Biography of a baby

8/7/2019 Biography of a baby

1/260

Jj^fX


2/260


3/260


4/260


5/260

THE BIOGRAPHYOF

A BABYBY

MILICENT WASHBURN SHINN

BOSTON AND NEW YORKHOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY


6/260

COPYRIGHT, IQOO, BY MILICENT WASHBURN SHINNALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PRINTED


7/260

CONTENTSI. Baby Biographies in General 1n. The New-born Baby : Structure and Move-

ments 20IIL The New-born Baby : Sensations and Con-

sciousness 39rV. The Earliest Developments 58v. Beginnings of Emotion and Progress in

Sense Powers 78VI. Progress toward Graspino 99

VII. She learns to grasp, and discovers theWorld of Things 118

Vin. The Era of Handling Things 141IX. The Dawn of Intelligence 161X. Beginnings of Locomotion 182XI. Creeping and Standing 203Xn. Rudiments of Speech ; Climbing and Progress

toward Walking 224Xm Walking Alone; Developing Intelligence 238


8/260

Digitized by the Internet Archivein 2007 with funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/biographyofbabyOOshinuoft


9/260

THE BIOGRAPHY OF A BABY

BABY BIOGRAPHIES IN GENERAL'* It is a well recognized fact in the history

of science that the very subjects which con-cern our dearest interests, which He nearestour hearts, are exactly those which are thelast to suLmit to scientific methods, to bereduced to scientific law. Thus it has cometo pass that while babies are born and growup in every household, and while the gradualunfolding of their faculties has been watchedwith the keenest interest and intensest joyby inteUigent and even scientific fathers andmothers from time inunemorial, yet very Httlehas yet been done in the scientific study ofthis most important of all possible subjects^


10/260

2 THE BIOGEAPHY the ontogenetic evolution of the facultiesof the human niind.

" Only in the last few years has scientificattention been drawn to the subject at all.Its transcendent importance has already en-listed many observers, but on account of thegreat complexity of the phenomena, and stillmore the intrinsic difficulty of their inter-pretation, scientific progress has scarcely yetcommenced.

" What is wanted most of all in this, asin every science, is a body of carefully ob-served facts. But to be an accomplishedinvestigator in this field requires a rare com-bination of qualities. There must be a wideintelligence combined with patience in observ-ing and honesty in recording. There mustbe also an earnest scientific spirit, a lovingsympathy with the subject of investigation,yet under watchful restraint, lest it cloud thejudgment; keenness of intuitive perception,yet soberness of judgment in interpretation."

1 have appropriated these words of Dr.


11/260

OF A BABY 3Joseph Le Conte because the general readeris not Hkely to see them where they wereoriginally printed, in a Httle university study,and it is a pity to let the general readermiss so good an introduction to the subject.Not all learned men rate baby biography ashighly as Dr. Le Conte does ; but probablyall biologists do, and those psychologistswho are most strongly impressed with theevolutionary interpretation of life.

It is easy to see why one's views of evolu-tion affect the matter. In botany, for in-stance, we do not think that we can under-stand the mature plant by studying it alone,without knowledge of its germinating period.If we omitted all study of radicle and plu-mule and cotyledon, we should not only losean interesting chapter from the science, buteven the part we kept, the classification andmorphology and physiology of the gi-ownplant itself, would be seriously misunder-stood in some ways. So in other sciences : itis necessary to understand how things came


12/260


13/260

OF A BABY 5through in babyhood, many an inspection byeye, many an exercise of memory, connectingthe peculiar arrangement of Hght and shadewith the form as felt, before we could " see "a ball. Had this been understood in Froe-bel's time, it would have made a materialdifference in his suggestions as to sense train-ing in earHest infancy. So other powers thatseem simple and inborn may perhaps be de-tected in the act of forming themselves outof simpler ones, if we watch babies closelyenough, and it may lead us to revise some ofour theories about education.

There are enthusiasts, indeed, who wouldhave us beheve that child study is going torevolutionize all our educational methods, butthose who are surest of these wonderful re-sults, and readiest to teU mothers and teacherswhat is the truly scientific thing to do withtheir children, are not the ones who havedone the most serious first hand study ofchildren. From indications so far, it is likelythat the outcome of such study will oftener


14/260

6 THE BIOGRAPHYbe to confirm some good old-fashioned waysof training (showing that they rested uncon-sciously on a sound psychological basis) thanto discover new ways. No substitute hasyet been found by scientific pedagogy formotherly good sense and devotion.

Yet the direct study of child minds doesbiing out some new suggestions of educa-tional value, does give a verdict sometimesbetween old conflicting theories, and alwaysmakes us understand more clearly what weare doing with children. And on the purelyscientific side there is one aspect of especialinterest in genetic studies. That is, the pos-sible Hght we may get on the past of thehuman race.

It has long been observed that there arecurious resemblances between babies andmonkeys, between boys and barbaric tribes.Schoolboys administer law among themselvesmuch as a tribal court does ; babies sit Hkemonkeys, with the soles of their little feetfacing each other. Such resemblances led,


15/260

OF A BABY 7long before the age of Darwin, to the spec-ulation that children in developing passedthrough stages similar to those the race hadpassed through ; and the speculation has be-come an accepted doctrine since embryologyhas shown how each individual before birthpasses in successive stages through the lowerforms of hfe.

This series of changes in the individual iscalled by evolutionists the Ontogenic Series ;and the similar series through which the racehas passed in the myriads of ages of its evo-lution is called the Phylogenic.Now, of these two versions of the great

world history, the phylogenic is a worn andancient volume, mutilated in many places,and often illegible. The most interestingchapter of all is torn out that which re-cords the passing over of man from brute tohuman, the beginning of true human rea-son, speech, and skill. The lowest livingraces are far beyond the transition line ; theremains of the past can never tell us how it


16/260


17/260

OF A BABY 9short cuts, and condense and omit inconceiv-ably, to get through in a few brief years adevelopment that the race took ages for.Even the order of development gets dis-arranged sometimes. For instance, primi-tive man probably reached a higher develop-ment before he could talk than babies haveto now, after ages of talking ancestry: wemust not look to a child just learning to talk,to get an idea of what the minds of menwere Hke when they were just learning totalk. Again, the human child is carryingon under the influence of adults an evolutionthat primitive man worked out without helpor hindrance from any one wiser than him-self ; and that makes a great difference inthe way he does it.

The moral of all this is that people shouldbe very cautious indeed in drawing parallelsbetween the child and the race, and especiallyin basing educational theories on them. Butif one is cautious enough and patient enough,there are many hints about our race liistory


18/260

10 THE BIOGRAPHYto be found in every nursery. Some of theseI shall relate in the following chapters.

Most studies of children deal with laterchildhood, the school years ; and these arealmost always statistical in their method,taking the individual child very little intoaccount. My own study has been of baby-hood, and its method has been biographical.It is hard to get statistics about babies, scat-tered as they are, one by one, in differenthomes, not massed in schoolrooms. Nowand then a doctor has found material forgood comparative investigations, and mucheffort has been spent in trying to gather upmeasurements of babies' growth ; but on thewhole the most fruitful method so far hasbeen the biographical one that of watch-ing one baby's development, day by day, andrecording it.

I am often asked if the results one gets inthis way are not misleading, since each childmight differ greatly from others. One must,


19/260

OF A BABY 11o course, use great caution in drawing gen-eral conclusions from a single child, but inmany things all babies are ahke, and onelearns to perceive pretty well which are thethings. Babyhood is mainly taken up withthe development of the large, general racialpowers ; individual differences are less impor-tant than in later childhood. And the bio-graphical method of child study has the ines-tunable advantage of showing the process oevolution going on, the actual unfolding ofone stage out of another, and the steps bywhich the changes come about. No amountof comparative statistics could give this. IfI should find out that a thousand babieslearned to stand at an average age of forty-six weeks and two days, I should not knowas much that is important about standing, asa stage in human progress, as I should afterwatching a single baby carefully through thewhole process of achieving balance on hislittle soles.

Yet there are not many baby biographies


20/260

12 THE BIOGRAPHYin existence. There are scarcely half a dozenrecords that are full and consecutive enoughto be at all entitled to the name, and even ofmore fragmentary ones the number in printas separate essays is scarcely larger. A goodmany more, however, have been available inmanuscript to students, and many mothersno doubt keep such little notebooks. Thesenotes are often highly exact and inteUigent,as far as they go (I have found this espe-cially true of the notebooks of members ofthe Association of Collegiate Alumnse), andajfford important corroborations here andthere to more continuous records.

It was the Germans who first thought babylife worth recording, and the most completeand scientific of all the records is a Germanone. The first record known was pubhshedin the last century by a Professor Tiedemann a mere sHp of an essay, long completelyforgotten, but resuscitated about the middleof this century, translated into French (andlately into Enghsh), and used by all students


21/260

OF A BABY 13of the subject. Some of its observations wemust, with our present knowledge, set downas erroneous ; but it is on the whole exactand valuable, and a remarkable thing for aman to have done more than a hundred yearsago.

Perhaps Darwin, in 1840, was the nextperson to take notes of an infant's develop-ment ; but they were taken only incidentallyto another study, and were not published formore than thirty years (partly in " The Ex-pression of the Emotions in Man and Ani-mals," 1873, partly in a magazine article in1877). They are scanty but important. Inthe interval before they were published twoor three small records had been published inGermany, and at least one paper, that of M.Taine, in France.

In 1881, the first edition of ProfessorPrayer's "model record" was published, andbefore his death, in 1897, it had reached itsthird edition in Germany, and had beenwidely circulated in America in Mr. Brown's


22/260

U THE BIOGEAPHYexcellent translation, " The Senses and theWill," and " The Development of the Intel-lect." It did more to stimulate and direct thestudy of infancy than any other publication.It has, however, the limitations that were tobe expected from Professor Preyer's specialtraining as a physiologist, and is meagre onthe side of mental, moral, and emotional de-velopment. Professor Sully's " Extractsfrom a Father's Diary," published in part in1881 and 1884 and fully in 1896, Ls richeron these sides, and also more readable.

Within the present decade, it is worthobserving, the principal records have beenAmerican, not German, and have been writ*ten by women. Outside of America, onlymen, usually university professors, have madeextended records. Professor Preyer andProfessor Sully have both appealed in vainto their countrywomen to keep such records,holding up American women for emulation.My " Notes on the Development of a Child '"were published in 1893 and 1899. In 1896


23/260

OF A BABY 13appeared Mrs. Hall's " The First 500 Daysof a Child's Life," a brief record, and con-fined to a short period, but a very good one,and perhaps the best for use as a guide byany one who wishes to keep a record andfinds Preyer too technical. Mrs. Moore's" Mental Development of a Child " is quiteas much a psychological study as a record,but is based on full biographical notes ; itwill be more used by students than generalreaders. Mrs. Hogan's "A Study of aChild," 1898, is less scholarly than theothers, but has a great deal of useful mate-rial ; it does not begin at birth, however, butwith the fourteenth month.

Perhaps I should say a word here as to theway in which I came to make a baby bio-graphy, for I am often asked how one shouldgo to work at it. It was not done in mycase for any scientific purpose, for I did notfeel competent to make observations of scien-tific value. But I had for years desired anopportunity to see the wonderful unfolding


24/260

16 THE BIOGEAPHYof human powers out of the limp helpless-ness of the new-born baby; to watch thisfascinating drama of evolution daily, mi-nutely, and with an effort to understand itas far as I could, for my own pleasure andinformation. I scarcely know whence thesuggestion had come; probably almost byinheritance, for my mother and grandmotherhad both been in somewhat notable degreeobservers of the development of babies*minds. But, unlike them, I had the note-book habit from college and editorial days,and jotted things down as I watched, tillquite unexpectedly I found myself in posses*sion of a large mass of data.A few days after my own notes began Iobtained Professor Preyer's record, and with-out it I should have found the earhest weeksquite unintelligible. For some months mynotes were largely memoranda of the like-nesses and differences between my niece'sdevelopment and that of Preyer's boy, andI stiU think this is the best way for a new


25/260

OF A BABY 17observer to get started. As time went on, Ideparted more and more from the lines ofPreyer's observations, and after the first yearwas httle influenced by them. Later, I de-voted a good deal of study to the notes, andtried to analyze their scientific results.

There is one question that I have beenasked a hundred times about baby biogra-phy: "Doesn't it do the children someharm? Doesn't it make them nervous?Does n't it make them self-conscious ? " Atfirst this seemed to me an odd misapprehen-sion as if people supposed observing chil-dren meant doing something to them. ButI have no doubt it could be so foolishlymanaged as to harm the child. There arethousands of parents who tell anecdotesabout children before their faces every dayin the year, and if such a parent turns childstudent it is hard to say what he may not doin the way of dissecting a child's mind openly,questioning the httle one about himself, andexperimenting with his thoughts and feehngs.


26/260

18 THE BIOGEAPHYBut such observing is as worthless scientifi-cally as it is bad for the child : the wholevalue of an observation is gone as soon asthe phenomena observed lose simphcity andspontaneity. It should be unnecessary tosay that no competent observer tampers withthe child in any way. If Professor Preyer,observing the baby as he first grasps atobjects, notes down the way in which hemisdirects his inexpert httle hands ; if Mrs.Barus keeps record of her boy's favoriteplaythings ; if I sit by the window and catchwith my pencil my niece's prattle as she playsabout below and if these babies afterwardturn out spoiled, the mischief must be cred-ited to some other agency than the silentnotebook.Even direct experimenting on a child is

not so bad as it sounds. When you show ababy his father's photograph to see if herecognizes it, you are experimenting on him.The only difference between the child stu-dent's experimenting and that which all the


27/260

OF A BABY 19members of the family are doing all day withthe baby, is that the student knows betterwhat he is trying to find out, and that hewrites it down.

Probably women are more skillful thanmen in quietly following the course of thechild's mind, even leading him to reveal him-self without at all meddling with him ormarring his simpHcity. It has been so ina marked degree in the cases I have seen.But no one who has good judgment willallow himself to spoil both the child and hisown observation ; and any one who has notgood judgment will find plenty of ways tospoil a child more potent than observinghim.


28/260

20 THE BIOGRAPHY

nTHE NEW-BORN BABY: STRUCTURE AND

MOVEMENTS."Its first act is a cry, not of wrath, as

Kant said, nor a shout of joy, as Schwartzthought, but a snufiling, and then long, thin,tearless aa, with the timbre of a Scotchbagpipe, purely automatic, but of discomfort.With this monotonous and dismal cry, withits red, shriveled, parboiled skin (for thechild commonly loses weight the first fewdays), squinting, cross-eyed, pot-bellied, andbow-legged, it is not strange that, if themother has not followed Froebel's exhorta-tions and come to love her child before birth,there is a brief interval occasionally danger-ous to the child before the maternal instinctis fully aroused."

It cannot be denied that this unflattering


29/260

OF A BABY 21description is fair enough, and our baby wasno handsomer than the rest of her kind.The httle boy uncle, who had been elated tohear that his niece resembled liim, lookedshocked and mortified when he saw her.Yet she did not lack admirers. I have nevernoticed that women (even those who are notmothers) mind a few Httle aesthetic defects,such as these that President Hall mentions,with so many counterbalancing charms inthe Httle warm, soft, Hving thing.Nor is it women only who find the newbaby enchanting in Germany, at least.

Semmig, whose " Tagebuch eines Vaters"is one of the earHest attempts at a record, isdehghted even with the " dismal and mono-tonous cry." " Heavenly music of the firstcry ! " he exclaims, " sacred voice of life,fii'st sound of the poem of a heart, first noteof the symphony of human life, thou echoof God's word! What sound is like untothee ? " " Yes, it is so : the cry of the babyis music ! When it is stiU, especiaUy in the


30/260

22 THE BIOGRAPHYnight, one is uneasy; one longs for thisprimitive expression of the little being, and)s consoled, enraptured, when the helplesscreature breaks into loud wails, and says tous : I hve, give me what I need ! Oh, cryof the baby in the night, nightingale songfor mother and father ! "

Our baby was at least a handsome onefrom the doctor's point of view, strong,healthy, and well formed ; and this is to betaken into account as a determining factorin all the record that follows.

I thought that she must be out of the nor-mal in the matter of legs, so oddly brief werethe fat little members. Afterward I learnedthat all babies are built that way andindeed that they are altogether so differentin structure from the grown man that Dr.Oppenheim, in his book on " The Develop-ment of the Child," comes near to sayingthat we must regard the infant as a differentanimal form from the adult, almost as thecatei^illar is different from the butterfly.


31/260

OF A BABY 23Common speech recognizes this in the caseof several of the higher animals, naming theyoung form as differently as if it were adifferent species. We say a colt, a calf, apuppy, a baby; not a young horse, cow,dog, or man.We call a baby a little copy of the man,

but really if he were magnified to man's sizeand strength, we should regard him at firstglance as an idiot and monster, with enor-mous head and abdomen, short legs, and noneck, not to speak of the flat-nosed, progna-thous face ; and on the other hand, a babythat was really a small copy of man's bodywould seem positively uncanny. We see thisin old pictures, where the artist tried to de-pict babies by placing small-sized men andwomen in the mother's arms.

The middle point of the baby's lengthfalls a Httle above the navel, the abdomenand legs together making up a little morethan half the whole length ; in the man thelegs alone make a trifle more than half. la


32/260

24 THE BIOGRAPHYproportion to the baby's total weight, itsbrain weighs seven times as much as a grownperson's, its muscles httle more than half asmuch.

** The two [man and baby] do not breatheahke, their pulse rates are not ahke, the com-position of their bodies is not ahke." Thebaby's body at birth is 74.7 per cent, water,ours 58.5 per cent. It is largely due to itsloose, watery structure that the baby's brainis so heavy which shows the folly of try-ing to compare mental powers by means ofbrain weights, as is so often done in discuss-ing woman's sphere. As Donaldson says,if there were anything in that basis of com-parison, the new-born baby would be theintellectual master of us all. The baby hasbright red and watery marrow, instead ofthe yellow, fatty substance in our bonesand its blood differs so from ours in propor-tion of red and white corpuscles and inchemical make-up as to "amount almost toa difference in kind," says Dr. Oppenheim,


33/260

OF A BABY 25who adds that such a condition of marrowor blood, if found in a grown person, wouldbe considered an indication of disease.The organs are differently placed within

the body, and even differently formed. Thebony structure is everywhere soft and unfin-ished, the plates of the skull imperfectly fittedtogether, with gaps at the corners ; and it iswell that they are, for if the brain box wereclosed tight the brain within could nevergrow. Surgeons have lately even made arti-ficial openings where the skull was prema-turely perfect, to save the baby from idiocy.The bony inclosures of the middle ear arequite unfinished, so that on the one sidecatarrhal inflanmiations from the nose andthroat travel up to the ear more readily thanin later life, while on the other side ear in-flammations are more likely to pass into thebrain. The spine is straight, Hke an ape's,instead of having the double curve of human-kind, which seems to be brought about bythe pull of the muscles after we have cometo stand erect.


34/260

26 THE BIOGRAPHYI have quoted these details from Oppen-

heim, and from Vierordt's and Roberts's mea-surements, as given by Dr. Burk (" Growthof Children in Height and Weight.") Someof the figures are given otherwise by otherauthorities. I might fill many pages withsimilar details. Some of these differencesdo not disappear till full manhood, othersare gone in a few weeks after birth. Andin them all there is so constant a repetitionof lower animal forms that anatomists arebrought to a confidence in the " recapitula-tion doctrine," such as they can hardly giveto others by means of a few sample facts.The most curious of all the monkey traits

shown by the new-born baby is the one inves-tigated by Dr. Louis Robinson (" NineteenthCentury," November, 1891). It was sug-gested by "The Luck of Roarmg Camp."The question was raised in conversationwhether a limp and molluscous baby, unableso much as to hold up its head on its helplesslittle neck, could do anything so positive as


35/260


36/260

28 THE BIOGRAPHYfrom it like athletes, without apparent dis*comfort, by the half minute; many of usgrown people could not do as well. Such aremarkable power of hands and arms has forages been of no especial use to the himianrace, and it fades out in a few weeks, but formany months the arms keep ahead of thelegs in development.

Here was not only strength of arms, butthe ability to perform quite skilKully an ac-tion, that required the working together of anumber of muscles to a definite end, theaction namely, of clasping an object withthe hand. This is one of several actionsthat come ready-made to the baby at birth,before he can possibly have had any chanceto learn them, or any idea of what they arefor. Babies sneeze, swallow, and cry on thefirst day ; they shut their eyes at a brightHght, or at a touch. On the first day,moreover, they have been seen to start at asound or a jar ; Preyer observed hiccough-ing, choking, coughing, and spreading the


37/260

OF A BABY 29toes when the soles were tickled ; and Dar-win saw yawning and stretching Avithin thefirst week, though I do not know that anyone has seen it on the first day.

These movements are all of the class calledreflex, movements, that is, in which thebodily mechanism is set off by some outsideaction on the senses, as a gun is set off bya touch on the trigger. Thus, when a tick-ling affects the mucous membrane, a sneezeexecutes itself without any will of ours ; whenour sense of sight perceives a swift missilecoming, the neck muscles mechanically jerkthe head to one side.We grown people have, however, a gooddeal of power of holding in our reflexes," inhibiting " them, as the technical ex-pression is, but the baby has none at all.If they had a highly developed reflex activ-ity, babies would be in real danger from theunrestrained acts of their own muscles, aswe see in the case of convulsions, whichshow reflex action at its extreme. But the


38/260


39/260

OF A BABY 31race movements, the habits of the species towhich the animal belongs, and every normalmember of the species is bound to come tothem ; yet they are not so fixed in the bodilymechanism as the reflex movements. Thestimulus to them seems to come more fromwithin than from without yet not fromreason and will, but from some blind im-pulse. This impulse is usually imperfect,and the child has to work his own way tothe mastery of the movements. Yet thoughcertain reflex activities are inherited in amore highly developed condition than anyhmnan instincts, the instincts are at bottomalways hereditary, which is not the case withthe reflexes any one may teach his musclesnew reflex movements, unknown to his an-cestors. A musician does it every time thathe practices new music till his hands will runit off of their own accord, while he is think-ing of something else. But instinct cannotbe thus acquired.The amazing instincts of the lower ani


40/260

32 THE BIOGRAPHYmals ; the imperfect and broken condition ofthe instincts in man, yet the deep hold thatthey have on him ; the mingUng of inheritednecessity and individual freedom in the wayin which they are worked out ; the mysteryof the physiological method by which theyact (while that of reflex movement is fairlywell understood, up to a certain point) ; thelight they seem always about to shed for thebiologist on the profoundest problems ofheredity, and for the philosopher on thoseof free will and personality, these thingsmake instinct one of the great fields of pre-sent research, and I must not venture intoit, though it is of importance in trying tounderstand a baby.

I shall say only that while instinct doesnot appear in the lowest animals (whoseaction is all of the reflex type), and is for atime a sign of rising rank in the scale of life,it reaches its culmination with the insects,and as we approach man it is the breakingup of the instincts that is in its turn a sign


41/260

OF A BABY 33of advancement to higher life. The Httlechicken runs about as soon as it is out of itsshell, and even the monkey baby is able totake care of itself in a few months. Nothingis so helpless as the human baby, and in thathelplessness is our glory, for it means thatthe activities of the race (as John Fiske hasso clearly shown) have become too many,too complex, too infrequently repeated, tobecome fixed in the nervous structure beforebirth ; hence the long period after birth be-fore the child comes to full human powers.It is a maxim of biology (as well as the fre-quent lesson of common observation) thatwhile an organism is thus immature andplastic, it may learn, it may change, it mayrise to higher development ; and thus to in-fancy we owe the rank of the human race.The one instinct the human baby always

brings into the world already developed ishalf a mere reflex act that of sucking. Itis started as a reflex would be, by the touchof some object, pencil, finger, or nipple, it


42/260

34 THE BIOGKAPHYmay be, between the lips ; but it does not actlike a reflex after that. It continues andceases without reference to this external stim-ulus, and a little later often begins without it,or fails to begin when the stimulus is given.If it has originally a reflex character, thatcharacter fades out, and leaves it a pure in-stinct.

These two types of automatic movement(for instinct, however complicated later withvoUtion, gives rise in these earliest days tonone but automatic movement) are both" purposive," though not purposed thatis, they are actions that are plainly adaptedto some end by ancestral intelligence or bynatural selection. But there was anothertype of movements more conspicuous in ourbaby than either, and apparently quite non-purposive. From the first day she movedslightly, but almost constantly, the legsdrawing up, the arms stirring, the eyes andhead rolling a little. Sometimes the featureswere distorted with vague and meaningless


43/260


44/260

S6 THE BIOGRAPHYit seems hardly possible that in a humanbaby, whose structure passed the amphibianstage long before birth, the most frequentmovements should hark back to that tre-mendous antiquity. It is more likely thatPreyer's explanation is the correct oneviz., that the movements are simply due tothe rapid growth of nerve centres, whichcauses an overflow of nervous force to themuscles and makes them contract at haphaz-ard. A certain regularity is given to thesechance movements by the tendency of nerveimpulse to flow in the same paths where ithas flowed before, rather than in new ones,so that the muscles are drawn toward theposition they occupied before birth. Thisbrings the hands constantly up about thehead a fact that later has important resultuin development.

These aimless movements are called " im-pulsive " by Preyer. I have followed Bainand Mrs. Moore in calling them " spontanea


45/260

OF A BABY 37There were no movements beyond these

three types, and therefore none that showedthe least volition. Mothers often think thecrying shows wish, will, or understanding ofsome sort. But Preyer tells us that babiesborn without a brain cry in just the samemanner.

Mothers do not like to think that thebaby is at first an automaton ; and theywould be quite right in objecting if thatmeant that he was a mere machine. He isan automaton in the sense that he has prac-tically neither thought, wish, nor will ; buthe is a living, conscious automaton, and thatmakes all the difference in the world. Andit would be a bold psychologist who shouldtry to say what germ of thought and willlies enfolded in his helplessness. Certainly,the capacity of developing will is there, andan automaton with such a capacity is a morewonderful creature than the wise, thinking,willing baby of nursery tradition would be.

If mothers would only reflect how Httle


46/260

38 THE BIOGRAPHYdeveloped a baby's mind is at a year old,after all the progress of twelve months, theywould see that they rate the mental startingpoint altogether too high. And they missthus the whole drama of the swift and lovelyunfolding of the soul from its invisible germ a drama that sometimes fairly catchesone's breath in the throat with excitementand wonder.


47/260

OF A BABY 39

mTHE NEW-BORN BABY: SENSATIONS AND

CONSCIOUSNESS.I HAVE said that the baby began the world

as an automaton, but a conscious, feelingautomaton. And what, then, were thesefeelings and this consciousness? What wasthe outfit for beginning the world that thelittle mind brought with it ? When I askedsuch questions I was skirting the edge of oneof the great battle-grounds of philosophy.Whether all human ideas are made up solelyfrom one's own experience of the outer worldas given him by his senses, or whether thereare, on the contrary, inborn ideas, implanteddirectly by nature or God, this is a ques-tion on which volumes have been written.

Did the baby start out ready equippedwith ideas of space, personal identity, time,


48/260

40 THE BIOGRAPHYcausation, such as we find so ineradicable inour own minds ? That is, did she see ob-jects about her, located in space, nearer andfarther, right and left, and all outside andseparate from herself, as we do ? hear soundscoming from without, as we do ? Did shefeel herself a separate thing from the outerworld ? Did she perceive events as happen-ing in time succession, one after another ?And did she think of one thing as happen-ing because of another, so that, for instance,she was capable of crying in order to causeher dinner to be brought?The hope of answering such questions was

the first stimulus to the study of infants, andthe earlier records are much occupied withthem. Philosophers nowadays are less dis-posed to think that we can prove anythingabout the doctrine of innate ideas by find-ing whether babies have such ideas to beginwith ; for we might indeed have ideas thatcame direct from God, or from the nature ofthe mind, and yet might not enter into ourinheritance of these at once.


49/260

OF A BABY 41To me, however, not seeking to solvephilosophical problems, but only to watch

and comprehend what was going on in thebaby's mind, it was none the less interest-ing to try to make out the condition of hersenses and consciousness though withoutthe careful special investigations certainphysiologists had made before, I should havefound it blind guessing as to how much shereally did see, hear, and feel ; for these pro-cesses, of course, went on inside her littlemind, and could only be inferred from herbehavior.

She evidently felt a difference betweenlight and darkness from the first hour, forshe stopped crying when her face was ex-posed to gentle light ; and other observersconfirm this. Two or three report also aturning of the head toward the light withinthe first week. The nurse, who was intelli-gent and exact, thought she saw this in thecase of my niece. I did not, but I saw in-stead a constant turning of the eyes toward


50/260

42 THE BIOGRAPHYa person coming near her that is, towarda large dark mass that interrupted the Hght.Either movement must be regarded as en-tirely instinctive or reflex. Even plants willturn toward the light, and among animalmovements this is one of the most primitivewhile the habit of looking toward any darkmoving mass runs far back in animal history,and may well have become fixed in the bodilymechanism. With the beginning of volun-tary looking these instinctive movementsfade.No other sign of vision appeared in the

little one during the first fortnight. Theeyes were directed to nothing, fixed on no-thing. They did not wink if one made apass at them. There was no change of focusfor near or distant seeing ; the two eyes didnot even move always in unison, and asthe lids also had by no means learned yet tomove symmetrically with the balls and witheach other, some extraordinary and alarmingcontortions resulted.


51/260

OF A BABY 43True seeing, such as we ourselves have,

is not just a matter of opening the eyes andletting the vision pour in ; it requires a greatdeal of minute muscular adjustment, both ofthe eyeballs and of the lenses, and it is im-possible that a baby should see anything butblurs of light and dark (without even anydistinction of distance) till he has learned theadjustments. Not colored blurs, but Hghtand dark only, for no trace of color sensehas ever been detected within the first fort-night of life, no certain evidence of it evenwithin the first year.The baby showed no sign of hearing any-

thing until the third day, when she startedviolently at the sound of tearing paper, someeight feet from her. After that, occasionalharsh or sudden sounds oftener the rus-tling of paper than anything else couldmake her start or cry.

It is well established by the careful testsof several physiologists that babies are deaffor a period lasting from several hours to


52/260

44 THE BIOGRAPHYseveral days after birth. The outer tube ofthe ear is often closed by its own walls, andthe middle ear is always stopped up withfluid. Even after the ear itself is clear andready for hearing, few sounds are noticedperhaps because the outer passage is still sonarrow, perhaps because of imperfect nerveconnections with the brain, perhaps becausesounds are not distinguished, but go all to-gether into a sort of blur, just as the sightsdo. As the usual effect of sounds on weebabies is to startle them, and to set off con-vulsive reflex movements, it is weU for themthat hearing is so tardy in development.

There is noticeable variation in sensitive-ness to hearing, not only among differentbabies, but in the same baby at differenttimes. A sound that startles on one dayseems to pass absolutely unheard on the next.

In observing the sensibihty to sound, onemay easily be misled. If a baby starts whena door slams or a heavy object falls, it ismore likely to be the jar than the sound that


53/260

OF A BABY 45affects him ; if he becomes restless when oneclaps the hands or speaks, it may be becausehe felt a puff of air on his head. The tapof an ordinary call bell is a good sound totest with, causing neither jar nor air current.

Taste and smell were senses that the babygave no sign of owning till much later. Thesatisfaction of hunger was quite enough toaccount for the contentment she showed innursing ; and when she was not hungry shewould suck the most tasteless object as cheer-fully as any other. Physiologists, however,have had the daring to make careful test ofsmell and taste in the new-born, putting awee drop of quinine, sugar, salt, or acid solu-tion on the babies' tongues, and strong odorsto their noses, and have been made certainby the resulting behavior that these sensesdo exist from the first. But it requires ratherstrong tests to call them into action. Manybabies, for instance, suck at a two per cent,solution of quinine as if it were sugar ; so itseems unlikely that the mild and monotonous


54/260

46 THE BIOGRAPHYtaste of milk, and the neutral smells by whichany well-kept baby u surrounded, are reallyperceived at all. There are instances relatedof very positive discrimination between onemilk and another, either by taste or smell,shown by very young babies ; yet the weightof evidence points to an almost dormantcondition of these two senses.We were told in school that the fifth sensewas " feeling," but psychologists now regardthis not as a single sense, but as a group,called the " dermal " or skin senses. Thesense of touch and pressure, the senses ofheat and cold, and the sense of pain are theprincipal ones of the group.

Our baby showed from the first that shewas aware when she was touched. Shestopped crying when she was cuddled orpatted. She showed comfort in the bath,which may have been in part due to freedomfrom the contact of clothes, and to hking forthe soft touches of the water. She respondedwith sucking motions to the first touch of


55/260

OF A BABY 47the nipple on her lips. Preyer found thelips of new-born babies quite delicately sen-sitive, responding even to the lightest touch ;and there are other sensitive spots, such asthe nostrils and the soles of the feet.On the whole, however, the rose-leaf baby

skin proves to be much less sensitive thanours, not only to contact, but also to pain,and perhaps to heat and cold, though thishas not been so thoroughly tested. This isnot saying, of course, that the physiologicaleffects of heat and cold upon the baby areunimportant.

Our baby had no experience of skin painin her early days, and being kept at anequable temperature, probably received nodefinite sensations either of heat or of cold.The foregoing are the " special senses,'*

that is, those that give impressions of exter-nal things, and have end organs to receiveand make definite these impressions, theeye at the end of the optic nerve, the differ-ent kinds of nerve tips in the skin, and so


56/260

48 THE BIOGRAPHYforth. Another sense now claims almost torank with them, the recently studied senseof equilibrium and motion, by which we feelloss of balance in our bodies and changes intheir motion (changes only, for no one canfeel perfectly smooth motion). This sensehas been traced to the semicircular canals ofthe ear; and as this part of the ear is theoldest in evolution, and the rudimentary earsof the lower orders of animals are quite anal-ogous to it in structure, biologists now sus-pect that hearing may be a more recent sensethan we have thought, and that much whichhas been taken for sense of sound in thelower animals even as high as fishesmay perhaps be only a delicate sense ofmotion.

I failed to watch for this motion sense inthe baby. It would have been shown bysigns that she felt change of motion whenshe was lifted and moved. Equihbrium senseshe must have used as soon as she began tobalance her little head, but in the first limp


57/260

OF A BABY 49and passive days there was no sign of it.Still, there are tales of very young babieswho showed disturbance, as if from a feelingof lost equilibrium, when they were loweredswiftly in the arms.

There is besides a sort of sensibiHty tovibration that affects the whole body. Weknow how much of the rhythm of music maybe caught quite soundlessly through thevibrations of the floor ; and it is said (per-haps not altogether credibly) that it was thusthat Jessie Brown recognized even the instru-ments and the tune at the relief of Lucknowby the tremor along the ground before asound was audible. A jar, affecting thewhole body, seems to be felt by creatures ofvery low organization. Babies are undoubt-edly quite susceptible to jarring from theearliest days. Champney's baby startedwhen the scale of the balance in which hewas lying immediately after birth sprang up.Then there is the " muscle sense " thefeeling of the action of our own muscles;


58/260

50 THE BIOGRAPHYand a most delicate and important sense thisis. It is safe to saj that the baby had itfrom the first, and felt the involuntary move-ments her own Httle body was making, forit is hardly conceivable how else she couldhave learned to make voluntary ones. Butthat is another story, and comes later.Even this does not exhaust the list of sen-sations the baby could feel. There was thewhole group of " organic sensations," comingfrom the inner organs, hunger, thirst, or*ganic pain. With older people, nausea, suf-focation, choking, and perhaps some othersmight be added ; but Httle babies certainlydo not feel nausea, their food regurgitateswithout a qualm. Nor do they seem to feeldisagreeable sensations when they choke innursing.

Organic pain our baby had her touch ofin the usual form of colic ; and huno-erwas obviously present very earlv, thouo-hperhaps not in the first two or three days.Thirst appeared from the first, and was


59/260

OF A BABY 51always imperative. Of course, the milk dietlaro^elv satisfied it, but not entirely. Luck-ily our baby did not suffer from thirst, forgrandma, nurse, and the good doctor had aUentered early warning that '*' babies neededwater," and that many a baby was treatedfor coHc, insomnia, nervousness, and naturaldepra\4ty, when aU the poor little fellowwanted was a spoonful of cool water. Thebaby's body, as I said in my last chapter, islargely composed of water, and the evapora-tion from the loose texture of the skin isvery great. After children can talk, theywear out the most robust patience with inces-sant appeals, night and day, for a " d'ink,"and consume water in quantities quite beyondwhat seems rational. But their craving isdoubtless a true indication of what they

There are composites of sensation whichthe baby experiences very early. There isthe feeling of clothes, for instance, made upof warmth, of touch and pressure sensations


60/260

62 THE BIOGRAPHYall over his skin, and of changes in the mus-cular feelings from constraint, and in theinternal feelings from the effect on circula-tion. There are feelings of fatigue in oneposition, made up of sensations of touch, ofthe pressure of the body's weight on theunder surfaces of skin, of some musculartensions, and perhaps of several other ele-ments. Our baby's nurse saved her muchfretting by simply changing the position ofthe little body from time to time. We our-selves are constantly moving and shiftingour positions, to relieve a pressure on theskin here, or a muscular tension there, butthe wee baby cannot so much as turn hishead or move a limb at will.

Vaguest and most composite of all is whatis called " common sensation," or " generalsensation " that feeling of comfort or dis-comfort, vigor or languor, diffused throughthe whole body, with which we are all famil-iar. It seems to be very primitive in origin indeed, the speculation is that this dim^


61/260

OF A BABY 53pervasive feeling is the original one, theprimitive way in which animal tissue re-sponded to light and heat and everything,before the special senses developed, gather-ing the light sensations to one focus, thesound sensations to another, and so on. Butin its present development it is also largelymade up of the sum of all the organic sensa-tions, and even of dim overflows of feehngfrom the special senses.

It is with older people notably connectedwith emotional states. It varies, of course,with health and external conditions; yeteach person seems from birth to be held toa certain fixed habit in this complex under-lying condition of feehng pleasant withone, unpleasant with another. This fixedhabit of general sensation is perhaps thesecret of what we call temperament ; whileits surface variations seem to be mainly re-sponsible for moods.

Our baby showed temperament luckilyof the easy-going and cheerful kind from


62/260

54 THE BIOGRAPHYher first day (though we could hardly seethis except by looking back afterward) ; andthere is no reason to doubt that she experi-enced some general sensation from the first.It was evidently of a pretty neutral sort,however : the definite appearance of highcomfort and well-being did not come till later;nor were moods apparent at first.Now in all this one significant thing

appears. Sensations had from the first thequality of being agreeable or disagreeable.The baby could not wish, prefer, and choose,for she had not learned to remember andcompare ; but she could like and dislike.And this was shown plainly from the firsthour by expressions of face reflex facialmovements, so firmly associated in the humanrace with liking and disliking that the mostinexperienced observer recognizes their mean-ing at once. It is said that facial expressioncomes by imitation, and that the blind aretherefore deficient in it ; but this is not trueof these simplest expressions : they come by


63/260

OF A BABY 55inheritance, and are present in the first hourof hfe. A look of content or discontent, themonotonous cry, and vague movements oflimbs, head, and features, these are thelimits of expression of feeling in the earUestdays.

It would seem that in this sense conditionthere was nothing that could give the babyany feeling of inner or outer, of space orlocality. We have some glimpse of the likecondition ourselves, when people say afteran explosion, for instance, that it " seemedto be inside their own heads," or when wetry to locate a cicada's note, or when we feeldiffused warmth.

Here is the conception I gathered of thedim life on which the Httle creature enteredat birth. She took in with a dull comfortthe gentle light that fell on her eyes, seeingwithout any sort of attention or comprehen-sion the moving blurs of darkness that variedit. She felt motions and changes ; she feltthe action of her own muscles ; and, after


64/260

56 THE BIOGRAPHYthe first three or four days, disagreeableshocks of sound now and then broke throughthe silence, or perhaps through an unnoticedjumble of faint noises. She felt touches onher body from time to time, but without theleast sense of the place of the touch (thisbecame evident enough later, as I shall relatein its order) ; and steady slight sensations oftouch from her clothes, from arms that heldher, from cushions on which she lay, pouredin on her.From time to time sensations of hunger,

thirst, and once or twice of pain, madethemselves felt through all the others, andmounted till they became distressing ; fromtime to time a feeling of heightened comfortflowed over her, as hunger and thirst weresatisfied, or release from clothes, and theeffect of the bath and rubbing on her circu-lation, increased the net sense of well-being.She felt slight and unlocated discomfortsfrom fatigue in one position, quickly relievedby the watchful nurse. For the rest, she lay


65/260

OF A BABY 57empty-minded, neither consciously comfort-able nor uncomfortable, yet on the wholepervaded with a dull sense of well-being.Of the people about her, of her mother'sface, of her own existence, of desire or fear,she knew nothing.

Yet this dim dream was flecked all throughwith the beginnings of later comparison andchoice. The Hght was varied with dark;the feelings of passive motion, of muscularaction, of touch, of sound, were all unlikeeach other; the discomforts of hunger, ofpain, of fatigue, were different discomforts.The baby began from the first moment toaccumulate varied experience, which beforelong would waken attention, interest, dis-crimination, and vivid life.


66/260

58 THE BIOGRAPHY

IVTHE EARLIEST DEVELOPMENTS

Out of the new-born baby's dim life ofpassivity the first path was that of vision. Inoticed about the end of the second weekthat her eyes no longer wandered altogetherhelplessly, but rested with a long and con-tented gaze on bright surfaces they chancedto encounter, such as the shining of the lampon the white ceiHng, or our faces turnedtoward the light as she lay on our knees.It was not active looking, with any powerto direct the eyes, but mere staring ; wheBthe gaze fell by chance on the pleasant light,it clung there. But something must havecome to pass, that it could stop and cling towhat gave it pleasure.

I think no one has yet analyzed this ear-liest stage in progress toward real seeing,


67/260

OF A BABY 59though Professor Sully touches on an expla-nation when he says that the eyes " maintaintheir attitude under stimulus of the pleasure."We know that muscular action is normallycaused by stimulus received from the nervecentres, and that in the earliest days thereseems to be a good deal of random dischargeof stimulus, developed by the growth of thecentres, and causing aimless movements.Now there are two fundamental and pro-foundly important things about this nervousdischarge. One is that pleasure, attention,or intensity of sensation seems to have thepower of increasing it, and thus influencingthe action of the muscles. The other is thatthe discharge always tends to seek the samepaths it has used before, and more andmore easily each time ; so that physiologistsspeak of it as a current deepening its chan-nels. It is really nothing like a flowingliquid, nor the nerve threads along which itpasses like channeled watercourses. Still,just as a current of water will deepen a gully


68/260

60 THE BIOGRAPHYtill it drains into itself all the water that hadspread about in shallower ditches, so thewave of molecular change running along anerve somehow so prepares that nerve that byand by, instead of spreading about throughany fibres that come handy, the whole energywill drain into the accustomed ones. Then,of course, the muscles to which these runwill perform more and more easily the ac-customed acts. Some of these channelseven whole connected systems of themare already well prepared by inheritance, andhence come instinctive and reflex actionsmany are still to be deepened by the baby'sown experience.Now suppose the aimless impulse straying

to the baby's eye muscles, making the eyesroam hither and yon ; but as they reach acertain position, they fall upon a lightedsurface, and a pleasant brightness flows backinto the consciousness ; and something stirswithin that has power to send an intensercurrent through those same fibres. For the


69/260


70/260

62 THE BIOGEAPHYheightened the pleasant condition of generalsensation, her expression approached realdelight; the movements of her limbs werefreer, and all her muscles tenser.

The neck muscles, especially, were so far" innervated " that is, supplied with ner-vous energy as fairly to lift her head fromthe supporting hand. This was probablynot as yet a real effort to hold up the head,only a drafting of surplus energy into theneck muscles, partly because of inheritedaptitude, partly because the pleasure receivedfrom the lifted head and better seeing tendedto draw the energy thither, just as it wasdrawn to the eye muscles in the case of thestaring. At least one careful observer, Mrs.Edith Elmer Wood, records this action ofthe neck muscles on the first day.

It was at this period that the baby firstsmiled ; but being forewarned of the " colicsmile," which counterfeits so exactly theearliest true smiles, fleeting as these are,just touching the mouth and vanishing, I


71/260

OF A BABY 63never felt sure whether the baby was smihngfor general contentment with life, or whethera passing twinge had crossed her comfortand drawn her lips into the semblance of asmile ; and so never dared to record the ex-pression till it first occurred for unmistakablepleasure.

There must have been rapid progressgoing on in the clearness of muscular andtouch sensations, and in the forming of as-sociations in the baby's mind ; but no plainevidence of these inner processes came tillthe fourth week. Then I noticed that thebaby, when crying with hunger, would hushas soon as she was taken in the arms in theposition usual in nursing, as if she recognizedthe preliminaries, and knew she was aboutto be satisfied. She could not, in fact, haveremembered or expected anything as yet ; itwas not memory, but a clear instance of theworking of that great law of association bywhich the raw material of the senses was tobe wrought up into an orderly mental life.


72/260

64 THE BIOGEAPHYThe substance of the law is that when

experiences have repeatedly been had to-gether, the occurrence of one of them (stillmore, of several out of a group, as in thiscase) tends to bring up into consciousnessthe others. It is a law that underlies psychiclife as profoundly as the law that nerveenergy seeks its old channels underlies phy-sical life. Indeed, it is in a sense the psychicside of the same law ; for it implies that whena group of nerve centres have formerly actedtogether, the action of one tends to bringon that of the rest. So, since the baby hadoften experienced the feeling of that par-ticular position (a combination of tactile andmuscular and organic sensations) in connec-tion with the feeling of satisfied hunger,that comfortable feeling, the missing memberof the group, came into her consciousnessalong with the rest, some moments in ad-vance of the actual satisfaction.

I have said that this is not memory, yetthere is in it a germ of memory. A past


73/260

OF A BABY 65experience is brought back to consciousnessand if it were brought back as a definiteidea, instead of a vague feeHng, it would bememory.

Close on this came another great advancein vision. This was on the twenty-fifth day,toward evening, when the baby was lying onher grandmother's knee by the fire, in a con-dition of high well-being and content, gazingat her grandmother's face with an expressionof attention. I came and sat down close by,leaning over the baby, so that my face musthave come within the indirect range of hervision. At that she turned her eyes to myface and gazed at it with the same appearanceof attention, and even of some effort, shownby a slight tension of brows and lips, thenturned her eyes back to her grandmother'sface, and again to mine, and so severaltimes. The last time she seemed to catchsight of my shoulder, on which a high lightstruck from the lamp, and not only movedher eyes, but threw her head far back to see


74/260


75/260

OF A BABY 67since the eyes are turned, not toward theside on which the ray strikes the retina, buttoward the side from which the ray entersthe eye ; that is, the baby thinks out alongthe line of the ray to the object it comesfrom, thus putting the object outside him-self, in space, as we do. Professor Wundt,the great German psychologist, is positivethat the baby has no sense of space or direc-tion, but gains it by just such measurementswith the eye muscles ; that there is no rightnor left, up nor down, for him, but onlyassociations between the look of things offat one side, and the feel of the eye actionthat brings them to central vision.

This means that before a baby can carrythe eye always through just the right arc tolook at an object, he must have made thisassociation between the look of things andthe feel of the action separately for eachpoint of the retina. It is a great deal for ababy to have learned in three weeks ; still,babies have to learn fast if they are ever to


76/260

68 THE BIOGRAPHYcatch up with the race ; and in the earlyroamings of the eye they experience overand over all manner of transits of images toand fro across the retina. Probably, too, itwas still only partially learned.

I watched now for what Preyer's recordhad led me to expect as the next develop-ment in vision the ability to follow a mov-ing object with the eyes ; that is, to holdthe yellow spot fixed on the object as itmoved, moving the eyeball in time with itin order to do so. I used my hand to moveto and fro before the baby, and could notsatisfy myself that she followed it, thoughshe sometimes seemed to ; but the day aftershe was a month old I tried a candle, andher eyes followed it unmistakably; she eventhrew her head back to follow it farther. Intrying this experiment, one should alwaysuse a bright object, should make sure thebaby's eyes are fixed on it, and then shouldmove it very slowly indeed, right and left.

So far, there is no necessary proof of will.


77/260

OF A BABY 69Longet found that the eyes and head of apigeon whose cerebrum had been removedwould follow a moving light. We ourselvescan sit absorbed in thought or talk, yet fol-low unconsciously with our eyes the move-ment of a lantern along a dark road ; and ifsomething appears on the outer edge of ourvision we often turn quite involuntarily tolook. But the baby's new expression of in-telligence and interest showed that whethershe willed the movements or not, she attendedto the new impressions she was getting.

Professor Preyer noticed the same dawnof intelligence in his baby's face at aboutthe same stage. And it is worth while to ob-serve that when I came to study my recordI was surprised to find how often such anawakening look, an access of attention, won-der, or intelligence, in the baby's face, hadcoincided with some marked step in devel-opment and signalized its great mental im-portance. I should advise any one who isobserving a baby to be on the lookout for


78/260

fO THE BIOGRAPHYthis outward and visible sign of an inwardand spiritual unfolding.

In both these visual developments thebaby had proved able to use her neck in co-operation with her eyes, throwing back herhead to see farther. It began at the sametime to seem that she was really and deliber-ately trying to hold up her head for the samepurpose of seeing better. She not onlystraightened it up more and more in thebath, but when she was laid against one'sbreast she would lift her head from theshoulder, sometimes for twenty seconds at atime, and look about. Preyer sets this downas the first real act of will.The baby's increased interest in seeing

centred especially on the faces about her,at which she gazed with rapt interest. Evenduring the period of mere staring, faces hadoftenest held her eyes, probably because theywere oftener brought within the range ofher clearest seeing than other light surfaces.The large, light, moving patch of the human


79/260

OF A BABY 71face (as Preyer has pointed out) coming andgoing in the field of vision, and ot'tenerchancing to hover at the point of clearestseeing than any other object, embellishedwith a play of high lights on cheeks, teeth,and eyes, is calculated to excite the highestdegree of attention a baby is capable of at amonth old. So from the very first beforethe baby has yet really seen his motherher face and that of his other nearest friendsbecome the most active agents in his develop-ment, and the most interesting things in hisexperience.

Our baby was at this time in a way awareof the difference between companionship andsolitude. In the latter days of the firstmonth she would lie contentedly in the roomwith people near by, but would fret if leftalone. But by the end of the month shewas apt to fret when she was laid down ona chair or lounge, and to become contentonly when taken into the lap. This was notyet distinct memory and desire, but it showed


80/260

72 THE BIOGRAPHYthat associations of pleasure had been formedwith the lap, and that she felt a vague dis-comfort in the absence of these.

Just before she was a month old came anadvance in hearing. So far this sense hadremained little more than a capacity for be-ing startled or made restless by harsh sounds.I had tested it on the twenty-third day, andfound that the baby scarcely noticed thesound of an ordinary call bell unless it wasstruck within about six inches of her ear,and suddenly and sharply at that; and onthe twenty-sixth day she showed no sign ofhearing single notes of the piano, struckclose to her, from the highest to the lowest.But the next day, at the sound of chords,strongly struck, she hushed when frettingwith hunger, and listened quietly for fiveminutes her first pleasant experiencethrough the sense of hearing.

In the following days she would lie andtake in the sound of the chords with a lookof content, staring at the same time into the


81/260

OF A BABY 73face of the person -who held her, as if sheassociated the sound with that. Only a fewdays later, when she was a month old, Ithought that her pleasure in companionshipwas increased if she was talked and croonedto ; and it is likely that by this time, thoughshe had not hitherto noticed voices, she wasbeginning to get them associated with thehuman face probably to the enhancementof its charm.

There were signs now, too, that touchsensations, in their principal seat, the lips,were becoming a source of pleasure. Thefirst smile that I could conscientiously re-cord occurred the day before the baby was amonth old, and it was provoked by the touchof a finger on her lip ; and a day or twolater she smiled repeatedly at touches on herlip. The day before she was a month old,also, when her lips were brought up to thenipple, she laid hold upon it with themthe first seizing of any sort, for her handswere still in their original helplessness, wav


82/260

74 THE BIOGRAPHYing vaguely about at the will of the nervecurrents.

It is plain that the eyes led in the develop-ment of the psychic life. Yet the baby wasstill far from real seeing. Professor Preyerbelieves that there is at this stage no " ac-commodation " of the eyes to near and far,although they can now be focused for rightand left : that is, both yellow spots can bebrought to bear in unison on an object, butthe lenses do not yet adjust themselves todifferent distances. Though the baby mayhave perceived direction, then, she could nothave perceived depth in space. It was onlywhen an object chanced to be at the distancefor which her eyes were naturally adjustedthat she could have seen it clearly.

Nor is it likely that even then she sawanything as a definite outline, but only as anundefined patch. The spot of clear visionin our eyes is very small (a twenty-five centpiece would cover all the letters I can takein at once on this page, if I do not let my


83/260

OF A BABY 75eyes move in the least), and the only wayTve ourselves see anything in definite outlineis by running our eyes swiftly over its sur-face and around its edges, with long trainedand unconscious skill. The baby had notyet learned to do this. Her world of vision,much as it pleased her, was still only patchesof light and dark, with bits of glitter andmotion. She could turn her eyes and lifther head a little to make the vision clearerbut except about her neck, eyes, and in aslight degree her lips, she had no control ofher body. She had gained much in group-ing and associating together her experiences,yet on the whole she still lived among disrjointed impressions.

In the light of such interpretations, thespeculative attempts to arrange a system ofcradle education become futile. What cana swinging ball do for a pupil whose senseapparatus is not yet in condition to see theoutline of the ball definitely ? Froebel him-self could not have been expected to know


84/260

76 THE BIOGRAPHYmuch of the condition of a baby's sense ap-paratus ; but modern FroebeHans would bebetter apostles of his almost Messianic in-spiration if they were willing to throw franklyaside his unfounded speculations and his ob-solete science. The letter killeth, but thespirit giveth life.

Meanwhile, nature has provided an edu-cational appliance almost ideally adapted tothe child's sense condition, in the mother'sface, hovering close above him, smiling,laughing, nodding, with all manner of de-lightful changes in the high lights ; in thethousand little meaningless caressing sounds,the singing, talking, calling, that proceedfrom it ; the patting, cuddling, lifting, andall the ministrations that the baby feels whilegazing at it, and associates with it, till finallythey group together and round out into theidea of his mother as a whole.

Our baby's mother rather resented theidea of being to her baby only a collectionof detached phenomena, instead of a mamma;


85/260

OF A BABY 77but the more you think of it the more flat-tering it is to be thus, as it were, dissolvedinto your elements and incorporated itemby item into the very foundations of yourbaby's mental life. Herein is hinted muchof the philosophy of personaUty; and Pro-fessor Baldwin has written a solid book,mainly to show from the development ofbabies and little children that all other peo-ple are part of each of us, and each of us ispart of all other people, and so there is reallyno separate personality, but we are all onespirit, if we did but know it.


86/260


87/260

OF A BABY 79seeing and hearing powers ; but she likedthe feeling of the motion, and lay and en-joyed it with a tranquilly beatific look. Per-haps also the fresher air and larger light sentsome dim wave of pleasant feeling throughher body.

Some days earlier, when carried out inarms for her first outdoor visit, she had foundthe light dazzling, and kept her eyes tightshut. In all I have said of babies' pleasurein light, I have meant moderate light : thelittle eyes are easily hurt by a glare. Thereare nursemaids, and even mothers, who willwheel a baby along the street with the sunblazing full in his face, and who will keep alight burning all night for their own con-venience in tending him ; and in later yearshis schoolbooks will get the credit of havingweakened his eyes. Nature protects the littleone somewhat at the outset, for at first theeyes open by a narrow slit, which admits butscanty light : our baby was just beginning, ata month old, to open her eyes like other folk.


88/260

80 THE BIOGEAPHYPleased though the baby was with her new

powers, her Ufe at this period was not all ofplacid content. Ambition had entered in.It had already seemed as if the mechanicallifting of the head was passing into realeffort to raise it; and day by day the inten-tion grew clearer, and the head was held upbetter. Now, too, appeared the first sign ofcontrol over the legs. Laid on her face onthe lounge, the baby did not cry, but turnedher head sidewise and freed her face, and atthe same time propped her body with herknees. This was on the first day of themonth. A few days later she was proppingherself with her knees in the bath every day.With increase of joy and power came also

the beginning of tears. This, too, was onthe first day of the month. The tears wereshed because she had waked and cried sometime without being heard. When she wasat last taken up, her eyes were quite wet.As every nurse knows, wee babies do not crytears. When they do, it does not mean that


89/260

OF A BABY 81any higher emotional level has been gained,only that the tear glands have begun to act.Nor have I any reason to suppose that inthis case the baby felt fear at being leftalone. It was simply that she was uncom-fortable, and needed attention ; and theattention delaying, the discomfort mounted,till it provoked stronger and stronger reflexexpressions.The first fright did occur, however, a few

days later in the same week ; but it was in amuch more primitive form than fear of soli-tude. The baby was lying half asleep onmy lap when her tin bath was brought inand set down rather roughly, so that thehandles clashed on the sides. At this shestarted violently, with a cry so sharp that itbrought her grandfather anxiously in fromtwo rooms' distance ; she put up her lip atthe same time, with the regular crying grim-ace known to every nursery,the first timeshe had done this, and it was fully fiveminutes before her face was tranquil again.


90/260

82 THE BIOGRAPHYThere had been reflex starting at sounds

from the first week, and Professor Preyercalls this an expression of fright ; but to me(and Professor Sully regards it in the sameway) it seemed purely mechanical. Our babywould even start and cry out in her sleepat a sound without waking. But now therewas clearly something more than reflex start-ing. It was not yet true fear, for fear meansa sense of danger, an idea of coming harm,and the baby could have had no such idea.But there was some element of emotion to beseen, akin to fear ; and (if we regard plea-sure and pain as psychologists are disposedto do, not as emotions in themselves, butonly as a quality of agreeableness or dis-agreeableness in our feelings) here was thefirst dawn of any emotion. Fright, that wasbut a step above mere physical shock, ledthe way into the emotional life.

This probably gives a true hint of thehistory of emotional development in therace : for in the animal world, too, fear ap-


91/260

OF A BABY 83pears earliest of all the emotions, and in thesimplest forms of fright is hardly to be dis-tinguished from mere reflex action ; and it iscaused oftener by sound than by anythingelse. When we remember the theory thathearing is developed from the more ancientmotion sense, we are tempted to trace theorigin of fright still farther back, to the veryprimitive reflex sensibility to jarring move-ment, of which I have spoken before.And now the baby had come to six weeks

old, and could hold up her head perfectlyfor a quarter of a minute at a time, and likedgreatly to be held erect or in sitting position.Apparently all this was for the sake of see-ing better, for her joys still centred in hereyes. She had made no advance in visualpower, however, except that within a fewdays she could follow with her eyes themotion of a person passing near her.Human faces were still the most entertain-

ing of all objects. She gazed at them withher utmost look of intentness, making move-


92/260


93/260

OF A BABY 85I have said that in such associations there

is a germ of memory. There is a sort ofhabit memory, too, that appears very early.Impressions that have been received over andover gather a sort of famiHarity in the baby'smind ; and while he does not yet recognizethe familiar things themselves, yet he feels achange from them as something strangeit jars somehow the even current of his feel-ings. Or where impressions have been espe-cially agreeable, they are vaguely missedwhen they are absent. The consciousnessof difference between society and solitude,which our baby had showed at the end ofthe first month, was habit memory of thissort.

Professor Preyer thinks that his babyshowed habit memory as early as the firstweek, perceiving a new food to be differentfrom the old. Our baby (who knew no foodbut mother's milk) experienced a new tasteonce or twice, when dosed for colic, andnever showed the faintest sense of novelty at


94/260

86 THE BIOGRAPHYit till she was six weeks old. Then she wasgiven a little sugar for hiccoughs, and madea face of what seemed high disgust over itbut this particular face has been observedmore than once, and is known to be commonin babies at a new taste, even a pleasant one.It seems to be caused by a sort of surpriseaffecting the face muscles.A few days later the baby showed surprisemore plainly. She lay making cheerful littlesounds, and suddenly, by some new combina-tion of the vocal organs, a small, high crowcame out doubtless causing a most novelsensation in the little throat, not to speakof the odd sound. The baby fell silent in-stantly, and a ludicrous look of astonish-ment overspread her face. Here was notonly evidence of the germs of memory, butalso the appearance of a new emotion, thatof genuine surprise; and, like fright, it isone that is closely related to simple nerveshock. From being startled to being sur-prised (as to being frightened) is not a longstep.


95/260

OF A BABY 87I have just spoken of the baby as making

little sounds. This was a new accomplish-ment. Until a few days before, she hadmade no sounds except some inarticulatefretting noises, the occasional short outcrywhen startled, and the " dismal and monoto-nous" cry that began with the first day.This original cry was clearly on the vowel ct(as in fair), with a nasal prefix nga ; butlate in the sixth week it began to be varieda little. In the fretting, too, a few syllablesappeared. The new sounds were mostlymade in the open throat, and grew out ofthe old ngd by slight changes in the positionof the vocal organs ncj, and hng, andhng-ct; but now and then there was ashort w^f ga, or M, or even a lip sound,as m-ba.

It has been said that the broad Italian a isof all sounds the easiest, the one naturallymade from an open throat : but the recordsshow both German and American babies be-ginning with the flat ^, or shorter a. Our


96/260

88 THE BIOGRAPHYbaby scarcely used any other vowel soundfor weeks yet.

Little sounds of content, too, began in thesixth week mainly inarticulate grunts andcooing murmurs; but in the course of theseventh week, besides the sudden crow, therewere a few tiny shouts, a-a-ha, a gurgle,and some hard g sounds, ga, and g-g-g, whichpassed in the eighth week into a roughenedgh, a sort of scraping, gargling sound, notin the English language.

Our baby had a leaning to throat soundsbut other babies begin with the lip sounds,and some, it is said, with the trilling I and r.It seems to be only chance what position ofthe vocal organs is first used ; but after oncebeginning to articulate, the baby seems topass from sound to sound by slight changes(probably made accidentally in using the oldsounds), and so goes through the list withsome regularity.

This practice in sounds may be at firstquite without will, a mere overflow of energy


97/260

OF A BABY 89into the vocal organs ; but it is highly impor-tant none the less, for any creature that isto use human speech must get the speakingmuscles into most delicate training. Thinkwhat fine and exact difference in muscularcontractions we must make to be able to say" ball," and be sure that it will not come out"pall"!

For a week or two now the baby made agood deal of progress in control of her body.She strove valiantly every day to keep herhead erect, and made some little advance.In the bath she began to push with her feetagainst the foot of the tub, so hard that hermother could not keep the little head frombumping on the other end. She pulleddownward with her arms when her motherheld them up in wiping her. These pushingand pulling movements may have been madefor the pleasure of the feeling, or they mayhave been involuntary. Perhaps they wereaccidental movements, passing gradually intovoluntary ones. In either case, as they de-


98/260

90 THE BIOGRAPHYveloped, the old irregular movements of legsand arms passed away, as those of the headand face had done before.

One new bit of muscular control was un-doubtedly voluntary a trick of putting outand drawing back the tip of her tongue be-tween her pursed lips. And this was some-thing more than just one new voluntarymovement. The important thing was thatshe was using the movement to bring tO'gether the evidence of tioo different sensesinto one jjerception.When something touches against our fin-

gers, we have one sort of feeling in them,and quite another when we pass them overthe thing and " feel of it ; " and this other,clearer feehng is really a compound one,made up of the touch sensation in the skinand the muscle sensation in the moving fin-gers. It is called " active touch," and it isa wonderful key to the world around usso wonderful that with this alone it provedpossible to educate Laura Bridgman and


99/260

OF A BABY 91Helen Keller. This active touch the babyhad now developed in tongue and Hps ; notyet in the fingers.

The passive sensation of Hght had alreadybeen blended with muscle sensation in some-thing the same way, by the voluntary move-ment of turning and focusing the eyes ; butthat complete seeing which we might call"active sight " is a more complex powerthan active feeling, and there were other as-sociations yet to be made before it could befully built up. And I hope it will not spoilthe interest of the story of the baby's sensedevelopment if I say here that the plot isgoing to turn mainly on these two combina-tions, muscle sense with sight and musclesense with touch ; and then recombinationof these two with each other all weldedtogether by voluntary movements, growingout of involuntary ones.

All this time the baby had had a dailysource of placid pleasure in listening tochords on the piano no longer heavy stac-


100/260

92 THE BIOGRAPHYcato chords, but flowing ones, in the middleoctaves. The baby of theory cares for no-thing but eating and sleeping ; but ourbaby, even after she was ah'eady frettingwith hunger, would forget all about it forten minutes, if one would take her to thepiano. Hunger, after it grew really strong,was a sensation that swept all before it ; buton the whole, food was a matter of smallinterest compared with the world of hghtand touch and sound.As for sleep, the baby slept, from the first,

in pretty long periods, six and seven hourswas not uncommon, and was wide awakebetween sleeps. At such times she would lieby the half hour, looking peacefully abouther, or gazing into our faces with smiles.When we nodded, laughed, and talked toher, her smiles seemed Hke friendly re-sponses; but this could have meant nothing,except that with our demonstrations thoselittle constellations of high hghts and gUtters,our faces, bobbed and twinkled in a moreamusing manner than ever.


101/260

OF A BABY 93At eight weeks old came the final stage

in mastery of the mechanism of vision thepower of accommodation, or adjusting thelenses for different distances. It may havebeen present even earher : it is a hard thingfor the observer to know. But the indica-tions are that it really did happen when Ithought, the day the baby was eight weeksold. She was lying on her mother's knees,fixing an unusually serious and attentivegaze on my face, and would not take hereyes away ; indeed, as her mother turned herin undressing, she screwed her head aroundcomically to keep her eyes fixed. At last,after some fifteen minutes, she turned herhead clear over, and gazed as earnestly ather mother's face. To see what she woulddo, her mother turned her again towardme, and once more she surveyed me for atime, and again turned her head and lookeddirectly at her mother.What was in the Httle mind ? Was she

beginning to discriminate and compare, for


102/260

94 THE BIOGKAPHYthe first time setting apart as two separatethings the two faces that had bent over heroftenest ? Or was she simply using, on themost convenient object, a new power of ad-justing her eyes, which filled her with seriousinterest by the new clearness it gave to whatshe saw ? At all events, she would not havelooked from one to the other with such longand attentive regard if she had not beenable to focus both faces, at their differentdistances ; so that I felt sure the power ofaccommodation was really there.

But there was more in the incident thanjust the advance in vision. Hitherto whenthe baby had turned her head to look, it hadbeen only at something that she had alreadya ghmpse of, off at the edge of the field ofvision. Now she turned to look for some-thing quite out of sight, something, there-fore, that must have been present as an ideain the little mind, or she could not havelooked for it. And in view of what I havesaid of the mother's face as the great educa-


103/260

OF A BABY 95tional appliance in the early months, it isworth noticing that it was this which gavethe baby her first idea, so far as I coulddetect.We come a step nearer, too, to true mem-ory, when the baby can keep thus, evenfor a few minutes, the idea of somethingformerly seen. It was still mainly habitmemory, however. She looked for an accus-tomed sight in an accustomed place, bring-ing it to the point of clear vision by anaccustomed movement of the neck muscles.There was no evidence till considerably laterthat she was capable of remembering a sin-gle, special experience.

The next day she was singularly brightand sunny, smiling all day at every one.She stopped in the middle of nursing tothrow her head back and gaze at the bow ather mother's neck, and would not go on withthe comparatively uninteresting business offood till the bow was put out of sight. Thatnight she slept eight hours at a stretch,


104/260


105/260

OF A BABY 97the month, four days later, she could balanceit for many minutes, with a little wobbling.This uncertainty soon disappeared, and theerect position of the head was accomplishedfor life.

During these last days of the month thebaby was possessed by the most insatiate im-pulse to be up where she could see. It washard to think that her fretting and even wail-ing when forced to He down could mean onlya forndess discontent, and not a clear idea ofwhat she wanted. Still, it is not uncommon,when an instinct is thwarted, to feel a dimdistress that makes us perfectly wretchedwithout knowing why. As soon as she washeld erect, or propped up sitting amid cush-ions, she was content ; but the first time thatL)he was allowed to be up thus most of theday, she slept afterward nine unbroken hours,recuperating, probably, quite as much fromthe looking and the taking in that the Httlebrain and eyes had been doing as from anymuscular fatigue there may have been in theposition.


106/260

98 THE BIOGRAPHYSuch is the " mere Hfe of vegetation " the

baby Hved during the first two months. Nogrown person ever experiences such an ex-pansion of Hfe, such a progress from powerto power in that length of time. Nor wasour Httle girl's development anything unus-ual for a healthy, well-conditioned child, sofar as other records give material for com-parison. Preyer's boy was later than sh

Date post:	09-Apr-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	moniquitta2000
View:	215 times
Download:	0 times

Biography of a baby

Documents