his toes, as a much older child does 
 when being tickled.^^ 
 
 There are still other motions that should be 
 considered reflex : first, to be sure, a great part 
 of those connected with the operations of the 
 organic life (the rest being attributed to instinc- 
 tive impulses), which depend either upon the mus- 
 cles called involuntary in physiology, as the 
 motions of circulation or of the digestive organs ; 
 or upon the voluntary muscles, as the motions of 
 respiration ; and also the motions which come 
 nearer to the mental life — the winking of the eye 
 to protect the eye from too bright a light, the 
 contraction of the limbs to escape a painful con- 
 
 Preyer, the Senses and the Will, p. 214. 
 
76 the development of the child. 
 
 tact, turning of the head to avoid a knock or a 
 blow.* 
 
 Reflex actions in their original simplicity 
 have no psychic antejcedent unless one wishes to 
 consider as such the obscure and unconscious 
 excitation of the sensitive nerves, which is still 
 only an impression and not a sensation, still less 
 a perception. But when the sensibility has in- 
 creased, when the organs acted upon give birth 
 to agreeable or disagreeable sensations, the reflex 
 act, although always involuntary and mechan- 
 ical, and, so to speak, inevitable, may succeed a 
 
 * I add two examples of automatic motion observed by Binet 
 in little girls six and eight months old : ‘‘ When the child had 
 her hand open, one could make her contract her fingers and 
 close her hand by scratching the palm of the hand very lightly ; 
 while, if her hand was closed, a slight mechanical excitation on 
 the back of the hand would make her extend her fingers very 
 quickly. This little experiment succeeded under the most vary- 
 ing conditions, whether the child was awake or asleep, whether 
 she was attentive to what was going on about her or whether 
 her attention was otherwise occupied. A second example of 
 automatism is the facility with which one can cause co-ordinate 
 motions in a child whose attention is otherwise occupied, of 
 which he himself is unconscious. I have seen this very often 
 in little girls, and add an example selected from several. A 
 little girl eight months old was looking attentively at a lady who 
 was smiling at her ; her hand was open with its palm downward. 
 A small object, as a key or a ruler, was slipped into the palm of 
 her hand. The child, occupied elsewhere, did not seem to per- 
 ceive anything, but her little fingers tightened about the object ; 
 they were pressed tightly together and held the object for some 
 time — several minutes, perhaps ; then the hand opened, quickly 
 or slowly, and the object fell to the floor, without the child’s 
 having suspected anything.” 
 
MOVEMENTS THE FIRST FORMS OF ACTIVITY. 77 
 
 feeling of pleasure or of pain, a vague conscious- 
 ness of a danger dreaded or an advantage sought. 
 If a ray of the sun strikes the child's head and 
 makes it too warm as he is seated at his desk 
 plunged in his lessons, he will change his position 
 so that he may be in the shade ; in the same way, 
 if the cold affects his legs, he will draw them 
 closer together to warm them. 
 
 There are degrees to distinguish, then, in the 
 reflex operations, and it is certain that the parts 
 of the nervous system employed in motions of 
 this kind are not always the same. Bain thinks 
 that some, the most rudimentary, are carried on 
 by the system of nerves and sympathetic gan- 
 glions ; others, by the spinal cord or the medulla 
 oblongata ; others, finally, by higher centres of 
 the cerebro-spinal system, as the mesocephalon 
 and corpora quadrigemina.* * It is hardly pos- 
 sible, in the present state of physiological re- 
 search, to arrive at an absolute decision on this 
 point. But, although we agree with Virchow f 
 in admitting that the newborn child, in the first 
 moments of his existence, is a purely spinal being, 
 and that his activity is placed under the control 
 of the spinal cord, it is not less probable that 
 the brain very soon plays a part in the produc- 
 tion of reflex motions, t 
 
 * Bain, Senses and Intellect, p. 240. 
 
 • t This is the opinion of Ribot also, Les maladies de la vo- 
 lonte, p. 5. 
 
 X Automatism was for a long time considered as belonging 
 exclusively to the spinal cord and to the secondary nervous 
 centres. But the works of Dr. Carpenter and of Dr. Laycok 
 
78 the development op the child. 
 
 What is certain^ in any case, is that, in spite 
 of the apparent analogies, there can be no possi- 
 bility of confusing even the simplest reflex act 
 with the purely mechanical motions which are 
 sometimes produced in certain species in the 
 vegetable kingdom. There is, doubtless, some 
 resemblance between the action of the newborn 
 child in sneezing or winking and the trembling 
 of the sensitive plant, which folds its leaves at 
 the slightest touch. The child when closing his 
 Angers about objects placed in his hand may be 
 compared to the catchfly plant, which closes its 
 blossoms as soon as an insect lights upon them. 
 But there is here only material for comparison, 
 and the most elementary reflex motion presup- 
 poses something altogether different from the 
 simple contractility of the tissues ; it comes from 
 a pre-established harmony, from a consensus of 
 the different parts of the nervous system ; it 
 throws a veritable organism into play, and this 
 may be proved by the phenomenon described by 
 Preyer, of the irradiation of the reflex motions 
 — that is to say, the concomitant motions which, 
 for example, accompany tickling and sneezing. 
 
 III. 
 
 Whatever certain physiologists say on this 
 point — Vulpian, for instance,* * who asks, without 
 
 have established the fact that the brain also possesses an auto- 
 matic activity peculiar to itself, which they have designated by 
 the name of “unconscious cerebration,” or the “ preconscious 
 activity of the soul.” (Kibot, ITlercdite, p. 313.) 
 
 * Vulpian, Physiologic du systeme nerveux, p. 194. 
 
MOVEMENTS TEE FIRST FORMS OF ACTIVITY. 79 
 
 attempting to hide his perplexity. Where do the 
 sensitive reflex motor actions end ? where do 
 the instinctive phenomena begin ? — the motions 
 attributable to instinct are recognised by very 
 precise characteristics. They are distinguished 
 from automatic motions in that they are co- 
 ordinate and tend manifestly to a definite end ; 
 and from reflex motions, in that they have their 
 origin not in a superficial excitation from with- 
 out, but in the very depths of our being, in the 
 hereditary habits or the innate tendencies of hu- 
 man nature. Long before the personal will has 
 appeared and laid hold of the muscles, to subject 
 them to an intentional direction, instinct has es- 
 tablished regularity in the child's motions. How- 
 ever involuntary and thoughtless the instinct 
 may be in itself, it is already a co-ordinating 
 power, a regulating agent, whether we consider 
 it as the resultant of all the accumulated wills 
 of past generations, or whether we see in it the 
 direct effect of the far-seeing will of Nature. 
 
 In the study of the instincts of childhood we 
 must be careful to avoid the extremes both of 
 those who see instinct everywhere and of those 
 who hardly see it at all. Perez, for instance, 
 claims that sneezing can not be separated from 
 instinct " ; * there would be, then, if not a god, 
 as with the ancients, at least an instinct of sneez- 
 ing. Rabier, on the other hand, declares that 
 
 * “ One of the first refiex actions to notice in the child, and 
 one which seems to be hardly separable from instinct, is sneez- 
 ing.” (Perez, Les trois premieres annees dc I’enfant.) 
 
80 the development of the child. 
 
 instinct hardly exists at all in man.* The dis- 
 agreement arises from an equivocal definition of 
 instinct. In the eyes of Rabier, indeed, instinnt 
 would always presuppose intellectual representa- 
 tions as conditions and antecedents, a series of 
 images following one another in the conscious- 
 ness.^^ We believe, on the contrary, that instinct 
 in its original form is absolutely blind, not only 
 because it does not know its end, but because it 
 is ignorant of itself. As soon as intellectual rep- 
 resentations are possible and consciousness has 
 appeared the instinctive action in the case of 
 man gives place to desire, and desire journeys 
 on, little by little, to will.f Rabier is wrong, un- 
 less he means to speak of the adult only, in whom 
 reason and habit have caused the impulses of the 
 animal nature to almost entirely disappear ; but 
 in the child, in so many ways but a little animal, 
 instinct is unquestionably the origin of a large 
 number of actions. J 
 
 * Rabier, Psychologic, p. 666. 
 
 t “ If a feeling of an emotional order, known by the name of 
 desire, comes between a sensation or an idea and the motion it 
 may evoke, this motion has a right to the title of voluntary mo- 
 tion.’’ (Charlton Bastian, Le cerveau organe de la pensee, vol. 
 ii, p. 171.) 
 
 t Compare what Maine de Biran says, in the introduction to 
 his Anthropologic, on the characteristics of life in its begin- 
 nings : “ This purely sensitive existence, these overpowering 
 appetites, these blind inclinations, anterior to all experience, in 
 fine, this ensemble of determinations and of automatic motions, 
 which manifest themselves at the beginning of existence and 
 even before the birth of the individual, may be included under 
 the name of instinct, or the sensitive principle — vague title, 
 
MOVEMENTS TJIE FIRST FORMS OF ACTIVITY 81 
 
 In describing the nature of instinctive mo- 
 tions let us take the action of sucking as an ex- 
 ample.* * Bain states that the act of sucking is a 
 reflex act, which transforms itself into a volun- 
 tary act.f But the first part of his statement is 
 inexact, and there can be no doubt but that in this 
 essential operation of life — nutrition — on which 
 the child’s existence depends, there is something 
 more than a motion resulting from an external 
 •excitation. The best proof that can be given of 
 this is, that, however eager to nurse the child may 
 be when he is hungry, he is as strongly disposed 
 to repel his mother’s breast or the bottle if he is 
 satisfied. Doubtless the presentation of the ob- 
 ject is necessary at first, in order that the child 
 may satisfy his instinct ; but it is not sufficient 
 to cause the motion to continue after the inner 
 need, the real cause, has disappeared. The in- 
 stinct, then, is pre-existent to the external excita- 
 tion, since the motion does not continue although 
 this excitation is still going on. Must we go still 
 further, and accept the testimony of certain ob- 
 servers who claim that the child shows his in- 
 
 doubtless, as expressing the force acting within the organism, 
 a blind force, ignorant of itself even in its most powerful 
 action.” 
 
 * “ The nursing child does not reason about it when he ad- 
 justs his lips and his tongue in the way best calculated to draw 
 the milk from his mother’s breast.” (Bossuet, Connaissance de 
 Dieu et de soi-meme, v, 3. 
 
 f Senses and Intellect, p. 217. To be sure, we employ the 
 word “ reflex ” simply as a synonym of an action provoked by 
 an external excitation. 
 
82 the development of the child. 
 
 stinct of sucking, apart from any solicitation 
 that excites it. Espinas is of this opinion, and 
 he thinks that he has observed that the child 
 subjected to his experiments, from the very first 
 day of his life, stretched his head, in yawning, 
 toward the breast of the person holding him, try- 
 ing, doubtless, to nurse ; the same movement of 
 the head toward the breast was observed in the 
 same child on the fourteenth day, although he 
 was fed by a bottle. Leaving out of account 
 the fact that the motions referred to might have 
 been caused by the sense of smell, it seems to us 
 that Espinas^s observations ought to be repeated 
 and verified ; it may be that casual or chance 
 motions have been confused with instinctive 
 motions. In any case it is not necessary that they 
 should be proved in order to show the instinctive 
 character of sucking. In animals, also, a decided 
 instinct demands that they shall act upon the 
 impressions which excite it. Marion tells us that 
 a little chicken does not scratch with his feet 
 when he is placed upon a carpet ; but he begins 
 it immediately upon being placed on the gravel, 
 as if the sensation caused by the grains of sand 
 were necessary and sufficient to put the mechan- 
 ism in motion. 
 
 The complicated acts involved in sucking are 
 accomplished from the very first moment with 
 remarkable precision, and, as Bossuet says, in 
 the manner best calculated to draw the milk 
 
 * Observations sur un nouveau-ne, in the Annales de la Fa- 
 culto des lettres de Bordeaux, 1883, p. 383. 
 
MOVEMENTS THE FIRST FORMS OF ACTIVITY. 83 
 
 from the breast.^^ Preyer, who does not wait 
 until the child is fairly in the world to begin 
 his experiments and observations, recounts the 
 following instance : In December, 1870, three 
 
 minutes after the appearance of the head — the 
 child cried weakly as soon as the mouth was free 
 — I touched the child^s tongue ; I passed the end 
 of my finger back and forth over the surface of 
 the organ ; the child stopped crying immediately 
 and began to suck my finger with great energy. 
 Will any one contest the instinctive character of 
 sucking by urging the fact (and it is undoubtedly 
 a fact) that the child does not always immediate- 
 ly succeed in grasping the mother's nipple ; that 
 it is sometimes necessary to aid him in it ?" But 
 these hesitations of the first hour of life are met 
 with in animals also. Moreover, they result, as 
 we have already said, from the insufficiency of 
 the child's organs, or from the difficulties of 
 adaptation to the other organs. The defects of 
 an abnormal organism, in children particularly 
 weak and sickly, could prove nothing against 
 the reality of instinct, of which that organism 
 is but the instrument. In a few days, moreover, 
 all is regulated ; every trace of hesitation has 
 disappeared, and the motion is executed with 
 perfect mechanical regularity. It is so, at least, 
 with normal children. In one sense the future 
 intelligence, hard as it may be to believe it, 
 shows itself in the way in which the child sucks. 
 Indeed, a real difficulty in sucking has been ob- 
 served in idiots from birth : Every time the 
 
 breast is presented to them it seems to be a new 
 7 
 
84 the development op the child. 
 
 thing to them, and each new experience does not 
 unite with the preceding in determining an idea, 
 however unconscious it may he.'^ * 
 
 The force of instinct, in its blind and mechan- 
 ical character, shows itself in the fact that the 
 child sucks anything that is offered him — a 
 finger, a rag doll, any object whatever — as soon 
 as it is placed in contact with his tongue and his 
 lips. Preyer gives an account of the custom of 
 the inhabitants of Thuringia, who keep their 
 children quiet by letting them suck an empty 
 rubber bottle for hours at a time. Although 
 sucking, in this case, does not produce the effect 
 intended by Nature, that of nourishment, still 
 the motion is prolonged. We may compare with 
 this fact the observations of a Parisian physi- 
 cian, who affirms that the newborn child meas- 
 ures his degree of satiety not by the quantity of 
 milk that he has absorbed, but by the sensation 
 of fatigue which sucking produces ; when he has 
 made the motion with his lips for a few minutes, 
 he believes that he is satisfied, even if very little 
 milk has come. Many bad nurses deceive them- 
 selves in this way.f 
 
 After having established the blind, mechan- 
 ical character of the motions of the sucking 
 child, we must hasten to observe that the phe- 
 nomena change very rapidly, consciousness shows 
 itself, and the child soon begins to seek his 
 
 * Psychologie de I’idiot et de Timbecile, p. 44. 
 f Dr. Horace Bianchon, Causerie medicale, in the Journal Le 
 Temps for February 23, 1891. 
 
MOVEMENTS THE FIRST FORMS OF ACTIVITY. 85 
 
 mother’s breast, no longer under the rule of 
 an obscure instinct, but with a remembrance of 
 the pleasure he has already experienced, the de- 
 sire to find this pleasure again, and the vague 
 representation of the motions about to be per- 
 formed again in order to satisfy the needs of 
 nutrition. The phenomena of the child are con- 
 tinually modified in character. We have no 
 sooner defined a passing condition of his mobile 
 nature, always on the path of development, than 
 we must hasten, if we would be exact, to describe 
 a different condition if not an opposing one. The 
 child is like a book whose pages are being con- 
 tinually turned over, one after the other, with no 
 chance of our being allowed to stop in our read- 
 ing. To-day he is not what he was yesterday. 
 His actions, which seemed at first to be uni- 
 form, always the same in reality, are constantly 
 transforming themselves, and their appearance 
 changes, too, to the careful observer. 
 
 Everything is mingled in the child — the re- 
 mains of the aniinal life and the beginnings of 
 the intelligent life. Then too, however disposed 
 we may be to see the effect of instinct in the act 
 of sucking, we are forced to admit that the reflex 
 operations have their part there too ; the act of 
 closing and tightening the lips about the nipple 
 is purely reflex, excited by simple contact. And 
 in the same way, although we feel certain that 
 no antecedent, neither a sensation of hunger nor 
 any idea whatever has preceded the child^s first 
 motion toward his mother’s breast, there is no 
 doubt but that the child, a short time after birth. 
 
86 the development of the child. 
 
 having from this time on a conscionsness of what 
 he does when he nurses, is no longer under the 
 exclusive domination of instinct. He does not 
 act voluntarily yet, but the desire, the wish, to 
 obtain again that which has been given him so 
 many times, directs and urges his motions. He 
 already knows this semi- will, which implies, if 
 not the choice between several actions, at least 
 the conscious pursuit of a known end. As proof 
 of this the presence of the nurse excites a desire : 
 the child, who had no idea of wanting to nurse a 
 few moments before, demands the breast with 
 impatience as soon as he sees the person that 
 nurses him. 
 
 Contemporary psychologists have brought to 
 light this law, namely, that every state of con- 
 sciousness tends to express itself to the outside 
 world by movements. In the child, and in the 
 original evolution of our faculties, it is, on the 
 contrary, the movement that precedes the con- 
 sciousness ; * it is the repetition of the uncon- 
 scious motor phenomenon that seems to call forth 
 the conscious state, emotion, desire, and, later, will. 
 It certainly is not until after he has taken the 
 breast mechanically several times that the suck- 
 ing child becomes conscious of the motion he is 
 performing. The mechanical life precedes and 
 prepares the way for the conscious life.f At first 
 
 * We understand by this, either the knowledge of the act at 
 the moment when it is produced, or the faculty of representing 
 it to the self before it is produced. 
 
 t Compare Marillicr’s article in the Revue scientifique (1890, 
 p. 398) on Les Phenomenes moteurs et la volonte, in which ho 
 
MOVEMENTS TEE FIRST FORMS OF ACTIVITY. 87 
 
 sight children seem to act as though they desired 
 and willed, and it is not until after they have 
 IX3iietrated through these disguises of instinct 
 that they arrive at the reality of desire and of will. 
 It is not enough to say that some of the child^s 
 involuntary motions are conscious, some uncon- 
 scious : the truth is, there are degrees of con- 
 sciousness ; there are subconscious states, semi- 
 conscious states, which hover, so to speak, be- 
 tween darkness and light. 
 
 The study of the other instincts of the child 
 reveals the same complexity, and the interven- 
 tion of the different principles of activity pe- 
 culiar to man. Habit itself, however unexpected 
 it may be, in a being only beginning to live, loses 
 no time in playing its part in the direction of the 
 motor faculty. We have seen that in the general 
 attitude of his bod}^, in the position which his 
 legs and his feet take, and also in the motion of 
 putting his hands to his face, the child simply 
 repeats motions which were performed in the 
 intra-uterine life. In the same way the new ac- 
 tion performed under the guidance of instinct 
 may become habit also. It is not at all necessary 
 that will should have presided at the first mani- 
 festation of a movement in order that it should 
 be produced by habit. Every action, voluntary 
 or involuntary, produced once by any cause what- 
 ever, tends to repeat itself, to renew itself uncon- 
 sciously. It is not rare to observe ridiculous 
 
 says, “ The evolution of the motor phenomena precedes that of 
 representations.” 
 
88 the development of the child. 
 
 habits in babies as well as in old men, little mns- 
 cular twitchings, which it is difficult to correct if 
 allowed to become really habitual. The obser- 
 vations made on idiots, the jer kings, the endless 
 grimaces noticed in them, show us, as in a mag- 
 nifying mirror, the character of these motions of 
 habit, which, in the normal child, will be re- 
 pressed by the action of intelligence and of the 
 nascent will, but which persist in perpetuating 
 themselves when Nature allows the ^^part of man, 
 by virtue of which he is a machine,'^ to rule. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The foregoing analyses will help us to find our 
 way in the midst of the many and varied motions 
 which constitute almost exclusively the child^s 
 activity during the first months. Later, in the 
 adult, the inner life up to a certain point will be 
 sufficient to itself. We shall live within our- 
 selves. Our refiections, our cares, will absorb 
 our activity, and they will not always express 
 themselves to the world without. Language, 
 moreover, will be the regular instrument in sat- 
 isfying the need we feel for communication with 
 others, the stream in which our feelings and 
 thoughts will flow out. But how shall the child, 
 who does not think, who does not talk, occupy 
 his time during the long waking hours increas- 
 ing day by day, if he does not move ? Sense-per- 
 ception, sensation at least, will doubtless occupy 
 him more and more as time goes on. But this 
 very activity of the senses is accompanied by 
 
MOVEMENTS THE FIRST FORMS OF ACTIVITY. 89 
 
 motions. There are many movements without 
 an idea in the child, but there is no idea — that is 
 to say, of perception or of sensation — without a 
 movement. 
 
 Let us see, then, without pretending to analyze 
 them all, in what category the manifestations of 
 the motor faculty, of which we have not yet 
 spoken, can be placed. Perhaps the conclusion 
 drawn from our examination will be that they 
 all share, more or less, in the different types 
 which we have outlined. 
 
 Crying, with which the child enters the world, 
 and of which there will be trouble in breaking 
 him, is represented by Preyer as being purely re- 
 flex. There is, assuredly, no longer question of 
 giving it moral signiflcance, of seeing in it with 
 too poetical writers, or even with too symbolical 
 philosophers, the wail of a creature cast into 
 the world only to suffer there. Even Kant did 
 not escape this illusion. According to his the- 
 ories, the cry of the newborn child should be a 
 sign of irritation and of anger. It is not that 
 he suffers,^^ he said, ^^but that something dis- 
 pleases him ; doubtless he would like to move 
 his legs, and he feels his powerlessness as he 
 would feel a chain that hindered his liberty. 
 What could have been Nature^s purpose in doom- 
 ing him to utter cries, which, by their very na- 
 
 * Kant varied in his interpretation of cries. Sometimes he 
 seems to see in them only a mechanical phenomenon. “ Chil- 
 dren aid in the unfolding of the inner parts of their bodies by 
 crying. Consequently one does them a bad turn by trying to 
 quiet them as soon as they begin to cry.” (Traite de pedagogie, 
 
90 the development op the child. 
 
 ture, would be most dangerous to the mother and 
 to himself ? And he adds elsewhere, If an ani- 
 mal should cry, as children do, upon coming into 
 the world, it would inevitably become the prey 
 of wolves and of the other wild animals that 
 would be attracted by its cries.'’^ We willingly 
 grant to Kant that the purpose of Nature in 
 this case is obscure enough, and that it is diffi- 
 cult to discuss the utility of the first cries. But 
 we can not agree with him in interpreting them 
 as the expressive signs of the discontent of a 
 weak being railing at his own weakness. Should 
 we, on the other hand, adopt Preyer^s view, and 
 consider them as simply respiratory reflex actions, 
 caused by cooling the skin or by any other dis- 
 agreeable impression ? We believe that there is 
 something more in the prolonged cries, which 
 cease only to begin again, and which are surely 
 out of all proportion to the impressions of suffer- 
 ing that a child could feel. They are sponta- 
 neous, and in a great measure automatic. They 
 arise in the newborn child from a general need 
 of action, and perhaps also from a particular 
 need of testifying to his existence, although they 
 are lacking, not only in intentional significance, 
 but also at first in consciousness. And when by 
 frequent repetition, and by virtue of the gen- 
 eral progress of the nervous system, they have 
 become conscious of themselves, they are so far 
 
 Education physique.) Elsewhere he says : “ When the child is 
 capable of laughing and of crying, he cries with reflection, how- 
 ever obscure this reflection may be. He thinks that something 
 is going to hurt him.” 
 
MOVEMENTS THE FIRST FORMS OF ACTIVITY. 91 
 
 from expressing a feeling of weakness, as Kant 
 thought, that they become rather the natural 
 manifestation of a feeling of strength. The 
 child often finds pleasure in crying. Disagree- 
 able as they are for everybody except himself, 
 the cries form a part of the great ensemble of 
 natural signs, various sounds of the voice, little 
 grunts, murmurs, and prattlings, which are the 
 preludes to language : simple vocal gesticulation 
 in the beginning, while waiting for the time for 
 them to become signs of appeal when our intelli- 
 gence shall have comprehended of what use they 
 can be. 
 
 The smile, the laugh, we shall see elsewhere, 
 are only automatic motions before becoming the 
 definite expression of a feeling of pleasure or of 
 affection. Tears are the same. Sobs and sighs, 
 which appear early, have at first no expressive 
 import.* This can not be too strongly insisted 
 upon : it is a general law that the child^s activity 
 up to the age of four or five months gives no evi- 
 dence of a real moral sense, still less of the inten- 
 tional or willed. The reflex mechanism, auto- 
 matic or instinctive, is organized at the outset ; 
 thoughts and will take possession of it later. 
 
 Grasping the nipple with the lips is a matter 
 of instinct ; taking hold of an object with the 
 
 * We do not take time to consider certain motions, frequently 
 produced in the child, pure reflex motions, which have no psy- 
 chological value — snoring, yawning, hiccough, etc. ; nor the 
 respiratory motions, which result from a purely psychical func- 
 tion. As to the motions that accompany the exercise of the 
 senses, see Chapters III and IV. 
 
92 the development of the child. 
 
 hands, to seize it and to feel it, is also an instinct- 
 ive act. Prehension — which is such an important 
 faculty in man, and which will be, later, in the 
 complication of the motions that it demands, the 
 supple instrument of the will and of habit — is per- 
 formed spontaneously in the beginning. Mme. 
 Necker de Saussure was mistaken when she 
 wrote : More than five months pass before the 
 
 child has an idea of making use of his hands ; 
 their use is unknown to him for a long time ; 
 and the extreme slowness with which he begins 
 to divine it proves that this discovery is the 
 gradual work of experience.^^ * Long before five 
 months, even from the first days, the child presses 
 his mothers breast with his hands when nursing, 
 as though to keep it there. The child observed 
 by Espinas thrust the bottle against his mouth 
 with the backs of his hands, and sometimes, too, 
 with his fingers. The awkward first gropings of 
 prehension evidence only the weakness of the 
 organs, and do not prove that the tendency itself 
 to seize objects is an acquisition of experience. 
 If a child that has with difficulty succeeded in 
 taking a plaything or a rattle in his hand, lets 
 it escape, almost immediately, while he watches 
 it aghast, as it rolls about on the floor, it is not 
 the desire to keep it tha^t is wanting ; it is only 
 strength or skill, f 
 
 * Mme. Necker de Saussure, L’fiducation progressive, book 
 ii, chapter ii. 
 
 + “ Who has not seen and been surprised,” says Luys, “ by 
 the incessant motor activity, the never-lagging desire of young 
 children to know the outside world, to seize it in their little 
 
MOVEMENTS THE FIRST FORMS OF ACTIVITY. 93 
 
 Preyer has studied the motor phenomena of 
 prehension very minutely, and we can not do 
 better than report some of his observations.* * In 
 the first place, it can be proved that prehension 
 by the fingers, as well as the contraposition of the 
 thumb, which is its indispensable condition, can 
 be produced without intention, in a reflex way, 
 as a consequence of the cutaneous excitation 
 caused by the contact of a strange body."^^ Thus, 
 while the child^s hands move in every direction, 
 if they come against the extended finger of the 
 nurse, they grasp it mechanically. The same 
 with the rattle, which people usually take the 
 precaution to tie around the baby's neck, because 
 they know that he is incapable of muscular ten- 
 sion suflBciently prolonged to keep it from escap- 
 ing him. But toward the fourth month desire 
 begins to direct the motions of the arms. If the 
 hand is carried to the face, we can no longer say 
 that it gets there by chance in the course of the 
 innumerable motions in every direction ; it has 
 been conducted there. The arms are extended 
 toward a desired object, and the beginning of an 
 effort to attain it shows itself. It was during 
 the seventeenth week," says Preyer, that I first 
 noticed real efforts to grasp an object with the 
 hand. This object was a little rubber ball that 
 happened to be within reach, but the child's hand 
 passed to the side of it. When it had been put 
 into his hands he held it in his grasp for a long 
 
 hands, to touch everything around them, and to take note of 
 everything near them ? (Luys, Le Cerveau, p. 158.) 
 
 * The Senses and the Will, pp. 241-257. 
 
94 the development of the child. 
 
 time, then lifted it to his month and to his eyes ; 
 all this with a new and more intelligent expres- 
 sion. The day afterward, the unskilful but ener- 
 getic efforts of the child to grasp all sorts of ob- 
 jects placed before him became more frequent. 
 A few days later he extended both arms to me, 
 for the first time, when I went to see him in the 
 morning, and his face presented an indescribable 
 expression of desire."’"’ It was not only desire, but 
 attention also, expressed by the significant mo- 
 tion of the protrusion of the lips, that animated 
 Preyer^s son in these first conscious and inten- 
 tional efforts of prehension. In a few weeks, as 
 we see, the transition has been made ; and what 
 was at first exclusively mechanical is on the way 
 toward becoming voluntary. 
 
 The history of all the child^s motions, then, 
 is almost the same : irresistible, blind, fatal im- 
 pulses at the start ; then, little by little, conscious 
 desires, thoughtless, but lit up by an intellectual 
 representation, by the idea of an end to be at- 
 tained ; finally, will and efforts : such are the 
 successive causes that determine them. The 
 child, who knows nothing at first, either of his 
 organs or of his motor powers, or of the rela- 
 tion existing between his motions and the satis- 
 faction of his needs, learns all that, little by little ; 
 he understands all his motions and their results ; 
 he comes to direct them, although ignorant of 
 how they are carried on. We shall find charac- 
 teristic examples of this complex evolution in the 
 movements that we shall study later, because 
 they correspond to a subsequent development, to 
 
MOVEMENTS TEE FIRST FORMS OF ACTIVITY. 95 
 
 a more advanced period in the child^s life ; in the 
 the expressive movements/ in the imitative mo- 
 tions, t and even in the movement par excellence 
 — walking locomotion. J In these phenomena, 
 although the term voluntary is employed in 
 designating them, there will always be a reflex 
 and a spontaneous element about which we have 
 just been studying. 
 
 * On Expressive Movements, see Chapter V. 
 f On Imitative Movements, see Chapter IX. 
 
 X 0 .n Voluntary Movements, see Chapter XII. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF SIGHT. 
 
 I. The newborn child is half blind. — Natural photophobia. — 
 Cuignet’s observations. — First manifestations of appetence 
 for light — first for diffused light, then for luminous objects, 
 finally for brightly coloured objects. — The field of vision very 
 limited in the beginning. — The range of sight very short at 
 first. II. Part played by the muscles of sight. — Motions of 
 the eyelids. — A sort of apprenticeship necessary simply to 
 know how to open the eye. — Corresponding motions of the 
 two eyes. — These motions, inco-ordinate«at first, become regu- 
 lated, little by little. — Although co-ordinate, they are still 
 involuntary. — Sight itself helps to develop the muscular 
 mechanism. — How the child comes to follow moving objects 
 with his eyes. — The accommodation of sight is not imme- 
 diate. III. How the confused picture of external things 
 gradually resolves itself. — Progress of the participation of 
 the brain. — Relative independence of the retina and of the 
 nervous centres.— Distinguishing colours. — Binet’s observa- 
 tions. — Yellow and red the first colours distinguished. — 
 Hugo Magnus’s hypothesis. — The progressive evolution of 
 the sense of colour. — Colour the first revelation of the sen- 
 sible world. — The child passes from the world of colours to 
 the world of forms. — The act of recognising persons and 
 things implies the perception of shapes and forms. — Appre- 
 ciation of distances. — Attention’s role. — Infiuence of moral 
 causes on the development of sight. — Imperfection of sight 
 in imbeciles and idiots. IV. The visual perception of space. 
 — Nativists and empiricists. — The perception of distances is 
 not innate. — Preyer’s observations. — The child shows by the 
 90 
 
DEVELOPMENT OP SIGHT. 
 
 97 
 
 awkward motions of the hand that he does not appreciate 
 distances. — Observations made on people born blind. — The 
 perception of distances the result of experience. — The visual 
 and tactile impressions are not combined at first. 
 
 In beginning tbe study of sight and of tlie 
 other sensations or perceptions of the child, we 
 shall enter into the domain of the intellectual life 
 and into the history of the humble beginnings of 
 the mind. However simple the act of perceiving, 
 this first intellectual element, may appear to be, 
 it must not be thought that perception is possible 
 from the first day. And, to speak first only of 
 the most important of the senses — of sight — I 
 would say that it is by no means a paradox to 
 state that the newborn child learns to see just as 
 he will later learn to walk, as he learns to hear, 
 to touch. Kant said that during the first three 
 months children'^s sight is not complete. They 
 receive the sensation of light, but can not distin- 
 guish one object from another. It is easy,^^ he 
 says, to convince one^s self of this by showing 
 them something bright. They will not follow it 
 with their eyes.'^ A sort of evolution, of natural 
 education is necessary, that the child^s eyes may 
 become accustomed to the light, then that he may 
 form the habit of directing his looks, of fixing 
 them upon objects, of recognising them, of dis- 
 cerning their colour and their form, and, finally, 
 of appreciating distances. Here, as everywhere, 
 one of the characteristic laws of the development 
 of mankind reveals itself — the law according to 
 which the child acquires by exercise and learns 
 by experience all that Nature teaches the lower 
 
98 the development op the child. 
 
 animals in the beginning, all that she suggests to 
 them by blind and irresistible instincts ; with the 
 exception, of course, of a few of the child's actions 
 governed directly by instinct, which, however, 
 constitute a minimum of the operations indis- 
 pensable to the preservation of life. 
 
 I. 
 
 Every child is to a certain extent blind at 
 birth. He sees enough to be hurt and disturbed 
 by the light, if it is bright, but not enough to 
 distinguish objects. Doubtless he will not be 
 long in showing himself eager for the sensations 
 produced by light. In a few days the light of 
 a candle will be enough to throw him into a 
 sort of ecstasy. But in the first weeks he shows 
 by certain signs that, far from liking the light, 
 he has a fear of it, so to speak. Observers of 
 child nature, conscientious in other respects, 
 have erred in admitting as an established truth 
 the opinion that the newborn child seeks for and 
 enjoys the light of day from the very first mo- 
 ments of his life. Tiedemann shows no hesi- 
 tation on this point : It is known," he says, 
 
 ^^that when children come into the world, and 
 as often as they awake afterward, they turn 
 their eyes toward the light : a fact which proves 
 I that light produces an agreeable impression."* 
 
 * The error is a frequent one. We find it again in Ribot’s 
 book, La psychologie allemande (p. 11, note) : “ A few hours 
 after birth the child follows with his eyes the motions of a light 
 a short distance from him.” 
 
dp:velopment of sight. 
 
 99 
 
 Facts flatly contradict this assertion. Physicians 
 have observed in adults what they call mor- 
 bid photophobia, which causes certain nervous 
 states, or, rather, inflammations of the eye. In 
 the case of the newborn child, the fear of light, 
 a sort of natural photophobia, is the normal 
 state. When he opens his eyes for the flrst 
 time, after the almost uninterrupted sleep that 
 he has been enjoying, he closes them almost im- 
 mediately, as though dazzled by the light of day. 
 In this first contact of his delicate organs with 
 the ether waves, on coming out of the dark prison 
 in which he has lived for nine months, he feels 
 in an intense degree the impression of discomfort 
 which the sudden appearance of light succeeding 
 darkness produces even on the experienced eyes 
 of the adult. It is for this reason, doubtless, that 
 the child has a marked tendency to sleep in the 
 daytime rather than at night. The eyes of the 
 newborn child,^^ says Espinas, open by prefer- 
 ence at twilight and in the evening."^ * Preyer, 
 who can not be accused of any lack of precision 
 and vigilance in his experiments, since his son 
 had not been in the world five minutes before he 
 held him at the window at dawn to observe the 
 effect of light upon him, recognises also that the, 
 child feels at first a real antipathy toward light, f I 
 Cuignet, to whom we are indebted for very inter- 
 esting observations upon two children, studied 
 from birth to the complete development of the 
 
 * Annales de la Faculte des lettres de Bordeaux, 1883, 
 p. 383. 
 
 t The Senses and the Will, p. 5. 
 
 8 
 
100 the development op the child. 
 
 faculty of sight, is very positive in his opinion : 
 The second day, the child likes darkness better 
 than light ; he does not open his eyes except 
 when in darkness.” * If he half opens his eye- 
 lids during the day he immediately blinks his 
 eyes. Do not let us look yet for those beauti- 
 ful, clear, and fixed looks which later will render 
 his countenance adorable. The newborn child 
 squints ; he squints to avoid the brightness of 
 the light. He has from birth a marked con- 
 vergent power which permits him to shelter his 
 eye in the dark chamber formed by the angle of 
 the eye.f Just as we make a sudden inclination 
 of the head to avoid a stone about to strike us, so 
 the child by a sort of instinctive strabism turns 
 the pupil to protect himself from the blinding 
 light.]: 
 
 The observations made upon people born 
 blind to whom a successful operation has given 
 sight confirm, by analogy, what we have just 
 said of the child^s first impressions. In the case 
 of a woman forty years old, who had been blind 
 from birth, operated upon by Wardrop, the sud- 
 den brightness of day produced a disagreeable 
 sensation ; the woman complained that the light 
 
 * Annales d’oculistique, Bruxelles, vol. Ixvi, p. 117. 
 t Ibid. 
 
 t Compare the following observation : “We have seen a child 
 three months old, when a light was brouglit near him, lying in 
 his cradle, draw his coverlet up little by little until it reached 
 his eyes and hid him completely, doubtless, because the bright- 
 ness of the light hurt him.” (Espinas, Lcs Societes animales, 
 p. 52.) 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF SIGHT. 
 
 101 
 
 hurt her eyes.* So, in the case of a child attend- 
 ed by Home, the light was manifestly disagree- 
 able to the eye : the pupil was clear, but the pa- 
 tient could not endure daylight, f 
 
 According to Cuignet, the strabismus of the 
 newborn child lasts until the twentieth day. It 
 is probable, however, that this state of uneasiness 
 and suffering does not last as long as this. The 
 child observed by Espinas did not dread the light 
 after the fourteenth day. But it is quite certain 
 that a second period begins very soon, toward the 
 third week, when the child^s eyes have served 
 their apprenticeship, and show a decided taste 
 and a manifest appetence for light. Simply let- 
 ting in the light will often quiet a crying child. 
 I know very well that he is not yet capable of 
 following an object with his eyes, nor of fixing 
 his gaze upon it ; but the light spread around 
 him, the diffused light, pleases him — it causes 
 agreeable sensations. Cuignet found that his 
 son seemed to tire of being in darkness too long 
 from the sixteenth day, that he was quiet as soon 
 as a candle was lighted, that he seemed to enjoy 
 a soft light shed upon the objects about him. 
 
 But very soon the child is no longer contented 
 with the vague pleasure that he finds in being 
 plunged, as it were, in a bath of light. After a 
 few weeks his eyes have gained strength enough 
 to look at luminous objects. Darwin even claims 
 that from the ninth day the gaze of his son Doddy 
 
 * See Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Lon- 
 don, 1826, vol. iii, pp. 529-540. 
 
 t Ibid., 1867, vol. i, pp. 85-87. 
 
102 the development of the child. 
 
 was fixed upon a lighted candle. A moderate and 
 diffused light at first, then a bright light, not too 
 bright, however, centred in a luminous object, 
 that is what pleases the child. Up to the forty- 
 fifth day, Darwin says further, no other object 
 seemed to attract Doddy's eyes to the same de- 
 gree as did a lighted candle. It is necessary, to 
 be sure, that the candle should be placed at some 
 distance from the child ; if too near it would 
 oblige him to blink, or even to completely close 
 his eyes. But when this condition is complied 
 with, it seems to be established that the child 
 sees and looks at luminous objects first — the 
 flame of a lamp, the fire in the grate. Objects 
 that simply reflect the light will not attract his 
 attention until later, and then beginning with 
 the brightest, those whose colours are most strik- 
 ing ; for instance, the gaily coloured tassel re- 
 garded with admiration by Doddy on the forty- 
 ninth day, as was evidenced by the fixedness of 
 his gaze and the sudden immovableness of his 
 arms ; or again, the red curtain brightly lighted 
 up by the sun which PreyeUs son greeted with a 
 smile of content on the twenty-third day. 
 
 It is in the education of sight — that is to say, 
 of the most essential, the most complicated of our 
 organs of sense-perception — that Nature has in- 
 troduced the greatest number of steps, of little 
 progressions, and that she has employed the most 
 caution and delay in conducting a faculty, seem- 
 ingly innate, to its final development. Step by 
 step, as has been said, sight becomes accustomed 
 to lights more and more intense, and extends 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF SIGHT. 
 
 103 
 
 farther and farther the limits at which the eye 
 is dazzled.* But even this light, spread abroad 
 or centred in a single point, the eyes can not 
 grasp immediately in all its directions, nor per- 
 ceive at a great distance. On the one hand, the 
 field of vision is restricted for the newborn child ; 
 on the other, the range of sight is limited and 
 short. 
 
 However little we may observe the child, in 
 the first gropings of sight we are convinced that 
 his eyes do not perceive objects situated to the 
 right or to the left of his little body. The new- 
 born child sees only in a straight line before him. 
 His sight is confined, as it were, in a narrow pas- 
 sage ; there is, so to speak, a wall on both sides 
 of him, which prevents sight from acting in a 
 direction other than straight in front of him. 
 To test this, move the candle that he has looked 
 at a few centimetres to the right or to the left, 
 or even above or below its former position, and 
 you will see that he has lost sight of it, and that 
 he allows his eyes to wander about aimlessly. 
 
 It is easy to understand why the field of vision 
 is so limited in the beginning. The first reason 
 is that the child has not yet the faculty of mov- 
 ing his e^^eball easily and that he has not, above 
 all, the power of moving his head, since he can 
 not even hold it upright. But it is only by means 
 
 * Certain animals can exercise their sight with less light 
 than children : there is no doubt, consequently, but that daz- 
 zling begins sooner for them, and that the intense light of the 
 noonday sun, for instance, would cause a very disagreeable im- 
 pression. 
 
104 the development of the child. 
 
 of the motions of the eye and of the head that the 
 increased power of vision will attain later its 
 normal extent in every direction. Another more 
 subtle reason is that, according to the observa- 
 tions of physiologists, the sensibility of the retina 
 would be confined to the central tract ; the peri- 
 pheric parts would not become sensible to light 
 until later, and then little by little.* Therefore 
 the limited visual perception of the newborn 
 child would not depend merely upon the mus- 
 cular weakness, the inability to turn the eyes 
 from one side to the other ; it would be caused 
 also by the imperfection of the nascent organ. 
 Reduced to a central sensibility, the retina would 
 not be in a condition to respond to the lateral 
 solicitations of surrounding objects. f 
 
 Another fact, as indisputable, is that sight has 
 at first only a very short range. Place a lighted 
 candle two or three metres from a child fifteen or 
 twenty days old ; he will look at it fixedly ; if 
 you place it three, four, or five metres from him, 
 it will become evident that the child has lost 
 sight of the light, and you will be sure from the 
 uncertainty of his glances that he no longer per- 
 ceives anything. Here, too, there is a progressive 
 development, and it is hard to say exactly at 
 what time the child acquires the regular range of 
 vision. According to Cuignet, a child two months 
 and a half old would see seven or eight metres. 
 
 * On this point see Hugo Magnus, History of the Evolution 
 of the Sense of Colour. 
 
 f According to Cuignet, at two months and a half the child 
 would have still only central vision. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF SIGHT. 
 
 105 
 
 According to Espinas, the child two months old 
 would not perceive anything farther away than 
 fifty centimetres ; a child three months old not 
 farther than a metre.* Perhaps these contradic- 
 tions arise from the fact that in the two series of 
 observations the objects considered were not of 
 the same nature : in the first case, the flame of a 
 candle; in the second, simply an object in the light, 
 the face of a person. However this may be, bear- 
 ing in mind the fact that in the education of 
 sight, as in all the other faculties, the natural in- 
 equalities of health and of strength may advance 
 or retard the date of the complete development 
 of the organs and their functions, it is proved 
 that adaptation, accommodation, which permits 
 the eye to see at greater and greater distances, is 
 organized only slowly and progressively. Every 
 newborn child is a provisional myope, f The 
 picture of exterior Nature, with all its perspec- 
 tive, its depths, and its backgrounds, is not un- 
 rolled at first before the astonished and enrap- 
 tured gaze of the child. He does not enter the 
 world, as we do the theatre, upon a scene all ar- 
 ranged in advance, which the spectator sees as a 
 w^hole at one glance ; it is jnece by piece, bit by 
 bit, that the world of visible things presents 
 
 * At one year the child observed by Preyer distinguished 
 men sawing wood more than a hundred feet away. 
 
 t The experiments made by von Jager in 1861, and attempted 
 by Preyer, confirm this point. It is true, the same author cites 
 contradictory experiments, and concludes by urging the neces- 
 sity of new observations on this point. We believe that innate 
 presbyopia is the exception, at any rate. 
 
106 the development of the child. 
 
 itself to his eyes, and that the curtain that cov- 
 ered it is torn away and raised. 
 
 The two causes that we have already stated 
 contribute to extending the range in front as 
 well as to the progress of the lateral extent : First, 
 the state of the retina, which gains its sensibility 
 little by little, from the centre to the periphery, 
 so that the image which should be formed exactly 
 on the retina, and not in front of or behind it, in 
 order that the sight should be clear and distinct, 
 has henceforth more chances of being produced 
 under the required conditions; in the second 
 place, the growth in strength of the muscles, of 
 those that allow the eyeball to move and to change 
 its position within certain limits, as well as of 
 those that assure the movements of the head it- 
 self. It is with this last point that we are now 
 about to occupy ourselves. 
 
 II. 
 
 Vision, it is known, does not result merely 
 from the sensibility peculiar to the optic organs ; 
 it presupposes determined motions which of 
 themselves render clear and complete sight pos- 
 sible.* Visual perception is not, as one might 
 think, a simple passive reception of the luminous 
 ray, striking a screen prepared to receive it. 
 There appears here, as everywhere, this neces- 
 
 * Maine de Biran wrote in his Memoire sur I’habitude : “ It 
 is difhcult to say in what narrow limits the functions of sight 
 would be circled, if considered apart from the particular mo- 
 bilty of this organ.” 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF SIGHT. 
 
 107 
 
 sary condition of all mental phenomena ; col- 
 laboration, participation of the inner activity, 
 which is reduced, it is true, in the present case, 
 to motions. And even the most rudimentary of 
 these motions are not performed regularly from 
 the first day. It is not only the optic sensibility 
 that is weak and incomplete in the newborn 
 child ; it is not only attention and intellectual 
 force that are lacking, whether in fixing and look- 
 ing at objects or in interpreting sensible appear- 
 ances ; it is the physiological mechanism that is 
 still imperfect ; it is the material apparatus, the 
 muscular apparatus, that does not act normally. 
 There is in this a period of gropings analogous 
 to those of an astronomer who is trying to point 
 his telescope and who can not clearly perceive 
 the star that is the object of his investigations 
 unless he adjusts the instrument exactly. 
 
 If we were still imagining that there is noth- 
 ing acquired in the exercise of the sense of sight, 
 that all is innate, it would be sufficient to unde- 
 ceive us to examine the motions of the eyelids, 
 and to see that a sort of apprenticeship is neces- 
 sary in order merely to open the eyes. It is a 
 question of very simple motions, however, in this 
 case. At the same time an essential condition 
 of sight is involved, since the motions of the eye- 
 lids, when co-ordinate, have no end other than to 
 raise for both eyes at the same time, and at the 
 desired moment, the veil, the curtain, which hides 
 Nature from us when it is lowered. But for a 
 few weeks the motions of the eyelids present 
 neither co-ordination nor symmetry. One eye 
 
108 the development of the child. 
 
 opens while the other remains closed. On the 
 other hand, the eyelids do not accompany the 
 pupil regularly in its own motions. All ob- 
 servers agree on this point, and afl&rm that the 
 co-ordination of the motions of the eyeball with 
 those of the eyelids does not exist at first. One 
 motion only seems to be innate, and yet Darwin 
 doubts this ; it is the motion by which the eyelid 
 is lowered and the pupil protected from the 
 wounds of too bright a light. As to the squint- 
 ing and the blinking of the eyelids, which the 
 approach of an object causes instinctively in the 
 adult, what Preyer calls the test of the aggres- 
 sive hand,"^ this is not produced during the first 
 weeks either. 
 
 But what is much more important, and this is 
 progressive, too, is the adjustment of special con- 
 tractions by which the muscles bring about cor- 
 responding motions of both eyes. The child 
 learns to use the ocular muscles to see, just as he 
 will learn a little later to use the crural muscles 
 to walk. And there are several stages in this 
 education : First, motions that are not coordi- 
 nate; then motions that are regular but in- 
 voluntary ; finally, and it is only then that the 
 child really possesses the faculty of directing his 
 glances, voluntary motions. 
 
 It is easy to prove that the motions of the 
 Childs's eyes are not co-ordinate in the beginning. 
 The right eye looks to one side, the left to the 
 other. There is no association yet, no conver- 
 gence in the motions that cause the eyes to look 
 up or down, without or within, to the right or to 
 
DEVELOPMENT OP SIGHT. 
 
 109 
 
 the left. More accurate and often repeated ob- 
 servations of the eye movements of the child/^ 
 says Preyer, especially during the first six days, 
 taught me that the simultaneous turning of both 
 eyes to the left or the right is not co-ordinated 
 with complete symmetry, as it is in adults. In a 
 child ten hours old, and in another six days old, 
 both of whose eyes were wide open, I saw mo- 
 tions several times that seemed to be co-ordinate 
 in both eyes. But on closer examination these 
 motions showed that they were not of exactly the 
 the same direction. On the whole, I have found 
 in the newborn child that one eye often moves 
 independently of the other, and that the head is 
 often inclined in a direction different from that 
 followed by the motions of the eyes.* 
 
 This picture of the child, which represents 
 him as an ugly, grimacing thing in the incoher- 
 ence of his ocular motions, we are at first tempted 
 to reject as inexact and false. People will say : 
 Who has not seen very little children look, or 
 at least turn their eyes in the same direction 
 with perfect ease — for instance, on the face of 
 their mother or their nurse, when she speaks to 
 them or smiles at them There certainly are 
 numerous examples of agreement in the motions 
 of the eyes from the very first days. What still 
 remains true, however, is that this seeming agree- 
 ment is a chance one ; it arises from the excita- 
 tion produced by a very bright object which, be- 
 ing in the field of vision, holds the uncertain gaze 
 
 * The Senses and the Will, p. 36. 
 
110 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD. 
 
 of the child and forces upon him, so to speak, 
 regularity of his muscular contractions. This is 
 what Preyer thinks, who declares that he has 
 never found in any child the exclusive existence 
 of co-ordinate motions, and that he has estab- 
 lished the existence of inco-ordinate motions up 
 to the age of three months. 
 
 Some time must pass, then, for the useless dis- 
 jointed motions, which are of no value to sight, 
 to be effaced in the general current of normal 
 life, that they may give place to the only use- 
 ful motions, to those that assist the child in see- 
 ing, and that from this sort of original chaos 
 may come, insensibly, order and regulated direc- 
 tion. There is the child spoken of by Espinas, 
 who knows how to follow the light of a lamp, 
 being moved from place to place, on the twenty- 
 sixth day ; * who when two months old directs 
 his glances better and better, and even fixes them 
 upon the eyes of the person talking to him. And 
 Cuignet also shows us a child looking about him 
 the twentieth day without moving his head, by 
 the mere motion of the eyeballs. The mechanism 
 of the muscular apparatus gains strength from 
 day to day ; the head becomes accustomed to ac- 
 companying the motions of the eyes, and the 
 sight, thus carried in every direction, acquires its 
 full range. 
 
 But it must not be imagined that will plays 
 any part in this progressive regulation of the 
 
 * Compare the observation of Preyer, who found the same 
 action on the twenty-second day (p. 85). 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF SIGHT. 
 
 Ill 
 
 ocular motions. Will does not exist until much 
 later. If it were true, as Preyer says, that all "" fix- 
 ation of the glance is an act of will, we should 
 have to conclude that fixation is a thing un- 
 known to the child. It is not so, however. We 
 have all seen the prolonged contemplation in 
 which a very little child indulges when the 
 flowers in a curtain or brilliant objects of any 
 sort are before him; his face, ordinarily so 
 changeable, resembles that of a meditative or 
 rapturous person. The cause of this is not in a 
 voluntary intention, in a personal effort, in an in- 
 ner power of concentrating his gaze wherever he 
 will, but simply in the excitation produced by 
 the luminous perceptions which attract and cap- 
 tivate the child. It is the muscular mechanism 
 that when once regulated will permit sight to ex- 
 tend in every direction, to radiate, to become that 
 wonderful sense of touch by means of which a 
 star in the infinite heavens may be grasped. But 
 it is sight itself that calls forth the development 
 of the muscular mechanism in the beginning. 
 Indeed, when the child has looked a certain num- 
 ber of times upon objects naturally placed within 
 his range and his line of vision, his ocular mus- 
 cles form, as it were, the habit of associating their 
 motions ; they do this by the simple force of cir- 
 cumstances under the rule of a dominant sensa- 
 tion continued or often repeated. And when they 
 have once taken their bent they hold to it — that 
 is, they become qualified to associate one with 
 the other, instinctively, under the impulse of a 
 desire, of an inner curiosity — so that when will 
 
112 THE DEVELOPMENT OP THE CHILD. 
 
 appears it will find the optic mechanism ready to 
 act according to its orders. 
 
 It is the fact of vision also which, coincident 
 with the development of the muscular forces, 
 with the consolidation of the muscles, explains 
 how the child's eye reaches the point where it 
 moves easily, how the child removes his gaze to 
 follow the motion of objects. He arrives at this 
 point by slow stages. ^‘1 was surprised," says 
 Darwin, to see how slowly my son acquired the 
 faculty of following an object with his eyes when 
 it was waved quite rapidly before him ; even at 
 the age of seven months and a half he had not 
 acquired it fully." It was not until the twenty- 
 ninth month," says Preyer, that I saw the child 
 follow the flight of a bird with his eyes. Still 
 more time was needed for him to follow the ob- 
 jects and playthings that he allowed to fall to 
 the floor after having amused himself with 
 them." It is slowly moving objects, as the pen- 
 dulum of a clock or a heavily laden cart, that the 
 child first follows with his eyes. His sight, a 
 prisoner of the sensation of light that enslaves it, 
 determines the muscular motions necessary in 
 order that this sensation should continue, that 
 the moving object should remain within the field 
 of vision. If the displacement of the objects is 
 too sudden the eyes come to a halt ; the con- 
 tinuity is broken ; the muscles are not yet strong 
 enough or trained enough ; they can not quickly 
 make the eyeball perform the motion indispen- 
 sable to the adaptation of sight to a new distance. 
 A child whose eyes can follow the smoke of a 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF SIGHT. 
 
 113 
 
 puff of tobacco or the course of a cloud in the 
 sky still can not change the direction of his 
 glances quickly enough to follow the swallow 
 cleaving the air, or even the plaything that falls 
 from his knees to the floor. In the flrst case ac- 
 commodation — that is to say, the faculty which 
 the eye possesses of adapting itself to different 
 distances in order to see well — is carried on insen- 
 sibly; the glance, as though gently led by a 
 string, obeys and yields to the action of the 
 luminous sensation, like a young dog allowing 
 himself to be led by the end of a string which 
 has been put in his mouth and of which he does 
 not wish to let go. In the second case, the transi- 
 tion is not gradual enough for the motions of the 
 eye to be performed, and the glance is discon- 
 certed, loses trace of the object. A long training 
 of the muscles is necessary under the flrst form, 
 in order that the second operation may become 
 possible, that the muscles of the neck and the 
 ocular muscles may acquire sufficient flexibility, 
 and that they may make the position of the head 
 and of the eyes agree exactly with the position 
 in space of the moving object, which is tending 
 to escape from sight. 
 
 Let us conclude, then, that the muscular ap- 
 paratus, which assists sight, does not act im- 
 mediately in the normal conditions, in man, at 
 least ; for the case seems to be different in ani- 
 mals, in the chicken for instance, which can ap- 
 preciate distances as soon as it is out of the shell, 
 as is shown by the way it plunders grain, and 
 can follow with unfailing precision the motions 
 
114 THE DJ]VELOPMENT OF THE CHILD. 
 
 of an insect crawling on the ground. In man 
 there is no inherited or innate accommodation, 
 adaptation of the visual functions. Nature fur- 
 nishes the child directly with luminous sensations 
 only, sight, more or less distinct, of objects placed 
 directly before him at a limited distance from 
 him ; and yet, as we have seen, she does not do 
 this even until several days have passed, and the 
 organs have become strong enough to endure the 
 nervous excitation of light. In order that sight 
 should succeed in conquering space it is necessary 
 for the muscles to enter into play, and it is exer- 
 cise alone that will render the muscles flexible, 
 that will strengthen them little by little and be 
 the means of educating them. 
 
 III. 
 
 A person born blind, upon being asked what 
 impression he felt a few days after the operation 
 that had given him his sight, answered : I see 
 
 an extended bright field where everything seems 
 dim, confused, and in motion.'’^ * It is thus, prob- 
 ably, that the picture of external things appears 
 to the first glance of the child. Even when two or 
 three months old the child does not distinguish 
 one object from another. A few bright points, the 
 flame of a lamp, the sparkling eyes of his mother 
 or of his nurse, a brightly coloured plaything, 
 appear first on this dim, confused scene which 
 the world presents to him.f New images are 
 
 * Philosophical Transactions of the Itoyal Society, 1841, 
 vol. i, p. 59. 
 
 f “ I feel certain,” says Taine, “ that for the first two months 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF SIGHT. 
 
 115 
 
 detached little by little from the vague whole, 
 define themselves clearly, particularize them- 
 selves in distinct sensations, according as the 
 objects present themselves to him with more 
 or less intense light or colour. The child goes 
 from discovery to discovery ; from the second 
 to the third month he seems to perceive for 
 the first time objects or persons that have 
 been before him from his birth. The canvas is 
 animated little by little; all the parts become 
 brighter. The colours are distinguished first, 
 and with them consecutively the forms that they 
 determine later, the relief, the depth of bodies. 
 As in a scene formed by the scene shifter little 
 by little, to amuse the spectators, each object 
 comes to take its place successively in the field 
 of vision, and at the same time that it widens, 
 extends its depth. 
 
 In this work of elaboration which enlarges 
 the child^s visual horizon, which makes complete 
 clearness about him, which enables him to dis- 
 cern and interpret sensible phenomena, which, in 
 a word, substitutes real perceptions for confused 
 sensations, it is necessary to take account of the 
 general cause, which is the condition of all 
 mental development and which alone renders 
 complete vision possible : I mean the progress of 
 the participation of the brain. The first lumi- 
 nous impressions interest only the retina, the optic 
 nerves, and the optic thalami ; they do not com- 
 
 the outside world to the child consists of a few sounds and a 
 few specks of colour which he can not place,’’ (De I’lntelligence, 
 book ii, chap, ii.) 
 
 9 
 
116 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD. 
 
 municate themselves to the hrain^ which is not 
 yet in condition to receive and use them. The 
 child^s brain, we must not forget, is in process of 
 development. It is only in the second month 
 that the convolutions and the ganglionary cells 
 appear. Anatomists say that in the first months 
 of the intra-uterine life, the retina is absolutely 
 independent of the encephalic nervous centres; 
 it is not until a later period that the nervous 
 elements of the retina and the cerebral masses 
 will unite through the medium of the optic 
 nerves.^^ * It is probable that this union is not ac- 
 complished immediately after birth ; and, in any 
 case, exercise is necessary to the formation of 
 broad and convenient paths of association be- 
 tween the different parts of the nervous system, 
 and to the establishment of a correspondence, 
 a regular communication, between the images 
 formed on the retina and the cerebral centres, 
 whose co-operation is indispensable in any real 
 perception. 
 
 But although the progressive organization of 
 the brain and its action ruling over all must be 
 taken into account, it is none the less true that a 
 local work, so to speak, is carried on in the eye 
 itself, in the state of its nervous elements as well 
 as in its muscular apparatus, which has its part 
 in bringing the Childs’s sight, little by little, to 
 the highest point of its development. 
 
 So far we have spoken only of the distinction 
 
 * Dictionnaire de medecine et de chirurgie, Dr. Jaccoud, 
 article CEil. 
 
DE\"ELOPMENT OP SIGHT. 
 
 117 
 
 of light and darkness, of day and night — that is 
 to say, of the sensibility to white or diffused 
 light. But very soon the child gives evidence 
 of being sensible also to the accidents of light — 
 that is to say, to colours. Pink or red ribbons 
 lighted up by the sun, gilded frames shining in 
 the lamplight, a bouquet of flowers, in fine — every- 
 thing that is coloured, that is bright, appeals to 
 children's sight and delights them. 
 
 At what moment does the eye of the child go 
 beyond simple sensibility to light and begin to 
 discern colours ? We can not tell this exactly. 
 The minute and precise observations made by 
 Preyer and Binet on the sense of colour apply 
 only to children two or three years old.* They 
 have the common plan of presenting to the child 
 samples of different colours, and of ascertaining 
 how many times he correctly names the red, the 
 green, the yellow, etc. These are rather, to speak 
 exactly, experiments on language and the prog- 
 ress of memory ; for it is evident that the child 
 can distinguish the colours perfectly, and, as a 
 matter of fact, it is certain that he distinguishes 
 them long before he possesses the infallible fac- 
 ulty of associating each one with the name that 
 designates it in the language of men. It is pre- 
 cisely for this reason that Binet has substituted 
 
 * “ In order to find out how it is with simple colours, I made 
 several hundred experiments on my son, beginning with the end 
 of the second year ” (p. 6). “ I have studied the chromatic sen- 
 
 sibility in a little girl from the age of two and a half to three.” 
 (Binet, Revue Philosophique, article Perceptions d’enfants, 1890, 
 vol. XXX, p. 584.) 
 
118 THE DEVELOPMENT OP THE CHILD. 
 
 for what he calls the method of appellation of 
 Preyer, the method of recognition/" which con- 
 sists in making the child select from a bunch of 
 samples of different colours a particular one that 
 has been shown him before. This method has 
 the advantage of doing away with the complica- 
 tions resulting from the inexpert management of 
 language and of avoiding the confusion of words, 
 which does not always correspond to a confusion 
 of things. But it implies, on the other hand, that 
 the child understands what we want to say to 
 him when we ask him to select the sample at 
 first presented, then removed from his sight. It 
 can not be employed, then, in the case of the very 
 young child, and Binet has applied it only to sub- 
 jects two or three years old. 
 
 These experiments, although applied a little 
 late, give us, nevertheless, some information con- 
 cerning what has previously taken place in the 
 eyes of the newborn child. If it is, indeed, proved 
 that the child about two years old recognises or 
 names one colour with more certainty than an- 
 other, it is allowable to infer that this order of 
 more or less correct designation corresponds ex- 
 actly to the order of acquisition and is the conse- 
 quence of it, and that it reveals to us the order 
 of evolution, according to which the retina has 
 become sensible successively to different colours. 
 But, without being exactly identical, since the 
 children observed by Binet recognised red most 
 easily, while Preyer"s son named yellow with 
 most certainty, the results of these two series of 
 observations seem to prove that these two col- 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF SIGHT. 
 
 119 
 
 ours affect earliest the chromatic sensibility of 
 children. 
 
 Red and yellow, the very colours represented 
 to us by the suppositions, a little imaginative, to 
 be sure, of some of our contemporary evolution- 
 ists, as having been the only ones perceived by 
 primitive peoples ! According to Hugo Magnus, 
 the world of material things has not always ap- 
 peared to man with the colours that adorn it to- 
 day, perfected for our senses by heredity. Two 
 thousand years ago humanity would not have 
 been capable of perceiving anything but the ex- 
 tremity of the solar spectrum, the red, the orange, 
 the yellow, without being able to distinguish the 
 green, the blue, the violet. And Hugo Magnus 
 pushes the paradox to the point of claiming that 
 the author of the Homeric poems, as well as the 
 authors of the Bible and the sacred books of India, 
 had so little perception of colour as to see only red 
 and yellow in the universe. These fancies have 
 been justly disposed of ; * it has been shown that 
 in the pretended insensibility of primitive peo- 
 ples respecting certain colours there is mani- 
 fested simply a poverty of language in expressing 
 sensations which are nevertheless distinct. But 
 without intending to find fault with Hugo Mag- 
 nus’s hypothesis in itself as a general formula 
 applicable to the evolution of the sense of col- 
 ours in humanity, it seems at least to express the 
 history of the perception of colours in the little 
 child. 
 
 Notably in Grant Allen’s work. 
 
120 the development of the child. 
 
 If the eyes of the newborn child seem at first 
 to be indifferent to colours, there comes a change 
 at the end of a few weeks. The first time richly 
 coloured objects are shown him the sensation 
 must be like that described by Wardrop as being 
 produced in a person born blind from whose eyes 
 cataracts were successfully removed ; the visible 
 world agitated him greatly. One day/^ said 
 Wardrop, gave him some new clothes of very 
 bright colours ; he was delighted beyond all ex- 
 pression ; it was the most interesting display of 
 sense pleasure that I have ever seen."' * The 
 child offers us what Haeckel has called a raw " 
 state of the sense of colours ; he is not sensible 
 yet to delicate shades, to mild tints, to blue or to 
 gray, and selects by preference the strong colour- 
 ing, which later will shock the eyes of the adult, f 
 A little boy spoken of by Preyer began at the 
 age of four months to prefer bright red to other 
 colours. 
 
 From these facts we conclude, not that the 
 child is incapable of perceiving soft colours, but 
 that he likes them less than the strong ones. It 
 is probable, however, that perception and taste 
 go together, that the colours the child likes best 
 are at the same time the first perceived, especial- 
 ly as the natural disposition to distinguish red 
 
 * See Dugald Stewart, Elements of the Philosophy of the 
 Human Mind, vol. i. 
 
 t “ In all probability the child a year old still perceives 
 green and blue as though they were gray ; in any case, he does 
 not distinguish them as clearly as he will later.’’ (Preyer, 
 p. 146.) 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF SIGHT. 
 
 121 
 
 and yellow first seems to be explained by the fact 
 that these two colours correspond to the longest 
 and the most powerful waves of ether. Let us 
 not forget that the red is the first ray visible in 
 the spectrum. In any case, as has been demon- 
 strated by the experiments of Thomas Young 
 and of Helmholtz, since the nervous elements 
 impressed by the elementary colours are not 
 equally distributed in the retina, and, on the 
 other hand, the sensibility of the retina is devel- 
 oped gradually from the centre to the periphery, 
 we have some right to affirm that there is in 
 the child a progressive evolution of the sense of 
 colour. 
 
 But what is unquestionable, and would be a 
 certain a priori^ supposing that experiment did 
 not furnish us with a confirmation, is that the 
 child, in one order or another, very soon per- 
 ceives the principal colours. And it is by the 
 colours that the exterior world is revealed to him 
 and becomes the object of visual perceptions. To 
 the child the universe is not at first a collection 
 of solid things, each independent of the other, 
 placed at different distances ; it presents itself to 
 him only as an extent of surface, vari-coloured like 
 a picture, in which all sorts of things are painted. 
 First the sensations of light, then sensations of 
 colour ; those are the two stages which vision 
 passes through before arriving at really objec- 
 tive perceptions. There is a period of longer or 
 of shorter duration, during which the world pre- 
 sents to the child only bits or streaks of colour, 
 which form for his eyes a mosaic of different col- 
 
122 the development op the child. 
 
 ours. What goes on in the child^s brain at this 
 time must closely resemble the impressions which 
 Kaspar Hauser declared he had felt when one 
 day, soon after his arrival at Nuremberg, he was 
 taken to a window at the top of a tower and told 
 to look down upon the landscape. I had,^^ he 
 said, an impression analogous to that which 
 would have been produced by a window shutter 
 very close to my eyes, on which had been daubed 
 blots of white, blue, green, yellow, and red, one 
 next to the other. I could not then distinguish 
 and recognise the separate objects as I see them 
 to-day.""^ 
 
 It is from the world of colours that the child^s 
 sight passes to the world of forms. The colour 
 coincides, indeed, with the surface, with the ex- 
 tent of two dimensions, and by the sense of sight 
 alone, without its being necessary to resort to the 
 medium of touch, without feeling the corners of 
 objects and following their contour with his 
 fingers, the child recognises the form of things 
 with great certainty. Up to this time he has re- 
 ceived only sensations of sight, which are almost 
 exclusively subjective ; from now on, through 
 sight, he will receive knowledge — entirely objec- 
 tive perceptions. Images are no longer sketched 
 only in the retina and in the optic thalami ; they 
 are formed in the brain and in the mind ; and 
 these images soon acquire enough precision for 
 the child to be able to distinguish one from the 
 other ; as he evidently does, as soon as he can 
 recognise persons and has a different welcome 
 for his mother or his nurse, whose appearance 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF SIGHT. 
 
 123 
 
 calls forth a smile of joy, and for the stranger 
 who astonishes and frightens him. Preyer states 
 that his son at the age of two years recognised 
 the photographs of people who were familiar to 
 him. But long before this the child greets the 
 persons themselves in a very significant way, 
 proving that he remembers their faces, and that 
 he has consequently distinguished them in his 
 perceptions. This fact is explicable only on one 
 condition, namely, that the face, the stature, the 
 whole body of these persons, have left a distinct 
 impression of their form in the child. Darwin 
 says : At the age of four months the baby 
 
 showed by certain signs that he recognised and 
 distinguished between different people. At four 
 months and a half he often smiled on seeing my 
 image and his own in a mirror.^^ Likewise, the 
 child observed by Preyer at six months looked 
 attentively at the reflection of his father^’s face in 
 a mirror, then turned to his father as though in- 
 tending to compare the image with the original. 
 Tiedemann found that his son, when in his fifth 
 month, turned away from people dressed in black 
 with plain signs of repugnance ; in this case the 
 sensation of colour is uppermost in the visual 
 impression. But this same child, three months 
 afterward, showed evident signs of affection for 
 people that he knew, and in this case it was the 
 distinct and clear 'perception that guided the 
 affectionate sensibility. The child observed by 
 Cuignet recognised his mother at two months ; 
 he looked at her attentively and smiled, while he 
 did not smile at other people, and already hesi- 
 
124 the development of the child. 
 
 tated to let strangers take him in their arms. 
 We might multiply examples of this sort. We 
 have all seen very young children distinguish 
 persons, which is not possible, we repeat, except 
 by virtue of visual images, tracing exactly the 
 portrait of these persons. 
 
 We may even believe that the child^s percep- 
 tion has remarkable exactness in this work of 
 representing lines and forms. We may find a 
 proof of this in the observations undertaken by 
 Binet concerning the appreciation of distances : * 
 it was found that a little girl two years and a 
 half old, when called upon to look in turn at 
 lines of unequal length, noticed even very slight 
 differences, and showed almost as much precision 
 in a glance as would a grown person. Nothing 
 could be more curious,’^ says Binet, than to see 
 this child place her index finger on each one of 
 these lines with such certainty, saying each time, 
 ‘ This one is the shortest," or ^ That one is the long- 
 est." "" I do not deny that at two years and a half 
 the visual perception has already made great 
 progress, and that we can not infer from what 
 happpens at this age that like conditions exist 
 at the age of ten or fifteen months. It is al- 
 lowable to suppose, however, that the child"s 
 glance becomes very early quite exact and pre- 
 cise. It is a law of the evolution of the faculties 
 that the lower functions, those that do not yet 
 presuppose reasoning, attain very rapidly an ad- 
 vanced degree of perfection. ^ The child, who is 
 
 * Revue philosophique, 1890, vol. xxx, pp. 68 et seq. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF SIGUT. 
 
 125 
 
 so visibly inferior to the adult in force of judg- 
 ment and in power of abstraction^ shows him- 
 self to be almost his equal when it is a question 
 of seeing, of measuring surfaces and lines at a 
 glance, and, above all, of representing to himself 
 with clearness the forms of realities. 
 
 For the child, moreover, to appreciate dis- 
 tances, like a little geometrician, and for him to 
 represent to himself by a mental drawing either 
 the persons or things that he knows, there is 
 need, to be sure, of something more than the 
 normal development of the nervous and of the 
 muscular apparatus which constitute the material 
 organs of sight : attention must interpose. It is 
 the lack of attention, according to Binet, that has 
 more than once perverted the results of the ex- 
 periments to which he has submitted his children. 
 And not only attention, but curiosity, sympathy, 
 astonishment, intellectual and moral instincts 
 which are sprouting and beginning to appear, 
 play an important part in the progressive devel- 
 opment of sight. The eyes which during the 
 first months do not open wide except when under 
 control of a material pleasure (when the child is 
 nursing, for instance), will open at eight or nine 
 months under the influence of surprise. There 
 is a first period during which the child, so to 
 speak, sees automatically ; later he sees intelli- 
 gently, he looks. In the first case he is plunged 
 in a sort of vague, torpid contemplation ; in the 
 second case he shows a satisfied countenance, 
 which reveals the intelligence, and it is then only 
 that his glance becomes beautiful. 
 
126 the development of the child. 
 
 This influence of moral causes stands out 
 forcibly in the counter proof to be found in ex- 
 amining idiotic or imbecile children, and in ascer- 
 taining the slowness, the deficiencies of the sense 
 of sight. Perception presupposes not only an 
 action produced by the external phenomena on 
 the appropriate organs : it implies also a reaction 
 of the brain, or, in other words, of the intelligence 
 and of feeling. With perfectly healthy organs of 
 sense, the idiot and the imbecile have only very 
 imperfect sight in their childhood. They see, but 
 they do not really look at anything ; or, on the 
 other hand, being plunged in a dull and obstinate 
 immobility, they do not know how to change 
 their position in order to follow objects with 
 their eyes. ^^However,^^ says Sollier,* apart 
 from the fact that the pupillary modifications 
 show that the eye itself is not reached, we see 
 them, when under the influence of an appropriate 
 excitant, change the direction of their glances.'’^ 
 It is established, then, that the imperfections of 
 their sight result from that which the inner ac- 
 tivity lacks, the intelligence and the feeling not 
 being sufficiently developed to set the mechanism 
 of the sight in motion. 
 
 IV. 
 
 There remains one last question for us to treat, 
 that of the visual perception of distance or of 
 space — a much debated question, to be sure. The 
 nativists, Muller, Hering, Giraud-Teulon, to cite 
 
 Psychologic de I’idiot et de Fimbecile, p. 48. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF SIGHT. 
 
 127 
 
 but a few, on one side, and the empiristic school, as 
 Helmholtz, one of its leaders, has called it, on the 
 other side, are at swords’ points : the one holding 
 that the perception of the third dimension of bodies 
 and of distance is innate in man, as it certainly is 
 in animals, and that it follows immediately from 
 the play of the hereditary mechanism, completely 
 organized from birth; the others affirming, on 
 the contrary — and we believe that the study of 
 the child bears them out — that it is a more or 
 less slow acquisition of experience, the effect of a 
 progressive accommodation of the sense of sight. 
 
 Let us try to show first by facts that the per- 
 ception of space is not given to the child im- 
 mediately ; afterward we will try to see how 
 this perception becomes possible. 
 
 Every one has seen how the child gropes and 
 how he deceives himself when it is a question of 
 appreciating the distance of objects. Preyer has 
 noted a great many observations from day to 
 day showing this lack of power. The fourth 
 month the child stretches out his hands to seize 
 objects that are distant twice the length of his 
 arm from him, and although disappointed, he 
 tries several times to accomplish his purpose. 
 At one year he holds out his arms toward the 
 lamp in a carriage with untiring perseverance. 
 At twenty months he seems to wish to throw 
 himself into his father’s arms, whom he perceives 
 at a second story window of the house, while he 
 himself is in the garden.* If the child could 
 
 * The Senses and the Will, pp. 54 et seq. 
 
128 the development op the child. 
 
 speak and interpret his actions^ he would say to 
 us that if he moves his hands in this way toward 
 distant objects, it is because he believes he can 
 grasp them ; he appreciates their size and their 
 form, but he is incapable of judging whether they 
 are within his reach or not. The notion of distance 
 does not yet exist in him ; perspective is unknown 
 to him ; he does not yet know how to project, to 
 exteriorize, so to speak, at the required distance, 
 the images, however clear they may be, of the ob- 
 jects that make an impression upon his eyes. 
 
 The observations made upon people born 
 blind, who at least can express what they feel 
 when they see for the first time, throw a great 
 deal of light upon this question. I know that 
 Cheselden is reproached for not having noted 
 with enough exactness the facts which he was 
 the first to discover. But his statement has great 
 value nevertheless, other more exact experimen- 
 ters having come after him and having established 
 the inability of the blind to recognise immediate- 
 ly, as soon as they begin to see, the third dimension 
 of extent and the distance of objects. The first 
 time that he saw clearly,^" Cheselden says of his 
 blind man (he neglects to say how many days it 
 was after the operation), he had so little appre- 
 ciation of distances that he imagined that all ob- 
 jects, whatever they were, were in contact with 
 his eyes, ^ were touching his eyes,’ as he said him- 
 self, just as everything he touched was in con- 
 tact with his skin.”* Paul Janet claims that 
 
 * See Philosophical Transactions, April, May, June, 1728. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OP SIGHT. 
 
 129 
 
 this is only a metaphor, a very natural one in a 
 blind person, who has never had any but tactile 
 impressions. But, fortunately for the empiristic 
 argument, other testimony is more decisive. 
 Such is that of a blind person operated upon at 
 the age of twelve by Everard Home. '' Like most 
 of those that are born blind, this boy could dis- 
 tinguish daylight from artificial light, the bright- 
 ness of the sun from that of a lamp, before the 
 operation, and he said that it seemed to him that 
 the sun touched his eyes; which was not sur- 
 prising, the sun manifesting itself to him by the 
 intensity of its light and not by the appearance 
 of its form. But when he had been operated upon 
 once in the left eye, he was not any farther ad- 
 vanced in this respect. When the operator asked 
 him what he saw, he said, ^ Your head, and it seems 
 to touch my eyes.'’ When the right eye had been 
 operated upon, experiments were not begun im- 
 mediately. But twenty-seven days after the second 
 operation, nearly three months after the first, it 
 seemed to him that the sun and all other objects 
 were still very near him.'’^ * Wardrop and Franz 
 have collected facts analogous to this. Wardrop, 
 whose observation is most minute, operated upon 
 a woman forty-six years old who had been blind 
 from birth. On the eighteenth day the patient 
 still finds great difficulty in discovering how far 
 objects are from her ; when an object is placed 
 near her eyes, she tries to grasp it, but extends 
 her hand far beyond it, while in other cases she 
 
 * Philosophical Transactions, 1807, i, pp. 83-87. 
 
130 the development op the child. 
 
 extends her hand a very short distance to grasp 
 objects that are farther away.* We find, then, in 
 this person, though elderly and intelligent, the 
 same awkwardness that we see in the child every 
 day, when he extends his hands at random to 
 grasp what is out of his reach. Franz performed 
 experiments in 1840 in Leipsic with the same re- 
 sult. Several days after the operation that gave 
 him his sight, the patient, seventeen years old, 
 could not distinguish a plane surface from a 
 solid. cube and a sphere are placed before 
 him : he declares that he sees a square and a disc. 
 The cube is removed and replaced by a disc of 
 the same dimensions as the sphere : he declares 
 that he sees two discs. Exterior objects seem to 
 him to be so near him that he is sometimes afraid 
 of striking against furniture that is in reality 
 some distance from him. Although he had 
 learned by touch that in the human face the 
 nose is prominent and the eyes sunken, the hu- 
 man face seemed to him as he looked at it to be 
 a plane."^^ f In a very recent observation on a 
 girl of thirteen who had been born blind, it was 
 found that there was at first no appreciation of 
 space, and eight days after the operation it was 
 still very imperfect. Four or five days after the 
 patient had recovered sight an object was shown 
 her at least thirty metres away. She declared 
 that she could touch it with her hand, and ex- 
 tended her hand to grasp it.^^ J 
 
 * Philosophical Transactions, 1826, iii, pp. 552-554. 
 
 f Ibid., etc., 1849, i, pp. 59-69. 
 
 t Revue philosophique, January, 1889. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OP SIGHT. 
 
 131 
 
 We have insisted upon these observations be- 
 cause they are, by analogy, characteristic and 
 convincing from the point of view with which 
 we are concerned. A person born blind is really 
 a child as far as sight is concerned If, on the 
 one hand, he has to meet with more unfavour- 
 able conditions, whether because the operation 
 that he has undergone has given him sight in 
 only one eye, or because his diseased and painful 
 organs do not act as readily or with the same 
 completeness as in a naturally healthy sense, it 
 is evident, on the other hand, that he has some 
 advantages over the child. For a long time he 
 has been collecting a large number of tactile ex- 
 periences, which can at once, so to speak, guide 
 his vision ; besides, the band that covers his eyes 
 is almost never thick or opaque enough to render 
 them absolutely insensible to the action of light. 
 Those whose blindness is owing merely to a 
 lesion of the crystalline lens can even recognise 
 colours, according as they are more or less bril- 
 liant or striking ; and this perception, although 
 confused, permits them in a certain degree (the 
 coloured object lighting up to a greater or less 
 extent the visual field) to take account of the 
 limits, the dimensions of this object, to judge 
 even if it is very near or far away, the illumina- 
 tion of the eye being more or less intense. The 
 person born blind has the superiority over the 
 child in the education of sight, which his age, 
 his tactile experience, and his developed reason 
 assure him. From what we find in him, then, we 
 have a right to infer what probably takes place 
 
132 the development of the child. 
 
 in the child, and to conclude, a fortiori^ that the 
 latter must experience at least equal difficulties. 
 
 There remains to discover how the mental 
 construction of the perception of distances and 
 of the depth of bodies is carried on. The child 
 will show us himself, if we observe him care- 
 fully. Why do we see him continually turning 
 objects about in his fingers and feeling of them, 
 as he will of a box, a glass, or a book ? Because 
 of a secret need of activity certainly, and for the 
 pleasure of moving his hands ; but also, we be- 
 lieve, through curiosity, in order to find out, by 
 the indications of touch, the contours of objects, 
 their nature and peculiarities. And while the 
 touch perceptions are becoming distinct, sight, 
 acting at the same time, receives varied impres- 
 sions. Different images correspond to different 
 situations of the bodies that are felt and handled, 
 not only by reason of their particular form, but 
 also because of their position in space, as the 
 child holds them near or far from his eyes. 
 A correspondence, an association, is established 
 slowly between the data of the two senses ; so 
 that after a number of experiences the child 
 comes to interpret the visual phenomena, and 
 to take them as signs of such and such tactile 
 knowledge. 
 
 It is not at the very outset, indeed, that the 
 touch perceptions join the sight perceptions,* 
 and adjust themselves to form the notion of the 
 
 * In the third month the little girl observed by Taine “be- 
 gan to feel things with her hands, to move her arms to reach 
 
DEVELOPMENT OP SIGHT. 
 
 133 
 
 dimensions and depth, of objects in the child's 
 mind. The blind person operated upon by War- 
 drop, nearly twenty days after the operation, 
 could not yet distinguish, with her eyes alone a 
 silver pencil and a large key, although, she recog- 
 nised them perfectly when she touched them. 
 So Cheselden's blind man had to look very at- 
 tentively at things that he had already handled 
 before he could tell what they were. He was 
 obliged to feel even familiar objects again be- 
 fore establishing clearly a definite association 
 between the visual image and the tactile repre- 
 sentation. After forgetting often which was the 
 dog and which the cat, he was ashamed to ask 
 the question again, and taking the cat, which he 
 recognised by touch, he looked at it fixedly for a 
 long time ; then placing it on the floor, he said. 
 Well, pussy, henceforth I shall know you !" 
 
 The case is nearly the same for the percep- 
 tion of distances. Here, too, there is an associa- 
 tion established between the visual phenomena — 
 greater or less dimensions, outlines more or less 
 defined, colours more or less pronounced — and 
 the reality of the distance. We have some right 
 to suppose that the child does not really acquire 
 the notion of the relative distance of bodies until 
 he can walk, and, being able to measure the dis- 
 tance between objects by traversing it, finds that 
 the tree becomes larger as he approaches it, that 
 the house appears smaller and smaller the farther 
 
 objects, beginning to associate blots of colour with tactile and 
 muscular impressions of distance and of form.” De I’lntelli- 
 gence, book ii, chap. ii. 
 
134 the development of the child. 
 
 lie goes from it. But the child can appreciate 
 the variation of sensible images, in its connection 
 with the relative proximity of objects, long be- 
 fore he can walk. He has noticed that the book 
 that is within his reach appears to him in other 
 conditions from the one that he tries in vain to 
 grasp. The child can measure small distances 
 by simply extending his arms, and so begins the 
 long work which will allow him to represent the 
 world of material things to himself, not as a 
 plane surface but as a depth, in which material 
 things are placed in a succession of planes at dif- 
 ferent distances from the eye. 
 
 The visible world, as we can not repeat too 
 often, presents itself to the child at first only as 
 a picture in which an awkward painter has dis- 
 regarded the laws of perspective, and has not 
 succeeded in producing the illusion of distance. 
 It is only little by little that things draw back, 
 so to speak — locate themselves at different points 
 in space. The distribution of light and shade, 
 the strong relief of the nearer objects, the gray 
 tints that dull the outlines of those farther away, 
 in a word, the visual phenomena, thanks to ex- 
 perience and to habit, become the signs of pos- 
 sible tactile representations ; and what is most 
 remarkable — we do not pretend to explain it — 
 these signs are immediately interpreted, trans- 
 formed even, to the point of disappearing from 
 consciousness, and sight seems in some way to 
 grasp of itself, in the original text, what it 
 really does not perceive except by a translation, 
 by means of the experiences of touch and of loco- 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF SIGHT. 
 
 135 
 
 motion. The natural perceptions of sight are re- 
 duced to colour and extent of surface ; all the 
 rest is acquired. And if we grant the nativists 
 this fact, which, moreover, does not seem contro- 
 vertible, that the motions of the eyes contribute in 
 small part to the perception of space ; if we admit, 
 with Maillet,* that the feeling of the effort of 
 convergence of our eyes (the nearer the object to 
 be seen the greater the convergence) gives us, up 
 to a certain point, a vague notion of distance, it 
 would follow, then, that sight begins by itself, 
 without the aid of touch, the construction of 
 space, but by no means that it can perfect it 
 without that aid. 
 
 * Maillet, Elements de psychologie de rhomme et de Tenfant, 
 p. 193. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HEARING, TASTE, SMELL, AND TOUCH. 
 
 I. Hearing. — Temporary deafness of the newborn child : its 
 causes. — First auditory sensations. — Insensible progression 
 and intermediate states. — Sounds, from childhood, excite the 
 nerves more than any other impressions. — Sounds have also, 
 in certain conditions, a moderating power. — Rudiments of 
 the musical sensibility. — Noise for the noise’ sake. — Impres- 
 sion produced on the child by the human voice. — Sensations 
 and impressions. — The direction and distance of sound. II. 
 Taste and Smell. — Taste impressions the first to appear. — 
 The tactile sensibility associated with the gustatory sensi- 
 bility. — Distinction of different tastes. — The taste for sweets 
 the first habit of the child. — Repugnance for new foods. — 
 Natural likes and dislikes. — Resemblance between taste and 
 smell. — The general inutility of sensations of smell retards 
 their development. — Sensations of smell are the weakest of 
 all sensations. — They are of account only when superadded 
 to sensations of taste. — The child is rather inattentive to 
 odours than incapable of perceiving them. III. Touch. — 
 Particular character of tactile impressions. — Passive and 
 active touch. — Impressions, sensations, and perceptions. — 
 Thermal impressions. — Does pleasure accompany the first 
 tactile impressions f — Pleasures of active touch. — The mus- 
 cular sense. — The notion of exteriority. — How the child 
 comes to recognise his body as belonging to himself. — 
 Pain aids him in distinguishing the subject from the 
 object. 
 
 I. 
 
 The development of the sense of hearing does 
 not by any means involve the complications, the 
 
 136 
 
HEARING, TASTE, SMELL, AND TOUCH. 137 
 
 delays in muscular adaptation and arrangement, 
 which the sense of sight has presented. Doubt- 
 less every child is deaf at first ; but this tem- 
 porary deafness does not last more than a few 
 hours — a few days at most — and, moreover, it re- 
 sults from wholly material causes ; so that these 
 physical obstacles once removed, and they are 
 rapidly, the child enters into immediate posses- 
 sion of the sense of hearing in all essential 
 points. 
 
 The principal reason for this state of tempo- 
 rary deafness is the absence of air in the tym- 
 panum. In order that the child may hear, it is 
 necessary that the liquids that obstructed this 
 cavity during the intra-uterine life should flow 
 out and make room for the atmospheric air ; and 
 it is owing to the respiratory motions that this 
 exchange takes place. There is no longer a ques- 
 tion of holding, as certain physiologists did in the 
 gala days of the inneity doctrine, that " hereditary, 
 innate air exists,^^ which would fill the ear of the 
 new-born child.* Several hours at least of respira- 
 tion seem to be necessary to completely clear the 
 auditory paths. One other cause assists in pre- 
 venting at first the full play of the operations of 
 hearing : it is the closing of the cavity of the ear, 
 whose walls are so firmly joined together in the 
 beginning that the sound can not penetrate to the 
 tympanum, t 
 
 But these material obstacles very soon disap- 
 
 * Preyer, The Senses and the Will, p. 73. 
 t It is probable, also, that the ossicles which transmit the 
 vibrations communicated by the membrane of the tympanum 
 
138 the development OF THE CHILD. 
 
 pear, a little sooner in one case, a little later in 
 another, while the individual differences are not 
 very great. Preyer, who has studied the progress 
 of the child^s hearing with his usual conscien- 
 tiousness, declares that it was not until the morn- 
 ing of the fourth day that he knew, from certain 
 signs, that his son^s deafness had disappeared. 
 
 As long as he was warm and well fed, and in a 
 comfortable position, I had but to clap my hands 
 or to whistle to make his eyes, which were half 
 closed, close completely. As this occurred in the 
 course of the fourth day, when nothing like it 
 had taken place on the third, it seemed certain 
 to me that the tympanum had not begun to 
 act until the fourth day, that it had been in- 
 active up to that time.'’^ * * But the change comes 
 earlier in other children, and from the second 
 day, sometimes from the first, characteristic mo- 
 ions, such as the w inking of the eyes, wrinkling 
 the forehead, moving the arms, show us that the 
 vibrations of the sound waves have penetrated 
 into the canals of the labyrinth as far as the fibre 
 of the auditory nerve, and that the newborn child 
 is sensitive to sound. 
 
 To what extent he is thus sensitive, through 
 what stages hearing passes, how auditory acute- 
 ness is insensibly developed by exercise, in what 
 order the ear comes to perceive the different 
 qualities of sound, it is almost impossible to 
 
 to the fluid contained in the labyrinth are not immediately in 
 a state to act, and that some time is necessary for their move- 
 ments to be performed regularly. 
 
 * See The Senses and the Will, pp. 81 et seq. 
 
HEARING, TASTE, SMELL, AND TOUCH. 139 
 
 know ; tho only signs that disclose the audi- 
 tory sensations to the observer not being of a 
 nature to tell of the shades, the proportions of 
 these sensations, and revealing to us but this 
 one fact in the rough, that the child hears. It 
 is probable that the total deafness of the first 
 days is succeeded by intermediate states until 
 the hearing faculty is perfected ; the organ de- 
 veloping and being strengthened little by little, 
 so that it receives sound impressions more and 
 more intense without being wounded by them. 
 What would happen if from the very first day a 
 screech or a shrill whistle, or a resounding roar, 
 could affect the sensibility to the extent that it 
 will affect it later ? By hearing too soon the child 
 would run the risk of not hearing at all for the 
 rest of its life. If the noise of a cannon can cause 
 deafness in grown people, how much greater rea- 
 son is there that sounds too intense, if felt, should 
 threaten to bruise, to injure an organ so delicate 
 and so unexercised ; just as too strong a vibra- 
 tion breaks the strings of a harp or a violin. In 
 any case, too precocious an auditory sensibility 
 would present other dangers : it might provoke 
 excessive excitement, even convulsions, perhaps. 
 Nature has wisely protected the child against the 
 shock of too numerous or too violent sensations, 
 in leaving him dull of hearing for a few weeks. 
 This relative deafness of the newborn child, like 
 his semi-blindness, gives the organism time to 
 consolidate, so to speak, so that it may be able 
 to resist later the force and multiplicity of sen- 
 sations. It is to the child, above all, that these 
 
140 the development of tee child. 
 
 words of Hartmann can be applied : What 
 
 would become of our poor souls if they had to 
 respond unceasingly to the infinite multitude of 
 excitations constantly in play about us ? 
 
 From the first days of childhood, however, 
 hearing appears with the characteristics which 
 this sense will keep all through life ; its impres- 
 sions move the nerves most quickly, and excite 
 most profoundly the inmost emotions of the soul. 
 At every age, as we know, sound far surpasses 
 form, and even colour, as the agent of excitation. 
 There is something penetrating and keen, we can 
 not tell what, in every kind of sound (I do not 
 speak of the human voice alone), that affects us 
 with greater intensity than the most highly col- 
 oured and most striking images possibly could. 
 And at the same time, by a singular privilege, if 
 sounds are at all sweet and caressing, or harmo- 
 nious, they have the virtue of calming, of stilling 
 passions, and of establishing a sort of happy quiet 
 in the soul. 
 
 Facts show that the child feels, from these 
 two points of view, the particularly strong action 
 of auditory impressions. The least noise very 
 soon makes the newborn child start. During 
 the first week,^^ says Darwin, my little child 
 started and winked his eyes on hearing a noise. 
 When he was sixty-six days old I happened to 
 sneeze near him. He moved quickly, contracted 
 his brows, seemed to be frightened, and cried. 
 For a whole hour he was in what would be called 
 a nervous state in a grown person."^ To be sure, 
 the new objects that strike the child's sight have 
 
HEARING, TASTE, SMELL, AND TOUCH. 141 
 
 also the effect of provoking motions of surprise 
 and starts of fear ; nevertheless, as Darwin has 
 also observed, sounds startle the child much 
 more frequently, and, we shall add, much more 
 violently, than do the sensations of sight. 
 
 On the other hand, we have all seen the sooth- 
 ing power which the auditory impressions in 
 certain cases and under certain conditions exer- 
 cise upon the child's sensibility. His cries yield 
 to the sound of his mother's voice ; his tears are 
 dried by the songs of his nurse.* And it seems 
 that the aesthetic sense — under the form of a 
 rudimentary taste for music — is aroused more 
 quickly in the case of hearing than in that of 
 the other senses. When one month and a few 
 days old, Tiedemann's son heard the piano for 
 the first time, and seemed delighted by it. Preyer 
 has noticed the progress of this musical sensi- 
 bility : The sixth week," he says, the child 
 
 became quiet and opened his eyes wide when he 
 heard his mother sing. The eighth week he 
 showed his satisfaction on hearing a piece ren- 
 dered on the piano by a particularly attentive 
 look, by lively motions of the arms and of the 
 legs, by laughter and smiles. The thirteenth 
 week it became easy to attract the child's atten- 
 tion with single notes, chords, or scales ; he be- 
 came quiet as soon as he heard them, in the midst 
 of the most violent crises, and took on an air of 
 rapt attention, f 
 
 * When the child observed by Espinas was one month and 
 two days old, he could be quieted by the songs of his nurse ; as 
 soon as she became quieted he began crying again. 
 
 t See The Senses and the Will, pp. 84 et seq. 
 
142 the development of the child. 
 
 However, we must not exaggerate the child^s 
 musical taste. It is doubtless sweet intonations, 
 humming of songs, that succeed of tenest in calm- 
 ing him. Doubtless, too, he will prefer rhythm, 
 cadence, harmony ; but the sound in itself pleases 
 him, whatever may be its quality ; he likes the 
 noise because it is a noise. As soon as his organs 
 are strong enough to support it, the intensity of 
 the sound is a pleasure to him. What deafens 
 us, and seems loud and brawling, delights him, 
 perhaps because he is accustomed, by his own 
 piercing cries, to the most discordant sounds, but, 
 above all, because every excitation is agreeable 
 to the nascent sensibility, and the stronger it is 
 the more agreeable it is. With children as with 
 savages, there can be no question of taste, which 
 presupposes a work of selection, a reflective judg- 
 ment, which primitive nature does not permit. 
 
 It is no less true, however, that if the child is 
 amused by all noises, he is charmed by harmo- 
 nious and musical sounds. It is hearing that 
 first arouses in the child a vague sense of order, 
 of regularity, and consequently of beauty. It is 
 hearing, also, that first seems to emancipate his 
 intelligence. We have said that the child, at the 
 end of a few months, recognises familiar persons, 
 their faces, and their physiognomy ; but the au- 
 ditory impressions have, I believe, the advantage 
 over visual impressions in this respect. When 
 one month old the child observed by Cuignet did 
 not recognise any one by sight ; it mattered little 
 to him who carried him, who took him in their 
 arms ; but he already distinguished his mother^s 
 
HEARING, TASTE, SMELL, AND TOUCH. I43 
 
 voice. The verse of the poet should be modified 
 to read : 
 
 Incipe, parve puer, lingua cognoscere matrem ! 
 
 The human voice — above all, the mother voice — 
 which is like the appeal of the active intelligence 
 to the dormant intelligence, is perhaps the quick- 
 est of all sensible impressions in finding its way 
 to the child^s attention. Natural affinities ex- 
 plain this particular power, but we may remark 
 further, that the human voice being the sound 
 that the child has most frequent occasion to hear, 
 he very soon becomes familiar with it. Finally, 
 it is the mother's word that sounds nearest the 
 ear of the newborn child, and penetrates it most 
 sweetly during the long hours passed together. 
 
 Some time, moreover, will be required for the 
 impression of the human voice itself to become 
 more than a confused sensation, to become a dis- 
 tinct perception. The child would learn to speak 
 much more rapidly than he does if he were able 
 at the start to distinguish the different articu- 
 lations. The difficulty in reproducing sounds, 
 which he finds at first, does not result merely 
 from the inexperience of the vocal organ ; it is 
 owing in part to the vagueness, the lack of pre- 
 cision in the first perceptions of hearing, which 
 is at the beginning sensitive above all to the in- 
 tensity, to the pitch or to the tonality of sounds, 
 but which comes only little by little to distin- 
 guish tone and articulation. 
 
 Hearing does not at once perceive the distance 
 and direction of sound. Espinas, to be sure, says 
 that he saw a child seven days old raise toward 
 
14:4 the development of the child. 
 
 a person who spoke- aloud very near him. But 
 in this case it was easy to recognise the direction 
 of the voice, since the person speaking was only 
 a few steps away, and was directly in front of 
 the child.* If the sound comes from a distance 
 the difficulty is greater, and the child does not 
 overcome it easily, although he is aided, as we 
 all are, by the fact that the organ of hearing is 
 double, and the sound waves, according to their 
 origin and their source, impress one ear more 
 strongly than the other. Darwiffis son, in spite 
 of his sensibility to sounds in general, even at 
 the age of four months could not easily recog- 
 nise the direction of a sound so as to turn his 
 eyes toward its source. We must not forget 
 that in order to find the direction of a sound it 
 is necessary to begin by feeling a need of seeking 
 for it ; and the little child is not yet sufficiently 
 dominated by the instinct of causality to have an 
 idea of inquiring into the cause of any noise that 
 he hears. 
 
 The case is the same in the perception of dis- 
 tance, which comes only from experience and 
 from reasoning. We judge that a sound that 
 we have heard several times before is near, if it 
 is strong ; that it is far away, if it is weak. But 
 it is impossible to demand this appreciation, only 
 approximate at best, of the child, as long as his 
 hearing, on the one hand, is not sensitive enough 
 
 * At two months and a half, the little girl observed by Taine 
 recognised manifestly the direction of certain sounds — for in- 
 stance, hearing the voice of her grandmother, she turned her 
 head toward her. 
 
EEARING, TASTE, SMELL, AND TOUCH. 145 
 
 to discern easily the relative intensity of sounds, 
 and his judgment, on the other hand, is not 
 strong enough to draw a conclusion from the 
 degree of intensity as to the difference in dis- 
 tance. Just as Cheselden's blind man saw ob- 
 jects as though very near his eyes, perhaps in his 
 eyes, so a deaf person who should suddenly re- 
 ceive his hearing would imagine, doubtless, that 
 the sounds he heard were touching his ears. 
 
 II. 
 
 If we had followed the chronological order in 
 the study of the child's sensations and percep- 
 tions, we should have begun with the sense of 
 taste.* Apart from a few vague tactile impres- 
 sions which have preceded them (and that from 
 the intra-uterine life), the sensations of taste are 
 certainly the first to appear. The sense of taste 
 is formed and ready to act from the time of birth. 
 We should not expect any ulterior development 
 of so simple an organism, since it includes only 
 the tongue, the mucus that covers it, and the 
 nerves whose ramifications are spread out there. 
 At the first contact with a sapid substance, then, 
 the sense acts immediately. And whereas the 
 need of nourishment and the instinctive motions 
 
 * “ The functions of taste and of smell hold the first place in 
 the animal life ; the newborn child makes use of them from the 
 beginning, without groping, without experience ; he first smells 
 milk, desires it, and tastes it. These are the first purposes, 
 brought with him on his entrance into the world.” — (Maine de 
 Biran, Fondements de la Psychologie, part ii, sec. ii.) 
 
146 the development op the child. 
 
 of Slicking will keep the child at his mother^s 
 breast, agreeable impressions of taste will en- 
 courage this effort and contribute by a sensible 
 excitation to the accomplishment of an essential 
 function. Without wishing to exaggerate the 
 importance of final causes, it is difficult not to 
 recognise in this co-ordination of different means 
 for a common end the intention of a benevolent 
 and far-seeing Nature. 
 
 Not only nourishment, then, but also, we may 
 almost affirm, the first pleasure, the first sensa- 
 tion comes to the child from his mother^s breast. 
 This sensation, moreover, is not one exclusively 
 of taste ; touch, too, has its part here ; the tongue 
 and the lips possess a very keen sensibility to 
 touch. And it is perhaps by pressing the moth- 
 er’s nipple in his mouth that the child acquires 
 also the first confused notion of exteriority. 
 
 We should not dare to affirm, however, that 
 the action of sucking, and the gustatory impres- 
 sions resulting from it, are at the outset accom- 
 panied by consciousness. It is by a wholly in- 
 stinctive impulse that the child moves his head 
 or his lips to get nearer the source of his life, and 
 the continued repetition of an act entirely me- 
 chanical to begin with is probably necessary in 
 order that consciousness should appear. But 
 there is no doubt that the child very soon dis- 
 tinguishes the particular taste of the milk with 
 which he is fed from all other tastes. 
 
 We frequently see nurslings that can not ac- 
 custom themselves to a new nurse ; and although 
 the impressions of smell, not to speak of the hab- 
 
HEARING, TASTE, SMELL, AND TOUCH. 147 
 
 its of general sensibility, can in part explain this 
 repulsion, it is certain that the sense of taste is 
 the principal cause of it. Just as we notice it if 
 the wine served to us to-day is not the same that 
 we had yesterday, so the child perceives imme- 
 diately that there has been a change in the milk 
 with which he is fed. I remember with what 
 grieved energy a child that I used to see refused 
 the milk offered him in the bottle if it was not 
 quite so sweet as usual. Sucking being the es- 
 sential act in which almost the entire life of the 
 newborn child is centred, it is in this circle of 
 impressions that the faculty of comparison be- 
 tween different sensations is developed, and it is 
 here also that the force of habit has its begin- 
 ning. Indeed, if the child, while a nursling and 
 after the weaning, shows a marked preference 
 for sweets, it is not only a matter of instinct 
 and of innate tastes,* nor because the organism 
 
 * We do not hesitate to recognise what there is of the in- 
 stinctive and innate in the child’s liking for a sweet taste, and 
 consequently his liking for milk. There is an old experiment 
 made by Galieno which seems decisive in the case of animals. 
 He chose a newborn goat, one that had not taken suck ; he 
 placed it before a row of vessels, all alike, each one filled with a 
 different substance : milk, wine, oil, honey, and meal. The goat 
 smelled each vessel, but chose the one containing the milk, Ro- 
 manes, who cites this experiment, concludes from it that there 
 can be no doubt as to the hereditary memory or instinct in the 
 goat, and adds that it is probably the same, in part at least, in 
 the case of the child. In support of this hypothesis he cites 
 Professor Kussmaul’s experiments, according to which newborn 
 children, even before having taken the breast, “ show a prefer- 
 ence for sweet tastes. . . . Moisten a child’s tongue with a sweet 
 11 
 
148 the development of the child. 
 
 demands the sugar, so to speak, by a sort of nat- 
 ural appetite ; it is partly habit that determines 
 the preference — the habit of an alimentation al- 
 ways the same, uniformly pleasant and sweet, 
 which will render the transition to another kind 
 of nourishment diflScult and painful. 
 
 It is to be remarked, indeed, that the child, 
 when once weaned, will almost always show a 
 sort of apprehension and a repugnance, at least 
 transitory, when new foods are offered him. 
 Even those that he will like best when he has 
 tasted them several times he is almost sure to 
 repel at first. Every sensation of taste to which 
 the child is unaccustomed disconcerts him to a 
 far greater degree than the new impressions of 
 sight or of hearing Preyer found this to be so 
 with his son at the age of a year and a half, and 
 still so at four years. He shook his head and 
 closed his eyes every time a new dish was offered 
 him ; his face took on an expression of astonish- 
 ment ; and yet the food was pleasing to him, as 
 he asked for it often after that with an expres- 
 sion of satisfaction.^^ Habit holds tyrannical sway 
 over the tastes and dislikes of children ; and the 
 proof of this is in the astonishing differences 
 which the sensibility of adults themselves offer, 
 from this point of view ; a dish that nauseates 
 some being, on the contrary, the favourite of 
 others. 
 
 solution and he will show satisfaction, but do the same with salt 
 solutions, with vinegar or quinine, and he will make all sorts of 
 faces.” Although we wish to give instinct its due, still wo be- 
 lieve that it must take account of habit also. 
 
HEARING, TASTE, SxMELL, AND TOUCH. I49 
 
 Still, while admitting that there may be tastes 
 almost indifferent in themselves, and that the 
 habits of alimentation alone make them relished 
 or detested, we do not believe any the less that, 
 naturally and instinctively, the taste of every 
 little child distinguishes between agreeable and 
 disagreeable impressions. The nurse in Romeo 
 and Juliet * tells how she had covered her breast 
 with wormwood when she weaned Juliet, and 
 how the child turned from her breast in disgust. 
 But before the weaning, from the very first days, 
 bitter, sour, salt tastes provoke motions of repul- 
 sion, expressions of displeasure in the newborn 
 child. Whereas he eagerly sucks a piece of su- 
 gar, he forcibly rejects medicine. Later, marked 
 partialities, invincible repugnances will accen- 
 tuate themselves still further. We have seen a 
 child four years old, usually very docile, who 
 would not yield to any prayer, to any threat, 
 when being urged to eat some green peas. And 
 this instinct of violent repulsion is so powerful 
 that the mere sight of dishes that the child dis- 
 likes will sometimes cause a really angry scene ; 
 at the least, the child will put his hand before his 
 eyes to escape seeing the food that displeases him. 
 As far as we are concerned, we have never ob- 
 served the effects of that happy and easy verbal 
 suggestion which Preyer claims to have success- 
 fully employed, when, to induce his son to take 
 a certain dish, he simply said, emphatically, It 
 is good ; and the child, convinced, found it good. 
 
 * Act i, scene iv. 
 
150 the development of the child. 
 
 Although fancy plays a great part in the impres- 
 sions of taste, daintiness that might be corrected, 
 habits that might have been moderated, still we 
 shall find a firm foundation derived from inne- 
 ity or from heredity, of dislikes or instinctive ap- 
 petites. Preyer is more correct when he seems to 
 be putting himself in contradiction with himself, 
 and declares that a practical rule should be laid 
 down never to oblige a little child to take a food 
 whose taste does not please him.* 
 
 Smell works in collaboration with taste, and 
 these two senses whose organs are such near 
 neighbours, locally speaking, have a great simi- 
 larity between them.f The olfactory apparatus 
 is also very simple : a membrane covering the in- 
 side of the nose and a special nerve spreading out 
 over it. It would seem natural, then, that the 
 development of the sensations of smell should bo 
 as rapid, as precocious, as is that of the sensations 
 of taste ; and it would probably be so if they were 
 as useful. Utility — that is to say, adaptation to 
 an end which the needs of Nature demand — is 
 the great agent of acceleration in the evolution 
 of functions, as in the development of organs. 
 And that is why the sensations of smell, whose 
 general uselessness in human life is hardly to be 
 
 * The Senses and the Will, p. 127. 
 
 t There is no certainty that there is any differentiation in 
 the very beginning between the two senses. Perhaps at first 
 there are not both odours and tastes, but taste-odours — the 
 odour of milk, for instance, joined to the taste of milk. When 
 a flower is presented to a child for him to smell it he opens his 
 mouth. (See Perez, p. 18.) 
 
IIEAKIMG, TASTE, SMELL, AND TOUCH. 151 
 
 doubted, wliile they are, on the contrary, so im- 
 portant in animals, are so little developed in man, 
 and so slowly developed in the child. The new- 
 born cliild^s indifference to odours results from 
 the same principle as the marvellous power of 
 scent in the case of dogs. Condillac did not 
 trouble himself at all with the natural order of 
 evolution of the sensible faculties, or, in any 
 case, he did not respect it, when, in animating 
 his statue, he made it begin by smelling a rose. 
 Roses and flowers speak only to the child^s eyes 
 at flrst by their shape and form ; their perfumes 
 do not affect him. Rousseau saw this. He says. 
 It is certain that the sense of smell is dull and 
 almost lacking in most children.^^ * 
 
 The flrst reason to give for this, as we have 
 said, is that sensations of smell are the most use- 
 less of all sensations. Colours in themselves are 
 useless also, but colours are coexistent with ex- 
 tent ; they are received with the forms and con- 
 tribute consequently to the knowledge of the ex- 
 terior world. The odorous emanations of things, 
 on the contrary, teach us nothing, or almost noth- 
 ing of the nature of objects. They float about in 
 the air ; they lack foundation, so to speak. Ex- 
 cept in the case of food (and we shall see im- 
 mediately that on this point the rule that we 
 establish admits of an exception), they serve for 
 no more in the satisfaction of material life f than 
 
 * Emile, book ii. Rousseau, moreover, gives this strange 
 reason for it that smell is the sense of the imagination. 
 
 f It is because they are, on the contrary, of the greatest 
 utility in animal life that the sensations of smell are so devel- 
 
152 the development of the child. 
 
 they contribute to the development of intelli- 
 gence and to satisfy curiosity. They are the 
 weakest of all sensible impressions in the child, 
 as they always will be. They will never disturb 
 the sensibility to any great extent, at most they 
 can but caress it, so to speak, when they are 
 agreeable, and offend it slightly in the opposite 
 case. Finally, they are of no value in themselves, 
 and are of account only when added to other im- 
 pressions ; they perfume the flower that we take 
 pleasure in seeing, the fruit that we like to taste. 
 
 It is precisely under this last form, as an ele- 
 ment added to the impression of taste, that smell 
 affects the child. There is no doubt that what 
 we call an appetizing odour excites the sensi- 
 bility of the nursling when he is no longer 
 hungry. The sense of smell being so closely 
 connected with the sense of taste that we can not 
 taste anything without smelling it at the same 
 time, the two sets of sensations are intermin- 
 gled, are confused, and mutually excite each 
 other. It is probable that smell, rather than the 
 remembrance of former impressions, guides and 
 attracts the newborn child when, placed near his 
 mother's breast, he turns quickly to grasp it.* 
 
 oped in the carnivorous animals, and especially in the dog. 
 Romanes cites the instance of a dog which he tried to lose on 
 a public promenade one fete day. He made a great many turns 
 and detours in his path, then sat down on a bench and waited 
 When the dog found that his master was no longer at his side, 
 he returned to the place where he had seen him for the last 
 time, and then, finding his scent again, he followed him in all 
 the zigzags he had made until he came up with him. 
 
 * Compare Preyer, The Senses and the Will, p. 133. “ The 
 
HEARING, TASTE, SMELL, AND TOUCH. 153 
 
 Peroz tells of children several weeks old who re- 
 fused to go to a new nurse simply because the 
 odour of her breath or of her person affected 
 them disagreeably.* * Finally, smell plays a great 
 part, assuredly, in the dislikes or preferences 
 which children evince for such or such food. 
 
 It is important to notice, moreover, that in 
 the case of the little child there is a lack of at- 
 tention in respect to odours rather than a lack 
 of the power of smelling them. The experiments 
 cited by Preyer prove this beyond a doubt. He 
 says : Kiissmaul has seen that newborn children^ 
 
 even when asleep, show their sensitiveness to 
 odour, if the fumes of asafoetida, for instance, 
 are placed under their nose : they quickly shut 
 their eyelids tight, wrinkle up their faces, be- 
 come restless, move their arms and head, wake 
 up, then fall asleep again when the fumes have 
 passed away.^^ Genzmer has obtained analogous 
 results. To complete these observations Preyer 
 asks that nurses shall come to his assistance, that 
 they shall put some strong-smelling substance 
 either on the outside of the bottle or even on 
 their breast. ^^Such investigation,^\he adds, ^Gs 
 very desirable.'’^ And he seems to have succeed- 
 ed already in persuading people to do it, for he 
 speaks of a little girl two days old who obstinate- 
 ly refused the breast when it had been previous- 
 
 disinclination of many infants, in the first week, to take cow’s 
 milk after they have had the breast must be ascribed to smell 
 rather than to taste, since they sometimes discard the cow’s milk 
 without tasting it.” 
 
 * Perez, p. 38 . 
 
154 the development of the child. 
 
 ly sprinkled with petroleum. Preyer concludes, 
 nevertheless, as we do, that the olfactory im- 
 pressions are slow in manifesting themselves 
 clearly. At seventeen months his son could not 
 distinguish odours and tastes, and when hyacinth 
 blossoms were given him to smell, he put them 
 up to his mouth instead of to his nose. Not until 
 the fifteenth month did eau de Cologne give him 
 any pleasure.* And finally, to end with a more 
 important observation, it is only when he is chal- 
 lenged, when odorous substances are placed di- 
 rectly under his nose that the child feels and 
 smells them ; he does not seem disposed to look 
 for this sort of sensation himself, and there is 
 not, so to speak, any active spontaneity in the 
 sense of smell. 
 
 III. 
 
 Touch is presented under the most favourable 
 conditions for a broad and immediate develop- 
 ment, and tactile impressions are at the disposal 
 of the child from the start. In the first place, 
 the apparatus is still less complicated than that 
 of smell or of taste, since it is composed simply 
 of nerves ending in the skin. At the same time 
 the tactile sensibility is spread out over the en- 
 tire surface of the body, although in very differ- 
 ent degrees : the tongue, the lips, the hands, and, 
 above all, the fingers, being particularly endowed. 
 Besides, the operation that brings the sense of 
 touch into play is most simple — a mechanical 
 
 Preyer, pp. 131 seq . 
 
HEARING, TASTE, SMELL, AND TOUCH. 155 
 
 contact, a pressure. Finally, there is no doubt 
 tliat this sense, by an exclusive privilege, has 
 been exercised in a certain measure from the 
 time of the uterine life. On this point De 
 Frarifere and the partisans of anterior education 
 are right. The child in his mothers womb has 
 already felt light touches, vague contact ; and it 
 is to the confused sensations, to the reactions that 
 are excited, either by the limbs of the child, one 
 striking against the other, or by a thrust from 
 without, that we must attribute in part the mo- 
 tions that reveal the life of the foetus. 
 
 We may affirm, then, that the child is in pos- 
 session of the sense of touch from birth, at least 
 in an elementary form, and in purely passive 
 operations. Touch acts in two very different 
 ways : first, as a simple susceptibility which is 
 aroused by exterior contact ; second, and it is 
 then, above all, that it acquires its importance 
 as an active organ, when the motions of the body 
 come to add their quota of special sensations to 
 the impressions that belong properly to touch. 
 
 Nowhere is it easier to distinguish the nat- 
 ural advance of progression which determines 
 the phenomena relating to the senses : first, pure- 
 ly subjective impressions, which give place to 
 muscular contractions ; in the second place, sen- 
 sations of pleasure or of pain ; finally, veritable 
 perceptions, when the subject is no longer affect- 
 ed simply in himself, and when the distinction, 
 which knowledge of things presupposes, is made 
 between the sentient subject and the object per- 
 ceived. 
 
156 the development of the child. 
 
 All is reduced in the beginning to nervous ex- 
 citations^ having, as their result, not an intellec- 
 tual notion, nor perhaps immediately, an agree- 
 able or disagreeable sensation, but simply reflex 
 actions and motions without consciousness. We 
 cite, as examples, the motions of sucking, which 
 may be excited by merely touching the end of 
 the tongue or the lips, the motions produced in 
 the eyelids if the nose is tickled, the motions of 
 the legs if the sole of the foot is touched, etc. 
 Darwin says : On the seventh day I touched 
 
 the sole of my son^s foot with a piece of paper ; 
 he quickly drew up his foot, and at the same 
 time crooked his toes as a much older child does 
 when being tickled.^^ It would be sufficient proof 
 of the sensitiveness to touch of very young chil- 
 dren to have seen one while being baptized. 
 
 It is true that in this last case, the day of bap-^ 
 tism, when the cold water moistens the child's 
 forehead, the sense of touch does not act exclu- 
 sively as the sense of contact, of pressure ; it acts 
 as the thermal sense, which temperature, heat 
 and cold, affects very quickly. When the child 
 comes forth from the warm prison in which he 
 has been confined for nine months into the free 
 air, he feels a sudden coldness which produces 
 sneezing among other reflex motions. • The need 
 of warmth and the aversion to cold, supposing 
 even that suffering and enjoyment do not result 
 at first, cause different reactions in the child ac- 
 cording as they are thwarted or satisfied, either a 
 feeble stretching of the whole body, which hap- 
 pens when the child is in a warm bath or in a 
 
HEARING, TASTE, SMELL, AND TOUCH. 157 
 
 well-warmed bed, or crispations and contortions 
 in the case of the contact of cold water. 
 
 It is difficult to say with certainty whether 
 ] pleasure or pain accompanies these first impres- 
 ' §ions of the organism or not. The observations 
 on this point seem to be contradictory. Preyer 
 tells of having put a finger or a piece of ivory 
 in the mouth of a child whose head was hardly 
 born; he began to suck, opened his eyes wide, 
 and showed by his expression that the sensations 
 were very agreeable. On the other hand, it is 
 possible that the compression undergone by the 
 child during the passage through the neck of the 
 uterus may have been painful. Preyer goes on 
 to say that he heard a child cry twice when its 
 head only was born, and that the expression of 
 the face during this period of half birth was that 
 of great discomfort.* 
 
 According to this, the child only half born 
 would have felt pleasure or pain. Nothing is 
 less certain, and the cries interpreted by Preyer 
 as expressive signs of suffering might well be 
 only automatic motions. The child allows him- 
 self to be handled by the nurse with a dull tran- 
 quillity that would lead us to believe him to be in 
 a state of complete insensibility, a sort of natural 
 anaesthesia. In any case. Nature observes here, 
 as elsewhere, the law of moderation, or of the 
 least intensity of the first sensations. The child 
 just born is- less sensitive to painful contacts 
 .than is th.e_adult. With his soft, tender flesh. 
 
 * 
 
 
 Preyer, p. 97. 
 
158 the development op the child. 
 
 and his fine, delicate skin, it would seem that the 
 least touch ought to excite extraordinary flutter- 
 ings of the sensibility. It is not so at all, and 
 benevolent Nature has wisely dulled and dead- 
 ened the effect of the first impressions of contact. 
 We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by 
 appearances, by the force and frequency of the 
 child^s cries, which are almost always dispropor- 
 tionate to the real extent of the sensation felt. 
 
 However that may be, if not on the first day, 
 at least at the end of a few weeks, the sensibility, 
 properly speaking, in so far as it is the principle 
 of pleasure and of pain, shows itself with respect 
 to tactile impressions, when they are mere tactile 
 impressions, or when they concern also the sense 
 of temperature. The child cries in his cradle be- 
 cause he is uncomfortable. He cries when being 
 washed if the water is too cold, if the towel or 
 the hand is too harsh. He cries, too, if his swad- 
 dling band is too tight, or if a wrinkle in the 
 cloth wounds his delicate skin. He refuses cer- 
 tain foods, not because their taste displeases him, 
 but because they are not warm enough for him. 
 Any one who has assisted at one of these terrible 
 washing scenes, so to speak, the stamping and 
 violent resistance which this daily event in the 
 child's life often causes, has surely no doubt as 
 to the cutaneous sensibility existing in the child. 
 
 All observers agree in recognising the exist- 
 ence of disagreeable tactile impressions in chil- 
 dren a few weeks old, which, Perez says, result 
 in making them cry, screw up their faces, move 
 their arms, fidget, strike their faces with their 
 
nEARING, TASTE, SMELL, AND TOUCH. 159 
 
 hands. On the other hand, Perez believes he can 
 state that lie has not found a trace of tactile 
 pleasure in children less than two months old.* 
 The reason for this, we believe, is that pain be- 
 trays itself more easily than pleasure. We have 
 no right to conclude from the fact that agreeable 
 sensations, caused by the gentle pressure of the 
 mother's breast, by the touch of a caressing hand 
 or of a soft fabric, do not manifest themselves in 
 the child, that therefore these sensations are not 
 produced; it is only that the outward expres- 
 sion of them is lacking. It can not be disputed 
 that pain finds means of expressing itself sooner 
 than does pleasure, and it is easy to understand 
 the reason for this priority. The expression of 
 pain is really an expression of a need and of a 
 necessity, because pain, abnormal, though fre- 
 quent, results from disordered functions, com- 
 promises life or health, and consequently de- 
 mands help. Pleasure, on the contrary, corre- 
 sponding to a healthy state of the organs, to a 
 regular development of the faculties, does not 
 aim with the same energy at outward manifes- 
 tation. No inconvenience results from its re- 
 maining concealed ; and the expression of pleas- 
 ure is, if I may say so, an expression of luxury 
 which the child can dispense with for some time. 
 
 It is active touch, above all, that will cause 
 kefen and often repeated pleasure. But the pas- 
 sive impressions of the epidermis are enough in 
 themselves to produce agreeable sensations. The 
 
 * Perez, p. 38. 
 
160 the development of the child. 
 
 attraction of a little child for his mother or his 
 nurse is not only the effect of his need for nour- 
 ishment ; it results also, in small part at least, 
 from the pleasure derived from a warm, gentle 
 contact. Preyer mentions a child seven days old 
 whose sleep was never troubled by a loud noise, 
 but whom the touch of his mother^'s face awak- 
 ened immediately. 
 
 In the development of active touch the child 
 will not only feel sensations of comfort, his pleas- 
 ure will rise to delight ; and we come now to one 
 of the richest sources of agreeable sensations in 
 childhood. When the child puts every object 
 within reach into his mouth, when he sucks any 
 substance whatever and presses it between his 
 lips, we must not see in it merely a reminiscence 
 of the act of nursing, an illusion of duped glut- 
 tony, nor should we believe, with Preyer, that if 
 he persists in sucking the finger held out to him, 
 it is because he hopes in his ingenuousness that 
 the finger will decide to provide him with milk ; 
 it is simply that he enjoys touching, feeling with 
 his lips everything that can give him occasion to 
 exercise at once his nerves and his muscles. And 
 what joy it will be to him when he can use his 
 hands and his fingers in turning over and over 
 in a hundred different ways the same plaything 
 or object, whatever it may be, not only because 
 his intellectual curiosity will be satisfied, but be- 
 cause this exercise of the sense of touch is in itself 
 agreeable to him ! 
 
 The sense of touch under this new form is but 
 an annex of what modern psychology rightly dis- 
 
HEARING, TASTE, SMELL, AND TOUCH. 161 
 
 tingiiislies by the name of ‘"muscular sense.” 
 The muscles, so to speak, move the organs of 
 touch. They permit the hand to move about the 
 body it is touching ; they give to the fingers that 
 flexibility, that suppleness which they need in 
 order to pass over the different sides of a book, 
 the angles or edges of a square or a round object. 
 In a word, the sense of touch becomes compli- 
 cated by means of the muscles ; it becomes a col- 
 lection of special and immediate sensations and 
 of motions giving place to other resultant sensa- 
 tions, and also to veritable perceptions. It is 
 then, above all, that touch becomes really active, 
 and that, sensible to pressure, to weight, to the 
 resistance of material objects, it prepares the 
 way for the acquisition of the notion of exte- 
 riority. 
 
 This acquisition is slow, however, and involves 
 a series of gropings. We must not forget that 
 the notion of the objective, of the non-ego, pre- 
 supposes that of the subjective, of the ego ; and 
 some time is necessary for the child to succeed in 
 this act of consciousness apparently so simple, 
 by which he places himself in opposition to all 
 exterior objects. Without doubt the new-born 
 child can not immediately distinguish his own 
 body from other bodies. In the confusion of his 
 first sensations his feet, which he likes so well 
 to touch and feel, his hand, which he puts in 
 his mouth in spite of the different impressions 
 which would result from the double sensation 
 experienced in this case, are not clearly distin- 
 guished by him from all the other objects that 
 
162 the development of the CniLD. 
 
 he has occasion to grasp. Romanes says, The 
 child a year old does not know his own organ- 
 ism in so far as it is part of himself, or, more cor- 
 rectly, in so far as it is a part having special rela- 
 tions with his sensations.'’^ Preyer has remarked 
 that his son, when more than a year old, bit his 
 own arm as thongh it were a strange body ; we 
 may say that he still had less consciousness of 
 this member as belonging to his own person 
 than had Buffon^s parrot, which began by saying 
 to himself, Give me your paw,^^ and which after- 
 ward yielded to his own demand by putting his 
 foot into his mouth exactly as he would have 
 given it to any one else who had asked it of him 
 in the same way.* 
 
 Preyer has made a great many observations 
 on this point : " Before he can be in a condition 
 to recognise the parts of his own body which he 
 could touch and see as belonging to himself, the 
 child must pass through a great many experi- 
 ences. . . . Vierordt thinks that the distinction 
 of general feeling from the sensations that refer 
 to the outside world exists from the third month. 
 My observations do not permit me to adopt this 
 opinion. ... In the ninth month the child still 
 manipulates his feet with great ardour and puts 
 his toes in his mouth as though they were a new 
 plaything. Even in the nineteenth month the 
 idea of what does and what does not form a part 
 of the body is not clear. The child had lost one 
 of his shoes. I said to him, ^ Give me the shoe.^ 
 
 * Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man. 
 
nEARING, TASTE, SxMELL, AND TOUCH. Ifi3 
 
 Ho bent over, seized the shoe and gave it to me. 
 The child was standing in the room, and I said 
 to him, ^Give me your fooV meaning that he 
 should hold it out for me to put his shoe on 
 again ; he grasped his foot with both hands and 
 tried for some time to seize it and hold it out to 
 me, as he had done in the case of the shoe.'’^ * 
 
 The senses are not; in the beginning, properly 
 speaking, the organs of the perception of the ex- 
 terior world. The exterior world does not exist 
 yet for the child. His first sensations and per- 
 ceptions are neither subjective nor objective ; 
 they are simply impressions, or representations 
 which fioat in the air, so to speak, and which the 
 child does not localize. Pain, perhaps, will teach 
 him to distinguish between subject and object 
 before the comparison of tactile and visual per- 
 ceptions can accomplish it. The localization of 
 pain, however, is not produced immediately. 
 Houzeau says : Newborn animals are capable 
 
 of localizing their pains. It is not so with the 
 child. Egger adds that when Emile was four- 
 teen months old he scratched his finger ; he cried, 
 but did not show his finger nor put the other 
 hand upon it. He fell on his nose a few days be- 
 fore, and the blood gushed forth without his 
 knowing, apparently at least, where the seat of 
 the trouble was.^^ f 
 
 In passing his hand over his body, in giving 
 himself up to all the little experiments that he 
 tries on his head and on his limbs, the child gains 
 
 * The Development of the Intellect, p. 19p. f Egger, p. 26. 
 12 
 
164 the development op the child. 
 
 little by little the idea of the form and extent of 
 his own body, but yet without knowing, perhaps, 
 that the body is his. It is useless to talk of a sort 
 of vital sense which would give us conscious- 
 ness of the diffusion of our material being, which 
 would suggest to us in a certain measure the idea 
 of a region where our heart beats, of another 
 where our brain thinks and reflects.'’^* "We do 
 not know where our heart is until anatomy 
 teaches us ; and the little child would be greatly 
 puzzled, no doubt, if asked to tell where the seat 
 of his thought lies. But what he can learn of 
 himself, aided by sight and by touch, is that it is 
 his body, his flesh that suffers, is troubled by pain 
 in illness, that is burned or shivers with the cold ; 
 or, inversely, that takes delight in the touch of a 
 gentle, caressing hand. It is then that the gen- 
 eral feeling of the self begins, an indivisible and 
 indistinct self, to be sure, for which there is as 
 yet no question of considering the body as exte- 
 rior to the soul. And, this general feeling once 
 formed, thanks to the localizations of the sensi- 
 bility oftener than to visual or tactile perception 
 of the form and of the resistance of the different 
 material parts of his being, the child is hence- 
 forth in a condition to recognise, by looking at 
 objects, by touching them, and by feeling of 
 them, what is distinct from himself and outside 
 of, exterior to his own being. 
 
 * Maillet, Elements de Psychologie de rilomme et de PEn- 
 fant, p. 199. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. 
 
 I. Pleasure balances pain. — The disagreeable impressions of 
 the senses. — The organic functions. — Sensations of discom- 
 fort caused by hunger, by hinderance to motion, by the need 
 of sleep. — The teething crisis. — Weaning, and its sadness. — 
 Correlative pleasures. — The simplest sensations, sources of 
 pleasure. II. The most complex phenomena of the sensibili- 
 ty. — Little passions. — Gluttony. — Egoistic emotions. — Pear. 
 — Is it innate or acquired ? — The fear of the new, the un- 
 known. — The fear of darkness. — The part played by surprise 
 in the child’s fears. — Analogies in the observations made on 
 animals. — Different forms of fear. — Fear, an emotion pro- 
 ceeding from the intelligence and the imagination. — General 
 apprehension of a possible evil. HI. Transition from selfish 
 to affectionate emotions. — Instinctive tendency to love. — 
 Relative spontaneity of sympathy. — The child’s affection 
 called forth by the parent’s affection for him. — Character- 
 istics of the child’s egoism. — The child’s sympathy for ani- 
 mals. — Contagion of feelings. IV. The expression of emo- 
 tions. — The child’s power of expression. — Smiles and 
 laughter. — The purely automatic character of the first 
 smiles. — Date of the appearance of the smile. — Different 
 causes of the expressive smile. — Infiuence of general disposi- 
 tions of mind and body. — Tears. — Date of the first tears. — 
 Their different significations. — Other expressive signs of the 
 child. 
 
 I. 
 
 The child^s life, like all Imman life, is a mix- 
 ture of pleasure and of pain, and if the balance 
 165 
 
166 the development op the child. 
 
 seems to lean to the side of pain at first, the equi- 
 librium will soon re-establish itself ; toward the 
 second year, when the work of teething is over, 
 it will incline to the side of pleasure. 
 
 Let us lay aside the question of deciding 
 whether the child begins life by an agreeable or 
 disagreeable impression. Bouillier, in his book 
 entitled Du Plaisir et de la Douleur, affirms, prin- 
 cipally for metaphysical reasons, that pleasure 
 should precede, if only for an imperceptible in- 
 stant, the appearance of pain.* We do not be- 
 lieve that this order of pre-eminence and of suc- 
 cession is the necessary law of sensibility, pain 
 being, whatever may be said about it, as positive 
 as pleasure. However it may be, the question is 
 determined in one way or another, in the intra- 
 uterine life, and the child has not waited till 
 birth to suffer and enjoy, to feel vague comfort 
 or infinitesimal pains. 
 
 Let us consider first the pains. We shall not 
 return to those resulting from the exercise of the 
 senses. t Let us notice only that in the begin- 
 
 * Every pain having as its cause a stopping, an arresting of 
 our activity, an obstacle of some sort to the different principles 
 of action of our being, we must conclude, contrary to Leibnitz 
 and to Kant, that the first state of our nature is not one of pain, 
 but of pleasure (Du Plaisir et de la Douleur, p. 101). Leibnitz, 
 on the contrary, believed that imperceptible pains or discom- 
 forts were the necessary condition of pleasure : “ Without these 
 semi-pains,” he said, “ there would be no pleasure, and no means 
 of perceiving that something aids us and relieves us by remov- 
 ing the obstacles that prevent us from being comfortable.” 
 (CRuvres philosophiques, edition Erdmann, p. 248.) 
 
 f See chapters iii and iv. 
 
FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. 167 
 
 ning all sense impressions, excepting the taste of 
 milk and of warmth, are disagreeable to the 
 child. What will soon be a source of pleasure, 
 sight, and hearing, is at the beginning only a 
 source of suffering. The nerves, in their deli- 
 cacy, can not endure as yet either light or noise. 
 And what is no less remarkable is that in a second 
 period, when the sensations have acquired some 
 consistency, all the visual and auditory impres- 
 sions, or nearly all, will please the child, because 
 they will all call into exercise organs henceforth 
 strengthened and fortified. Time will be neces- 
 sary for the establishment of a natural selection 
 in forms, colours, and sounds, the two categories 
 of the agreeable and the disagreeable, in order 
 that the child, at first bewitched by everything 
 bright, everything that makes a noise, may dis- 
 tinguish between a hideous gaily coloured Punch 
 and an artistic doll of well-combined shades, be- 
 tween the noise of a rattle and the melody of the 
 piano. 
 
 The impressions of the five senses, moreover, 
 when not pleasant, are disagreeable rather than 
 really painful. Localized as they are in one f)art 
 of the body, they have not a re-echoing in the 
 organism deep enough to result in pain. We 
 ought to except the sensations of touch, at any 
 rate the thermal sensations. The child is very 
 sensitive to cold.* He has been spoiled by the 
 warm temperature of his mother’s womb, and has 
 
 * The temperature sense perhaps does not exist immediately, 
 since the child is in a uniform temperature during the intra- 
 uterine life. But the variations to which he is exposed as soon 
 
168 the development of the child. 
 
 difficulty in becoming acclimated to the free air ; 
 if he makes a scene while being washed, it is less 
 the water than the coldness of the water that he 
 fears.* * There is no doubt that the exposure to 
 intense cold would cause him real suffering, for 
 he might die in consequence. 
 
 A second series of pains and of sufferings con- 
 sists of those resulting from organic, nutritive, 
 and respiratory functions, and from the needs 
 corresponding to these functions. Of all the little 
 miseries of childhood, there is none that tries 
 the sensibility of the suckling more than an in- 
 sufficient, poorly regulated, or in any way vitiated 
 alimentation. I saw one of my sons shed his first 
 tears when he was four months and a half old ; 
 the cause was a very prosaic one : his nurse had 
 eaten too many French beans ! The case is cited 
 of a child three months old whose mother nursed 
 him immediately after having had a violent fit of 
 anger ; the child became as pale as death, after 
 he had nursed, and the result was a fit of convul- 
 sions in the right side of the body and paralysis 
 of the left side. Hunger is the first need felt by 
 the child ; if it is not regularly satisfied the dis- 
 comfort that results causes cries and tears in the 
 suckling ; and if this suffering is repeated too 
 often, it will, perhaps, cause a nervous and irri- 
 table temperament for life. Compare the dis- 
 
 as he is born develop very quickly the sensation of heat and 
 cold. 
 
 * The use of cold water, so extolled in our day, does not 
 agree with very young children (Dr. d’ Ammon, Livre d’Or de 
 la jeune Femme, p. 155). 
 
FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. 169 
 
 positions of children that are well nourished and 
 of those poorly fed : the former are quiet, gentle, 
 and contented, the latter uneasy and restless. It 
 is no exaggeration to say that some of the defects 
 of the matured character of man have sprung 
 from the breast of an irregular or sickly nurse. 
 A good lactation is not only a condition of 
 health, it is also a principle of a good disposi- 
 tion. Notice, moreover, that hunger and thirst 
 appear more frequently in their periodic returns, 
 and demand satisfaction oftener during the first 
 months. As Preyer has pointed out, the smaller 
 the stomach, the oftener it becomes empty ; the 
 more it can hold, the longer the interval between 
 the moments when nourishment is needed, and 
 the rarer is hunger.* At first the needs of Na- 
 ture seem to demand that the child shall be fed 
 every two hours ; at three months, the time be- 
 tween repasts may be three or four hours ; it will 
 continue to increase, and little by little the child 
 will free himself from the servitude that kept 
 him so constantly at his mother’s breast during 
 the first weeks. 
 
 The sensations caused by insufficient or im- 
 pure air, the oppression, the suffocation resulting 
 from difficulties in the circulation of the blood, 
 do not merit particular attention in the case of 
 the child. But the sensations, particularly keen 
 in the first period, resulting from the muscular 
 sense and from the need of motion, must be con- 
 sidered. When the child cries in his cradle, it is 
 
 * The Senses and the Will, p. 154. 
 
170 the development op the child. 
 
 not always hunger that besets him; it is his 
 clothes that annoy him ; his swaddling band^ per- 
 haps, binds him too tightly. The sensibility of 
 the epidermis, doubtless, plays a part in these 
 impressions of discomfort.* What would be 
 only a slight touch to an adult may be a painful 
 contact to the child. When we think we are 
 caressing him gently with our hand, we are un- 
 suspectingly wounding and bruising his delicate 
 skin. But it is from hinderances to the liberty of 
 his movements, above all, that the child suffers. 
 Bound like a mummy in his swaddling clothes, 
 he can not stretch his limbs nor exercise his 
 muscles ; and to the torture of a painful com- 
 pression is added the discomfort of impeded 
 action. 
 
 It is true that if being deprived of motion is a 
 cause of chagrin to the child, action, in its turn, 
 however limited in extent, opens up a new source 
 of discomfort. I refer to the sensation of fatigue, 
 which accompanies almost immediately the nerv- 
 ous excitations of the senses or the exercise of the 
 muscles. To escape from this, the child keeps 
 falling asleep. With the limited strength at his 
 disposal, the bounds of possible effort are quickly 
 reached and passed. After crying or nursing, 
 the child is tired and goes to sleep. But when 
 he is too much excited to sleep, he shows very 
 plainly that he suffers. Nothing is more un- 
 happy than a child that needs sleep and can not 
 
 * To be sure, this sensibility does not show itself immedi- 
 ately, and it is certain that in the first days the sensibility to 
 touch is hardly developed. 
 
FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. 171 
 
 sleep. De Varigny, Preyer’s French translator, 
 says, in a note in his translation, that he has often 
 been struck by the folly of children when they 
 want to go to sleep. ^"Often,^^ he says, ^^they 
 grunt and cry for a quarter of an hour ; it seems 
 as though it would be very much more simple to 
 go to sleep without so many ceremonies."^ That 
 would be more simple, assuredly ; but the child 
 has no more power than the adult to command 
 sleep, and we all know how painful this state 
 of insomnia is when, the more we seek rest, the 
 more it seems to flee from us. 
 
 The child"s- weakness betrays itself continu- 
 ally in the fatigue, of which he gives proofs every 
 instant, either by a state of somnolence or by 
 cries followed suddenly by sleep. And there is, 
 doubtless, a disagreeable impression correspond- 
 ing to this sensation of fatigue and exhaustion. 
 The child"s power of action is still so limited that 
 even pleasure soon tires him. Axel, at the age 
 of two months, after having listened for a few 
 minutes to the sound of a piano, slept six hours 
 without awakening, which had never happened 
 before.* Mobility, changeableness, with which 
 the child is so often reproached, results often from 
 his weakness ; each one of his functions having 
 only a very limited provision of strength at its 
 disposal, and this being soon exhausted, he is 
 obliged to pass quickly from one occupation to 
 another to exercise his different faculties, one 
 after the other. 
 
 The Senses and the Will, p. 160. 
 
172 the development of the CniLD. 
 
 In finishing this sketch of the pains that are 
 the lot of the child, wholly physical pains, more- 
 over, in which the intelligence, the moral sensi- 
 bility have no part, there remains but to describe 
 the crises of teething and of weaning. But these 
 are medical rather than psychological questions. 
 We shall borrow a few facts, however, from an 
 observer of childhood, to show how deeply the 
 work of teething troubles the sensibility. The 
 child becomes restless. . . . Sometimes he utters 
 sharp, sudden cries and then becomes quiet im- 
 mediately. . . . His sleep is often interrupted 
 
 by starts of fright One sees that his gums 
 
 hurt him, for he puts everything that comes his 
 way into his mouth, and bites eagerly at the first 
 object he can grasp. In a second period, on the 
 contrary, he avoids taking objects into his mouth, 
 and cries if he happens to bite anything inad- 
 vertently. His colour quickly comes and goes. 
 He is disturbed ; if the nurse is holding him, he 
 shows a desire to be laid on the bed ; he is hardly 
 settled there before he demands to return to his 
 nurse or his mother. Nothing pleases him. He 
 seems to be tormented by a confused feeling re- 
 sembling fear, which does not leave him a mo- 
 ment of rest.’^ * 
 
 We should not touch upon weaning, which 
 interests hygienists above all, if this important 
 event in the cbild^s life did not cause an emotion 
 of a wholly new kind to appear, that of sadness. 
 If weaning is premature, if it is sudden, if it is 
 
 * D’ Ammon, Livre d’Or do la jeuno Femme, p. 182. 
 
FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. 173 
 
 not seconded by the natural progress of the or- 
 ganism, itself desiring a new alimentation, it not 
 only can cause the child to decline, but can throw 
 him into a sort of moral despondency, which 
 has all the characteristics of sadness and of 
 regret, sadness and regret for the first habit 
 broken. 
 
 What we have said of the child^s discomforts 
 and suffering, excuses us almost from establishing 
 the contrary — that is to say, from enumerating 
 the pleasures that come to counterbalance them. 
 Pleasure and pain are really correlative. They 
 emanate from the same principle, and there could 
 not be sensibility for bad without, at the same 
 time, a sensibility for good. It is, then, from 
 progressive and measured exercise of the organs 
 of the senses, it is from the satisfaction of organic 
 needs that the child^s first pleasures will come. 
 During the first weeks they will result almost 
 wholly from the appeasing of hunger, from the 
 comforts of lactation. Balzac has put these 
 words into the mouth of a young mother. This 
 little being knows absolutely nothing but his 
 mother^s breast. He loves it with all his 
 strength; he thinks of nothing but this foun- 
 tain of life ; he comes to it and goes away to 
 sleep ; he awakes only to return to it.'’^ Pleas- 
 ure for the child will result, furthermore, from 
 the comfort that the bath in which he is plunged 
 brings to his whole body, and also from the agree- 
 able sensations which a soft moderate light 
 causes. The pleasures of hearing will be joined 
 to these later, and also those of touch. We must 
 
174 the development op the child. 
 
 not forget that in the first exercise of the child^s 
 muscles and nerves there are sources of pleasure 
 that the adult does not suspect, because they are 
 in his case, so to speak, exhausted, under the in- 
 fluence of repetition and of habit. Think of all 
 that these little agreeable sensations must repre- 
 sent — whether impressions felt in the fir'fet airing, 
 the brightness of day, the blue sky which a blind 
 person, a few days after the operation that gave 
 him his sight, called the most beautiful thing in 
 the world, or the sensation of the pure fresh air, 
 striking the child^s head for the first time. And, 
 likewise, when the .child has become familiar with 
 external objects, when he has overcome the first 
 feeling of surprise and of fear which the appear- 
 ance of everything new causes, is it not certain 
 that even the simplest perceptions, to which later 
 he will be indifferent, interest him, and that in 
 this world of real things, when his every glance 
 is a discovery, he feels, if not clear and distinct 
 pleasure, at least a vague contentment. People 
 do not understand why Preyer claims that for 
 children of the first age pleasure results rather 
 from the absence of disagreeable conditions than 
 from the presence of positively agreeable con- 
 ditions. Prom the first day the suckling experi- 
 ences a positive pleasure every time he nurses. 
 And after some time, when the muscular activity 
 can exercise itself, when the child can stretch and 
 move his limbs, when he can utter sounds, when 
 he can feel objects, all these movements will 
 charm and delight him — pleasures, already keen, 
 while awaiting those that the joy of the first steps 
 
FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. 175 
 
 holds in reserve for him, the day when he can 
 walk.* 
 
 We may conclude, then, that, with the excep- 
 tion of the first few weeks, there is, in the first 
 period of life, as at every age, a balance, an equal 
 mixture of good and bad. Only, as we have al- 
 ready said, the expression is more prompt, more 
 decided, in the case of discomfort than in that of 
 comfort. When their sensations are agreeable,^^ 
 said Rousseau, even in his day, children enjoy 
 them in silence ; f but this assertion is too abso- 
 lute, for the child that feels pleasure knows how 
 to say so in his own language ; he prattles, gestic- 
 ulates, and smiles. It has been falsely claimed 
 that the explanations of the first motions and of 
 the first symptoms of vitality should be sought 
 in some uneasiness, that the first vocal utterances, 
 for instance, depend only on suffering.^ No, the 
 child has motions of pleasure also, and at a little 
 more advanced age, flutterings of joy, little cries, 
 too, as a prattling of contentment and of satis- 
 faction. If the painful states of his sensibility 
 have a more marked tendency to manifest them- 
 selves, it is because they demand relief and help; 
 and they give thus to the very little child the ap- 
 pearance of being more unhappy than he really is. 
 
 II. 
 
 The pleasures and pains that we have just 
 been enumerating are connected either with the 
 
 * The Senses and the Will, p. 143. f ^lmile, Book I. 
 t Souriau, Esthetique du mouvement. 
 
176 the development of the child. 
 
 organs of sense or with their organic functions, 
 and are localized in different parts of the body. 
 They correspond, moreover, it should not be 
 necessary to say, to as many desires and aver- 
 sions, as many tastes and dislikes — the pleasure 
 and the pain being but the conscious phenomena 
 which reveal the inclinations, the innate needs. 
 They constitute what might be called the ele- 
 ments of sensibility,^^ just as the particular, sepa- 
 rate, successive perceptions are the elements of 
 intelligence. Is it possible, then, to point out 
 in the child sensible phenomena of a more com- 
 plex order, resulting, not immediately and di- 
 rectly, from the muscular or nervous organism, 
 but from a grouping, an association of different 
 elements — that is to say, from sensations already 
 felt, from images and remembrances ; and even 
 to note veritable feelings, which, although de- 
 pendent upon material pleasures already felt, 
 witness, nevertheless, their virtuality and their 
 own energy ? 
 
 There can be no doubt as to the answer to this 
 question : The affective states of childhood pre- 
 sent to us the complete series of the phenomena 
 of the sensibility — sensations, as we have seen, 
 and also, as we are going to show, emotions, even 
 little passions. 
 
 It is not too much to aflBrm that the need for 
 nourishment soon ceases to be simply an instinct- 
 ive need, and that, excited by the remembrance 
 of satisfaction already experienced, it becomes a 
 passion, with its characteristic of a fixed idea, of 
 a tyrannical and exclusive domination. At the 
 
FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. 177 
 
 end of a few months, doubtless, the nascent facul- 
 ties will balance and counterbalance each other. 
 But in the beginning the child is merely a little 
 monomaniac of gluttony, referring everything to 
 the one action of sucking, and falling asleep as 
 soon as he is satisfied. His first love is that of 
 a gastronomist.^' * Later, he will allow himself 
 to be diverted from his ruling thought, but in 
 the first months nothing, not even a toy when 
 shown him, nor a loud noise sounding in his ears, 
 can turn him aside from his animal desire for 
 food. ^^Even from the ninth to the tenth month," 
 says Preyer, "^nourishment and everything con- 
 cerning it comprises the greatest interest for the 
 child who, with sparkling eyes, holds out his 
 arms toward his food as long as he is not satis- 
 fied." And that is why he puts everything he 
 can grasp into his mouth, sucks his finger or 
 his nurse's finger — in fine, tastes everything he 
 touches. Nothing is so curious as this mania of 
 the child. We have seen a baby a few months 
 old move his lips and open his mouth on hearing 
 us drumming on the glass of a window near him; 
 one might say that he was trying to lay hold of 
 the noise. And something of this habit will re- 
 main in the kiss, which is perhaps only a recol- 
 lection of the motion of the lips moving forward 
 to grasp the mother's nipple. 
 
 Gluttony is the first passion to appear. Doubt- 
 
 * A correspondent of Perez, speaking of a child two months 
 old, wrote : “ He is a perfect little beast, voracious to the last 
 extreme. ... I never should have believed that a child could 
 be such an absolute animal without any instinct but gluttony.’* 
 
178 the development of the child. 
 
 less it will not show itself in all its force except 
 in the child two or three years old, who has been 
 spoiled by dainties ; but the child at the breast is 
 not exempt. It is certain that the nursing baby 
 often demands the breast when he is not hungry. 
 And the proof that the characteristics of a pas- 
 sionate need already exist, abridged, to be sure, 
 is that the emotions that usually come in the 
 train of passion, anger, jealousy, find here first 
 occasion to exercise themselves.* The child is 
 angry with his nurse if, for any reason, her breast 
 does not furnish his usual ration of milk. And 
 Tiedemann says that his son showed great dis- 
 content when one day, in fun, another child was 
 placed at his mother^s breast ; he struggled and 
 tried to remove the intruder. 
 
 It is natural that the personal emotions should 
 appear first — those that are caused by egoistic 
 aversions to suffering or by the desire for pleas- 
 ure. The most characteristic of all the child^s 
 emotions is fear. 
 
 The question is to find out whether fear is in- 
 stinctive and innate, if it precedes the experience 
 of danger. Assuredly, the greater part of the 
 child^s fears correspond to suffering already felt. 
 He has experienced pain very early in life ; he 
 fears its approach and its return. And it is to 
 be noted that in certain cases, when exposed to 
 a real danger, he is not aroused, because ignorant 
 and unconscious of it. The child^s fearlessness 
 
 ♦ We speak elsewhere of the child’s anger and jealousy. (See 
 Chapter XIII.) 
 
FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. 179 
 
 is oftciiest but the lack of foresight. A child 
 that has never been struck, for instance, does not 
 understand the signification of threats, and is not 
 frightened by them. You advance toward him, 
 with hand raised to strike him, and he will an- 
 swer you with a smile. He knows only your 
 caresses ; he does not guess the import of your 
 angry gesture ; he is like a little dog that receives 
 the switch with which you are going to strike 
 him, for the first time, with joyful leaps and 
 gambols. 
 
 But if the child has smiles for real dangers 
 sometimes, he has tears also for imaginary perils. 
 In other words, the remembrance of a pain al- 
 ready felt is not always necessary to the child^s 
 feeling of fear.* And the proof of this is that he 
 will show a keen fear of things that are abso- 
 lutely inoffensive. Whether by the influence of 
 heredity, or from the feeling of weakness, al- 
 though he has had no previous experience, the 
 little child shows natural spontaneous apprehen- 
 sions, and these under two forms — the fear of 
 what is new and unknown, and the fear of dark- 
 ness.! 
 
 We ought, in the case of childhood, to reverse 
 the old saying to read, Everything new is ugly.^^ 
 
 * “ It is altogether wrong to maintain that a child has no 
 fear unless it has been taught him.” (The Senses and the Will, 
 p. 167.) 
 
 t “ Fear,” says Dr. Sikorski, “ is an innate feeling ; it appears 
 very early before the child has had reason to feel afraid. Little 
 children feel a panical fright at the sight of a cat or a dog ap- 
 proaching them in the most unconcerned way.” 
 
 13 
 
180 the development op the child. 
 
 Everything new and unfamiliar makes the child 
 start and cry. At the sight of an unfamiliar face 
 he clings, crying, to his nurse. And it is really 
 only the novelty of the impression that frightens 
 him ; for in a few days he will become familiar 
 enough with the stranger, to whom he to-day re- 
 fuses to extend his hand, to throw himself upon 
 his neck. So the dog and the cat, which will 
 soon be the favoured objects of the child^s ten- 
 derness, cause at first insurmountable terrors. A 
 simple change in the costume of his mother or 
 father makes him cry. And that is why a little 
 girl four months old, spoken of by Preyer, began 
 to cry when her mother approached her with a 
 large hat on, and smiled as soon as the hat was 
 removed. These are cases of misoneism, of that 
 neophobia which modern science studies, * which 
 is found in the adult, but which is, above all, the 
 characteristic of the first period of life. Every- 
 thing unexpected, unforeseen, is unbearable to 
 the child and causes either fear or, later, anger. 
 One of my sons when four and a half years old 
 would get into a veritable rage every time I 
 spoke to him in the patois of my country ; the 
 unusual language irritated him to an extraordi- 
 nary degree. 
 
 Astonishment in the case of the child is syn- 
 onymous with fear as it will be later with ad- 
 miration. Surprise and fright are one and the 
 same thing to him. Darwin says that at the age 
 of four months his son regarded all the loud and 
 
 * Revuo scicntifiquo for November 1, 1884. 
 
FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. 181 
 
 strango noises which he was in the habit of hear- 
 ing as good jokes ; but one day his father began 
 to snore loudly, a noise that the child had never 
 heard until then ; he became serious immediately 
 and burst into tears. About the same time Dar- 
 win walked up to him backward and stopped 
 suddenly. The child seemed greatly surprised 
 and was about to cry when his father turned 
 around ; his face relaxed immediately into a 
 smile. 
 
 Another very characteristic form of childish 
 fear is the fear of darkness. Whence comes this 
 terror of night, which, moreover, is not found in 
 children alone ? Rousseau says, Night natural- 
 ly frightens men and sometimes animals.^^* * * § It 
 comes at first, as Rousseau has also pointed out, 
 from ignorance of the things that surround us 
 and of what is going on about us.f The child, 
 not being able to exercise the sense of real sight, 
 peoples the darkness with phantoms, with fantas- 
 tic visions. All the frightful things of which his 
 little imagination, too often excited by his nurse’s 
 tales, can conceive, spring up in the darkness. J 
 A child who was asked why he did not like to be 
 in a dark place answered, ^‘1 don’t like the 
 
 * Locke is of a contrary opinion : “ If children were left to 
 
 their own inspirations, they would not be more frightened in 
 
 darkness than in daylight.” (Some Thoughts on Education, 
 
 § 139.) 
 
 t Rousseau, fimile. Book II. 
 
 t Dr. Sikorski says that his children have never been afraid 
 of the dark, because they have never heard tales to make them 
 afraid. 
 
182 the development of the child. 
 
 chimney-sweeps ! And this instance proves 
 that the child does not have to have his head 
 crammed with foolish stories to be frightened by 
 darkness. It is not only supernatriral beings that 
 his imagination calls np ; it is real beings, thieves, 
 chimney-sweeps ! Where he does not see any- 
 thing he imagines everything. Add to that the 
 natural repugnance for black which is generally 
 found by observers of childhood. Preyer tells of 
 a child seventeen months old who showed a re- 
 pugnance even for his mother when he saw her 
 dressed in mourning.* Tiedemann's son, in the 
 fifth month, turned away from people in black 
 with an evident feeling of repugnance. Black, 
 the colour of darkness, denotes in itself some- 
 thing disagreeable.^^ There remains for us to 
 add, finally, that solitude is even more terrible to 
 the child than darkness. Even when the child is 
 not alone he believes, if it is dark, that he is 
 alone. His eyes can no longer rest on the per- 
 sons or on the things that are the familiar sup- 
 ports of his weakness. He feels himself to bo 
 abandoned, deserted. Such is the meaning of the 
 reflection of the child that said to one of his com- 
 panions, Do not let us go there ; there is no one 
 there ; some one might hurt us ! 
 
 Is it necessary to call in heredity to explain 
 the instinctive apprehensions of the first years, 
 as do Preyer and Darwin? And to admit that 
 
 * Mme. Necker de Saussure claims, however, that the fear of 
 black is a simple effect of habit. “ In Africa,” she says, “ tho 
 little negroes are afraid of white people.” (Education progres- 
 sive, Book II, chap, iv.) 
 
FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. 183 
 
 tlio fears of the child, when completely independ- 
 ent of experience, are the hereditary effects of real 
 dangers and of barbarous superstitions dating 
 from the epoch of savage life? This would be 
 exaggerating the case and seeking uselessly in 
 a prehistoric past for an explanation that one 
 has, so to speak, right under one^s nose. In the 
 two classes of fears that we have examined — those 
 caused by the surprise of a new impression, and 
 those caused by the absence of light — the question 
 is really one of visionary terrors, the emptiness 
 of which is shown by experience. The experience 
 of our ancestors has, then, nothing to do with it. 
 Darwin, it is true, seems to lay stress upon other 
 facts, and particularly upon the following exam- 
 ple : When his son was only two years and three 
 months old he took him to the zoological gar- 
 den ; the child took great pleasure in looking at 
 the animals that resembled those he knew — deer 
 and antelopes, all the birds, and even the os- 
 triches; but he showed great fear of the large 
 animals that he saw in the cages. He often said 
 afterward that he would like to go to the zo- 
 ological garden again but not to see the beasts 
 in houses.’^ And Darwin concludes that this fear 
 would be inexplicable if we did not consider it as 
 the remembrance of the bloody struggles which 
 our ancestors had to carry on against the wild 
 beasts in the primitive life. The phenomenon, 
 however, seems to us to be much more simple. 
 Darwin says himself that the child was never 
 frightened at the sight of animals whose forms 
 were familiar to him and which were not shut 
 
184 the development of the child. 
 
 up. If the animals imprisoned in their cages 
 caused another impression, it was a simple effect 
 of surprise. By their forms, by their dimensions, 
 perhaps by their motions, if they were leaping be- 
 hind the bars, above all, by the fact that they were 
 inclosed in their houses,^^ as the child expressed 
 it, the lion and the tiger astonished, and conse- 
 quently frightened, his imagination. 
 
 It is not in an unconscious recollection of the 
 life of the ancestors, it is in the very nature of 
 the child that we must look for the origin of his 
 fears. We must not forget that it is real dangers 
 that frighten him least ; and if he has never been 
 harshly treated, he even seems to pass through 
 an initial period characterized by the absence of 
 fear.* But at the end of a few months he has felt 
 suffering, he has vaguely discovered his weakness. 
 And in his limited experience of evil, by a nat- 
 ural generalization, he suspects danger every- 
 where, like a sick person whose aching body 
 dreads in advance every motion and every con- 
 tact. He feels that there is a danger everywhere, 
 behind the things that he can not understand, be- 
 cause they do not fit in with his experience. The 
 observations collected by Romanes f in his inter- 
 esting studies on the intelligence of animals 
 throw much light on this question ; they prove 
 that dogs, for instance, do not fear this or that 
 
 * This is Preyer’s opinion. In the Senses and the Will, p. 
 165, he says : “ The avoidance of occasions of pain prolongs the 
 period that is marked by unconsciousness of fear, whereas the 
 multiplication of such occasions shortens the period.’’ 
 
 f Romanes, Mental Evolution in Animals. 
 
FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. 185 
 
 except as they are ignorant of the cause. A dog 
 that was afraid of thunder was very much terri- 
 fied one day when he heard a rumbling like thun- 
 der produced by throwing apples on the floor of 
 the garret ; he seemed to understand the cause of 
 the noise as soon as he was taken to the garret, 
 and became as quiet and happy as ever. Another 
 dog had a habit of playing with dry bones. One 
 day Romanes attached a fine thread, which could 
 hardly be seen, to one of the bones, and while the 
 dog was playing with it he drew it slowly toward 
 him ; the dog recoiled in terror from the bone, 
 which seemed to be moving of its own accord. 
 So skittish horses show fright as long as the 
 cause of the noise that frightens them remains 
 unknown and invisible to them. It is the same 
 with the child. When in the presence of all 
 these things around him, of which he has no 
 idea, these sounding objects, these forms, these 
 movements, whose causes he does not divine, he 
 is naturally a prey to vague fears. He is just 
 what we should be if chance should cast us sud- 
 denly into an unexplored country before strange 
 objects and strange beings — suspicious, always 
 on the qui vive^ disposed to see imaginary ene- 
 mies behind every bush, fearing a new danger 
 at every turn in the road. 
 
 The chapter on fear would be a long one if we 
 tried to go into minute details and examine all 
 the forms that this emotion assumes, from the 
 terror, full of anguish, which the little child feels 
 for a few moments in the presence of a conflagra- 
 tion, for instance, to timidity, that diffuse fear. 
 
186 the development op the child. 
 
 whicli paralyzes all the movements of the child 
 three or four years old, and which is, as it were, 
 the residuum of the fears of the first period. 
 There would be many kinds to distinguish ; for 
 instance, the fear of falling, which is found not 
 only in the child learning to walk, but which ap- 
 pears even in the nursing baby when he hugs 
 himself close to his nurse's breast to keep from 
 sliding to the floor, a sort of childish agorapho- 
 bia, a characteristic fear of space.* According 
 to Preyer, the child has also an instinctive fear 
 of the immensity of the ocean. He says : When 
 
 in his twenty-first month my son showed all the 
 symptoms of fear when his nurse took him to 
 the beach. He began to fret, even when the 
 water was quiet, the wind calm, and the tide 
 low." We must see there, assuredly, only the 
 effect of a sensation of surprise before the sight 
 of a great sheet of water. In the same way the 
 fear of thunder in the child is only the result of 
 the unexpected impression of a loud noise whose 
 cause is unknown. And the proof of this is that 
 one sees children two years old who, when they 
 have become familiar with the phenomenon, 
 laugh at the claps of thunder and amuse them- 
 
 * Compare what Tiedemann says on this point : “ The child 
 was in his fifth month. One could see that he tried to use his 
 hands to keep himself in place. If one put him down suddenly, 
 he tried to steady himself from falling by using his hands. It 
 was very disagreeable to him to be lifted very high. Ho could 
 have had no idea of a fall. So the fear of it was nothing but a 
 purely mechanical impression, like those that one feels when 
 near a precipice, and a little analogous to vertigo.” 
 
FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. 187 
 
 selves by imitating with their hands the zigzag 
 flashes of lightning. 
 
 What is more important than classifying the 
 different kinds of fear is to determine the fact 
 that fear marks a real step forward in the de- 
 velopment of the child^s sensibility. Sully says, 
 rightly, that it is the most elementary form of 
 emotion, pure and simple — that is to say, of feel- 
 ing caused directly by the mental activity. There 
 is something here besides a sensation produced 
 immediately by a present object ; there is an act 
 of intelligence and of imagination, and a sort of 
 vague induction. The child that has suffered 
 from an injury is henceforth disposed not only 
 to fear the recurrence of the same injury, but to 
 take for granted the possibility of evils of the 
 same sort. Locke said : I think we may observe 
 
 that, when children are first born, all objects of 
 sight that do not hurt the eyes are indifferent to 
 them ; and they are no more afraid of a black- 
 amoor or a lion than of a nurse or a cat.* What 
 is it, then, that afterward, in certain mixtures of 
 shape and colour, comes to affright them ? Noth- 
 ing but the apprehension of harm that accom- 
 panies those things,^^ \ apprehension, this idea of 
 a possible harm, that steps into even the most in- 
 stinctive fright and gives to fear, however ridic- 
 ulous, however foolish it may be, an intellectual 
 if not an intelligent character. 
 
 * This is true, we believe, only in the first days of life at 
 most, when the child is still almost indifferent to outward per- 
 ceptions. 
 
 f Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education. 
 
188 the development of the child. 
 
 Fear, in the totality of its manifestations, is, 
 like the appetite of hunger, only one of the forms 
 of the instinct of conservation, one of the means 
 that Nature employs in order to preserve the in- 
 dividual, one of the instruments of the struggle 
 for existence. It is exclusively a personal, ego- 
 tistical feeling, like the instinct of ownership and 
 self-love ; and we have now to find out how the 
 sensibility, which has already passed from sensa- 
 tions to personal emotions, rises by a much more 
 difficult transition to the affectionate emotions. 
 
 III. 
 
 It can not be denied that the affectionate feel- 
 ings of the child have their origin in selfishness. 
 The first affections arise from the remembrance 
 of little personal pleasures which the nurse or 
 the mother have given the child.* The little 
 child likes only what gives him pleasure or 
 amuses him, and that is why an inanimate ob- 
 ject — a toy, a doll, a favourite animal, a dog, or 
 a cat — has perhaps the same rank in his affec- 
 tions that his father or mother enjoy. Doubtless 
 the love for others, even in its childish form, 
 
 * Compare the case of animals. A little dog that I observed 
 showed a great affection for the servant whose duty it was to 
 feed him. But the dog was taken sick, and could not eat ; he 
 was not hungry. From this moment he paid no attention what- 
 ever to the servant, and preferred to seek the company of the 
 other people in the house, who were contented to pet him. It 
 is the same with the child ; affection is first inspired by the 
 grateful remembrance of the material attentions he has re- 
 ceived. 
 
FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. 189 
 
 is far from being only a grouping of agreeable 
 impressions, concentrated by the association of 
 ideas about the same person; just as judgment 
 and reasoning should not be confounded with a 
 collection of sensations. But these agreeable im- 
 pressions are the occasions, the circumstances, 
 that incite the need of loving, and guide it iji 
 one direction or the other. The analysis, to ex- 
 plain the tender sympathy which the child shows 
 for its mother, may well enumerate the apparent 
 and, so to speak, exterior elements of the filial 
 feeling — the recognition of services rendered, the 
 remembrance of caresses received, the whole se- 
 ries of impressions that have pleased the utili- 
 tarian instinct, or bewitched the senses of the 
 child. But there is something more which the 
 analysis does not reach ; there is a natural some- 
 thing, the instinctive tendency to love, which 
 springs from the depths of the soul. In other 
 words, we can explain the reasons that attach 
 the child^s heart to such and such a person, just 
 as, when studying the growth of a climbing plant, 
 we might tell why (from circumstances of prox- 
 imity) it has fastened its tendrils on one bush 
 rather than on another ; we can easily explain 
 why the child loves his mother or his nurse, but 
 we can not tell why he loves at all. 
 
 It has often been said that the child learns to 
 love by feeling that he is being loved, by seeing 
 the love of others for each other. Affection then 
 would be, above all, an act of return, of imitation. 
 We shall not contradict this; we can not insist 
 too strongly upon what is social, of the family. 
 
190 the development of the child. 
 
 and, consequently, what is acquired in the devel- 
 opment of individual sensibility. As Guyau puts 
 it, It is by dint of receiving that the heart ends in 
 gi ving.^^ * It is from the collaboration of many, 
 from contact and correlation with other person- 
 alities already formed, that the power of each in- 
 dividual to love springs. A child deprived of 
 love, cast by the fatality of his birth into the 
 midst of barrenness and coldness, would run 
 great risk of not knowing the sympathetic and 
 affectionate emotions. It is not absolutely by a 
 moto proprio, it is by a sort of response from 
 within to the appeal without that the sensibility, 
 like the intelligence, frees itself from the shackles 
 of the unconscious. 
 
 But the relative spontaneity of sympathy in 
 the child is none the less an established fact, and 
 it shows itself at first by the need that the child 
 feels for the sympathy of others. The child de- 
 mands from his parents not only material care, 
 external attentions, to make him happy ; he de- 
 mands their love also. Darwin has written these 
 touching lines in his notes on his daughter Annie, 
 who died at the age of ten : When her gaiety 
 
 became too boisterous a single look on my part, 
 not of anger (I thank God that I almost never 
 looked at her so), but of a lack of sympathy, 
 changed her expression for several minutes. Her 
 affectionate disposition showed itself when she 
 was a very little child, in that she never re- 
 mained really quiet in her bed, except when she 
 could touch her mother.^^ 
 
 Guyau, Education et h6redite, p. 03. 
 
FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. 191 
 
 The need of being loved does not exist with- 
 out a certain faculty for loving ; and on this 
 point, too, we shall call upon the testimony of 
 Darwin. He says that sympathy was clearly 
 shown in his son at the age of six months and 
 eleven days ; every time that his nurse pretended 
 to cry he assumed an air of sadness, characterized 
 by the lowering of the corners of his little mouth. 
 But not until he was a little more than a year 
 old did he begin to express his affections by spon- 
 taneous actions — for instance, by embracing his 
 nurse over and over when she returned after a 
 long absence. 
 
 W e can not agree with the view of childhood 
 given by Naville, a philosopher, who, on most 
 points, is better informed. Little children,” he 
 says, are perfect egotists. Let us not reproach 
 them for it. How could they feel sympathy ? 
 They do not know that there are joys and suf- 
 ferings in the world other than their own. The 
 people about them are at first only things to 
 them. They have not yet divined souls behind 
 these bodies that move under their very eyes. 
 Even when a mother bends over the cradle of 
 her little child with a face full of love she is to 
 him only a moving thing. He will see her shed 
 tears many times before understanding that she 
 suffers. And only when he does understand this 
 will the dawn of sympathy and of the moral life 
 break forth in his heart.” * It would be hard to 
 bring together more errors into a few lines, and 
 
 * Revue philosophique, 1881, vol. ii, p. 654. 
 
192 the development of the child. 
 
 this half page would be enough to show how the 
 psychology of the child is still groping and wan- 
 dering ; how, after a hundred years, Rousseau 
 could still say, in his own country, We know 
 nothing of childhood.'’^ In the first place, the 
 child is not a '^perfect egotist,^" since real ego- 
 tism presupposes the calculated preference which 
 we give to our own interests. The child is inca- 
 pable of calculation, and so, if he is an egotist at 
 all, he is but an egotist without knowing it. His 
 amiable, innocent egotism is but the instinctive 
 search for pleasure. But what is rash above all 
 things is to pretend that people are only things 
 in the child’s eyes, when, on the contrary, he con- 
 siders and treats inanimate things as though they 
 were persons — the doll, for instance, which he 
 loves, which he personifies to the point of loving 
 it as a sister, and pitying it for its imaginary 
 woes.* And, finally, we can not agree that chil- 
 dren are as slow as Naville thinks in interpreting 
 the feelings of others, in understanding, for in- 
 stance, the meaning of tears. There is a force 
 of signification in the natural expression of pain 
 which can not long escape the child’s divining 
 intelligence. 
 
 There is no doubt, moreover, that egotism is 
 mingled with disinterested affection in the af- 
 
 * Compare Preyer in The Senses and the Will, pp. 150, 151. 
 “ When figures of all sorts — e. g., human forms — were cut out 
 of paper with scissors for the amusement of my child, he would 
 often weep if a paper figure was in danger, through hasty cut- 
 ting, of losing an arm or a foot (twenty-seventh month). A 
 like account has been given me of a little girl.” 
 
FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. 193 
 
 fectionate emotions of the child. But will not 
 this always be the case ? Is it not very rare 
 to meet a sentiment of affection absolutely free 
 from personal preoccupation ? So the child loves 
 his mother for his own sake more than for hers ; 
 he loves her in the interest of his own comfort, 
 which the mother assures by her care and ca- 
 resses.* Tiedemann^s son, when almost a year 
 old, became attached, little by little, to liis sister 
 and to a little dog, to both of which he had been 
 perfectly indifferent up to that time. He did not 
 want any one to harm either the one or the other, 
 for both began to serve as a pastime in his play. 
 So, later, friendship will be, in its beginnings, but 
 the pleasure of playing with companions. The 
 egotistic impression is always the starting point, 
 just as at the root of every abstract and general 
 idea there is always a sense impression or a par- 
 ticular image. 
 
 Let us notice, moreover, that the child’s affec- 
 tions are guided by this particular sentiment 
 called sympathy, in the proper sense of the word 
 
 * Lactation, with its accompanying caresses, is the most im- 
 portant agent in the development of sentiment. It is from “ this 
 physiological source of the connection of the mother with her 
 child,” according to Fonssagrives’s expression (Le 9 ons d’hygiene 
 infantile, Paris, 1882), that the future feeling of human soli- 
 darity and altruism spring. As Morel has said (Maladies men- 
 tales, 1860, p. 561) : “ The first maternal education, thanks to a 
 multitude of careful attentions, of instinctively ingenious ca- 
 resses, thanks to a long moral incubation, if we may express it 
 so, brings us to tlie spiritual life, as we have been brought to the 
 physical life, and renders us twice the sons of our mothers.” 
 (Dr. Sikorski, Revue philosophique, vol. xix, p. 252.) 
 
194 the development of the child. 
 
 — that is to say, the tendency to reproduce, to re- 
 flect, so to speak, the feelings of others. It is 
 doubtless for this reason that animals are the 
 child's best friends. He naturally sympathizes 
 with beings that resemble him in so many ways, 
 in which he finds needs analogous to his own, the 
 same desire for nourishment, the same tendency 
 to movement, the same fondness for caresses. To 
 resemble one another is to love one another. The 
 animal, which suffers, cries, feels hunger, diso- 
 beys, and is scolded, recalls to the child at every 
 turn the events of his own life. This is why he 
 seeks its company, and is particularly charmed 
 by the stories that tell him of animals. Sympa- 
 thy is not a blind instinct ; it is a feeling — that is, 
 the intellectual representations are involved, and 
 are even the necessary condition ; the representa- 
 tion at least of thoughts, of emotions, which we 
 have experienced in ourselves more or less vague- 
 ly, and traces of which we recognise by certain 
 signs in other beings. Let us not expect the child, 
 then, to sympathize with grown people in general ; 
 their actions, their feelings, their ideas, are too 
 far above his range for him to comprehend them. 
 Nothing brings them near to him. This is not 
 the case with parents that act like children with 
 their children, and show the child by their un- 
 ceasing solicitude that they feel all that he feels, 
 suffer what he suffers, that they share his amuse- 
 ments and his troubles. The child that has di- 
 vined from his mother's glance that she shares 
 his suffering will be prepared, by this close com- 
 munion of his soul with another soul, to sym- 
 
FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. 195 
 
 pathize, in his turn, with his mother’s emotions. 
 Ho will be sad when he sees her weep, gay when 
 she is gay. The force of sympathy, the contagion 
 of the feelings which it engenders, though pow- 
 erful at every period of life, is particularly re- 
 markable in children, as is proved, for instance, 
 toward the fourth or fifth year, by those fits of 
 foolish laughter, or, on the contrary, of violent 
 indignation, which are communicated from one 
 to another through a whole band of urchins. 
 
 IV. 
 
 We shall now study the expressive signs of 
 the different emotions that we have just been 
 describing — emotions that are known to us as 
 long as the child does not speak, only by these 
 expressive signs themselves. Even at his time 
 Charles Bell wrote : Children express some emo- 
 
 tions with an extraordinary force; indeed, as we 
 advance in age, some of our expressions no longer 
 spring from the pure, unmixed source from which 
 they gushed during childhood.” * The child, as 
 no one will dispute, possesses the faculty of ex- 
 pression in a very high degree. Everything in 
 his soul fiashes forth in the movements of his 
 supple body, in his immoderate gesticulation, in 
 his frank, open physiognomy. No calculation 
 comes as yet to disturb the natural order which 
 associates with every inner emotion an exterior 
 sign. It is the eyes, above all, that may be called 
 
 14 
 
 Anatomy of Expression. 
 
196 the development of the child. 
 
 the mirror of the child^s soul. The man will 
 learn to hide his feelings, to bury in the depths 
 of his being all that he wishes to conceal. Ardent 
 passions will escape often behind an impassable 
 mask, or will betray themselves only by imper- 
 ceptible signs. The child, on the other hand, does 
 not want to hold back anything that he feels, and 
 he could not if he would, the organs of expression 
 being not yet mastered by the will. The dualism 
 that is established in the grown man, with au- 
 tonomous will and moral faculties on the one side 
 and a manageable disciplined body on the other, 
 is hardly even outlined in the child. His little 
 soul shines forth in every muscle. It will re- 
 strain itself, recover itself, in the adult, but in the 
 first years of life it pours itself forth with a pro- 
 digious exuberance ; and no counter-order of will, 
 no inhibition of the faculties of reflection, arrests 
 the flight, the excessive prodigality of the need 
 for expression found in the nascent soul, which, 
 so to speak, is as yet one with the body. There 
 is almost always a disproportion between the ex- 
 pressive faculties and the impressions felt; but 
 while in the adult the expression falls short of 
 the reality, in childhood it exceeds it. The child^s 
 embraces are in excess of his love ; he cries more 
 than he suffers ; he laughs more than he is 
 amused ; and when he has learned to talk, he will 
 talk more than he thinks. 
 
 It is not from the first day, moreover, that 
 cries, smiles, tears, or gestures acquire signifi- 
 cance. Before becoming expressive motions they 
 are simply impulsive motions. We have estab- 
 
FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. I 97 
 
 lished this fact in the case of the cries,* and we 
 shall now show that it is true of the smile, of the 
 laugh, and of tears. The same motion may be 
 in turn a pure reflex, an automatic action, an in- 
 voluntary sign. Anally, the voluntary expression 
 of such or such a state of the soul. An attentive 
 observer could doubtless note quite perceptible 
 differences in the movement, according as it is 
 passing through one or another of these different 
 phases of its evolution ; he would And, for in- 
 stance, that the child^s cries, that express noth- 
 ing, do not resemble those that, on the contrary, 
 express a sensation, an emotion, hunger, anger ; 
 that the smile is not always the same either, and 
 that it is transfigured, even materially, when it 
 corresponds to a feeling. But these shades are 
 hard to appreciate, and parents often make the 
 mistake of being too disposed to see signs and 
 significant things where there is still nothing but 
 pure automatism. 
 
 Poets, and even philosophers, know how to 
 embellish the subject. We have already cited 
 Victor Hugo^s verses on the sweet smile of the 
 child. Paul Janet, in a charming page, greets in 
 the first smile the beginning of the moral life, 
 the hatching of a reasonable soul.^^ f There is 
 
 * See Chapter II. 
 
 f Paul Janet, La Famille, p. 149. “We might say that the 
 child’s moral life begins with the first smile — that smile so sweet 
 to the parent’s eyes, so indifferent to strangers, but so worthy 
 of the attention and admiration of the observer and the philos- 
 opher, who discover in it in a way the hatching of a reasonable 
 soul.” 
 
198 the development of the child. 
 
 nothing really inexact in all this, neither in the 
 enthusiasm of the poet, nor in the philosopher's 
 interpretation. But in order to have the right 
 of attributing either this aesthetic charm or this 
 high moral significance to the smile, it is neces- 
 sary to choose the time, to wait until the smile 
 has become, by a slow evolution, what it was not 
 in the beginning. In the prosiness of facts the 
 smile is at first only an automatic motion or a 
 reflex action. It does not escape the general law 
 that unconscious life precedes the intelligent life, 
 and that moral significance is added little by 
 little to acts that are at first purely mechanical. 
 When the triumphant mother cries toward the 
 second or third month, He has smiled,^^ or She 
 has laughed,'^ she ought to be told that behind 
 this first smile there is no intention, perhaps no 
 feeling even, of pleasure. This first smile is a 
 body without a soul. It is only a grimace, pro- 
 duced by chance, or because the mechanism of 
 the face wished it thus. There is the outward 
 appearance of a smile, the mask of a smile, so to 
 speak, but the reality is not there. Darwin calls 
 attention to this. Those who take care of little 
 children,'^ he says, “ know well that it is hard to 
 tell whether certain motions of the mouth ex- 
 press anything or not, to know whether they are 
 smiling or not.^^* The proof that smiling and 
 laughing may be owing to purely physical causes 
 
 * Compare Preyer, The Senses and the Will, p. 294. “ The 
 first smiling is the movement most often misunderstood. . . . 
 Tt is no more the case with the child than with the adult that a 
 mere contortion of the mouth fulfils the idea of a smile. There 
 
FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. 199 
 
 that have nothing to do with the sensibility is 
 the fact that tickling produces bursts of immod- 
 erate laughter in the child, together with a con- 
 vulsion of his whole body. How long the tirst 
 sign of love, the smile, is in appearing ! writes 
 Guyau. People believe that it is natural, spon- 
 taneous ; who knows how many accumulated 
 efforts of perseverance, of will, have been neces- 
 sary in order that the child might bring to light 
 this marvelous smile, which is already the rough 
 draft of disinterestedness ? Follow the Childs’s 
 moral life, reflected upon his face ; you will see 
 this first sketch, little by little, clothed in a thou- 
 sand shades, a thousand new colours ; but how 
 slowly ! No picture of Raphael’s ever cost more 
 effort ! ” * * 
 
 The expressive smile, which not only opens 
 the mouth but which betrays either the child’s 
 pleasures or his first affections, which gives bril- 
 liance to the eyes and lights up the whole face, 
 does not appear immediately. It presupposes, as 
 do tears also, a gradual development, and before 
 the real smile there are, as it were, outlines and 
 sketches which are half smiles, quarter smiles. 
 
 According to Darwin, the smile would be but a 
 diminutive laugh, a weakened laugh, the vestige, 
 the remainder in the child of the habit acquired 
 by our ancestors during a long line of genera- 
 tions, of showing their joy by laughing. There 
 
 is required for this either a feeling of satisfaction or an idea of 
 an agreeable sort. Both must be strong enough to occasion an 
 excitement of the facial nerves.” 
 
 * Guyau, Education et heredite, p. 63. 
 
200 the development of the child. 
 
 seems^ however, to be more than a difference of 
 degree between a smile and a laugh, since they 
 do not express the same feelings. The smile is 
 the sign of a moderate emotion of pleasure or of 
 an affectionate feeling ; the laugh corresponds to 
 an intense joy, and, in the adult, to more compli- 
 cated causes. The laugh, indeed, does not pro- 
 ceed from the same principles in the child and in 
 the man any more than do tears ; and if psycholo- 
 gists have some trouble in analyzing the origins 
 of the human laugh, it is surely much easier to 
 explain the child's laugh, which is always, or 
 almost always, the simple expression of joyous 
 emotions of the soul. Children laugh oftener 
 and more easily than grown people. Their plays 
 are often merely a long burst of laughter. The 
 most trivial event, the slightest motive suffices 
 to excite these indefatigable peals of laughter. 
 It is to be remarked, however, that the categories 
 of laughable things are less numerous at this 
 period. The child hardly knows the laugh of 
 derision nor the laugh produced by surprise, by 
 a sharp and sudden contrast, which would incline 
 him rather to cry. 
 
 It is when the child is about six weeks old 
 that the laugh appears, according to Mme. 
 Necker de Saussure ; the smile, earlier. Darwin 
 observed the first real smile in the case of two 
 children on the forty-fifth day ; in another, a 
 little earlier. But these are only rare, fleeting 
 appearances, and at two months old the smile 
 has not yet become a habit. 
 
 The smile in its first manifestations is, so to 
 
FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. 201 
 
 speak, concentred in itself ; it is not directed 
 toward any one. Tlie child smiles with pleasure 
 after having been gorged with milk, in the state of 
 comfort in which his finished repast leaves him. 
 Preyer says : On the tenth day of his life I saw 
 
 my child while he was asleep, after having just 
 nursed his fill, put his mouth exactly into the 
 form of smiling. The dimples in his cheeks be- 
 came distinct, and the expression of countenance 
 was, in spite of the closed eyes, strikingly 
 lovely.^'’ * Later, the child smiles at his mother, 
 later still at the objects that amuse him, at his 
 playthings. And these smiles are not all alike. 
 The expression of the child, smiling at his mother 
 toward the third month, is easily distinguished 
 by the direction of his glance from that of the 
 child that smiles without thinking of it, simply 
 because his nourishment satisfies him. If we 
 could follow and note exactly the progressive 
 shades of the smile, we should find briefly a his- 
 tory of the child^s mind : first, the simple mate- 
 rial satisfaction of the little animal that has been 
 well fed ; later, the feeling of gratitude which 
 the nursing baby has for whoever nurses, cares 
 for, and caresses him ; later still, and in a higher 
 degree, sympathetic affection, love, disinterested 
 tenderness ; finally, when the intelligence is 
 awakened, the shrewd penetrating sense that 
 seizes upon the amusing connections of things, 
 the entertaining witticisms of conversation. 
 
 The smile, like the laugh, does not involve 
 
 * The Senses and the Will, p. 295. 
 
202 the development of the child. 
 
 merely a special cause that calls it forth at the 
 moment when it is produced ; it is connected 
 with the healthy with the general state of the 
 body, and of the mind. Marcel was ill for a 
 time, and the smile disappeared entirely ; it did 
 not return until his physical strength began to 
 be built up again. In the child, perhaps, much 
 more than in the man, the smile and the laugh 
 depend upon the general conditions of the whole 
 organism. How can we explain, except by a gen- 
 eral state of comfort and contentment, these in- 
 numerable laughs of the child, that never end 
 and do not seem to have any definite cause ? 
 
 The question reduces itself to an investigation 
 as to whether the smile comes spontaneously to 
 the child^s lips or whether it has to be called 
 forth, whether it is but an imitation, or at the 
 least a response to another smile. Guyau does 
 not hesitate on this point, and says, It is by dint 
 of seeing smiles that the child smiles.^" This 
 statement is too absolute. Doubtless little chil- 
 dren smile oftener if they have an example before 
 them — ridentibus arrident . . . Excited by the 
 sound of a caressing voice and by the sight of a 
 smiling face, the nursing baby flutters, moves his 
 hands, seems to wish to raise himself, and at the 
 same time his whole face is lighted up with joy. 
 But toward the fourth or fifth month, according 
 to my personal observations, the child begins to 
 show signs of the initiative in his smile. Marcel 
 at this age, when lying in his cradle, was very 
 much pleased by a curtain with red flowers on 
 it ; he talked to it in his own language, he smiled 
 
FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. 203 
 
 at it. The same child at six months did not wait 
 for me to smile before smiling himself ; he took 
 the lead, and smiled first. Imitation, that great 
 means of education, undoubtedly exercises its 
 influence in the development of the expressive 
 signs, as in all the other parts of the intellectual 
 evolution. But we believe, nevertheless, that the 
 smile, hereditary or innate, is a natural grace of 
 the child. It is with the smile as with all the 
 rest; first, reflection, so to speak, /reaction, and 
 response; afterward, personal initiative. Even 
 if he lived with sombre, melancholy parents, in 
 the midst of frowning faces, the child would 
 smile, less often perhaps, but still he would en- 
 liven this society of saddened and unfortunate 
 people with his gay and charming smile. 
 
 When the smile has once become a habit the 
 child will never unlearn it, not even the most 
 sickly, the most miserable child ; for there will 
 always be, even in the midst of the greatest suf- 
 fering, bright gleams of comfort, of relative pleas- 
 ure, which will permit a smile to dawn upon his 
 lips as the sun breaks across the clouds. On the 
 other hand, there is always enough tenderness 
 in the child^s heart for a disinterested smile to 
 be developed, the expression of pure sympathy, 
 freed from all remembrance of agreeable sensa- 
 tions. At four months Marcel smiled at me al- 
 most as much a^ at his mother, notwithstanding 
 the fact that the sight of me did not recall any 
 pleasures to him. 
 
 The laugh under its different forms — the 
 moderate laugh, bursts of laughter, immoderate 
 
204 the development of the child. 
 
 laughter — is in one sense the adult smile, in so 
 far as the smile is simply a sign of pleasure. It 
 is owing to a lack of strength if the smile of the 
 very young child when he is satisfied and happy 
 does not break forth into noisy laughter. Even 
 in the child of two months the smile is accompa- 
 nied by sounds that seem to prepare the way for 
 a laugh : A sort of little bleating/^ Darwin says, 
 
 and he adds that when the child he observed 
 was one hundred and thirteen days old these 
 sounds changed their character ; they became 
 more broken, more jerky, as in the sob. This, 
 Darwin says, was the beginning of laughter. 
 
 It is the same with tears as with smiling and 
 laughing; here, too, there is a gradual develop- 
 ment. Darwin says that a certain practice is 
 necessary for weeping as well as for the acquisi- 
 tion of the ordinary motions of the body, such as 
 those of walking, for instance.* Before being 
 the expression of pain, tears are a purely material 
 phenomenon, devoid of any moral significance. 
 Darwin says, in addition, that every time the 
 periocular muscles contract greatly to protect the 
 eyes, in compressing the veins the lachrymal se- 
 cretion becomes more active, often to such an 
 extent that tears flow down the cheeks. This 
 phenomenon appears under the influence of the 
 most opposite emotions, as well as in the absence 
 
 * It is to be remarked, moreover, that children differ greatly 
 in the matter of tears, rare in some, frequent in others. Dr. 
 Sikorski has minutely analyzed the causes of what he calls 
 pleurnicherie : the sicknesses, bad care, conditions of birth, etc, 
 (See Revue philosophique, vol. xix, pp. 248 et seq.) 
 
FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. 205 
 
 of all emotion. Purely physical impressions that 
 do not arouse the sensibility may produce tears. 
 Paring an onion will cause even an adult to weep. 
 But tears are soon associated with the cries that 
 the child utters when he suffers, when he com- 
 plains, and they become the sign of physical 
 suffering before being, at a higher stage of evo- 
 lution, the natural language of affliction and of 
 moral grief. 
 
 It is important to note, moreover, that tears 
 do not accompany the first cries of the newborn 
 child. The date of the first tears varies greatly 
 with different children. Darwin made experi- 
 ments on his children and the children of his 
 friends. In some the eyes were not moistened 
 by tears until the third or fourth month; in 
 others tears appeared toward the end of the 
 third week. Preyer claims that his own observa- 
 tions would point to a more prompt appearance 
 of tears, and he protests in the name of German 
 children at least, who show greater precocity, I 
 have seen tears flow from the eyes as early as the 
 twenty -third day in my boy.""^ * 
 
 These contradictions are not of great impor- 
 tance, since they bear only on a question of days, 
 or of weeks at most. What is undoubtedly estab- 
 lished from now on is the order of the evolution 
 of the causes that determine tears from the days 
 when tears have acquired significance : First, 
 physical suffering ; later, emotions of another 
 
 * The Senses and the Will, p. 308. “ What Darwin reports — 
 that usually babes do not shed tears before they are two or four 
 months old — is not true of German children in general.’’ 
 
206 the development of the child. 
 
 order — anger, caprice, chagrin ; finally, moral 
 grief. And it is to be noticed that in the life of 
 the adult the last stage will continue almost 
 alone. In man at least, if not in woman, tears 
 will become less and less frequent, and will 
 never be occasioned by physical suffering ; mor- 
 al pain alone will bring tears to their eyes.* 
 
 Let us not neglect to show, moreover, that a 
 certain number of movements of the face are 
 joined to tears to express the painful states of 
 the soul, just as laughing is not only a movement 
 of the lips, but is completed by a number of 
 other signs. Darwin, following in the footsteps 
 of others — of Lebrun, for instance — has described 
 minutely the physiognomy of a weeping child: 
 Knitting of the brows, lowering the corners of 
 the mouth, etc. The weeping child cries aloud, 
 and the two English verbs to weep and to cry are 
 synonymous. The knitting of the brows, the 
 wrinkles that crease his forehead, are produced 
 independently and do not always accompany 
 cries and tears. Preyer observed these motions 
 from the second day. A mother saw her baby 
 a few days old knitting his brows and said, He 
 is thinking of grave matters."" No, these motions, 
 like all the rest, do not represent a real moral sit- 
 uation until after some time, and they have not 
 at first any psychic causes. 
 
 Let us add, finally, that tears, like laughter, 
 
 * The laugh, Darwin says, resembles tears, which do not flow 
 in the case of the adult except under the influence of moral 
 grief, while in the child they are occasioned by any suffering, 
 physical or otherwise, as well as by fright and anger. 
 
FIRST EMOTIONS AND THEIR EXPRESSION. 207 
 
 even at the period when they have become ex- 
 pressive signs, are not necessarily the expression 
 of suffering. The proof that there is often in 
 the laugh only a superabundance of life, the dis- 
 charge of the excess of nervous force, is in the 
 fact that sometimes when children begin to 
 laugh, a meaningless circumstance — a nothing, 
 really — will cause them to pass from laughing to 
 crying, and vice versa. Tears sometimes accom- 
 pany contentment, satisfaction. The child some- 
 times sheds a few tears while nursing. In the 
 adult, also, there are tears of joy.* 
 
 Cries then, together with smiles and tears, are 
 far from exhausting the natural language of sen- 
 sibility. In moments of joy or of keen pleasure 
 the whole body is in motion ; the legs move, the 
 child claps his hands ; later, he will leap with joy. 
 When angry the child becomes red, when he is 
 frightened very pale. It is hardly probable that 
 the child^s cheeks are coloured by a blush for the 
 same reason as in the case of the adult. Darwin 
 says that the intellectual faculties of children 
 are not sufficiently developed to permit them to 
 blush, t To say nothing of the intellectual facul- 
 ties, it is certain that the feelings that most fre- 
 
 * If the laugh is peculiar to man, it is not the case with tears. 
 Darwin says, “ It is known that the Indian elephant weeps some- 
 times.” Sir J. E. Tennent, in describing the elephants that he 
 saw captured and imprisoned at Ceylon, expresses himself thus: 
 “ Some remained motionless, crouched on the ground without 
 showing their suffering except by the tears that flowed inces- 
 santly.” 
 
 f “ The blush,” Darwin says, “ is the most human of all ex- 
 pressions. We can cause a laugh by tickling the skin, tears or 
 
208 the development op the child. 
 
 quently cause a blush — shame, wounds to self- 
 love — are rare in the child. Darwin, however, 
 mentions two little girls who blushed at the age 
 of two or three years, and a child four years old 
 who blushed when reproved for any fault. 
 
 The multiplicity of the affective states in the 
 child could not be better established than by the 
 study of his physiognomy. Humility or courage, 
 the feeling of weakness or of strength, surprise, 
 astonishment, admiration, are strongly depicted 
 on his face or are revealed in his posture. What 
 could be more expressive than the pout, the pro- 
 trusion of the lips, that sign of bad humour ? A 
 whole book might be written on this subject, a 
 whole gallery of photographs taken and collected 
 (like those that have already been attempted, of 
 crying children), in which might be preserved 
 that which is so fleeting, which by its incessant 
 changing defies even the quickest observation, 
 the most continued attention, which, finally, bears 
 witness even by this very fact to one of the prin- 
 cipal characteristics of childish sensibility — the 
 perpetual inconstancy of its light and capricious 
 emotions. 
 
 frowns by giving a blow ; but we can not occasion a blush by 
 any physical means. The mind must be impressed.” 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MEMORY BEFORE AND AFTER THE ACQUISITION 
 OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 I. Opinions of Rousseau and Madame Campan. — How far back 
 do our first remembrances date? — Why do we remember 
 nothing of our first years ? — Development of the child’s mem- 
 ory. — The continuity, or at least the repetition of percep- 
 tions is necessary to establish the remembrance of them. — 
 Consequently, the remembrance of accidental facts is effaced. 
 — The multiplicity of impressions, and, above all, the ab- 
 sence of co-ordination, causes the disappearance of the first 
 remembrances. — The idea of the self, the necessary rallying 
 point, does not exist as yet. — The inability to localize re- 
 membrances in time and space. — The passive character of 
 the child’s memory. — The presence of things necessary to 
 arouse memory. — The impersonal memory of the child and 
 the organic memory. — In one sense, memory precedes con- 
 sciousness. — Recognition. — The association of ideas and 
 language. II. The further development of memory. — The 
 power of acquisition of the child’s memory. — Physiological 
 reasons. — Psychological reasons. — In the adult, the overbur- 
 dened condition of the memory hinders the acquisition of 
 new ideas. — Other characteristics of the child’s memory. — 
 The child has not learned to forget. — The remembrances of 
 childhood are particularly vivid ; in different forms of am- 
 nesia they are the last to disappear. — Faults of childish 
 memory : it is literal and mechanical. — The memory of imbe- 
 209 
 
210 the development of the child. 
 
 ciles. — Inequality and different forms of memory. — Impor- 
 tance of memory. 
 
 I. 
 
 Memory is not developed until the age of 
 three years/^ wrote Mme. Campan.* J. J. Rous- 
 seau, more absolute still, declared that children, 
 not being capable of judgment, have no real 
 memory, t 
 
 What seems to be unusual and false in these 
 estimations may be easily explained if we con- 
 sider, not what the two authors seem to say, but 
 what they really mean to say. If Rousseau 
 seems to deny the child memory, he means only 
 the memory of ideas — the adult memory, which is 
 capable of following and recognising all the 
 threads of a long reasoning. He was the first to 
 affirm that children remember sounds, forms, 
 sensations, which amounts to saying that they 
 remember everything that they can perceive and 
 feel, abstract ideas not being yet within their 
 reach. 
 
 As to Mme. Campan^s statement, it depends 
 on this fact of general observation, namely, that 
 the adult does not remember the first years of 
 his life. In my earliest remembrances, which 
 go back, if I mistake not, to my fifth or sixth 
 year — this is the opening of the Memoires d^un 
 
 * Mme. Campan, De TEducation, Book III, chap. i. 
 t Rousseau, Emile, Book II : “ Although memory and rea- 
 soning are two essentially different faculties, still one does not 
 really develop without the other. Before the age of reason the 
 child does not receive ideas, but images.” 
 
MEMORY. 
 
 211 
 
 Enfant, by Mme. Micbelet. first recollec- 
 
 tions/^ says Darwin, date from the age of four 
 years and several months/^ * 
 
 According to other testimonies, memory some- 
 times goes back a little further. One person of 
 thirty-five whom I questioned on this subject 
 told me that she remembered with remarkable 
 precision as to details certain sights that she had 
 witnessed when she was three years old : a bap- 
 tismal ceremony in the village, a noisy fair in 
 Paris. One of my sons remembers a visit which 
 he made his grandfather ; he remembers having 
 seen him, when ill, stretched at length in his in- 
 valid’s chair. He died a few months later, when 
 the child was only two years old. Pierre Loti 
 claims to have had remembrances dating from as 
 early an age. He says : I remember as though 
 
 it were yesterday the evening on which I sud- 
 denly discovered how to run and jump; I was 
 excited to the point of falling by the deliciously 
 new amusement, though I had walked for some 
 time. This must have been at the beginning of 
 my second year.” f 
 
 But most memories seem to have begun at a 
 more advanced age. I have pried into my own 
 
 * Rousseau says the same : “ 1 do not know anything about 
 what I did before the age of five or six. I do not know how I 
 learned to read.” (Confessions, Book I.) 
 
 t Pierre Loti, Le Roman d’un enfant, p. 4. Perez tells us 
 that he retains the terrifying remembrance of an ignorant and 
 coarse nurse who, when he was only two years old, held him out 
 of the window a moment, and pretended that she was going to 
 throw him down. (L’Enfant de trois a sept ans, p. 3.) 
 
 15 
 
212 the development op the child. 
 
 recollections in vain; the only fact that rises 
 from the dark abyss in which my first years are 
 buried dates from my sixth year : it is the proc- 
 lamation of the republic of 1848. I still hear, as 
 though in a dream, the serious tones of a friend of 
 my father's who came, while we were all at table, 
 to announce the news of the fall of Louis Phi- 
 lippe. I still see the restless groups of people in 
 the evening discussing the situation for hours on 
 the promenade of the little city in which I lived. 
 
 There is no doubt but that different causes 
 vary for each individual, the date at which his 
 past begins : First, the particular dispositions, a 
 more or less marked precocity, but, above all, the 
 circumstances, the character of certain incidents 
 that the child has witnessed, which have sur- 
 prised him and have struck him by their novelty 
 or their importance, projecting them, so to speak, 
 causing them to stand out, on the customary 
 course of life. One will remember a catastrophe, 
 a great misfortune, even less than that, a bad fall 
 experienced at the time of the first steps, while 
 the ordinary events of a regular and monotonous 
 life will be forgotten. 
 
 But with these variations, which are easily ex- 
 plained, the general fact stands, nevertheless: 
 there is a limit beyond which we do not remem- 
 ber anything.* A veil of obscuration hides our 
 first years from us. It would seem natural that 
 the recollections of the beginnings of our life 
 
 * “ It is customary generally to assume that the memory of 
 jfdults does not extend further back than to the fourth year of 
 life.” (Preyer, The Development of the Intellect, p. 9.) 
 
MEMORY. 
 
 213 
 
 should be confused, but the truth is, they do not 
 exist at all. It is true that we always find some 
 difficulty in recomposing, so to speak, in bringing 
 back the past by means of memory, even in the 
 case of maturity or of youth. In even the most 
 faithful adult memory there are always gaps, 
 partial forgetfulness. But when it is a question 
 of our very first years there is a total amnesia 
 analogous to that which follows intoxication or 
 to that which is caused by certain diseases, an 
 amnesia, however, which is natural and normal. 
 Nothing of what we have seen or felt, of our joys 
 and our first sorrows, remains in our conscious- 
 ness. Not one ray of remembrance lights up 
 these years which are lost to us — lost, at least, to 
 our memory — and during which nothing recalls 
 to us the fact that we have lived. 
 
 This is the first problem we have to solve in 
 the history of the evolution of the memory. We 
 must not think to explain it by answering that if 
 we do not remember anything it is because noth- 
 ing has happened and that wherever conscious- 
 ness is wanting memory loses its power. There 
 is no doubt but that consciousness is awakened 
 very soon, that the child feels emotions — emotions 
 of fear, of astonishment, of joy — which, although 
 arising from slight causes, have nevertheless their 
 force and their vividness. And, to take but one 
 example, how does it happen that we have no re- 
 membrance of an action that seems to interest all 
 the active forces of the child’s being — that of the 
 first step, the first walk ? The essential condi- 
 tions generally associated with the power of re- 
 
214 the development op the child. 
 
 membering — keen sensation, attention — are real- 
 ized in this case. The child learning to walk is 
 visibly attentive, and when he takes possession 
 of space for the first time he is manifestly de- 
 lighted. How comes it, then, that this important 
 event of the first period of our lives leaves not 
 the slightest durable imprint in our memory ? 
 
 The best way to explain the facts is to begin 
 by defining them well. Let us begin, then, by 
 showing that the memory of the little child acts 
 in its own way, and then consider under what 
 conditions it acts. From the very first months 
 the nursling learns to recognise his mother's face, 
 the faces of the people who care for him and 
 caress him. In this recognition, which sometimes 
 withstands an absence of several weeks, the pow- 
 er of memory shows itself. Perez cites an in- 
 stance of a child (a year old, to be sure) who was 
 taken back to his home after a month's absence. 
 As soon as he saw a good old servant coming to- 
 ward him, even before she had spoken his name, 
 he smiled and held out his arms to her, fairly 
 leaping with joy. Preyer tells of a little girl 
 seventeen months old who recognised her nurse 
 after an absence of six days.* In this respect, 
 moreover, the aptness of the newborn child does 
 not exceed that of animals — of little dogs, for in- 
 stance — which can very quickly distinguish the 
 hand that caresses them from the hand that 
 
 * To be sure, Preyer found that his son did not recognise 
 his nurse at seven months after an absence of four weeks. The 
 power of memory, from this point of view, seems to be clearly 
 established at about one year. 
 
MEMORY. 
 
 215 
 
 strikes them. On the other hand, all the knowl- 
 edge that the child collects through the medium 
 of his senses concerning the things that he sees 
 and hears, the objects that he handles — all this 
 little practical science so rapidly acquired in- 
 volves a considerable exercise of memory. And 
 it is the same with the acquisition of language ; 
 every new word that the child learns represents 
 an effort, or at least an act of memory. 
 
 But the result of many observations seems to 
 establish the fact that these acquisitions of the 
 child's memory, so easy and so prompt, are, on 
 the other hand, fragile, unsubstantial ; that they 
 vanish ; that they are obliterated if any accident 
 whatever interrupts the course of the perceptions 
 which have produced them, and whose continua- 
 tion is necessary to retain them in the mind.* 
 Leibnitz tells of a child who became blind when 
 two or three years old, and who never had any 
 remembrance of his visual perceptions.! Laura 
 Bridgman had had the use of her senses for 
 several months before an attack of fever de- 
 stroyed her hearing, her sight, and her speech ; 
 from that time on she never mentioned any- 
 
 * Memory, at first, is really only the continuation of the 
 same impression. “ The first phase of real or conscious mem- 
 ory,” says Romanes, “ may be considered as consisting in the 
 secondary effect produced on a sensitive nerve by an excitation — 
 an effect which, as long- as it lasts, is continually transmuted to 
 the sensorium. As an example^ -I shall cite the persistency of 
 impressions on the retina, the pain that follows a blow.” (Men- 
 tal Evolution in Animals.) 
 
 f Leibnitz, Nouveaux essais sur I’entendement, Book I, 
 chap. iii. 
 
216 the development of the child. 
 
 tiling that she had learned before her illness. 
 A little girl mentioned by Preyer became totally 
 blind at the age of seven years^ as the result of 
 having been exposed to too bright sunlight. At 
 the age of seventeen she recovered her sight ; she 
 had to learn anev^, as a little child would, to name 
 colours. She had forgotten, through want of exer- 
 cise, all that during those seven years she had 
 learned of distances and the dimensions of objects. 
 
 The conclusions to be drawn from these facts 
 and others which might be cited is that repeti- 
 tion, the frequent and continued recurrence of 
 impressions, is necessary to fix the recollections 
 of the earliest years. The child learns his mother 
 tongue so easily only because he hears the same 
 words continually. He recognises objects and 
 persons only because he sees them every day. 
 Place him in the midst of other surroundings, 
 send him from home when he is two or three years 
 old, and everything that was particular or local 
 in the impressions of his first habitation will be 
 obliterated forever. The child's memory is like 
 a delicate painting, which the brush must pass 
 over several times in order to keep the fleeting 
 colours, always ready to disappear. 
 
 We see from this that an impression which 
 has been but a fleeting apparition in the child's 
 consciousness, the emotion of an instant, an acci- 
 dental fact, does not succeed in impressing itself, 
 in fixing itself in the mind. The child's memory 
 is like the moving sands of the seashore. In 
 vain do you mark them with your footprints as 
 the wave recedes; the returning wave effaces 
 
INTELLECTUAL EVOLUTION. 
 
 217 
 
 all. If repetition is a useful condition at every 
 age in assuring the continuance of recollections, 
 it is an absolutely necessary condition when 
 light impressions that only skim over the child^s 
 consciousness are concerned.* 
 
 Moreover, the multiplicity of new impressions 
 of every sort which assail the brain of the new- 
 born child is undoubtedly one of the causes of 
 the weakness of his memory. Too many things 
 crowd forward at once and overpower the child's 
 perception. His little memory bends under the 
 mass of sensations. In this respect the case of 
 the child is the same as that of the blind per- 
 son spoken of by Cheselden, who had too many 
 objects to recognise at once, and forgot some of 
 them. And, moreover, his inconstant attention, 
 which, according to Fdnelon's pretty compari- 
 son, resembles a lighted candle when exposed to 
 the wind, its light wavering and flickering con- 
 tinually, does not give the separate sensations 
 time to become hardened or solidified, so to 
 speak. The child's perception does not stop for 
 consideration ; it moves — runs on incessantly ; 
 
 * Compare Preyer, The Development of the Intellect, p. 9 : 
 “ Nothing later on reminds us of the once existing inability to 
 balance the head, or of the former inability to turn around, to 
 sit, to stand, to walk, etc. But this is not true of what is ac- 
 quired later. My child, when less than three years old, remem- 
 bered very well — and would almost make merry over himself at 
 it — the time when he cguld not yet talk, but articulated incor- 
 rectly, and went' imperfectly through the first, often repeated 
 performances of his nurse . . . The child of three, and even of 
 four years, can remember separate experiences of his second 
 year,” provided, Preyer adds, “ he is often reminded of them.” 
 
218 the development op the child. 
 
 and in this rapid course of fluttering from subject 
 to subject, it can not seize and lay hold of objects 
 that are hardly touched in passing. 
 
 We have not yet indicated, however, the real 
 essential cause that renders the continuance of 
 the first remembrances so uncertain: it is the 
 absence of co-ordination between the successive 
 perceptions. Real memory, the memory of the 
 adult, is a totality, a close woof of impressions 
 bound one to the other, enclosed in fixed frames 
 about a central nucleus, the idea of the ego. This 
 is not the place to investigate the question as to 
 whether the idea of self be or be not derived from 
 the close connection of the states of consciousness 
 which are being unfolded within us. But what 
 is certain is that during the very first years the 
 ego, or at least the consciousness of the ego, does 
 not exist. There is not as yet what Luys calls 
 ^‘^a chain, a mysterious federation of remem- 
 brances.^^ * Scattered and floating, as it is, in a 
 succession of separate sensations, which are not 
 associated one with the other, but are strangers 
 so to speak to the ego, and so have no personal 
 character, the child^s consciousness is not cen- 
 tred; it does not control itself. The inner life 
 is not yet organized, and it is this inner life that 
 permits adults to preserve the exact and faithful 
 memory of events in which they have partici- 
 pated. By reflection, by a turning in upon our- 
 selves, we ' think anew of what we have done a 
 day, a week, or a month before. The event upon 
 
 * Luys, The Brain, Genesis, and Evolution of the Memory, 
 
 p. 112. 
 
INTELLECTUAL EVOLUTION. 
 
 219 
 
 which, our memory is fixed will perhaps not be 
 reproduced before us; but if the real repetition 
 is lacking, we substitute for it an ideal and a 
 mental repetition. In a word, the mature man 
 thinks over his remembrances ; he digests them ; 
 he assimilates them. Moreover, when the feeling 
 of the ego is once born, each new acquisition of 
 memory takes a definite place in the conscious- 
 ness by the side of other impressions, before or 
 after other remembrances; it forms part of a 
 whole ; it is, so to speak, inlaid, cemented in the 
 mental construction of our inner consciousness, as 
 stones would be cemented in a wall, without the 
 power, henceforth, to detach itself. In the case of 
 the child, on the contrary, the fieeting impressions, 
 separated and independent one of the other — 
 grains of dust with no cohesion— do not find place 
 to fix themselves. The current of the inner life is 
 not sufficiently established, and the remembrances, 
 like waters that have not been directed into canals, 
 are scattered and lost on one side and on the other. 
 
 The same reasons that explain, in the case of 
 the adult, the disappearance of remembrances 
 relating to the first period of existence, help us 
 to understand some other particulars of the 
 child’s memory; for instance, his inability to 
 localize in time and space even the most recent 
 impressions. The picture is engraved on his 
 memory, but the setting has vanished.* He re- 
 
 * Romanes says : “ The last phase of the development of 
 memory is reached when reflection permits the mind to localize 
 in the past the time at which an event, which memory has pre- 
 served, took place.” 
 
220 the development of the child. 
 
 members distinctly the things he has seen^ but he 
 can not tell where or when he saw them. Com- 
 plete memory involves an appreciation of dura- 
 tion of which the child is incapable, since this 
 appreciation involves the co-ordination of recol- 
 lections or remembrances. Who has not heard a 
 child tell of an event that he witnessed several 
 months before as though it had happened only 
 the day before ? The child that breakfasted only 
 two or three hours ago demands his dinner now 
 because he has no notion of time passed.* The 
 child's memory is, above all, imaginative, repre- 
 sentative ; it has not found yet, in the idea of the 
 ego, in the idea of the duration of time, the solid 
 principles on which rests the reflective and rea- 
 soning memory of the adult. 
 
 Just as, withbut, the child's perceptions seem 
 to him to be almost on the same plane, and he 
 can not project them in space with exactness ; so, 
 within, his remembrances and his impressions co- 
 exist in him, as it were, without his being able to 
 arrange them in a linear series, and to relate them 
 to different moments of time. To the newborn 
 child there is no depth in space ; to the child a 
 few months old there is no perspective in the 
 past; there is no past. The images which he has 
 
 * “ The confusion of past and present time is seen in the 
 child. A boy two years and a half old lost his ball the other day 
 from the balcony ; he found it again, and lias played with it a 
 hundred times since : in spite of that fact, he led me suddenly 
 toward the balcony, and told me in a very sad tone, with an 
 expression he could not have feigned, that he had lost it there.” 
 (Guyau, ^lducation et heredite, p. 147.) 
 
INTELLECTUAL EVOLUTION. 
 
 221 
 
 successively acquired are mingled in a confused 
 chaos. The child must conquer illusions analo- 
 gous to those that perplexed the visual percep- 
 tions of Cheselden^s blind man before he can 
 have the consciousness of time and represent 
 duration to himself. His images must group 
 themselves little by little, must be associated in 
 a regular order, must define the idea of the ego, 
 joined to that of duration, just as the repre- 
 sentations of the exterior world form, little 
 by little, the conception of space, and conse- 
 quently the conception of what is not the 
 self. 
 
 Another characteristic of the child’s memory 
 is its passivity ; it has to be continually propped 
 up, so to speak, by external excitations called to 
 action by the presence of objects. The child’s 
 remembrances do not call themselves up. His 
 little intelligence is limited almost entirely to 
 the present; it does not think much of the 
 future, not at all of the past. We must not ex- 
 pect it to delight in living over the months 
 already passed, as the memory of the mature 
 man will do. The child’s memory resembles 
 that of animals — without activity in itself, sub- 
 ordinate to real sensations. It is certain that 
 the horse in the stable, if he thinks at all, does 
 not think of the road he travelled over the day 
 before; and yet, if he begins the same journey 
 on the next day, 'he will know with unfailing 
 certainty which way to go. 
 
 This influence of the presence of things al- 
 ready seen may be demonstrated by the facts 
 
222 the development of the child. 
 
 cited by Ribot,* which prove that under the 
 action of particular circumstances, revived or 
 brought to life again by the reappearance of ob- 
 jects long forgotten and removed from our sight, 
 the memory of the first years, though apparently 
 destroyed, may suddenly arise again. Abercrom- 
 bie reports the instance of a woman who, on re- 
 turning when about forty years old to the room in 
 which as a little child not yet able to speak she 
 had seen her dying mother for the last time, felt 
 the remembrance of the emotions she had then ex- 
 perienced rising from the depths of her memory. 
 She said that she had a distinct feeling of hav- 
 ing been in that room before. There was a 
 woman in bed in one corner, she remembered, who 
 seemed to be very ill, and who leaned over her 
 and wept. Carpenter relates that a man, of 
 vivid imagination to be sure, who when sixteen 
 months old had visited a castle to which he had 
 been carried on the back of a donkey, on return- 
 ing to the same castle long years afterward, felt 
 clearly the impression that he had seen it before. 
 It seemed to him that he could even see, under 
 the porch, the donkey that had carried him be- 
 fore, f Perceptions recovered even after a long 
 interval suffice, in cases of this kind, to stir the 
 nervous cells to their very depths, to renew par- 
 ticular movements in the brain, and to cause, in 
 consequence, the resurrection of correlative re- 
 membrances which were, so to speak, buried 
 there. 
 
 * Les maladies de la memoire, p. 143. 
 f Carpenter, Mental Physiology, p. 431. 
 
INTELLECTUAL EVOLUTION. 
 
 223 
 
 In other cases it is a morbid cause, a fit of 
 fever, which produces the same effect. Aber- 
 crombie tells of a child four years old who had 
 to be trepanned because of a fracture of the 
 skull. He apparently had no remembrance of 
 this event, and it had never been spoken of to 
 him. At the age of fifteen he was taken with a 
 febrile delirium, and described to his mother 
 with perfect exactness all the details of the 
 operation. 
 
 There are many bends and turnings, many 
 byways and hiding places in the memory. The 
 successive events of life store up layers of re- 
 membrances, one superposed on the other, and 
 this work begins with childhood. Forgetful- 
 ness, a positive oblivion, usually, gets possession 
 of a large number of these impressions which 
 we bear within us unconsciously, and which will 
 spring up again only under the excitatory action 
 of extraordinary circumstances ; just as the char- 
 acters of a palimpsest do not reappear under the 
 writing that hides them, unless affected by chem- 
 ical reactions. 
 
 It follows from all this that memory, although 
 the results of its action are often obliterated, is 
 by no means a stranger to the little child. How 
 could it be, when it is developed to such an ex- 
 tent even in little animals?* But, as Egger has 
 
 * On the development of memory in animals, see Romanes, 
 on Animal Intelligence. Memory is one of the faculties that 
 we have most right to attribute to animals; but, whatever 
 credit is due most of the facts reported by the English evolu- 
 tionist, we must guard against attributing to personal memory 
 
224 the development op the child. 
 
 remarked, memory is produced at the earliest age 
 for acts that are frequently repeated ; it is slower 
 in the case of accidental acts/^ * * It is only at the 
 age of fifteen months that Egger claims to have 
 observed it under this second form. ^^At that 
 age Emile seizes a toy that he has left or hidden 
 under a chair; a quarter of an hour afterward 
 I ask him for it; he goes straight to the object 
 and brings it to me.^^ We believe that the re- 
 membrance of a sensation, even isolated or acci- 
 dental, may come much earlier ; and Egger him- 
 self furnishes us with a proof of this. ^^At six 
 months Emile was slightly burned by touching 
 a warm dish with his hand ; when it is presented 
 to him again, he draws his hand back with an 
 evident intention to escape pain ; the same ob- 
 servation in the case of an object harsh to the 
 touch, the impression of which is disagreeable to 
 him.’^ f In these direct inductions, founded on a 
 single experiment, the force of particular re- 
 membrances is clearly shown. 
 
 The memory of the child is not a Danaidean 
 cask, emptied as fast as it is filled. If no intel- 
 lectual operation can be accomplished without 
 the memory, it is equally true that no practical 
 action is possible without it. In lactation, in 
 play, in walking, memory has its part to play. 
 But these remembrances, utilized as they are 
 immediately, and sufficing to assure from day to 
 day the regular development of the intelligence 
 
 what is only the effect of hereditary memory, of instinct de- 
 termined by ancestral experiences. 
 
 * Egger, o'p, cit., p. 11. 
 
 f Ibid, p. 10. 
 
INTELLECTUAL EVOLUTION. 
 
 225 
 
 and of the activity, do not constitute the durable 
 elements of the personal memory. They form 
 part, so to speak, of that impersonal though con- 
 scious memory which characterizes the child a 
 few months old, and which has been preceded itself 
 by a sort of organic, unconscious memory. If in 
 the adult memory presupposes consciousness, if 
 it is true that we remember only what has been, 
 at a given moment, present in our mind and 
 felt or perceived by it, it is not impossible to 
 hold, in turn, that consciousness in its original 
 evolution proceeds partly from memory, at least 
 from that obscure memory which is but a habit 
 contracted by the nerves and the muscles. We 
 have said that in the action of sucking, for in- 
 stance, it is only little by little that the child 
 becomes conscious, has the sense of an act which is 
 at first purely automatic.* This transition from 
 the unconscious to the conscious would be inex- 
 plicable if we did not admit that every repetition 
 of the same action leaves some trace behind it, 
 and makes deeper and deeper impressions in the 
 nervous system, which impressions are associ- 
 ated and stored up, and so prepare the way for 
 consciousness. 
 
 Memory has often been represented as a form 
 of habit, and it is in this sense that instinct may 
 be defined as a hereditary memory, an imper- 
 sonal habit. But what distinguishes the con- 
 scious and personal memory in its subsequent 
 development is the fact that the sensation which 
 
 * See chapter ii. 
 
226 the development of tee CniLD. 
 
 is presented to the consciousness anew does not 
 'appear to it as a stranger, as an unknown ; it is, 
 in a word, the fact of recognition. We are not 
 called upon here to seek an explanation for this ; 
 recognition, moreover, seems to be one of those 
 ultimate facts that resist analysis. But what 
 we have to ascertain is that, thanks to, his per- 
 sonal experiences, the child very soon recognises 
 sensations; for instance, the particular taste of 
 the milk with which he is fed.* After several 
 successive acts of sucking, the nursling has evi- 
 dently acquired the remembrance of the taste of 
 the milk, so that if there is a change he will 
 perceive it. It is much easier to bring up a 
 child on the bottle, to nurse him artificially, so 
 to speak, if he has never been nursed at the 
 breast, f 
 
 * Compare Romanes’s Mental Evolution in Animals. Romanes 
 distinguishes two phases : that in which a present sensation is 
 felt as analogous to a sensation already felt, and that in which, 
 on the contrary, a present sensation is perceived to differ from 
 a past sensation. He adds : There is not, in these cases, a con- 
 scious comparison between the two sensations ; there is not even 
 an act of ideation : but the past sensation has left its trace in 
 the nervous tissue in such a way that when it is presented anew 
 it appears in the consciousness as being a sensation that is not 
 unknown, but familiar ; or if it is replaced by a different sensa- 
 tion, the latter appears in consciousness as being an unknown 
 sensation, unfamiliar. 
 
 f The same fact is observed even in the lower animals. 
 Reamur (Entomologie, vol. i, p. 391) says that larva?, having 
 lived some time on one plant, would rather die than change 
 their food and live on another plant, which, however, they 
 would have accepted if they had been accustomed to it from 
 the beginning. 
 
INTELLECTUAL EVOLUTION. 227 
 
 In the first stages of the evolution of the mem- 
 ory there are only sensations which are renewed, 
 and which, by a mysterious power or faculty, 
 recognise themselves, so to speak, or, if they are 
 different, distinguish themselves and perceive 
 their own differences. There can be as yet no 
 question of appealing to the intervention of some 
 mental power distinct from sensations, which 
 would appreciate their difference or their resem- 
 blance as an independent witness. This mental 
 power is not yet formed, nor, in consequence, is 
 there yet a real memory awake in the interval of 
 sensations and in their absence, tending, through 
 the association of ideas, to unite and call up 
 again, one after the other, the remembrances 
 whose relations it has appreciated. As Romanes 
 has very aptly expressed it, there is then no 
 longer simply the memory of a past sensation 
 (which sleeps until the moment when it is awak- 
 ened by another sensation resembling it, or dif- 
 fering from it), but there is the memory of two 
 things at least, and the memory of a relation pre- 
 viously found between them. But in order to 
 arrive at that point, an essential condition is re- 
 quired in addition to the natural progress of 
 intelligence, of what English psychologists call 
 ideation ; it is the possession of language. If 
 words, indeed, are necessary to the formation of 
 more or less clear general ideas, they are indis- 
 pensable also in fixing the remembrance of the 
 , particular perceptions themselves, and in causing 
 them to remain. And to all the reasons that we 
 have given to explain the weakness, the uncer- 
 16 
 
228 ™e development of the child. 
 
 tain state of the memory during the first months, 
 we must add, as one of the most important, the 
 absence of language. 
 
 II. 
 
 Thus far we have described only the prepara- 
 tory period of mnemonic development, a period 
 of gropings, of weakness, and, so to speak, sudden 
 swoonings, during which the memory seems to 
 stumble at every step, working only from day to 
 day, incapable as yet of keeping a firm and even 
 gait, and passing through moments of torpor ; 
 for instance, when the child who has happened 
 to pronounce the eagerly watched for syllable pa 
 does not find it again for several months, and 
 seems to have forgotten it. 
 
 Moreover, let us not regard these first periods 
 of the development of memory as unimportant 
 to its future. The faculty of recognising persons 
 and things is in itself of some importance.* Lan- 
 guage itself, a condition of subsequent positive 
 development, is acquired only by the aid of the 
 nascent memory of the child. 
 
 It is true, nevertheless, that the period of the 
 memory proper does not begin until the child can 
 talk. Then, indeed, the child does not acquire 
 merely a minimum of trifling and necessary 
 knowledge through the senses ; he can learn and 
 
 * “ Before he is two years of age the child has very precise 
 remembrance of things familiar from his point of view — of whip- 
 pings, sweetmeats, falls, a kitten, a bowwow, a hobby-horse, a toy, 
 caresses, kisses, etc.’’ (Nicolay, Lcs enfants mal eleves, p. 308.) 
 
IXTELLRCTUAL EVOLUTION. 
 
 229 
 
 retain what is told him, can interest himself in 
 stories, can acquire finally ideas that are stran- 
 gers to his experience. 
 
 It is almost commonplace to extol the merits 
 of the child^s memory, and especially its marvel- 
 lous facility of acquisition. Observe the child 
 attentively, and you will discover in him a power 
 of absorption and assimilation that is almost 
 prodigious, and is found at no other age. The 
 child's mind is like a sponge, always thirsty." * 
 It is easy to understand why this is so. First, 
 there are physiological reasons for this extreme 
 faculty of absorption, and the state of the brain 
 should be mentioned as the first. Luys says: 
 In young children tlie cerebral cells are flexible 
 and pliant." Besides, the cerebral matter is oc- 
 cupied perpetually with the work of organic de- 
 velopment ; new elements are continually being 
 added to the old." Later, the cerebral matter 
 will have less flexibility, less plasticity ; a period 
 of fatigue and of saturation will come. The phys- 
 ical structure of the brain will be determined; 
 new divisions will no longer be opened. We see, 
 then, what favourable conditions the cerebral or- 
 ganism offers in childhood for the development 
 of memory. It is the period when, in its fresh- 
 ness, in its vitality, the brain most resembles a 
 sensitive photographic plate, receiving and stor- 
 ing up the slightest shades of objects ; it is also 
 the moment when, sb to speak, the house is not 
 yet finished, and new stories are being placed one 
 
 * G. Droz, L’Enfant. 
 
230 the development of the child. 
 
 above the other, when, in consequence, there is 
 room for ceaseless new acquisitions. 
 
 But the psychological reasons are quite as 
 clear as the physiological reasons. What im- 
 pedes the work of storing up remembrances at a 
 more advanced age is, first, that the personal re- 
 flection, inner preoccupations, and also the pas- 
 sions, turn us aside from the observation of things 
 as they are. The mature man, or even the youth, 
 centred as he is in himself, finding in his own 
 thought sufficient food for his intellectual life, 
 has not his eyes open on the world, so to speak, 
 in the same degree as the child. On the other 
 hand, being already overburdened and encum- 
 bered with remembrances, the adult memory is 
 less supple, less active in its motions. The paths 
 of access are obstructed. The place is taken, so 
 to speak, and a new remembrance, to be fixed in 
 the mind, often has to take the place of an old 
 one. If it is true that there is a limit to the pos- 
 sible acquisitions of memory, it is natural that 
 the acquisitions should be easiest at the age when 
 the mind is furthest from this limit. In the adult 
 a new acquisition often displaces prejudices, pre- 
 conceived beliefs. We give only a distracted at- 
 tention to ideas that are presented to us for the 
 first time ; and even a sort of instinctive repug- 
 nance keeps us at a distance from them. We are 
 far from that state of naive candour of the mind 
 which accepts all, even becomes enamoured of all. 
 Doubtless one has more power of attention at fif- 
 teen than at ten, more at ten than at four or five ; 
 so the progress of age improves and fortifies one 
 
INTELLECTUAL EVOLUTION. 
 
 231 
 
 of tlio conditions of the acquisition of remem- 
 brances. But we must not forget that the defects 
 of the child^s attention are compensated for by 
 valuable qualities; his attention does not last 
 long, it is true, but it is always ready, always in 
 motion ; a searcher and f erreter, it is always on 
 the watch for new impressions. 
 
 Under these conditions, it is not surprising 
 that the child, who sees all, who hears all, 
 whose curiosity grasps all the details of things, 
 should soon acquire a great many remembrances. 
 George, at the age of four and a half, told me 
 what he had seen several months before in a 
 picture of skating; nothing escaped him, not 
 even a little dog which was seen on the ice ; he 
 knew the number of ladies, the number of gentle- 
 men in the sleighs. Hence the sometimes un- 
 bearable babbling of the child, who does not 
 spare you any of the trifles, who notes all and 
 tells all, the insignificant and secondary as well 
 as the important. And if it is true, as Ribot 
 claims, that forgetfulness is one of the conditions 
 of memory, whose exercise would be impossible 
 if, in order to reach a remote remembrance, it 
 were necessary to follow the entire series of terms 
 that separate us from it, this condition is lacking 
 at least in the memory of the child, who has 
 learned little as yet and can forget nothing. 
 
 At least the child forgets nothing of what he 
 has recently learned’ nor, above all, of what has 
 affected him keenly. Memory, like attention, 
 like imagination, and the different faculties or 
 forms of the intelligence, depends in part upon 
 
232 the development of the child. 
 
 the sensibility. And this explains why the recol- 
 lections of childhood (those that date from the 
 fourth or fifth year) are so remarkably tenacious, 
 and remain with us all our lives. Doubtless 
 they have this advantage over later remem- 
 brances — namely, that they came first. By the 
 right of the first occupant, a remembrance ac- 
 quired in the first years has less difficulty in fix- 
 ing itself forever in the mind. But the particular 
 emotion which moves the child when his im- 
 pressions are new has much to do with the dura- 
 tion of his first remembrances. And here we 
 have the explanation of the charm which the 
 remembrance of the events and sensations of 
 our first years has for us when we have reached 
 middle age, and the shadows of the night of ap- 
 proaching old age are closing in around us — for 
 instance, a bit of song that our mothers used to 
 hum, whose refrain still lingers in our ears, or a 
 bit of landscape of our native country lighted 
 up by the clear sun that dazzled our childish 
 eyes. 
 
 Nothing demonstrates the solidity, the per- 
 sistent vitality of the child’s recollections, more 
 clearly than the study of mental diseases, of mor- 
 bid amnesia. It has been established by repeated 
 observations that in the abnormal states which 
 cause a gradual destruction of memory, the rec- 
 ollections of childhood are the last to disappear. 
 They constitute a first layer, resisting and tena- 
 cious, which the disease does not break through 
 until the very last. Luys says that memory, in 
 its decay, loses its remembrances in the exact 
 
INTELLECTUAL EVOLUTION. 
 
 233 
 
 chronological order in which it has accumulated 
 them. 
 
 But in the normal life of the man healthy in 
 body and in mind, the remembrances of child- 
 hood, if not the only ones to last, are nevertheless 
 most prompt in reviving themselves. As I ap- 
 proach old age,^^ said Rousseau, I feel that my 
 recollections of childhood are renewed, while the 
 others escape me.'’^ To be sure, imagination plays 
 a part in the complacent glance which the old 
 man casts upon his past, and with imagination a 
 certain egoism also, a personal tenderness for the 
 age when he was young and strong. It is true 
 that the remembrances recalled by celebrated 
 writers are not all exact and faithful. They yield 
 in these recitals to the desire to put themselves 
 forward, to pass for little prodigies, to attribute to 
 their childhood the ideas and feelings of a grown 
 person. They yield thus, very naively, to the 
 natural tendency of the imagination to embellish 
 and transform everything that is at a distance. 
 
 Every one has noticed,^^ says Doudan, that the 
 recollections of childhood and of youth take on, 
 little by little, as life advances, the character of 
 the ideal. . . . Our impressions at that time were 
 extremely vivid, and their object often trifles, 
 but in the distant perspective in which life leads 
 us, in going back to the time that has fled, we ex- 
 aggerate all those objects according to the im- 
 pressions that we have remembered. We make 
 wonderful spectacles of those vanished days, so 
 that they may correspond to the intensity of the 
 feelings which moved us then. In the spring- 
 
234 the development op the child. 
 
 time of life the brilliance of the sun and of Na- 
 ture excited us to the point of mad joy, and in 
 returning to those days in thought we see a 
 higher Nature under a brighter sky than our 
 eyes have ever beheld.'’^ * We have all felt these 
 illusions of memory, which at a distance idealize 
 and metamorphose everything. The people we 
 knew in our childhood appear to us as shadows ; 
 a sort of confused vapour envelops their outlines. 
 
 It seems, however, that by an effort of reflec- 
 tion, on rummaging in the recollections of the 
 fourth or fifth year, one may find something be- 
 sides vague impressions, and recall very precise 
 and clear circumstances. If the memory is 
 strongest in the morning, or after meals (moder- 
 ate meals, to be sure), when the physical forces 
 have been renewed, refreshed, whether by sleep 
 or by alimentation, it is natural that in the 
 morning of life, when the soul awakens for the 
 first time in all its youth and freshness, the fac- 
 ulty of memory should be developed also with 
 extraordinary power. We do not subscribe to 
 the opinions of those who say, with Egger, that 
 the child retains only impressions and not pre- 
 cise observations.''^ t Experience proves, on the 
 contrary, that notation, properly speaking — that 
 is to say, the exact perception of the sensible char- 
 acteristics of things or of their signs — reaches 
 a high degree of development in the child. At 
 the age of four George had remarkable facility 
 
 * Pensces et fragments, Paris, 1881, p. 58. 
 t Egger, op, cit., p, 3G. 
 
I NT K I . LK( U A L K VOL U T ION. 
 
 L>35 
 
 in counting; ho could count up to a tliousand 
 and oven beyond without the slightest hesitation. 
 Egger himself says that Emile at five and a half 
 was more interested in numbers than in anything 
 else, and that he learned them more quickly. 
 We may mention, also, the remarkable facility 
 with which the child learns the letters of the 
 alphabet. Finally, the rapid acquisition of words 
 is undeniable proof that the child's memory is 
 qualified to receive more than mere impressions. 
 
 To tell the truth, the capital fault of the child's 
 memory is that it is literal and mechanical.* It 
 is only the exact reproduction of images formed 
 by the senses, the representation of the sensible 
 form of realities. It is, above all, verbal. The 
 memory of words, which is so important at every 
 period of life, reigns as sovereign in the child. 
 To demand that he should recall impressions " 
 would be granting him a depth of inner feeling 
 that he does not possess ; nor is he capable of 
 remembering abstract and general ideas which 
 he does not understand, and of which he retains 
 only the verbal expression. This explains the 
 impatience that he shows if one changes a single 
 word in a story with which he is very familiar, 
 
 * This passion for literal exactness, which makes a sort of 
 stereotype plate of memory, exists only in the beginning. To- 
 ward the fifth or sixth year, on the contrary, the child endowed 
 with imagination likes to constitute himself a partner with the 
 person telling him stories* and joins in the narration by making 
 corrections and additions. Egger has spoken of this (p. 89), 
 and he sees in this fact an explanation of the origin of legends, 
 each new narrator modifying the primitive text, and uncon- 
 sciously substituting fictions for realities. 
 
236 the development of the child. 
 
 and which is being told him, perhaps, for the 
 tenth time. He stops the narrator at the slight- 
 est modification of a text which is, as it were, 
 sacred to him; at the slightest interpolation he 
 cries, No ! not that ! and demands the original 
 text. The story of Jonah was being told Boulot : 
 
 Jonah was a good man Oh, no!"^ said 
 
 Boulot, it always begins with ^ Once upon a 
 time.^ 
 
 The child^s memory has all the imperfections 
 implied by weakness of judgment and of reason- 
 ing, or at least by the predominance of the auto- 
 matic over the reflective faculties. It resembles 
 in more than one respect the memory of imbe- 
 ciles, which sometimes survives the ruin of all 
 the other faculties of the mind. The memory 
 of imbeciles,^^ says Dr. Sollier, is sometimes 
 greatly developed ; but on careful observation 
 one finds that they always tell things in the order 
 in which they have learned them, and that they 
 do not understand them. The slightest inversion, 
 the least interruption, stops them. It is pure 
 automatism. No matter how many times you 
 make them go over it, they tell it in just the 
 same way ; for instance, if an imbecile has 
 learned the days of the week beginning with 
 Thursday, and you ask him to enumerate them, 
 beginning with Monday, he may be utterly un- 
 able to do iV^* 
 
 Of all the intellectual faculties or functions, 
 memory depends most on the organism, and that 
 
 * Dr. P. Sollier, op , cit .^ p. 325. 
 
INTELLECTUAL EVOLUTION. 
 
 237 
 
 is why it presents so many differences and so 
 great variations in different individuals, whether 
 in respect to its general strength or its special 
 aptitudes. Moreover, it is not in man alone that 
 it presents striking inequalities. Sir John Lub- 
 bock tells what he has seen in the case of bees : 
 Among the bees that left the hive by the little 
 postern gate, some learned in a few lessons to find 
 it again; others had great trouble in doing so. 
 There was one even that I tried in vain to induce 
 to enter at different times during the ten days 
 that it came to the honey; it could never find 
 the opening.'’^ * 
 
 In the same way, what diversity of natural 
 disposition between one child and another, wheth- 
 er in facility in learning or in tenacity of mem- 
 ory ! So, too, what inequalities in the different 
 forms of memory even in the same child ! Mem- 
 ory is not an indivisible faculty ; it includes dis- 
 tinct powers which correspond either to each one 
 of the five senses or to the different operations of 
 the mind. There are even more memories than 
 senses, for one can remember forms with preci- 
 sion, and still be little sensitive to colours. 
 
 But, although memory varies in its forms and 
 in the degrees of its power, it is nevertheless in 
 different proportions common to all intelligences. 
 It is really the first condition of all work of com- 
 prehension, of all development of the mind. Suc- 
 cessive perceptions acquire value only when mem- 
 ory preserves them, and when, accordingly, it 
 
 * Cited by Romanes in his Animal Intelligence. 
 
238 the development of the child. 
 
 renders possible the comparison between them 
 and the new perceptions that follow them. It is a 
 question of determining whether the perception — 
 the primary and fundamental fact — constitutes as 
 yet an intelligent act, in the highest sense of the 
 word. We are disposed to incline toward the 
 negative. Perception, forced upon the mind by 
 the external medium, although conscious, does 
 not show the activity of the brain. It is another 
 matter when, by means of memory, a comparison 
 can be made between a past and a present per- 
 ception. In that case, from the joining of two 
 psychic facts, each one of which, if alone, would 
 have no importance in the evolution of the mind, 
 springs the first intellectual act, properly speak- 
 ing, the judgment by comparison, the first link 
 of the chain, which, being continually increased, 
 will form the human mind. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE DIFFERENT FORMS OF IMAGINATION. 
 
 Perception, memory, imagination. — Representative and active 
 imagination. — Characteristics of the image. — Representative 
 imagination not absolutely passive. — Difficulty in appreciat- 
 ing the first traces of imagination in the little child. — 
 Dreams. — Imagination in the interpretation of drawings. — 
 Imagination, when the child begins to talk, or at least to 
 understand the language of others. — Stories. — How the child 
 becomes narrator in turn. — Inventive imagination. — Anal- 
 ogy between the child’s mental state and the mythological 
 period of primitive peoples. — The child animates, personifies 
 inanimate things. — Different examples of this tendency. — 
 The child is not completely deceived by his own inventions. 
 — His imaginative inventions are often only play. — The 
 child’s poetic instinct shows itself under the dramatic form. 
 — The inventive imagination of the child does not require 
 many material instruments, but sometimes does without 
 them entirely. — The aesthetical sense. It does not exist in 
 the child. — Why is the child’s imagination disposed to en- 
 large the proportions of things ? — Causes of the activity of 
 imagination in childhood. 
 
 Perception, memory, imagination are three 
 distinct terms, three successive and correlative 
 stages of intellecthal development. The child 
 remembers only what he perceives, and it must 
 necessarily follow that the faculties of perception 
 have acquired a certain force before the faculties 
 
 239 
 
240 the development of the child. 
 
 of memory can be really exercised. Imagination, 
 on its side, presupposes memory ; it is from dis- 
 tinct and precise remembrances that the images 
 burst forth. In imagination itself, moreover, we 
 must notice two consecutive and closely con- 
 nected steps : First, the pure and simple represen- 
 tation of things perceived and recalled ; then the 
 construction, more or less original, of new images 
 which have no exact correspondence in reality. 
 And in order that the mind should accomplish 
 this work of combination, of invention, in a word, 
 of active imagination, it is evidently necessary 
 that it should be able to dispose of a large num- 
 ber of sensible representations. 
 
 The child sees snow the first winter of his life. 
 He certainly does not think of it after it has dis- 
 appeared. But when winter returns, and with it 
 the snow, he recognises the white heaps which 
 meet his gaze for the second time ; memory ap- 
 pears, and if he already knows the sense of the 
 word snow,^'’ he will remember every time that 
 it is pronounced in his presence that he has seen 
 snow in the garden, in the street, in the fields. 
 And from these repeated recallings of the same 
 remembrance will come, little by little, the image 
 of snow, the cold, white mass that covers the 
 earth like a carpet. The child, on the other 
 hand, has seen mountains ; he retains the remem- 
 brance, the image of them ; and when, later, the 
 adventures of this or that sailor at the north 
 pole are told him, when he hears of mountains 
 of snow, the distinct representations, the differ- 
 ent images already formed in his mind will bo 
 
THE DIFFERENT FORMS OF IMAGINATION. 241 
 
 joined and combined to form by a first effort of 
 inventive imagination an approximately adequate 
 conception of those piles of frozen snow of the 
 polar regions which he has never seen and prob- 
 ably never will see. And if we go a little further 
 still there will come a moment when the child 
 will perform the entire act of creative imagina- 
 tion, when he will not only represent to himself 
 a mountain of snow, a glacier, but, in combin- 
 ing with this isolated representation others ac- 
 quired from his own experience (the cold that 
 he has felt, the falls he has had in his coasting), 
 will picture to himself in his day dreams the 
 suffering undergone, the dangers run by the sail- 
 ors roving in the lonely polar regions. 
 
 In other words, if memory results from the 
 renewing of perceptions, from the renewing of 
 remembrances comes, in its turn, the image. 
 Imagination is not distinguished from memory 
 simply by the fact that the image is more dis- 
 tinct than the remembrance, more representative 
 of the sensible qualities of reality — more pictur- 
 esque, in a word. It has above all this charac- 
 teristic — namely, that it constitutes a purely 
 mental act, independent of objects, an ideal draw- 
 ing, an inner representation of things seen or 
 felt, a conception, finally, tending to reproduce 
 itself by the forces of the mind alone. In the 
 little child, as we have seen, memory does not act 
 except when in the presence of facts that have 
 been perceived before and reappear ; the remem- 
 brance is not, as it will be later, a mental repro- 
 duction which the mind carries on even in tho 
 
242 the development of the citild. 
 
 absence of objects. A certain time is necessary 
 in order that the absolutely subjective represen- 
 tation may be separated, detached, so to speak, 
 from these phenomena of memory, which are re- 
 newed every time an object or a person reappears 
 before the child, and that it may be established 
 in the mind and become an image; the image, 
 which is, as it were, one of the elements of that 
 inner museum which every man of imagination 
 carries within him, which he can survey even 
 when closing his eyes, since he carries it in his 
 eyes,^^ in oculis fert, as the Latins said when they 
 meant to express the idea of thinking of a loved 
 one. 
 
 Representative imagination is not then an ab- 
 solutely passive phenomenon. To liken images 
 to footprints made in the shifting sands, or to 
 the characters stamped upon a sheet of paper by 
 a printing press, is simply to draw a comparison 
 between analogous facts — complete assimilation 
 would be absolutely erroneous. Even in the 
 phenomena in which it seems to receive passive- 
 ly, as soft wax would do, the images coming 
 from without, the active soul already shows itself. 
 An engraving is one thing, an impression is quite 
 another thing, and the image, in its turn, sums 
 up and condenses a large number of impres- 
 sions. It is wrong, then, to represent imagina- 
 tion and abstraction as two opposed rival powers. 
 The truth is, that in imagination there is a begin- 
 ning of abstraction ; it is not the whole object 
 that passes into the image, for the image is but 
 an abridgment, an abstraction, in a way, of 
 
THE DIFFERENT FORMS OF IMAGINATION. 243 
 
 different successive perceptions, since the mind 
 retains only a certain number of qualities which 
 are common to all these perceptions.* There is 
 not a single act of reproductive imagination 
 which is an exact reproduction and nothing 
 more; we always modify something, either by 
 omission or by addition, in the images of things ; 
 and invention, personal construction, appears 
 even in the first attempts of representative im- 
 agination, without the intervention of the will 
 in these different modifications. 
 
 These considerations lead us to conclude that 
 even if imagination is strong in the child, as the 
 whole world agrees in saying, it is not, even in 
 its simplest form, as precocious as one would be 
 tempted to believe. If it were possible to open 
 the brain of a child five or six months old, and 
 to read there what its consciousness is still 
 powerless to decipher, we believe that these 
 photographs would not be found there. Before 
 imagination, even exclusively representative im- 
 agination, can take its flight, the inner forces of 
 the mind, or, to translate the same idea into 
 
 * Imagination is different from memory. I have in my 
 mind the idea of a mountain which I perceive every day from 
 my window, when I spend the summer in the Pyrenees — a pure 
 phenomenon of memory. All the details are stored up in my 
 consciousness ; the tall green trees, the meadows lighted up by 
 the rising sun, the form and outlines of the peaks ... To 
 imagine a mountain is quite another thing; it is to represent to 
 one’s self an ideal mountain, by a fusing of remembrances, 
 not ideal in the sense of more beautiful than reality, but be- 
 cause it is an idea distinct from the perceptions which have 
 prepared it. 
 
 ir 
 
244 the development of the child. 
 
 physiological language, the cerebral centres must 
 have attained a degree of development which 
 the child at that age is far from having reached. 
 Even if imagination is but the copy, a sort of trac- 
 ing of sensible objects, still that transmutation 
 which creates a mental world, an ideal world, by 
 the side of the real world, is not the work of a 
 day. 
 
 Let us not seek, therefore, examples of im- 
 aginative power in the very young child. As 
 long as he does not speak, it is very difficult to 
 penetrate into his consciousness, still mute, to 
 seize upon the germs of imagination. The new- 
 born child has the means of making us see that 
 he perceives, that he recalls ; but at just what 
 point these perceptions and these remembrances 
 culminate in a veritable work of imagination is 
 what we can hardly divine. 
 
 Perhaps the child will give us a better 
 glimpse of the activity of the budding imagina- 
 tion when he is asleep, when dreams appear. In 
 spite of the obscurities of the subject there seems 
 to be little doubt that the child dreams at a 
 very early age ; * it is impossible to prove it, 
 however. Egger has rightly said that since the 
 child dreams before he has the power to testify 
 to it in words, by recounting his dreams to us we 
 can never tell at what moment the phenomenon 
 is produced for the first time.f In default of 
 testimony from the child himself, we must con- 
 
 * In the fourth month, when fast asleep, Tiedemann’s son 
 made the motions of sucking, 
 f Egger, op. cit., p. 86. 
 
THE DIFFERENT FORMS OF IMAGINATION, 245 
 
 tent ourselves with appearances, with external 
 signs, which betray the inner agitations of the 
 mind of the sleeping child. Here is an in- 
 stance reported by Egger: ^^From the second 
 ’ year I have seen a child wake suddenly with 
 cries, caused doubtless by some painful sight; 
 he had had bad dreams.^^ So a child nine 
 months old, when fast asleep on his mother’s 
 knee, after having nursed, began -to repeat the 
 motions, the sudden starts which he had per- 
 formed a few moments before ; he was evidently 
 dreaming — dreaming that he was nursing or that 
 he was going to nurse. Later, the child will 
 dream of his plays; he will laugh or smile in 
 his sleep. Or he will groan ; he will be a prey to 
 some imaginary terror. Moreover, we may con- 
 clude, a priori, by analogy with what takes place 
 in animals, that the little child can dream, Lu- 
 cretius tells us that dogs dream : 
 
 So, too, the hound, amid his soft repose, 
 
 Oft starts abrupt, and howls and snuffs the breeze, 
 
 With ceaseless nostrils, as though full at hand 
 He tracked the antlered trembler. * 
 
 Tiedemann, however, is of the opposite opin- 
 ion. He says that little children make motions 
 and noises in their sleep as though they were 
 
 * De Natura Rerum, Book lY. With respect to animals mod- 
 ern observers are all agreed that they dream. See Romanes’s 
 Evolution, etc., p. 141. Not only the dog but the horse also 
 dreams, as is shown by his shivering and trembling in his sleep. 
 “ The dreams in the case of a racehorse probably are associated 
 with some imaginary race, as those of the hunting dog with 
 pursuit and imaginary hunts.” 
 
246 the development op the child. 
 
 dreaming, although they probably do not dream ; 
 they move simply because of the irritability of 
 the body. Nurses and mothers ordinarily attrib- 
 ute these motions to dreams ; but, according to 
 Egger, they do not distinguish what is mechan- 
 ical from what is the action of the soul ; . they 
 confound purely organic motions with psychic 
 phenomena, which are habitually produced only 
 in the adult. 
 
 Some weight must be given to the wise obser- 
 vations of Tiedemann, and there is no necessity 
 for exaggerating the matter by seeing proofs of 
 memory or of imagination in all the motions of the 
 sleeping child. The confused sensations which 
 sleep does not put a stop to altogether — for in- 
 stance, the uneasiness caused by an uncomfort- 
 able position or by pain — may often explain these 
 appearances. 
 
 But let us return to the waking life. It would 
 be an exaggeration to hold that the child shows 
 no signs of imagination until he begins to speak. 
 When he cries for his mother or his nurse, who 
 has just left him, is it not probable that already 
 he has in a certain measure the power of pic- 
 turing absent ones to himself ? When he shows 
 impatience to go out as soon as he sees his nurse 
 making preparations for a walk, is it not prob- 
 able that he is excited by the vague image of 
 former airings and of the pleasure he has found 
 in them ? 
 
 It is a beginning of imagination when the 
 child recognises objects in a drawing or painting, 
 and there is no doubt that the child is capa- 
 
THE DIFFERENT FORMS OF IMAGINATION. 247 
 
 ble of interpreting and appreciating the images 
 shown him in a book. Mme. Necker de Saussure 
 says: have seen a child eleven months old 
 
 recognise a very small dog in an engraving. All 
 children amuse themselves with pictures after 
 the age of one year."’"’^* It is to be remarked, 
 moreover, that the presentation of pictures drawn 
 on paper or on linen aids greatly in the develop- 
 ment of children's imagination. An image traced 
 by the designer's pencil or brush is indeed a re- 
 production of reality on a smaller scale ; conse- 
 quently, it favours the analogous work which the 
 mind is obliged to do in passing from the percep- 
 tion of real objects to the conception of the men- 
 tal image. 
 
 But it is when the child begins to speak, when 
 he understands the sense of words, that the activ- 
 ity of his imagination finally shows itself by un- 
 mistakable signs. It shows itself, for instance, in 
 his interest in the stories told him. The pleasure 
 which the recital of the simplest narration gives 
 children results from the vividness of the repre- 
 sentation in their minds. The pictures called forth 
 within them are perhaps more brilliant, more 
 highly coloured than the real objects. The recital 
 has the effect of a magic lantern upon them.^^f 
 This is perhaps straining a point. We hesitate to 
 believe that the representative imagination of the 
 
 * Mme. Necker de Saussnre, op. cit., Book III, chap. v. We 
 have spoken of the difficulty experienced by Cheselden’s blind 
 man, two months after the operation, in believing that pictures 
 represented real objects. 
 
 t Mme. Necker de Saussure, op, cit., Book III, chap. v. 
 
248 the development of the child. 
 
 child possesses as yet that colouring power, that 
 intensity of mental vision which it acquires only 
 in the case of the painter and of the poet. An 
 important place must be given to the satisfaction 
 of curiosity, the charm of the unknown, in the 
 fascination which stories have for the child^s at- 
 tention. Since in our mature years we still find 
 such keen enjoyment in penetrating ideas that 
 are revealed to our minds for the first time, how 
 shall we measure the degree of pleasure which an 
 amusing tale, well told, would afford the child 
 for whom everything is new ? Notice (and this 
 proves the relative weakness of the imagination, 
 or at least shows its limited character) that the 
 child likes above all the stories in which he fig- 
 ures himself, which recall to him his personal 
 impressions and the incidents of his own life. 
 Notice, too, that when a story which he already 
 knows is told him again, even for the tenth 
 time, he demands the exact wording to which he 
 is accustomed, as though his imagination, still 
 frail and weak, had to grasp it several times in 
 order, even in the simplest tales quite within his 
 range, to appreciate the sense of that which he 
 makes people repeat to him with an insatiable 
 avidity. 
 
 The representative imagination is not the only 
 source of supply for the intellectual work which 
 is accomplished in the child’s mind when he is, 
 as it were, hanging upon the lips of a narrator. 
 A little effort of constructive imagination is ne- 
 cessary for him to understand, even in the most 
 familiar tales, the expressions that do not corre- 
 
THE DIFFERENT FORMS OF IMAGINATION. 249 
 
 spond exactly with his experience : for instance, 
 the desert or the ocean. The epithets that accom- 
 pany these words, the definitions which will be 
 given him, for instance, The desert is a flat 
 country, bare and sandy ; the ocean is a vast ex- 
 tent of water "" ; all that, to be understood, presup- 
 poses that the child is capable of combining, of 
 associating the different particular images which 
 each one of these terms calls up, so as to evolve 
 a more or less perfect and approximate concep- 
 tion of the desert or of the ocean which he has 
 never seen. 
 
 The exercise of the imagination is, so to speak, 
 suggested by an outward excitation in the case 
 of hearing a story, as later in the child’s personal 
 reading. But imagination may act of its own ac- 
 cord, may set itself going, so to speak, at a very 
 early age. When the child becomes narrator, in 
 his turn, we feel from the exactness of his de- 
 scriptions and the precision of the details which 
 he accumulates, that he sees mentally all that he 
 describes. It is evident that the child two or 
 three years old thinks, above all, in images. The 
 power of abstract reflection which allows the 
 adult to use words as he would algebraic signs, 
 without representing to himself the thing signi- 
 fied, is unknown to the child. Every word that 
 he hears pronounced or pronounces himself gives 
 rise to a whole series of images. And when by 
 prolonged habit he has trained his imagination 
 in the recollection of scenes that he has wit- 
 nessed or that have been described to him, he 
 becomes capable of inventing original ones him- 
 
250 the development of the child. 
 
 self. The child three or four years old/^ says 
 Sully, who has heard a great many tales will 
 make new ones out of them.'’^ The same author 
 tells of a little girl, five years and nine months 
 old, who found a stone with a hole through it ; 
 whereupon she imagined a whole fairy tale : the 
 stone was a wonder stone ; the hole represented 
 beautiful apartments in which fairies lived.* 
 
 It is thus step by step that the imagination 
 becomes inventive, aided by the imitation of the 
 inventions of others. Here, as in the case of all 
 the other faculties, there is not complete spon- 
 taneity, although there is perhaps more here than 
 elsewhere. The imaginative faculties respond 
 better than do the others to the nature of a being 
 who is still destitute of reason and of experience. 
 We have sometimes been startled at the facility 
 with which one can make a child wander from 
 his subject if his imagination be stimulated and 
 fed ever so little, led on from one dream to an- 
 other. But the child, even when left to himself, 
 gives himself up to incoherent and strange con- 
 ceptions. Sully tells of a child, three years old, 
 who continually wished that he might live in the 
 
 * Compare Egger, op, cit.^ p. 58 : “ At four years Felix 
 loves to have little stories told him, which he certainly does 
 not understand very well; he follows them attentively and 
 asks to have them repeated. His mind takes hold of certain 
 words or phrases, and that is enough to attach his curiosity to 
 the whole with a sort of passion. He even tries to imitate these 
 little narrations. But the recitals he gives us are disconnected, 
 hardly intelligible; his childish narrations are nothing more 
 than an amusing verbiage for his vanity which believes that it 
 is making him like grown people. 
 
THE DIFFERENT FORMS OF IMAGINATION. 251 
 
 water as fishes do, or that he might shine in the 
 heavens like a star. 
 
 Taine has rightly said : The mental state of 
 
 little children is in many respects that of primi- 
 tive peoples in the mythological and poetic pe- 
 riod.^^ * If we should let the child alone, and if 
 education did not come in to put reason into his 
 fancies, we should see him creating a new and 
 complete mythology. We often, doubtless, help 
 him out in his superstitions ; we suggest his er- 
 rors to him when we speak to him of little Jesus, 
 when we tell him the story of the black bogy. 
 But the perfect good faith, the candour, the touch- 
 ing innocence which he displays in his absolute 
 adherence to these fables, is the proof that he 
 has a natural disposition to live in the marvel- 
 lous. There can be no doubt that the child spon- 
 taneously gives full scope to this mythological 
 tendency which is one of the primitive instincts 
 of human nature. He invests inanimate objects 
 with life and feeling ; he personifies them ; he 
 deifies them sometimes, just as he will humanize 
 animals and be a prey to La Fontaine^s fictions. 
 
 Let us cite a few facts in this connection. A 
 little girl three years old observed by Taine, to 
 whom it was said that the moon had gone to 
 bed, asked, Where then is the moon^s nurse 
 Here, to be sure, the child’s imagination simply 
 obeyed the suggestion already contained in the 
 figurative language that had been used in speak- 
 ing to her. But other observations are more con- 
 
 * Taine, Revue philosophique, 1876, Book I, p. 14. 
 
252 the development op the child. 
 
 vincing. Tiedemann relates that his son^ on look- 
 ing for a rainbow in the clouds and not finding 
 it (he had seen one a few days before), said : 
 ^^The rainbow is asleep now.'’' Insufficiency of 
 language, it will be said, and pure metaphor! 
 We believe that there is something more — a sort 
 of assimilation. And the same child, not seeing 
 the sun on the horizon, said : The sun has gone 
 
 to bed ; to-morrow he will get up ; he will eat a 
 piece of bread and butter ! " 
 
 The child enters into conversation with his 
 playthings of his own accord. The doll is a real 
 living being to him. In the same way he says, 
 ^^My carriage will not walk; it is naughty!" 
 And when one speaks to him of a familiar ani- 
 mal or of a familiar object, he will say, What 
 does the rabbit say ? What does the big tree 
 say ? " 
 
 If a child twelve years old, brought up accord- 
 ing to the laws of Nature and on the pattern of 
 Rousseau's Emile, could be found, as Sentenis re- 
 lates,* on his knees in the garden, adoring the 
 sun, is it not evident a fortiori that the very 
 young child whose imagination is not yet con- 
 trolled by the severities of experience would 
 naturally yield to analogous suggestions, would 
 abandon himself to mythological conceptions and 
 conceive of the things of Nature as being in his 
 image by a sort of naive anthropomorphism ? 
 
 George Sand says in her M^moires that all 
 
 * See the report of Villemain, under the head of L’Enseigne- 
 ment regulier de la langue maternelle, by P. Girard. 
 
THE DIFFERENT FORMS OF IMAGINATION. 253 
 
 her life as a child was a life of imagination. She 
 cursed the day when doubt first came to her as to 
 the existence of Santa Claus, the mysterious dis- 
 tributor of playthings. She combats the au- 
 sterity of Rousseau and of all who would ex- 
 tinguish the flame of childish imagination by 
 blasts of positive explanations. ^^To take the 
 marvellous out of the child's life/' she says, is 
 to go against the very laws of his nature." The 
 child naturally lives in a medium which is, so to 
 speak, supernatural, where everything within is 
 wonderful, and everything without must seem 
 wonderful to him at first sight. 
 
 Tiedemann has cleverly deduced the reasons 
 which explain the anthropomorphic conceptions 
 of the little child. In the first place," he says, 
 it is a law of his intelligence that he can not 
 picture to himself the unknown except in terms 
 of the known." But the child knows first his 
 own sensations, his emotions, the accidents of his 
 life ; hence a natural disposition to imagine that 
 other beings and even things live, feel, and act 
 in the same conditions as himself, that the moon 
 has a nurse, that the sun breakfasts. Moreover, 
 and this is also an important reason, the child has 
 to believe that things are animate to a certain 
 extent in order to sympathize with them. When 
 the little child Mme. Necker tells us of saw 
 her cup broken and cried, The poor cup that I 
 loved so well," and then broke into tears, it was 
 not a cry analogous to that of the housewife 
 when she loses an object more or less precious 
 to her ; it is partly the illusion of a.sympathetic 
 
254 the development of tee child. 
 
 sensibility animating and personifying every- 
 thing. Savage peoples obey the same imagi- 
 native feeling when they dream of a paradise 
 where there will be room not only for them- 
 selves, but for all the objects they have used 
 during their lives — for their arrows, for their 
 boats. 
 
 If modern positivism were not hemming the 
 child in more and more, the examples of these 
 childish illusions would doubtless be much more 
 numerous, since they are not, as Mme. Necker 
 believed, voluntary illusions, but evidence often 
 a naive and complete error. We can catch pass- 
 ing manifestations of this instinct of the mar- 
 vellous, from which arise the superstitious beliefs 
 of humanity ; and on this point the most refined 
 little Parisian is the equal of the little savage, 
 which proves, among other things, that Nature 
 is stronger than heredity. 
 
 The preceding observations, however, call for 
 some reservations. The nature of the child is 
 not less various than that of the man ; and if, in 
 many cases, the child is a complete dupe to the 
 fictions of his imagination, if he renews the su- 
 perstitions of idolatry and fetishism in his fan- 
 tastical beliefs, it is, for the most part, only a 
 semi-illusion. Like the poet, he delights in his 
 fancies without believing them. The poet, who 
 lives in the world of his creations, does not be- 
 lieve in the reality of his heroes, but he speaks 
 of them as though they were real ; he sees them 
 before him in flesh and blood ; he hears the ac- 
 cents of thej^r words and the sound of their voices. 
 
THE DIFFERENT FORMS OF IMAGINATION. 255 
 
 And without being poets, we all feel the begin- 
 ning of an illusion analogous to this at the the- 
 atre ; we are not really deceived by the events of 
 the drama being played before our eyes, yet we 
 are to a certain extent ; we lend our interest to 
 the characters in the play as though they existed, 
 and yet we know that they do not exist. 
 
 The child of whom it has been said that he is 
 born a poet * often finds himself in the same state 
 of mind. He is himself the fashioner of his illu- 
 sions ; he invents the falsehoods that cha^*m him ; 
 he plays with his fictions, and he makes believe 
 that he is allowing himself to be deceived by 
 them, finding infinite pleasure in this game. 
 
 He knows that he is dreaming, assuredly,^^ says 
 Droz, ^^but he experiences a real happiness in 
 playing this little comedy with himself.'’^ 
 
 There are abundant observations on this 
 point. From the time he was two years old 
 Marcel played Rock-a-bye, baby^^ with every 
 object that came into his hands — with a pencil 
 or a medal. When asked the time, he would put 
 his hand on his heart and answer, Two o^clock,^^ 
 drawing a comparison for fun between the tick- 
 ing of a watch and the beating of his heart. 
 George at the age of four made three balls of 
 lead play the part of people; one was the cook, 
 another the nurse ; the largest one was the mis- 
 
 * “ Observe the child,* ’ says M. G. Droz, “ and you will dis- 
 cover in him a wealth of imagination which delights in prod- 
 igies, and which is found at no other age. Is there not more 
 true poetry in the brains of these little darlings than in twenty 
 epics ? ” 
 
256 the development op the child. 
 
 tress of the house; and he imagined dialogues 
 between these three people. ‘"'Now” says the 
 mistress, will you go and get some water ? 
 So also Tiedemann^s son. On the twenty-ninth 
 of October (he was two years old) he took sev- 
 eral pieces of white cabbage and made them 
 represent different people who were pushing 
 themselves forward and extolling their own 
 merits.'^ 
 
 Espinas has collected the following observa- 
 tions : A child a few months old on being given 
 
 the bottle wishes it to be offered first to a little 
 wooden horse, roughly fashioned with a knife, 
 which he is very fond of. He knows perfectly 
 that the horse does not eat, and that is precisely 
 the cause of the pleasure he derives from this 
 little ceremony. It is a play to him ; a fiction. 
 All children show very early this faculty of be- 
 ing pleased with fictions, as is evidenced by the 
 endless jests of nurses, who hide themselves or the 
 children, in order to find them afterward amid 
 triumphant bursts of laughter. Their readi- 
 ness to enter into games of this sort is always 
 astonishing. I have seen two children just learn- 
 ing to talk, who were seated opposite each other 
 at table, amuse themselves for a quarter of an 
 hour at a time by showing each other crusts of 
 bread and christening them with names of ani- 
 mals, even when there was not the slightest re- 
 semblance between the form of the object and 
 that of the animal mentioned. Each partner in 
 this game considered attentively the object pre- 
 sented by the other, and seemed to take the great- 
 
THE DIFFERENT FORMS OF IMAGINATION. 257 
 
 est pleasure in thus arMtrarily calling up differ- 
 ent images/^ * 
 
 Another example. Guyau says : “ To my child, 
 two and a half years old, every fruit is an apple, 
 every colour that attracts his eyes is red, because 
 red is essentially the showy colour. When he is 
 in his cradle he shows me the middle of the bed 
 and then the edge, and says, ^This is the road 
 and that is the ditch.^ He imagines these things 
 of his own accord, no one ever having suggested 
 such a game to hird. The explanation is simple 
 enough: he is so carried away by superficial 
 analogies that he soon fails to see the differ- 
 ences; I am persuaded that when he goes to 
 sleep he believes himself to be lying in the bed 
 of a white road with ditches on each side of 
 him.^^ t 
 
 It is under the dramatic form that the poetic 
 instinct peculiar to the child^s imagination likes 
 best to show itself. Egger gives a characteris- 
 tic proof of this. child twenty months old 
 
 knows, recognises, and recalls quite well from 
 memory several persons whom he sees frequently 
 in the Luxembourg Garden — a nurse, for in- 
 stance, and the child that she takes care of. One 
 day he left us, pronouncing more or less distinctly 
 the three names, Luxembourg, the nurse, and the 
 Child. He went into the next room, pretended to 
 say ^ How do you do ? ’ to these two people, then 
 came back to tell us with the same simplicity 
 
 * Espinas, Observations, etc., p. 387. 
 t Guyau, Education et heredite, p. 148. 
 
258 the development of the child. 
 
 what he had just been *doing. There was evi- 
 dently nothing in the room to remind him of 
 Luxembourg^ or of the people who frequented it. 
 It was what I shall call an act of dramatic im- 
 agination ; it was a drama in its elementary 
 germ.'’^ * 
 
 The child usually assigns himself the princi- 
 pal role in these imaginary scenes. He pictures 
 himself or pretends to picture himself as a grown 
 person. Little girls take the part of their mam- 
 mas ; little boys play soldier/coachman, and keep 
 up the fiction for some time. Egger tells us that 
 Felix played coachman when he was about four 
 years old. One day while he was engaged in this 
 game Emile came into the house. In announcing 
 his brother, Fdlix did not say, Emile has re- 
 turned,^^ but spoke of him as ^Hhe coachman^s 
 brother. f 
 
 The child usually seems to need a little ex- 
 ternal machinery in order to thus exercise his 
 inventive imagination. He takes some object as 
 a starting point, which the alchemy of imagi- 
 nation^^ immediately transforms and metamor- 
 phoses. Anything will do. He rides horseback 
 on a stick. A stool turned upside down is a boat 
 or a cab ; set upright, it is a horse or a table. J 
 
 * Egger, op. cit., p. 12. f Ibid, p. 55. 
 
 X “ Playthings representing lifelike animals are little aid to, 
 and may even hinder, the play of the child’s imagination. For 
 two entire winters a child left alone in a room every morning 
 amused himself in a marvellous way with chairs. He arranged 
 them in different ways, and they represented to him either a train 
 of boats or of wagons, or a carriage and horses. You should have 
 
THE DIFFERENT FORMS OF IMAGINATION. 259 
 
 A bandbox becomes a house, a cupboard, a char- 
 iot — in short, anything that it pleases the child 
 to imagine it, according to the fancy of the mo- 
 ment.* * 
 
 Sometimes, however, the child does without 
 any material symbol : witness the little girl men- 
 tioned by Egger, who amused herself with an 
 absolutely fanciful companion. When I play 
 with my little Jane,^^ she said, ^^it is all make 
 believe.'" So, too, the child who, according to 
 Mme. Necker, amused himself by feeding imagi- 
 nary birds in an imaginary poultry yard, with 
 imaginary grain, insisted that the door of the 
 room in which he said he kept them should be 
 open, and if, by chance, any one closed it he im- 
 mediately began to cry, saying, People are keep- 
 ing my poor ducks and chickens from going out." 
 
 In all these examples, as we have said, the 
 child makes himself the voluntary accomplice of 
 his imagination ; he plays with it more than he is 
 played upon by it. Unfeigned illusion, however, 
 has some part, too. The proof of this is that the 
 sensibility is really moved. Real tears are shed 
 
 seen the air of seriousness with which, from the top of one of his 
 chairs, he plunged his pole (represented by a cane) into the deep 
 water, or mimicked the locomotive, or lashed his fictitious horses, 
 his armchair representing the coachman’s seat, and two lower 
 chairs the horses. He spent hours in this play every morning. 
 A real carriage drawn by a beautiful pasteboard horse would 
 surely have amused him less than this play with chairs, in which 
 his imagination bore all the expenses.” (Espinas, Zoc. cit.y 
 p. 388.) 
 
 * See Mme. Necker de Saussure, op. c^Y., Book III, chap, v. 
 Also Anthoine, A travers nos eeoles, p. 182 et seq. 
 
 18 
 
260 the development of the child. 
 
 over the supposed misfortunes of a doll, and the 
 child will be grieved or angry if you happen to 
 contradict him or to trouble him in the arrange- 
 ment of his favourite fictions. 
 
 If by aesthetic faculty is meant the power 
 simply of combining images, of creating, to a 
 certain extent, we must grant that the child has 
 it. But if the aesthetic sense is the sense of the 
 beautiful, the taste for and discernment of the 
 beautiful, it is absurd even to state the question. 
 No doubt the child likes the colours, the sounds, 
 which later will be the elements of the beauti- 
 ful in colour and sound, as appealing to the 
 artist. But all colours please the child, all 
 sounds delight him. The sense of harmony, of 
 time, of order, and of progression is a delicate 
 thing that escapes him. He is indifferent to the 
 beauties of Nature. Pictures do not interest 
 him except when they represent real scenes, 
 familiar objects, to him; dogs, for instance, 
 animals, or perhaps soldiers and battles. Why 
 should this surprise us, when we think of the 
 conditions of development required for the cul- 
 ture of the aesthetic faculties, the refined facul- 
 ties, so rare even among grown people ? How 
 many people remain children in this respect all 
 their lives! When we consider the discordant 
 toilets of peasant women, and note the indifference 
 of the peasant to the beautiful paintings which 
 Nature is constantly renewing before his eyes, is 
 it hard to understand that the child is also in- 
 capable of feelings which can be only the result 
 of a long intellectual evolution ? 
 
THE DIFFERENT FORMS OF IMAGINATION. 261 
 
 Perez lias devoted a whole chapter of his 
 psychology of the first three years of childhood 
 to this subject.* But he is obliged to concede 
 that the musical education does not begin be- 
 fore the age of five or six years ; that the word 
 pretty/^ which is so continuously on the baby^s 
 lips, is a synonym of all that is new, brilliant, 
 pleasing; that in the choice of playthings it is 
 the size, the brightness, the novelty, which de- 
 termines it ; that the child of three years, even, 
 goes crazy over the images of Epinal, while the 
 pictures of a master say nothing to him; in a 
 word, that the child has not and can not have 
 the sense of the beautiful. There is, at most, 
 but one exception to be made concerning singing 
 and music, which very early seems to have a 
 certain attraction. From the age of five months 
 Tiedemann^s son accompanied his mother^s songs 
 with signs of pleasure by moving his arms and 
 legs. And we might cite many analogous obser- 
 vations. 
 
 There are other points to be cleared up in the 
 mysteries of childish imagination. For instance, 
 it is a question whether the child, in his tend- 
 
 * Here are some of the interesting facts reported by Perez : 
 A child, three years old, expressed thus his admiration of an 
 Italian picture : “ It is very pretty, papa ; there is a lot of gold, 
 a lot of red, and a lot of blue ; and down there is a papa and a 
 mamma ; there is no baby.” So another child on seeing a moun- 
 tain said, “ Oh ! the pretty mountain ! ’ ’ but he justified his 
 enthusiasm by remarking that it was much larger than his 
 house, perhaps four times larger. Perez has elsewhere de- 
 voted a whole book — a little too long, perhaps — to the same 
 subject ; Art and Poetry in the Child, Paris, 1888, 
 
262 the development of the child. 
 
 ency to exaggerate, which, moreover, will al- 
 ways be a characteristic of imagination, is not 
 imposed upon by an error of his senses. The blind 
 man described by Cheselden thought things ex- 
 traordinarily large when he began to see. Is 
 there not an analogous optical illusion in the 
 eyes of the child ? When we return to a place 
 that we have not seen since we were three or 
 four years old everything seems shrunken to us : 
 the houses and the monuments seem to have 
 been lowered. Is it simply the effect of our own 
 stature being increased, while the city has re- 
 mained the same ? It is hard to admit this, and 
 we incline to the belief that things appear larger 
 to the child than they will seem later, because 
 he has not yet travelled over great distances, 
 nor compared many altitudes, just as the hours 
 seem longer to him who has lived but a little 
 while, as Paul Janet has ingeniously shown, and 
 shorter to him who is already far along on the 
 road of life. 
 
 Beginning with exact perception and intu- 
 ition of reality, imagination very soon comes to 
 forge for itself a little world of fancies, so bely- 
 ing its very origin ; the more elements of action 
 and the more images it seizes in the contempla- 
 tion of things, the more disposed is it to create 
 myths. The psychological evolution is full of 
 these contrasts. The faculties, in their natural 
 development, bear fruits and flowers which the 
 character of the trunk and of the roots fails to 
 reveal to us. Not only do the effects differ from 
 their sources, but they are in direct opposition 
 
THE DIFFERENT FORMS OF IMAGINATION. 2G3 
 
 to the primitive causes that cradled them. A 
 slave to the perception of real objects in its be- 
 ginnings, imagination comes to be the freest of 
 all the faculties when it has reached its height, 
 removes us furthest from the truth when it 
 breaks loose with its greatest boldness. Is it 
 not by an analogous contradiction that the affec- 
 tionate sensibility and the love for others re- 
 sults, in a way, from the child^s egoism, from 
 the love of self, if at least it is true, as can 
 hardly be questioned, that the more the child 
 loves his own pleasure the more he is led to love 
 those who provide this pleasure for him; the 
 intensity of his feelings of friendship being in 
 proportion to his ardour in seeking selfish satis- 
 faction, and the cold natures, without tenderness, 
 hard hearted, being precisely those which in 
 youth did not passionately desire personal plea- 
 sure ? 
 
 We shall meet with imagination again in the 
 child^s plays, in the little practical inventions in 
 which his initiative displays itself. But even 
 now we may conclude that imagination is really 
 active in the child, not only the sensitive and in- 
 voluntary imagination, but intentional imagina- 
 tion also ; and this, because it finds itself in con- 
 ditions most favourable to its exercise. 
 
 The materials at its disposal are not numer- 
 ous, but they lend themselves marvelously to the 
 work of imagination. ^^The excessive imagina- 
 tion of the child, as of primitive peoples,’^ says 
 Guy an, depends in great measure upon the lack 
 of distinctness in perceptions which transform 
 
264 the development op the child. 
 
 themselves at will one into the other. We see 
 what we will in what is as confused as the form 
 of the clouds. The child does not distinguish 
 clearly either time, places, or persons. The im- 
 agination of children, then, has as a starting 
 point the confusion of images produced by their 
 reciprocal attraction ; they mingle what has been 
 with what is or will be ; they do not live, as we 
 do, in the real, in the determined, but they dream 
 about everything they perceive.'^* Let us add 
 that the more limited the acquired experience, 
 the greater is the liberty of imagination. It 
 makes up for the poverty of its resources by the 
 independence allowed its conduct. Later it will 
 shatter itself in its first contact with the exact 
 knowledge of the laws of Nature. The faculties 
 of refiection, the scientific faculties, will lose no 
 time in showing it the impossibility of the fic- 
 tions in which it may have been tempted to lose 
 itself. Accordingly, instead of increasing, as do 
 most of the other faculties, instead of developing 
 with age, at least in the ordinary man, in all who 
 are neither artists nor poets, imagination, on the 
 contrary, will tend to diminish and to decrease. 
 
 * Guyau, Education et heredite, p. 147. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS. — ATTENTION. — ASSOCIATION OF 
 IDEAS. 
 
 I. Consciousness. — The gradual development of consciousness 
 in intensity and extension, — The conscious states and the 
 consciousness of the self. — Conscious states following an un- 
 conscious act, a conscious perception, an absolutely internal 
 conscious state. — Consciousness is not coextensive with the 
 whole mental life. II. Attention, a more intense degree of 
 consciousness. — Attention in the child and in the adult. — 
 Attention called spontaneous. — Voluntary or active atten- 
 tion. — Passive attention. — The child’s attention is in one 
 sense only a perpetual distraction. — Causes of the child’s 
 involuntary attention. — Novelty produces surprise, astonish- 
 ment, and consequently attention. — Is involuntary attention 
 always caused by affective states ? — Curiosity, the intellectual 
 germ of attention. — Origin of voluntary attention. — Volun- 
 tary attention also presupposes stimuli, but inner stimuli. — 
 The exercise of attention in the child’s plays. — Effects of at- 
 tention. — The lack of attention in idiots. III. Attention iso- 
 lates and separates intellectual elements ; association of ideas 
 reunites them. — Mechanical characteristics of the associa- 
 tion of ideas. — Successive states of consciousness tend to 
 reappear in the same order. — Association of distinct im- 
 pressions not contiguous in time. — Associations by resem- 
 blance. — Purely verbal associations by the sound of words. 
 
 I. 
 
 More than once in the course of the preced- 
 ing chapters we have had occasion to speak of 
 265 
 
266 the development of the child. 
 
 the child^s consciousness, and to show that the 
 essential fact of the life of the mind, the inexpli- 
 cable and indefinable character common to all the 
 conscious phenomena, is developed only step by 
 step. The light of consciousness, in succeeding 
 the almost complete obscurity of the first days, 
 passes through all the degrees of dare- obscure, 
 then of a brightness more and more intense. On 
 the other hand, the field over which it sheds its 
 rays is enlarged more and more ; confined at first 
 to mere sensations and to first impressions of 
 pleasure and pain, it extends afterward to per- 
 ceptions, to remembrances, to emotions, to the 
 phenomena of the imagination ; and we shall see 
 it now manifesting itself in the acts of attention, 
 of judgment, and of reasoning; annexing to its 
 domain each day a larger number of acts, of dis- 
 tinct states, until the day when, turning in upon 
 itself, so to speak, it will give birth to the idea of 
 the ego, and will, properly speaking, establish the 
 personality. Let no one think that the conscious 
 states, which exist very early in the child, can 
 immediately and at the first onset serve as prin- 
 ciples of the idea of the ego, of the distinction 
 between subject and object. The child is con- 
 scious of a multitude of successive acts which 
 exist only at the moment when they are produced, 
 long before he becomes conscious of his personal 
 existence, of a self that lasts and survives the dis- 
 appearance of such and such a conscious state. 
 He can think, even reason, long before he knows 
 himself. Romanes says very truly that there is 
 a period in the child’s life during which judgment 
 
CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 267 
 
 develops so far as to enable the mind to utter a 
 truth, without its being sufficiently developed to 
 be conscious of itself, in so far as the mind is 
 the object of its own thought, and when, conse- 
 quently, it can not yet assert a truth to itself as 
 a truth.* 
 
 In the first two years of life, then, conscious- 
 ness is simply a succession of conscious states, and 
 we have but to consider its double progress in 
 intention and extension ; until, from the group- 
 ing of these phenomena, more and more clearly 
 known and more and more numerous, shall finally 
 spring forth the idea of the ego, the real con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 Consciousness seems to obey a regular law of 
 evolution in its development in intensity. It is 
 at its lowest stage when it shc|ws itself by light- 
 ing up, for the first time, an activity before un- 
 conscious ; when, for instance, the intelligence 
 plays a part in motions, so frequent in the child, 
 which were at first only automatic impulses, re- 
 flex motions, or when a feeling of pleasure or of 
 pain accompanies a phenomenon which is purely 
 physical. It attains a higher degree of clearness 
 when it follows, not an unconscious phenomenon, 
 but a former conscious state ; for instance, when 
 the remembrance or the image of a perception 
 already acquired is produced by its repetition. 
 Finally, it rises still higher, or, to state it better, 
 it is more profound when it follows, not a percep- 
 tion, that is to say, not a phenomenon produced 
 
 * Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man, p. 156. 
 
268 the development of the child. 
 
 by an outward impression, but a conscious state, 
 absolutely internal ; for instance, when a remem- 
 brance calls forth another remembrance, when 
 one image begets another image. Then the inner 
 activity has really begun. A work of ideation 
 takes place, which, because it is wholly internal, 
 is accompanied by a more active consciousness. 
 And we are now nearing the time when the will, 
 following upon a conscious idea or desire, deter- 
 mining an intentional act, will call forth a still 
 more intense consciousness, a consciousness very 
 different in its character and in its effects, since 
 it will no longer be merely the consciousness of a 
 phenomenon, but will become the consciousness 
 of an active force, of the ego, and of the person- 
 ality. 
 
 In its development in extension consciousness 
 very soon embraces the greater part of the acts 
 performed by the child or of the phenomena pro- 
 duced within him. The unconscious life of the 
 sleeping state gives place, little by little, to the 
 awakened life, and during his waking hours the 
 child is almost constantly in a state of conscious- 
 ness. Sensations, perceptions, remembrances, 
 fancies, this is the train of conscious acts which 
 unroll themselves in a sort of continuous march. 
 But, in spite of the fact that the list of the states 
 of consciousness is extended from day to day, 
 consciousness does not coincide with all the acts 
 of the child^s life. The unconscious doubtless 
 draws back, becomes less and less, but it main- 
 tains its rights, and will never completely lose 
 them. The conscious life is always framed, as it 
 
CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 269 
 
 were, by a large number of automatic and uncon- 
 scious motions, of obscure impressions, on which 
 no sensibility sheds its rays. If it is true of the 
 adult, as Ribot says, that in any man the sum of 
 the conscious states is much less than the sum of 
 the nervous actions (reflex actions, from the sim- 
 plest to the most complex) ; that the conscious 
 personality can not be a representation of all that 
 goes on in the nervous centres ; that it is only an 
 extract, a reduction ; it is still more true of the 
 child, in whom there still remain, so to speak, 
 many unconscious provisional states, the circle 
 of conscious acts being still very limited, and the 
 consciousness. Anally, not having conquered all 
 the territory which it is afterward called upon to 
 subdue. 
 
 Moreover, what is this consciousness in itself 
 which becomes clearer and clearer, more and 
 more extended ? Is it simply, as the psycholo- 
 gists of the new school would state it, a some- 
 thing superadded to the reflex and unconscious 
 acts, and, to use a word that has found great 
 favour, an einpTienomenon, a supreme effect of 
 the organic development, something like the sil- 
 very bright fringe of foam bordering the dark 
 wave of the ocean ? Is it, on the contrary, the 
 progressive manifestation of a force sui generis, 
 which at flrst buried, as it were, in the organism, 
 struggles against obstacles, and makes its way to 
 the light little by little, shedding its rays farther 
 and farther ; the revelation of an incorporeal 
 substance, which can not produce its full effect 
 until it has .found the instruments necessary to 
 
270 the development op the child. 
 
 its action in a completely developed nervous sys- 
 tem and brain ? This is the question as it stands, 
 but we do not have to settle it here in our studies 
 of pure observation, from which problems of sub- 
 stances and of causes are necessarily excluded. 
 Doubtless the observation of the child upholds 
 those who believe, in spite of the protestations 
 of the idealists,* that the way is prepared for the 
 conscious by the unconscious ; but it does not 
 prove that the conscious is a consequence of the 
 unconscious. The unconscious does assuredly 
 precede consciousness in the evolution of time, 
 but nothing shows that it creates consciousness. 
 And on this point we shall call upon the valid 
 testimony of a pupil of Darwin, Romanes. He 
 says : From a philosophical point of view, no 
 
 one can have more respect for the problem of 
 consciousness than I have, and no one can be 
 more convinced than I of the impossibility of 
 our obtaining a solution of the question. I am 
 completely in accord on this point with the most 
 advanced idealist ; and I consider that in the idea 
 of consciousness we possess not only our ultimate 
 knowledge, but the only mode of existence which 
 the human mind is capable of conceiving of as 
 existence, and, consequently, the condition sine 
 qua non of the possibility of an external world. 
 
 * On this subject see Fouillee’s book, L’kvolutionnisrne des 
 idees-forces, 1890, p. 39, where Fouillee discusses and decides in the 
 affirmative (which seems faulty to us) the question as to whether 
 consciousness is coextensive with the mental life. The uncon- 
 scious, so called, according to Fouillee, is only a new name for 
 material phenomena, or for matter in itself. 
 
ATTENTION. 
 
 271 
 
 . . . In trying to trace the progress by which 
 consciousness emerges from the inferior phases 
 of mental organization, I am as far as one could 
 be from the hope of throwing any light on the 
 intrinsic nature of the phenomenon whose prob- 
 able beginnings I am trying to describe. It is as 
 true to-day as in the days of Solomon, that just 
 as you do not know how it is that the child^s 
 bones grow in the mother's womb, so you do not 
 know what the paths of the mind are." * 
 
 II. 
 
 One of the great difficulties of psychological 
 analysis is that it is obliged to study succes- 
 sively, thus isolating in distinct divisions, the 
 faculties or mental states which Nature trains 
 and develops simultaneously. In order to un- 
 ravel the tangled skein of the child's psychic 
 operations it is necessary to go back to them 
 again and again, to approach a complex reality 
 from all sides, and take the measurement of the 
 nascent soul, so to speak, in every direction, 
 which, among other inconveniences, necessitates 
 repetition. Thus we have already encountered 
 attention several times in studying perception, 
 memory, imagination, feelings, and even physical 
 activity. But it is necessary to consider again by 
 itself, in its germs and in its growth, this par- 
 ticular power of concentration, of intellectual 
 direction, which all the psychologists agree in 
 
 ' * Romanes, Op, cit,, p. 194. 
 
272 the development of the child. 
 
 recognising as one of the essential elements, as 
 the indispensable condition of the development 
 of the forces of the mind. 
 
 It may be argued that attention, taken in it- 
 self, is but a degree, a mode, a form of conscious- 
 ness, a more intense consciousness, or, as the 
 English say, an intensification of consciousness. 
 Indeed, all the mental operations, to whatever 
 category they belong, can be reduced to the form 
 attention.^^ There is not an intense emotion, a 
 connected action, a clearly defined perception, in 
 which attention does not enter more or less. 
 
 Attention, thus understood, and considered 
 independently of the causes that produce it, ex- 
 ists in the child as well as in the man. At a 
 very early age, indeed, there are moments of keen 
 consciousness when all the intelligence the child 
 possesses is concentrated on one point, when he 
 is fascinated, for instance, by a light or a bright 
 colour. The external signs of attention show 
 themselves then: the eye is fixed; the child is 
 motionless, plunged in a sort of stupor or of ec- 
 stasy. As Ribot says, The whole body seems to 
 converge toward its object; all motion stops; all 
 the energy at the individuals disposal aims at the 
 same point. 
 
 It is this first form of attention that Ribot 
 calls spontaneous^^; we believe, on the con- 
 trary, that this appellation ought to be reserved 
 to designate voluntary attention — that which re- 
 sults from an inner excitation of thought. ISToth- 
 
 * Psychologie de Tattention, p. 8. 
 
ATTENTION. 
 
 273 
 
 ing is less spontaneous than the attention of the 
 child, since it is generally provoked by a strong 
 external impression. When Condillac defined 
 attention as a dominant and exclusive sensation, 
 he was wrong in only one particular — namely, in 
 wishing to extend to the voluntary phenomena 
 what is true of involuntary phenomena, and of 
 the, so to speak, passive attention of the first 
 period.* 
 
 It is a question of words, it will be said, and 
 indeed the difl&culty results from the fact that in 
 the language of psychology, which is so imper- 
 fect, the same term represents states of conscious- 
 ness which differ greatly if not in their phenom- 
 enal appearance at least in their origins and their 
 causes. As for us, and according to the etymol- 
 ogy of the word, which indicates both a tendency 
 and an act of the mind, real attention, whatever 
 Ribot says about it, may be defined as the liberty 
 of the mind — that is to say, in the child, in the 
 natural dispersion of his ideas, in the fickle vari- 
 ableness of his imagination, in the midst of all 
 the sensations which follow each other and whose 
 plaything he is, we can find but the phantom of 
 attention. 
 
 The attention claimed for the child is most 
 
 * Condillac, who, without suspecting it, has written in places 
 a psychology of the child instead of adult psychology, defines 
 attention as we have just given it : “ That operation by which 
 our consciousness, with reference to certain perceptions, in- 
 creases so rapidly that they seem the only ones of which we have 
 taken account.’’ (Essai sur I’origine des connaissances humaines, 
 part i, sec. ii, chap, i.) 
 
274 the development op tee child. 
 
 often, indeed, only the shadow, the phantom of 
 voluntary attention. Eead the chapter, other- 
 wise so interesting, which Perez has written on 
 this subject,* and you will be convinced that the 
 essential characteristics of active attention are 
 usually lacking in the intellectual states repre- 
 sented as attentive. In Perez^s examples atten- 
 tion is constantly confounded with an imperious 
 need, like that of the nursling looking fixedly at 
 his mothePs breast ; or with a lively sensation, as 
 in the case of the child a month old, who can 
 follow for three or four minutes the reflection of 
 the light on a picture placed near a window ; or 
 with the variableness of impressions, as in the 
 case of the little girl, three months old, who is 
 depicted to us as being attentive to all that went 
 on around her — to sounds of every sort, to the 
 noise of a step in the room. In these different 
 cases in which the child showed proofs of atten- 
 tion, the observing subject, Perez admits, seemed 
 to belong less to himself than to the object ob- 
 served. Is not this choosing what is character- 
 istic of opposed states in order to make of it a 
 feature common to all states of attention ? The 
 attentive mind is master of itself ; it directs, 
 fixes itself; it changes its place as it will. Far 
 from being a dominant sensation or a successive 
 compliance of thought to the manifold impres- 
 sions of the senses, attention consists in ruling 
 sensations in order to follow voluntarily one idea 
 
 * Perez, op. cit. It is a certain abuse of words to class as 
 “ attentive ” a state which he himself declares to appear as “ re- 
 flex,” and which is only a “ passive reaction.” 
 
ATTENTION. 
 
 275 
 
 which is preferred to all others. It is not the re- 
 sult and the rebound of an excitation from with- 
 out ; it emanates from an effort within. As to 
 this habit of prompt attention, scattered capri- 
 * ciously — that is to say, insufficiently accorded to 
 everything — it is indeed characteristic of the 
 child ; but it is a denial of real attention which 
 holds the mind on a single object, while repress- 
 ing every other kind of sensation, and consigning 
 to inaction all faculties that might throw strange 
 impressions in the way. 
 
 One need but teach a child to read, even a 
 child four or five years old, to understand how 
 little this restless being knows of attention, and 
 at the same time to see how many states pro- 
 duced in him simulate attention. Put him in the 
 garden with his primer; there, in the midst of 
 the sensations which, as it were, whirl about him, 
 it will be almost impossible to fix his mind. He 
 will interrupt his spelling incessantly with all 
 sorts of exclamations : There goes a butterfiy ! 
 
 See that bird fiy ! Place the same child, on the 
 other hand, in a rather dark, rather empty room, 
 where the sense solicitations are few ; let him 
 see nothing but his spelling book, and you will 
 find that he will repeat his lesson very docilely. 
 But even then you have not a really attentive 
 mind to deal with, a mind making an effort of 
 itself to follow a given direction ; you will have 
 before you only a passive being, whom you keep 
 by dint of skill and much managing under the 
 rule of a single sensation, that of the syllable 
 you are making him spell, and who will escape 
 19 
 
276 the HEVELOPxMENT of the child. 
 
 you on the first occasion to become the slave of 
 a new sensation. A child listening to an unusual 
 noise or looking at a bright-coloured object may 
 resemble an attentive man externally, because 
 of his immovableness and the fixedness of his 
 glance; but this sort of enthralment, in which 
 an exclusive impression holds him, has but the 
 outward semblance of attention ; according to 
 Bossuet’s expression, it is only a forced atten- 
 tion.^^ 
 
 We find here, in new terms, the general law of 
 which we have cited so many examples — namely, 
 that the definite states of human consciousness 
 are preceded and prepared for by very different 
 and sometimes by opposed states. In one sense, 
 we might say, without paradox, that the child's 
 attention is only perpetual distraction. In any 
 case, there is in the first age a series of at- 
 tentive states rather than a real faculty of 
 attention. 
 
 What, then, are the causes that turn the child's 
 involuntary attention from one object to another? 
 The first is the novelty of impressions, for novel- 
 ty renders impressions more intense. As a gen- 
 eral rule, anything that is presented to the child 
 for the first time will captivate him and occupy 
 him for several moments at least. Astonish- 
 ment, the surprise which every unexpected ap- 
 pearance causes, are attentive states. But we do 
 not have to wait very long for the child to give 
 signs of attention. Thirty days after his birth 
 Tiodemann's son noticed the gestures of those who 
 spoke to him ; their words had also as great an 
 
ATTENTION. 
 
 277 
 
 influence, even quieting his cries. At two months 
 and a half the child observed by Taine heard 
 the voice of its grandmother, and turned its head 
 in the direction from which the sound came. To 
 the child, who has everything to learn, every 
 perception is a surprise, and consequently every 
 perception has an effect upon his intelligence. 
 But the more unexpected the impressions, the 
 less they agree with the general run of daily ex- 
 periences, the more easily will attention be ex- 
 cited. Romanes tells us that when a woollen 
 sock was put on the hand of his daughter nine 
 weeks old, she looked at it very attentively, as 
 though she saw that some strange change had 
 unexpectedly come over her hand. 
 
 Darwin said : When attention is called forth 
 
 suddenly and forcibly, it is transformed into sur- 
 prise ; this, in turn, becomes astonishment, which 
 leads to stupefaction and to fright.'’"* We might 
 question this genealogy of the states of con- 
 sciousness and hold, for instance, that surprise 
 is the starting point, that it precedes and deter- 
 mines attention, instead of following it.f But, 
 not to strain a point, it is certainly true that the 
 two states, emotion or the affective states on the 
 one hand, and the intellectual act on the other, 
 are coincident and coexistent. And the proof 
 of this is that the one and the other show them- 
 
 * Expression of Emotions. 
 
 t Compare Descartes : “ Admiration is a sudden surprise of 
 the soul which inclines it to consider attentively objects that 
 seem rare and extraordinary.” (Traite des passions, part ii, arti- 
 cle 70.) 
 
278 the development of the child. 
 
 selves by the same expression of the face — a 
 slight elevation of the brows. * 
 
 The other stimuli of the child's attention are 
 the different emotions that he is capable of feel- 
 ing : the agreeable emotions ; above all, those that 
 naturally captivate the senses because the desire 
 for pleasure is satisfied; for instance, all that 
 tickles the appetite of hunger or of thirst ; later, 
 all that calls forth sympathy and affection. But 
 the disagreeable emotions too are, to a certain 
 extent, the starting point of the attentive mo- 
 tions, although they usually seem to result in 
 turning aside or in repulsing thought, and it 
 seems as though attention and aversion could 
 not exist together. Examine a frightened child, 
 however, and you will convince yourself that 
 even in his fear he tries to account to himself for 
 the object that startles him ; he will look at it 
 stealthily out of the corner of his eye. But here 
 the affective state is not the real cause of atten- 
 tion ; and if it does not prevent its coming alto- 
 gether, it is because there is already a stimulus 
 of another order in the child, an intellectual ele- 
 ment ; I mean curiosity. 
 
 Indeed, whatever truth there may be in the 
 rule laid down by Ribot — namely, that, strong or 
 weak, everywhere and always, involuntary atten- 
 Hon has affective states as its causes’’ we do not 
 believe that this rule is as he states, absolute. 
 
 * Note also among the external signs that betray attention 
 the open mouth (Darwin) and the momentary suspension of 
 respiration (Sikorski). 
 
ATTENTION. 
 
 279 
 
 without exception/" Seeing, hearing, touching, 
 simply for the sake of seeing, hearing, touching, 
 are not unknown even to the child. And from 
 these disinterested perceptions result, very natu- 
 rally, the attentive states of looking, listening, and 
 feeling. It is true that particular pleasures, all 
 of which result from the interest which sensible 
 objects inspire in the child, accompany these mo- 
 tions of attention, and, if we wished to so state it, 
 even stimulate them. But it will be seen, at least, 
 that we have something more than a purely bio- 
 logical origin for attention, which Ribot claims 
 for it, when he tells us that its first forms have 
 been linked to the most imperious conditions of 
 animal life, that it is connected in the final analy- 
 sis with what is most profound in the individual, 
 the instinct of preservation.* That in the first 
 weeks the child does not interest himself in any- 
 thing except what touches him in the material 
 needs of nutrition, no one will dispute ; but very 
 soon by the side of the animal awakes the human 
 being, with his brain, with the wants belonging 
 to intelligence. Ribot establishes this point him- 
 self by citing Preyer : Toward the end of the 
 
 third month the child explores the field of vision, 
 gradually allowing his eyes to rest on objects 
 less and less interesting. It is the same with the 
 other senses ; the transition is made little by little 
 from that which aftects him most to that which af- 
 fects him least."" f But what affects him least is 
 precisely the ensemble of things that have no 
 
 * Ribot, Psychologie de Tattention, p. 143. 
 1 1 hid., p. 50. 
 
280 the development of the child. 
 
 connection with his physical needs^ and which the 
 child studies simply in order to get acquainted 
 with them. Ribot, who does not seem to admit 
 in any way the intrinsic attraction of the intel- 
 lectual work, complacently cites the two following 
 examples, borrowed from Perez*: ^^One day a 
 child, six years old, who was, as a usual thing, very 
 distrait, sat down of his own accord at the piano 
 to play an air that his mother liked. The same 
 child, when seven years old, seeing his brother 
 occupied with his studies, went and sat down in 
 his father's study. ^ What are you doing ?' asked 
 his nurse, who was astonished at seeing him 
 there. ^ I am doing a page of German,' said the 
 child. ^It is not very amusing, but I want to 
 give mamma a pleasant surprise.'" And Ribot 
 concludes from these anecdotes that the piano 
 and the German did not awaken attention spon- 
 taneously. Then there would be no study at- 
 tractive in itself, and we should have to admit 
 that the attention of the savant, of the philoso- 
 pher, is artificial " — that is to say, it has no direct 
 motive power — that it always results from a feel- 
 ing, such as the fear of punishment, the charm of 
 rewards, ambition, interest, in the practical sense 
 of the word, and so on. 
 
 What is this innate curiosity, then, which, 
 Ribot himself declares, is, as it were, the appetite 
 of intelligence, and which is found in some degree 
 in every one ? It is hard for us to consider it as 
 an affective state ; the pleasure that mingles with 
 
 See L’enfant de trois a sept ans, p. 108. 
 
ATTENTION. 
 
 ^281 
 
 the satisfaction of curiosity is the effect and con- 
 sequence of it rather than the origin and cause. 
 And, to keep within the bounds of our subject, 
 not to call on the example of the attentive efforts, 
 determined in the man of study by the sheer at- 
 traction of science, do we not find traces of pure 
 curiosity in the child ? Taine says : The child 
 
 of twelve months spends the livelong day in tast- 
 ing, feeling, turning over, letting fall, smelling — 
 in short, in experimenting with everything that 
 falls in his way ; whatever the object may be, a 
 doll, a basket, a rattle, a toy, as soon as it is suffi- 
 ciently understood, the child lets it alone; the 
 object is no longer new; the child has nothing 
 more to learn, and the object interests him no 
 longer. 
 
 Curiosity is the real source of voluntary at- 
 tention ; for the curious child is no longer under 
 the rule of external impressions which are forced 
 upon his sight ; he seeks them himself ; he keeps 
 them for some time under the notice of his mind, 
 so to speak. But the attention called forth in the 
 child by curiosity is only a shadow of the atten- 
 tion which is its own mistress. Childish curiosity 
 becomes tired very soon, and lasts only as long as 
 the novelty of the object arrests and holds it. To 
 speak exactly, it is spontaneous attention, but it 
 is not yet voluntary attention. 
 
 However unconscious may be the first concen- 
 trations of thought of which the child gives so 
 many proofs, it is there that real attention begins. 
 It will develop more or less rapidly in proportion 
 to the care that is taken in helping the child to 
 
282 the development of the child. 
 
 form a habit of receiving these intense dominant 
 impressions which hold and captivate his mind. 
 When he has fixed his gaze a number of times on 
 the bright outlines, on the bewitching forms that 
 attract him, when he has lent his ear to the strong 
 voice that rules him, to the harmonious sounds 
 that charm him, he will be led gently to direct 
 his thoughts of his own accord toward these 
 habitual objects of his contemplation. To the 
 habitual excitation from without will come to 
 respond, little by little, a voluntary motion from 
 within. There is no other secret for calling the 
 mind to liberty than that of charming and im- 
 prisoning it at first in continued and forced sen- 
 sations.* It is wonderful to see how the inner 
 energy by a natural evolution, by the force of in- 
 telligence, makes its way to the light, how the 
 will glides by degrees into the habit of the work 
 imposed upon it and of thought restrained and 
 kept upon a single point. The child^s mind is 
 strengthened little by little in this sort of de- 
 pendence in which a single impression holds it 
 to the exclusion of all others ; it loses the habit 
 of dispersion, of variableness ; it lends itself more 
 and more, with ever-increasing docility, to the 
 objects of study placed before it. After having 
 allowed itself to be compelled, it comes to acqui- 
 esce, and finally to take the initiative, to wish. 
 At first it gives its attention to whatever will 
 take it, and it ends by being its own master and 
 according attention only when it pleases. Even 
 
 * “ In everything,” says M. Ravaisson, “ the necessity of 
 nature is the warp on which liberty weaves.” 
 
ATTENTION. 
 
 283 
 
 in the attention of the adult there will always 
 remain something of the involuntary and, so to 
 speak, of the fatal ; the irresistible attraction of 
 a favourite thought, of a chosen study, of a rul- 
 ing taste.* 
 
 The word voluntary,^^ applied to reflective 
 attention, must not deceive us. There are, doubt- 
 less, pure motions of attentive will ; for instance, 
 when against winds and tides, in spite of the agi- 
 tation of our minds and the excitement of our 
 imagination, from a motive of duty or of press- 
 ing obligation, we wish to hold our thoughts on 
 an object from which everything turns us away. 
 Schoolboys, as well as men of science, know these 
 efforts of attentive will, which, not being seconded 
 by the other forces of the soul, often exert them- 
 selves to no purpose. It is in this case alone 
 that Ribot's expression seems acceptable when 
 he speaks of artificial attention. A child’s bright 
 sally, reported by Maillet, characterizes wonder- 
 fully this state of powerless tension. When I 
 pay attention,” said a schoolboy, I think of 
 nothing.” 
 
 But fortunately this situation of an isolated 
 will reduced to itself, and consequently produc- 
 ing no result because not accompanied and aided 
 by the ordinary stimuli of attention, is altogether 
 exceptional, we might say hypothetical. Volun- 
 tary attention does not emanate from the will 
 alone any more than does voluntary action. 
 Like involuntary attention, it has need of mo- 
 
 * See the author’s Cours de pedagogie theorique et pratique, 
 Paris, Delaplane, part i, section 5. 
 
284 the development of the child. 
 
 tive principles. Only while in one case the 
 stimuli of attention are the excitations from 
 without^ the action being caused by the very 
 nature of the object observed, by all that it pre- 
 sents of the unexpected, of the interesting, or, on 
 a higher plane, of the beautiful and of the admi- 
 rable ; in the other case the stimuli are within — 
 we find them in ourselves. Will is not an abso- 
 lute power, an authority scorning help of any 
 sort. To state it exactly, it reigns but does not 
 govern. What does govern is the ideas, the feel- 
 ings. And it should be well understood that 
 when we speak of voluntary attention, even in 
 the adult, but with greater reason in the child, 
 we mean to say simply that the mind has the 
 power of directing, of concentrating the thought 
 by the aid of the motive ideas or of the excitatory 
 perceptions. 
 
 Let us see just what happens in the child. It 
 is in his plays that he makes the first serious 
 exercise of his reflective attention. Let us not 
 expect to find in him that purely mental atten- 
 tion which accompanies a train of reasoning in 
 the adult. The child being incapable of any 
 prolonged intellectual work is attentive only to 
 the actions which presuppose motions, which 
 claim the participation of all the senses, of his 
 eyes, above all, of his hands. Preyer relates 
 that his son raised the lid of a jar sixty-nine 
 times without interruption, and without even 
 getting up. He seemed to be trying to find out 
 how the sound was made. All children have 
 the same tendency to repeat indefinitely the 
 
ATTENTION. 
 
 285 
 
 same action : knocking, opening and shut- 
 
 ting; and although we must recognise here in 
 part, the effect of a sort of automatism which 
 calls for the repetition of the same act easily 
 accomplished, it is impossible not to see from 
 the preoccupied air of the child, from his fixed 
 glances, sometimes from the protrusion of his 
 lips, that he is really attentive. 
 
 In other words, it is not to exclusively specu- 
 lative perceptions, to purely intellectual acts, 
 that we must look for the first considerable 
 manifestations of refiective attention; it is to 
 the physical actions which the child performs 
 of his own accord, and in which it is no longer 
 possible to say that he is simply the slave of a 
 ruling sensation. As Sikorski said, Experience 
 proves that if a child is left on the floor alone 
 with his toys, he remains quiet for a long time, 
 absorbed in his play and showing all the signs 
 of an intense intellectual work.'’^ Yes, but this 
 intellectual work is accompanied by physical 
 motions ; the child turns his toys over in a hun- 
 dred ways, and the thought is active only be- 
 cause the muscles are so too. There is a valuable 
 point for educators ; they should allow the child 
 some leeway, so to speak, in the first lessons; 
 they should come to terms with the child's 
 need of motion and not demand that the im- 
 movability of his body should correspond to 
 the attention of his mind, and that he should 
 be, as it were, a thinking statue. And, finally, 
 they should remember that the child's ideal, 
 as he continually shows in his eyes, is the 
 
286 the development op the child. 
 
 alliance of physical activity with intellectual 
 exercise. 
 
 Charm, interest, here is the great source of 
 attention. But the charm is not only in things : 
 the child creates it in part. The diversity of his 
 tastes prove this, also his versatility, his ca- 
 prices. What pleases one displeases another. 
 What delighted a child a few moments ago dis- 
 gusts him now. It is because interest is sub- 
 jective rather than objective ; and the best criti- 
 cism one could make of certain methods of 
 attractive instruction is that they pretend to 
 find in the very nature of things, in the facility 
 of methods, in the agreement of means, the 
 talisman to call forth attention, when they 
 should, above all, try to fathom the secret in 
 the very nature of the child, in his individual 
 tastes, in an appropriate and cautious exercise of 
 his inclinations, and, in certain cases, even in 
 what the attractive instruction pretends above 
 all to avoid, in effort. 
 
 But, however it be aroused, charm is never- 
 theless the necessary condition of any lasting 
 attention. And the end is attained if we can 
 succeed in getting the child to say when we sub- 
 mit him to an exercise of any sort — That amuses 
 me ! This is what an ingenious observer, 
 Binet, found in the experiments which he per- 
 formed on the perception of numbers and of dis- 
 tances : I will say again, at the risk of repeat- 
 
 ing myself too often, that the first condition of 
 these experiments is to fix the child’s attention. 
 I prefer to be in his room alone with him, so 
 
ATTENTION, 
 
 287 
 
 that no stranger shall distract him. I seek, 
 above all, to interest him in the experiments, 
 and I guard against his getting tired. Sometimes 
 the little girl I observed said, ^ I am beginning 
 to get tired,^ or she expressed the same senti- 
 ment more mischievously by saying, ^ I am afraid 
 I am tiring you ' ; when that occurred I stopped 
 immediately. But sometimes I had the good 
 fortune to hear the child say, Again! that 
 amuses me!^^ I was sure then that attention 
 was awakened, and I tried to profit by the good 
 humour shown.^^ * 
 
 It is not necessary to say that when the child 
 begins to study, to learn to read and to write, he 
 will accomplish nothing if he is not capable of 
 attention ; but what is more interesting is to 
 show what part attention plays in certain acts of 
 the child^s life, notably in walking. I have 
 been convinced in the case of two little sisters,^' 
 says the author we have just cited, ‘‘that the 
 psychic qualities of the child, especially the stage 
 of his voluntary attention, may have a great in- 
 fluence on the success of the efforts at walking. 
 The older of the two little girls walked alone at 
 twelve months, while the second did not succeed 
 until the age of fifteen months ; still, the older 
 was much more delicate, and what is more, she 
 had not the advantage which the second one had 
 of being brought up with another child who 
 could walk and whose example could stimulate 
 and instruct her. I attribute this difference in 
 
 * Revue philosophique, 1890, vol. ii, p. 76. Article on the 
 Perception des longueurs et des nombres. 
 
288 the development of the child. 
 
 development to the fact, often noticed by the 
 parents of the two children, that the elder of the 
 two little girls gave more connected, more meth- 
 odical attention to her first efforts at locomotion. 
 When she was standing holding on to objects, a 
 table or a chair, she did not let go of one object 
 until she had chosen another a little way off 
 which could offer her a new support; and she 
 went very slowly toward this new object, giving 
 great attention to her legs ; these motions were 
 performed with the greatest seriousness and in 
 perfect silence. The younger sister, on the con- 
 trary was a noisy, laughing child ; as soon as one 
 had placed her on her feet and she had remained 
 motionless for an instant, she was seized by 
 an uncontrollable desire for progression, which 
 seemed to push her forward ; it was evident that 
 she had made no calculation as to what object 
 could act as her support, for she advanced with- 
 out the slightest hesitation to the middle of an 
 empty part of the room ; she cried and gesticu- 
 lated, and was very amusing to see ; but she went 
 on tottering like an intoxicated man, and could 
 not go four or five steps without falling — thus 
 her walking was retarded — she could not walk 
 alone with safety until she was fifteen months 
 old.^^ * 
 
 It is not only in learning to walk, but earlier 
 than that, in grasping objects, perhaps even in 
 the action of sucking, that the first effects of at- 
 tention may be seen ; and it is not a paradox to 
 
 * Billet, Mouvements des jeunes enfants, Revue phil., March, 
 1890. 
 
ATTENTION. 
 
 289 
 
 say that a child who will be studious later reveals 
 it in the way he takes the bottle, the way he 
 grasps and holds it. 
 
 Nothing throws more light on the develop- 
 ment of normal attention than the study of what 
 goes on in the obscure, veiled consciousness of 
 idiots and imbeciles. The most recent researches 
 confirm this long-established truth — namely, that 
 the intellectual weakness in idiocy and imbecility 
 is the direct consequence of the powerlessness of 
 attention.* And it is interesting to show that 
 the cause of this incurable infirmity corresponds 
 exactly to the absence of the intellectual or af- 
 fective principles which, in the intelligent and 
 impressionable child, call forth perception or the 
 action of attention. In the idiot,^^ says Dr. Sol- 
 lier, ^Hhe affective state is lacking either alto- 
 gether or in part. The only need it feels, and 
 even then vaguely, is that of hunger. The sight 
 of food alone can sometimes call him out of his 
 indifference. The sensations of an idiot are very 
 vague. He does not perceive them clearly; he 
 does not know how to compare them. He does 
 not grasp the simplest resemblance any better the 
 hundredth time than the first.'’^ f It is the same 
 with insane people. Luys calls attention to the 
 fact that maniacs, people possessed by hallucina- 
 tions, have no force, or almost no force of atten- 
 tion. The sensations, so to speak, slip over their 
 minds; or, on the other hand, when they have 
 
 * Esquirol attributed the intellectual incapacity of idiots to 
 the lack of attention. 
 
 f Dr. Sollier, op, cit,, chaps, ii and iv. 
 
290 the development op the child. 
 
 fixed ideas they are slaves to them — they are, as 
 it were, possessed by them. 
 
 There is nothing like this in the normal child. 
 Intelligence shows itself there whether by the 
 intense concentration of which it is capable at 
 a given moment, or by the facility of its evolu- 
 tions. And it is this last characteristic, more- 
 over, to which the weakness of childish attention 
 is owing ; the attention is of short duration, soon 
 wearied, exhausts a thousand subjects in an hour, 
 and can be kept alive only by variety and inces- 
 sant changing. The child's soul is like an open 
 house which any one who will may enter. His 
 attention has not yet learned to defend itself, and 
 it gives all impressions the right to enter.* 
 
 III. 
 
 However imperfect the child's attention may 
 be, and although it does not present itself in gen- 
 eral except as a subordination of the mind to the 
 successive impressions which contend for the 
 thought, nevertheless it produces its effects from 
 the point of view of intellectual development. 
 Even if the child's attention is not voluntary, 
 still it brings about results which do not differ 
 sensibly from those of reflective attention. It 
 
 * We must recognise the fact, moreover, that it is faults of 
 education which often aid in developing this lack. “ The habit of 
 giving children a great number of toys, and so of crowding their 
 rooms, is extremely injurious. An immoderate richness in dif- 
 ferent impressions creates conditions of distraction. (Sikorski, 
 Rev. phil., vol. xix, p.^47.) 
 
ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 
 
 291 
 
 isolates the phenomena perceived ; it analyzes 
 their different qualities; it renders possible the 
 work of preliminary dissociation, which sepa- 
 rates, which frees the elements contained in com- 
 plex perceptions, and which is necessary in order 
 that by new associations the beginning thought 
 may do its work. * 
 
 But the law of association does not apply only 
 when it is a question of imagining, of reasoning — 
 that is to say, of associating in the combinations 
 that appear for the first time the detached ele- 
 ments of perception. It governs memory also ; 
 it tends to make the perceptions which succeeded 
 each other reappear in a certain order. And un- 
 der this form it is, in a way, the automatic side 
 of the mind, a sort of instinctive attraction which 
 calls the ideas one after another; while atten- 
 tion, even in the rudimentary forms, prepares the 
 way for the reflective activity, for reason. In 
 other words, before the analytical, logical connec- 
 tion which the judgment or even imagination 
 will establish between ideas, there is a mechanical 
 association which contents itself with connecting 
 ideas that have already been connected in expe- 
 rience ; and it is this association, naturally very 
 strong at the age when the faculties of reflection 
 are still dormant, that explains either the recall- 
 ing of ideas remembered, or, indeed, the greater 
 part of the judgment and reasoning of childhood. 
 
 Indeed, it is not exaggerating the action of the 
 association of ideas to attribute to it a preponder- 
 
 On dissociation, as a necessary condition to association, see 
 Rabier Psychologie, p. 215 et seq,, also Maillet, op, cit, 
 
 20 
 
292 the development of the child. 
 
 ant part in the first manifestations of childish, 
 intelligence. Before the child can break the 
 chain of sensations which obtrude themselves 
 upon him simultaneously or successively, he 
 obeys readily the natural concatenation of things. 
 It is not he himself as yet that puts order into 
 his little ideas ; the order they follow is precisely 
 the order of nature. He wants to be fed as soon 
 as he sees his nurse ; he wants to go out as soon 
 as he sees the hat that he wears when out for his 
 walk. In a general way, every state of conscious- 
 ness that has been experienced calls up immedi- 
 ately, when renewed, by a sort of distinctive affin- 
 ity, the state of consciousness that preceded or 
 followed it. 
 
 Romanes, who has studied animals too much 
 not to be beguiled also into the observation of 
 children, states that it is at the age of seven 
 weeks he finds the first proof of the existence of 
 memory in the association of ideas. That is the 
 age, he says, when children brought up on a bot- 
 tle recognise the bottle for the first time, an object 
 which children always seem to recognise before all 
 others ; and he calls to mind the fact that Locke 
 cited, the act of recognising the nursing bottle as 
 contemporary with that of recognising the rod. 
 Romanes adds that in the case of his own child 
 he found that the faculty of associating ideas 
 grew stronger during the ninth week; as soon as 
 her bib was put on — an action that always pre- 
 ceded that of giving her the bottle — she stopped 
 crying for her bottle.* 
 
 * Mental Evolution in Animals. 
 
ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 
 
 293 
 
 But the law of the association of ideas is not 
 simply an intellectual habit reproducing un- 
 changingly in a faithful memory the simultane- 
 ous or successive impressions that are presented 
 to the mind. It tends to make innovations also 
 in bringing together separate impressions which, 
 however, bear some relation to each other. Perez 
 cites the following : A little girl, three months 
 
 and a half old, was put for a moment into the 
 arms of her uncle, who had a beautiful rose in 
 his buttonhole ; he was surprised to see the child 
 extend her arms, press his coat with both hands, 
 as when she nursed, and then put her lips against 
 his shirt, while making all the motions of suck- 
 ing. The nurse declared that several days be- 
 fore, when she was out with the child, she bought 
 a bunch of violets and put them in her dress; 
 there was, then, an olfactory sensation associated 
 with the idea and the motions of nursing.^^ We 
 are not so sure that the odour of the rose or that 
 of the violet was, as Perez believes, the princi- 
 ple of the child^s illusion; we would incline to 
 the belief, rather, that the child, feeling herself 
 to be in the arms of her uncle, as she was often 
 in those of her nurse, had the idea that an analo- 
 gous operation ought to correspond to the analo- 
 gous situation. But however we interpret it, 
 this little instance shows the power of the law of 
 association, which joins the idea of nursing not 
 only with the reappearance of the nurse, as in or- 
 dinary experience, but with a fact simply analo- 
 gous to it, that of being carried in arms and of 
 being near a human breast. 
 
294 the development of the child. 
 
 others have succeeded in showing that the 
 associations founded on resemblance — that is to 
 say, on an apparently objective principle — are, 
 however, in themselves, as are all the others, 
 only subjective associations which result from 
 the coexistence or from the succession of two 
 states of consciousness.* We have the right, 
 nevertheless, if we judge only from appearances, 
 to consider the association by resemblance and 
 by analogy as a distinct category ; and it is to 
 this category that most of the child^s associations 
 of ideas belong. The association of ideas, like all 
 forms or laws of the mind, has its own physiog- 
 nomy in the first years of life. And it is un- 
 doubtedly the particular frequency of associa- 
 tions that have no other raison d’etre than a 
 likeness more or less real which is the peculiar 
 characteristic of the child^s intellectual activity, f 
 Any analogy, however vague it may be, almost a 
 nothing, will suffice to turn him from one idea to 
 another. Consequently we are often unable to 
 understand a child^s thought. We are tempted 
 to believe that it is mere wandering, an absolute 
 incoherence, when he really has his secret reasons 
 for jumping from one thing to another. I have 
 seen a baby two years old, when looking at a 
 book of natural history, recognise and call by 
 name quite a number of animals ; when he came 
 to a very brilliant parrot he invariably called it 
 mamma."^^ After hearing this several times, 
 
 * See Rabier, op, cit., p. 191 et seq. 
 
 f “ In idiots it is manifestly the appreciation of resemblances 
 that predominates.’^ (Dr. Sollier.) 
 
ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 
 
 295 
 
 one could not but recognise that in the employ- 
 ment of this strange denomination the child al- 
 lowed himself to be guided by an altogether 
 external association of ideas between the parrot 
 with his bright feathers and the brighter^ more 
 striking costumes, the hats covered with feathers 
 worn by his mother and women in general. 
 
 It is a superficial appreciation of the resem- 
 blances of objects that determines the generaliza- 
 tions of children, sometimes so strange and so 
 haphazard. Where we see only differences they 
 perceive likenesses ; they establish relations that 
 disconcert us.* The thought of the child, like 
 that of the poet, is light and winged ; it crosses 
 invisible and fragile bridges, which refiection 
 would break should she bear her weight upon 
 them, but over which the child^s imagination 
 gently glides as the spider on the fine thread of 
 his web. 
 
 Purely verbal associations, those that result 
 from the resemblance of sounds, are found fre- 
 quently in the child. It is very natural that the 
 consonance of words should exercise a greater 
 influence on an intelligence that is as yet limited 
 than on the reflective mind of the adult. Not 
 that these associations do not present themselves 
 to the mature man also. How often in our medi- 
 tations or our reveries are we victims to these 
 external analogies of words ! But we repulse 
 them, while the child obeys them. One day, when 
 Marcel was two years and a half old, he was at 
 table ; the dessert was brought on, and he was 
 
 See chapter xi : How the child learns to talk. 
 
296 THE DEVELOPMENT. OF THE CHILD. 
 
 asked if he would have some cheese {fromage). 
 He did not wish any, and asked immediately for 
 mages, mages, I suspected that he wanted pic- 
 tures (images), and as soon as they were shown 
 him he became quiet. The child's inexperience 
 in respect to language makes these superficial 
 connections easier to him. Murdering words, as 
 he does continually, distorting them at will, the . 
 resemblance of a single syllable is sometimes 
 enough to start his imagination off on a new 
 track. It is association, too, that explains the 
 awkwardness of a child's expression — and the 
 same confusion may be produced at any age — 
 the barbarisms which he scatters so profusely in 
 his vocabulary when he gives one word the ter- 
 mination of another that is more familiar to 
 him. 
 
 The other classical principles of the associa- 
 tion of ideas, contiguity in space, relation of 
 cause and effect, of means to the end, determine 
 many of the child's judgments or reasonings. 
 Examples of this will be found further on.* 
 There is no need to exaggerate the case, however, 
 and to see the unalloyed effect of an involuntary 
 mechanism, a simple automatic juxtaposition of 
 ideas or states of consciousness in acts in which 
 the force of judgment or of reasoning is already 
 showing itself. The psychologists of to-day show 
 a marked tendency to make all the intellectual 
 phenomena dependent upon the association of 
 ideas. Because a word calls up the idea which 
 it expresses, or, inversely, because the object pre- 
 
 * See chap. x. 
 
ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 
 
 297 
 
 sented calls forth the corresponding term, is it ne- 
 cessary to call in the law of association ? Is it 
 not more exact to say that there is an act of in- 
 telligent interpretation of the sign, or, in the in- 
 verse case, an act of remembrance ? ''A child 
 ten months old sees her grandfather every day, 
 and his portrait, small, but a good likeness, has 
 been shown her several times. When she is asked 
 ^ Where is grandpa ? ^ she turns toward the por- 
 trait and smiles at it.'" Perez, who borrows this 
 anecdote from Taine, gives it as an example 
 of association.* According to this, everything 
 being associated and connected in the mind, there 
 would not be a single judgment, a single act of 
 reasoning, that could not be explained in the 
 same way. We can not admit Sully's opinion 
 either when he offers as examples of association 
 the judgments by which the child aflS.rms that 
 the sun shines, that the rain wets, that hard 
 bodies wound, f These are but immediate per- 
 ceptions which associate two ideas, as do all acts 
 of judgment, the idea of the sun and of the bright 
 light, etc., but which associate them spontane- 
 eously. Philosophers as well as children can be 
 the dupes of a superficial relation between things 
 and can be led away by imprudent generaliza- 
 tions. Every intellectual act, even the most ele- 
 mentary, even that which consists simply in af- 
 firming the existence of an object — and the child 
 can do this even before he can speak by showing 
 that he recognises an object — presupposes the 
 connection of two intellectual elements. And in 
 
 * Perez, op. ciL, p. 162. 
 
 f J. Sully, op, ciLj p. 169. 
 
298 the development op the child. 
 
 the same way, the most profound act of reason- 
 ing, as in the case of the calculator with his 
 proofs, the observer with his discoveries, rests 
 on the association of ideas. But this is no reason 
 for forgetting and ignoring the differences that 
 distinguish these phenomena from the associa- 
 tion of ideas, pure and simple, nor for confound- 
 ing the operations in which appears either the 
 natural force of intelligence in a perception imme- 
 diately comprehended, or the effort of thought 
 in a chain of reasoning, with the phenomena of 
 purely mechanical association, with what may be 
 called, in a word, intellectual automatism. 
 
 END OF VOLUME I. 
 
A WORK OF GREAT VALUE, 
 
 The International Geography. 
 
 By Seventy Authors, including Right Hon. James 
 Bryce, Sir W. M. Conway, Prof. W. M. Davis, Prof. 
 Angelo Heilprin, Prof. Fridtjof Nansen, Dr. J. Scott 
 Keltie, and F. C. Selous. With 488 Illustrations. 
 Edited by Hugh Robert Mill, D. Sc. 8vo. 1088 
 pages. Cloth, $3.50. 
 
 “ Can unhesitatingly be given the first place among publications of 
 its kind in the English language. ... An inspection of the list of asso- 
 ciate authors leads readily to the conclusion that no single volume in 
 recent scientific literature embodies, in original contributions, the labor 
 of so many eminent specialists as this one. . . . The book should find 
 a place in every library, public or private, that contains an atlas or 
 gazetteer.” — The Nation. 
 
 The attempt to present in one volume an authoritative modem 
 summary of the whole of geography as fully as space would permit has 
 been admirably successful.” — New York Sun. 
 
 In brief, it may be said* to be both a reference book and a con- 
 nected geographical history of the modern world, something that any 
 one can read with profit in addition to finding it of constant value in 
 his library.” — Chicago Evening Post. 
 
 “ In his entirely studious moments the geographer cherishes above 
 all things facts and accuracy. He must, therefore, value very highly 
 a work like the ^ International Geography.’ It should be precious alike 
 to the specialist and to the beginner. . . . Small but adequate maps are 
 constantly introduced, and there is, finally, a splendid index.” — New 
 York Tribune. 
 
 ‘^Simply invaluable to students, teachers, and others in need ot 
 such a book of reference.” — Washington Times. 
 
 “ Not only as complete as the limits would allow, but is strictly 
 up to date.” — San Francisco Argonaut. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 
 
A 
 
 McMASTER'S FIFTH VOLUME, 
 
 History of the People of the United 
 States. 
 
 By Prof. John Bach McMaster. Vols. I, II, III, 
 IV, and V now ready. 8vo. Cloth, with Maps, 
 I2.50 per volume. 
 
 The fifth volume covers the time of the administrations of 
 John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, and describes the 
 development of the democratic spirit, the manifestations of new 
 interest in social problems, and the various conditions and plans 
 presented between 1821 and 1830. Many of the subjects in- 
 cluded have necessitated years of first-hand investigations, and 
 are now treated adequately for the first time. 
 
 “ John Bach McMaster needs no introduction, but only a greeting. . . . 
 The appearance of this fifth volume is an event in American literature 
 second to none in importance this season.” — JVew York Times. 
 
 “This volume contains 576 pages, and every page is worth reading. 
 The author has ransacked a thousand new sources of information, and has 
 found a wealth of new details throwing light upon all the private and public 
 activities of the" American people of three quarters of a century ago.” — 
 Chicago Tribune. 
 
 “ In the fifth volume Professor McMaster has kept up to the high standard 
 he set for himself in the previous numbers. It is hard to realize thoroughly 
 the amount of detailed work necessary to produce these books, which con- 
 tain the best history of our country that has yet been published. ” — Philadel- 
 phia Telegraph. 
 
 “The first installment of the history came as a pleasant surprise, and 
 the later volumes have maintained a high standard in regard to research 
 and style of treatment.” — New York Critic. 
 
 “A monumental work. . . . Professor McMaster gives on every page 
 ample evidence of exhaustive research for his facts.” — Rochester Herald. 
 
 “ The reader can not fail to be impressed by the wealth of material out 
 of which the author has weighed and condensed and arranged his matter.” 
 — Detroit Free Press. 
 
 “ Professor McMaster is our most popular historian. . . . He never 
 wearies, even when dealing with subjects that would be most wearisome 
 under clumsier handling. This fifth volume is the most triumphant evi- 
 dence of his art.” — New York Herald. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YOR.K. 
 
By EDGAR STANTON MACLAY, A. M. 
 
 A History of American Privateers. 
 
 By Edgar Stanton Maclay, A. M., author of “A History of 
 the United States Navy.” Uniform with “A History of the 
 United States Navy.” One volume. Illustrated. 8vo. Cloth, 
 
 After several years of research the distinguished historian of American sea power 
 presents the first comprehensive account of one of the most picturesque and absorb- 
 ing phases of our maritime warfare. The importance of the theme is indicated 
 by the fact that the value of prizes and cargoes taken by privateers in the Revo- 
 lution was three times that of the prizes and cargoes taken by naval vessels, 
 while in the War of 1812 we had 517 privateers and only 23 vessels in our 
 navy. The intimate connection between privateers and the navy, the former 
 serving often as a training school for the latter, is brought out in the author’s 
 narrative. From forgotten monographs, the records of historical societies, from 
 unpublished log books, and from descendants of noted privateersmen, he has 
 obtained intimate and vivid accounts of the fitting out of the vessels, the 
 incidents of their voyages, and the thrilling adventures of the brave sailors who 
 manned them. Mr. Maclay’s romantic tale is accompanied by reproductions of 
 contemporary pictures, portraits, and documents, and also by illustrations by 
 Mr. George Gibbs. 
 
 A History of the United States Navy, from 
 1775 to 1898. 
 
 By Edgar Stanton Maclay, A. M. With Technical Revision 
 by Lieutenant Roy C. Smith, U. S. N. New edition, revised 
 and enlarged, with new chapters and several new Illustrations. 
 In two volumes, 8vo. Per volume, cloth, $3.50. 
 
 This ‘work has been adopted as the Text-Book upon United States Na‘val 
 History in the U. S. Na-val Arr.demy at Annapolis. 
 
 The Private Journal of William Maclay, 
 
 United States Senator from Pennsylvania, 1789-1791. With 
 Portrait from Original Miniature. Edited by Edgar S. Maclay, 
 A. M. Large 8vo. Cloth, ^2.25. 
 
 During his two years in the Senate William Maclay kept a journal of his 
 own in which he minutely recorded the transactions of each day. This record 
 throws a flood of light on the doings of our first legislators. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 
 
THE BEST BOOK ON PUERTO RICO. 
 
 Puerto Rico and its Resources. 
 
 A book for Travelers, Investors, and others, 
 containing Full Accounts of Natural Features and 
 Resources, Products, People, Opportunities for 
 Business, etc. By Frederick A. Ober, author 
 of “ Camps in the Caribbees,” “ Crusoe’s Island,” 
 etc. With Map and Illustrations. i2mo. Cloth, 
 I1.50. 
 
 *^You have brought together in a small space an immense 
 amount of most valuable information, which it is very important 
 to have within the reach of the American people at this time.” 
 — Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge. 
 
 An orderly and intelligent account of the island. Mr. Ober’s 
 book is both timely and trustworthy .” — New York Evening Post. 
 
 The best authoritative and ^ eyewitnessing ’ book on this 
 subject yet printed. . . . Mr. Ober describes in a definite, 
 practical way its commercial, strategic, agricultural, financial, 
 political, and geographical features, and furnishes just the informa- 
 tion sought for by intending settlers .” — Boston Globe. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 
 
By Prof. G. MASPERO. 
 
 The greatest and most scholarly work on the history of 
 the Ancient World* 
 
 The Passing of the Empires 
 
 (Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, and Medea), 
 
 850 B. C. to 330 B. C. 
 
 By Prof. G. Maspero, author of “ The Dawn of Civiliza- 
 tion ” and “The Struggle of the Nations.” Edited by 
 the Rev. Prof. A. H. Sayce. Translated by M. L. 
 McClure. With Maps and numerous Illustrations, in- 
 cluding three Colored Plates. Uniform edition. 4to. 
 Cloth, $7.50. 
 
 “With this magnificent volume Professor Maspero completes his 
 great task, which has extended over nearly seven years, of writing a 
 history of the Oriental world from the earliest times down to the death 
 of Darius. The work has been great, as the progress of Oriental re- 
 search has been so rapid, and discoveries so numerous, that to attain 
 any finality seemed impossible ; but the author has neglected nothing, 
 and indeed the footnotes to these volumes show an almost herculean 
 labor of research among authorities in every land and every tongue, 
 and add immensely to the value of the work .” — Chronicle (London). 
 
 “For learning and industry. Professor Maspero’s epoch-making 
 series on the ‘History of the Ancient Peoples of the Classic East’ 
 deserves to be called monumental. . . . The work is a remarkably full 
 encyclopaedia of the subject of which it treats, though arranged in 
 chronological and not in alphabetical order. Owing to these charac- 
 teristics it is indispensable as a book of reference. . . . ‘ The Passing 
 of the Empires,’ whatever be its imperfections or blemishes, is the 
 completion of a prodigious achievement, and its usefulness will be in 
 proportion to the labor it has cost.” — Sunday-School Times, 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 
 
TWENTIETH CENTURY TEXT BOOKS. 
 
 A History of the American Nation. 
 
 By Andrew C. McLaughlin, Professor of 
 American History in the University of Michi- 
 gan. With many Maps and Illustrations. i2mo. 
 Cloth, $1.40 net. 
 
 One of the most attractive and complete one- volume his- 
 tories of America that has yet appeared.” — Boston Beacon, 
 
 Complete enough to find a place in the library as 'well as in 
 the school.” — Denver Republican, 
 
 ^^This excellent work, although intended for school use, is 
 equally good for general use at home.” — Boston Transcript, 
 
 ^^It should find a place in all historic libraries.” — Toledo 
 Blade, 
 
 Clearness is not sacrificed to brevity, and an adequate 
 knowledge of political causes and efihcts may be gained from this 
 concise history.” — New York Christian Advocate, 
 
 A remarkably good beginning for the new Twentieth Cen- 
 tury Series of text-books. . . . The illustrative feature, and 
 especially the maps, have received the most careful attention, 
 and a minute examination shows them to be accurate, truthful, 
 and illustrative.” — Philadelphia Press, 
 
 ^^The work is up to date, and in accord with the best modern 
 methods. It lays a foundation upon which a superstructure of 
 historical study of any extent may be safely built.” — Pittsburg 
 Times, 
 
 A book of rare excellence and practical usefulness .”- — ^alt 
 Lake Tribune, 
 
 ^^The volume is eminently worthy of a place in a series des- 
 tined for the readers of the coming century. It is highly 
 creditable to the author.” — Chicago Evening Post, 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 
 
LITERATURES OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Edited fcy EDMUND GOSSE, 
 
 Hon. M. A. of Trinity College, Cambridge. 
 
 A succession of attractive volumes dealing with the history of literature in 
 each country. Each volume will contain about three hundred and fifty i2mo 
 pages, and will treat an entire literature, giving a uniform impression of its 
 development, history, and character, and of its relation to previous and to con^ 
 temporary work. 
 
 Each, J2mo, cloth, $1*50 each* 
 
 NOW READY. 
 
 Sanskrit Literature. By A. A. Macdonell, 
 
 M. A., Deputy Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the Uni- 
 versity of Oxford. 
 
 Russian Literature. By K. Waliszewski. 
 
 Bohemian Literature. By Francis, Count Lutzow, 
 author of Bohemia : An Historical Sketch.” 
 
 Japanese Literature. By W. G. Aston, C. M. G., 
 M. A., late Acting Sec’y at the British Legation, Tokio. 
 
 Spanish Literature. By J. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, 
 Member of the Spanish Academy. 
 
 Italian Literature. * By Richard Garnett, C. B., 
 LL. D., Keeper of Printed Books in the British Museum. 
 
 Ancient Greek Literature. By Gilbert Murray, 
 
 M. A., Professor of Greek in the University of Glasgow. 
 
 French Literature. By Edward Dowden, D. C. L., 
 LL. D., Professor of English Literature at the Univer- 
 sity of Dublin. 
 
 Modern English Literature. By the Editor. 
 
 IN PREPARATION. 
 
 AMERICAN LITERATURE. By Prof. W. P. Trent, of the Univer- 
 sity of the South. 
 
 GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 HUNGARIAN LITERATURE. By Dr. Zoltan Be6thy, Professor 
 of Hungarian Literature at the University of Budapest 
 
 LATIN LITERATURE. By Dr. Arthur Woolgar-Verrall, Fellow 
 and Senior Tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge. 
 
 MODERN SCANDINAVIAN LITERATURE. By Dr. Georg 
 Brandes, of Copenhagen. 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 
 
TWENTIETH CENTURY TEXT-BOOKS. 
 
 NOW READY. 
 
 Plant Relations. 
 
 A First Book of Botany. By John Merle Coulter, A. M., Ph. D., Head of De- 
 partment of Botany, University of Chicago. i2mo. Cloth, $1.10. 
 
 Plant Structures. 
 
 A Second Book of Botany. By John Merle Coulter, A. M., Ph. D. i2mo. 
 Cloth, $1.20. 
 
 Plant Studies. 
 
 An Elementary Botany. By John M. Coulter, A. M., Ph. D. lamo. Cloth, $1.25. 
 
 Plarts. 
 
 A Text Book of Botany. By John Merle Coulter, A. M., Ph. D. i2mo. 
 Cloth, $1.80. 
 
 A History of the American Nation. 
 
 By Andrew C. McLaughlin, A. M., LL. B., University of Michigan. i2mo. 
 Cloth, $1.40. 
 
 English Texts. i2mo. Cloth, 50 cents ; boards, 40 cents. 
 
 Dryden’s Palamon and Arcite. 
 
 Edited by George M. Marshall, Ph. B., University of Utah. 
 Shakspere’s Macbeth. 
 
 Edited by Richard Jones, Ph. D., Vanderbilt University. 
 
 The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. 
 
 Edited by Franklin T. Baker, A. M., Columbia University, and Richard 
 Jones, Ph. D. 
 
 Selections from Milton’s Shorter Poems. 
 
 Edited by Frederic D. Nichols, University of Chicago. 
 
 Macaulay’s Essays on Milton and Addison. 
 
 Edited by George B. Aiton, A. M., State Supervisor of High Schools, 
 Minnesota. 
 
 Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with America. 
 
 Edited by William I. Crane, Steele High School, Dayton, Ohio. 
 Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 
 
 Edited by Pelham Edgar, B. A., Ph. D., Victoria College. 
 
 George Eliot’s Silas Marner. 
 
 Edited by J. Rose Colby, Ph. D., Illinois State Normal University, and 
 Richard Jones, Ph. D. Cloth, 60 cents; boards, 45 cents. 
 
 Animal Life. 
 
 A First Book of Zoology. By David S. Jordan, M. S., M. D., Ph. D., LL. D., 
 President of Leland Stanford Junior University, and Vernon L. Kellogg, M. S., 
 Leland Stanford Junior University.- i2mo. Cloth, $1.20. 
 
 The Elements of Physics. 
 
 By C. Hanford Henderson, Ph. D., Principal of Pratt High School, Brooklyn, 
 and John F. Woodhull, A. M., Professor of Physical Science, Teachers’ College, 
 Columbia University. 
 
 Physical Experiments. 
 
 A Laboratory Manual. By John F. Woodhull, Ph. D., and M. B. Van Arsdale, In- 
 structor in Physical Science in Horace Mann School and Assistant in Teachers’ College. 
 
 The Elementary Principles of Chemistry. 
 
 By Abram Van Eps Young, Ph. B., Northwestern University, Evanston, 111 . 
 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 
 

 
 
 .v> 
 
 
 ’ - 
 
 a 
 
 ■ s^Vj6 
 
 
 jHl 
 

,x