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 Now Ready. Bound in Cloth. Price, 60 Cents Each. 
 
 VOICE USE AND STIMULANTS. 
 
 Containing the Experience in Abstract and Detail of nearly 400 Profes- 
 sional Singers, Actors, Statesmen, etc. By LENNOX BROWNE, 
 F. R. C. S., Edin., Senior Surgeon to the Central London Throat and 
 Ear Hospital, Surgeon and Aural Surgeon to the Royal Society of 
 Musicians, author of "The Throat and its Diseases," "Medical Hints 
 on the Singing Voice," "Science and Singing," etc. Joint author of 
 "Voice, Song and Speech;" and also of "The Child's Voice." 
 
 * * Probably no vocal student, or indeed, very few accomplished 
 singers, when consulting a doctor as to his voice, fails to ask the 
 question, "What am I to sing on?" that is, "What alcoholic stimu- 
 lant do you advise me to take to aid me in the functional perfection 
 of my art?" It is this question that I have endeavored to answer in 
 the following pages. * * Incidental to the question of alcohol, and 
 by an almost natural sequence, I have thought it well to give some 
 information regarding the influence of tobacco on voice-use. * * 
 Though I have drawn all my statistics and deductions from the 
 point of view of the singer my conclusions will equally apply to the 
 no less important calling of the minister, lawyer, senator and actor, 
 as well as to all who desire to have a pure and enduring voice. -from 
 the A uthor's Preface. 
 
 * * Every vocalist or teacher of Ringing should make a point of 
 reading this most valuable little work. Athenceum, (London.) 
 
 THE CHILD'S VOICE. 
 
 Its Treatment with Regard to After Development. 
 
 Containing the Experience in Abstract and Detail of over 200 Teachers, 
 and oner 600 Students. By EtflL BEHNKE, Lecturer on Vocal 
 Physiology and Teacher of Voice Production; author of the 
 "Mechanism of the Human Voice, 1 ' co-author of " Voice, fionff and 
 Speech," and of " Voice-Training Exercises," and LENNOX 
 BROWNE, F. R. C. S., Ed. 
 
 Among the most eminent specialists of the day are Professor 
 Kmil Behnke and Doctor Lennox Browne, whose researches * * * 
 are as valuable as any contributions which have ever been made to 
 the literature of vocal investigation. * * "The second b ^ok, named 
 ["The Child's Voice,"] represents an analysis of 4,2i'0 replies [to ques- 
 tions by the authors] and the first ["Voice Dse"] gives the statements 
 of nearly 100 persons. * * The deductions are interesting to 
 every person who is interested in physiology, education and hygiene, 
 and oueht to be indispensably useful on the one hand to teachers, 
 into whose province falls any training of the young voice, and on 
 the other to all who use their owu voice in any professional way." 
 The Beacon, (Boston.) 
 
 Two valuable little books. * * They are thoroughly scientific 
 works, and yet are very tree from all scientific terms. They abound 
 in facts such as every parent and teacher should understand. Chi- 
 cago Inter Ocean. 
 
 "The practical value of the treatise will at once recommend itself 
 to the attentive consideration of all parents and instructors in the 
 vocal art." Musical World, (London.) 
 
 For sale by booksellers generally, or sent, post paid, on receipt of 
 Price by 
 
 A. N. MAKQUIS & CO., PUBLISHERS, CHICAGO, ILL.
 
 "THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF 
 CHILDHOOD.. 
 
 EDITED AND TRANSLATED BY 
 
 ALICE M. CHRISTIE, 
 
 Translator of "Child and Child Nature," etc., etc. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JAMES SULLY, M.A. 
 
 Author of "Outlines of Psychology," etc. 
 
 A. N. MAEQUIS & COMPANY, 
 
 1885.
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1885, BY 
 A. N. MARQUIS & COMPANY.
 
 Ed./PsycRi 
 
 Library 
 
 1131 
 ptJI 
 'U 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 FOUR years ago this book appeared to be a fortu- 
 nate hit, offering as it did, though on the most 
 simple scale, a study of infant psychology. The 
 character of the work arose naturally from the line of 
 study I had planned. I had, in fact, set myself to 
 follow out in little children the gradual awakening of 
 those faculties which constitute the psychic activity, 
 so abundantly differentiated, so delicate and at the 
 same time so powerful, of the adult human being. It 
 was, no doubt, this intention possibly a somewhat 
 premature one of systematizing a class of observa- 
 tions, of which hitherto only rough sketches had been 
 attempted, which gained me the encouragement of 
 philosophers and educationalists both in France and 
 abroad. Thus then, while endeavoring to improve 
 upon the modest beginning which had at first won 
 me their sympathy, I could do no better than keep 
 to my original method. My canvases were already 
 sketched in and accepted: I have merely endeav- 
 ored to draw them a little better and to fill them in 
 more, to render facts and interpretations of facts 
 clearer and more precise. 
 
 With regard to the facts, either simply described
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 or dramatized in the form of psychological anecdotes, 
 I have carefully sorted and re-arranged them, dis- 
 carding a certain number which seemed to me of little 
 importance, and adding a good many others, either 
 taken out of my own journals of observations or bor- 
 rowed from other people, but all of them verified by 
 myself. I thought also that I should be readily 
 forgiven for having interpolated a few pages of psy- 
 chological observations taken out of my book on 
 Education from the Cradle, which seemed here in 
 their natural place, and which will be replaced in the 
 other book by considerations of a more specially ped- 
 agogic nature. Both books will, I think, have gained 
 by the exchange. 
 
 As to the interpretations of facts, I have striven to 
 be guided by the spirit of the experimental method. 
 If I have sometimes been happy in my observations 
 and judgments, it is to this method that the honor 
 is due; the mistakes and omissions are my own 
 share. At any rate, no one of the systems of philo- 
 sophy, which, under different names, have more or 
 less exactly adapted themselves to the experimental 
 method, is responsible for my errors. Although I 
 have my preferences and my tendencies, I belong to 
 no school. I find myself most often, it is true, quot- 
 ing from a Darwin or a Spencer, but I am none the 
 less glad to do so from Mme. Necker, de Saussure, 
 and Guizot, from Messrs. E. Egger and L. Ferri, 
 when they can give me the fruits of real experience. 
 I do not ask of facts and ideas for their label and
 
 PKEFACE. vii 
 
 trade -mark before admitting them to my humble psy- 
 chological domain ; it is enough for me that they are 
 facts well observed and well described, enough that 
 they are clear and judicious ideas. 
 
 It is in such a spirit that I would have my readers 
 deal with my essay on infant psychology ; letting all 
 thoughts of a particular system be secondary in their 
 minds, as they have been in my own. I have often 
 pondered trying to turn them to account myself 
 those most pithy words of Mr. F. Pollock's : " And 
 as science makes it plainer every day that there is no 
 such thing as a fixed equilibrium, either in the world 
 without or in the mind within, so it becomes plain 
 that the genuine and durable triumphs of philosophy 
 are not in systems but in ideas." 1 
 
 If some few good ideas are found scattered in my 
 book, I beg my readers neither to see nor seek for any- 
 thing else in it. 
 
 BERNARD PEREZ. 
 
 1 Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy, p. 408.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 I. THE FACULTIES OF THE INFANT BEFORE BIBTH - 1 
 II. THE FIBST IMPBESSIONS OF THE NEW-BOBN CHILD 7 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 I. MOTOB ACTIVITY AT THE BEGINNING OF LIFE - 11 
 
 II. MOTOB ACTIVITY AT Six MONTHS - - - 16 
 
 III. MOTOB ACTIVITY AT FIFTEEN MONTHS 20 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 I. INSTBUCTIVE AND EMOTIONAL SENSATIONS - - 23 
 II. THE FIBST PEBCEPTIONS 32 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 I. GENEBAL AND SPECIAL INSTINCTS - 44 
 
 II. SPECIAL INSTINCTS --....-49 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE SENTIMENTS ---60 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 I. INTELLECTUAL TENDENCIES 82 
 
 II. VEBACITY ---------86 
 
 III. IMITATION ...... . . 90 
 
 IV. CBEDTJLITY -----.--94 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 THE WILL 99
 
 x CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 THE FACULTIES OF INTELLECTUAL! ACQUISITION AND RE- 
 TENTION. 
 I. ATTENTION - - - - 110 
 
 II. MEMORY 121 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE ASSOCIATION OF PSYCHICAL STATES. 
 
 I. ASSOCIATION - ... 131 
 
 II. IMAGINATION - ... 147 
 
 III. SPECIAL IMAGINATION ---_._ 152 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ON THE ELABORATION OF IDEAS. 
 
 I. JUDGMENT - - - - - -'- - 163 
 
 II. ABSTRACTION -- 177 
 
 III. COMPARISON - - - - - - - - 189 
 
 IV. GENERALIZATION - - 196 
 
 V. REASONING .... ... 209 
 
 VI. THE ERRORS AND ILLUSIONS OF CHILDREN - - 223 
 VII. ERRORS OWING TO MORAL CAUSES - - 231 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 ON EXPRESSION AND LANGUAGE, PARTS I., II., 
 
 HI. 234,239,249 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE ^ESTHETIC SENSE IN LITTLE CHILDREN. 
 
 I. THE MUSICAL SENSE 263 
 
 II. THE SENSE OF MATERIAL BEAUTY ... 268 
 
 III. THE CONSTRUCTIVE INSTINCT - -'"274 
 
 IV. THE DRAMATIC INSTINCT ... 276 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 I. PERSONALITY. REFLECTION. MORAL SENSE - 280 
 II. THE MORAL SENSE - ..... 285
 
 INTKODUCTION. 
 
 AMONG the many new fields of investigation 
 which modern science has opened up, there is 
 none which is more inviting than that of infant 
 psychology. The beginnings of all things are 
 full of interest, as we see by the amount of 
 inquiry now devoted to the origin of human 
 institutions and ideas, and all the various forms 
 of life. And the beginnings of a human mind, 
 the first dim stages in the development of man's 
 God-like reason, ought surely to be most inter- 
 esting of all. And infancy has its own peculiar 
 charm. There is an exquisite poetry in the 
 spontaneous promptings of the unsophisticated 
 spirit of the child. So far removed at times 
 from our one-sided prejudiced views, so high 
 above our low conventional standards are the 
 little one's intuitions of his new world. Child- 
 hood has its unlovely and unworthy side no 
 doubt. Still I cannot think that any close 
 observer of infancy ever thoroughly believed in 
 its total depravity. Possibly, indeed, to a per- 
 fectly candid mind its fresh and striking observ- 
 ations about things, which, though often bizarre, 
 are on the whole thoroughly sound and whole- 
 some, are always apt to suggest the pleasing 
 fancy of Plato and Wordsworth, that the little
 
 IV THE FIEST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 new-comer brings from his ante-natal abode ideas 
 and feelings which lie high above the plane of 
 earthly experience. However this be, no thor- 
 oughly open and unspoiled mind can fail to 
 learn much that is good from a close study of 
 childhood. This is the period when very ordi- 
 nary mortals display something remarkable. 
 Perhaps indeed no healthy child has ever failed 
 to present some new mental or moral phenom- 
 enon, to impress, amuse, or instruct, if only the 
 appreciating eyes had been there to see. 
 
 But it is not with the poetic side of infancy 
 that we are here specially concerned. We have 
 to look on the opening germ of intelligence from 
 the colder point of view of science. Not that 
 the savant need be insensible to the aesthetic 
 charm of his subject. A botanist ought, perhaps 
 to feel something of the rich store of loveliness 
 which lies enclosed within the tiny confines of a 
 wayside flower. Scientific curiosity often leaps 
 into full and vigorous life under the genial 
 vivifying influence of a glowing admiration. 
 And a man who has a keen eye for all the pretty 
 and humorous traits of infant life is all the better 
 qualified for a close scientific observation of its 
 processes. Only that in this case the aesthetic 
 interest must be subordinated to the scientific. 
 
 The science which is specially concerned with 
 the baby mind is Psychology. It is only the 
 psychologist who can pretend to record and 
 interpret all its strange ways. And on the other
 
 INTKODUCTION. 
 
 hand, the domain of infant life is of peculiar 
 interest to the psychologist. True, he can study 
 in other ways the manner in which the human 
 mind behaves, and the laws which bind together 
 its sequent movements. He has a mind of his 
 own, which is directly accessible to his internal 
 vision; and there are the minds of his friends 
 and acquaintances, about which he can know a 
 good deal too, always provided that they are 
 quite open and confiding. Still, he can not dis- 
 pense with the young unformed minds of infants. 
 His business, like that of all scientific workers, is 
 to explain the complex in terms of the simple, to 
 trace back the final perfectly shaped result to the 
 first rude beginnings. In order to this, he must 
 make a careful study of the early phases of 
 mental life, and these manifest themselves directly 
 under his eye in each new infant. 
 
 Some of the gravest questions relating to 
 man's nature and destiny carry us back to the 
 observation of infancy. Take, for instance, the 
 warmly-discussed question, whether conscience 
 is an innate faculty each man's possession 
 anterior to and independently of all the external 
 human influences, authority, discipline, moral 
 education, which go to shape it ; or whether, on 
 the contrary, it is a mere outgrowth from the 
 impressions received in the course of this train- 
 ing. Nothing seems so likely to throw light on 
 this burning question as a painstaking observa- 
 tion of the first years of life.
 
 VI THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 This, however, is not the whole of the sig- 
 nificance of infancy to the modern psychologist. 
 We are learning to connect the individual life 
 with that of the race, and this again with the 
 collective life of all sentient creatures. The 
 doctrine of evolution bids us view the unfolding 
 of a human intelligence to-day as conditioned 
 and prepared by long ages of human experience, 
 and still longer cycles of animal experience. 
 The civilized individual is thus a memento, a 
 kind of short-hand record of nature's far-reced- 
 ing work of organizing, or building up living 
 conscious structures. And according to this view 
 the successive stages of the mental life of the 
 individual roughly answer to the periods of this 
 extensive process of organization vegetal, ani- 
 mal, human, civilized life. This being so, the 
 first years of the child are of a peculiar anti- 
 quarian interest. 
 
 Here we may note the points of contact of 
 man's proud reason with the lowly intelligence 
 of the brutes. In the most ordinary child we 
 may see a new dramatic representation of the 
 great cosmic action, the laborious emergence of 
 intelligence out of its shell of animal sense and 
 appetite. 
 
 Yet it must not be supposed that the interest 
 here is wholly historical or archaeological. For 
 in thus detecting in the developmental processes 
 of the child's mind an epitome of human and 
 animal evolution, we learn the better to under-
 
 INTRODUCTION. Vll 
 
 stand those processes. We are able to see in 
 such a simple phenomenon as an infant's respon- 
 sive smile a product of far-reaching activities 
 lying outside the individual existence. In the 
 light of the new doctrine of evolution, the early 
 period of individual development, which is pre- 
 eminently the domain of instinct, that is to say, 
 of tendencies and impulses which cannot be 
 referred to the action of the preceding circum- 
 stances of the individual, is seen to be the re- 
 gion which bears the clearest testimony to this 
 preparatory work of the race. It is in infancy 
 that we are least indebted to our individual 
 exertions, mental as well as bodily, and that 
 our debt to our progenitors seems heaviest. In 
 the rapidity with which the infant co-ordinates 
 external impressions and movements, as in 
 learning to follow a light with the eyes, or 
 stretch out the hands to seize an object, and 
 with which feelings of fear, anger, etc., attach 
 themselves to objects and persons, we can 
 plainly trace the play of heredity that law by 
 which each new individual starts on his life 
 course enriched by a legacy of ancestral ex- 
 perience. 
 
 Viewed in this light, infant psychology is 
 seen to be closely related to other departments 
 of the science. To begin with, it has obvious 
 points of contact with what is known as the 
 psychology of race (Volkerpsychologie). The 
 first years of the child answer indeed to the
 
 Vlll THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 earliest known stages of human history. How 
 curiously do the naive conceptions of nature, 
 the fanciful animistic ideas of things, and the 
 rude emotions of awe and terror, which there 
 is good reason to attribute to our earliest 
 human ancestors, reflect themselves in the lan- 
 guage of the child! It is probable indeed 
 that inquiries into the beginnings of human 
 culture, the origin of language, of primitive 
 ideas and institutions, might derive much more 
 help than they have yet done from a close 
 scrutiny of the events of childhood. 
 
 Again, it is evident that the psychology of 
 the infant borders on animal psychology. The 
 child's love of animals points to a special facility 
 in understanding their ways ; and this, again, 
 indicates a certain community of nature. The 
 intelligence of children and of animals has this 
 in common, that each is simple and direct, un- 
 encumbered with the fruit of wide comparison 
 and abstract reflection, keen and incisive within 
 its own narrow compass. Both the child and 
 the brute are exposed by their ignorance to 
 similar risks of danger and deception; both 
 show the same instincts of attachment and 
 trustfulness. And so a study of the one helps 
 the understanding of the other. The man or 
 woman who sees most clearly into the workings 
 of a child's mind will, other things being equal, 
 be the best understander of animal ways, and 
 vice versa.
 
 INTRODUCTION. IX 
 
 There is one particular aspect of this relation 
 between infant and animal psychology which 
 calls for special notice. The baby contrasts 
 strongly with the young of the lower animals 
 in the meagreness of its equipment for life. 
 Though, as observed above, the child reaps 
 the heritage of the past in instinctive germs of 
 capacity, these are far less conspicuous, far 
 less perfect and self-sufficing than the unlearnt 
 aptitudes of young animals. The young chick 
 seems able to co-ordinate the movements of 
 its head with visual impressions so perfectly 
 from the very first that it can aim with accuracy 
 at so small an object as a grain of corn. The 
 young kitten displays quite an experienced and 
 mature hostility to the hereditary foes of its 
 species. There is nothing corresponding to 
 this in the case of human offspring. The baby 
 has to begin life in the most pitiable state of 
 helplessness. For a year and more he cannot 
 execute one of the most important and wide- 
 spread functions of animal life, namely locomo- 
 tion. And this prolonged period of helplessness 
 has a deeply interesting significance from the 
 point of view of the evolutionist. The back- 
 wardness of the human offspring, as compared 
 with the forwardness of the animal, is only a 
 striking illustration of a general law or tendency 
 of evolution. As creatures rise in the scale of 
 organization they have to adapt their actions 
 to a wider and wider variety of circumstances
 
 X THE FIEST THKKE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 and actions of the environment. In the lower 
 grades of animal life there is much more same- 
 ness and routine just because there is much 
 more simplicity. In the higher grades, actions, 
 having to adapt themselves to more complex 
 and changeful surroundings, are more varied, or 
 undergo more numerous and extensive modifi- 
 cations : contrast the actions performed by the 
 bee in obtaining its food with those carried out 
 by the fox. And the capability of thus varying 
 or modifying actions is the result of individual 
 experience and education. Hence, as the vari- 
 ability of the actions of life increases, so does the 
 area of individual learning or' acquisition, as dis- 
 tinct from that of inherited aptitude or instinct. 
 And since the range and variability of human 
 actions are immeasurably greater than those of 
 the most intelligent animal performances, we find 
 that the infant is least equipped for his earthly 
 pilgrimage and has most to do in the way of 
 finding out how to live. 
 
 And here we seem to touch on the more 
 practical side of our subject. To the helpless- 
 ness of the infant there correspond those instincts 
 of tendance, protection, and guidance which, 
 though discernible in the lower animals, are 1 only 
 highly developed in man ; and which, while they 
 are seen most conspicuously in the human 
 mother, are shared in by all adults, and underlie 
 the long and tedious processes of education. It 
 is not only the theoretic psychologist who needs
 
 INTRODUCTION. XI 
 
 to study infantine ways ; it is the practical psy- 
 chologist, that is to say, the educator. The first 
 three or four years of life supply the golden har- 
 vest to which every scientific educationist should 
 go to reap his facts. For the cardinal principle 
 of modern educational theory is, that systematic 
 training should watch the spontaneous move- 
 ments of the child's mind and adapt its processes 
 to these. And it is in the first years of life that 
 the spontaneous tendencies show themselves most 
 distinctly. It is in this period, before the exam- 
 ple and direct instruction of others have had 
 time to do much in modifying and restraining 
 innate tendency, that we can most distinctly spy 
 out the characteristics of the child. It is the 
 infant who tells us most unmistakably how the 
 young intelligence proceeds in groping its way 
 out of darkness into light. It is an historical 
 fact, that the supreme necessity in education of 
 setting out with training the senses and the 
 faculty of observation, was discovered by a close 
 consideration of the direction which children's 
 mental activity spontaneously follows. By sit- 
 ting at the feet of nature and conning the ways 
 of untaught childhood we may learn that all the 
 essential functions of intelligence, separation or 
 analysis, comparison, discrimination, etc., come 
 into play under the stimulating force of a strong 
 external impression. In the act of holding and 
 looking at its brightly-coloured toy the infant is 
 already showing himself to have a distinctively
 
 Xll THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 human mind, and to be on the road to abstract 
 reflection or thought. It is during that prolonged 
 gaze that the first rude tentatives in distinguish- 
 ing and relating the parts and qualities of things 
 are effected. And the object-lesson, properly 
 conceived, is nothing but a methodical develop- 
 ment of the mental processes which are involved 
 in every serious effort of infantine inspection. 
 
 Nor is it only on the intellectual side that this 
 study of the infant mind is of moment to the 
 teacher. It is in the first three or four years of 
 life that we have the key to the emotional and 
 moral nature of the young. If we want to know 
 how a child feels about things, what objects and 
 articles bring him most pleasure, we must watch 
 him at his self-prompted play and overhear his 
 uncontrolled talk. It seems self-evident indeed 
 that if the teacher is to adapt his method of 
 training so far as may be to the tastes and pre- 
 dilections of the pupil, he must have made a 
 preliminary study of these in their unprompted 
 and unfettered expression. If the study be 
 deferred to school life it will never be full or 
 exact. The artificial character of even the 
 brightest school surroundings offers too serious 
 an obstacle to the free play of childish likings. 
 
 Enough has been said, perhaps, to show that 
 the observation and interpretation of the infant 
 mind are at once a matter of great theoretic and 
 practical importance. And now comes the ques- 
 tion : By whom can this line of research be best
 
 INTRODUCTION. X1I1 
 
 pursued ? The conditions of success are plainly 
 two : (1) proper qualifications for the work, and 
 (2) ample opportunity. 
 
 1. With respect to the first condition, it has 
 already been suggested that a good observer of 
 childish ways must combine a number of intel- 
 lectual and moral excellences. He must, to 
 begin with, be a painstaking and exact observer. 
 He must be determined to see children as they 
 actually are, and not to construct them out of his 
 own presuppositions. And this implies a mind 
 trained in observation, and a certain scientific 
 rigour of intellect. Yet this is clearly not enough, 
 for many an excellent observer of other domains 
 of nature might prove a very sorry depicter of 
 infant traits. The close habitual concentration 
 of the mind on things so trivial, to robust common 
 sense, as baby whims and oddities, presupposes 
 a selective emotion, a strong loving interest in 
 this particular domain of natural fact. And 
 this, again, implies that the observer should be 
 touched by that enthusiasm for childhood 
 which shows itself as a kind of consuming 
 passion in men like Pestalozzi and Froebel. 
 
 Nor is this all. The infant mind cannot be 
 seen, but only divined. Every movement of 
 the tiny hands, every modulation of the baby 
 voice, is as meaningless as sounds of an un- 
 known tongue, until the interpretative work of 
 imagination is added. And it is just in the 
 ability thus to construe the external signs of in-
 
 XIV THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 fantine feeling and thought that so many other- 
 wise good observers fail. Nothing perhaps, 
 has been more misunderstood than childhood. 
 Few have the retentive memory of their own 
 early experiences which would at once put them 
 en rapport with the mind they are observing. 
 And few have the disposition to seriously 
 endeavour to think themselves into the situation 
 and circumstances of the child, casting aside 
 their own adult habits of mind, and trying to 
 become themselves for the moment as tittle 
 children. 
 
 Neither the close observation nor the careful 
 interpretation of children's words and actions 
 can be counted on where there is not love and 
 the habitual companionship which grows out of 
 love. The man to whom children will reveal 
 themselves, is not he who is wont to look on 
 them as a nuisance or a bore, but he who finds 
 them an amusement and a delight, who likes 
 nothing better than to cast aside now and again 
 the heavy armour of serious business, and indulge 
 in a good childish romp. Understanding of the 
 child's mental workings, his own peculiar maniere 
 de voir, his standard of the importance of things, 
 and so forth, presupposes a habit of steeping the 
 mind in the atmosphere of child-life. 
 
 2. It follows that a complete qualification for 
 the office includes the second condition, namely, 
 ample opportunity. Nobody ever acquired the 
 art of reading the book of child-nature who had
 
 INTRODUCTION. XV 
 
 not enjoyed full opportunity of observation. 
 When, however, we consider the first year or two 
 of life, we see that opportunity is necessarily 
 greatly restricted. Beyond the mother, nurse, 
 and perhaps the doctor, who is there that is 
 privileged to watch the first tremulous move- 
 ments of the baby-mind ? 
 
 And here the thought naturally occurs, that 
 the mother is the person specially marked out 
 by nature for this honourable task. She is, or 
 ought to be, the one who comes into closest con- 
 tact with the baby, and gives it the first sweet 
 taste of human fellowship. She too has, or ought 
 to have, the liveliest interest in the child, the 
 absorbing interest of idolatrous maternal love. 
 She, we all cheerfully grant, will grudge no effort 
 spent in divining the direction of those first 
 obscure baby impulses, the form of that first 
 unfamiliar baby thought. But has she the other 
 qualifications the mind severe in its insistance 
 on plain ungarnished fact, trained in minute and 
 accurate observation and in sober methodical 
 interpretation ? Here our doubts begin to arise. 
 Few mothers, one suspects, could be trusted to 
 report in a perfectly cold-blooded scientific way 
 on the facts of infant consciousness. The feelings 
 which rightly tend to baby-worship would, one 
 feels sure, too often lead to an arbitrary limit- 
 ation of the area of fact, to confusion of what is 
 actually observed with what is only conjecturally 
 inferred, to exaggeration and misrepresentation.
 
 XVI THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 The very excellences of maternity seem in a 
 measure to be an obstacle to a rigorous scientific 
 scrutiny of babyhood. 
 
 The doctor would of course be much more 
 likely to possess the scientific qualifications for 
 this office of baby-interpreter. And medical 
 men have been known to throw themselves into 
 the work. At the same time it is obvious that a 
 doctor's preoccupation of mind with the physical 
 state of the infant would necessarily interfere 
 with a close attention to psychical traits. And 
 at best he could only obtain, by his direct observ- 
 ation alone, a few fragmentary results. 
 
 And here, perhaps, we may do well to think 
 of another possible candidate for our post. 
 The father can, it is evident, find an ampler 
 opportunity than the doctor for a continuous 
 systematic observation of his child. No doubt 
 he will have obstacles put in his way. It is 
 not improbable that the nurse may assert her 
 authority and set her face resolutely against a 
 too free intrusion of man's footsteps into the 
 woman's domain. Still these obstacles may 
 by judicious cajoling be greatly reduced in size, 
 if not altogether removed. In most cases, it 
 may be presumed, he will have a moderate 
 paternal sort of interest in the doings of his 
 tiny progeny. And his masculine intelligence 
 will be less exposed to the risk of taking a too 
 sentimental and eulogistic view of the baby 
 mind.
 
 INTRODUCTION. XV11 
 
 The father cannot, however, hope to accom- 
 plish the task alone. His restricted leisure 
 compels him to call in the mother as collabora- 
 teur. Indeed, one may safely say, that the 
 mother's enthusiasm and patient brooding 
 watchfulness are needed quite as much as the 
 father's keen analytic vision. The mother 
 should note under the guidance of the father, 
 he taking due care to test and verify. In this 
 way we may look for something like a complete 
 record of infant life. 
 
 It is satisfactory to find that fathers are 
 waking up to a sense of their duty in this 
 matter, and are already laying the foundations 
 of what may some day grow into a big biogra- 
 phical dictionary of infant worthies. The 
 initiative, as might have been expected, has been 
 taken by men of scientific habits and tastes. 
 Physicians, naturalists, and psychologists have 
 co-operated in this useful parental work. Among 
 physicians may be named Tiedemann, Sigis- 
 mund, and Lobisch. Among naturalists figure 
 the names of Darwin and Professor Preyer. 
 And the psychologists are represented by M. 
 Taine, M. Perez, Mr. F. Pollok, and others. 1 
 
 1 Reference to the bibliography of the subject will be 
 found in Preyer's Die Seele des Kindes, cap. 19. The obser- 
 vations of Darwin, Taine, Pollock, and others, are recorded 
 in Mind, vol. ii. pp. 252, 285 ; vol. iii. p. 392 ; vol. vi. p. 
 104. I may also refer to two articles of my own, one on 
 Babies and Science, in The Cornhill Magazine, May, 1881, 
 and one on Baby Linguistics, in The English Illustrated 
 Magazine, November, 1884.
 
 XV111 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 The volume which is here presented in an 
 English garb, is from the pen of one who 
 combines considerable physiological and psy- 
 chological knowledge with a practical interest 
 in education. M. Perez is best known perhaps 
 as a writer of psedagogic literature. He has 
 written a volume, as well as occasional articles 
 on distinctly pedagogic themes, and in addition 
 to this has edited writings of other psedagogists. 
 
 The peculiarity of this record of the first three 
 years of the child, is that it is not a biographical 
 sketch. M. Perez, so far as we can judge, has 
 made special note of the progress of one or two 
 favourites, but his record is a wide and compara- 
 tive one. This gives it its peculiar utility. 
 Each mode of chronicling the events of child-life 
 is valuable the careful chronological report of a 
 single child's development, as that of Tiedemann, 
 Darwin, Preyer, and others, and the larger sur- 
 vey of facts which comes from the observation of 
 a number of children and the averaging of the 
 results reached, as in the work of M. Perez. It 
 may be added that our Author appears to have 
 enjoyed very exceptional advantages in finding 
 out the ways of infants. 
 
 The obvious defect of a single biographical 
 record is, that it cannot be taken as typical. As 
 every mother of a family knows, children mani- 
 fest striking differences from the very beginning 
 of life. Indeed, it is not too much to say, that 
 the child shows its individuality the very first
 
 INTRODUCTION. XIX 
 
 day of its post-natal existence, in the way it takes 
 to "the nutriment provided by nature. The dif- 
 ferences of mental precocity in infants are very 
 striking too. It is one merit of the present vol- 
 ume, that it presents us with a wide variety of 
 childish character. In some places we have a 
 distinctly precocious trait recorded, as for exam- 
 ple in the odd display of quasi-pity by a child 
 of sixteen months, at the sight of an adult under- 
 going a douche bath (p. 80). En revanche, we 
 have in other places instances of quite common- 
 place achievement, if not of decided backward- 
 ness, as when it is recorded that a child of eleven 
 months was able to understand a number of 
 words and "even a few little phrases" (p. 236). 
 It is only by taking the dull and the clever 
 infants together that we are able to reach the 
 idea of an average typical development. 
 
 M. Perez combines, I think, in a very happy 
 and unusual way, the different qualifications of a 
 good observer of children. He has the first con- 
 dition loving interest, and the clear sympathetic 
 insight which grows out of this. Even the 
 much-neglected dreams of children are a matter 
 of concern to him, and receive illumination from 
 his bright intelligence. Nor is he without a 
 quick sense of the poetic charm of babyhood. 
 Some of the stories he tells us are as fresh and 
 delightful as idylls. They transport us into the 
 very atmosphere of unconventional child-nature. 
 At the same time he never allows his sentiment
 
 XX THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 to get the better of him. He is before all other 
 things savant, and as such he exposes the 
 unlovely side of infancy in a most merciless 
 fashion. The account of the little ones' fierce 
 angers, petty jealousies, and brutal insensibilities 
 to the sufferings of others will perhaps horrify 
 some readers, who are accustomed to think of 
 them as having only a divine or angelic side; 
 but they will be appreciated by every one who 
 cares more for the accuracy of facts than for their 
 conformity to our wishes and fancies. 
 
 Another prominent feature of this work, is 
 its clear recognition and appreciation of the 
 bearings of evolution on the facts of child-life. 
 M. Perez is evidently an ardent evolutionist, 
 and makes excellent use of the new doctrine in 
 explaining what he sees. This feature gives 
 the air of newness to the volume. The 
 reader feels that he is listening to one who 
 is fully abreast of the latest developments of 
 science. 
 
 With this feature may be coupled another, 
 namely, the ample reference to animal psycho- 
 logy. M. Perez illustrates the observation 
 made above, that interest in children has a 
 close kinship with interest in animals. He has 
 himself been a careful observer of domestic 
 animals, and his references to his kittens are as 
 delightful to the imagination as they are helpful 
 to the understanding. 
 
 As remarked, M. Perez looks at the infant
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXI 
 
 from an educator's point of view. He knows 
 very well that education begins from the cradle, 
 and his book abounds with practical hints on 
 the proper way of training the very young. 
 His kindly nature is quick in detecting the 
 woes of childhood, and eloquent in pleading 
 for their mitigation. Instance what is said 
 about the wickedness of deceiving children 
 (p. 98). At the same time, the psedagogic 
 intention is never obtruded unpleasantly on 
 the reader's notice. It is by way of passing 
 suggestion, rather than of elaborate enforce- 
 ment, that he aims at making his study of 
 facts a practical guide to the mother and the 
 teacher. 
 
 A last feature of this volume which is deserv- 
 ing of mention, is its thoroughly French form 
 and style. The reader feels at every page that 
 he is listening to a Frenchman who knows how 
 to shape his materials, give order and arrange- 
 ment to his exposition, light it up with per- 
 tinent illustration, and adorn it with the graces 
 of style. While in places the Author ventures 
 a few steps into the darker recesses of meta- 
 physical psychology, he never long forgets that 
 he is writing a popular work. And he has 
 succeeded in producing a volume which, while 
 it will be of special interest to the scientific 
 student, will attract the general reader as well. 
 
 It may not be superfluous to say perhaps, 
 what I feel sure the Author himself would
 
 XX11 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 endorse, that this volume makes no pretension to 
 be a final and exhaustive study of its subject. 
 A complete theory of the infant mind will need 
 to be built up by the combined efforts of many 
 observers and thinkers. In the region of psy- 
 chology, much more than in that of the physical 
 sciences, repetition of observation and experi- 
 ment is needed to check and verify the results 
 of individual research. The secrets of infancy 
 will only be read after many pairs of eyes have 
 pored over the page. Though, as observed, 
 M. Perez has made his studies unusually wide, it 
 may be reasonably doubted whether in some 
 cases he does not give exceptional instances as 
 typical and representative. Certain it is that his 
 notes respecting the first appearance of sensations, 
 e. <?., those of taste and smell, of the perceptions 
 of distance, etc., of the movements of grasping 
 objects, and so forth, differ in some important 
 respects from those of other observers. In cer- 
 tain particulars, too, this volume is less full than 
 some other records, notably that of Professor 
 Preyer's Die Seele des Kindes, which as it was 
 published after the work before us, is not referred 
 to. Hence the student who wants to be quite 
 abreast of the present results of research will do 
 well to read other records in company with this. 
 This circumstance however does not in the least 
 detract from the value of The First Three Years, 
 as a rich mine of facts, and one of the fullest, if not 
 indeed the very fullest, monograph on its subject.
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXlll 
 
 In conclusion, I would express the hope that 
 this pleasant volume will stimulate many an 
 English parent to new individual research in the 
 same promising field. After reading it carefully, 
 any person of ordinary intelligence will have 
 learnt something about the things to be looked 
 for, and the way in which they are to be looked 
 for. And I trust I am not going ultra vires in 
 reminding my readers that there is an English 
 journal of psychology, the Editor of which has 
 proved his readiness to publish contributions to 
 the young and promising science of baby-lore. 
 
 JAMES SULLY.
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE FACULTIES OF THE INFANT BEFORE BIRTH. 
 
 CAN the foetus be regarded as belonging to psychology? 
 Psychologists have no doubt whatever on the subject, 
 for they will not admit that any organism exists without 
 functions in a greater or less stage of development, and 
 they see in the fostus a rough sketch, as it were, of the 
 entire system of the organs of sensibility. No doubt, 
 either, is expressed on the question by philosophers of the 
 experimental school, who accord as much importance to 
 the unconscious as to the conscious life of the mind, and 
 who regard the apparently automatic movements of the 
 intra-uterine stage of existence as evident manifestations 
 of sensibility of some sort. We will begin by quoting the 
 opinion expressed by Dr. Luys concerning initial sensibility. 
 
 " In the first phases of f oatal life it is very difficult to fix 
 definitely at what epoch sensibility manifests itself as a 
 motor force; nevertheless, from the fourth month we can 
 observe that the nervous system begins to react and reveal 
 the vitality of the different apparatuses of which it is made 
 up. We know, indeed, that from this period the foatus is 
 sensitive to the action of cold, and that we can develop its 
 spontaneous movements by applying a cold hand to the 
 abdomen of the mother. We know also that it executes 
 spontaneous movements to withdraw from pressure that 
 constrains it and brings its sensibility into play. We may 
 then legitimately conclude that here we have the first 
 gleams of awakening sensibility, which from this period is 
 transmitted through its natural channels by the nervous.
 
 2 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 system and already regulated in the manner in which it will 
 subsequently manifest itself throughout the organism." l 
 
 If we admit with this writer the persistence in the nerve 
 cellules of the vibrations which first set them in motion, 
 and, as regards intellectual activity, the persistence in these 
 vibrations of memories and ideas, unconscious though they 
 be, we shall understand the great interest which psycholo- 
 gists must feel in the study of the functional action, what- 
 ever its nature, of psychological life before birth. 
 
 M. Eibot, a philosopher of the experimental school, 
 admits the possibility of researches useful to psychology 
 being made on the subject we are treating of, but only 
 from the point of view of our knowledge of the unconscious 
 life. The first forms of unconscious life must be sought for 
 in the foetal life a subject full of obscurity, and very little 
 studied from the psychological point of view. We may 
 hold, with Bichat and Cabanis, that though the external 
 senses are in the fetus in a state of torpor, and though, in 
 the constant temperature of the amniotic fluid, the general 
 sensibility of the foetus is almost null, still its brain has 
 already exercised perception and will, as seems to be 
 evidenced by the movements of the foetus during the last 
 months of pregnancy. 2 
 
 Professor Kussmaul goes still further. He admits "that 
 the child can, even before birth, experience certain sensa- 
 tions and acquire certain aptitudes by means of the sense of 
 touch aroused in it through contact with the matrix which 
 surrounds it, as well as by the sensations of hunger and 
 thirst excited by the amniotic fluid which it swallows. 
 Thus, at this period already, the intelligence of the child 
 would begin to be developed, although very imperfectly." 
 
 What, we ask, do these modifications of the mental life 
 before birth amount to? May we hope that experimental 
 analogy will one day enlighten us on this delicate and 
 complex question? Will not the comparative anatomy of 
 the foetal brain, the child's brain, and the adult brain 
 
 1 Luys, Le Cerveau et ses Fonctions. See English translation (Inter- 
 national Scientific Series), p. 12i. 
 ? Ribot, Ii'Heredite, See English translation, p. 227.
 
 THE FACULTIES OP A CHILD BEFORE BIRTH. 3 
 
 some day inform us whether the primitive sensations are 
 or are not arrested before they reach the nerve fibres, 
 which help them to transform themselves into perceptions? 
 The organs of sense, although as yet incompletely finished, 
 do they not nevertheless produce local peripheric reac- 
 tions, sensitive vibrations, or veritable sensations, which 
 are a kind of rudimentary exercise and training to the 
 parts acted on? 
 
 What is the action of external or internal life on these 
 semi-formed, semi-active, perhaps vaguely conscious souls? 
 If the movements of the foetus were all mechanical and 
 unconscious, would its sensations end only in dull excita- 
 tions of the sensibility the importance of which it is as 
 unreasonable to deny as to exaggerate? Since the devia- 
 tion of the tenth part of a millimeter sustained by a nerve 
 fibre during pregnancy, exercises considerable influence 
 over the contexture of any one organ, the impressions re- 
 ceived during foetal life whether regular or accidental 
 and although working on organs which are still imperfect 
 and unexercised, must nevertheless have an influence on 
 the general constitution of the mind, as well as on its 
 special dispositions, which it will no doubt be possible to 
 determine within certain limits. These are the first rays 
 of spiritual life whose dawn is the moment of birth. It 
 is the first page of a book which the psychologist should 
 neither despair of being able, nor be in too great haste to 
 decipher. 
 
 What is the nature or the intensity of the sensations 
 which we suppose the foetus to experience? They are 
 probably sensations already localized and differentiated, of 
 visceral comfort or discomfort, muscular, cutano-thermal, 
 tactile, or sapid sensations; these latter less distinct 
 because they are less varied than the vital and muscular 
 sensations ; we may even suppose that, in spite of the im- 
 perfect development of the auditory apparatus, the vibra- 
 tions of sound, transmitted through the abdominal parti- 
 tion or chamber, would produce on the parts already 
 completed concussions corresponding to a rudimentary 
 and general sensation of hearing. From what we have 
 been able to gather, however, as to the nature of these
 
 4 THE FIRST THREE YEARS Otf CHILDHOOD. 
 
 hypothetical sensations, we may infer that they are not 
 very distinct or intense. 
 
 Contemporary physiology recognizes generaUy in sensa- 
 tion only the result of the modification of the organs 
 which takes place in correspondence to each modification 
 of the surrounding medium. The intensity of sensation 
 is in direct ratio to the resistance offered hy the fibres of 
 sensation to the action of external impressions, It is the 
 repercussion of this action on the sensorium which produces 
 sensation. The nerve of an adult is able to bear greater 
 excitation than that of a young child, and requires for the 
 production of a given sensation a minimum excitation 
 stronger than the minimum excitation which would pro- 
 duce the same sensation in the case of the child. But 
 the extreme adaptivity of the infant organization to its 
 surroundings, and the small resistance which it offers to 
 external excitation, renders the sensational susceptibility 
 considerably less than at a more advanced age. Ex- 
 tremely open to new impressions, children resist them but 
 little, easily get accustomed to them, and also, for that 
 very reason, do not feel them long. And all this applies 
 still more strongly to the foetus. The relative activity of 
 the visceral functions, the extreme tactile sensitiveness of 
 the skin, partly the result of its yet imperfect state, 
 the already considerable, development of muscular sensi- 
 bility, may all cause the fetus to experience distinct and 
 acute sensations, under the influence of pressure, of heat 
 or cold, or of internal modifications of the organization. 
 
 What do we know, however, concerning the degree of 
 actual vitality inherent in the organs and the nervous 
 centres at the period of which we are treating? In a 
 word, does the foetus really feel and receive the sensations 
 which we suppose it does? 
 
 Most physiologists are, like Wirchow, of opinion that 
 the new-born child is simply " a vertebrate animal," that 
 its unconscious sensations are nothing more than auto- 
 matic reflex actions, that its sensations and movements 
 have no echo in the centres of sensational and motive 
 ideality. Does this mean that these two encephalic 
 centres are inactive in the foetus? Our scientific knowl-
 
 THE FACULTIES OP A CHILD BEFORE B1ETH. r, 
 
 edge of the foetal brain, as far as I know, can teach us 
 nothing decisive on this point, and the brain of the new- 
 born child is still fallow ground, if we may judge from the 
 small amount of information to be found on this subject 
 in the most recent French works on the brain in general. 
 We quote from Dr. Charlton Bastian some interesting 
 passages on the development of the brain during fcetal 
 life 
 
 " By the end of the fifth month the growth of the cere- 
 bral hemispheres has been so great that they completely 
 cover not only the corpora quadrigemina but also the now 
 larger cerebellum . . ." 
 
 " In the remaining important section of intra-uterine 
 life, from the sixth to the end of the ninth month, the de- 
 velopmental changes in the cerebrum are much more 
 marked than they are in the cerebellum. The walls of the 
 cerebral hemispheres become thicker, and there is a pro- 
 portionate diminution in the capacity of the ' lateral ven- 
 tricles,' the three 'horns' of which now become quite 
 distinct. The corpus callosum assumes a more horizontal 
 direction, whilst it increases both in thickness and in 
 length. . . ." " During the sixth month a surprising 
 development of the fissures and convolutions takes place, 
 so that early in the seventh month all the principal of them 
 are distinctly traceable. . . ." 
 
 "During the attainment of this degree of convolutional 
 complexity, some important changes have been taking 
 place in the relative development of the different ' lobes ' 
 of the brain. At the seventh month the parietal lobe 
 (which at birth showed proportionately fuller develop- 
 ment) is notably small, while the frontal or temporal lobes 
 are large. . . ." 
 
 " According to S. Van der Kolk and Vrolik it appears 
 that in their relative proportions, the lobes of the brain in 
 a new-born child hold just the mean between those of a 
 chimpanzee and an adult man. In the adult orang, how- 
 ever, the same proportion obtains between its different 
 lobes and those of the new-born child. . . ." 
 
 " In regard to the microscopical characters of the f ratal 
 brain, one brief but important statement deserves to be
 
 6 THE PIEST THKEE YEAES OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 recorded. According to Lockhart Clarke : ' In the early 
 foetal brain of mammalia and man the structure [of the 
 cerebral convolutions] consists of one uninterrupted nu- 
 cleated network. As development advances, separate 
 layers may be distinguished.' 1 But even in these layers 
 there are only to be recognized ' roundish nuclei connect- 
 ed by a network of fibres,' or, in other parts, groups of 
 more elongated nuclei, in place of the distinct but differ- 
 ently shaped nerve cells with inter-connecting processes 
 which are the prevailing and characteristic constituents of 
 the cerebral convolutions in their developed condition." 8 
 
 As far as these superficial indications allow of any con- 
 clusion, we see that if the development of the superior 
 hemispheres appears to be ripe enough for perception, 
 emotion, and volition, the defective consistence of their 
 constituent elements indicates, at least during the uterine 
 period, a very limited functional power of the psychical 
 faculties. But it does not follow from the fact that the 
 development of the cerebellum, the organ of co-ordinate 
 movements, is not so advanced as that of the cerebrum, 
 that the centres of ideality and of motive volition have not 
 already entered on their functions before birth. 
 
 Psychologists ought then to be very careful of pro- 
 nouncing judgment in a matter where physiologists of the 
 highest authority are still so much in the dark. I may 
 add, that the latter not being able to subject new-born ba- 
 bies to the murderous experiments of vivisection under 
 anaesthetics, we have at the present moment but little to 
 expect from their direct sources of information on the 
 cerebral functions of young children a fortiori of the 
 fffitus. At the most, as we shall show further on, they 
 may contribute to infant psychology some indirect infor- 
 mation from their experiments on new-born animals. 
 Every age has its comparative psychology. 
 
 For the present, however, we may fairly assume from 
 analogy, that a long time before it is born a child will 
 
 1 Notes of Researches on the Intimate Structure of the Brain. Pro- 
 ceedings of Royal Society, 1863, p. 721. 
 
 2 Charlton Bastian, The Brain as an Organ of Mind (International 
 Scientific Series), ch. xix.. pp. 341-346.
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE NEW-BORN CHILD. 7 
 
 have become acquainted both with pain and pleasure, in so 
 far, i. e., as its gradually developing organs have allowed 
 the passage of the impressions which normally produce 
 these sensations. It will also have experienced a great 
 number of lesser sensations, which, though they may have 
 been almost indifferent to it, will nevertheless have had 
 some sort of echo in its already formed consciousness. 
 Most of these sensations, from being produced without the 
 concurrence of the higher brain action, will be confused 
 and indistinct. Others, however, will be clearer, and re- 
 sult in true rudimentary perceptions- vague perceptions, 
 i. e., and not localized, and without any other connecting 
 link than that obscure and innate sentiment of personality 
 which is buried in I know not what mysterious corner of 
 the encephalus. These perceptions are, as it were, inte- 
 rior and subjective. We shall have occasion to return to 
 the subject of perception during foetal life in the chapter 
 devoted to the perception of the new-born child. 
 
 n. 
 
 THE FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE NEW-BORN CHILD. 
 
 The child has already made acquaintance with pain be- 
 fore coming into the world, and we cannot tell how much 
 more the hard labor of birth may have caused it to suffer. 
 There is no doubt, however, that the moment when it first 
 enters into relation with external realities is a very painful 
 one. As soon as its head comes in contact with the air, 
 this fluid pours in torrents down the delicate tissues of the 
 respiratory organs ; and the progressive succession of move- 
 ments of inspiration and expiration, which are the begin- 
 ning of pulmonary respiration, are not effected without 
 painful shocks. This is why a new-born infant utters 
 sounds similar to those produced by suffocation. It is 
 only slowly and after several days' time, that the little 
 being gets accustomed to the atmosphere which surrounds 
 it. When it first comes into the world, unfurnished with 
 the power of resistance which it acquires later, its delicate 
 skin is suddenly enveloped in an atmosphere which is icy
 
 8 THE ElfcST THREE YEAftS OF CHILDHOOD, 
 
 cold compared to that which it has just left. Cold is the 
 most serious enemy to new-born children. We know with 
 what care animals hasten to warm their little ones with 
 the heat of their own bodies. The first operation of wash- 
 ing is another source of suffering, for, whatever care be 
 taken and however rapidly it be performed, the towel and 
 the sponge, even though of the finest texture, must irritate 
 the tender skin of a new-born child. The freedom of move- 
 ment, too, which its limbs have gained is in itself a source 
 of pain, after the soft pressure they have been accustomed 
 to; and the most gen tie handling of the nurse or mother 
 are torture to its delicate frame, still suffering from the 
 struggle of coming into life. 
 
 All its senses are battered by repeated shocks of strange 
 impressions, and its wailing cries indicate how painfully 
 these are felt. A new-born infant is both deaf and blind, 
 but the rays of light strike none the less on its eyes with a 
 sense of shock, and the waves of sound dash all the same 
 against its tympanum. 
 
 Can we then wonder that the child's entrance into life 
 should be accompanied by those plaintive cries so well 
 described by the Latin poet. " A child at its birth, like 
 a mariner cast ashore by the angry waves, lies prostrate on 
 the earth, naked, speechless, destitute of all the aids to 
 existence, from the moment when it reaches the shores of 
 light, torn from its mother's bosom by the efforts of nature ; 
 and it fills the place it has entered with dismal wailings. 
 And such distress is but natural! There lies before him 
 to traverse a life afflicted with bitter woes." 1 
 
 The child, however, has no presentiments of the sorrow 
 or the joy which will make up his longer or shorter career; 
 but the individual life that has become his is evidently a 
 cause of suffering to him. Like new-born animals, he is 
 restless and wailing under the influence of all the new im- 
 pressions which irritate his keen susceptibilities ; and it is 
 strictly true that children make acquaintance with external 
 life through suffering. Their entrance into the world is 
 as painful as their exit ; and this is the reason why so many 
 
 1 Lucretius, De Natura Kerum, lib. v., ver. 223, etc.
 
 FI&ST IMPRESSIONS OP THE KlW-fiGftftf CHILD. 9 
 
 children, exhausted by all their efforts and sufferings, fall 
 after birth into a kind of corpse-like rigidity. A new-born 
 infant shows no immediate desire for food. This is prob 
 ably owing to exhaustion and the strong need of sleep, and 
 perhaps also to the powerful action of the air, which at 
 once begins to transform the venous blood into arterial 
 blood. 
 
 "It is not till after several hours that the need of nour- 
 ishment first makes itself felt. The sensations of hunger 
 and thirst, both equally new, recall the child from the ob- 
 livion of sleep, and it awakens with a cry. Maternal ten- 
 derness responds instinctively to this appeal, and offers its 
 first gift. The child now learns the delight of moistening 
 its lips with a sweet and pleasant liquid, imbibed from the 
 breast on which its head reposes so softly; and the first 
 sufferings experienced at its debut are quickly effaced by 
 this first sweet pleasure. The satisfied child falls asleep 
 again on its mother's bosom, with the feeling of comfort 
 which satiety produces, and seems once more to return to 
 the isolated life which was its normal condition in the 
 mother's womb, and which its organism has not yet lost 
 the habit of. It reawakens from this slumber every time 
 that the need of nourishment returns to trouble its re- 
 pose." 1 
 
 Thus, though the child thrown naked on the earth soon 
 finds there the soft warm pillow of its mother's breast; 
 though nature herself manages for it the transitions which 
 lead it gently up to the complete possession of sight, hear- 
 ing, and locomotion, the struggle for existence begins 
 nevertheless at birth. Hunger, thirst, cold, difficulty of 
 respiration and of digestion, tactile and muscular suffer- 
 ings, irritating impressions on the organs of sight and 
 hearing, all these await its awakening from each of its 
 deep slumbers. And however little conscious and vivid 
 these sensations may be, they none the less affect the deli- 
 cate and still imperfect organs. This accounts for the 
 great difficulty there sometimes is in rearing little children, 
 and the frequency of nervous or pectoral affections which 
 
 1 Richard de Nancy, Education Physique des Enfants.
 
 10 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OP CHILDHOOD. 
 
 carry off so great a number. Moreover, if it is reasonable 
 to judge of the welfare of a child by the strength of, and 
 the manner in which, its various functions operate, we 
 may fairly attempt to determine the condition of a new- 
 born infant by this one action of feeding. During the 
 first few days babies suck feebly and without energy, and 
 quickly weary of the process. At this period they are suf- 
 fering from various operations of nature, and up to the 
 third day there is a diminution of between three and four 
 ounces in their weight; and it is not till the sixth or 
 seventh day that they get back to what they were at birth. 
 Thus we conclude that a child's general well-being corre- 
 sponds to the degree of development of its organs and 
 their power of adaptation to their new surroundings and 
 conditions.
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 MOTOR ACTIVITY AT THE BEGINNING OF LIFE. 
 
 As the first manifestations of psychic life in a new-born 
 child are shown in movements which are more or less 
 automatic, it will be well for us first to study the nature 
 of these movements, which in adults are the expression of 
 psychological phenomena. From the very first days we 
 perceive in infants a sort of motor activity, general and in- 
 definite, which is due to external or internal excitations, 
 themselves also for the most part vague and undefined. 
 We recognize in all this activity a spontaneous tendency 
 of the nervous centre to spend its superabundant energies 
 in muscular force; but we can also see in some of the 
 actions the expression of pre-established association be- 
 tween certain movements and certain sensations, agreeable 
 or otherwise. For instance, the vague incoherent move- 
 ments of the arms, legs, and facial muscles, which young 
 babies make, as if trying to escape from the pressure of 
 their clothes, or struggling against some painful state of 
 their system; the aimless movements which their arms 
 perform, striking right and left without any definite object; 
 all these belong to the first class of indefinite reflex 
 actions. From the first also, the mouth will seize and 
 suck eagerly a finger, or anything else held before it; the 
 fingers close mechanically round any object with which 
 the palm is touched ; " Like the leaves and flowers of a 
 sensitive plant whenever they are touched by a foreign 
 substance." ' The eyes blink uneasily, as if endeavoring 
 
 * Memoir e de Tiedemann,
 
 12 THE FIKST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 
 
 to accustom themselves to the blinding light; if the soles 
 of the feet are touched gently, or tickled with a feather, 
 instinctive movements are at once made to draw away the 
 feet. All these movements, in themselves automatic, but 
 of definite use, belong to the class of general distinct 
 movements. According to Darwin, one of the first reflex 
 actions to be noticed in babies, and one which appears at 
 first sight to have nothing to do with instinct, is the 
 sneezing which accompanies the first act of respiration. 
 The same applies to the shrill staccato screams which are 
 the preliminaries to the action of crying, the pouting of 
 the lips, the wrinkling of the forehead and eyebrows, the 
 contraction of the moitth, by which the lower lip is raised, 
 with a convulsive depression of the corners of the mouth, 
 and finally the sobs and tears when the child is old enough 
 to produce them. Darwin tells us that in one of his own 
 children he noticed a distinct sob at the age of 138 days. 
 With regard to the effusion of tears, his observations show 
 the period of their first appearance to be very variable. 
 He has never seen them before the twentieth day; once at 
 the sixty-second day; two other times at the eighty -fourth, 
 and once not before the hundredth day. Laughter, which 
 begins so early, is manifestly a reflex action. This uni- 
 versal sign of joy consists in the retraction of the corners 
 of the mouth, with a slight separation of the lips ; and we 
 may remark this slight expansion of the anterior muscles 
 of the face, this smiling countenance, even in the faces of 
 dogs and cats when at play. Tiedemann thought that he 
 noticed in his boy five days after his birth " the appearance 
 of laughter without any particular motive, thus most 
 probably without intention or sentiment of pleasure, and 
 simply the result of chance action of the mechanism." 
 Tiedemann's son, however, was altogether remarkably 
 precocious. I would rather quote the authority of Darwin 
 in the case of points which have been scientifically ob- 
 served by him. 
 
 " Those who have the care of young children," he says, 
 " know very well that it is difficult to determine with cer- 
 tainty whether particular movements of the mouth ex- 
 press anything, i.e., whether a child is really smiling."
 
 MOTOR ACTIVITY AT THE BEGINNING OF LIFE. 1U 
 
 He has scarcely ever observed anything like a real smile 
 before the age of forty-five days; and the broken, jerky 
 sounds of genuine laughter he has never heard before the 
 sixty-fifth day. 
 
 " In this gradual development of the laughing powers 
 we find, up to a certain point, an analogy with what takes 
 place in the case of tears. It seems that in both cases a 
 certain amount of practice is wanted, just as for the pro- 
 duction of the ordinary movements of the body, or in ac- 
 quiring the power of walking. The faculty of screaming, 
 on the contrary, the use of which is very evident, is com- 
 pletely developed at the outset." I have seen smiles on 
 many infants' faces before they were a month old. But 
 this henceforth reflex symptom of joy must not be con- 
 founded with certain spasmodic and jerky twitchings of 
 the lips which acute pain produces in infants as well as in 
 grown-up people. All the children of two months old 
 that I have observed have laughed genuinely if they were 
 tickled, or if anything pleased them ; and their laughter 
 has been more or less easy and distinct according to their 
 organization. But they were not themselves aware that 
 their smiles or laughter expressed anything, and I have 
 seen very few infants at this age respond with a smile to 
 their mother's smile. An appeal of a more physical nat- 
 ure is needed at this period, an appeal of the voice or a 
 sensation of physical pleasure. Or if ever they smiled 
 consciously without any apparent stimulus of this kind, 
 the intention was probably a very feeble one. 
 
 People who have to do with young babies know how, 
 even before the age of two months, they delight in moving 
 their arms and legs about in their cradles. While waiting 
 for the power of locomotion to develop, the tendency to 
 motion vents itself in incessant exercise of the limbs. 
 And these movements, for the most part vague and indefi- 
 nite, are accompanied by "sounds, simple and inarticulate 
 it is true, but full of variety" (Tiedemann). Nothing 
 shows more clearly the intimate relation between the 
 motive centres of the limbs and the centres of articulation, 
 than this necessity, both for children and animals, of asso- 
 ciating sounds with movements, M. Taine gives an in-
 
 14 THE FIRST THEEE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 stance of this in a little girl on whom he made observations : 
 "Towards the age of three-and-a-half months she used to 
 be laid out on a rug in the garden, and there, lying either 
 on her back or her stomach, she would fling her four limbs 
 about for hours together, uttering at the same time all 
 sorts of varying cries and exclamations ; nothing but vowel 
 sounds however, no consonants ; this went on for several 
 months." But sounds, either articulate or inarticulate, 
 are of no great importance as far as psychology is con- 
 cerned, since the acquired language of gestures and words, 
 as soon as children understand their expressive value, ren- 
 der these early utterances useless. It would be very 
 interesting, however, to study them in the case of children 
 placed, if such a thing were possible, in such a situation 
 that they would have to re-invent their language, without 
 other help than the gestures of their teachers. The experi- 
 ment may possibly be made some day. 
 
 But to return to the study of movements, so interesting to 
 the psychologist, because they are most often the expres- 
 sion of mental phenomena, which in their turn they again 
 produce. 1 Movements that are very frequent with children 
 hardly a month old, are those which they make when they 
 are held up, with both arms or with only one, with a slight 
 impulsion up and down, without apparent purpose and in a 
 more or less marked manner, accompanying the movement 
 with little clutchings of the fingers. In like manner, when 
 their legs are free, they kick them up and down with an 
 automatic regularity which reminds one of certain convuls 
 ive movements of adults. Must we not recognize in these 
 movements a discharge of the surplus nervous activity, 
 which neither has nor seeks any special end, but which 
 nevertheless has a useful effect on the whole system of vital 
 functions? It seems to me that we may also reasonably 
 regard them as the effect of latent tendencies eager to 
 manifest themselves by specialized movements ; and more- 
 over the result is facilitated by these movements, though 
 they may have no definite aim. In fact, each nerve and 
 each muscle produces its own action, more or less regular, 
 
 1 See M. Ribot, Revue Philosophique, Oct. 1st, 1879.
 
 MOTOR ACTIVITY AT THE BEGINNING OF LIFE. 15 
 
 when its fibres and centres have reached a sufficient degree 
 of strength or organization ; and further exercise, which is 
 favorable to the general development of the body, prepares 
 also the way for powers latent in the organization, and 
 which sometimes burst quite suddenly, or at least without 
 apparent gradation, into actuality. 
 
 During the first three months the movements of the head 
 from right to left, or left to right, or up and down, which 
 continue for some time to be so uncertain and feeble, 
 assume by degrees a more definite character. In the case 
 of a child of a month and a half only, I have noticed a 
 movement of the head which followed a look cast in my 
 direction, while the ear was bent forward as if listening to 
 me. I have seen a child at the age of seven weeks repeat 
 twice over a face of disgust at the sight of a dose of medi- 
 cine, accompanying the grimace with movements which 
 later on will signify No, but which at the time were only 
 unconsciously repellent. This, however, was a step in 
 advance : an infant of eight days or a month simply makes 
 a face, without any accompanying movement, to reject 
 anything that is disagreeable to its taste. As for the move- 
 ments of the eyes which Tiedemann has observed, and 
 which often occur the second day after birth, they can only 
 be considered as purely reflex actions, even at the age of 
 three weeks or a month, since, as I have already said, 
 children are blind during a period the length of which it 
 is impossible to determine. It may be, however, that the 
 vibrations of light excite their eyes to automatic move- 
 ments which seem, by chance, to be following some object. 
 These movements are perhaps a necessary stepping-stone 
 to sight, for everything tends to the belief in a vague cor- 
 respondence between light and the tissues intended for 
 vision, since a like correspondence is found where there 
 is little or no visual organ. 
 
 "The rudimentary eye, consisting, as in a Planaria, of 
 some pigment grains, may be considered as simply a part 
 of the surface more irritable by light than the rest." 1 
 
 A fortiori may this be the case with young babies, who 
 
 1 Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology, p. 314.
 
 16 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 have a special organ of sensibility to light. The automatic 
 movements of the eyes, which are produced by mere irrita- 
 tion, without any sensation of light, contribute nevertheless 
 to the nutrition of the muscular and nervous tissues, .the 
 development of which is indispensable to the production of 
 visual sensibility. As the development of the muscles, the 
 nerve centres, and the motor centres proceeds, as the sensa- 
 tions become distinct and the judgments more extended, 
 the motor centres acquire more and more specialized powers 
 of adjustment. 
 
 A child of two months who can distinguish several ob- 
 jects outside himself, and is beginning to have a vague idea 
 of distances, not being able to stretch out his hands and 
 seize distant objects, as he does those near to him, bends his 
 whole body towards them. At this same age children be- 
 gin also to have a clearer idea of extent, or rather of local- 
 ization relatively to the different parts of their bodies; 
 they now only scratch themselves at intervals. Before the 
 end of the third month, they begin to lift their hands to 
 their faces oftener than before, and a little later the first 
 pains of teething cause their fingers to be incessantly car- 
 ried to the mouth. They now use their hands more and to 
 better purpose ; the flexion of the hand from the wrist is 
 accomplished perfectly; the fingers have acquired more 
 regular and more varied movements, and we notice efforts 
 at stretching out the arms; this, however, rarely as yet. 
 A child at this age will also attempt movements of the 
 legs and the thorax to balance himself in an upright posi- 
 tion when held up on his feet, and will struggle with arms 
 and knees to climb up to his nurse's face, when she helps 
 him forward on his feet. 
 
 In a word, he has gained greater consciousness and 
 mastery of his activity; it affords him more pleasure, and 
 this very pleasure excites him to the use of it. 
 
 II. 
 
 MOTOR ACTIVITY AT SIX MONTHS. 
 
 From the fourth to the sixth month, progress is made in 
 numerous ways, but very slowly in comparison to some of 
 the superior animals. The reason of thi is, that the
 
 MOTOR ACTIVITY AT SIX MONTHS. 17 
 
 more the will is intended to operate iu the control and co- 
 ordination of the movements of the body, the more vari- 
 ous and complex will be the special locomotive attainments 
 and the longer the process of training. A cat at a month 
 old, or a dog at four months, will better use its paws for 
 standing, walking, seizing or playing, than a year-old 
 child will use its hands and legs for the same purposes. 
 A kitten, immediately after birth, can drag itself along on 
 its stomach, if not walk; and its efforts and progress, 
 especially in locomotion, may be with interest compared to 
 the corresponding progress which takes place so slowly in 
 a child. 1 
 
 It takes a child two years to accomplish stages -of prog- 
 ress which a kitten gets over in less than a month. A 
 child of six months, if lowered rapidly in its nurse's arms, 
 will scarcely put out his arms to save himself from falling. 
 His triumph is in the sitting posture. Seated on the floor, 
 surrounded with playthings, of which he shows himself a 
 jealous master, his hands, arms and fingers accomplish 
 many delicate and varied movements of which a cat or a 
 dog of a year old would not be capable. His activity, 
 doubled now by curiosity, and stimulated to the highest 
 pitch by emotional sentiments of all sorts, makes him 
 happier and happier, and seems to him so great a neces- 
 sity, that a quarter of an hour of relative inactivity weighs 
 on him as much as a whole day of ennui on a grown-up 
 person. 
 
 At this period a child gets an immense amount of 
 pleasurable sensation of all kinds, muscular, intellectual, 
 and moral, from its first attempts at walking and talking 
 and imitating all the different gestures of the people 
 around ; and all these progressive steps are so much the 
 more keenly relished by its sensitive personality that they 
 are not the result of so many conscious efforts or of gradual 
 and intentional evolution, but more often come quite sud- 
 denly into operation, according as the development of 
 the different organs which produce them proceeds. The 
 
 1 See Mes Deux CJmts, Fragment de Psychologie Comparee, foroch, 
 iu-12, chez Genjier Bailere,
 
 18 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 sudden apparition of these forces, of which possibly a 
 vague presentiment may have been felt throughout the 
 organism, but which have not been intentionally called up, 
 affords the child the constant delight of fresh surprises. 
 They are treasures which he wishes to share with all 
 around ; he will repeat, untiringly, boine new movement of 
 which he has just discovered in himself the power a 
 special movement of the hands or legs, for instance; and 
 he will endeavor to apply it to any and every purpose, just 
 as the first significant articulations which he has learnt to 
 utter serve him for general terms to designate objects which 
 perhaps have only a very distant resemblance to each other. 
 We need scarcely remind our readers that with regard to 
 the most important and personal progress which goes on 
 in children, the greater part is effected without our con- 
 currence, often, indeed, in spite of us. There is at least 
 very little that we can, or that we know how to, watch 
 over and direct. But nothing is more interesting than the 
 study of those points in which we can to some measure 
 co-operate. 
 
 We will take the case of a child of ten months who has 
 for some time been learning to walk. His first efforts were 
 very laborious; although carefully held by his frock, he 
 often failed in his attempts at making steps, and more 
 than once he rolled over, and the lesson ended with crying. 
 'For a good while he stuck at the A, B, C, of the art, that 
 is to say, at stamping up and down in one place, like a raw 
 recruit who is made to stretch out first one leg and then 
 the other. After a time he became a little firmer on his 
 thighs and at last he was able to make seven or eight steps 
 without stumbling. But he still keeps his head constantly 
 turned towards the person who is holding him up. He 
 knows that it is only thanks to this support that he is able 
 to keep upright; he remembers his numerous falls, or per- 
 haps, like a cat set down for the first time on a slippery 
 floor, he has an instinctive feeling of the difficulty of the 
 enterprise; whatever the reason, however, he often exhibits 
 fear. But, encouraged by his increasing successes, he 
 finally forgets his apprehensions, grows eager and inspir- 
 ited, an.d executes, a. few well-formed steps, more or less
 
 MOTOR ACTIVITY AT TEN MONTHS. 19 
 
 firmly, and with evident delight. I am even inclined to be- 
 lieve that something akin to pride, to the exultant feeling 
 of a difficulty conquered, has been awakened in him. 
 And this sentiment must be experienced in a more or less 
 exaggerated degree, for he measures the importance of his 
 efforts by the trouble they cost him; and the distance 
 traversed by his footsteps is estimated by comparison of 
 the surrounding objects with his own dimensions. 
 
 The eminent philosopher, Herbert Spencer, has admir- 
 ably explained these two psychological facts. On the one 
 hand he says: 
 
 " The sense of effort which a child experiences in raising 
 a weight, greatly exceeds in intensity the sense of effort it 
 will experience in raising the same weight by the same 
 muscles twenty years afterwards. At maturity a like 
 amount of sensation is the correlate of an increased amount 
 of produced motion. Similarly this relation varies quanti- 
 tatively as the constitutional state varies. After a pros- 
 trating illness, the feeling of strain that accompanies the 
 raising of a limb, is as great as that which in health 
 accompanies a considerable feat of strength. 1 
 
 " The dimensions of our bodies and the spaces moved 
 through by our limbs, serve us as standards of comparison 
 with environing dimensions; and conceptions of smallness 
 or largeness result according as these environing dimen- 
 sions are much less or much greater than the organic 
 dimensions. Hence, the consciousness of a given relation 
 of two positions in space, must vary quantitatively with 
 variation of bodily bulk. Clearly, a mouse, which has to 
 run many times its own length to traverse the space which 
 a man traverses at a stride cannot have the same concep- 
 tion of this space as a man. 
 
 " Quantitative changes in these compound relations of 
 co-existence are traceable by each person in his own mental 
 history, from childhood to maturity. Distances which 
 seemed great to the boy, seem moderate to the man ; and 
 
 Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology, p. 2O4.
 
 20 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 buildings once thought imposing in height and mass, 
 dwindle into insignificance. " ' 
 
 It is the same with all the conscious efforts that a child 
 makes, and which habit so quickly transforms into reflex 
 actions. I suppose that the child of whom I shall have 
 occasion to speak later on, who seized hold of two feeding 
 bottles at once and lifted them without help, thought he 
 was lifting two objects of enormous weight. In like man- 
 ner, when at three-and-a-half months children begin to be 
 a little less awkward in their way of feeling and holding 
 things, it is evident that joy in overcoming difficulties is 
 combined with the pleasure they experience in touching 
 and handling. At this age the mere fact of holding in the 
 hands a coveted piece of paper, of hearing it crackle in 
 the fingers, seems a wonderful feat. But one of the tri- 
 umphs that a child enjoys the most keenly, is when he is 
 first able, however faintly, to imitate some of the words 
 which his attendants have repeated to him with so much 
 patience, and which, owing to the quick impressionability 
 of his brain, had been promptly fixed in the memory, but 
 which the rebellious vocal organs had long refused to utter. 
 And when at last he succeeds in pronouncing them, how- 
 ever badly, he makes up for lost time, and seems to de- 
 light in deafening himself incessantly with the repetition 
 of these sounds. 
 
 m. 
 
 MOTOR ACTIVITY AT FIFTEEN MONTHS. 
 
 At a year old, children begin to toddle a few steps by 
 themselves, letting themselves go from one person to an- 
 other ; they are now no longer so much afraid of falls which 
 they can ward off by reaching out their hands to the floor; 
 they take kindly, moreover, to the role of quadruped, which 
 they find very convenient. It is curious to watch them at 
 this age, leaning with their stomachs against chairs or 
 benches, as they will for half-an-hour at a time, arranging 
 and disarranging their toys; spreading out little mimic 
 feasts, with any scraps they can get hold of; playing with 
 
 1 Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology, p. 213.
 
 MOTOR ACTIVITY AT FIFTEEN MONTHS. 21 
 
 the cat or the dog, who give themselves up most amiably 
 to being tortured ; then suddenly turning round to any one 
 present; stretching out tiieir arms with earnest pantomime, 
 if the person moves away or refuses them what they pointed 
 to; turning this way and that, as their mobile impressions 
 prompt them; creeping carefully round a chair or table, 
 clinging on to it all the time, stooping down with the same 
 precaution in order to sit on the ground, and then lifting 
 themselves up again with a little more difficulty in short, 
 learning to trust to their own resources, and now almost 
 able to stand upright and move about at will, with very 
 little help from grown-up people. 
 
 Towards the age of fifteen months children will execute 
 with a skill and precision comparatively great, a number of 
 movements which they have either just acquired or have 
 been gradually bringing to perfection. A few instances 
 that I shall cite will give an idea of the enormous progress 
 accomplished by this time. The head can now be raised 
 or lowered, turned to right or left, held immovable by the 
 tension of the neck, shaken to signify ,Y<>, nodded up and 
 down for Yea, tossed about with joy, or, at some outburst 
 of tenderness, sunk in the shoulders, or hidden playfully 
 in the hands. 
 
 The ear and the eye have become accommodated to dis- 
 tances; the ear is now always promptly turned towards 
 the point whence a sound is heard to come; it can also 
 hear more sounds, and has even the power of choosing 
 what it will listen to, and of shutting itself against sounds 
 which are displeasing to it; it has further learnt to dis- 
 tinguish many creatures and objects by the different sounds 
 they produce. The eye has acquired a large store of adap- 
 tations. Cheselden's blind youth, if such a metaphysical 
 blind being really existed, is already far advanced in the 
 double and reciprocal education of sight, touch, and mus- 
 cle. This eye has no longer the vacant expression of former 
 days; its look seems sometimes to go through one; it 
 moves with electric rapidity in response to all outward 
 impressions, of whatever nature; it expresses with force 
 and delicacy all the various shades of thought, sentiment,
 
 22 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 and will ; it is conscious of what it is expressing, and from 
 time to time it does so with intention. 
 
 There is something grand and dignified, so to say, in the 
 happy astonishment called forth in the eye by the discov- 
 ery of a new fact, and in the confiding and steady attention 
 which it pays to the slightest words, gestures, or looks of 
 a person who is speaking. Laughter and tears, which 
 are as frequent as a few months since, are now more often 
 and more fully expressive intentionally so also though 
 they do not always express the sentiments, and above all 
 the shades of sentiment, which they are intended to do 
 later on. 
 
 As for the hand, the human organ par excellence, the 
 stages of its progress must of necessity escape the analysis 
 of an observer attempting to record them ; for the move- 
 ments which it executes, nearly all of them complicated, 
 and most delicately combined, are the result of efforts and 
 acquirements, and degrees of perfection which have gone 
 on from hour to hour during long months. At fifteen 
 months the hand can already touch with more or less cer- 
 tain discrimination and appreciation; it can sometimes 
 measure the effort required by the nature of the difficulty, 
 either known or inferred; the fingers, always in motion, 
 often double themselves up to distinguish the roughness or 
 smoothness of objects, or to find out whether they are hot 
 by skimming the surface. The fist no longer closes with 
 automatic indifference; it now expresses anger, shows an 
 intention to strike, beat, or thump. The first finger 
 often starts out by itself, and is stretched forward to point 
 out or name objects; or the fingers will open out and the 
 hand be waved gracefully to make a salute, or energetic- 
 ally to repulse anything that annoys. In short, the hand 
 can now hold, lift up, and carry weights adapted to the 
 strength and necessities of the child; it is master of the 
 playthings which are its owner's treasure, and, what is 
 neither the easiest nor the least valuable step in advance, 
 it can carry a spoon and glass more or less skillfully to its 
 mouth.
 
 CHAPTEK HI. 
 
 INSTRUCTIVE AND EMOTIONAL SENSATIONS. 
 
 SENSATIONS may be studied from three points of view, 
 the perceptive, the emotional, and the instinctive; that is 
 to say, in the perception and ideas which they leave behind 
 them, in the pleasant or painful emotions which they oc- 
 casion, and in the tendencies or inclinations which they 
 engender. We will begin by showing the order of the 
 natural development of perceptions in a child, as far, that 
 is, as it is possible to observe or to infer it. 
 
 "The mind of man," says Bacon, " must work upon 
 stuff." Sensations are the primary matter of the mind, 
 the determining cause of our ideas. But we cannot affirm 
 on the evidence of facts that intellectual operations are, 
 like ideas, engendered by the medium of sensation. If we 
 regard sensations as a particular state of the sensory cen- 
 tres, ideas as special modifications of the intellectual center, 
 and the various operations as special dispositions of the 
 spiritual organs, the one and the other tending from habit 
 and practice to reproduce themselves, and to excite each 
 other mutually, it remains to be proved, with the help of 
 the scalpel and the microscope, that the transformation, 
 lor instance, of the idea into attention, produces a new and 
 persistent disposition of molecules in the tissues and cells 
 of the brain. No observations of this nature have yet 
 been made. But there is no longer any doubt in the minds 
 of anatomists and physiologists, that the play of our fac- 
 ulties is intimately connected with the perfection of the 
 instrument. "Not only does the slightest pathological
 
 24 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 modification affect the whole of the cerebral functions, but 
 we find these functions increase as age multiplies the cer- 
 ebral fibres and cells, or complicates their relations to each 
 other. Science has not yet arrived at specifying the 
 functions of each fibre in this wonderful labyrinth ; they 
 count by thousands ; most of them measure less than the 
 thousandth part of a millimetre, some of them even 
 can scarcely be seen through the best microscopes." 1 It 
 is the condition of this iustrument in the new-born child 
 that we want to understand. 
 
 Comparative psychology and physiology, as I have 
 already said, can hardly give us any information concern- 
 ing the state of the centres of perception during the first 
 period of life. Brain anatomists, however, foresee the 
 moment when experiment may open this vast field to 
 human thought. "It woiild be extremely interesting," 
 says Ferrier, " to ascertain whether, in an individual born 
 blind, the sight centre presents any peculiarities, either as 
 regards the form of the cells or their processes, or other- 
 wise, differing from those of the normal brain. If siich 
 were detectable, we should come near arriving at the char- 
 acter of the physical basis of an idea." 2 Dr. Tarchanoff 
 has made some experiments on the nerve centres, and 
 especially on the psychomotor centres of new-born animals, 
 and their development under different conditions, the 
 interesting results of which I will give here in his own 
 words: "In a new-born rabbit the auditory passage of the 
 ear is closed, and does not begin to open till the fifth day 
 after birth, when it has the appearance of a very fine slit. 
 The first sign of a slit between the eyelids appears towards 
 the tenth or eleventh day; and to wards the twelfth day, in 
 most cases, the eyes are quite open. The psychomotor 
 centres generally make their appearance towards the twelfth 
 or thirteenth day. It is the motor centres of the jaw the 
 centres of mastication which develop first on the grey 
 cortex of the brain. After these, the motor centres of the 
 
 1 O. Pouchetj Analyse du Livre de M. Ribot sur I' Heredite, dans le 
 Journal Le Sircle, juin, 1873. 
 
 2 David Ferrier, The. Functions of the Brain, p. 260.
 
 INSTRUCTIVE AND EMOTIONAL SENSATIONS. 25 
 
 anterior paws appear, and three or four days later, those 
 of the posterior limbs. By the sixteenth day, all the 
 psycho-motor centres of the rah bit are fully developed. An 
 almost identical order of development of the psycho-motor 
 centres has heen described by Saltman ia the dog." 
 
 What knowledge have we of the condition of the seat of 
 perception or ideation, whether visual, auditory, or even 
 motor, in new-born infants? Almost none. In the first 
 place, as far as vision is concerned, although the constit- 
 uent parts of the ocular apparatus may be sufficiently de- 
 veloped, and though the child sometimes shuts its eyes 
 under the action of a bright light, as it is continually 
 shutting them, it is difficult to draw any inferences from 
 this as regards sight. During the first days of existence, t 
 the immobility of the pupils and of the iris appears to indi- ) 
 cate insensibility of the retina to light. It is however \ 
 probable that it soon hegins to distinguish feebly between 
 day and night. This stage is generally reached by the end 
 of the first week. A few days after, the eyes begin to 
 follow the direction of light, and of candles. But, except 
 when the child is sucking, the eyes continually wander; 
 they do not fix themselves on any ohjects or follow their 
 movements, which is a proof that they do not distinguish 
 them better than at the moment of birth. They do not S 
 begin to distinguish objects till the end of the fourth week, I 
 and then still very confusedly. 
 
 We know that new-born babies are deaf, the external J 
 auditory passage being closed, and the cavity of the tym- < 
 panum containing too little air. But we are ignorant as * 
 to whether they arrive at the faculty of hearing by inter- 
 mediate degrees, or by a sudden bound, their auditory 
 apparatus becoming all at once sufficiently developed to 
 fulfill its functions. It is easy, however, to observe during 
 the first fortnight a very great susceptibility to the slightest 
 sound of any kind. A baby shudders and blinks its eyes 
 when it hears any sudden noise, a door being closed, apiece 
 of furniture moved, the rolling of a carriage, a sneeze, a 
 burst of laughter, a scream, or a loud song. 
 
 As regards muscular perceptions, which, as we have said, 
 are no doubt faintly begun in the foetus, their progress in
 
 26 THE FIRS? THREfi YtiAttS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 number and differentiation is very limited during the first 
 month. Muscular perceptions, being connected with 
 motivity, are still very rudimentary at this period; but this 
 does not apply to the other muscular sensations, or to 
 cutaneous sensations. Young infants, being continually 
 subject to new sensations of contact, pressure, and tem- 
 perature, are able to retain and develop sufficient percep- 
 tions, by the laws of integration and differentiation, for 
 the faculty of localizing sensations from external causes 
 in the different parts of the body to have made some prog- 
 ress at an early period. But what point has been reached 
 by the second month in the knowledge of external objects'? 
 And, first of all, how does a child see them at this age? 
 
 It would be well, perhaps, to ask oneself whether a 
 little baby a month, or even two months, old sees all the 
 objects situated in the field of vision. Is there for the 
 individual also a progressive evolution of the sense of 
 color, as Gladstone and Magnus assert that there is 
 for the race? According to their theory, the sense of 
 color has only been developed in man since the heroic 
 ages, i.e., about 3,000 years. The ancients before Homer's 
 time only distinguished light as brightness and color. 
 As the education of the organ progressed, three principal 
 colors seem to have been apprehended by it, and in the 
 order of greater or less refrangibility, viz., red, green and 
 violet. In the second phase of development, the sense of 
 color becomes quite distinct from the sense of light. Red 
 and yellow, with their various shades, including orange, 
 are now clearly distinguished. The characteristic of the 
 third period is the power of distinguishing colors which, 
 as regards brilliancy, belong to neither extreme but are, 
 on the whole, varieties of green. Finally, in the fourth 
 period, man begins to distinguish blue. This phase is still 
 going on, and with regard to some portions of humanity is 
 not yet far advanced; we ourselves, indeed, easily confuse 
 blue and green by candle-light. 1 M. G. Atlen, as the advo- 
 cate of evolution pure and simple, has undertaken the refu- 
 
 1 See the interesting review of M. G. Atleu's book by M. A. Espinas, 
 Revue Plulosopldque, Jan., 1880.
 
 INSTRUCTIVE AND EMOTIONAL SENSATIONS. 27 
 
 tation of the theory of historic evolution ; but there remains 
 still the ante-historic question. The formation of the 
 human visual organ as it exists at the present day, and 
 the development of the sense of color, can only be ex- 
 plained by hereditary transmission. Our more immediate 
 ancestors of the pre-historic age, did they see the same 
 colors that we do? Do children see colors in the same 
 way as we ourselves? Certain pathological facts engen- 
 dering optical illusions, and in particular, Daltonism, 
 which is so frequent in adults, might lead us to suppose, 
 considering the incompleteness of the visual organ and 
 the optic centres in new-born children, that they do not 
 see all colors at the beginning of life, that the sense of 
 certain colors is perhaps wanting in them at first, and that 
 these deficiencies in sight vary with different individuals, 
 and in each individual according to the physiological 
 state of the organs, and even according to the day and 
 the hour. 
 
 But what data have we for establishing this hypothesis ? 
 I believe, moreover, that the value of chromatic distinc- 
 tion is of little importance to the question in point. The 
 non-distinction of color does not necessarily imply the 
 non-perception of light; and it is by their degrees of 
 light and shade, by the greater or less intensity of the 
 impressions they produce, that a child distinguishes 
 objects. 
 
 It is probable that the field of vision only opens out 
 gradually to a child, and that the different parts of it are 
 only apprehended by him according to the degree of 
 intensity of their light or coloring. We should form a 
 wrong idea of the first perceptions of children if we 
 suppose them to be like Cheselden's blind youth, to whom 
 different objects placed before his eyes seemed only a mass 
 of colors spread over a plane surface. Binocular vision, 
 as soon as it operates with regularity of adjustment, pro- 
 duces the perception of colored space in two dimensions, 
 and suggests the idea of the third dimension. This 
 power is increased in the child by the simultaneous seeing 
 and touching of things brought near to it, but the progress 
 is very slow up to the age of six weeks. Towards the
 
 28 THE FIEST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 eiad of the second month, however, a marked improve- 
 ment begins. First, the child pays a little more attention 
 to the impressions which come to him. His tactile and 
 muscular functions (the latter especially) proceeding from 
 centres more fully developed, bring their contingent of 
 perceptions indispensable to those of sight. The eye, 
 moreover, has grown more mobile, its muscles are 
 stronger and it opens wider, thus not only giving an 
 enlarged field of vision, but also allowing the formation 
 of ideas of localization, relief, and distance. 
 
 That all these ideas are still very confused in the brain 
 of an infant of two months, is, however, a matter of 
 course; but it will already have had a great number of 
 those muscular experiences on which the formation of all 
 ideas of outside things, and, above all, the distinction 
 between the external and the internal depends. Just as 
 by the distinction between his own cries and the voices of 
 others, a child at once conceives as distinct from himself 
 other beings capable of making themselves heard like 
 himself, so the muscular sensations produced by move- 
 ments which he makes himself are distinguished by him 
 from the sensations resulting from movements foreign 
 to himself, and this distinction is corroborated by the 
 concomitant sensations of sight, which cause him to see 
 foreign bodies in motion. His progress in mobility thus 
 carries with it progress in his ideas of the separate exist- 
 ence of things, as well as their forms, their relations to 
 each other, and their distances. By the age of three 
 months the mobility of his eyes, neck, and arms has 
 increased, and hence a quantity of muscular sensations 
 combined with visual ones, which result in a clearer dis- 
 tinction of all the ideas of which we are speaking. He 
 also begins now to have the power of discerning, I do 
 not say of appreciating, weight, which calls into play 
 the muscular sense of effort, and above all, if we go 
 by Ferrier, the feeling of the contraction of the respiratory 
 organs. 1 
 
 Mary, at the age of three and a half mouths, can already 
 
 l Furrier, The Functions of the Brain, p, 338,
 
 INSTRUCTIVE AND EMOTIONAL SENSATIONS. 29 
 
 >v 
 
 distinguish several parts of her body. When her mother 
 says to her, "Where are your feet? " her eyes first of all 
 move uncertainly to right and left, and then, bending her 
 neck forward, she directs them toward her feet. She 
 plays with and fondles her mother; when her mother's 
 face is bent over hers, she seizes it with her little fat 
 hands, and touches and pats it with an evident intention 
 of showing tenderness. " She chatters to the flowers," to 
 quote her mother's words. She is passionately fond of 
 colors, especially very brilliant ones. If a colored picture 
 is shown her, she makes two or three sudden starts, and 
 then holds her little hands out eagerly towards it, palpi- 
 tating with desire or pleasure, her eyes attentively fixed, 
 her face beaming with joy, and uttering all the time little 
 birdlike cries. But seeing is not enough; she soon wants 
 to handle the beautiful object, and seizing it with both 
 her hands she crumples it up and gazes at it admiringly, 
 but without seeing any more in it than pretty colors. 
 The word picture will now make her smile from associa- 
 tion of ideas and feelings. She is very fond of babbling 
 to the birds, with whom she is well acquainted; and she 
 not only turns toward the cage when the canary is sing- 
 ing, but also when he is quite quiet, if her mother says to 
 to her, "Where is Coco'? Listen to Coco." 
 
 She understands, from the expression of the face arid 
 the tone of the voice, when she is being scolded, and then 
 she wrinkles up her forehead, her lips twitch convulsively 
 and pout for two or three seconds, her eyes fill with tears, 
 and she is on the point of sobbing. She is very sensitive to 
 caresses, and laughs and plays with every one who laughs 
 and plays with her. But she is jealous in the extreme. 
 If her elder sister is placed beside her on her mother's 
 lap, and the mother kisses the sister, quite a tragic scene 
 ensues ; for a few seconds she remains still with her eyes 
 fixed, then her mouth begins to twitch, her eyes fill with 
 tears. She becomes convulsed with sobs, she turns away 
 her head so as not to see her rival, and presents for some, 
 minutes the picture of misery. She behaves precisely in 
 the same manner if her mother gives her sister the feed- 
 ing-bottle, or if the latter ^akes it up from, the table; but
 
 30 THE FIEST THREE YEAES OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 when the mother takes the bottle herself and pretends to 
 suck from it, she instantly recovers her serenity; it seems 
 as if she had no sense of egotism in her relations with her 
 mother. 
 
 Let us take another child of different sex and tempera- 
 ment. Georgie is seven months old. He has hardly 
 entered my room when his attention is vividly excited by 
 the noisy movements of a sparrow hopping up and down 
 in its cage close to the window. Then he fixes his eyes 
 steadily for the space of three minutes on a cat lying 
 cuddled up at the foot of an arm-chair: he has often seen 
 cats before. 
 
 But the sparrow sings a few notes, and Georgie looks 
 round on all sides, not knowing whence the pleasant 
 sounds proceed. I call him by his name, Georgie; and 
 though he has never heard my voice before, he smiles at 
 me most sweetly. The next thing that attracts his atten- 
 tion is a bunch of flowers which I placed on a table near 
 him. He stretches out his arms toward these, and evi- 
 dently derives great pleasure from looking at them; but 
 his delight does not manifest itself in those bounds and 
 cries and outbursts of joy which I have already noticed in 
 little Mary and many other children of the same age 
 (three-and-a-half months) under similar circumstances. 
 Georgie is a big, fat boy of Alsatian parentage, chubby- 
 faced, grave, slow, and obstinate; while Mary, on tlie 
 other hand, is a pale, slender, animated, sparkling little 
 Parisian. Ten days alter his first visit to me, Georgie 
 was brought into my room for a second " sitting." This 
 time he amused himself with making ]umps at my cat. 
 When tired of this game he stretshed himself forward to 
 seize a plate which stands in the middle of the table; I 
 allowed him to reach across the table and to touch the 
 plate ; he handled it with evident gestures of pleasure, and 
 his face also expressed extreme delight. After a while (I 
 supporting three-fourths of the weight) he carried it to his 
 mouth, as he does with all objects he gets hold of. His 
 grandmother has brought him up with a bottle. I have 
 noticed in this child, as in many others, a quite peculiar 
 tenderness for his grandmother, who has been his nurse.
 
 INSTRUCTIVE AND EMOTIONAL SENSATIONS. 31 
 
 The instant he has got hold of a desired object, and when- 
 ever he experiences any pleasure which is not connected 
 with eating, he turns smilingly toward her, as if his joy 
 were not complete till he had shared it with her. Or 
 must we see in this nothing more than a mechanical habit, 
 the child having never experienced any joy without his 
 grandmother being at hand to take part in it? 
 
 Thus in children of three-and-a-half and seven months we 
 find the power of distinguishing a large number of essential 
 ideas. They can distinguish themselves from their mother, 
 their grandmother, their sister, myself, a bird, a cage, a cat, 
 table, a plate, etc. But even at seven months they see 
 prominent details better than whole objects; they see them 
 by a kind of process of imaginative abstraction, by means 
 of which external perceptions come to them as scraps of 
 color. They have only an imperfect appreciation of dis- 
 tance and weight; an object a little way off must be very 
 bright or very sonorous, for their curiosity, even when 
 excited by craving, to fasten upon it. 
 
 They try to seize objects before they are within their 
 reach ; they will put out a whole hand and all their strength 
 to take up a bit of colored paper, as if it were a compact 
 and heavy substance. At three months a child can distin- 
 guish his feeding-bottle by its form and color; but so 
 little does he compare, that he will seize an empty or a 
 full bottle with equal eagerness. At seven months he 
 compares better than at three ; and he appears at this age 
 to have visual perceptions associated with ideas of kind: 
 for instance, he connects the different flavors of a piece of 
 bread, of a cake, of fruit, with their different forms and 
 colors. At one or two years old, when his curiosity has 
 been developed by exercise by the continual supply of 
 fresh emotions, by the growth of his muscular forces, and 
 above all of his mobile and locomotive faculties, his power 
 of comparison is very much greater. All his ideas of sit- 
 uation, of figure, of relief, of distance, and of weight have 
 now reached such a pitch of perfection that in many cases 
 they are nearly equal to those of an adult. But many 
 are the illusions he will suffer, sometimes consciously, 
 from these perceptions, which bring into conflict the actual
 
 32 THE FIRST THKEE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 sensations of sight and the judgment acquired from out- 
 side. Countless experiences, countless errors, deceptions 
 vividly felt, will have to be gone through before the child 
 can arrive at the summary knowledge of the external 
 world, such as it appears to the eye of an adult. This 
 knowledge, in point of fact, has no limits; or rather, its 
 limits are forever receding before science. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE FIRST PERCEPTIONS. 
 
 The Sensations of Taste. The first manifestations of 
 pleasure in little children are connected with tihe sense of 
 taste. A few hours after birth, hunger makes itself known 
 by the efforts of the mouth, as if to seek its food, and its 
 attempts to suck any object presented to it, and by wail- 
 ings accompanied by lively movements of the arms. 
 During the following days, when the infant has learned to 
 suck, it will remain glued to the breast, and, until its 
 appetite is satisfied, the strongest appeal to its attention 
 will not disturb it. There is no doubt, however, that 
 after the child has sucked for a few seconds it goes on 
 doing it mechanically, without any feeling of pleasure or 
 otherwise, except at intervals, its organs being for the 
 present incapable of feeling a sensation repeated too often. 
 The sensation of taste soon ceases to react on the nerves 
 subject to its influence, and after a certain time the inter- 
 vention of a stronger excitement is needed to produce a 
 reaction. Greediness then comes in as a stimulus and in 
 a child is as legitimate as it is common. 
 
 We are at liberty to believe that the sense of taste is 
 very slightly developed in a child just born, the indirect 
 proof of this being the small necessity there is for a child 
 to distinguish flavors. But we have more positive reasons 
 also for this assumption; we know that in adults the sen- 
 sations of taste are mixed up with sensations of smell 
 which influence us in distinguishing flavors. " If our 
 nostrils were closed," says Longet, " we should not be 
 able to distinguish vanilla cream from coffee cream, and
 
 OLFACTORY SENSATIONS. 33 
 
 both would only produce a general sensation of softness 
 and sweetness." But also, as Brillat-Savarin has told us, 
 " the empire of flavor has its blind and its deaf, and 
 degrees of sapid sensitiveness, very different in different 
 people, are seen already at a tender age." In some cases 
 children of six months have been induced to take disagree- 
 able medicine simply by a change being made in the 
 color. Others again, at an earlier age, will refuse to suck 
 from their mother, or from particular nurses, because of 
 something unpleasant either to their sense of smell or 
 taste. Some children are very easily disgusted. I have 
 seen a child two months and a half old refuse its bottle 
 determinately and with a face of disgust; once because it 
 was filled with water, and another time because the milk 
 was not sweetened. Some children appear sensitive to all 
 impressions of taste, whatever they may be, while others 
 again are indifferent to them. A member of my family, 
 when a child, could never be persuaded by her mother to 
 taste wine, and, in spite of the advice of doctors, she has 
 never been able to drink anything but water. Other chil- 
 dren, and by far the greater number, begin very early to 
 notice the acid taste in certain substances. In general, 
 however, children very easily change their tastes, which is 
 a reason for not forcing them to eat things against their 
 inclination when there is no necessity for it. 
 
 Olfactory Sensations. Children, as a rule, appear to re- 
 main for some time insensible to bad smells. The prob- 
 ability, however, is, that they are only less sensitive to 
 them than adults are, and that their olfactory apparatus, 
 the delicate organs of which are closely related to the 
 different regions of the brain, are not nighly developed in 
 the earlier months. This would not be at all surprising, 
 as the olfactory sense seems to be of no use whatever to 
 the nurrfing child. Possibly also, as odors are variable 
 and fleeting in their nature, it may require a practiced 
 judgment to distinguish the sensations produced by them, 
 and to refer them to the right objects and causes. To 
 know the origin of a sensation, is to be able to single it 
 out from the concomitant sensations. 
 
 Nevertheless certain specialist doctors have assured me
 
 34 THE FIRST THKEE YEAKS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 that new-born infants are impressed by smells, and I have 
 had cited to me the cases of a child of six weeks, and 
 another of two months, who, in refusing or in taking the 
 breast of certain nurses, were guided only by the smell of 
 their perspiration. Tiedemann, whose son at the age of 
 thirteen days had rejected different medicines after having 
 tasted them several times, supposes that "he distinguished 
 them from his food by their smell." A son of Darwin's, 
 thirty-two days old, "recognized its mother's breast at a 
 distance of 75 to 100 millimetres, as the movement of its 
 lips and the fixity of its eyes testified;" and Darwin as- 
 sumes that sight and touch had nothing to do with this, 
 and that the child was guided by the sensation of heat, or 
 by the smell. But scientific observations concerning smell, 
 both from the emotional and the cognitive point of view, 
 are very incomplete, even when coming from the most 
 competent people. 
 
 An infant of fifteen days, one month or two months, 
 manifests only visual or tactile sensations in the presence 
 of, or in contact with, a rose, a lily, a geranium, or a nose- 
 gay of flowers ; but I would not affirm that it experiences no 
 other sensations. I have subjected a certain number of 
 children between the ages of ten and fifteen months, to 
 experiments relating to the olfactory sensations, and all of 
 them, excepting one who was insensible to any smells, 
 even those of tobacco and ether, felt the different olfac- 
 tory impressions very vividly. One child of ten months 
 seemed to me to be very sensitive to pleasant smells and 
 very much annoyed by bad ones. When I prevented his 
 seizing hold of a rose, or a bunch of violets, which I had 
 held close to his nose, his expression and his gestures evi- 
 dently begged me to give them to him. When I again 
 held them up to his nose, he remained some time quite 
 motionless, smiling with pleasure; in short, he seemed to 
 appreciate and delight in pleasant scents. As we said 
 above, there are some kinds of food which not only im- 
 press the organs of taste (affording us the . sensations 
 described as sweet, saline, sour, acid, bitter, etc.), but 
 which act on the olfactory nerves, chocolate and coffee, 
 for instance, and these this child was extravagantly fond 

 
 ORGANIC SENSATIONS. 35 
 
 of; and it certainly appreciated, as thoroughly as a grown- 
 up person could, the perfumes of cocoa and mocha. I 
 have seen two other children of the same age who cared 
 less for the perfume of a rose or of mignonette, by which 
 the alimentary organs are not affected, than they did for 
 the smell of chocolate. Odors connected with food are 
 apt, as we can easily conceive, to take rank before odors 
 pure and simple with the inexperienced sensibility of a 
 child, while the contrary is frequently the case with adults. 
 The ancients crowned themselves with roses at their ban- 
 quets; and we ourselves often deck our dinner-tables with 
 flowers, or at any rate we generally have about us delicate 
 perfumes which do not impair the flavor of the wines and 
 viands. 
 
 Organic Sensations. Bain has given this name to those 
 sensations which arise from the diverse dispositions and 
 affections of our bodies and which all become fused into 
 the vital or fundamental sense the general sensation of 
 existence and the immediate sensation of our own body, 
 which is, according to Luys, the sum of all nervous actions, 
 and, as it were, the organic basis of consciousness. To the 
 organic sense are to be referred the respiratory sensations, 
 which we have already spoken of, the sensations of the 
 circulation and nutrition, the organic sensations of the 
 nerves and the muscles, such as fatigue, pain from a cut or 
 a scratch, cramps, spasms, etc. There is no doubt that 
 children, with their incomplete organisms and imperfect 
 powers of adjustment, frequently suffer from these different 
 kinds of pain, especially during the first period of exist- 
 ence. It is less evident that they experience correspond- 
 ing sensations of pleasure, the latter being only equivalent 
 to a passive state of functional regularity and general well- 
 being which is not expressed by violent signs. 
 
 The state of comfort resulting from regular breathing 
 is one of these passively pleasurable sensations which 
 children have most experience of. In fact, respiration 
 being more active in infancy than in adult life, and the 
 frequency of inspiration in children causing them greater 
 need of oxygen, they must on the one hand have their 
 attention a good deal excited by this respiratory action, on
 
 36 THE FIRST THREE YEA.RS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 account of the rapid modifications which it causes in their 
 organs; and, on the other hand, the quality and tempera- 
 ture of the air hreathed must afford them sensations 
 corresponding to the freshness and appetition of their respi- 
 ratory organs. We know, moreover, that even before the 
 age of a month there is nothing more salutary or enjoy- 
 able to infants than to be carried out into the open air. 
 
 If we admit that there is an organic and automatic con- 
 sciousness always watching over all the internal and 
 external parts of a young infant, we may also class among 
 its happy sensations those which regular sleep afford it. 
 Sound slumber in a child implies healthy and thorough 
 nutrition, and perfect harmony of all its functions. Not 
 only is sleep the necessary condition of the growth of the 
 organs, and of moral and intellectual development, which 
 depends less on the impressions received than on the per- 
 ceptions digested and consolidated, but it is the greatest 
 boon that nature bestows on children before the age of 
 eager curiosity and easy locomotion. 
 
 Muscular Sensations, I have already had occasion to 
 speak of a sense to which a certain number of the tractile 
 properties of bodies have been transferred the muscular 
 sense; which, in the opinion of Renouvier, is only a hypoth- 
 esis, but the existence of which Bain and Wundt believe 
 they have established by irrefutable experiments. To this 
 "interior contact" are usually referred all sensations of 
 pressure, weight, traction, and even resistance; it is 
 regarded as the conscious centre, not only of muscular 
 contractions, but even of the state of the muscles, and in 
 a lesser degree, of the state of the articulations of the 
 skin accompanying muscular contractions. 
 
 Whatever be the origin and whatever the centre of these 
 sensations, it cannot be denied that there result from them 
 sensations of pleasure or pain of a particular sort, inde- 
 pendent of the moral pleasure or displeasure resulting 
 from desires more or less keen and more or less perfectly 
 satisfied. An effort pleases in itself when it is not too 
 violent; it may then be said that sensations of pressure, of 
 weight, of muscular efforts, are agreeable to children when 
 not beyond their strength, and more or less disagreeable
 
 MUSCULAR AND THERMAL SENSATIONS. 37 
 
 to them in the contrary case. These sensations are also 
 all the more agreeable the more they are varied. Each 
 limb and each organ is capable of an infinite number of 
 movements which produce in the owner the personal, 
 although perhaps unconscious, sense of his own activity 
 and existence. How many muscles are put into play suc- 
 cessively or simultaneously by the simple action of drag- 
 ging along a ball tied to a piece of string! And in the 
 matter of a weight, however small, to be lifted or held up, 
 it is not only the muscles of the back, shoulders, neck, or 
 arm which are exerted, but also a certain number of 
 respiratory muscles. Ferrier seems in fact to have demon- 
 strated that the sense of effort necessary for the discern- 
 ment of a heavy weight "would be more correctly assigned 
 to the region of the respiratory muscles." This sensation 
 of weight, which precedes the appreciation of weight, is 
 thus a muscular phenomenon of such complexity that th^e 
 host of sensations which result from it must deeply affect 
 the muscular consciousness, or the centre where the 
 attributes of that consciousness are located. The pleasure 
 of a state of equilibrium and health, the pleasure of mod- 
 erate and appropriate exercise when he moves his own 
 limbs or they are moved for him, such are the enjoyable 
 sensations which unconscious infants experience every day. 
 But on the other hand, how many disagreeable and hurt- 
 ful sensations do not we ourselves cause them, without 
 being aware of it. 
 
 Thermal Sensations. -The sensations of heat and cold 
 depend essentially on the difference of temperature between 
 our organs and the surrounding atmosphere, the radiating 
 body and the body in contact either the air or any object 
 whatever. When the disproportion is only moderate, there 
 results an agreeable sensation of warmth or coolness, as 
 the case may be; when it exceeds certain limits, it causes 
 pain and at the same time more or less serious trouble in 
 the depths of organic life. In spite of the incomplete 
 development of their " plexus " and nerve centres, children, 
 from the delicacy of their epidermic tissues, their slight 
 degree of nutritive activity, and the smallness of their bulk, 
 are predisposed to very great susceptibility to temperature.
 
 38 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 We have already seen that the foetus is very sensitive to 
 high or low temperature. With all new-born animals, the 
 tendency to suffer from cold is very great, and they are 
 very apt to die of cold even in summer, if out of reach of 
 the sun. 
 
 The pleasure which young children derive from sensa- 
 tions of warmth is so evident that it is needless to dwell 
 on it. But we may legitimately ask whether the sensations 
 of cold which cause death to so many are as painful to them 
 as they would be to older children or adults. My own 
 opinion is, that very young children suffer less in reality 
 than we should expect, considering the sensitiveness of 
 their organization to such impressions. Sensations of the 
 above nature are generally modified in the adult by judg- 
 ments, habits, and sentiments of diverse and variable kinds 
 which a rise or fall of some degrees may awaken in them. 
 A sentry on duty during a hard frost will possibly have 
 thoughts in his mind which may counterbalance the keen 
 sensations of cold, or may make reflections and compari- 
 sons, call up recollections, indulge in imaginations, which 
 will have the result of making the cold more painful to him 
 than to a child of two months, or only a few weeks, exposed 
 perhaps on a doorstep a few paces from him. It is need- 
 less to insist on a fact patent to all, viz., that the individ- 
 ual constitution, and the accidental state of health augment 
 or diminish, in children as well as in adults, the suscepti- 
 bility of which we are speaking. 
 
 Sensations of Touch. The sense of touch is a means of 
 preservation before it becomes a means of instruction; and 
 we know that, like the muscular and thermal senses, it 
 operates already in the womb under the action of the pres- 
 sure of a hand or of heat or cold air. At the moment of 
 birth cutaneous sensibility is very acute, and the child 
 seems to show, either by a happy state of quiescence or by 
 cries and convulsions, that the contact with outward objects 
 causes it pleasure or pain. 
 
 The sensation of resistance is considered by some to be 
 the fundamental sensation of touch. The intensity of this 
 sensation, and the modifications of which it is capable, 
 according to the nature of the objects which cause the
 
 SENSATIONS OF TOUCH. 39 
 
 impressions, will produce in children feelings that are 
 either really painful or simply annoying and irritating; 
 such are the feelings of tickling, rubbing, bandaging, prick- 
 ing, etc. Sensations of contact which seern to us insignifi- 
 cant cause a child great uneasiness, and will cause it to 
 make faces, to scream, to wriggle its body, to toss its arms 
 about and carry them automatically to its face. A feather 
 passed over the eyes and nose of a child fifteen days old 
 made it frown, contract its nose obliquely, and close its 
 eyes. Other children again, at an older age, are insensible 
 to this kind of excitation. 
 
 As to the pleasant sensations of touch, it is not so easy 
 to, tabulate their signs (though, as we have said, they are 
 very evident) in children less than two months old. Light 
 and delicate pressure, the contact of a soft skin or material, 
 do not call up in the face any decided expression of pleas- 
 ure, a smile or movement of the eyes. Infants, however, 
 are not insensible to this kind of sensations, which signify 
 to them already the presence of certain objects; it is im- 
 possible but that they should produce in the little creatures 
 some vague sensations of comfort, in spite of their inability 
 to localize or differentiate them. Later on, experience and 
 comparison will have taught them to distinguish these sen- 
 sations from the more violent ones which cause pain or 
 annoyance. But at the age of two mouths, when a child 
 appears to enjoy the touch of my hand stroking its own 
 hand, or cheek, or forehead, is it the contact itself which 
 pleases it, and even makes it smile, or is it the idea of its 
 mother's breast which the contact of the skin calls up, or 
 the pleasure resulting from the sensation of temperature? 
 Possibly all these at the same time. Soon too the sympa- 
 thetic significance of caresses, which babies are not slow 
 in understanding, begins to afford them very evident pleas- 
 ure in connection with tactile sensations. However this 
 may be, and notwithstanding the absence of signs indicating 
 it, I incline to believe that tactile pleasure is experienced 
 at a very early period. There is no doubt about it in the 
 case of young animals. If I pass my finger, gently, and 
 several times in succession, over the head of a sparrow ten 
 days old, it will almost close its eyes, and with its head
 
 40 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 bent down it will put itself into a position favorable to the 
 continuance of this pleasant process. The same thing 
 happens with kittens and puppies. And why should it not 
 be the same also with young children? 
 
 ]'i>inal Sensations. We cannot but regard as exaggeration 
 Tiedemann's statement concerning his son, who, when 
 scarcely thirteen days old, he tells us, showed, both in his 
 eyes and his general countenance, expressions of pain or 
 pleasure at the sight of certain objects, and paid sustained 
 attention to the gestures of people who spoke to him. But 
 to keep within well-established limits, we may without 
 audacity affirm that at the age of a month or forty days a 
 child has already experienced a certain number of pleasures 
 and pains suggested by visual impressions. The pleasures 
 consist in the sensations caused by luminous objects 
 candles, lamps, the flames of the fire, the sunlight, brightly 
 colored objects, and the lights and shadows caused by 
 moving them about. The pains are caused by impressions 
 of too violent a nature, colors which are too bright, sounds 
 which are too noisy, objects brought too abruptly in con 
 tact with the retina, or too rapidly shaken in front of it, 
 and also by the moral annoyance which must result from 
 imperfect adaptation to one's surroundings, or at any rate 
 the physical pain arising from efforts after normal adjust- 
 ment. This latter hypothesis seems to me indeed to rest 
 on grave analogies. It is unfortunately no't true that the 
 progressive adaptation of the young human being to the 
 surroundings for which it is hereditarily constituted takes 
 place by successive steps, with gentle transitions and prov- 
 idential management. As a matter of fact, the sufferings 
 of a human being are all the greater in proportion to his 
 weakness. With regard to intellectual perception, the 
 organs may exercise themselves usefully according to their 
 strength ; but the same cannot be said of sensibility rela 
 tively to pleasure. As Rosseau has said, " Much time is 
 needed for learning to see," and imperfect sight is neces- 
 sarily accompanied by painful sensations, like all other 
 ill-satisfied needs 
 
 Visual impressions do not produce in children the same 
 emotions of pain or pleasure, nor perhaps so great a num-
 
 VISUAL AND AUDITORY SENSATIONS. 41 
 
 her of them, as in adults. All colors, it is true, attract 
 and fascinate them; subdued colors, also, are not always 
 indifferent to them, and sometimes they afford them evi- 
 dent pleasure, provided they are distinct and contrasted 
 with brighter ones, as black on grey, or even grey on white, 
 and provided, above all, that the child's organism is im- 
 pressible. I saw a little girl of three months and a boy of 
 five months delighted with some drawings of a uniformly 
 grey color. The boy took a particular fancy to some lith- 
 ographs in black and white; it was enough to say the 
 word " picture " to him, for his eyes to turn to the part of 
 my room where these lithographs hung. Another child of 
 six months only evinced pleasure at the sight of bright- 
 colored pictures and flowers; but these seemed to delight 
 him quite as much as they did the other children. The 
 conclusion I came to was, that, owing either to hereditary 
 causes or to personal habits, there was less energy in his 
 visual organs, or that his moral sensibility was not so 
 easily excited by the sensation of color as that of his two 
 companions. 
 
 It would not be very easy to discern in a child between . 
 the ages of one day and five months the painful emotions , 
 produced by certain colors, although it is incontestably 
 established that the visual organs have adaptive powers, 
 and also, without doubt, likes and dislikes. I have not 
 succeeded in discerning in children of this age, or even in ' 
 much older ones, any trace of those affective predisposi- 
 tions of sight, the result of differences of organization, 
 which express themselves unconsciously in adults in 
 marked preferences for such and such colors. 
 
 The pleasures and pains of sight are possibly in great 
 measure artificial phenomena with adults. But with 
 children who go on for a long time without any distinct 
 ideas all the utility or the hurtfulness of different objects; 
 all objects whatever are in their eyes merely moving 
 colors, all of which give them pleasure as soon as they 
 produce impressions on their visual organs. 
 
 Auditory Sensations. Infants are very early excited by f 
 sound, by musical instruments or song. Tiedemann's son . 
 heard the piano played for the first time when he was \
 
 42 THE FIRST THKEE YEAKS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 forty days old, and he is said to have shown singular 
 delight and excitement at the sound. A young relation 
 of mine delighted in hearing singing or playing when only 
 a month old. At the age of six months he was taken on 
 a visit to some aunts ; and the strong emotion produced 
 in him by the songs they sang to him was manifest from 
 the brightness of his eyes and the immobility and height- 
 ened color of his face. The younger one sang to him 
 first, and he listened to her with evident delight; but 
 when the other sister joined in, with her more vibrating 
 and more melodious voice, he instantly turned to her, and 
 an undefinable expression of admiration and surprise came 
 over his countenance. All children are not equally sensi- 
 tive to melody; but all clear, ringing sounds, especially if 
 reiterated more or less rhythmically, seem to amuse them 
 when they do not strike too violently against the tympa- 
 num. I have seen many infants of two months whom 
 noises of medium intensity, the sound of a door being 
 shut, a footstep, a voice, the bark of a dog close by, did 
 not seem to affect in any way whatever. But at four or 
 six months almost all babies like being sung to, and a 
 great many try to warble themselves, from instinct or love 
 of imitating. We may, then, conclude that there are 
 sounds which are pleasant and sounds which are un- 
 pleasant to children, according as their vibrations corre- 
 spond to certain conformations of the acoustic apparatus, 
 or to certain inherent states of the personality, or awaken 
 concordant emotions in the mysterious recesses of their 
 hereditary sensorium. 
 
 However it may be, children become soonest accustomed 
 to those very noises which at first, for one reason or 
 another, impressed their tympanum disagreeably. Start- 
 ling, piercing, scraping noises are not so disagreeable to 
 them as to grown people. They will shudder, it is true, 
 on hearing them, and sometimes cry if the noise is very 
 loud and near; but few sounds displease them on moral 
 grounds, or by reason of the association of ideas which 
 makes noises call up the idea of objects known to be dis- 
 agreeable. They are not more particular about melody, 
 either, than bees, serpents, monkeys, and other animals,
 
 AUDITOKY SENSATIONS. 43 
 
 to whom the most rude and deafening noise, providing it 
 is rhythmical, is as good as music. From the moment 
 that children can hold things in their kands, anything 
 that they produce sound with delights them, and they are 
 evidently as happy as they can be in the execution of 
 these feats. I can never see little children doing their 
 best to deafen themselves and others without being re- 
 minded of the monkey musicians of Africa, of which 
 Houzeau writes:--" The noise of these animals is not 
 always the mere accidental result of the play of their 
 organs, it is sometimes produced intentionally; they will 
 make a noise for the love of the noise, and as a means of 
 amusing and exciting themselves. I am not alluding to 
 the ordinary sounds with which tropical forests resound 
 deafening screams, the crashing of broken branches, the 
 pecking of beaks on the bark of trees, the cracking of nuts 
 in the teeth which are the natural result of the existence 
 and occupations of the inhabitants of the woods. I mean 
 the sounds which are produced by monkeys with as deter- 
 mined an intention as that of a bell-ringer or a player on 
 the drum. The black chimpanzees of Africa, for instance, 
 will assemble together as many as twenty, thirty, or fifty, 
 and amuse themselves not only with uttering shrieks, but 
 by beating and thumping on dead wood with small sticks 
 held in their hands or feet." l 
 
 * Houzeau, Les Facultes Mentales des Animaux, etc., t. iu, p. 1O6.
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 GENERAL AND SPECIAL INSTINCTS. 
 
 IN man as in animals, instinct manifests itself in con- 
 genital dispositions to perform certain definite actions 
 under certain special circumstances. These dispositions 
 to produce given actions are the tendencies which make up 
 our natural and hereditary constitution. It is the uncon- 
 scious experience of our ancestors adapting itself with more 
 or less consciousness or freedom to the individual experi- 
 ence of their descendants. It is necessary to insist on 
 these mysterious impulses of organic and psychic activity, 
 and to set forth their true nature, in order that we should 
 not be tempted to look on animals as mere machines, set 
 in motion once for all at the beginning of life, and on 
 children (with the exception that they have reason in addi- 
 tion) as animals, with analogous, and perhaps rather in- 
 ferior instincts. 
 
 The best treatises of current philosophy, whether in- 
 tended to awaken in the young generation or to perfect in 
 the more erudite a sense of psychological observation, still 
 represent instinct as having the following character- 
 istics: ignorance of the end in view, immediate perfec- 
 tion of special actions, infallibility, immobility, and uni- 
 formity in these actions. To be quite just, however, we 
 must own that M. Janet does not recognize "in these char- 
 acteristics absolute and inflexible laws." 1 He admits as 
 a fact of experience that instinct may vary "under the 
 influence of certain circumstances, though within very 
 
 1 Janet, Tralte Element air e de Philosophie, t. i., p. 37. 
 
 44
 
 GENERAL AND SPECIAL INSTINCTS. 45 
 
 narrow limits and in exceptional cases;" in a word, that 
 these modifications are nothing else than "an innate power 
 of adaptation of the animal to its surroundings," and that 
 they only occur in very secondary details. 
 
 Let us first endeavor to show what part ignorance, or 
 rather unconsciousness, plays in the working of instinct. 
 It is perfectly evident that not one of the movements of 
 the foetus can be explained by reason, or intelligent will, 
 or experience. They do not proceed from consciousness, 
 considered as an impulsive cause, although they may be 
 supposed to provoke the exercise of consciousness. When, 
 shortly after its birth, we see a little baby feeling after its 
 mother's breast, and co-ordinating the movements of its 
 mouth, head and neck, so as to suck in the milk; when it 
 combines the actions of the tongue, palate and pharynx, 
 which co-operate in the process of deglutition; when, a 
 little later on, it presses its little fingers and fists against 
 the breast, in order to facilitate the passage of the milk ; 
 when the combined and harmonious action of all these 
 numerous organs prodiices respiration; when the eyelids 
 close if the conjunctiva be touched, or if too intense a 
 light disturbs the retina, or a violent sound shocks the ear; 
 when irritation of the face, ears or tongue causes contrac- 
 tion of the muscles, etc , etc., we know that neither ex- 
 perience nor reason have taught the little creature these 
 movements, which are accomplished with a precision far 
 superior to what we find in actions where the will inter- 
 venes. Both children and young animals perform all 
 these actions without knowing either their object or the 
 means by which they are executed; but they are aware of 
 what they are doing, and the more they advance in knowl- 
 edge the more fully will they be aware of it, and the more 
 they will realize the means to the end, and the end asso- 
 ciated with the means. The impulses are arbitrary and 
 unconscious, but the actions have a constant tendency to 
 revert to their original nature, which may often have been 
 conscious and even voluntary. 
 
 Let us proceed to consider the immediate perfection of 
 instinctive actions. "Animals," says M. Joly, "generally 
 succeed the first time, without any preliminary attempts
 
 4 THE FIRST THKEE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 and failures. Birds have no need to study in order to 
 make their nests. Carnivorous animals feel no hesitation 
 when they find themselves for the first time in the presence 
 of the prey destined by nature for them; and amongst the 
 herbs of a meadow ruminants will go straight to those 
 adapted to them." This perfection and infallibility of 
 animal instinct are very much exaggerated. The asser- 
 tion is true in general with regard to the principal mechan- 
 ical functions of life, the most delicate and indispensable 
 organic actions, the execution of which it would have been 
 dangerous to entrust to the will. 
 
 Here the impulse of instinct is certain and unerring, 
 "like all the great harmonies of nature," says Houzeau. 
 But in the greater number of other less necessary actions, 
 which are "ruled or at least influenced by the animal 
 itself," we find an instinct "subject to accidental illu- 
 sions, to the aberrations of the individual, to the idiosyn- 
 crasies of species." 1 It would not be uninteresting to 
 quote a few examples from this same author, showing that 
 instinct can sometimes err. 
 
 "The large earth worm, or lob worm, is very much 
 frightened of the mole; and whenever it feels the earth 
 moving, it mounts to the surface to escape from this insect 
 hunter. Now certain birds, such as tli3 gull and the lap- 
 wing, and fishermen who use earth worms as bait, prowl 
 about on the sands in search of the latter. The worm, 
 thinking that the shaking of the earth is caused by the 
 approach of a mole, comes out of his subterranean retreat 
 and falls a prey to the other enemy. This is a false appli- 
 cation of instinct, but it is not correctly speaking a false 
 instinct. ..." In the following facts, however, we 
 see error rather than illusion : " Of what use would it be 
 for a hen to retain the instinct of silting when her eggs 
 are addled, just as if she were able to hatch them? A 
 superior guide would make a distinction. It is true all 
 the same that a hen will sit without eggs, when the proper 
 time arrives, from which we surmise that repose, the atti- 
 
 1 Houzeau Etude sur lt;s Fac nttes Mentales chez les Animaux, t. i., p. 
 295.
 
 GENERAL AND SPECIAL INSTINCTS. 47 
 
 tude of prostration, and a partial abstinence are necessary 
 to the dissipation of an overabundance of organic heat. 
 The hen which broods over an empty nest, does so from 
 personal necessity. . But the instinct of preservation 
 is sometimes faulty. Thus, little birds mistake the cuckoo 
 for a sparrow hawk; and these same sparrows attack the 
 European goat sucker as if they had reason to fear him, 
 while in reality the latter bird feeds solely on moths and 
 nocturnal insects. . . Instinct here goes too far in the 
 idea of protection ; it may be said to be an excess of pre- 
 caution. Here, however, is an example of a contrary case. 
 The aphides, or plant insects, do not know that the larvse 
 of the syrphides are their mortal enemies. They feel no 
 fear at the sight of them and will even walk over their 
 bodies. The syrphides, which feed on aphides, take ad- 
 vantage of this imprudence, as may easily be imagined. 
 
 " Thus the consciousness of danger, and even of an ordi- 
 nary and constant danger, may be at fault; instincts 
 therefore are not absolute. But the facts in our possession 
 are certainly very insufficient to determine the important 
 question at the head of this chapter Can instinct err?" 
 
 It is probable, but it has not yet been demonstrated, 
 that the execution of instinctive actions is influenced in a 
 certain measure by volition. We may infer this particu- 
 larly from the fact that animals have the power of sus- 
 pending their respiration and exercising a partial or 
 momentary control (as man himself can) on certain auto- 
 matic functions. Dogs and horses suspend their breath, 
 in order to listen better, when they apprehend some danger. 
 Now, if certain actions of the automatic life of animals 
 are in part subjected, though in a very limited degree, to 
 the control of volition, why should it be a matter of sur- 
 prise if one day it were demonstrated that all instincts may 
 be equally influenced by a like control? 
 
 Since, then, instinct may err, and since, up to a certain 
 point, it is subject to the control of consciousness and 
 volition, it follows also that it is neither uniform for the 
 species nor invariable for the individual. Even in the 
 case of animals, it obeys the law of progress; and this 
 progress is more or less rapid according to the usefulness
 
 48 THE FIRST THKEE YEAKS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 which is to result from it to the species, more or less slow 
 according to the degree which it is to attain in the species, 
 and no doubt also according to the aptitudes of the indi- 
 vidual and the influence of surroundings. 
 
 Colts, calves, and young chickens all walk by instinct 
 as soon as they are born, with an automatic action facili- 
 tated by their organization and which they perfect by 
 exercise and attention. Birds fly, or try to fly, as soon as 
 their wings are strong enough. And see how usefully 
 heredity interposes in similar cases; sneep cannot take 
 care of their young ones as monkeys and women do, the 
 lambs would therefore perish if they could not very soon 
 use their legs and walk. A child sucks by instinct, and 
 moreover, like cats^ dogs, and lambs, it very quickly learns 
 to perform this operation with rapidity and certainty. 
 With walking, however, it is different; and although the 
 child may have an instinctive faculty for the operation, it 
 only acquires it perfectly by dint of countless efforts and 
 at the price of many tumbles. Here too we see the care 
 of nature, for if the organs of locomotion were perfect at 
 starting, while intellectual and moral experience is want- 
 ing, they would be the cause of dangerous errors and fatal 
 adventures. Again, children very early show themselves 
 adepts at the signs, gestures, or cries which are expressions 
 of emotion or volition; but it is not until their psychic 
 faculties have already reached a degree of development 
 superior to that of many adult animals that they begin 
 their first attempts at speech. 
 
 Thus, neither with human beings nor with animals is 
 instinct a uniform and infallible guide. For children, as 
 for animals, though in the former case within limits gen- 
 erally less restricted there is a more or less easy and cer- 
 tain development of the instinct to be folloAved; a child 
 has to carry 011 the simultaneous development of all its 
 senses and faculties intellectual, volitional, and moral. 
 One is struck, it is true, with the slowness of a child's 
 progress in comparison to that of young animals; but a 
 child of a year old is in many respects much more 
 advanced than an adult animal will ever be. In these 
 respects there are great differences in children, according
 
 SPECIAL INSTINCTS. 49 
 
 to their natural energy, the force of hereditary transmis- 
 sion, and the nature of the circumstances under which 
 their development proceeds. This bhould never be for- 
 gotten by those who are closely connected with young 
 children. Their influence, whether they will or no, is by 
 no means a matter of indifference, whether from a quan- 
 titative or a qualitative point of view, to the develop- 
 ment of the instincts of their young charges. They would 
 be making a great mistake if they imagined that nature 
 does everything at this early age; in other words, that 
 instincts, the fruit of hereditary experience, like a sort of 
 providential grace, dispenses young infants from all need 
 of effort and personal experience. 
 
 We, who are partisans of the doctrine of evolution, 
 must be careful to avoid the error into which the optimist 
 champions of final causes fell through exaggeration in the 
 opposite extreme. We must not sacrifice personal experi- 
 ence to the experience of the race, nor imagine that the 
 apprenticeship of life is nothing more than reminiscence, 
 that the child has only to repeat mechanically the work of 
 its ancestors. As has been very aptly said, "Notwith- 
 standing hereditary transmission of instincts, everything 
 has continually to be done over again, to be begun anew 
 in each new individual; and life is made up, not of a 
 series of easy reminiscences, but of a chain of laborious 
 acquisitions and personal conquests. In short, in the 
 evolution of the race we must not lose sight of individual > 
 evolution." 
 
 II. 
 
 SPECIAL INSTINCTS. 
 
 Instinctive activity presents a great many different 
 forms in new-born children, or in children several weeks 
 old; we shall endeavor to make a rapid analysis of the 
 principal of these. And first of all we must distinguish 
 between general tendencies, or simple appetites and in- 
 stincts, and special tendencies, or complex appetites and 
 instincts. Among the first we class the instincts of taste, t 
 odor, sight, hearing, touch, muscular activity, and ther.- ] 
 I
 
 50 THE FIRST THKEE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 r 
 
 mal equilibration; and among the second the instincts 
 of nutrition, of sleep, of utterance, locomotion and sex- 
 uality. f 
 
 General Instincts. Wherever there are organs of sensi- 
 bility, there is also an instinctive tendency to perform 
 actions which awaken a certain sort of sensibility. All 
 the senses desire to be satisfied; and we have seen that 
 from the moment of birth, or, at any rate, a few days 
 after, a young child will begin to use the energy which 
 belongs to each of its different senses. This is especially 
 the case with the sense of taste, which, nevertheless, at 
 the outset is passive and obtuse, because it is confounded 
 with the sense of nutrition. By the fourth month, how- 
 ever, the child has become better able to abstract his 
 various sensations, and shows evident signs of a tendency 
 to desire the food he has recognized as agreeable. It is 
 the same also with the sense of sight. By the third week 
 the eye begins to be attracted by light, and soon after by 
 any luminous or colored objects near at hand; and we can 
 here plainly see that the instinct which impels every 
 organ to maintain its vitality is in harmony with the 
 instinct which drives them to seek satisfaction in exercise ; 
 all colors are pleasing to young children if they stimulate 
 their sight without disturbing it. The same may be said 
 of auditory impressions; we have seen how much young 
 children delight in noise, and how indifferent they are to 
 discord, provided their ears are not shocked. These two 
 senses, sight and hearing, which later on will become two 
 essential instruments of instruction and emotion, operate 
 at first solely for themselves, if I may so express myself, 
 and with an aim entirely affective. A child of two or 
 three months spends the greater part of his waking hours 
 in looking and listening for the sole pleasure that the sen- 
 sations of seeing and hearing afford him, independently 
 of any immediate or future utility, and without any feel- 
 , ing of curiosity properly so called. The next sense that 
 r is awakened is that of touch. At the age of three months, 
 ' children begin to stretch out their hands in order to 
 take hold of things; they touch and feel everything 
 within reach, and. their tactile sensations develop day by day,
 
 THE INSTINCT OF NUTKITION. 51 
 
 A child of six months spends at least half of his waking 
 hours in exercising the organs which afford him pleasant 
 sensations, visual, auditory, tactile, and muscular; and 
 there is no doubt that these exercises have as a rule no 
 other object than the development of the organs, though 
 at intervals the child notices them with attention, and this 
 attention contributes usefully to his progress. But the 
 tendency to enjoy pleasant sensations, and to repeat them 
 over and over again for their own sake, is the dominant 
 instinct at this period. This tendency, moreover, exists 
 at all periods of life. A grown-up person, who is not 
 compelled either by the necessities of existence, or the 
 claims of duty, or the influence of special or professional 
 habits, to bring all his faculties under the discipline of 
 useful attention, reverts to the state of a child the sensual 
 and unconscious instinct reassuming its sway over the 
 voluntary and intellectual instinct; the man returns 
 gradually to the infant state of looking for the mere 
 pleasure of seeing, of listening for the sake of hearing, of 
 feeling for the sake of gratifying the touch, of moving and 
 walking for the sake of the more or less agreeable sensa- 
 tions which these automatic actions produce. How many 
 people are there not whose days are passed in vacuity, that 
 is to say in nothing higher than the unconscious func- 
 tional actions of the instincts of sense, which have grad- 
 ually become transformed into barren habits ! That which 
 is a constant necessity for a little child, who after slight 
 efforts at attention and intellectual operations requires to 
 rest in less engrossing sensations, is only necessary to the 
 adult at intervals, in order to recover from nervous or 
 muscular fatigue, or in case of illness. 
 
 The Instinct of Nutrition. The appetite for nutrition, 
 or the instinct of nourishing oneself, which occupies the 
 first place among special appetites, is not one of those 
 tendencies whose stimulus is always present in the visceral 
 organs, as the need of breathing, for instance, is from the 
 moment of birth; this stimulus has to be supplied from 
 without, and the state of the viscera to which the appetite 
 for nourishment corresponds is reproduced at regular 
 intervals. Even in the later stages of uterine life, the
 
 52 THE FIKST THKEE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 intimate union between sensory activity and visceral 
 wants is established relatively to this instinct ; it is because 
 its functions are too delicate, too important, and too com- 
 plex for the organs destined to perform them to be able to 
 come into play at the moment of birth a time liable to a 
 multitude of 'accidental variations. Hence the following 
 facts, related by Houzeau, are by no means improbable : 
 
 "Mammals and birds absorb nourishment before escap- 
 ing from their integuments; the chicken consumes the 
 white of the egg, the child sucks up the water of the 
 amnios, as also do calves and the greater number of mam- 
 mals. This foetal alimentation is the cause of the often 
 very copious motions of new-born animals. But calves go 
 still further. It is an ascertained fact that they lick them- 
 selves before the time of birth, pieces of their own hair 
 having been found in their stomach with the water of the 
 amnios. . . . The instinct of nourishment is thus as 
 innate as the need of taking nourishment." ' We should 
 even add, that this instinct is already specialized, "that it 
 does not impel the infant indifferently towards all objects 
 alike, but towards a certain class of objects." After the 
 first months of milk diet, children show very marked 
 omnivorous tendencies, with characteristic differences of 
 likes and dislikes according to the individuals. 
 
 The instinct of nutrition is innate; and so, up to a cer- 
 tain point, is the faculty of nourishing oneself, but it is 
 not perfect on the day of birth. Some animals, as Bastian 
 says, exhibit this faculty "almost immediately after birth, 
 and without making any previous abortive efforts." 2 The 
 wild boar and the chicken, for instance. But in the case 
 of animals who do not attain, while yet in the oviduct or 
 the uterus, the necessary development for the exercise of 
 certain faculties, the latter do not appear, or rather are 
 not developed, until a few days or weeks after birth. A 
 child manages the operation of suction, though awkwardly 
 it is true, a few hours after birth ; but it cannot masticate 
 or take hold of other food adapted to its species any more 
 
 1 Etude sur les Facultes Mentalvs des AnimaiKK, t. L, p. 193. 
 8 The Brain as an Organ of Mind.
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SLEEP. 53 
 
 than a new-born kitten can catch or devour prey. And 
 just as a kitten does not learn to lie in wait for prey, or to 
 seize its food and masticate it until certain parts of its 
 organism have become sufficiently developed, and birds do 
 not attempt to fly away and seek food for themselves until 
 the right organs are ready, so children only learn to take 
 hold of and eat an apple, a piece of bread, a cake, etc., 
 when their organs of mastication have reached a certain 
 stage of maturity. I may add, that the forces which 
 suffice to produce the stimulus of instinctive action in 
 infants, as in kittens, and even in young birds, result at 
 first merely in more or less successful attempts. The 
 power of feeding oneself, like that of walking or flying, 
 requires always a longer or shorter education, in which 
 the initiative of the young being needs to be helped by the 
 example and encouragement of grown-up people. 
 
 The Instinct of Sleep. The appetite of sleep manifests 
 itself in quite a special way, as a negative tendency, if I 
 may so express myself, as a need for the cessation of 
 activity. Hence the movements and actions which pro- 
 duce tranquillity and sleep are monotonous and slow ; the 
 natural rocking of branches for birds, the rhythmic move- 
 ment of the head in horses when standing upright, and 
 the rocking of the arms or cradle, accompanied by a 
 monotonous song, for children's sleep, is interesting to 
 study from the double point of view of physiology and 
 psychology. 
 
 The physiological cause of sleep is unknown. On what- 
 ever hypothesis it be explained, whether cerebral conges- 
 tion or cerebral anemia, we can at any rate easily observe 
 the almost constant characteristics of this phenomenon. 
 It takes possession, gradually in adults, and often abruptly 
 in children, of all the different organs: first of all the 
 muscles of the limbs, the arms and legs, become fixed in 
 the position they happen to have assumed; after the limbs, 
 the voluntary muscles of the trunk relax themselves into a 
 st.ite of more or less complete flexion. It has also been 
 noticed that during sleep respiration and pulsation be- 
 come rarer. But what is the mental condition of the ani- 
 mal while asleep? While the nutritive functions and
 
 54 THE PIKST THREE YEARS OP CHILDHOOD. 
 
 reflex movements are still going on, does the brain cease 
 to operate? Does sleep only suspend a portion of the 
 phenomena of psychic activity? We know nothing about 
 it. It is probable that the abolition of mental states is 
 never absolute, that it never reaches all the regions of the 
 brain, even when sleep is profound. 
 
 It is at any rate certain, both memory and the nature of 
 dreams prove this, that the cerebral hemispheres have a 
 great tendency during sleep to recommence their functions, 
 though always in an incomplete manner. We know also 
 that the impressions which come from the viscera, or a 
 very slight hindrance in the circulation or respiration, or 
 too strong a muscular pressure, or repletion or vacuity of 
 the intestines, or even perceptions from the external world 
 coming abruptly and disagreeably, will give rise to very 
 painful ideas and emotions, and ca'use corresponding 
 screams and movements. Although dreams do not appear 
 to be excluded, even from profound sleep, they are gen- 
 erally fatiguing to the organs. Sleep means the reparation 
 and restoration of the forces of the body, and the inco- 
 herent activity of the dream state is a premature expend- 
 iture of the force intended for the activity of the morrow. 
 
 But when dreams are light, intermittent and pleasant, 
 when they do not hinder the complete repose of the prin- 
 cipal organs, and when they only exercise the cerebral 
 organ moderately and without tiring it, they are entirely 
 negative from a physiological point of view, while at the 
 same time they are highly favorable to the intellectual and 
 moral development. In the absence of any actual per- 
 ceptions, past perceptions work themselves out under the 
 law of association, and free from the control and the 
 obstacles of reality. The mind, as it were, isolates itself 
 from the external world in order to abandon itself freely to 
 its wcrk of ideal incubation and digestion. 
 
 It is then, and perhaps better then than in our waking 
 hours, that the fortuitous association and dissociation of 
 images produce those abstractions by which individual 
 forms are detached from masses, details from the whole, 
 and qualities from objects; there is no doubt that in 
 dreams a child's brain is crossed by images as vivid in
 
 THE INSTINCT OF SLEEP. 55 
 
 themselves as they are unlike absolute realities; hallu- 
 cinations of sound, color, and tactile impressions, of 
 muscular sensations, of forms isolated or grouped together, 
 of objects that resemble each other, und objects that are 
 differentiated, and still more series of actions accomplished 
 by a greater or less number of actors, and giving rise to 
 reasonings and sympathetic sentiments. All the intellect- 
 ual operations, all the emotional faculties, are exercised in 
 dreams with all the more ease and utility that they act 
 solely on their own resources; in this state the mind 
 works on its own acquirements and ideas, we may almost 
 say, on itself. Thus it may be said that sleep is for chil- 
 dren general repose of muscular, sensorial, and cerebral 
 activity, though with intermittent returns of activity, all 
 the more agreeable and serviceable as the dreams are rare 
 and light. We know, moreover, that a child of two or three 
 years old dreams more than one of six months or a year, 
 a child of from six to ten years, more than one of three, 
 the adult less than the youth, and the old man less than 
 the adult. ^The frequency and the vivacity of dreams, pre- 
 supposing of course the normal condition of the subject, 
 appears to be in proportion to the psychic excitability or 
 activity. 
 
 Dreams are not only an important fact of psychic life, 
 interesting to our intellectual faculties; their influence 
 extends to our sentiments and even to our morality. The 
 mental states which are produced, with or without con- 
 sciousness, during sleep, are the consequence of and the 
 preparation for certain states of our waking hours. "It is 
 possible," says M. Ch. Leveque, "that the cheerful or sad 
 humors of the day are a faint repetition of the agitations 
 experienced in sleep, and that all the workings of the mind 
 during the night may help to produce certain actions of the 
 day." There is indeed no doubt that remembrance is not 
 the only trace dreams are able to leave after them. Accord- 
 ing to the nature of the dreams which it has had during 
 the night, the child is more or less cheerful during the 
 day, more or less inclined to be good and obedient. 
 
 I have said enough about the instinct of locomotion in 
 the chapter on movements, to make it unnecessary to go
 
 56 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 over it all again here. The instinct of utterance I shall 
 treat of in the chapter dedicated to language. The instinct 
 of sexuality will be most fitly considered in a chapter de- 
 voted to modesty or to the moral sense ; though it will not 
 be amiss to devote some attention to it in this chapter con- 
 cerning special tendencies. 
 
 The Sexual. Instinct. The localization of the sexual 
 instinct in the brain is far from being determined. The 
 hypothesis of Gall, who asserted that a constant relation- 
 ship exists between the development of the cerebellum and 
 the sexual appetite, has been entirely confuted by the facts 
 elicited by clinical observation and human pathology. Ac- 
 cording to Ferrier, the organic needs which constitute the 
 basis of sexual appetite, centre around a special form of 
 tactile sensation which may be supposed to have its centre 
 in close relation to the hippocampal region. But it is only 
 conjecture; he affirms nothing. He adds, moreover, rest- 
 ing his supposition on the power which some odors have to 
 excite the sexual instinct, that a region in close relation to 
 the centres of the sense of smell and to the tactile sensa- 
 tions might be considered as the probable seat of the sen- 
 sations which constitute the basis of sexual appetite. 1 The 
 centres of this sensation, according to the same writer, 
 "are probably placed in the regions which unite the occipital 
 lobes to the infero-internal region of the temporo-sphenoidal 
 lobe. As the reproductive organs in women form such a 
 preponderant element in their bodily constitution, they 
 must correspondingly be more largely represented in the 
 cerebral hemispheres, a fact which is in accordance with 
 the greater emotional excitability of women, and the rela- 
 tively larger development of the posterior lobes of the 
 brain." 2 Thus we are reduced to hypotheses with regard 
 to the localization of this instinct, and it is not necessary 
 to inquire whether the brain of a little child possesses, in 
 any degree of development, the cerebral organs of sexual 
 appetition. But we must not overlook the fact that this 
 instinct is not exclusively characterized by the reproductive 
 
 1 David Ferrier, The Functions of the Brain, p. 198. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 263.
 
 THE SEXUAL INSTINCT. 57 
 
 tendency. Its chief characteristic is the appetition of the 
 sensations whose unconscious object, or rather, perhaps, 
 whose result is the multiplication and preservation of the 
 human race. I quote here the words of a recognized 
 authority on comparative psychology : 
 
 "Modern anatomists have proved that the disparity of 
 the sexes is much less radical than we are inclined to think. 
 The type is the same for all the individuals of a species. 
 The male mammifer, like the female, has breasts, which 
 only lack development. The analogy is continued, if not 
 between the relative proportions of the different parts, at 
 least in the general plan of structure, down to the genital 
 organs. Everard Home goes as far as to think that at the 
 beginning the germ may be indiscriminately endowed with 
 either sex, and that its being male or female would depend 
 on ulterior circumstances of a simple nature, such as acci- 
 dents of impregnation. . . . Even in superior animals, 
 the sex, though it cannot be changed, is not such an exclu- 
 sive thing as is generally thought. At birth, and during 
 all the first period of life, the sex can only be distinguished 
 by the structure of the genital organs. *It is only later in 
 life that other characteristics appear, the beard, the breasts, 
 etc. The male bird decks himself out in the most resplen- 
 dent plumage ; and those mental affections which are 
 allied with sexual phenomena, and which have hitherto 
 lain dormant, or almost so, now burst forth in all their 
 strength." 1 
 
 The same author cites a number of examples taken from 
 the mammifer species, and tending to show that the devia- 
 tion of the sexual instinct, going as far as to anomalous 
 confusion of sex and age, and the exclusive pursuit of sen- 
 sations connected with this instinct, is not special to 
 human beings. In recording these physiological observa- 
 tions, the great naturalist has no other object than to ex- 
 plain the brutality of the passion of love in different ani- 
 mals. They enable us to understand the like excesses in 
 man, who is not necessarily a reasonable animal, but an 
 
 1 Houzeau, Etudes sur les Facultes Mentales des Animaux, tome. i. 
 pp ^74, etc.
 
 58 THE FIEST THEEE YEAKS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 animal who can and ought to be reasonable. Without 
 dwelling on these delicate questions, which frequent crimi- 
 nal scandals and the success of a certain class of novels 
 force on the consideration of moralists and legislators, I 
 shall content myself with pointing out to parents and edu- 
 cators who are ignorant of them, the possible dangers 
 resulting from the deviation and corruption of the sexual 
 instinct, even as regards quite young children. Let me 
 again quote a few passages from a book of high moral pur- 
 port, which grown-up people may study with profit both 
 to themselves and to children of any age who may come 
 under their care. The quotation refers only to the moral 
 interests of young children. 
 
 "The following points, bearing on the moral education 
 of childhood and youth, must be considered by all parents 
 who are convinced of the saving value of sexual morality, 
 viz., observation of the child during infancy, acquirement 
 of the child's confidence, selection of young companions, 
 care in the choice of a school and of studies which will 
 not injure the mind, the formation of tastes, outdoor exer- 
 cise, companionship of brothers and sisters, the choice of 
 a physician, social intercourse and amusements. These 
 various points require careful consideration. 
 
 " The earliest duty of the parent, is to watch over the 
 infant child. Few parents are aware how very early evil 
 habits may be formed, nor how injurious the influence of 
 the nurse" [why of the nurse only?] ''often is to the child. 
 The mother's eye, full of tenderness and respect, must 
 always watch over her children. . . . This watchful- 
 ness over the young child, by day and night, is the first 
 duty to be universally inculcated. Two things are neces- 
 sary in order to fulfill it ; viz., a clear knowledge of the 
 evils to which the child may be exposed, and tact to inter- 
 pret the faintest indication of danger, and to guard from 
 it without allowing the child to be aware of the danger.'" 
 Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell adds, in a note in the Appendix, 
 the following melancholy considerations: "Terrible in- 
 
 1 Advice to Parents on the Moral Education of their Children, p. 85 
 (Dr. Elizabeth BlackwelU
 
 THE SEXUAL INSTINCT. 59 
 
 stances of this may be seen in Trelat's medical work, La 
 Polie Lucide; ' and Lallemand and other French surgeons 
 report numerous cases of fatal injury, done even to nursing 
 infants, by the wicked actions of unprincipled nurses. I 
 have myself traced the ill-health of children in wealthy 
 families to the habits practiced by confidential nurses, ap- 
 parently quite respectable women! Abundant medical 
 testimony confirms these observations." 1 
 
 Id., Ibid. Appendix.
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 THE SENTIMENTS. 
 
 I CANNOT resign myself to seeing in a little child, even 
 when only a few days old, a mere machine or automaton. 
 A learned man to whom I had expounded, without con- 
 vincing him, my ideas pri the direction that should be 
 given to the faculties of young children, sent me by way 
 of refutation the following description of his infant son, 
 then about two months old: "He is a thorough little ani- 
 mal, voracious to excess, and never quiet except when 
 asleep or at the breast. I could never have believed that 
 a little child was 'so absolutely an animal, with no other 
 instincts than that of gluttony. To avoid being com- 
 pletely disgusted, one has to remind oneself that in a few 
 months there will be some gleams of intelligence, and that 
 the creature will begin to show some likeness to a human 
 being." All at once, I suppose! By one knows not what 
 miracle of nature! My friend received from me a variety 
 of further observations which, however, had no greater suc- 
 cess. He wrote again: "I believe still in the pure ani- 
 malism of the infant, and to give a real idea of the vorac- 
 ity of this age, I can only compare it to a larva, always 
 eating without pause or rest. " Setting aside for the moment 
 some details which appear to me to be doubly calumnious, 
 both towards children and animals, I must allow that my 
 friend has well observed and well described the state of a 
 young child subject to the tyrannical need of food. M. 
 Luy.s has observed the same state of things; but he, like 
 myself, has also observed something further, and, this
 
 THE SENTIMENTS. 61 
 
 something is of the greatest importance: "His organic 
 appetites are gratified by the niilk he sucks, and he feeds 
 himself organically, like an organic cell, which borrows 
 from the surrounding medium the materials which suit it. 
 But at the same time he expresses the satisfaction he feels 
 in his own manner; he smiles on seeing the breast which 
 yields him his nourishment and life, and from that time 
 his natural sensibility is thrown into agitation, his senso- 
 riuni is affected. He rejoices because he remembers, be- i 
 cause he has retained a memory of the satisfaction of his | 
 physical appetites. " ' 
 
 Sentiments connected with Taste. A child's most vivid 
 sentiments are for a long time after its birth those con- 
 nected with the sense of taste. The need of nourishment 
 dominates for a long time over all the others, even that of 
 movement; it manifests itself the first and is the most 
 persistent. The emotions connected with this incessant 
 and imperious want are the most agreeable ones that 
 children experience. It is through the satisfaction of 
 their appetite that they learn to know and to love first of . 
 all the breast they suck, or their- feeding-bottle, and 
 secondly the hands, the face, the voice, the eyes, the 
 smiles, the caresses, the entire person of their nurse or 
 mother. Their first affections are those of an epicure; , 
 their first feelings of gratitude are awakened by the 
 stomach ; they test their first tactile experiences, as much 
 as possible, by the sense of taste. If one puts an object ' 
 of any kind into the hands of a child of six months, he 
 will touch and feel it for a few seconds without seeming to 
 learn much from the tactile impression, and then, if he is 
 strong enough, he will carry it to his mouth, and experi- ' 
 rnent upon it with the organs of taste. His nurse's finger, 
 a bit of rag, a stick, a box, fruit, flowers, etc., anything 
 and everything, great or small, pleasant or unpleasant, all 
 goes up to the mouth. Pretty to look at, and good to eat, j 
 are synonymous terms to babies; a pretty picture, the 
 colors of which first attracted it, is seized hold of, and, 
 like everything else, put into the mouth. Even after they 
 
 Luys, I<$ Cerveau e^lse* Functions, Eng. Trans., p. 127,
 
 62 THE FIKST THREE YEAES OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 have learnt by frequent experiments that all objects have 
 not a pleasant taste, they only mistrust, at first sight, 
 , those which are notoriously offensive to them. Later 
 on, after the age of four months, the desire to stop the 
 itching of the gums becomes, no doubt, an -additional 
 reason for the constant movement of the hands to the 
 mouth; but the chief cause of it is the excessive excitabil- 
 ity of the functions of taste, and of the ideas and senti- 
 ments connected with this organ. 
 
 The sensations of joy and pain connected with taste 
 continue to be the dominant ones during the first 
 months; but they are not the only ones that children 
 feel. 
 
 Fear. The automatic instinct of fear exhibits itself in 
 infants from the very first. We may even, moreover, see 
 obscure manifestations of this instinct in the tremblings 
 produced in the foetus by any sudden terror in the mother. 
 A lady who had had a great shock three months before the 
 birth of her child, felt the child move convulsively within 
 her. The baby only lived three months; and during this 
 time it used frequently to give those violent starts, without 
 any external cause, which characterize excessive fear. 
 These are indisputably the effects of congenital imagin- 
 ativeness, against which a mother and those around her 
 should guard as much as possible. 
 
 As for the tremblings, the screams, the cessation or 
 precipitation of breathing, which are common symptoms 
 of fear in new-born children, their cause is often so slight 
 that it is not always possible to foresee or prevent them. 
 Sudden sounds and sights of all sorts clearly distinguished, 
 disturb a child's rest. At three. months, and even earlier, 
 the mere sight of a strange face will sometimes so agitate 
 a child and affect its breathing, as to make it seem on the 
 point of suffocation. Darwin has noticed signs of fear in 
 infants during the first weeks, at the slightest unexpected 
 noise, and later on at any strange noise or attitude. He 
 speaks also of the fear felt by some children at a more 
 advanced age, on finding themselves in the dark; but he 
 does not tell us whether he considers this tendency 
 hereditary. We think, however, that such is his opinion,
 
 THE SENTIMENTS. 63 
 
 for he attributes (what to my rniud seems exaggerated) 
 the fear felt by his child in the Zoological Gardens at the 
 sight of large animals " to the hereditary effects of real 
 dangers and abject superstitions which prevailed at the 
 period of savage life." With all deference for the opinions 
 of this illustrious physiologist, I cannot help asking 
 whether a little baby's fright at the sight of an enormous 
 animal may not be partly due to its own seu^e of com- 
 parison; and whether it is necessary to go back to the 
 experience of its savage ancestors to explain this particular 
 manifestation of a tendency which is hereditary only in so 
 far as it is general. 
 
 The following observation of Charles Bell may no doubt 
 be applied to the age of six or seven months : 
 
 " If an infant be laid upon the arms and dandled up 
 and down, its body and limbs will be at rest as it is 
 raised, but in descending it will struggle and make efforts. 
 Here is the indication of a sense, an innate feeling, of 
 danger; and we may perceive its influence when the child 
 first attempts to stand or run. When set upon its feet, 
 the nurse's arms forming a hoop around it, without touching 
 it, the child slowly learns to balance itself and stand; but 
 under a considerable apprehension; it will only try to 
 stand at such a distance from the nurse's knee, that if it 
 should fall, it can throw itself for protection into her lap. 
 In these its first attempts to use its muscular frame, it is 
 directed by a fear which cannot as yet be attributed to 
 experience. " l If a child tumbles down while trying to 
 walk, it sometimes gives up the attempt for a long 
 time. But there is as great difference in this respect 
 in individuals of the human race, as in the young of 
 animals. 
 
 Like little children in their first efforts at difficult 
 games, or in their first gymnastic exercises, some puppies 
 exhibit remarkable boldness, which no amount of tumbles 
 can overcome, and others a laughable degree of cowardice 
 and prudence. 
 
 Fright is less_ often caused in children between the ages 
 
 1 The Hand, p. 234.
 
 64 THE FIKST THREE YEAKS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 of three and ten months by visuaj. than by auditory im- 
 pressions ; with kittens, after the fifteenth day, the reverse 
 is the case. A child of three and a half months, in the 
 midst of the alarm of a house on fire, and surrounded by 
 flames and tottering walls, showed neither astonishment 
 nor fear; he even smiled at the woman who was taking 
 care of him and keeping watch over the furniture while 
 waiting for his parents. But the sound of the bugle, and 
 of the firemen coming up, and the noise of the engine 
 wheels made him tremble and cry. I have never seen a 
 ) child at this age startled by lightning, however vivid ; but 
 / I have seen many terrified by the sound of thunder. On 
 / this point my observations are in opposition to those of 
 Kosseau and Herbert Spencer. The former thinks erron- 
 eously, with Locke, that fear is a sentiment derived from 
 experience of hurtful or dangerous things, and that, in the 
 absence of very startling impressions, it does not become 
 developed in children. " I have noticed," he says, " that 
 children are rarely frightened at thunder, at least if the 
 claps are not too violent, and do not hurt the ear; other- 
 wise this fear does not disturb them until they have learned 
 to associate thunder with danger and possible death." 1 
 Herbert Spencer's opinion is as follows: 
 
 " It happens, no doubt, that a child may be seized with 
 terror at a clap of thunder; and an ignorant person will 
 regard a comet with superstitious terror. But claps of 
 thunder and comets are not every-day phenomena, and do 
 not form part of the usual orders of things. " s The fact 
 is, that certain children, in their first mouths, are fright- 
 ened by certain very sharp or very sonorous sounds, and 
 above all, by unusual sounds. It is also true, as Locke 
 and Rosseau have observed, that the more a child becomes 
 accustomed to any sounds, the less it will be frightened by 
 them. A child who was very much frightened by thunder 
 at the age of six months say in May would not be so 
 frightened five months later, at the end of September, 
 having heard the same sound several times, and having 
 
 1 Emile, livre I. 
 
 3 Principles of Sociology, vol. i.
 
 THE SENTIMENTS. 65 
 
 become familiar with it. But at a still later age, owing 
 possibly to bad training, this fear will reassert its 
 dominion. 
 
 There is a kind of natural fear, organic and hereditary, 
 the result of anterior experiences, and which is a safeguard 
 to the young infant against certain very real dangers, of 
 which it has not yet had any experience. This is the rea- 
 son why fear is stronger and more easily excited at five 
 years old than at three, and at three years than at six 
 months, and also why it is more apt to be aroused in little 
 children by auditory impressions than by visual ones. The 
 anterior life of civilized man has rather predisposed the 
 race to listen for dangers which are near at hand, than to t 
 be on the lookout for distant ones ; i. e., the ear has been j 
 more trained to keep watch than the eye. And accord- 
 ingly, setting aside all individual susceptibilities, which are 
 the fruits of special heredity, we find that in the inexperi- I 
 enced infant fear is excited rather through the ear than the ) 
 eye. It is natural that the reverse should be the case in 
 animals, so organized as to perceive danger from afar. 
 Thus, though I have never come across a child who was 
 frightened at the first sight of fire, I have found the con- 
 trary to be the case in several kinds of domestic animals 
 dogs, cats, chickens and birds, for instance. A chicken 
 found lying half dead in the garden was brought indoors 
 and placed near the fire; and, in spite of its feeble condi- 
 tion, it quickly hopped away from it. It was brought back 
 again and placed on a stool, and after a good deal of coax- 
 ing and petting it began to lose all fear, shut its eyes and 
 fell asleep. It was then left to itself; and whether that it 
 was too feeble to fiy away, or that it had become happy in 
 its new situation, it remained perfectly still there all the 
 rest of the day and the following night. The next day it 
 h.id quite recovered, but it came back of its own accord to 
 take up its position on the footstool. For several years 
 past I have given a home to a stray cat. She was about 
 a year old when I first took her in. A few months after, 
 when the cold weather set in, I lighted a fire in my study, 
 which is also the cat's sitting room. At first puss looked 
 at the flames with a frightened expression. I made her 
 
 6
 
 66 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 come near the fire, but she bounded away and hid herself. 
 I had a fire in the room every day, but it was not until 
 towards the end of the winter that I could induce the cat to 
 remain on a chair near it. By the following winter, how- 
 ever, her fears had disappeared, and she would as a mat- 
 ter of course seat herself on a chair in front of the fire. 
 Noise of any description at once puts her on her guard 
 with her eyes, not with her ears ; the sound of thunder or 
 of a heavy wagon causes her to look up suddenly at the 
 ceiling, and then to listen at the window; the reason of 
 this is, that the shadows of objects passing along the street 
 in the evening often flit across the ceiling of my room, 
 as I only have my shutters half closed. The conclusion, 
 then, that we arrive at is, that there are predispositions to 
 fear which are independent of all experience, but which 
 the gradual accumulation of experience lessens very con- 
 siderably, and that in the case of children they are chiefly 
 connected with the sense of hearing. 
 
 Anijer. During the first weeks of existence children's 
 instinctive mode of expressing the pain which any object 
 inflects on them seems to consist only in screams and 
 movements of resistance. But when about two months 
 old, they begin to push away objects that they do not like, 
 and have real fits of passion, frowning, growing red in the 
 face, trembling all over, and sometimes shedding tears. 
 At three months old, they begin to experience the feeling 
 of jealousy, which is shown in tears, screams and contor- 
 tions, if one pretends to be going to take away their feed- 
 ing bottle or any other object of their affections. They 
 also become very much irritated if they cannot at once get 
 at their mother's breast, or when being washed, or having 
 their clothes changed, or if their wishes are not guessed 
 and satisfied quickly enough. At six months they will 
 scream with impatience if their toys are taken from them. 
 This may be either owing to an inborn instinct of proprie- 
 torship, or because of the amusement which their toys 
 afford them. 
 
 At this same period their movements and cries during 
 sleep appear to indicate painful dreams. Towards the age 
 of one year their anger sometimes exhibits itself in hurtful
 
 THE SENTIMENTS. 67 
 
 actions in which we see, so to speak, the germ of the pas- 
 sion of revenge. They will beat people, animals, and 
 inanimate objects if they are angry with them; they will 
 throw their toys, their food, their plate, anything, in short, 
 that is at hand, at the people who have displeased them, 
 or simply at the first person near, when it is the objects 
 that have caused displeasure. Thus anger has its origin, 
 and that at a very early age, both in simple and complex 
 sentiments, and is expressed either by simple and auto- 
 matic actions or by complex ones acquired personally. 
 
 If the theory of evolution is true, it is necessary for the 
 young human being to pass through, in a certain grada- 
 tion, all the principal stages which have brought his ances- 
 tors from animalism up to the first beginnings of civiliza- 
 tion. It is but natural that a child should at one moment 
 reproduce this ancestor, at another resemble that savage, 
 with whom many would identify primitive man. Now, S 
 irascibility is one of the special characteristics of inferior f 
 races. Irritability and impulsiveness are, with few excep- 
 tions, fundamental traits of all these races. 
 
 "Spite of their usually unimpassioned behavior, the 
 Dakotahs rise into frightful states of bloody fury when 
 killing buffaloes ; and among the phlegmatic Creeks, there 
 are "very frequent suicides, caused by trifling disappoint- 
 ments." . . . Passing from North America to Asia, 
 we come to the Kamtschadales ; of whom we read that they 
 are "excitable," not to say (for men) hysterical. A light 
 matter set them mad, or made them commit suicide." 
 . . . Among the Negrittos the Papuan is "impetuous, 
 excitable, noisy;" the Fijians have "emotions easily roused 
 but transient." . . . The Tasmanians" quickly change 
 from smiles to tears. " . . . The Fuegians "have hasty 
 tempers, and are loud and furious talkers." "There are 
 the Australians, whose impulsiveness Sturt implies by say- 
 ing that the 'angry Australian jin exceeds the European 
 scold,' and that a man 'remarkable for haughtiness and 
 reserve, sobbed long when his nephew was taken from 
 him.' " l 
 
 1 Herbert Spencer, Principlpf of S<>< iology, pp. 63, etc.
 
 68 THE FIRST THREE YEAES OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 This impulsiveness and irascibility are in our children 
 legacies inherited from our primitive ancestors; they are, 
 as it were, instinctive weapons of defense, and native in- 
 struments of self-preservation. It appears then d, priori to 
 be established, that systematic evolution, or education, 
 should preserve this force while disciplining it. But ex- 
 perience alone can teach us what may be the consequence, 
 either in infancy or in the future, of combating or encour- 
 aging these sentiments, and consequently what place we 
 shu Id allow this moral factor in education. 
 ( Anger is legitimate in young children when it expresses 
 \ unconscious revolt against the first sufferings of life con- 
 vulsions, colic, pains of teething, discomfort produced by 
 fever, or by the want of air, of locomotion, or of sleep. 
 The screams and movements in which they vent their 
 anger distract and relieve them, in a certain measure, 
 from the feeling of pain ; and to the parents or guardians 
 of the child they are warnings dictated by nature herself. 
 In like manner, when a child, in its first awkward attempts 
 at speech, has given a wrong idea of its meaning, it is quite 
 justified in screaming, beating the ground with its foot, 
 and showing indignation at being so badly understood 
 when it thought it had spoken so well. It has still more 
 \ right to be angry, when, after having been accustomed by 
 j its nurse to any bad habit, such as being rocked to sleep 
 in its cradle or in any one's arms, or being put to bed with 
 a light in the room, these habits are suddenly discontinued; 
 still more so again, when, without regard for its delicate 
 sensitiveness, we try to force it to do something which, 
 either from nature or habit, is repulsive to it, sucli as 
 swallowing a bitter draught, or undergoing some punish- 
 ment or privation without complaining, or kissing a per- 
 son it dislikes. Another case mentioned by Eousseau, in 
 , which a child's anger is perfectly legitimate, is when the 
 ) nurse beats it for crying, and, an additional form of suffer- 
 i ing being thus added to that which he probably experi- 
 enced before, he expresses both by loud screams and rage. 
 There are also certain forms of impatience which be- 
 | token a frank and generous character, and which are 
 ) closely allied with the budding of the earliest moral vir-
 
 THE SENTIMENTS. 69 
 
 tues. A young child, for instance, who delights in walk- 
 ing alone, although at the risk of falling, will get extremely 
 angry if any one should persist in trying to help him. At 
 a later age, again, suppose a child to repeat in his mother's 
 presence some foolish joke which the servants had always 
 been very much amused at, but in which his mother sees 
 nothing to laugh at, his face will get very red and he will 
 close his lips firmly, evidently feeJing that he has exposed 
 himself to ridicule and appearing quite irritated with him- 
 self. Again, at ahout two years old, when a child is 
 suddenly punished severely by some person who had before 
 been generally indulgent to him, he will fly into a passion 
 for a punishment which he would have received submis- 
 sively had it been inflicted by his parents. Once more, if 
 he sees two children fighting in the street, he will run up 
 to them with clenched fists and crimson cheeks, and try to 
 separate them. Are not all these ebullitions of temper 
 invaluable guides to the knowledge of a child's character 
 and helps in its moral education? 
 
 But if anger has its good sides, its use and justification, 
 it has also its evils and abuses. It is often the outcome of 
 caprice, jealousy, hatred of all the hostile passions, com- 
 bativeness, destructiveness, and vengeance. It is the two- 
 edged sword of human wickedness, which wotinds the 
 striker as weh 1 as the victim. If indulged in too frequently, ( 
 it will injure the moral and physical development of the 
 child, who ought always to be surrounded by an atmos- 
 phere of peaceful serenity, and in whom we should 
 endeavor to maintain calmness and tranquillity of spirit. 
 Outbursts of anger may have specially disastrous effects 
 on children predisposed to convulsive maladies at an age 
 when the muscular system is not sufficiently developed to 
 counteract shocks to the nervous system. What is more 
 likely to hinder the growth of good-humor or docility in a 
 child, than the habit of getting irritated at the slightest 
 cause because an object he tries to take hold of slips out 
 of his hands, or because he is given something to eat or to 
 play with that he does not like, or because a stranger 
 speaks to him or kisses him? What less pleasing spectacle 
 can there be, than that of a pretty little child a year or two
 
 70 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 old, who habitually vents its anger on the furniture, the 
 books, flowers, fruit or food, the cat or the dog, its nurses, 
 or even its parents? 
 
 I have seen a capricious little creature eleven months 
 old put herself in a violent temper because she could not 
 succeed in seizing hold of her grandfather's nose ! Another 
 child I know of had a beautiful doll, of which she was very 
 fond; her parents took her once with them to Cauterets, 
 and on getting out of the carriage she saw another child 
 with a doll just like her own; instantly there were screams 
 and paroxysms of rage ! She flew upon the child, scratched 
 her, beat her, arid bit her; and she had to be carried away 
 by force. Her fury was so great that she was quite ill 
 from it for several days. Another little girl of the same 
 age had such fits of passion every evening when her mother 
 was putting her to bed, that the neighbors would some- 
 times come in and help to quiet her. There was one 
 person whom she specially dreaded, and the sight of whom 
 was sufficient to quiet her: this was a gentleman with a 
 loud voice and a long beard, who sometimes whipped her 
 in her cot. A little boy fifteen months old used to bite 
 his mother when she put him to bed. Another child, 
 three years old, who had been sent away from the dining- 
 room on account of his naughty behavior, came back soon 
 after and laid himself down on the floor across the door- 
 way, throwing out his arms and legs, and screaming at the 
 top of his voice. 
 
 Having thus pointed out the use and the abuse of anger, 
 it seems to me that we may, on & posteriori as well as on ct 
 priori grounds, place this passion among that class of 
 animal sentiments which it would be waste of time to en- 
 deavor to exterminate, but which need to be carefully 
 directed and controlled. We should recoguize in the pas- 
 sionate temper one of the most fruitful principles of human 
 activity, one which, if united with sympathy, will lead to 
 acts of self-devotion and may help in the formation of 
 moral habits by obliging the child to examine himself and 
 his own actions, or by inspiring him, as far as his tender 
 age permits, with a germ of 
 
 ces haines vigoureuses 
 Que doit dormer le vice aux times generalises.
 
 THE SENTIMENTS. 71 
 
 Jealousy. The instinct of jealousy, common to all 
 animals, but unequally distributed amongst individuals of 
 the same species, manifests itself in very different ways 
 and circumstances. It is not always the sign of very 
 acute sensibility or of strong personality, for it shows itself 
 very markedly in young children and in adults of a calm 
 and equable temperament. Sometimes it will burst into 
 flame, like latent fire. Sometimes it smoulders on like 
 burning ashes. Love and affection are its most violent 
 excitants; but any trifling cause may also give rise to it. 
 A cat or a dog will be jealous of each other about their 
 food, or about a favorite place, a plaything, or a caress. 
 A sparrow tamed by a lady was jealous of the cats when 
 its mistress fondled them, and of the visitors who came to 
 see her; its attitudes and cries plainly betokened this. In 
 like manner a child will show jealousy if any one ap- 
 proaches its nurse, or touches its bottle, or is caressed by 
 its mother. A child of fifteen months was evidently 
 jealous if sugar or dessert was given to its nurse. 
 
 This feeling is roused by very different objects, and is 
 sometimes confounded with envy and the desire of appro- 
 priation and imitation. Children often want things not 
 so much for the sake of having and enjoying them, as be- 
 cause they do not like to see them in the possession of 
 others. And what applies to things applies also to persons. 
 A child of fifteen months used to enact very curious little 
 scenes out of jealousy. If his father and mother kissed 
 each other in his presence, he would run up and try to 
 separate them, scolding and pushing away his father, who 
 was by no means the favorite. The same child, at this 
 age, could never see anything in anybody else's hand with- 
 out asking for it, or trying to touch or take hold of it; 
 nothing could ever be done in his presence, without his 
 wanting to meddle in it. In the kitchen he 'must have a 
 knife, or something like a knife, and pretend to be at work 
 with the parings of the vegetables while the servant is pre- 
 paring the dinner. When his older brother is writing, he 
 insists on having a high chair at the table and some paper 
 and a pen, and then he fancies that he is doing the same 
 as his brother; once he gravely asked for his father's razor,
 
 72 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 that he too might shave. Thus we see that the proprietary 
 and imitative tendencies enter largely into the displays of 
 envy and jealousy. 
 
 Fathers, by the way, need not be troubled by the prefer- 
 ence their little children generally show for their mother 
 or nurse. This is quite natural, and more favorable than 
 otherwise to their moral and intellectual development. 
 Mothers, on their part, need not be unduly distressed at 
 the inconstancy of their little hearts. They will right 
 themselves in time, provided the parents do their duty by 
 their children; and manifestations of jealousy in either 
 father or mother would be a very bad example to a child. 
 
 There is always, no doubt, a little self-love, if not van- 
 ity, mixed up with the jealousy a child feels towards its 
 brothers and sisters, especially with regard to the marks 
 of tenderness and attention which are shown them. Tiede- 
 mann says of his son, at the age of twenty-two months, 
 "Jealousy and vanity became stronger and stronger; if any 
 one praised his little sister, he instantly came up to be 
 praised also; he always endeavored to get away from her 
 whatever had been given her, and he would even hit her 
 on the sly. " When this little sister was born, the boy had 
 shown signs of displeasure; he wanted to beat her when- 
 ever he saw her on his mother's lap or in his own cot, 
 because it was disagreeable to him to see anything which 
 he had possessed exclusively for some time taken away 
 from him. 
 
 One of my nephews, at the age of three years, used con- 
 tinually to talk of the little brother he was soon to have. 
 "I shall love him so much," he would say at every instant. 
 But when he saw the baby taking up his mother's lap and 
 kisses and caresses, and his father's care and attention, he 
 expressed his annoyance loudly. He even said to his 
 mother one 'day "Won't little Ferdinand soon die?" 
 When the baby began to walk and talk, the elder child 
 would torment him in hundreds of naughty ways, beating 
 him, dragging him out of his chair in order to take his 
 place, shouting in his ears, calling him naughty and ugly, 
 taking away his toys, and mimicking his way of talking 
 and walking.
 
 THE SENTIMENTS. 73 
 
 Sentiments of various kind*. When experience has taught 
 a young child to know a certain number of objects as hav- 
 ing the power to afford him pleasant or painful sensations 
 of sight or touch, his waking hours begin to be more and 
 more divided between his meals and his playthings. To 
 the instinct of hunger or greediness, still dominant but no 
 longer exclusive, there are now added fresh wants, which 
 the Scotch call intellectual, because they imply a certain 
 growth of the intelligence. 
 
 Here is a child of eight months, of ordinary intelligence. 
 He is interested in a number of objects which have noth- 
 ing to do with his palate, and which he only carries to his 
 mouth accidentally. These objects are instruments of play 
 and study for the child. He handles them, turns them 
 round and round, knocks them down, sets them up again, 
 throws them away, fetches them back, crawls after them 
 on all fours when they are out of his reach, knocks them 
 one against the other, puts them inside each other, thrusts 
 his hands into them, piles them up in heaps and then 
 knocks them down; in short, disports himself with them 
 and learns from them in a thousand different ways. Sight 
 and touch, which before seemed generally mere auxiliaries 
 of taste, now act on their own account ; the original syn- 
 thetic condition of the functions has now given place to an 
 analytic condition which gains daily in strength and deli- 
 cacy; the concentric circles of sensations, perceptions, 
 judgments, sentiments, go on expanding; and henceforth 
 my friend the savant is able to admire the little animal, 
 who rises day by day and hour by hour to the level of a 
 little man. 
 
 Take another child of eleven months. He is passion- 
 ately fond of his bottle, which is for him the embodiment 
 of exquisite enjoyment; but he has made acquaintance 
 with a certain number of other eatables soup, bread, meat, 
 cakes, fruit, etc.- -which he seems to like as much as his 
 first food. However, when his appetite is satisfied, and 
 he is taken back to his toys, one sees that he enjoys them 
 just as much, if not in the same manner, as he did eating 
 and drinking. He shows the same desire to seize hold of 
 them, the same attraction towards them, the same distress
 
 74 THE FIEST THREE YEAES OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 if they are taken away; his expressions, gestures, and atti- 
 tudes of delight prove that they afford him equally agree- 
 able sensations. Then again I perceive that he shows love 
 for his mother, his nurse, his sisters, his aunt in fact, 
 for all the people who feed, pet, talk to, and amuse him. 
 Moreover, there are evidently different degrees in his affec- 
 tion. He seems more pleased to go to the arms of his 
 mother or nurse than to his little sister, who hugs him so 
 awkwardly that she sometimes makes him cry, or to his 
 aunt, who means to be very loving and caressing, but who 
 does not look so, and who, in addition to a repelling coun- 
 tenance, has a shrill voice. This child brightens up at the 
 sight of a young or pretty face, but shows very little inter- 
 est in old or ugly ones, or faces covered with veils. His 
 affections vary according to the nature of objects and the 
 sensations they afford him, and according to the character, 
 manners, and actions of different persons; he has also his 
 dislikes, both for persons and for things. He gets exas- 
 perated when a little neighbor, seven years old, who has 
 played him several tricks and made faces at him, comes up 
 to him to kiss him. One of his uncles often brings with 
 him a little black dog, much given to barking; and the 
 mere sight of this animal distresses the child. Soap and 
 water, and towels, the rod, and the enema syringe, he 
 looks upon as personal enemies. Inanimate objects have 
 a large share in the sentiments of little children. The 
 pleasure and the pain which these objects cause to some of 
 his senses are the germ of all these affections and repul- 
 sions. But curiosity and the incessant need of new and 
 vivid emotions are his stimulants, and furnish daily food 
 for his affective sensibility. 
 
 The affections of a child, however, like the curiosity 
 which excites them, are very transitory. They glide from 
 object to object, from person to person. Owing to their 
 ignorance and feeble power of attention, they are unable 
 to occupy themselves long with one person or object which 
 cannot vary and be metamorphosed every instant to suit 
 their restless curiosity. Here is a child of ten months. 
 He confuses flowers with other inanimate objects; a piece 
 of roae-colored paper excites in him as vivid and durable
 
 THE SENTIMENTS. 75 
 
 a feeling of curiosity and pleasure as would a beautiful 
 rose. When I sniff a rose in his presence, and invite him 
 to imitate me, saying to him, "It smells so nice," he draws 
 in his breath and looks pleased, showing that he is sensi- 
 ble of the sweet smell of the rose; but the sensations 
 which perfumes excite in us are so quickly effaced that the 
 artificial habits of adults are necessary in order to appre- 
 ciate them, and to like flowers for the sake of their smells. 
 These subtle charms, so keenly enjoyed by grown-up peo- 
 ple, soon cease for children. With regard to these fragile 
 works of nature, their pleasure is still more fragile, espe- 
 cially when they hold them in their hands. They will 
 jump with delight at first seeing and smelling them, but 
 will very soon leave them for something else. The infant 
 organization, more feeble than our own, is subject, almost 
 without exception, to the law of nature according to which 
 the most vivid sensations are the least enduring. This is 
 the reason why objects which excite in children sensations 
 keenly painful or pleasant, never please or distress them 
 for any length of time. 
 
 Animal Sympathy. Animate objects have rather more 
 power than inanimate ones of arresting the attention and 
 awakening curiosity, and hence of exciting the emotions 
 of children. Dogs, cats, sheep, birds, chickens all these 
 creatures are par excellence their objects of recreation, 
 instruction, and affection. And it is not strange that it 
 should be so. They afford all the gratifications of sight 
 and hearing combined, all the various pleasures of touch, 
 and that latent voluptuousness which follows the satisfac- 
 tion of the appetite of movement. Added, also, to the 
 perpetual renewal of curiosity excited by these animals, 
 are the no less powerful influences of animal sympathy. 
 How intense is a child's delight when almost strangling 
 one of these good-natured creatures in its eager grasp. It 
 seems like its own life, its own personality, vibrating in 
 those organs which beat with the same movements as his 
 own. This feeling, which is hereditary rather than 
 acquired by sympathy, sometimes has phases of superior 
 excitation; the games, the caresses, the screams of delight, 
 the gentle purrings, the wailings and moans of a cat or a
 
 76 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 dog, all this combination of sympathetic sensations stimu- 
 late the curiosity and excite to the highest pitch the affec- 
 tions produced by the increased gratification of the senses 
 of sight, hearing, touch, and movement which the presence 
 of these animals affords children. 
 
 This sympathy for animals, however, does not include 
 moral sympathy. The child of a neighbor of mine, who 
 is two months old, and who plays all day long with the 
 cat and the dog, loves these animals more for its own sake 
 than for theirs, i.e., for the pleasure they afford him. It 
 does not seem to occur to him that these creatures can also 
 suffer and enjoy. Their gambols, their happy bark or mew 
 delight him ; their cries of anger or pain frighten and dis- 
 tress him, and that is about all. The dog being more good- 
 natured than the cat, there is no trial to which this child 
 will not subject its patience; I have seen him pull him by 
 the tail, by the paws, by the ears, and even bite his tail, 
 thrust all sorts of things into his jaws, throw all his toys 
 on him, drop a chair down upon him, or beat him with his 
 wooden spade, etc., etc. The other day, the nurse seated 
 this child on the lawn, and put a tortoise near him to 
 amuse him. At first he looked at the animal with great 
 curiosity, and seeing this, the nurse left him alone for a 
 moment; on her retuni the tortoise had one leg half torn 
 off, and this enthusiastic student of natural history was 
 occupied in pulling off another with all his strength. This 
 insensibility to the suffering of animals, unless it is very 
 evident to the eye or ear, is very common in children, and 
 even in a great number of adults ; but it is due to a faulty 
 education, rather than to a defect in natural sensibility. 
 I have often heard ignorant, uneducated, people assert 
 that such and such animals or insects could not feel pain. 
 And have not the extreme advocates of the automatism of 
 beasts, Malebranche among others, positively declared 
 that they do not feel? It is remarkable, moreover, that a 
 learned man, the celebrated Lamarck, one of the precursors 
 of Darwin, has distinguished a part of the animal kingdom 
 by the name of apathetic animals. 
 
 Human Sympathy. A child of twelve months who came 
 back to his father's house after a month's absence, took no
 
 THE SENTIMENTS. 77 
 
 notice of the purrings and caresses with which his old 
 friend the cat welcomed him home. He hardly noticed the 
 dog either, though he had been in the habit of seeing him 
 every day, and had sometimes been allowed to play with 
 him, and used to repeat his name. It took him ten min- 
 utes or more to recover his familiarity with either of them. 
 Scarcely, however, did he catch sight of the faithful old 
 servant before even she had called him by his name 
 than he held out his arms to her, starting and jumping 
 with delight. The fact is, that though children often 
 seem to love cats and dogs as much as their parents or 
 nurse, they forget animals much faster than people. A 
 rather older child remembers animals much better, and 
 will even speak of them constantly when away from them. 
 But I think that in general the affection they feel for 
 people is of a deeper nature. Setting aside the tendencies 
 to human sympathy which are the result of organization 
 and heredity, man is always necessary to man ; and this is 
 especially the case with the little child, that "etre ondoyant 
 ft divers," the subject of ever new curiosity, always seek- 
 ing fresh gratification. A little child hangs, in the full 
 sense of the word, on the looks, words, and actions of the 
 human beings around him. Human speech is in itself, 
 apart from the ideas and sentiments it expresses, a music, 
 of which the rhythm and the intonations correspond to 
 the aesthetic faculties of a little child. The ever-changing 
 expression of the eye lends a further charm to this delight- 
 ful music. The eye is one of the most interesting and 
 attractive of objects; the vivacity of the pupil set in its 
 oval background of white, its sparkles, its darts of light, 
 its tender looks, its liquid depths, attract and fascinate a 
 young child, like the roundness and the shifting patterns 
 of a beautiful agate: it is a source of perpetual enchant- 
 ment. Although children may not be subtly sensible to 
 all the delicate impressions produced by beauty, graceful 
 figures, pleasant faces and manners, cannot but have a 
 powerful attraction for- them. The play of the human 
 countenance, moreover, so strongly affects the organiza- 
 tion of sensitive beings, that even animals who do not live 
 habitually in the company of human beings will endeavor
 
 78 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 to find out its meaning. And all these objects of intense 
 and incessant curiosity are associated in a child's mind 
 with the ideas of caresses, games, affection, pleasure, 
 nourishment, i. e., all the pleasures, moral, intellectual, 
 and physical, that they have experienced. 
 
 One sees in children, especially towards the age of ten 
 months, sudden fancies for new faces which it is not 
 always easy to explain. A young relation of mine, eleven 
 months old, came once on a visit to my family. On first 
 seeing me, his father being present at the time, he called 
 me, "Papa, Papa." I held out my hand to him and he 
 seized hold of my fingers and dragged me along, saying: 
 " Papa, mene, mene." I at once understood that he wanted 
 me to help him to walk, and to his great delight I grati- 
 fied his wish. During the whole week that he remained 
 with us he continued to show a marked preference for me 
 over every one else. He would often leave his mother, 
 and his father still oftener, to come to me. Often at 
 meals, when he was on his mother's Lip at a considerable 
 distance from me, he would fix his eyes on me, say, "Papa, 
 papa," and then slip from his mother's lap and scramble 
 on all fours under the table to my feet, in the hopes that 
 I should take him up. Sudden affection of this sort 
 deserved to be examined into, and I believe that I found 
 the key to the mystery. On the day of his arrival, seeing 
 me smoking a cigar, he began to puff vigorously as if he 
 were blowing smoke through his lips. Now he goes 
 through this performance with his grandfather; the latter, 
 moreover, whom he also calls papa, has a long beard like 
 mine. It was no doubt these points of resemblance, and 
 possibly some others, such as likeness in manner, figure, 
 and voice, which caused me to become at once the depos- 
 itory of the affection before bestowed on his grandfather. 
 Now, however, he has learnt to like me for myself, or 
 rather, I should say, because of the games I have played 
 with him, and which he cannot enjoy without me. 
 
 Human beings are thus the objects of children's most 
 marked affections, as they seem also to be of tame animals. 
 It is seldom, however, that a child manifests its sentiments 
 with a sufficient degree of energy to merit the name of
 
 THE SENTIMENTS. 79 
 
 passion. Exalted love so-called passion is the charac- 
 teristic of the adult. It implies an element of reflection, 
 though not perhaps always reasonable, and a strong 
 impulse of the will, though not always regulated; and 
 these elements are wanting in young children. They have 
 no such things as passions, but, like animals, they have 
 attachments and habits. As regards sympathy, properly 
 so called, we must not look for anything more in them 
 than the germ of this sentiment. A young child has not 
 yet made sufficient trial of the good and evil of life to be 
 able to imagine them in his fellow-creatures. He does not 
 sufficiently understand the full signification of the facts 
 which he observes, he does not possess in a sufficiently 
 high degree the faculty of induction and judgment for his 
 sensibility to be affected by the external manifestations of 
 complex sentiments. He does not experience those moral 
 sufferings which, for the adult, are often far harder to 
 bear than any physical pain. He may suffer from the 
 deprivation of a beloved person or object, but he does not 
 say to himself that he suffers. Suffering is only connected 
 in his mind with tears and groans. 
 
 This period of life, so full of irreflective sympathy, is, in 
 the words of the fable, without pity, owing to the want of 
 experience and to feebleness of judgment. Every day we 
 see children, even as old as three or four years, innocently 
 doing violence, by their inopportune remarks and cruel 
 proposals, to the most sacred griefs of those who love 
 them. I remember that, when about five years old, hav- 
 ing lost a young sister, I was taken by my aunt to the bed 
 where the dead child was lying. The pallor and immo- 
 bility of her face, her half-closed eyes, and her distorted 
 mouth (she had died of croup) all made a deep impression 
 on me ; but at the same time, she reminded me so strongly 
 of a very pale-faced little boy, whom I had often noticed 
 on my way to school on account of his colorless complex- 
 ion, that I could not rest till I had found my mother to 
 tell her of this likeness. A child of four years old had 
 lost one of his favorite companions; he was taken to the 
 little boy's house, and the father took him on his lap and 
 held him there a few minutes while giving way to a fit of
 
 80 THE FIRST THKEE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 weeping. The child understood nothing of all this grief ; 
 he got down as quickly as he could, disported himself a 
 little while about the room, and then suddenly going back 
 to the poor father, exclaimed: "Now that Peter is dead, 
 you will give me his horse and his drum, won't you?" 
 
 Sometimes, however, we see exceptions to this rule. T 
 know a little child, not yet three, who is a striking 
 example of what has been aptly called the "memory of the 
 heart." His grandfather and father, whom he was veiy 
 fond of, are both dead. The grandfather has been dead 
 a year, and the father five months. Not a day passes that 
 he does not speak of them. Whenever he is taken to his 
 grandmother's house, he seats himself on his grandfather's 
 arm-chair, asks to have the curtain lifted up from grand- 
 papa's picture, and looks at it with an expression of real 
 emotion. At home he asks every day for the photograph 
 of his father; he kisses it and makes his sister and his 
 elder brother do the same. He understands why his 
 mother is sad, and says to her, "You are sad because 
 father is not here." If he sees her crying, he kisses her 
 and says, "Don't cry; I will go and fetch papa; I will 
 make him come back; I have got the key of Paradise." 
 
 Let me mention one or two more facts to show how 
 very unequally different kinds of sympathy may be de- 
 veloped in the same child. The following facts were 
 furnished me by a friend: "Since I have been under 
 hydropathic treatment it has twice happened that the 
 child (sixteen months old) has been present at the opera- 
 tions. . . . Each time, when I began to douche my- 
 self, he burst into tears, probably, I suppose, because he 
 remembered what a disagreeable sensation he feels himself 
 when he is put into a bath. The first time, 1 was obliged 
 to leave off the performance and put him out of the room 
 away from this painful sight. The second time, I let him 
 remain, but he cried the whole time. He fetched my clothes 
 from the chair, and held up my shirt for me to put on. 
 This sympathetic sensibility touched me deeply." 
 
 "The little fellow is perfectly miserable if either his mother 
 or I say to him, 'I am angry, baby.' If any one scolds 
 him, it is the displeased expression of face that causes him
 
 THE SENTIMENTS. 81 
 
 the most distress and sets him off crying. If the scolding 
 is not of a very decided nature, one sees him hesitate, his 
 mouth is uncertain whether to laugh or cry, and he finally 
 decides according to the dominant expression. If he cries 
 a great deal at being scolded, his mother can always com- 
 fort him by saying, 'Mother not cross now; be mother's 
 little darling,' and then he is instantly consoled and holds 
 up his face to be kissed." 
 
 But the reverse of the medal is always there also. This 
 same child at the same age, and even a year later, was the 
 terror of all cats. During a visit that he paid at my 
 house, I went one day suddenly into a room where he had 
 been left alone with a little kitten. On seeing me he 
 cried out, "I'm not hurting the kitten." This was true at 
 the moment t which he spoke, for I found the little 
 creature squatting under a cupboard, frightened to death.
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 INTELLECTUAL TENDENCIES. 
 
 A CHILD'S curiosity, like its intelligence, is at the outset 
 entirely egotistic and sensual, but it is gradually and in- 
 stinctively elevated by a kind of scientific disinterested- 
 ness. It is in the first instance a vivid excitation of the 
 sensibility, and, by repercussion, of the activity, in the 
 presence or expectation of new and vivid sensations. 
 
 Fenelon has given a psychological, if not an exactly 
 physiological description, of this interesting organ of the 
 infant mind. "The substance of their brains is soft, but 
 it hardens day by day. As for their minds, they know 
 nothing, all is new to them; owing to the softness of the 
 brain, impressions are easily traced on it, and the novelty 
 of everything causes them to be easily excited to admira- 
 tion and curiosity. This moisture and softness of the 
 brain, combined with excessive heat, produce in it easy and 
 constant movement; hence arises the restlessness of 
 children, and their inability to keep their minds fixed on 
 one object, any more than their bodies in one place." 
 Fenelon says elsewhere: "The curiosity of children is a 
 natural tendency which goes in the van of instruction." 
 Let us say rather, "in the van of pleasure," and the defini- 
 tion will be more exact. 
 
 At two months a child will turn its eyes and ears and 
 stretch out its hands and arms towards the objects which 
 strike its senses. At three months it seizes the objects 
 brought within its reach and shakes them about to amuse 
 itself; it knows that its hands are the. instruments by 
 
 88
 
 INTELLECTUAL TENDENCIES. 83 
 
 means of which it can procure itself impressions and pro- 
 duce movements, and it exercises them in touching and in 
 bringing near to its eyes, and better still its mouth, as 
 many objects as it can. When it is undressed it rubs its 
 hands all over its little body, down its stomach, along its 
 legs and feet ; and it is astonished to feel so many different 
 things which are all parts of itself. When it is seated on 
 its nurse's lap or on a cushion in the middle of the room, 
 one of its favorite occupations is to take its foot in both 
 hands and to pull it up to its mouth. The mouth is the 
 central point of all its young experience; it is here that 
 every fresh bit of knowledge is brought to be measured 
 and determined. Very often too, whether from the need 
 of testing everything by the taste, or from the desire to 
 soothe the smarting of its teeth or gums, and to arrive at 
 the remedy by what seems the shortest road, children will 
 try to take hold of distant objects with their mouths. 
 
 Then soon comes the stage at which everything within 
 reach becomes the subject of continual study and desire, 
 and the child's curiosity flits from one thing to another 
 and backwards and forwards to the same things over and 
 over again, changing as rapidly as does the pleasure which 
 he feels in holding, moving, looking at, and listening to 
 different things. Woe henceforth to you parents who have 
 not kept your children in check, but have made yourselves 
 the ready slaves to their caprices. By a graceful wave of 
 the baby hand, or by resolute and imperious screams, they 
 will now insist on your bringing or giving them whatever 
 strikes their fancy; your watch, your eye-glass, your arm- 
 chair, a picture, a porcelain vase, a lamp, possibly even a 
 gas-burner in the street; "everything," as Bousseau says, 
 "including the moon." 
 
 Towards the age of a year, when a child begins to be 
 able to walk, its sphere of personal investigations becomes 
 rapidly enlarged, and the additional faculty of speech sup- 
 plies its curiosities and wishes with the means of endless 
 variety, and of enforcing attention. A hundred times an 
 hour, provided there is some one to listen to him, his little 
 voice will be heard, expressing some wish or asking some 
 question. All the observations which he formerly made
 
 84 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 with his eyes, are now made with his hands and mouth ; 
 he darts about hither and thither; he crawls or toddles 
 from one thing to another; he opens things, breaks them, 
 knocks them about, mixes them together. He pours his 
 broth into his grandfather's watch, puts the gold fish into 
 the doll's bed, and the doll into the water of the fish-globe; 
 in short, he commits the whole series of incongruities 
 which artists of late have been ingeniously striving to 
 reproduce; and all this is done, not so much from a desire 
 to know what the things are and what can be done with 
 them, as from the need of fresh sensations. 
 
 A little later, these mischievous tendencies become still 
 more numerous. The child seems to be everywhere at 
 once in the kitchen, in the garden, in the drawing-room, 
 with eyes and ears wide awake, hearing and seeing every- 
 thing without seeming to do so, asking endless questions, 
 often very embarrassing ones, and storing up in his mem- 
 ory all the most striking details, to be brought out suddenly 
 for the entertainment of visitors. II This craving of young 
 children for information is an emotional and intellectual 
 absorbing power, as dominant as the appetite of nutrition, 
 and equally needing to be watched over and regulated.) I 
 
 We should strangely exaggerate the hereditary influence 
 of scientific tendencies in man, if we transferred it from 
 the social group to the individual: all that belongs to the 
 individual is a greater aptitude at perceiving and at com- 
 bining tiis perceptions so as to form systematic and co- 
 ordinated conceptions ; but the instinct for abstract truth, 
 the necessity of finding out the truth for its own sake, is 
 not transmitted, it must be inculcated. If then there are 
 no questions asked by children to which a true answer 
 should not be given, we may comfort ourselves with the 
 thought that little children are not very critical, and that 
 a very vague answer, if necessary, will satisfy them. For 
 instance, a little girl asked her mother why there was 
 water in the river. Her mother answered, "Because there 
 must be water somewhere but not everywhere." Another 
 child asked why beans grew in the earth. Her mother 
 answered, "Do you not grow everyday? and kittens, don't 
 they grow? All animals get bigger, and little ones become
 
 INTELLECTUAL TENDENCIES. 85 
 
 great ones; and the plants do just the same." Another 
 child asked why water was not wine. His father asked 
 him in answer, "Is a dog a cat? Wine is wine, and water 
 is water." All these answers are not partly true, they are 
 absolutely true, and quite sufficient -for children of this 
 age. 
 
 Children do not trouble themselves about the invisible ; 
 they feel, indeed, an instinctive repulsion for what is mys- 
 terious. It may be said of them, as Spencer has well said 
 of primitive man: "He accepts what he sees, as animals 
 do ; he adapts himself spontaneously to the world which 
 surrounds him; astonishment is beyond him." If, then, 
 it is not possible to attribute the birth of religions to those 
 two tendencies said to be innate in man, automorphism, 
 which causes him to place a will similar to his own behind 
 natural phenomena, and wonder, which seizes him in the 
 presence of certain of these phenomena and impels him 
 to invent mysterious and supernatural explanations for 
 them, we may boldly assert that the sense of religion 
 exists no more in the intelligence of a little child, than 
 does the supernatural in nature. 
 
 Children, I take it, occupy their minds very little with 
 those conceptions of the invisible, of the infinite, and of 
 finality, which are disputed about in philosophic circles. 
 Their reverence and their love attaches itself to the human 
 beings who are kind to them, but to nothing which is in- 
 visible or distinct from their species. Their instinct of 
 finality is wholly objective and utilitarian. They ask what 
 such a thing is called, in order to know in what it is either 
 good or bad ; and also but this chiefly because they have 
 been taught to ask it where it comes from, who has made 
 it thus, who has put it there; i. e., what is there to like or 
 fear about any particular thing? There is nothing meta- 
 physical in all this ; they are only inquiries founded on 
 very concrete analogies and experiences. The mystery of 
 their own existence and of the existence of the world does 
 not interest or preoccupy young children, unless they have 
 had their attention directed to these subjects; and, in our 
 opinion, parents are very much mistaken in thinking it 
 their duty to instruct their little ones in such things,
 
 86 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHllDHOOD, 
 
 which have no real interest for them as who made them, 
 who created the world, what is the soul, what is its pres- 
 ent and future destiny, and so forth. 
 
 So great, moreover, is the confidence and credulity of 
 children, that they will accept, not always though with- 
 out a little kicking, almost any beliefs that you try to im- 
 pose on them. If you want to persuade your child that he 
 was born under a cabbage, that Hop-o'-my-Thumb had 
 seven-leagued boots, that the sky is peopled with angels, 
 that under the earth there are howling demons, that gar- 
 rets and chimneys are full of ghosts, you have only to look 
 as if you believed all this seriously yourself, and they will 
 be convinced at once. 
 
 II. 
 
 VERACITY. 
 
 Montaigne has said that the falsehood and stubbornness 
 of a child grows with its growth; and with regard to the 
 first of these faults, of which I shall treat in this chapter, 
 he has spoken very truly. Like all hereditary vices, the 
 habit of lying is developed more or less in each child, ac- 
 cording as internal or external circumstances, education, 
 example, the influence of such and such other tendencies 
 or habits favor or counteract its growth. As a matter of 
 fact, it is an absolutely subordinate vice; and we must 
 search out its primary source and its accidental deriva- 
 tions if we wish to apply a timely and efficacious remedy 
 to the evil. 
 
 A child's truthfulness is in proportion to its credulity, 
 although there is no direct relationship between these two 
 qualities. Nevertheless, at a very early age the illusions 
 from which no one of its senses is exempt, begin to startle 
 its early confidence, though without at once shattering it. 
 There is no doubt that many things astonish children on 
 account of the distinction they are obliged to make between 
 them and other things which resemble them. I have seen 
 a child of five months old quite perplexed and bewildered 
 at discovering that what she had taken for one and the
 
 VERACITY, 8f 
 
 same cat was two cats of the same color. Very young 
 children are frequently surprised and irritated by mistakes 
 which they have fallen into. But they are much more 
 annoyed and irritated by deceptions practiced on them by 
 others. 
 
 If you give a child of seven or eight months a piece of 
 bread instead of a cake which he had seen and coveted, 
 he will thrust aside the mocking gift with a gesture of 
 disgust; and the twitchings of his mouth, his tearful 
 eyes, and puckered forehead threaten an imminent out- 
 burst. Who that has had to do with children is not 
 familiar with the terrible scenes that occur when a change 
 of nurses, or the necessity of weaning the child, obliges 
 those around it to resort to all sorts of little tricks and 
 manoauvres? Happy the parents who can flatter them- 
 selves that neither they nor any of their household have 
 ever deceived a child unnecessarily, and without legitimate 
 cause. 
 
 Thus, then, we see that children from twelve to fifteen 
 months old have already discovered that all that grown-up 
 people do or say is not always truth. Very soon, more- 
 over, if the phenomenon of falsehood has not already 
 come under their notice, the cunning which is innate in 
 every animal organization will lead them to it by the 
 practice of useful dissimulations. The story of the piece 
 of sugar stolen by the young Tiedemann or the young 
 Darwin, is the story of all children at the same age. 1 
 They hide themselves instinctively to do what they know 
 is forbidden, as if in play, just as they will say what is 
 not the case by way of fun. A child of two years who 
 says to me, " I have just seen a butterfly as large as a cat, 
 as large as the house," is telling for fun what he knows to 
 be a falsehood. It is the same, too, when he crouches 
 behind a door saying, " Victor isn't here." But of these 
 two untruths the one is spontaneous, the other is imitated; 
 the playful imagination of children, and their tendency to 
 imitate the games of others, are two sorts of inducements 
 
 1 See my brochure: Thierri Tiedemann et la Science del' Enfant, 
 etc., p. 36.
 
 88 THE FIBST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 to them to counterfeit the truth. But in whatever way 
 they do it, whether by gesture, mien, or speech, it is more 
 for their own edification than for that of others. They 
 enjoy the surprise or the fright which they think they 
 have caused their nurse by suddenly popping their head 
 out from behind their table-napkin, or by coming out of 
 a hiding-place where they thought themselves invisible. 
 " How I frightened you ! " said a little girl of twenty 
 months to her uncle, who had pretended to be frightened 
 at hearing her imitate the barking of a dog behind the 
 door. We see also from example that the gratification of 
 the feeling of amour-propre has something to do with this 
 tendency of deceiving for fun. 
 
 Children will also turn a thing into a joke in the same 
 sort of way, to avoid being scolded, or to appear as if 
 they did not deserve a scolding. " Naughty, naughty," 
 said a little child of two and a half to its mother who was 
 putting it into a bath against its wiU. " What! " said the 
 mother, " is that how you speak to me? " " No, no, it's 
 not you; it's the water that's naughty," was the prompt 
 reply. In this case the falsehood, though suggested by 
 the mother's question, had more the nature of spontaneity 
 than imitation. 
 
 All egotistical feelings are conducive to lying. A child 
 who has just had some good thing to eat, will say that he 
 has not had it, or that he has had very little, in order 
 that he may have some more given him. Another child 
 has burnt his mouth, say, in drinking his broth, and 
 begins to cry. His nurse tries to comfort him, saying, 
 " Poor baby, it hurts very much, doesn't it," etc., etc. 
 All these words of comfort the child repels with move- 
 ments of the arms and head, accompanied by unintellig- 
 ible sounds, till at last it says more distinctly, " No, no; 
 not hurt." 
 
 In this case the imagination, over-excited by pain and 
 anger, suggests to the child the idea of denying the reality, 
 because he does not wish to believe it. A little girl, three 
 years old, seeing her mother fondling her brother for 
 several minutes without taking any notice of her, said all 
 of a sudden: "You don't know, mamma, how naughty
 
 VERACITY. 89 
 
 i 
 
 Henry has been to the parrot." This was a falsehood 
 suggested by jealousy. 
 
 Laziness will also lead children to tell untruths. A 
 child is told to go and look for a stool in the next room ; 
 he returns without having looked for it, and says it is 
 not there. Or he is given a book to take to his uncle 
 who is sitting out in the garden. He reluctantly leaves 
 his playthings, hesitates before starting, walks as slowly 
 as he can, looking around several times to see that 
 no one is looking at him, and when out of sight, he 
 drops the book into a bed of flowers, and runs back to 
 his toys, as if he had executed the commission. Lazi- 
 ness, disobedience, and hypocrisy are all combined in 
 this action. 
 
 The fear of being scolded, or punished, or of being 
 deprived of an unexpected treat, will also often lead a 
 child into falsehood; but this is generally at an older 
 age after they are three or four years old. Very often, 
 moreover, it is our manner of trying to elicit the truth 
 which leads to defiance, dissimulation, and falsehood. 
 Did you do that? Who has done this? Questions like 
 these, asked in a threatening voice and with severe 
 looks, provoke an answer which may save from punish- 
 ment, or, at any rate, may put it off; and so the child 
 tells a lie. 
 
 Truthfulness is so essential a virtue, and the habit of 
 lying is so dangerous, and one which in so many ways 
 affects all the details of human life, that we cannot be too 
 much on our guard against the first symptoms of prevari- 
 cation. It is a matter in which preservatives are more 
 valuable than correctives. It is a common -place truth, 
 but one too much forgotten in actual practice, that with 
 justice and kindness, we can make almost anything we 
 like of children. They will be frank and open, if they 
 are encouraged to be confiding; they will not seek to 
 make excuses for their faults, if they know that it grieves 
 their parents, and that this will be the worst conse- 
 quence of their naughtiness. And lastly, we should be 
 specially careful never to scold them for unintentional 
 faults.
 
 90 THE fflBST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD, 
 
 m. 
 
 IMITATION. 
 
 During the first months of life, the imitative tendency 
 is as little developed as the power of observation ; it ex- 
 hibits itself, however, in various little efforts. Darwin 
 thinks that he noticed it in his son at four months old, 
 when the child appeared to imitate certain sounds; but 
 he only determined it positively at the age of six months. 
 Tiedemann has noted the following phenomenon in his 
 son at four months, and he thinks it a clear indication of 
 association of ideas: " If he sees any one drinking, he 
 makes a movement with his mouth as if he were tasting 
 something." In this and analogous actions must we 
 not recognize, besides the instinct of finality which makes 
 the child understand the object of buccal movements, 
 the result of that instinctive sympathy of movement 
 which, in beings provided with the same organization, 
 makes like call forth like, and, given the impulsive char- 
 acter of childhood, results naturally in imitation? 
 
 M. Egger, 1 while agreeing that the faculty of imitation 
 is very precocious in children, does not note it with cer- 
 tainty until the age of nine months, and then in the fol- 
 lowing actions: 1. Alternately hiding and showing them- 
 selves, as a game. 2. Throwing a ball, after having seen 
 some one else throw one. 8. Trying to blow out a candle. 
 4. Trying to sneeze in imitation of some one else. 5. 
 Trying to strike the keys of a piano. M. Egger does not 
 notice at the same period " any conscious effort at imitat- 
 ing sounds." He considers, moreover, that the develop- 
 ment, or rather the appearance of this faculty of imita- 
 tion, is simultaneous with the first awakening of intelli- 
 gence. For my part, admitting as I do the co-existence in 
 children, at a very early age, of automatic movements and 
 conscious and intelligent movements, I believe that the 
 imitative function is also very early connected with these 
 two sorts of movements. 
 
 1 Le Developpemenl de I' Intelligence et du Langage chez les Enfanls, 
 pp. 10, etc.
 
 IMITATION. 91 
 
 Owing to the nervous connection of the auditory and 
 phonetic apparatus, young birds attempt mechanically to 
 produce the notes they hear sung by adult birds ; talking 
 birds try mechanically to produce the words and the 
 sounds which strike on their ears; and mechanically also, 
 as it seems to me, children, as soon as the second month, 
 make attempts at sounds, in order to answer people speak- 
 ing to them, or to imitate the sounds of the piano. Like- 
 wise at the age of three months, having learnt mechanically 
 to follow the direction of a look or a movement, they 
 will fix their eyes on objects which they see other people 
 looking at, turning their head also sometimes where they 
 see other persons turn theirs, and all this, though in a very 
 limited measure, with the intention of imitating. The 
 same applies to all young animals. 
 
 As the simultaneous development of the faculty of ob- 
 servation and of the play of the organs proceeds, the sphere 
 of children's imitations is proportionately enlarged: for in- 
 stance, their arms at first attempted a variety of instinctive 
 movements towards objects which attracted their atten- 
 tion or excited their desires; the desire to imitate analo- 
 gous gestures, which he sees others make with success, 
 excites him to renew his efforts, and indicates to him the 
 way to succeed in his turn : at the age of four months he 
 stretches out his arms with more assurance to the people 
 around him; he is more successful in smiling, he even at- 
 tempts to laugh and all this improvement is due to the 
 attempts at imitation which have helped and strengthened 
 the first spontaneous efforts. At six months children re- 
 spond with little starts and jumps to any attempt to amuse 
 them ; they stroke their mother's face with their little 
 hands, they babble inarticulate expressions of admiration 
 at any object which they are made to contemplate. A lit- 
 tle later still, their m m m and p p p, more or less spon- 
 taneous, becomes the mamma mamma, and papa papa, 
 which have been repeated to them a hundred times a day. 
 And finally their first efforts at walking, partly due to their 
 own initiative, and partly to the guidance and help of 
 n.urs,es, and mothers, will be brought gradually to perfect
 
 92 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 tion through their anxiety to imitate the grown-up people 
 whose walking they watch so attentively. 
 
 The older a child grows, the more he will be helped by 
 example in guiding the operations of his senses, as well as 
 those of his moral and intellectual faculties. For instance, 
 as has been said above, "We feel the desire to eat arising, 
 when we see others eating," and the practical lesson to be 
 learnt from this is, not to give the stimulus of example to 
 the instinct of greediness innate in children. The same 
 may be said of all actions which have more or less connec- 
 tion with sympathy, sociability, or with anti-social tenden- 
 cies. A little girl only fifteen months old had already be- 
 gun to imitate her father's frowns and irritable ways and 
 angry voice; and very soon after she learnt to use his 
 expressions of anger and impatience. When three years 
 old, this same little girl gravely said to a visitor at the 
 house with whom she had begun to argue quite in her 
 father's style: "Do be quiet, will you, you never let me 
 finish my sentences! " Thus we see that the contagious 
 effect of example operates very early on the habits and 
 morals of children. They copy everything, evil as well 
 as good, and are very quick to adopt the opinions and 
 ways of acting of their elders. We must not, however, be 
 in too great a hurry to judge them from their passing es- 
 timate of particular actions, or from their imitation of them, 
 which is purely accidental. It is not so much habits as 
 tendencies to habits which they exhibit, and these are 
 often lost as soon as learnt, as well as the manners or lan- 
 guage which they have acquired in the same fashion. 
 Moreover, there is in every child a distinct individuality, 
 the result of heredity and habits, which can always be dis- 
 covered if we will but look for it, underneath all its 
 plagiarisms. 
 
 The spontaneity natural to early infancy is sometimes 
 the means of saving children from the inconvenient results 
 of their extreme organic and intellectual plasticity. But 
 it would be dangerous to count too much on this spon- 
 taneity. The respect due to the individuality of a human 
 being makes it incumbent on us to be very careful as to 
 the examples a child sees around him, especially from the
 
 SPONTANEITY. 93 
 
 moral point of view. The ideal in education would be, 
 to allow each child scope for his own particular bent, while 
 at the same time setting our example before him. Locke 
 understood the necessity of respecting the natural bias in 
 each child, and could not endure the artificial product 
 which is the invariable result of constraint and affectation. 
 He specially deplores this fault in what concerns manners 
 and behavior in society. "Affectation," he says, "is a 
 clumsy and forced imitation of what should be easy and 
 natural, and is devoid of the charm which always accom- 
 panies what is really natural, because, of the opposition 
 which it causes between the outward action and the inward 
 motions of the spirit. . . ." Away with politeness and 
 agreeable manners if they endanger the frankness and 
 sincerity of the child. "Mamma," said a child of four 
 years old, "are you not going to teh 1 Madame X to go away? 
 She has been here a long time." I greatly prefer, even 
 in a child of four years old, this frank and innocent 
 rudeness, to formulas of politeness repeated by rote but 
 not felt. 
 
 There is another reason, well worth our consideration, 
 which should deter us from stifling a child's natural initia- 
 tive by the undue influence of our example and activity. 
 We see in animals a sort of individuality of action which 
 does not belong to man; the development of their powers 
 and skill affords them the greatest possible amount of 
 enjoyment when they are young, and later on inspires 
 them with a kind of proud confidence. And the same 
 thing may be observed in little children. Tiedemann says 
 of his son at fifteen months old, and the observation might 
 have been made earlier, "When he has done something 
 of his own accord, given a certain impetus to one of his 
 toys, for instance, he shows evident delight, and takes 
 pleasure in reiterating the action." And he goes on to 
 remark with equal truth: "Children in general like to do 
 by themselves what they have hitherto been obliged to let 
 others do for them. They like to feed themselves with 
 their own hands, to wash and dress themselves, etc., etc. 
 This ^iberty of action, even in imitated actions, is one of 5 
 the conditions of a child's happiness; besides that, it has *;
 
 94 THE FIRST THREE YEARS .OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 the effect of exercising and developing all its faculties. 
 Example is the first tutor, and Liberty the second in the 
 order of evolution ; but the second is the better one, for it 
 has Inclination for its assistant." I 
 
 IV. 
 
 CREDULITY. 
 
 The instinct of credulity is at first nothing else than the 
 instinct of belief. It is impossible for us to have a sensa- 
 tion, or a perception, or, in fact, a clear idea of any sort 
 without referring it at first to some object which is present, 
 and later on to something which has been or might be 
 present in short, to some real or tangible cause. This 
 is why, in the case of children or young animals without 
 discernment, and, up to a certain point, in the half -civil- 
 ized adults whom we call savages, belief, or, if we prefer 
 it, credulity, is confounded with the desire to see such and 
 such objects either present to the sight or fixed in the 
 memory, and to see them with such and such attributes, 
 agreeable or disagreeable. The child begins with a lively 
 faith in the truth of appearances ; but day by day he goes 
 through experiences which teach him to mistrust, not ap- 
 pearances in general, but certain sorts of appearances. In 
 this respect his faculty of discrimination and generaliza- 
 tion makes marked progress during the important period 
 from the third to the sixth month. 
 
 A little child of seven months who is on a visit to me, 
 is seated on the table before me as I am writing. I place 
 a brush within his reach with the bristles turned towards 
 him : he presses both his hands upon it, but soon lifts them 
 up again very slowly and looking very grave. His atten- 
 tion is then attracted in another direction. Some min- 
 utes after. I try the experiment over again, and this time 
 I notice a little more rapidity in the child's recoiling move- 
 ments. I repeat it five times more at intervals, and vary- 
 ing the circumstances ; but I do not remark any new facts. 
 A quarter of an hour having passed after the seventh ex- 
 periment, I again place Georgie in a position to tqu,ch the
 
 CEEDULITY. 95 
 
 brush. This time he draws back quickly at first sight, 
 and without trying to touch it. Having then amused him 
 and distracted his attention for a short space of time, I 
 repeated the experiment once more for the last time. The 
 child looked fixedly at the brush without stirring, then, 
 after a few minutes of hesitation or reflection, he threw 
 himself back and kissed his grandmother. 
 
 Children make experiments of this kind for themselves 
 every day ; and though they generalize them very little, they 
 help them, by dint of repetition, and thanks to analogy 
 and association of ideas, to know how to act advanta- 
 geously with regard to new objects which come before them. 
 But the mistakes which they make so frequently they do 
 not realize as such ; they regard them merely as isolated 
 experiences ; and thus in most cases the little creatures, 
 irreflective rather than inexperienced, judge things from 
 their appearance. 
 
 A fortiori then will children trust blindly in the words 
 of others. "The sounds whih a child has become ac- 
 customed to recognize and to attach to certain objects 
 while learning to speak, will naturally awaken in him the 
 thought of the same objects when heard again: until these 
 associations have been disturbed by the experience of error 
 and falsehood, they reproduce themselves naturally and 
 infallibly; the same words recall always the same ideas. 
 If every time that one says to a child, 'I have a cake for 
 you,' one really gives him a cake, it is impossible but that 
 the same words, spoken another time, should not awaken 
 in him the same idea and expectation ; but if once, instead 
 of the promised cake, he is given a bit of wood, he finds 
 himself suddenly confronted with a falsehood that nothing 
 could have made him foresee, and he begins to cry. We 
 can plainly see that the instinct of veracity is not needed 
 to explain these facts." I am of the same opinion as M. 
 Janet: it is not necessary to have recourse, as Reid has 
 done, to the instinct of truth, to explain the natural be- 
 lief of human beings in the testimony of other human 
 beings. This fact has its principle in tiie natural belief 
 of a child in the sense expressed by words, that is, in the 
 objectivity of the ideas that words express. Even at the
 
 96 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 age of two or three, when the child has made experience 
 of error and falsehood, he will tell untruths himself, with- 
 out ceasing to believe in the veracity of others. He only 
 mistrusts certain people, and those never entirely. Un- 
 truthful and credulous, these are two qualities which go 
 very frequently together in childhood, and also, I think, 
 in adult life ; it is easier to tell lies than to believe that 
 others are doing so. 
 
 Children, then, accept unhesitatingly as true all the 
 ideas which pass through their brains, and especially those 
 which gain confirmation and precision from the words or 
 looks of grown-up persons. The tales of the latter, what- 
 ever they may be, instantly become the child's creeds. 
 This is what constitutes the charm, and also, in my mind, 
 the danger, of all the improbable stories which are related 
 to children, before even they thoroughly understand the 
 language in which they are told. 
 
 At the age of twenty months a child is not keen to hear 
 stories and fables, which he would not understand; but he 
 delights in recounting his own little experiences. A little 
 girl of this age, whenever her mother took her out with 
 her, used to relate to her father in the evening all that she 
 and her mother had seen and done: "We went out under 
 the large trees of the Luxembourg; the dog was with us; 
 he kept running round the perambulator of a little girl, 
 and ever now and then he came up and licked her hands 
 and face. But the dog was very naughty, he ate the little 
 girl's cake. Mamma scolded the dog well, and drove him 
 away with her blue umbrella, which made Mary laugh 
 just when she was beginning to cry. Then a little boy 
 named Joseph came and sat on a bench by Mary. He 
 was bigger than little Mary, but he was very polite, and 
 he is very fond of the little girl. He let her take his bal- 
 loon and he did not hurt her doll; then he and Mary 
 jumped about together, but the little boy tumbled down 
 and made a bump on his forehead. He cried very much, 
 and the little girl cried too because he was hurt. And 
 then we walked a long, long way to the furthest bench 
 with Madame X., who loves baby very much. Madame 
 X. said to baby: 'When are you coming to see me?
 
 CREDULITY. 97 
 
 There are some beautiful apricots for you in the garden, 
 and the birds in the aviary are always very pretty and very 
 happy: they often ask where little Mstry is, saying, Coui, 
 com, coui,' etc., etc." And during this recital, often inter- 
 rupted by the kisses and pettings of her mother, or by 
 bursts of laughter and short remarks from her father, the 
 little girl, all eyes and ears, enacted all the various emo- 
 tions which the events called forth, gesticulating with 
 arms, feet, and head, and mimicking the cries of the ani- 
 mals she was talking about. She would become half lost 
 in the narrative, or rather in dramatizing it; and the habit 
 of recounting these true stories prepared her for following 
 the fictitious ones which her mother invented for her, suit- 
 ing them gradually to the progressive development of her 
 intelligence. When two years old, she could not exist 
 without these exciting little tales; and she used to say 
 several times a day to her mother, "Mamma, tale about 
 dood ittle dal ; mamma, tale about ittle dal. " 
 
 These little dramas and comedies, of which children are 
 so fond, are taken by them quite seriously, even when they 
 get to the age of three. When once they know them by 
 heart (a particularly happy expression in their case!), if 
 you change a single word, the charm is gone, and the 
 attention with it. A child who went on a visit to some 
 relations when only two-and-a-half years old, was partic- 
 ularly fascinated by the tales which his youngest aunt 
 used to tell him. He only liked to hear them from her, 
 and he wanted them, over and over again every day. Often 
 after late dinner, if he did not fall asleep in the middle of 
 dessert, he would settle himself comfortably on her lap, 
 leaning his head on her shoulder, and remain perfectly 
 still waiting for her to begin. And then nothing could 
 make him stir; no noise or interruption would disturb his 
 immovable attention. But we could tell by the expression 
 of his face, by his sudden changes of color, and by the 
 movements of his eyes and the twitchings of his lips, what 
 a series of profound emotions was successively agitating 
 his little mind. 
 
 One evening his aunts were out, and he was left alone 
 with the eldest of his cousins, a young man. He soon 
 8
 
 98 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 began to find himself bored. His cousin proposed to tell 
 him the story which he liked best, the one about a young 
 bird, which, having left its nest, although its mother had 
 forbidden it to do so, flew to the top of a chimney, fell 
 down the flue into the fire, and died a victim to his diso- 
 bedience. 
 
 The narrator thought it necessary to embellish the tale 
 from his own imagination. "That's not right," said the 
 child at the first change which was made, "the mother 
 said this and did that. " His cousin not remembering the 
 story word for word, was obliged to have recourse to in- 
 vention to fill up gaps. But the child could not stand it. 
 He slid down from his cousin's knees, and with tears in 
 his eyes, and indignant gestures, exclaimed, "It's not true! 
 The little bird said, Coui, coui, coui, coui, before he fell into 
 the fire, to make his mother hear; but the mother did not 
 hear him, and he burnt his wings, his claws, and his 
 beak, and he died, poor little bird." And the child ran 
 away, crying as if he had been beaten. He had been 
 worse than beaten, he had been deceived, or at least he 
 thought so ; his story had been spoiled by being altered. 
 So seriously do children for a long time take fiction for 
 reality.
 
 CHAPTEE VH. 
 
 THE WILL. 
 
 I KNOW not if it be very daring to suppose that all the 
 movements produced during uterine life are not absolutely 
 unconscious, and that the child may have some sort of 
 idea of a few of them at the moment they are going to be 
 produced. For instance, we may ask ourselves if it has 
 in no measure preserved the recollection of certain sensa- 
 tions of temperature, of pressure, of contact, of taste, and 
 also of movements more or less denned, such as contor- 
 tions, tremblings, contractions of the muscles of the 
 mouth, which the organism will have made in response to 
 these different sensations. If it were so, the conscious- 
 ness which, according to our hypothesis, would be either 
 concomitant with or consecutive to these instinctive move- 
 ments and the sensations which determined them, would 
 tend to forestall the action, or it might diverge into two 
 separate actions, bearing successively on the sensations 
 and on the movements in question. This is how it would 
 be, a sensation would be strong enough to be felt, but not 
 strong enough to produce instantaneously the correspond- 
 ing movements ; this hesitation of the instinct of move- 
 ment in following the shock of the sensation, perhaps a 
 pause produced by two crossing sensations, would give 
 the child time to interpose a glimmer of consciousness 
 between the sensation and the action ; and this would be a 
 first slight beginning of spontaneity. Is it at any rate 
 altogether exaggerated to suppose that during the long 
 travail of birth, composed of such varied actions and inter- 
 
 99
 
 100 THE FIKST THREE YEAKS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 hides, the child, however little conscious of some of the 
 efforts which it makes itself, and of the sensations of dif- 
 ferent degrees of intensity which cause it to make them, is 
 nevertheless capable of accidentally producing some of 
 these movements with a vague desire of doing so? It is 
 this intervention of consciousness and desire (or of per- 
 sonal spontaneity in the production of movements fatally 
 determined), if it does exist before and during birth, that 
 we must look upon as the germ of voluntary activity. 
 
 But without troubling ourselves further as to this meta- 
 physical hypothesis, let us try to interpret scientifically 
 some few of the facts observed at a later date. That 
 which distinguishes voluntary movements and actions from 
 involuntary ones, is, that in the former there exists a 
 desire either to renew or to get rid of certain sensations, 
 and besides, some idea of the movements necessary to 
 produce this result; in other words, some idea of the 
 muscular sensations corresponding to these movements. 
 The desire may be more or less vivid, the idea of the 
 movements more or less distinct, and by so much is the 
 intervention of the will greater or less. It is generally 
 very slight during the first period of existence. Whether 
 the great nerve centres, motor and other, be incomplete at 
 birth, whether instinct makes easy to the child a 'large 
 number of the movements which it seems to learn, the 
 volitions, that is to say, consciousness, effort, and de- 
 sire, play very little part in those movements which are 
 predetermined by organization and heredity. Thus the 
 fingers of a child a few days old close too easily on any 
 object placed in contact with its palm 'for it to be very 
 early stimulated to produce similar movements voluntarily. 
 In like manner it may be maintained that the progress 
 made in the act of suction during the first days has gone 
 on with as little of consciousness and desire as possible, 
 that this progress is due to a development of forces and to 
 exercise, which are purely mechanical; but can the same 
 be said Apropos of the remark made by Tiedemann on his 
 sixteen-days-old child: "If put in a position to suck, or 
 if he felt a soft hand on his face, he left off crying, and 
 felt about for the breast." There appears to be something
 
 THE WILL. 101 
 
 more here than association of ideas. There seems to be a 
 recollection of and a desire for the action of sucking, and 
 perhaps for the movements of suction. M. Preyer only 
 recognizes the first appearance of volition in a child in its 
 holding its head upright, and this it does not do till the 
 end of fourteen weeks. We may, however, notice other 
 conscious efforts towards the same period. When a 
 month and five days old, Tiedemann's child "distinguished 
 by himself objects outside him, showing the first effort to 
 seize something by extending his hands and bending his 
 whole body." 
 
 The same movements, more or less conscious, are to be 
 remarked in cats and dogs before the end of the first week. 
 The little Tiedemann, however, seems to me much too pre- 
 cocious. The following observation has much more veri- 
 similitude. When a month and twenty-seven days old, 
 the same child already showed that he realized his own 
 activity; his gestures of pleasure indicated this, as well as 
 his fits of anger and violence in pushing away disagree- 
 able things. The remark made at the same period by 
 Tiedemann, on the imperative intention of tears, is con- 
 firmed by similar observations of Charles Darwin's. At 
 the age of eleven weeks, in the case of one of his children, 
 a little sooner in another, the nature of their crying 
 changed, "according to whether it was produced by hunger 
 or suffering." This means of communication appeared to 
 be very early placed at the service of the will. The child 
 seemed to have learnt to cry when he wished, and to con- 
 tract his features according to the occasion, so as to make 
 known that he wanted something. 1 This development of 
 the will takes place towards the end of the third month. 
 At the same period, Tiedemann's son was still at the stage 
 of those instinctive, or rather primitive, movements of de- 
 sire which show themselves by the mechanical extension 
 of the arm and the inclination of the whole body; it was 
 not until towards the fourth month that he Began to take 
 
 1 Examples taken from Darwin's "Expression of the Emotions," and 
 which I have reproduced in my brochure: Thierri Tiedemann et la 
 Science de V Enfant. Mes Deux Chats, a fragment of comparative psy- 
 chology, pp. 12, etc.
 
 102 THE FIRST THEEE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 hold of objects placed within his reach; and in carrying 
 them to his niouth he learnt to hold them firmly ; all these 
 steps in advance being conscious and intended, that is to 
 say, voluntary. In proportion as the understanding and 
 the motive forces, or, in other words, the great nerve 
 centres of the child, develop, the emotional element of 
 volition or desire, and the idea or conception of the move- 
 ment to be made, become more marked. Desire is so 
 much the more keen, as the conception of the object de- 
 sired becomes clearer. This is the case with all move- 
 ments, which, though partly instinctive, are also more or 
 less acquired ; they become all the more conscious and in- 
 tended in proportion as their more complicated nature 
 renders their execution more difficult. 
 
 We see how greatly the child is interested inhis efforts to 
 stretch out his hands towards a wished-for object, to hold it 
 up, to handle it, to sit down, to stand upright, to walk, etc., 
 etc., from the fact that he never tires of repeating these 
 actions after having once accomplished them, and will 
 even repeat them quite inopportunely "in response to 
 desire in general, however ludicrously insufficient to ac- 
 complish the desired end." l 
 
 The will of a child, being more emotional than intellec- 
 tual, is generally very little amenable to personal control 
 from the age of three months to a year. At this age 
 desire manifests a more or less impulsive character, the 
 volition of a being without experience, if left to itself, 
 being insensible to the influence of any but the simplest 
 motives. When, at the age of four months, a child has 
 learnt to execute a few special actions with his hands, 
 more than one lesson is needed to form an association in 
 his mind between touching a certain brilliant object and 
 sharp pain, and to counterbalance his strong tendency 
 to touch a bright flame. But at six or seven months, the 
 contract with a prickly brush, experienced several times 
 over in a fetf minutes, will begin to establish, if only for 
 a day or an hour, one of those associations which, by 
 
 1 Perrler, The Brain and its Functions.
 
 THE WILL. 103 
 
 keeping up the recollection of pain, neutralizes the inten- 
 sity of desire. 
 
 The elements which preponderate in a child's will are 
 impulsiveness and stubbornness ; and can we expect any- 
 thing else from a little creature who is ignorant of the 
 distant consequences of actions, and who, under all cir- 
 cumstances, obeys only the desire or the aversion of the 
 moment? The following anecdotes plainly illustrate the 
 truth of this. 
 
 A little girl of three months old, who had always been 
 accustomed to be rocked to sleep, woke up one day whilst 
 the nurse was out of the room for a quarter of an hour; 
 when the nurse came back, she found the child in a frenzy 
 of despair; her face was crimson, and her eyes for the 
 first time wet with tears ; her screams could be heard fifty 
 yards off. The nurse rushed to the cradle and tried by 
 every means in her power to soothe the terrified child. 
 For some time, however, her efforts were all repulsed, the 
 child's hands pushing her away; and it was quite ten 
 minutes before her caresses and coaxings had any effect. 
 At last, however, the child seemed to be pacified, and con- 
 sented to take the breast. But as soon as its appetite was 
 satisfied, its forehead puckered up again, its eyes half 
 closed under its contracted eyebrows, its mouth quivered, 
 and it set off crying again. The nurse then thought the 
 child must be ill ; but turning suddenly round she saw 
 lying at the foot of the bed a heap of plaster which had 
 fallen from the ceiling. She was horrified at the discov- 
 ery, and naturally settled that this was what had fright- 
 ened the child and made it cry. She kissed and petted it, 
 and began rocking it to sleep again, and in a very few 
 minutes its cries ceased and it was sleeping peacefully. 
 Then the nurse, who was alone in the house, set to work 
 to clear away the pieces. She had to go down into the 
 yard to throw them away, and a neighbor on the rez-de- 
 chaussee, told her that he had heard the noise of the plas- 
 ter falling (which was very slight) directly after the nurse 
 went out : he had seen her go out, and thought the child 
 was with her. The noise of the falling plaster must have 
 awakened the child with a start, but this could hardly
 
 104 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 have been the cause of its crying so long: the fact was, 
 she wanted to go to sleep again, and grew more and more 
 distressed at having no one to rock her to sleep, as usual. 
 Had the nurse rightly guessed at the cause, she would 
 have had much less trouble in quieting her. Afterward, 
 in telling me this incident, she added: "I finished where 
 I ought to have begun ; children are very stubborn, mon- 
 sieur, about their habits and customs." 
 
 All who have had anything to do with the management 
 of babies know well what dreadful scenes often take place 
 during the operation of washing and dressing, what 
 screams, tears, and struggles. They cannot bear being 
 touched by water, even if it is warm. With some children 
 these scenes begin over again every day, unless by very 
 great skill they can be slipped into their cradles while 
 asleep. I knew one child who, at the age of four or five 
 months, could not be got to bed without the assistance of 
 several people. If one leg was got under the clothes, the 
 other would be kicked out; one hand had to be held whilst 
 the other was being bandaged up (it was necessary to 
 bandage his hands, to prevent his scratching his face 
 whilst asleep); and the whole proceedings were accom- 
 panied by screams, howls, and contortions of the face and 
 body. Wheu he was six months old, his mother, wishing 
 to avoid the almost daily recurrence of these disagreeable 
 scenes, resolved to put him on her bed to sleep for an hour 
 or two after dinner. Instead of this improving matters, 
 however, his fury was all the greater when he was put in 
 his cradle again ; the bed had .spoiled him, and he would 
 have nothing to do with the cradle. It ended in their 
 having to let him be on the bed as much as possible, and 
 take care to get him sound asleep before he was put into 
 his cradle at night. If he woke up afterward, the flicker- 
 ing flame of the night light was enough to prevent his 
 crying and to soothe him to sleep again. 
 
 I saw this child again when he was about a year old ; 
 and his nurse then told me that though in five or six mat- 
 ters he was still very obstinate and self-willed, yet he was 
 generally good-humored and even pliable. If any one 
 smiled at him, he would smile back again ; he made him-
 
 THE WILL. 105 
 
 self at home on anybody's lap; he had learnt not to wipe 
 atcay certain people's kisses; and he could be left alone 
 quite happily for hours with neighbors, or even with 
 strangers whom he had never seen before. But this was 
 if his mother or nurse was not present. Directly one or 
 other of them appeared, he would smile at her from a dis- 
 tance, hold out his arms to her, and make efforts to get 
 down if she did not come to take him, or if he were not 
 carried to her. Sometimes they would put him on the 
 floor to go to the person he wanted ; and then he would 
 crawl on all-fours, pushing himself along with the help of 
 his knees and stomach. This was a pleasing kind of self- 
 will. In the morning, when his mother had had her 
 breakfast, she used to take him to his father's bed, and 
 there he went through all sorts of little games and tricks, 
 turning over and over, now on his back, now, on his 
 stomach, burying his head in the pillow, diving under the 
 sheets, wriggling about like a serpent, mimicking the 
 noise of birds, and giving vent to decided bursts of laugh- 
 ter. This morning entertainment he looked upon as his 
 right. If, when breakfast was over, his mother did not at 
 once take him up to his father's room, even when he did 
 not hear his father's voice, he would call out Papa! and 
 then, if no one seemed to understand his gestures and his 
 eloquent looks, there would come mingled screams and 
 sobs and shrieks of Papa. 
 
 A little girl, now rather a big girl, and of an extremely 
 amiable and sweet disposition, was very difficult to bring 
 up, so her grandmother told me. Up to the age of a year, 
 there was always the greatest trouble to get her into her 
 cradle. It was often necessary to wait a long time for a 
 favorable moment to pop her in, and then the slightest 
 movement would wake her up again; or if she did not 
 wake up again at this critical moment, she would set off 
 crying like an automaton moved by a spring, the instant 
 she came in contact with the obnoxious cradle. This 
 unconscious crying always roused her up, and she had to 
 be taken out of the cradle again, to avoid the tears and 
 screams which made her mother fear for her health. 
 There was also the same difficulty always over her bath.
 
 106 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 She would stiffen herself out like a poker, I was told, and 
 scream like a little fury. Every possible dodge was tried 
 to get her to stay in ; the nurse pretended to get in with 
 her, her favorite toys were brought her, etc. ; and when at 
 last she had been got in, the mother or the nurse must not 
 stir, or the crying and kicking began again. 
 
 I will give one more example at about the same age. 
 Juliette is twenty-two months old. Her mother has for- 
 bidden her to touch the flowers in the window ; she is only 
 allowed to water them with a child's watering-pot. She 
 performs this task with a zeal which is only equalled by 
 her awkwardness. She has to ask her mother's permission 
 always before doing it; the flowers would be swamped 
 every day if she watered them whenever she wanted to. 
 When she has been disobedient, the nurse waters the 
 flowers instead. Several times a day she is heard saying: 
 "Ittle dal dood, water fower." The other day her mother 
 was in the drawing-room with some visitors and the child 
 suddenly disappeared with her toys. At the end of ten or 
 twelve minutes she reappeared, her frock and pinafore lit- 
 erally soaked with water. "Ittle dal dood, water fower," 
 were her first words on coming into the room. One of 
 the visitors, on kissing her, remarked the state she was in. 
 Her mother flew into the next room, where water was flow- 
 ing everywhere. This is what had happened : as Juliette 
 had been disobedient at table, she was forbidden to water 
 the flowers, and her little watering-pot had been hidden. 
 But the temptation was greater than her fear of being 
 scolded for disobeying a second time. She had got hold 
 of her nurse's watering-pot and turned on the tap to try 
 and fill it herself; but she had only succeeded in produc- 
 ing an inundation and deluging her frock. She looked so 
 crestfallen and penitent that her mother's only scolding 
 was to laugh at her. In the evening she said to her 
 father: "Ittle dal not be dood, not no longer dood, cause 
 not like water fower not like be all wet." The next 
 morning the nurse gave her back her watering-pot; but 
 she threw it down, saying: "Not dood water-pot, not 
 dood, wet ittle dal, no more water fower. " Her resolu- 
 tion, however, did not hold out when she saw the silvery
 
 THE WILL. 107 
 
 shower pouring out of the nurse's watering-pot. "Ittle 
 dal velly dood, water fower," said she, and picked up her 
 own little pot. 
 
 There is not one of the above-cited examples which does 
 not prove that, whether under the form of automatic de- 
 sire, or of conscious desire, or of voluntary determination, 
 action in children is almost always subordinate to their 
 sensibility. What they want, is what pleases them at the 
 moment, or what they remember to have been pleased 
 with ; what they dislike, is whatever displeases them or has 
 displeased them. 
 
 In proportion as a child forms its experience, a greater 
 number of sensations, of sentiment and ideas, that is to 
 say, of determinant motives and impulses, intervene be- 
 tween the action and the determination, which was before 
 simple and instantaneous. The action, when one is pro- 
 duced, is determined by the strongest motive; actions of 
 this nature are called deliberate, in distinction to those 
 which are impulsive. One often sees a young child hov- 
 ering between two contrary motives, both of which equally 
 solicit him to action; in general, the hesitation lasts but 
 a short time, especially if both the motives are agreeable. 
 This, no doubt, is for the reason assigned by Delbreuf , 
 " because in this case it is better to act than to wait. Buri- 
 danus' donkey, we may be sure, died neither of hunger 
 nor thirst. " J There is not even in such a case a conflict, 
 properly so called, biit merely a concurrence of motives. 
 An almost analogous case is, when a child has to choose 
 between the pain of not having a strong desire gratified, 
 and some compensating pleasure or present which is 
 offered to him. Here regret struggles with an attractive 
 reality; the child who was crying is on the point of smil- 
 ing; then he begins to cry again, and finally he consoles 
 himself and begins to laugh and play. At other times, 
 again, the conflicting elements are more numerous and 
 more distinct; for instance, we find on the one hand these 
 four terms: obedience, privation of a desired object, ap- 
 probation, caresses; and on the other hand these four: 
 
 1 See Revue PhilosopMque, Nov. 1881, p. 517.
 
 108 THE FIKST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 disobedience, the attraction of the forbidden object, re- 
 proaches, punishment. These different motives either 
 evolve themselves separately or are fused together; and 
 under the influence of their representations, impulse is 
 counterbalanced for a longer or shorter time. In cases 
 of this sort the habit of associations formed between 
 certain motives and certain ways of acting greatly facili- 
 tates the operation of the will. But deliberating voli- 
 tion, i.e., the reciprocal inhibition of the tendencies to the 
 action, tends more frequently in children to revert to im- 
 pulsiveness, and to impulsiveness dominated by actual and 
 personal suggestions; 
 
 When Bernard, fifteen months old, cries without any 
 reason, his father says in a loud voice, <\ Hold your 
 tongue;" and sometimes he stops at once. When his 
 father says Drink, or Walk, he also generally obeys. But 
 he obeys much more readily when it is a question of any- 
 thing which amuses him or gives pleasure to others. 
 Thus, when told to imitate the dog or the cat, or a monkey, 
 to clap his hands, to say No and shake his head, he does 
 not have to be told twice. If he is forbidden to do any- 
 thing that pleases him, he obeys less promptly than if it 
 is something that is indifferent to him. He obeys posi- 
 tive orders more readily than negative ones i.e., when 
 he is told to do something, than when told not to do 
 something; and this one can easily understand, for in the 
 first case there is no conflict between the will and the 
 order given him. Although he sets himself obstinately 
 against walking alone, I made him take four steps towards 
 me, by holding out to him half a peach which he wanted 
 very much, and which I would not take to him. But his 
 will to do right is as vacillating as his legs. When he 
 had eaten his bit of peach, I made a second trial, and the 
 result was different this time. I offered him another bit 
 of peach and said, " Come to papa, come and fetch the 
 peach," and he came at once, but on all-fours, which is 
 his way of running. He obeys his mother, however, 
 better than his father, gentleness being either better 
 understood by him than sternness, or else having more 
 influence over him. He had let fall a piece of bread, and
 
 THE WILL. 109 
 
 his father having told him to pick it up, he turned a deaf 
 ear. His mother went up to him, and he wanted to take 
 her hand ; but she said to him : " I will give my hand to 
 baby when he has picked up the bread; first pick up the 
 bread. " He picked it up, and then held out his hand to 
 his mother. 
 
 Thus we see, even in children less than three years old, 
 a certain faculty, very fluctuating and capricious it is true, 
 " of inhibiting or restraining action, notwithstanding the 
 tendency of feelings or desires to manifest themselves in 
 active motor outbursts." "* This faculty of restraint, which 
 insures the volitional control of the movements, and, up 
 to a certain point, of the ideas also, belongs to a period of 
 greater maturity, when experience suggests stronger 
 motives to the mind by calling up before it the pleasant or 
 unpleasant consequences of actions, and when the faculty 
 of attention, as well as the brain centres which minister 
 to it, being more developed, restrains, as by a sort of me- 
 chanical inhibition, the sensations, sentiments, and ideas, 
 whose tendency, if not combated, is to produce instant 
 action. We see then that attention is one of the most 
 important elements of volition, which explains the inde- 
 cision, weakness, changeableness, and caprice of a child's 
 will. 2 
 
 1 Ferrier, The Brain and its Functions, p. 232. 
 
 8 1 shall consider further on the close relation between the will and the 
 moral sense.
 
 CHAPTEE 
 
 THE FACULTIES OF INTELLECTUAL ACQUISITION AND 
 KETENTION. 
 
 I. 
 
 ATTENTION. 
 
 As ATTENTION is the result of an intense or distinct sen- 
 sation, and as the organs of young children are not yet 
 able to prolong these vibratory excitations, shocks of at- 
 tention appear to be very rare in babies quite at the begin- 
 ning of life. They seem, however, to occur now and 
 then. When I waved an object at a little distance from 
 the eyes of an infant seventeen days old, his eyelids 
 trembled and closed, expressing either fear or the desire to 
 escape from a vaguely unpleasant sensation. His eyes 
 followed, from right to left, and left to right, a candle that 
 I moved in either of these directions. The sound of a 
 door being shut, or a loud voice, made him tremble so 
 much that it was felt by the person holding him. But 
 the same causes only reproduced the same effect during 
 the space of three or four minutes; afterwards the child 
 was no longer impressed by the colors of the moving 
 object, the light, or the various sounds; it reassumed its 
 habitual rapt expression, its eyes becoming fixed and im- 
 movable as if looking within. After a short time, all 
 these different impressions, by dint of constant repetition, 
 become objects of reminiscence, of vague intention, of 
 desire, or of dislike. 
 
 The attention paid by children to their sensations and 
 no
 
 ATTENTION. Ill 
 
 recollections becomes stronger and easier every day, so 
 much so that it often appears reflex. When children seem 
 most to wish to fix their attention, and in fact when they 
 are most attentive, there is in reality the least need for 
 their being so. One might well compare an attentive 
 infant to a kitten, which the sight of some bright object, 
 or some watched-for prey, will hold for a long time im- 
 movable, its neck stretched out, its paws pressed against 
 the ground, its body drawn up, its eyes dilated, its upper 
 lip slightly arched, as if directed to the object of its desire. 
 Here we have a sensation, or group of sensations, exclu- 
 sively perceived, repeatedly renewed, and expected; the 
 observing subject seems to belong less to himself than to 
 the object he is observing; it is a case of intense reaction, 
 though as it were passive, of attraction more or less con- 
 scious, of the fascination of an attentive being by the object 
 of his attention. The pleasure which sucking the breast 
 affords a baby becomes an object of attention. The child 
 delights in the operation, and as it were listens to and 
 looks at himself, and feels that he is enjoying himself. 
 This budding of the conscious faculty, which is designated 
 by the name of attention, is produced first from the exterior 
 to the interior; it is an excitation of the nerve cellules 
 under the influence of an irritating impression; it is not a 
 tension or an effort from within, but only an adaptation of 
 the nerve centres to admit a sensation. Attention may be 
 the result of an action of the will; but its own proper 
 actions are apart from the will; it is a channel which 
 opens to external impressions, and which the will may 
 sometimes keep closed, but which is generally open in 
 spite of it. It is this muscular and nervous tension, this 
 intense reaction of vivid impressions, more often forced 
 than voluntary, which constitutes the primitive character 
 of attention. Bossuet designates it as "forced attention," 
 and he adds: "But this is not altogether what we call at- 
 tention; we only apply this name when we choose an object 
 to think about it voluntarily." This only means that 
 attention has degrees, and that that of which young children 
 are capable, voluntary or involuntary, is always in the 
 beginning induced by sensibility.
 
 1L2 THE FIRST THBEE YEAKS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 I knew a child who, at the age of a month, certainly 
 from time to time paid sustained attention to the act of 
 suction. This was evident from the fixed expression of 
 his eyes, which sparkled with pleasure, and at intervals 
 half veiled themselves under the eyelids. One day his 
 bottle was filled with sugared water; after sucking a few 
 drops he stopped for three seconds, and then began again 
 and went on with the same attentive expression of satis- 
 faction as if the bottle had contained milk. Plain water 
 without sugar did not have the same success ; he stopped 
 short after the first mouthful, went back to the bottle after 
 a pause of five or six seconds, and soon turned from it 
 again frowning and pouting most significantly. Here then 
 we see attention applied to the functions of taste. 
 
 During the first month, the various movements of the 
 organs, automatic or conscious (I allude only to the pre- 
 hensile organs), are executed in so awkward a manner, 
 they are so vague and undecided, that I have not been able 
 to recognize in them with certainty the influence of atten- 
 tion applied to tactile sensations. It is, however, impossi- 
 ble but that attention should be equally exercised in this 
 manner. In fact, when, at six weeks old, the hands of a 
 child wandered over its mother's breast, face, and hands, 
 the fixed and joyous expression of its eyes, and its wide- 
 open mouth indicated that it enjoyed prolonging these 
 tactile sensations, however vague they might be. At two 
 months and six days the same child would feel its mother's 
 breast and face and keep hold of her finger with evidently 
 voluntary attention. At the same period he began to 
 stretch out his hands towards his mother's breast, when 
 she uncovered it at a distance of two decimeters from his 
 eyes. 
 
 I have seen a little girl twenty-eight days and a little 
 boy thirty-five days old, show, by the fixity of their eyes 
 and the movements of the lips at the sight of the feeding- 
 bottle, that they recognized the instrument by which they 
 were fed, and were capable of directing their attention to 
 it. At the same period they used to lift their hands auto- 
 matically to their face with probably very little conscious- 
 ness of this involuntary movement; but when the object
 
 ATTENTION. 113 
 
 of the movement was to rub some part of the face, the 
 repetition of it, and the accompanying puckering of the 
 forehead and dilating of the eyes, indicated that their atten- 
 tion was directed to some disagreeable sensations which 
 they were experiencing. A child of one month would look 
 fixedly for three or four minutes at the flickering reflection 
 of the light on a table near the window. On the forty-fifth 
 day I saw him follow with his eyes, after having first well 
 looked at it, a doll dressed in light blue which a little girl 
 was dandling up and down at a distance of more than a 
 yard. Five days later, the fixity of his eyes turned in a 
 certain direction indicated that his attention was concen- 
 trated on something white, blue, or violet; other colors 
 appeared to be indifferent to him, perhaps owing to tem- 
 porary Daltonism. When two months old, he began to 
 notice red; but he still took no notice of black, brown, 
 lilac, or yellow. 
 
 This might either have been the result of special predis- 
 position to certain sensations of color, or of relative feeble- 
 ness in the different organs of sight ! We must put together 
 the results of a large number of experiments in order to 
 draw any reliable conclusions. Infants progress from day 
 to day and sometimes from hour to hour, revealing, one 
 after another, faculties which had not at first been noticed. 
 Those faculties which will one day be the strongest are not 
 always the first to appear. I know a case of a child who 
 did not fix his attention on any colored object before the 
 age of two months, but who at two months and a half was 
 as sensible to color as are the most precocious children. 
 
 As to the attention paid to sounds, it shows itself in the ) 
 second fortnight. Most babies at the age of twelve, thir- ) 
 teen, or fifteen days tremble when they hear a loud noise. 
 "On the 5th of September, thirteen days after his birth, 
 that is to say, it was observed that Tiedemann's son took 
 notice of the gestures of those who spoke to him (?); their 
 words even called forth or stopped his tears." I have 
 seen a child sixteen days old sometimes leave of crying 
 when his mother spoke coaxingly to him; but the rhyth- 
 mic movements which she made at the same time had 
 perhaps as much 1<o do with pacifying him as her words,. 
 a
 
 114 THE FIBST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 One night, however, she could not succeed in quieting him ; 
 the father got angry and scolded the child, and finally in 
 a loud voice ordered him to be silent. I cannot say what 
 was the impression produced on the child, but he instantly 
 stopped crying. 
 
 "At two months and a half," says M. Taine, Apropos of 
 a child whom he had studied, "I noticed a movement which 
 was evidently acquired. Hearing the voice of her grand- 
 mother, she turned her head in the direction whence the 
 sound came." I have also thought I noticed the same 
 thing in a child of a month and two days. I was on his 
 left hand and was speaking in a loud voice; his head ap- 
 peared to turn towards the left ; and the fixity of his eyes 
 seemed to express a certain amount of attention to the 
 sound of my voice. At the age of a month and a half a 
 little girl-baby would consciously express either pain or the 
 desire to be fed, by two different kinds of cries. When 
 she was two months old there was no difficulty in distin- 
 guishing whether her tears meant pain, desire or anger. 
 Another child, six weeks old, used to make starts on his 
 mother's lap at the sound of the violin. When two 
 months old, the barking of a dog in his room caused him 
 to contract his eyebrows, purse up his lips, and begin to 
 cry; the dog on being petted, changed his barking to a sort 
 of coaxing yelp; the child listened very attentively, be- 
 came gradually calm, and appeared to take pleasure in this 
 new sound. 
 
 At a very early age we notice direct correlation between 
 the strength of attention and the vivacity of the sensations 
 or feelings experienced. With little children, as with 
 young animals, those who most easily fix their attention 
 seem to be those whose nervous excitability is the greatest. 
 At three months and a half, a very quick little girl, who 
 could already distinguish some parts of her body, paid at- 
 tention to all that went on around her, to noises of every 
 description, the sound of a voice, a step in the room, the 
 shutting or opening of a door or window, and to all colors, 
 even the least vivid, when they were placed within reach 
 of her sight. A boy six months old, intelligent on the 
 whole, but lymphatic and not very sensitive, would hardly
 
 ATTENTION. 115 
 
 look at a nosegay of pale-colored flowers, placed rather 
 near him ; I had to wave them close in front of his eyes in 
 order to arrest his attention. A very brilliant flower, how- 
 ever, whdch I put beside the nosegay, gave him great 
 pleasure, and he looked at it for one or two minutes. 
 Presently a cat came on the scene, a kind of animal that 
 he had not yet seen. The child uttered several cries of 
 joy, stretched out his arms, and leant his whole body 
 towards the animal. As the cat, however, did not come 
 up to him, he subsided into an attitude of quietude. Thus 
 it is evident that the power of attention is primarily 
 related to the vivacity of sensation. 
 
 The more developed sensibility which produces the vari- 
 ous sentiments, that is to say, ideas, recollections of sen- 
 sations, magnified and exaggerated, exercises a considerable 
 influence over the attention of adults. "With the greater 
 number of men, the definite direction which intelligence 
 takes, is inspired by sentiment." 1 What is it to love, if 
 not to think constantly and with pleasure of some person 
 or object? What is it to hate? To think always with 
 pain of a disagreeable object. It is passion, that is to 
 say, attention constantly excited, or even over-excited, by 
 feeling, which makes lovers, artists, heroes, and savants. 
 I would modify the saying of Buffon, and I would say c : 
 that genius is a long passion. The little infant, hardly a 
 month old, is, as we have said before, already capable of 
 feeling sentiments, properly so called, though in a limited 
 degree. He loves his mother for what he gets from her, 
 if not for herself; he loves his feeding-bottle or the breast 
 which feeds him, the arms which caress or carry him, the 
 faces which sing to or smile on him, the eyes which speak 
 to him. He fears, he desires, he suffers, he hopes, he 
 frolics, he gets irritated; and these are all so many differ- 
 ent excitations of his faculty of attention, already de- 
 veloped by exercise and by the habit of keen sensations. 
 But his moral sensibility, still in a state of vague forma- 
 tion, can only influence his powers of attention in a very 
 
 1 Dr. Castle, Spiritualistic Phrenology, chapter on Education.
 
 116 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 slight degree, even when there are the most favorable 
 hereditary predispositions. 
 
 This original diversity of the faculties which occur to 
 form or to excite attention, is generally modified by the 
 effect of natural compensations. A very impressionable 
 child experiences too great a number of different sensa- 
 tions for them to be able to transmit durable impressions 
 to the brain, hence a habit of quick and ready attention 
 capriciously or insufficiently bestowed on every object in 
 turn, and thus it is to be feared that the little girl of whom 
 I have spoken above, with the ordinary education which 
 awaits her, that is, very little more than the chance action 
 of circumstances on her own original faculties, will become 
 a mere commonplace or flighty woman, with no definite 
 power of thought, and full of unbalanced and fantastic 
 ideas; superficial, in short, both in heart and mind. On 
 the other hand, the boy described at the same time, less 
 susceptible to ordinary impressions, with sensibility less 
 easily roused, more slow to bestow his attention, and more 
 slow also to take it away, will very likely, under the same 
 educational conditions, develop a clear, firm and practical 
 mind. He may perhaps have few ideas, but those he has 
 will be firmly held and accurate, because he will have 
 taken his time to form them ; and provided the spontaneous 
 development of his mediocre faculties be not checked, he 
 will know well the little he does know. We may add that 
 his organs of attention will have acquired by exercise a 
 power of adaptation which will perhaps compensate for 
 their want of natural quickness. This is a point of great 
 interest to rational educators. 
 
 Whatever differences natural dispositions or regular 
 exercise may produce in individual faculties, the general 
 tendency of a child's attention is to be brief and volatile. 
 The concentration of mental activity, the direction of the 
 intellectual vision, look after look, on one subject, is as 
 difficult for a little child as it would be for a valetudina- 
 rian to repeat during the space of two minutes the series of 
 muscular efforts which represent the lifting of a heavy 
 weight. What we call an act of attention, is in reality a 
 series of attentive actions, repeated a greater or less num-
 
 ATTENTION. ii? 
 
 ber of times during a relatively short interval. We must 
 not, however, exaggerate the astounding rapidity of 
 thought. Its supposed immeasurable velocity has in fact 
 been measured, both in men and animals, by the Dutch- 
 man Bonders, and others after him. But although the 
 rapidity of thought is not incalculable, it is none the less 
 very great; and to pay attention to any one thing, if only 
 for a few minutes, is to have observed it several times dur- 
 ing that short space of time. 
 
 Thus, in spite of the services that will, firm desire, and 
 habit render the faculty of attention, by continually in- 
 crea^ing its facility and energy, yet even in the most gifted 
 of men it is always liable to fail. Persons the most accus- 
 tomed to intellectual work are often obliged to force them- 
 selves to set to work even at the most familiar tasks. Very 
 few people, I take it, work because work is pleasant to 
 them. It is almost always the urgent motives of necessity, 
 interest, ambition, or duty, which determine them to make 
 and remake the first painful plunges ; but once started 
 again in the accustomed groove, the pleasure and excite- 
 ment of getting on keeps them going and facilitates and 
 sharpens their power of attention up to the moment when 
 lassitude causes it to wane. Grown-up people find a rem- 
 edy for this periodical weariness and difficulty in intellect- 
 ual labor, in that law of nature which makes change of 
 work a rest to the mind, just as variety in diet gives a fresh 
 stimulus to the appetite. But a young child, drawn con- 
 tinually in all directions by over-exciting impressions, and 
 endowed with very little power of resistance, has no such 
 antidote for lassitude of the brain. At the smallest effort 
 he is compelled to surrender. 
 
 Thus the greatest amount of attention in a child is in- 
 finitely little. This faculty of attention, which plays so 
 considerable a part in scholastic life, has hitherto been 
 very imperfectly studied. I know scarcely more than two 
 men, Horace Grant and Edwin Chadwick, who have taken 
 up the subject. Their researches have taught us, that 
 after five or six minutes in the case of infants, and from 
 thirty to forty-five in the case of older scholars, the atten- 
 tion becomes fatigued and intellectual effort fails ; that in
 
 118 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 schools, the capacity for attention varies with the duration 
 of the classes, the season of the year, the time of day, the 
 day of the week, the interval of time between meals and 
 studies, etc. These observations, however, have done no 
 more than open up the way. 1 If this question has only 
 begun to be considered with regard to children in general, 
 it has not even been thought of in connection with the first 
 period of infancy, that is to say from birth up to the first 
 attempts at speech. Long and patient observation will be 
 necessary, to construct merely the outline of this science 
 of infant psychology, of which we do not here intend to 
 make an exhaustive treatise but simply a sketch. . 
 
 But if children use their attentive powers very feebly, 
 they use them frequently, and in a rapid but nevertheless 
 profitable manner. The strong sensibility of their young 
 brains sometimes makes up for the adult's power of con- 
 centration, especially if it be aided by frequent repetition. 
 "In young children," says M. Luys, "the cerebral cells 
 are endowed with special histological characters ; they are 
 flabby, greyish, flexible in a manner; they are, moreover, 
 from the dynamic point of view, virgin to any anterior im 
 pression. 2 The sensorial excitation that affects them at 
 that age must therefore imprint itself upon them more 
 readily, since it finds them in a state of vacuity, their power 
 of retention not being put to the test. On the other hand, 
 in the first years of life the cerebral substance is in per- 
 petual exercise and organic development. New elements 
 are perpetually being added to the old ones; and as the 
 new are most probably derived from their predecessors, we 
 are led to conclude that the daughter-cells which appear, 
 borrow from the mother-cells which give them birth an in- 
 evitable bond of relationship, a species of hereditary trans- 
 mission of the different states of the mother-cells from 
 whence they spring. . . . It is in these intimate con- 
 nections between cell and cell, in these mysterious bonds 
 of relationship, that we must look for the secret of the 
 perennial character of certain memories. Thus it is, that 
 
 1 Fonsagrives, The Physical Education of Boys, p. 176. 
 
 2 Thla is not altogether our opinion.
 
 ATTENTION. 119 
 
 certain impressions received in our childhood become the 
 common patrimony of certain families of cells, which 
 maintain them in a state of freshness, incessantly vivify- 
 ing them by a sort of permanent co-operation. . . . 
 In the young child the impressionability of the cerebral 
 substance is such that it retains, motu proprio, all the im- 
 pressions that assail it, as passively as a sensitized photo- 
 graphic plate that we expose to the light, retains all the 
 images that are reflected on its surface." ' 
 
 It remains for us to examine two questions relative to 
 this faculty of attention, which is said to be the master 
 faculty of the mind. First, Helvetius has maintained the 
 rather Cartesian opinion, that all men are naturally gifted 
 with the attention and intelligence necessary for the same 
 degree of development ; but that attention means labor, 
 and that all men are not susceptible of sufficiently strong 
 passions to change this labor into pleasure. The differences 
 in men thus proceed from inequality of the passions, and 
 not of the faculty of attention. The famous professor 
 Jacolot has taken up the same theme in the present day; 
 and he seems to have even exaggerated the paradox. Ac- 
 cording to him, all intelligences are equal; minds only 
 differ in consequence of the different powers of attention, 
 which are in proportion of the will of the individual. The 
 truth is, in a physiological and psychological sense, that 
 we bring with us at birth intellectual and moral organiza- 
 tions different in quantity but not in quality. But it is 
 not perhaps quite reasonable to trust absolutely to first 
 appearances in respect of intellectual and moral inequali- 
 ties. Is it, in fact, impossible to remedy an incapacity of 
 attention which is perhaps hereditary, perhaps accidental 
 and passing? Can we tell, either, whether these inequal- 
 ities are not, perhaps chiefly, the result of the training dur- 
 ing infancy? This question, which I shall do no more 
 than briefly suggest here, is a complicated one. To settle 
 it now, either by the laws of heredity or by means of the 
 very meagre knowledge of infant psychology we at present 
 
 i Lays. Le Cerveau e.t ses Fonctions. See Eng. Trans. (Internat. 
 Sclent. Series), pp. 159, 160.
 
 120 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OP CHILDHOOD. 
 
 possess, would in my opinion be premature. At any rate 
 I shall content myself with merely suggesting the question 
 here, and shall hope later on to enter into it more fully, 
 taking into consideration all its developments and ramifi- 
 cations. 
 
 The second question of importance to those interested 
 in infant education, is to know whether it is possible to 
 predict a child's capacity for attention from phrenological 
 indications. This is a problem connected with the preced- 
 ing one, and quite as difficult to solve. This much, how- 
 ever, we may say, that without admitting with Gall and 
 Spurzheim a topographically separate localization of the 
 independent faculties, modern phrenology recognizes the 
 facts that certain portions of the cerebral hemispheres, 
 the anterior lobes, for instance, are always concerned in 
 the carrying on of intellectual operations, and that these 
 operations, identical in nature, evidently show different 
 degrees of complexity in' different individuals. Ferrier, 
 who, by his skillful experiments on the brains of monkeys, 
 has thrown so much light on these obscure subjects, be- 
 lieves in the possible localization of the perceptive centers 
 in the hemispheres. With regard to attention, he thinks, 
 like Bain and Wundt, that this faculty implies the activity 
 of the motive faculties. "In calling up an idea," he says, 
 "or when engaged in the attentive consideration of some 
 idea or ideas, we are in reality throwing into action, but 
 in an inhibited or suppressed manner, the movements with 
 which the sensory factors of ideation are associated in 
 organic cohesion. . . . The recall of an idea being 
 thus apparently dependent on excitation of the motor ele- 
 ment of its composition, the power of fixing the attention 
 and concentrating consciousness depends, further, on inhi- 
 bition of movement. During the time we are engaged in 
 attentive ideation, we suppress actual movements, but keep 
 up in a state of greater or less tension the centers of the 
 movement or movements with which the various sensory fac- 
 tors of ideation cohere. ... In proportion to the devel- 
 opment of the faculty of attention are the intellectual and 
 reflective powers manifested. This is in accordance with 
 the anatomical development of the frontal lobes of the
 
 MEMORY. 121 
 
 brain, and we have various experimental and pathological 
 data for localizing in these the centers of inhibition, the 
 physiological substrata of this psychological faculty. 
 The powers of attention and concentration of thought are, 
 further, small and imperfect in idiots, with defective de- 
 velopment of the frontal lobes; and disease of the frontal 
 lobes is more especially characteristic of dementia or gen- 
 eral mental degradation. . . . The development of 
 the frontal lobes is greatest in men with the highest intel- 
 lectual powers; and, taking one man with another, the 
 greatest intellectual power is characteristic of the one with 
 greatest frontal development. 
 
 " The phrenologists have, I think, good grounds for 
 localizing the reflective faculties in the frontal regions of 
 the brain; and there is nothing inherently improbable 
 in the view that frontal development in special regions 
 may be indicative of the power of concentration of 
 thought and intellectual capacity in special directions." l 
 
 It is thus beyond doubt that a marked projection of the 
 frontal region of the cranium is generally the sign of 
 natural power of attention; from which, however, we 
 must not infer, in the case of proportionate depression of 
 this region, a radical incapacity for attention. There is 
 no hereditary defect which education cannot lessen or do 
 away with. 
 
 n. 
 
 MEMORY. 
 
 Memory is not a purely intellectual faculty whose rdle 
 is to preserve and reproduce the past actions of its owner. 
 It is that property inherent in everything, and especially 
 in everything that lives, to retain a trace of all impres- 
 sions received. Every impression leaves a mark, more or 
 less deep and durable, and capable of combining in a 
 thousand ways with the marks of other impressions in 
 the cellules of the nerve, muscular, and cerebral tissues. 
 
 1 Ferrier, The Functions of the Brain, pp. 285-288.
 
 122 THE FIRST THEEE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 Thus, in all parts of the being, there are dispositions, 
 either hereditary or acquired, to remember, that is, to pre- 
 serve and to reproduce. There is not only a psychological 
 but ' also an organic memory ; sensations, sentiments, 
 affections, states of the viscera, the nerves, and the 
 muscles, movements and association of movement, all 
 that has once gone on within, may be revived, whether 
 we are conscious of it or not. 
 
 From the moment of its birth, an infant, whose first 
 act of breathing, as we have already said, is pain, who 
 hungers and thirsts, who suffers from the relative cold of 
 the surrounding atmosphere, from the sudden freedom 
 given to its limbs, from the sounds which shock its feeble 
 hearing and the rays of light which strike on its eyes, 
 from the unaccustomed contact 'with people and things 
 that come near it, and who expresses all these different 
 feelings of annoyance by screams, or rather sharp gasp- 
 ings, by agitated gestures, and deep flushes over its 
 face and head, is executing automatic actions, i.e., 
 hereditary reflex movements, which have belonged to 
 others before him; and this is hereditary memory. " Each 
 nerve has a sort of memory of its past life, is trained or 
 not trained, dulled or quickened, as the case may be; each 
 feature is shaped and characterized, or left loose and 
 meaningless, as may happen ; each hand is marked with 
 its trade and life, subdued to what it works in; if we 
 could but see it." l 
 
 All this is found transmitted by heredity, in the actions 
 and gestures of the new-born child, and why should 
 not what is true in respect to apparent movements be 
 also true in regard to other manifestations of human 
 activity, such as sensation, sentiments, and primordial 
 ideas? 
 
 I have often put this question to myself, and not with- 
 out anxiety, when I have found myself face-to- face with a 
 little child, a mysterious sphinx unconsciously watching 
 me observing it, and whose large calm wondering eyes 
 disconcert my laborious inductions. I remembered that 
 
 1 Bagehot, Physics and Politics, p. 3.
 
 MEMORY. 123 
 
 such and such an action, buried a long time in the store- 
 house of potential faculties, had suddenly sprung to light, 
 aroused by the fortuitous concurrence of certain favorable 
 circumstances. I have asked myself if I must not set 
 down to the credit of instinct and heredity that which my 
 observations had led me to attribute to consciousness and 
 individual experience. Thus, children have an instinctive 
 faculty for walking, and yet they have to learn the pro- 
 cess by long efforts, conscious and progressive. They have 
 an instinct for sucking, and, nevertheless, as in the case 
 of dogs and lambs, this operation has also to be learnt 
 by them. Chickens, colts, and calves walk by instinct as 
 soon as they are born, and this is an automatic action, 
 rendered easy by their organization, but which they per- 
 fect by exercise and attention. 
 
 These reflections have suggested another which has 
 quieted my conscience as an observer, namely (and Dar- 
 win is not opposed to this opinion), that the operations 
 due to instinct may easily, at the very outset, awaken a 
 conscious sense; and that, for instance, the first attempts 
 at sucking or walking may unite in varying proportions J 
 reflex influences with conscious efforts. Thus, then, we 
 may believe unreservedly in the existence of actual activ- 
 ity, even when the gestures and movements seem to be 
 derived from heredity, for they are brought into sub- order, 
 controlled and perfected by the present personality. Thus 
 the little baby who, at the age of five weeks, when his 
 nurse sang him a familiar air or spoke in a caressing voice, 
 began to warble various little sounds, did this by instinct 
 and organic sympathy the result of hereditary memory, 
 and also by the help of recollection associating together 
 these sounds and the nurse's voice i.e., the result of in- 
 dividual memory. 
 
 It needs only the most elementary powers of observa- 
 tion to see that the extent of the personal acquisitions of 
 a little child, only a few weeks old, is considerable. We 
 have already seen in play, from the age of two and three 
 months, all the various and numerous actions, instinctive, 
 voluntary, intellectual, and moral, which psychologists 
 generally observe at a more advanced age. It is needless
 
 124 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 to recapitulate facts, which indicate so evidently how 
 prompt, energetic, and tenacious a faculty memory is at 
 the commencement of life. 
 
 It is noticeable also that the recollections most firmly 
 planted in the mind are not always those which exhibit 
 themselves most prominently. The most important, and 
 perhaps the most durable, are those of which custom ap- 
 pears to have dulled the vividness, and whose capacity for 
 revival is dependent on the reflex or unconscious energy 
 of the intelligence. When Georgie stops before the prickly 
 brush without touching it, the idea of a brush is clearly 
 fixed in his mind, and yet nothing betrays the recollection 
 of a painful impression. This is what leads us to believe 
 that nothing is unimportant in the life of man; and that 
 the education of infants should have the same interest for 
 us as that of older children. Most of the ideas which in- 
 fluence the intellectual and moral nature of a man during 
 the whole of his life (as the startling instances of revived 
 memories recorded in cases of hallucination, of hypnotism, 
 or simply of exaggerated passion, testify) spring from the 
 latent capacities of the mind the mysterious but domi- 
 nant basis of the soul. Nothing is lost in nature, and, as 
 Mr. Bagehot has eloquently said, each nerve retains per- 
 haps the memory of its past life. 
 
 How many of the sudden flashes of sentiment, idea, 
 movement, of happy or deplorable inspiration, which we 
 attribute either to the natural powers of the mind, or to 
 education, or to the effects of example or excitement, are 
 perhaps in truth reminiscences from the cradle. True, I 
 have not been able to establish any instances of memory 
 going back beyond the two first years of life, but that is no 
 reason why none should exist. Language has become in- 
 corporated with a great number of ideas anterior to itself, 
 and as, generally speaking, words accompany the reap- 
 pearance of ideas, we are prone to imagine that the race 
 has had no other ideas than those which are symbolized 
 by speech, and that we have only retained traces of those 
 ideas which were acquired at the epoch and by the means 
 of speech. To affirm this, however, is to deny the exist- 
 ence in animals of a considerable number of ideas which
 
 MEMORY. 125 
 
 they have no means of expressing. My belief is, that all 
 the ideas which were well conceived and well preserved 
 before the epoch of speech, though they may have been 
 denned and fixed by the use of signs, have been inherent 
 in memory from the most remote epoch. 
 
 Such are the familiar ideas of dog, cat, birds, flowers, 
 milk, heat, cold, roughness, polish, palatable, bitter, etc., etc. 
 All essential ideas, that is to say, and which, although 
 modified by the posterior work of intelligence, have not the 
 less preserved their date and their rank in the collection of 
 cerebral processes. It is not likely that these impressions, 
 so numerous and so powerful, and which have served as 
 mental exercise during the first two years, should only 
 have been the point of departure of future modifications. 
 These were the first impulsions of a movement which has 
 gone on developing and expanding, and is still going on. 
 Life, in an organized being, does not break off and begin 
 again; it is a prolonged and continuous series of modifica- 
 tions. Not one of the perceptions of our infancy, whether 
 or no modified by language, is extinct; they have reap- 
 peared, or may reappear, in the intelligence, in the will, 
 or in the sensibility. 
 
 In the excellent monograph on memory lately published 
 by M. Th. Ribot I find a kind of confirmation of the hy- 
 pothesis for which I wanted facts. It is known that the 
 general excitations of the memory seem to depend exclu- 
 sively on physiological causes, which are often abnormal 
 ones. As to the partial excitations, they, too, most often 
 result from morbid causes ; but the two following examples 
 would seem to indicate that they can be produced in a 
 sound state of mind : 
 
 " A lady, in the last stage of a chronic disease, was carried 
 from London to a lodging in the country ; there her infant 
 daughter was taken to visit her, and after a short inter- 
 view carried back to London. The lady died a few days 
 after, and the daughter grew up without any recollection 
 of her mother till she was of mature age. At this time 
 she happened to be taken into the room in which her 
 mother died, without knowing it to have been so; she 
 Started on entering it, and, when a friend who was along
 
 126 THE FIKST THKEE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 with her asked the cause of her agitation, replied, ' I have 
 a distinct impression of having been in this room before, 
 and that a lady, who lay in that corner and seemed very 
 ill, leant over me and wept.' " l 
 
 Here is another example : 
 
 "Several years ago, the Eev. S. Hansard, now Eectorof 
 Bethnal Green, was doing clerical duty for a time at Hurst- 
 monceaux in Sussex; and while there he one day went over 
 with a party of friends to Pevensey Castle, which he did not 
 remember to have ever previously visited. As he approached 
 the gateway, he became conscious of a very vivid impres- 
 sion of having seen it before; and he 'seemed to himself 
 to see' not only the gateway itself, but donkeys beneath 
 the arch, and people on the top of it. His conviction that 
 he must have visited the castle on some former occasion, 
 although he had neither the slightest remembrance of 
 such a visit, nor any knowledge of having ever been in the 
 neighborhood previously to his residence at Hurstmon- 
 ceaux, made him inquire from his mother if she could 
 throw any light on the matter. She at once informed 
 him that, being in that part of the country when he was 
 about eighteen months old, she had gone over with a large 
 party and had taken him in the pannier of a donkey; that 
 the elders of the party, having brought lunch with them, 
 had eaten it from the roof of the gateway, where they 
 would have been seen from below, whilst he had been left 
 on the ground with the attendants and donkeys. It may 
 be worth mentioning, that Mr. Hansard has a decidedly 
 artistic temperament." ' 
 
 These facts of noimal hypermnesia are still more curious 
 than the much better established facts of hypermnesia 
 from morbid causes. They show clearly, on the one hand, 
 the incalculable power of resuscitation of the impressions 
 received at the beginning of life, and, on the other hand, 
 the close relation which exists between attention and 
 memory, between well seeing and well remembering. And 
 seeing how much sensibility influences attention, it ap- 
 
 1 Abercrombie, Essay on Intellectual Powers,?, 120. 
 8 Carpenter, Mental Physiology, p. 431.
 
 MEMORY. 127 
 
 pears evident to us that the quality of the memory depends < 
 still more on affectivity than on intelligence. I am led to < 
 believe that much that is put down to want of attention is J 
 in reality want of sensibility. Is it from want of attention 
 or from defective sensibility that old people, idiots, and 
 young children have such bizarre and scatter-brained 
 recollections? Perhaps it is owing to both these causes. / 
 The feebleness and intermittence with which impressions 
 are transmitted along the peripheric nerves, and with 
 which they strike on the intellectual, motor, and sensory 
 centres, in all these cases, necessarily cause incomplete 
 and disconnected emotions, ideas, judgments, volitions, 
 and movements. However this may be, the debility of the 
 organs in old people in their dotage, and young children, 
 shows itself in two opposite ways dispersion and fixed- 
 ness of ideas and sentiments. There is a great deal of 
 both in the period of infancy; and there is no doubt that 
 the babbling, at first monotonous but gradually becoming 
 rather varied, which babies of two months will repeat 
 several times a day, after hearing some one speak or sing 
 near them, and later on their parrot-like chatter, and also 
 the rambling talk of old people, are the result of some 
 dominant recollections which pass and repass in their 
 minds, along with a train of vaguer reminiscences. I 
 should explain in the same manner the apparently auto- 
 matic movements of the eyes, arms, and legs, which young 
 children make with so much animation and so little sig- 
 nification, in their cradles, in their nurse's arms, or when 
 set upright on the ground. These are often impulsions, 
 desires, repulsions, ideas, sensations, and feelings, recol- 
 lected more or less consciously, but with alternations of 
 incoherence and importunity, which the purely instinctive 
 need of locomotion does not sufficiently explain. 
 
 This intermittent importunity of recollections differs 
 from monomania, in that it is generally connected with 
 objects that are present, or with the remembrance of 
 familiar objects. A little girl of eight months, when she 
 has been sucking, makes a movement with her arm anal- 
 ogous to that of a person ringing a bell; it is because she 
 is absorbed in the idea of a little bell which serves her as
 
 128 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 a plaything; if she has it in her hands, she makes it 
 tinkle for a few minutes, carries it to her mouth, rings it 
 again, and then throws it carelessly away. When she 
 has shaken her other toys about for a little while she asks 
 for her bell again by the usual gesture, and she will re- 
 peat the same manoeuvres more than twenty times in half an 
 hour, if she is indulged ; this is purely a reflex habit. One 
 day, when I was visiting her parents, I imitated the little 
 girl's movements with a box which was very brilliantly 
 colored, and made an exciting noise: the child at once 
 wanted the box, and shook it about with evident delight. 
 After two or three minutes I put her little bell back into 
 her hand ; she shook it with an air of indifference, and very 
 soon threw it away. I then gave her the box again, and 
 she shook it about for a long time, crowing with delight. 
 This box remained her one interest and occupation for 
 nearly an hour; the little bell was supplanted. Another 
 fixed idea, analogous it is true, had replaced the habitual 
 one. This temporary possession of the mind by an idea is 
 most noticeable in little children beginning to talk ; whether 
 it be that names, by recalling the objects, give them a 
 clearer idea of them and stronger recollection or desire, or 
 that the mere sound of words which have no meaning for 
 them keep their brains and vocal organs on the alert. 
 A relation of mine, when fifteen months old, would keep 
 on incessantly repeating the double sound a-teau, which 
 represented to him the idea of boats (bateaux), which he 
 had seen on a river, and which had made him wild with 
 delight. 
 
 Some months afterwards his vocabulary was augmented 
 by the following jargon, " Cote noi, toute vilai; cote blan, 
 toute jolie." This black cocotte and this white cocotte were 
 two hens, which he used to go and look at two or three 
 hundred times a day in their yard at the bottom of the 
 garden; the white hen was very gentle, but the black one 
 sometimes pecked his fingers when taking the food he 
 brought them. The boats and the hens were at this time 
 his absorbing preoccupations. Some months later, having 
 made a railway journey, he used to talk every day of the 
 locomotives, the carriages, the whistle, and the steam:
 
 MEMOEY. 129 
 
 win fer had supplanted the boats and the cocottes in his 
 brain and his conversation. One of the most debated 
 questions of the day, and one interesting alike to psychol- 
 ogists and pedagogists, is whether it is possible in early 
 infancy to form an estimate of the intellectual faculties of 
 a child, and especially of its memory memory, i. <?., in 
 the sense of reproduction of ideas. Gall, and many others 
 after him, have inclined to the affirmative. This savant 
 considered that large prominent eyes were the index of a 
 facile memory (always, be it understood, a memory for 
 ideas). I believe I have also heard thick eyebrows men- 
 tioned as signs of a like facility, and especially of tenacity 
 of memory, or at least eyebrows which are close together, 
 and which also denote jealousy. My personal observa- 
 tions do not warrant me in either adopting or rejecting 
 any of these theories. 
 
 But I hope that the study of the connection between 
 physiognomy and transmitted faculties, will furnish the 
 means of determining, even before children can speak, 
 whether they have good or bad memories, and that we shall 
 thus be able to improve the bad memories by exercise 
 and training. Then, too, it will be possible, and very use- 
 ful, to be able from the first months of life to distinguish 
 between the original aptitudes of the memory and those 
 acquired under the influence of various circumstances, to 
 mark the union and the conflict of the one with the other, 
 in a word, to determine how far exercise and education 
 modify the memory, as a whole and in its special adapta- 
 tions. 
 
 I must particularly insist on the error of considering 
 memory as an intellectual faculty having different adapta- 
 tions, and of believing, for instance, that memory for sen- 
 timents is one of these adaptations. The truth is, that 
 there exists in every human being, not one, but several 
 memories. Not only do we recollect our past sentiments 
 and affections, without experiencing them over again, but 
 sentiment only persists on condition of keeping its place 
 in the memory. "The most affectionate heart," says 
 Chateaubriand, "would lose its tenderness, if it did not 
 remember. " We can say that, in regard to sensibility and 
 10
 
 130 THE FIEST THEEE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 the emotional life, each one has its memories, more or 
 less marked and tenacious. In the same way that each 
 sense, and each intellectual faculty, has its memory, or its 
 associations of memory, more or less energetic according 
 to the individual organization, so all sentiments and all 
 combinations of sentiment have their memories, which are 
 unequally distributed among men. Caasar, it is said, 
 never forgot injuries: some other people forget neither 
 the good nor the evil which is done to them, and others 
 again only forget the good. 
 
 This mode of conceiving of emotional mempjg&, which 
 throws a new light on the genesis of passions and desires, 
 enables us in many cases to penetrate to the bottom of the 
 infant soul. Underlying all the sentiments and tendencies 
 which manifest themselves at given moments of life are 
 the tendencies and sentiments inherited from our ances- 
 tors, who have exercised and developed them before us; 
 and the same also may be said of our pains and our pleas- 
 ures ; we know not how much of the past enters into the 
 joys and sorrows of the present. The impressions of our 
 emotional life people our souls and our sensoriums, and 
 are always ready to be revived afresh, whether with or 
 without our consciousness. It is the same with past 
 emotions as with past ideas: consciousness only reveals 
 an infinitesimal part of them. This is what the poet 
 Musset expresses with so much delicacy in the following 
 lines: 
 
 " Et Ton songe k tout ce qu'on aime 
 Sans le savoir."
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 THE ASSOCIATION OF PSYCHICAL STATES. 
 
 I. 
 ASSOCIATION. 
 
 ASSOCIATION is the state of dynamical connection which 
 accompanies the production and reproduction, not only of 
 the facts of intellectual and moral life, but of all the 
 mental, muscular, and nervous facts which are co-or- 
 dinated if not altogether brought about in certain fixed 
 regions of the brain. Association is not, properly speak- 
 ing, a special faculty, like sensibility, emotion, and motor 
 activity. It is one of the apparent or underlying forms or 
 all organic or psychic manifestations. Everything is con- 
 tinuous and bound together, in our perceptions, our affec- 
 tions, our thoughts, and our volitions. We have already 
 seen that all our distinct ideas of objects are equivalent to 
 syntheses or associations of ideas arrived at synthetically. 
 These abstractions and groups of perceptions, which are 
 found in the apparently simplest ideas, explain the nature 
 and conditions of psychic life, which is a series of mental 
 states reproduced and capable of combining with other 
 series of the same kind and with impressions of the 
 moment inserted in the complex woof of former combina- 
 tions. 
 
 It is impossible to know at what moment of the foetal 
 or intra-uterine life, associations of mental states, prop- 
 erly so called, begin. Some have certainly been formed 
 long before the time when we first observe them. In fact, 
 
 131
 
 132 THE FIKST THEEE YEAKS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 what external signs could reveal the numerous impressions 
 which must associate themselves together to produce even 
 a hazy knowledge of the simplest object, such as the feed- 
 ing hottle, the nurse's face, etc. ? 
 
 M. Eibot vividly describes all that is involved in a recol- 
 lection which consciousness presents to us as simple : 
 
 "The memory of an apple is necessarily a weakened 
 form of the perception of an apple. What does this per- 
 ception suppose? A modification of the complex structure 
 of the retina, transmission by the optic nerve through the 
 corpora geniculata and the tubercula quadrigemina to the 
 cerebral ganglia (optic tract?), then through the white 
 substance to the cortex. This supposes the activity of 
 many widely separated elements. But this is by no means 
 all. It is not a question of a simple sensation of color. 
 We see, or imagine, the apple is a solid object having a 
 spherical form. These conceptions result from the ex- 
 quisite muscular sensibility of our visual apparatus and 
 from its movements. Now, the movements of the eye are 
 regulated by several nerves the sympathetic, the oculo- 
 motor, and its branches. Each of these nerves has its 
 own termination, and is connected by a devious course 
 with the outer cerebral layer, where the motor intuitions, 
 according to Maudsley, are formed. We simply indicate 
 outlines. For further details the reader should consult 
 standard works on anatomy and physiology. But we 
 have given an idea of the prodigious number of nervous 
 filaments and distinct communities of cells scattered 
 through the different parts of the cerebro- spinal axis, 
 which serve as the basis for the psychical state known as 
 the memory of an apple, and which the double illusion of 
 consciousness and language leads us to consider as a sin- 
 gle fact." 1 
 
 Under these circumstances, then, we cannot hope to 
 "seize in the act" the first associations formed in a child's 
 mind between the different perceptions visual, muscular, 
 and motive, auditive, or tactile, or between these percep- 
 
 1 Eibot, Maladies de la Memoire. See Eng. Trans. (Internal. Sclent. 
 Series), pp. 42, 43.
 
 ASSOCIATION. 133 
 
 tioiis and different sensory and emotional conditions: 
 these facts go on in the mysterious depths of consciousness, 
 if even they do not belong in part to unconscious cerebra- 
 tion. We must be content to point out the most apparent. 
 
 Darwin does not notice any positive manifestation of 
 ideas in a child's mind before the age of five months. For 
 instance, speaking of one of his children at this age, he 
 says, "As soon as his hat and cloak had been put on, he 
 became very cross if not taken out at once. At five 
 months his eyes would seek his nurse when he heard her 
 name pronounced." This date, which to me seems tardy, 
 is much nearer the truth, however, than that of ten months, 
 indicated by M. Taine for the appearance of the same 
 phenomenon in his daughter. Tiedemann, rightly or 
 wrongly, notes the, beginning of the association of ideas 
 two days after birth. If any one placed his son "on his 
 side in a position to suck, or if he felt a soft hand on his 
 face, he became quiet and felt about for the breast." 
 "Here," writes his father, "association of ideas is evident, 
 the feeling of a particular position or of a soft hand awak- 
 ing the idea of sucking at the breast. On the 26th of 
 January, when five months old, the growing desire to learn 
 manifested itself more plainly. The nurse, whenever the 
 weather permitted, took him out into the street, which 
 delighted him beyond measure; and in spite of the cold, 
 he was always very eager for this event. The child soon 
 learnt to notice, that when the nurse took up her cloak it was 
 a signal for going out; and he smiled and crowed, even in 
 the midst of his tears, every time she performed the opera- 
 tion." 
 
 When I put two little kittens (three days old) which I 
 am rearing, on my hand in a standing position, they will 
 remain some seconds without stirring, as if enjoying the 
 heat of my hand; but soon, the contact of my skin not 
 affording them the same sensation as that of the body of 
 their mother, they begun to shake their heads, show signs 
 of uneasiness, move about on their little tottering paws, 
 and try to suck that portion of my hand which has pos- 
 sibly reminded them of their mother's breast. But as the 
 sucking produces no result, after a few fruitless efforts they
 
 134 THE FIRST THKEE YEARS OP CHILDHOOD. 
 
 become more and more uneasy; they do not feel at home; 
 they have begun to realize the difference between my hand 
 and their mother's warm, soft body, and they begin to 
 to pine for their familiar shelter, and to cry out for it 
 loudly. 
 
 These few facts, taken at random, show us how very 
 early, both in young children and young animals, the exer- 
 cise of this physical and intellectual faculty, formerly in- 
 correctly called association of ideas, but which is really 
 the associability of all the actions of the nervous systems, 
 either with their congeners or with their neighbors, comes 
 into play. 
 
 All the first manifestations of animal sensibility testify 
 to the faculty which the mind has of associating and blend- 
 ing in one the different series of homogeneous impressions 
 which it receives. A baby fifteen days old, who had just 
 gone to sleep, and in whose mouth I put a feeding bottle 
 filled with plain water, sucked it for a few minutes and 
 then began to make faces, to open its mouth, and finally 
 to cry. The same child, who was lying awake in its 
 mother's arms, was taken up in the same position by its 
 uncle, and began at once to whimper. A child two months 
 old, who already smiled consciously at his nurse, would 
 allow himself to be fed by another nurse, his own being 
 close by. These examples prove that homogeneous sensa- 
 tions were associated in their minds to such a point that 
 they recognized them when they were reproduced, and 
 that, not finding them when they expect them, they suf- 
 fer in consequence, in spite of the feebleness of their 
 powers of comparison. 
 
 Herbert Spencer gives to this remarkable phenomenon 
 the name of integration of the sensations. "A color, the 
 moment it is perceive^, not only irresistibly aggregates 
 with the class of feelings that originate on the outer sur- 
 face and imply outer stimuli, but also with the sub-class 
 of visual sensations, and cannot be forced into any other 
 sub-class. While being recognized, a sound falls simul- 
 taneously into the general assemblage of feelings derived 
 from the senses which hold converse with the external 
 world, and also into the more special assemblage of feel-
 
 ASSOCIATION. 135 
 
 ings distinguished as auditory; and no effort will separate 
 it from this special assemblage. And to say a smell cannot 
 be thought of as a color or a sound, is to say that it 
 associates itself indissolubly with previously experienced 
 smells." ' 
 
 On the other hand, "these simultaneous impressions, 
 optic, olfactory . acoustic, received at the same moment, 
 anom several circumscribed localities at the same time, 
 constitute a series of contemporaneous souvenirs, which are 
 created and implanted in the memory; and henceforth 
 those vibrations which were born together, and were simul- 
 taneously conceived, will represent in the series of remi- 
 niscences, a definite group, of which the elements, united 
 by the bonds of a mysterious federation, will all live with 
 the same life, anastomose one with another, and recall one 
 another as soon as one link of the chain is struck. " 2 
 
 My two kittens, which the mother had left to go and lap 
 up a saucer of milk I had pxit down for her, after tumbling 
 over and over for a few minutes, at last cuddled together 
 to go to sleep. Suddenly the mother returned and sprang 
 lightly into the box without touching her kittens. In- 
 stantly, however, they sat up, as if moved by a spring; the 
 slight noise which the mother had made in getting back 
 into the box, and the movement which she imparted to it 
 and which they had felt, produced auditory and muscular 
 impressions which became associated in their brain with 
 the idea of her presence; and to the idea of her presence 
 was joined the desire to suck, for they immediately set to 
 work at this operation. 
 
 When six weeks old, these same cats, having made ac- 
 quaintance with raw meat, precipitated themselves, one 
 after the other, on a ball of red paper, which they had 
 taken for a piece of meat, and were beginning to eat. The 
 sensation of a particular color was associated in their 
 minds with the idea of food, and with the movements of 
 absorption and prehension, which they already produced 
 by reflex action. 
 
 1 Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology, p. 255. 
 2 Luy8, Le. Ceroe.au et ses Fonctions. See Eng. Trans. (Internal. 
 Scient. Series), p. 154.
 
 136 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 A little child, of four months and a half, was in its 
 mother's arms; its nurse, who had just returned after a 
 short holiday, before coming into the room, put her mouth 
 to the key-hole and in her most coaxing voice called little 
 Paul three or four times. The latter first raised his head, 
 then turned to the right and the left, and cast questioning 
 looks at his mother; the nurse went over the comedy 
 again, laughing rather loud. Paul could not stand it any 
 longer; he held out his little arms, and made impatient 
 starts of joy, desire and vexation, and was on the point of 
 tears, when his mother, to spare him unnecessary teasing, 
 called in the nurse. Thus the sound of his nurse's voice 
 and laugh had become very early associated with the idea 
 of her person, with the pleasure of her presence, of the 
 need of seeing her when she spoke, and with instinctive 
 movements to be taken in her arms. 
 
 A little child a year old could not see a hat or bonnet, 
 or any article which appeared to be a covering for the 
 head, without saying, "Mene, mene" (promener), by which 
 he meant that some one was to take him by the hand and 
 lead him out for a walk. Whilst playing one day at a 
 table, he took a little round mat and put it on his head, 
 calling out "Mene, mene." He said the same thing also 
 when his aunt touched an umbrella. The word "peudu' 
 (perdu) is associated in his mind with the idea of any 
 object that he sees fall down, and which he throws away, 
 or which he cannot see when he hears it talked about. 
 One day he took my hand with both his, stroked it, shook 
 it about like one of his playthings, and then, the fancy 
 seizing him to throw it on the ground, he pushed it away 
 and let go of it, saying, "Peudu," and looking on the floor 
 to see where it had gone. If a flower is given him to 
 smell, he sniffs it for a few moments, and then imme- 
 diately offers it to some one else to smell. When he is 
 walking in the garden by the flower beds, he seizes hold 
 of the stalks of flowers, drags them towards him, and 
 gives whatever remains in his hand to some one to smell. 
 The sight of the smoke which I puff out of my lips when 
 indulging in a cigar, causes him to make a very curious 
 movement of expiration resembling +he action of a smoker.
 
 ASSOCIATION. 137 
 
 But smoke of all sorts attracts him, and makes him 
 say "Mtne;" and when he is near it, if it is I who am with 
 him, he looks at me with a happy expression, and makes 
 this movement of the lips which his grandfather has taught 
 him, and which I have already noticed in another child. 
 
 Thus we find in young children the same kinds of asso- 
 ciations as in adults. There is not one of the combina- 
 tions of associations which have been studied so carefully 
 by psychologists, of which we cannot find at least a faint 
 foreshadowing in a child of six or seven months. We can 
 also discern in little children a sketchy idea of the rela- 
 tions of sequence, which is the principle of the idea of 
 time. A child eight months old, to whom its mother held 
 out her arms while advancing towards it, stopped for a mo- 
 ment, and then held out /w*arms; she called him, but did 
 not yet go up to him, he gesticulated with his whole body 
 and began to scream; she advanced a little nearer, and 
 he pushed himself forward as if to hasten the meeting. 
 Thus movements, begun at a certain distance and in his 
 direction, were associated in his mind with the idea of con- 
 tinuation. 
 
 A child of eleven months warbles, as a sort of accom- 
 paniment, so to say, when his nurse sings a simple little 
 air, which he is very fond of, and which she has sung to 
 him ever since his birth. If the nurse stops in the middle, 
 or does not quite finish the song, the child looks at her 
 with astonishment and stops his warbling ; if the nurse 
 goes on with the song where she left off, the child evinces 
 great delight. These associations of successive sensations, 
 multiplied to infinity, prepare for the formation of the ab- 
 stract and general idea of time, which develops so slowly 
 in young children, even after they have begun to talk. A 
 child six months old 'will cry for his bottle as if he was 
 starving, even if he has had it a little while before, as soon 
 as day begins to dawn. The mother says, "He guesses 
 that it is time for his breakfast." No, but the return of 
 light is associated in his mind with the idea of sucking his 
 bottle, and this is why the morning twilight provokes in 
 him the factitious need of a meal. We may notice this 
 kind of association, and consequently a faint rudiment of
 
 138 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 the concrete ideas of time, in the supposed instinct which 
 causes even very young animals to know the hours of their 
 masters' or their friends' meals. Who has not seen dogs, 
 cats, and birds put in a punctual appearance in gardens 
 and houses, at the hours when meals are going on? It is 
 an indisputable fact that signs analogous to those which 
 give us our ideas of time, that is to say, successions of 
 impressions, indicate to these dumb creatures the oppor- 
 tune moment for returning to their restaurants. 
 
 The associations of resemblance are not less clearly 
 expressed by the language of action in little children. A 
 boy of nine months is opposite me. His grandmother has 
 just pronounced the word papa. The child smiles at her, 
 then at me, and holds out his arms to me. The child cer- 
 tainly did not take me for his father, even at first sight ; 
 but certain general resemblances between me and the 
 father had awakened, at the name of papa, the ideas, feel- 
 ings, and actions which had for a long time been asso- 
 ciated with the presence of his father, and which caused 
 the child to smile at me, to hold out his arms, to utter lit- 
 tle cries of joy, to embrace me and let himself be fondled 
 by me. 
 
 It is by associations of this kind that little children learn 
 very early to see well-known people or things in other 
 people or things, resembling them in some way. In a very 
 remarkable article, though, unhappily for the study in 
 which we are engaged, the observations are not taken till 
 after the age of three months, M. Taine notes the follow- 
 ing facts, "She sees her grandfather everyday, for they 
 show her his portrait drawn in crayon, much smaller than 
 life, but very like him. When any one says to her, 
 'Where is grandpapa? ' she turns towards this portrait and 
 smiles. But before her grandmother's portrait, which is 
 much less like, she shows no sign of recognition." 
 
 It is this association of like ideas which suggests to little 
 children those comparisons which we often take for ab- 
 stract generalizations, and which cause the little chatter- 
 boxes to talk of everything ct, propos of everything, their 
 vivid and inexperienced imagination showing them every- 
 where the known in the unknown, the like in the unlike.
 
 ASSOCIATION. 139 
 
 It is this imagination also which makes them afterwards 
 seize so vividly and be so startled at contrasts in objects 
 and actions in which at first sight they thought they saw 
 similarity. It is this which suggests to them analogies of 
 all sorts, which to us seem sometimes so strange and unac- 
 countable, but which are so natural to them, though at the 
 same time they have only an external signification for 
 them. For instance, a little girl who had seen some cock- 
 chafers on a tree, asked, "When would the cockchafers be- r 
 gin to bud?" Again, it is the association of analogous ) 
 sounds which causes children's strong liking for allitera- \ 
 tion and consonances; this taste first of all shows itself in i 
 meaningless repetitions and later by their delight in music 
 and rhymes. 
 
 I do not think it is possible to determine in children 
 who cannot yet talk, the existence of associations based on 
 the law of contrast. Is it not possible that for the fusion 
 of opposite ideas a greater degree of intellectual develop- 
 ment and a greater power of comparison is needed than a 
 child of hardly a year old possesses? Children pass from 
 the easy to the easy, from like to like, before advancing 
 from the easy to the more difficult, from like to difference, 
 from analogy to contrast. ) 
 
 Besides these connections, which philosophers have en- 
 titled accidental or fortuitous, there are others which they 
 have distinguished by the name of logical or rational, such 
 as the relations of cause to consequence, of means to ends, 
 of signs to the things signified. I wish merely to remind 
 my readers of this order of classification, without attempt- 
 ing to discuss it. I shall confine myself to remarking 
 that, the laws of nature and intelligence being given, there 
 is not one of the different kinds of association enumerated 
 above which does not necessarily exist in every intelligence. 
 The proof of this is, that all or nearly all the forms of as- 
 sociation called logical, exhibit themselves, as well as the 
 others, in young infants. What baby is there of three or 
 four months, who, having burnt itself with a candle or the 
 fire, or what child of ten months, who, having had a nasty 
 dose of medicine, will not recoil instinctively at the sight 
 of these objects, which remind them of the pain or disgust
 
 140 THE FIRST THKEE YEA.KS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 they have caused. Here we have the concrete idea of 
 cause associated with the concrete idea of effect. The 
 relation of the means to the end, which in children's minds 
 is confounded with that of cause to effect or succession, 
 is a matter of daily practical application at the earliest age. 
 The sight of their food and toys, of the people and objects 
 who please them and gratify their desires, or the reverse, 
 remind them at every moment that they are the instru- 
 ments of their pleasure or their pain. When, at the age of 
 three months, they cry for their food, or to be rocked to 
 sleep, they already possess a concrete idea of a . means 
 tending to an end; and what is more, they utilize this 
 knowledge in their own way. They know well enough, 
 long before they can speak, what such a sound or such a 
 modulation of the voice means, what is the signification of 
 this attitude or that gesture; in a word, the sign and the 
 thing signified are associated in their young minds. As to 
 the associations established concerning the relationship of 
 genus to species, we should not be able to find more than 
 very vague rudiments of these in little children, whose 
 power of generalization is always rather feeble, needing, as 
 it does, for full play a fairly large amount of experience 
 combined with considerable progress in the acquisition of 
 speech. 
 
 M. L. Ferri, in an interesting article on The First Three 
 Years of Childhood, 1 has expressed his opinion that the 
 intelligence of a child exists in a degree and is exercised in 
 a sphere proportioned to the degree of experience of which 
 the child is capable before it has acquired any abstract 
 notions; and that human intelligence, when it is only 
 founded on the sensitive associations common alike to men 
 and animals, consists essentially in an intuitive activity, 
 which distinguishes and combines, affirms and denies the 
 connection either of sensations or of things, and is not 
 limited to a passive reception of corresponding associations. 
 This is also my opinion. I think it is the natural organi- 
 zation only which predisposes a child to modify certain 
 
 1 In the Filosofla delle. Sc.uole Italians, Oct. 1879. See in Revue 
 Philos., April, 1880, the review of this article.
 
 ASSOCIATION. 141 
 
 actual experiences according to the dynamic impulsions 
 which anterior experiences have deposited in its organs 
 under the title of latent energy. This would still only 
 indicate a greater or less facility of accommodation in the 
 young being to new experiences, and perhaps the necessity 
 for him of certain associations which are imposed on him 
 by his specific organization, as much as by the nature of 
 things. At any rate, I agree with M. Taine that the asso- 
 ciations of ideas formed in the mind of a child of ten 
 months, do not go beyond the scope of animal intelligence; 
 but this may be because I grant more to the latter than 
 does M. Taine, or even Darwin, at any rate in the above- 
 mentioned treatise. Darwin sees a marked difference 
 between the aptitude of a little child and that of the most 
 intelligent adult animal, in forming associations due to 
 instruction and associations spontaneously produced. I 
 cannot subscribe to this. Does the dog who runs from the 
 bottom of the garden on hearing the word miyar, show a 
 faculty of association inferior to that of a child of six or 
 seven months, who moves his head from right to left when 
 one says to him, " Shake your head " ? I think not. 
 
 I have had cited to me an example of association fur- 
 nished by a little French girl in Vienna. She was two 
 and a half years old, when she heard related a detailed 
 account of the assassination of the Czar Alexander II. 
 All the events of the narrative were firmly imprinted on 
 her mind; but she confused the assassins of the Emperor 
 with the men who swept away the snow on the scene of 
 the assassination. A fortnight later, snow was falling in 
 Vienna; the window being open, the child looked out in 
 the street and saw several men occupied in sweeping away 
 the snow. Suddenly she cried out, " Oh, wicked men, 
 they have killed the Emperor ! me like to see poor Emperor 
 buried! " But why should we refuse to believe that ani- 
 mals which cannot speak are not susceptible of analogous 
 associations? Here is an example showing how durable 
 connected recollections may be in certain animals. " A 
 turtle-dove, which had been very carefully brought up by a 
 lady from London, was given to an officer who carried it 
 away with him on an expedition. The bird remained
 
 142 THE FIRST THKEE YEAES OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 absent a year and a half. When it was brought back 
 after this interval of time, it heard its former mistress 
 speak before it saw her. At the first sound of her voice it 
 showed signs of extraordinary impatience, and fluttered 
 about the cage, a prey to excessive emotions." 1 
 
 Philosophers have often remarked the influence of asso- 
 ciation of ideas on sentiment. Thus, the word mamma will 
 make a child smile, whereas that of papa will only make 
 him turn round quickly, to see the person whom he loves 
 with more of respect than tenderness. In general, the 
 habits founded on associations which are the most fre- 
 quently repeated appear to be the strongest. But there 
 are cases where the vivacity of the emotions engenders 
 associations suddenly, and, in consequence, establishes 
 lasting habits. Locke speaks of a little girl whom her 
 mother was obliged to whip, in order to cure her of the 
 bad habits she had learnt from her nurse. A single day's 
 correction sufficed. Painful affections, as we can easily 
 understand, have an influence proportioned to their vivac- 
 ity, on our moral habits especially. Hence those who 
 have the bringing up of children should keep them as 
 much as possible out of the way of terrible spectacles and 
 alarming tales. 
 
 In order to well understand the mechanism of thought 
 in children, and to be able to interpret at every turn their 
 gestures, words, and actions, we must not overlook that 
 law of association which causes memory to touch over and 
 over again on the culminating points of a series, an 
 abbreviative process which may be succeeded by the 
 detailed analysis of intermediate and secondary points. 
 This tendency of the mind, which enables the adult to 
 construct artificial chains of ideas, manifests itself spon- 
 taneously in children, and it is possible to follow the 
 formation of the chain up to a certain point. I will cite 
 one among a thousand examples. A lady had gone to call 
 on a friend aud had taken with her her little boy two 
 years and four months old. After the child had well 
 inspected every corner of the drawing-room, he slipped 
 
 1 Frank Buckland, Curiosities of Natural History, vol. i., p. 183.
 
 ASSOCIATION. 143 
 
 through an open door into a little passage which led into an 
 adjoining room. The door of this room being half-open, 
 he went a few steps into it, and in so doing upset a chair. 
 This noise awoke the husband of the lady, who, being 
 either tired or indisposed, had lain down on his bed in his 
 clothes, with his nightcap on his head. "Who is there?" 
 cried the sleeper disturbed in his slumbers. The sudden 
 sight of this bizarre apparition caused the child inexpress- 
 ible fear and surprise. He ran out of the room, took 
 refuge with his mother, and pulled her dress repeatedly, 
 as if to make her come away. Soon after the mother 
 went home with the child ; and the whole way along the 
 child talked of nothing but Pierrot whom he had seen 
 lying down, and who had frightened him very much. 
 More than three months later, when this lady came to see 
 the child's mother, the child asked her abruptly, "How is 
 Pierrot? Is he sleeping on his bed?" The lady answered 
 that he slept in his cage on a perch, and not in a bed. 
 "Is Pierrot naughty? he frightened me very much." The 
 lady thought he was speaking of her sparrow. Another 
 time, she answered him that Pierrot was dead. "Then," 
 said the child, "he is no longer in bed." The lady still 
 thought he meant the bird, which had just died. The 
 child's mother burst out laughing, and explained the mis- 
 understanding. These were the salient points of that 
 association of images and ideas so alarming to the child. 
 To all these prominent recollections there belonged a num- 
 ber of others, which came back capriciously to the child 
 when he talked of this redoubtable Pierrot. 
 
 Another question of importance is, whether it is easier 
 or more natural to recall a series of incidents in the same 
 order in which they occurred or in the inverse order. In 
 my opinion, this last kind of association is essentially arti- 
 ficial ; but it is not equally easy, or at any rate habitual, to 
 different orders of mind, apart from all inequality of intel- 
 ligence. One of my friends, a scientific man of superior 
 mind, sent me the following reflections on this subject: "I 
 remember that Taine asserts that memory can reproduce 
 ideas and incidents in the inverse order to that in which 
 they first arose, He cites as an example a journey along
 
 144 THE FIEST THKEE YEAES OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 a particular road, all the events of which can be recalled 
 by the memory in an order exactly the reverse to that in 
 which they happened, that is to say, beginning at the point 
 of arrival and going back to the point of departure. A 
 manifest error. I have vainly made the experiment, and 
 I have realized that in a series of objects or impressions, 
 a, b, c, d, e, /, if I wanted to go backwards from / to the 
 preceding object, I was obliged by a rapid flight to imagine 
 myself as having reached e or even d before getting to /. 
 To pass from e to d, I must first recall c or even b. Thus, 
 having learnt by heart the series of stations from Bor- 
 deaux to Morceux, it required a tremendous effort to recall 
 the inverted series from Morceux to Bordeaux, and I was 
 only able to construct it by the help of fragments of the 
 direct series." Such a conclusion surprised me in a man 
 of science, and one thoroughly initiated in the methods of 
 natural science. Must we conclude that he was wanting 
 in capacity to accomplish the feat, or was it only want of 
 habit? It may be that certain minds are naturally more 
 apt at it than others. As far as concerns my friend, I veri- 
 fied by experience that this operation is as difficult for him 
 as it is easy to myself. I made the experiment d propos 
 of a road which was well known to us both since our child- 
 hood; taking a distance of two leagues from a town to a 
 village, I repeated, both inversely and otherwise, every 
 little road on the left hand and on the right, which 
 diverged from the high road. My friend made some mis- 
 takes even when beginning at the point of departure, but 
 he would have made a still greater number had he 
 attempted the reverse way. This faculty, which I am 
 convinced is essentially an acquired one, but which is also 
 more or less a natural gift, must be very feeble in children. 
 But that it is entirely left out at the beginning of life, 
 nothing seems to show. 
 
 It is association which makes the unity of our mental 
 existence, by establishing a natural bond between all the 
 various parts of which it is constituted ; and it is to asso- 
 ciation that we must look for the formation of the habits, 
 judgment, character, and morality of children. Associa- 
 tion presents us with an easy means of exercising the
 
 ASSOCIATION. 145 
 
 memory methodically, of verifying its acquisitions and its 
 aptitudes, of facilitating its play, and rectifying its errors, 
 by the facility which it 'affords a child's mind especially 
 when influenced by an adult will of ascending or of 
 descending the chain of its ideas and sentiments. Do 
 what we will, however, we shall never arrive at knowing 
 and being able to guide more than a very limited number 
 of the associations which work in a child's mind. The 
 important matter is, to know that we can discover and 
 establish a great many essential ones, those which are the 
 most apparent and habitual, and that we can thus to a 
 certain extent move according to our own will the secret 
 springs of the young character. 
 
 We must not give in to Fenelon's opinion, that it is 
 enough to awaken the curiosity of a child and to heap up 
 in his memory a mass of good materials, which will com- 
 bine of themselves in due time and which the brain when 
 more highly developed will arrange in systematic groups; 
 we should endeavor as far as possible to control the first 
 impressions which sink unconsciously into a child's mind, 
 but still more careful should we be in the selection of those 
 later ones which we try to inculcate on him, and of the 
 links which we wish to establish between such and such 
 perceptions, sentiments or actions; for the older a child 
 grows the less must we count on the innate tendency of 
 just ideas, suitable sentiments, and useful impulses to 
 combine themselves in logical and durable associations. 
 To a child's mind every combination is logical and moral 
 from the mere fact of its existing. From infancy there- 
 lore we must keep careful guard over the formation of 
 those associations over which we have any hold. Why is 
 it that domestic animals, so far as they have escaped 
 man's training and follow the natural impulses of their 
 organization combined with the direct action of external 
 objects, appear to us often to show proofs of a surer 
 and quicker judgment in the things which are useful for 
 them to know than most human beings would in like 
 circumstances? It is because the instincts in each species, 
 and their variable development in each individual, are sub- 
 ject less to imitation and to education than to personal 
 11
 
 146 THE FIKST THREE YEAES OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 experience, and to the latter less than to hereditary ex- 
 perience; and by experience we mean associations firmly 
 combined and in a very limited space. Their logic is 
 more limited than ours, and is circumscribed within a 
 small sphere of relations, but in this sphere it moves 
 easily; it is founded on the natural relations of things, on 
 associations truly experimental. 
 
 As much may be said, in many respects, of savages. It 
 is not only by the acuteness and special adaptions of their 
 senses that they are superior to us, but by the judgments, 
 limited it is true, but founded on practical experience, 
 which they bring to bear on the impressions of their 
 senses. Not only are some of their senses, sight and 
 hearing for instance, of much wider scope than ours, but 
 their daily life places them in circumstances fitted for the 
 exercise and development of their sensorial judgments. 
 Concerning the Arawaks, Hillhouse says, "Where a Euro- 
 pean can discover no indication whatever, an Indian will 
 point out the footsteps of any number of negroes, and will 
 state the precise day on which they have passed; and if 
 on the same day, he will state the hour. " . . . "Along 
 with this acuteness of perception there naturally goes a 
 high degree of skill in those simple actions depending on 
 the immediate guidance of perception. . . ,' M Such 
 is the result of frequent or minute observation of a limited 
 .:' number of objects. We must, therefore, be careful to 
 select experiences for children who cannot choose for 
 themselves, and this not only with a view of developing 
 little by little the sensorial faculties of our species till they 
 equal those of savages and certain animals, but also of 
 developing, side by side with the perceptions, the faculty 
 of judging and acting rightly. 
 
 To give a child very little to observe at a time, but to 
 make it observe that little well and rightly, is the true way 
 of forming and storing its mind. 
 
 'H. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, p. 88.
 
 IMAGINATION. 147 
 
 n. 
 
 IMAGINATION. 
 
 Representative or reproductive imagination, or the return 
 of vivid impressions, images, forms, sounds, colors, objects, 
 persons and places which have keenly affected us, begins 
 to work very early in life. The child, hardly a month old, 
 who recognizes his mother's breast at a very short dis- 
 tance, shows, by the strong desire it has to get to it, that 
 this sight has made an impression on it, and that this 
 image must be deeply engraven on its memory. The child 
 who, at the age of three months, turns sharply round on 
 hearing a bird sing, or on hearing the name coco pro- 
 nounced, and looks about for the bird cage, has formed 
 a very vivid idea of the bird and the cage. When, a little 
 later, on seeing his nurse take her cloak, or his mother 
 wave her umbrella, he shows signs of joy and pictures to 
 himself a walk out of doors, he is again performing a feat 
 of imagination. In like manner, when, at the age of 
 seven or eight months old, having been deceived by re- 
 ceiving a piece of bread instead of cake, on finding out 
 the trick, he throws the bread away angrily, we feel sure 
 that the image of the cake must be very clearly imprinted 
 on his mind. Finally, when he begins to babble the word 
 papa, at the sight of any man whatever, it must be that 
 the general characteristics which make up what he calls 
 papa are well fixed in his imagination. 
 
 The terrors which young children and animals are sub- 
 ject to, and which are as vague and unaccountable as they 
 are strong, are in both cases sure indices of the workings 
 of the imagination. How can we otherwise explain a 
 child's dreams, the sudden tremblings, the screams, the 
 sobs, the smiles, the movements to seize hold of an object 
 or to repel it violently, which we observe in an infant of 
 three months while asleep, and which resemble the actions 
 produced during its waking hours by fear, pain, hunger, 
 desire and joy? It may be supposed that these recollec- 
 tions of objects with which he has already come into con- 
 tact came to him also during the diurnal exercise of his 
 faculties, but more as means for identifying analogies and
 
 148 THE PmsT TUttEE YEAHS OP CHILDHOOD. 
 
 various feelings, than as distinct images in his mind. The 
 absorbing preoccupations of their short waking moments 
 do not leave children as much time as adults for imagin- 
 ing recollections or for waking dreams. Thus, a little 
 baby of two months and a half, who had been held in his 
 father's arms for ten minutes, stretched out its arms 
 eagerly and with evident delight towards its mother when 
 she advanced towards it. The numerous impressions 
 with which the father had occupied and distracted it dur- 
 ing its mother's absence, had they not prevented it from 
 thinking of the absent one and imagining her near at 
 hand? Happily for children's peace of mind and delicate 
 health, they are rarely left to themselves wbile awake. 
 
 From my sitting room I have often heard the children 
 of working people, whose mothers had been obliged to 
 leave them alone for a couple of hours, screaming dis- 
 tractedly in their cradles ; their agonized shrieks of Mamma, 
 mamma, as soon as they can utter the sound, indicate 
 clearly what was the nature of the images and senti- 
 ments which distressed them several months before, when, 
 on finding themselves in the same isolated state, they had 
 no power of expressing their grief and anger. If children 
 exercise their imagination when awake, everything leads 
 us to believe that they exercise it still more during their 
 sleep. This is in my mind the most favorable time for 
 the intellectual labor of little children, labor which must 
 be frequent and peaceful, and whose value is almost 
 always in direct ratio to the apparent repose of the exterior 
 organs. It is then that those hallucinatory sensations 
 without any present or definite object, those vivid reminis- 
 cences, those countless associations flashes of abstrac- 
 tion and generalization those collocations verging on 
 comparison, those objective judgments and reasonings, 
 resuscitate, under the more or less open eye of consciousness, 
 in the fibres of the brain, charged as they are with recent 
 impressions and along which the blood ebbs and flows 
 rapidly, awakening incessantly the vitality which is 
 scarcely affected by the paralysis of slumber. 
 
 Let us study the transition from reproductive to pro- 
 ductive imagination, which is also called poetic or creative.
 
 IMAGINATION. 149 
 
 As soon as ideas no longer present themselves in the order r 
 in which the intelligence has first perceived them, as soon \ 
 as something has become altered were it only one link / 
 suppressed in a series of associated images there may be - 
 said to have taken place an artificial mental composition, \tvxvj* 
 a modified conception of reality, a spontaneous work of 
 productive imagination. These free combinations of im- ( 
 ages arise spontaneously in young children; and is it not 
 often the same with adults, who are visited by so many 
 unexpected inspirations? The little Tiedemann, when five 
 months old, "guessed," his father says, when he was going 
 to be taken out, and showed signs of delight. His biog- 
 rapher sees no more ip. this than an association of ideas; 
 but there is more in it. Mixed up with the act of judg- 
 ment which the word guess presupposes, there is a very 
 vivid conception of some of the recollections attached to 
 the idea of going out, which produces in the child's mind 
 a series of delightful pictures. Now, supposing the child 
 to be awake, this conception would probably remain for 
 some time in exact correspondence with the reality. But 
 during sleep the capricious mobility of the ideas would 
 introduce into these images of reality some circumstances 
 and details of a fantastic description. Certain details 
 would be added, others would disappear; time, places, 
 objects, would be transformed in a thousand unforeseen 
 ways. The impressions of the reality would become, to a 
 sleeping child, a fictitious reality. 
 
 Let us picture to ourselves the working of infant intelli- 
 gence during dreams, inferring, as analogy will allow up to 
 a certain point, from a child who can speak to one who is 
 still mute. 
 
 The infant has just slept for a quarter of an hour; this 
 first slumber, consecrated to the repose of the organs, has 
 been very profound ; a flow of blood to the brain, occa- 
 sioned by some internal trouble, half wakes him up; the 
 nurse rocks him, and in two or three minutes he is again 
 asleep. As the first sleep has already in some measure 
 repaired the losses of organic life, this second sleep is 
 lighter and more favorable to dreams. Vague sensations, 
 transmitted from the periphery to the brain, excite a revi-
 
 150 THE FIBST THREE YEAES OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 val of ideas, and the play of associating and dissociating 
 images has already begun. A fly settling on the child's 
 face, a movement of its bed curtains, a sensation of con- 
 tact caused by the sheets or its nightgown, a ray of light 
 falling on its closed eyelids, a noise in the house or in the 
 street, the muscular sensations caused by one of the child's 
 automatic movements, an impression surging up from the 
 depths of the organs of vegetative life in short, the 
 slightest circumstance foreign to the ordinary life of the 
 brain, will suffice to awaken its functional energy, and set 
 the child off dreaming. Instantly memory recalls to him 
 any of the most striking incidents of the day the green 
 bench, for instance, on which his nurse sat with him; and 
 with this comes a whole train of associated images. A 
 large tree with waving branches, a beautiful white cloud 
 on a bit of blue sky, the smiling face of a child who kissed 
 him, let him handle his toys, and play with him, then a 
 dog, spotted with white and brown, which came and put 
 its paws on the child's frock and licked his face; then a 
 man in a red and blue uniform, whose large sword glittered 
 and made a great noise, then another man like the first, 
 who passed very near the path, sounding a drum; then a 
 horse galloping the same way, then some more men in red 
 and blue with gleaming bayonets on their shoulders, then 
 a heavy cart which bumped on the pavement with a loud 
 noise, and directly after that an ugly woman with a smiling 
 face, offering cakes for sale out of a basket. We are sup- 
 posing that all these salient events, which happened whilst 
 the child was out of doors, have come back to his mind in 
 the order of succession of the real impressions. But the 
 reproduction of these recollections the illusion of sleep 
 assisting has made of them a simultaneous picture. This 
 in itself would be a notable modification, were there no 
 other, for imagination to have introduced into recollections 
 of real incidents. To modify still further this chain of 
 associations, it needs only a fresh excitation, coming either 
 from outside or rising from within, which shall combine 
 in the brain old recollections with new ones, separate what 
 was united and unite what was separated, and form dis- 
 proportioned and incongruous associations of ideas; and
 
 IMAGINATION. 151 
 
 the reproductive imagination will have given place to the 
 productive imagination. 
 
 If the series of impressions conceived in the dream were 
 a faithful imitation of the real impressions, why should 
 there be those violent contractions of the face, those con- 
 tortions of the limbs, that wild laughter and those piercing 
 screams and convulsive tremblings so painful to witness, 
 and all those evident signs of intense sensations and emo- 
 tions which the realities, the recollection of which forms 
 the tissue of the dreams, did not excite in the child? A con- 
 siderable change must therefore have been produced in his 
 hallucinated brain, a change affecting the proportions of 
 the images and their mutual relations. 
 
 For example, the large horse will have taken the place 
 of the dog; with awful neighings, he advances his gigantic 
 nostrils close to the child's face. The cake, a piece of 
 which was snapped up by the dog, will be seized by the 
 huge mouth of the horse, which will then gallop off to the 
 cart carrying away the nurse and the little child; and so on 
 through the whole chapter, until the horror reaches a cli- 
 max, and the child awakes with a loud scream. 
 
 But his half-open eyes have perceived, transfigured as in 
 the dream, the gentle face of his nurse, who is rocking him 
 and whispering comforting words in his ear. The charm 
 takes effect, and the child goes to sleep again, and resumes 
 the thread of his dream interwoven now with joy and hap- 
 piness; the green bench reappears, and the little children, 
 dressed in white and blue and pink, with bright eyes and 
 rosy cheeks; cake and toys are given to him, and so on, 
 and so on, at the will of the capricious fairy, who is the 
 association of ideas. Such is the rudimentary working of 
 creative imagination. 
 
 Dreams are the poems of children, who, even when 
 awake, are always more or less of poets. Ah ! the strange 
 dramas, the merry comedies, the sparkling idylls, the dis- 
 mal elegies, the thrilling odes which have haunted in their 
 cradles the brains of future poets ! Fictitious inventions 
 which will perhaps return to them later in life without 
 being recognized, when they think they are imagining quite 
 new and original combinations. For the adult, as well as
 
 152 THE Fl&ST THREE tfEAfcS 6 CHILDHOOD. 
 
 for the young child, what we call creative imagination con- 
 sists in separating, combining, cutting down, amplifying, 
 abridging, exaggerating, and juxtaposing in a thousand 
 different ways, and often in an order the least intended, 
 former perceptions, judgments, and reasonings, in order to 
 create out of these materials an inner world quite different 
 from the outer one, though made after its image. 
 
 In the waking state the exercise of this faculty shows 
 itself by manifestations of diverse kinds. 
 
 m. 
 
 SPECIAL IMAGINATION. 
 
 Every sense has its special imagination ; but psycholo- 
 gists tell us that the senses of sight and hearing call up 
 more vivid and distinct images than the other senses. 
 "This is because sight and hearing play a more important 
 part in our existence than taste and smell; incessantly 
 employed for the most various needs, these senses are sel- 
 dom left inactive. Besides which, the nerves set in vibra- 
 tion by auditory and visual impressions are finer, more 
 distinct, and more numerous, and their ramifications in 
 the cerebral substance are more systematic." l Moreover, 
 it is the images perceived by these senses which dominate 
 in animal intelligences, and in human intelligence in a 
 state of rest, or of relative suspension of thought, such as 
 reverie, natural sleep, and hypnotism. In induced som- 
 nambulism, as M. Eichet has said,, "the medulla acts when 
 the brain has become powerless;" and in addition to auto- 
 matism of movements, one of the most characteristic 
 phenomena of this state is the seeing of images. A child 
 in its ordinary state is what a somnambulist is by accident; 
 in the one and the other the superior nerve centres are but 
 little active and balanced. It is not astonishing that a 
 child's imagination should respond to external excitations, 
 and & fortiori to those of sight, which are the most vivid 
 and numerous. The habitual state of little children is that 
 of waking dreams. 
 
 i H. Jolly, Cours de Philosophic, p. 136.
 
 SPECIAL IMAGINATION. 153 
 
 Mr. Galton has made some interesting researches on the 
 mental representation of visual images. The result has 
 been to prove the existence of natural varieties of mental 
 disposition in different races, sexes, and ages. It appears 
 to be established, on the testimony of learned men them- 
 selves, that to the great majority of them mental imagery 
 was unknown, and that they looked on him as fanciful and 
 fantastic in supposing that the words ' mental imagery" 
 had more than a metaphysical meaning. On the other 
 hand, people of the world, women and children, on being 
 interrogated by Mr. Galton, " declared that they habitually 
 saw mental imageiy, and that it was distinct and full of 
 color." It has also been established, that color is more 
 easily imaged than form, especially with children, but 
 that the faculty of imaging color disappears sooner than 
 the other. These are facts of the highest importance in 
 the training of infant faculties and intelligence, if we allow 
 that imagination is always associated with the other phe- 
 nomena of psychic life, and that in children it dominates 
 over these others and carries them away with it. 
 
 Imagination can always reproduce, and sometimes with 
 great power and vividness, the perceptions of sound. The 
 tone of a human voice, the noise of an animal, the crack- 
 ing of a whip or the rumbling of a carriage, the ringing of 
 bells, the loud chords of an orchestra, haunt us still when 
 the sounds tnem selves are silent. We can recall the airs 
 that we have heard played or sung ; when we hum the scale, 
 we have every note of it in our ears. A musician com- 
 poses in his mind, and when he tunes his instrument, he 
 compares its sounds with those he hears in imagination. 
 We also hear mentally the words which express our 
 thoughts, so that it has become almost impossible to us to 
 think without words, a phenomenon designated by philos- 
 ophers under the name of internal speech. The auditive 
 imagination, more or less developed, according to the in- 
 fant's organization, plays a very important part in its 
 intellectual evolution, and a very important one also in its 
 emotional, moral, and aesthetic evolution. We shall have 
 occasion to refer to this later. 
 
 All recollections imply mental images more or less dis-
 
 154 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 tincfc and vivid; and we could not remember or recognize a 
 single taste or smell if the senses of taste and smell had 
 not also their special imaginations. There is no doubt 
 that we represent flavors and odors to ourselves in a par- 
 ticular manner. If a yourmet can taste and smell in im- 
 agination, a gourmand can enjoy his dinner in advance. 
 The recollection of sensations of smell, although generally 
 feeble, may sometimes be vivid enough to make us take 
 them for reality. People with a very delicate sense of 
 smell can enjoy in anticipation the scent of a rose which 
 they see, or that of a bunch of violets which they are about 
 to buy. We have shown above that this kind of imagina- 
 tion is already intellectually and emotionally active in some 
 young children. 
 
 There is also certainly a tactile imagination, a muscular 
 imagination, and a thermal imagination. The imagination 
 of touch is exemplified in people born blind, who can pict- 
 ure to themselves, without the help of sight, the objects 
 around them, who read raised letters by means of their 
 fingers, who possess a tactile system of geometry, and rep- 
 resent to themselves tangible figures as we do visible ones. 1 
 These three kinds of imagination, which superficial observ- 
 ers confound in one only tactile imagination are 
 powerfully exercised from the first days of life. We have 
 already devoted a few observations to them in the chapter 
 on emotional and sensual perceptions. We will content 
 ourselves here with reminding parents and ediicators of 
 children of their extreme susceptibility to the different im- 
 pressions in question. A child of three months will 
 already distinguish people from the manner in which they 
 touch, stroke, hold, or carry him. At six months he al- 
 ready appreciates very imaginatively the little punishments 
 that are inflicted on him, the people in connection with 
 these punishments, and the objects which are the instru- 
 ments of them. There are some children whom the sight 
 of a doctor who has attended them will drive almost mad. 
 If there are some children who are very little sensible, 
 one might almost say insensible, to blows, it is quite the 
 
 1 Diderot, Lettres sur les Aveugles.
 
 w 
 
 SPECIAL IMAGINATION. 155 
 
 contrary with the greater number. I can never help laugh- 
 ing when I see the peasant women in my own country 
 frightening their little pickles of two or three years old, or 
 more, with nothing but these words: " Quou te peli," or 
 " Qaet ba cose" (crude Gascon formulae, not easy to trans- 
 late). Whoever is inclined to doubt the powerful effects 
 of tactile imagination, has only to read the retrospective 
 memoirs of a child, now almost an old man, who has not 
 forgiven his mother the " thrashings " of old days. 1 It is 
 a happy thing, moreover, that tactile and muscular im- 
 pressions do leave deep traces on the child's imagination. 
 If this is the secret of some of his little troubles and sor- 
 rows, it is also the cause of his greatest pleasures. We may 
 often notice in little children between fifteen months and 
 four years old an inexplicable kind of hyper-excitement of 
 the tactilo- muscular imagination; they feel a need to cuddle 
 up against anything or anybody, inanimate objects, people, 
 animals. "Let us squeeze each other," said a child of two 
 years old to a friend of its mother's, proceeding at the same 
 time to hug her tightly. Is this play, or a superabund- 
 ance of vitality, or unregulated and unconscious impul- 
 sions of affectivity? 
 
 The influence of sentiment on imagination and of im- 
 agination on sentiment are facts so well known, and which 
 are so frequently the cause of affectionate rapprochements 
 between grown-up people and children, that they need not 
 be dwelt on here in connection with children. The affec- 
 tions, sentiments, passions, desires, fears, aversions, pleas- 
 ures, and loves of children have a continual tendency to 
 embody themselves in people and animals and inanimate 
 objects; they appear before their eyes as images in relief, 
 varied, capricious, and incoherent, nearly always false and 
 exaggerated, often terrible, sometimes enchanting. 
 
 At the age of a year, when a child is not yet a " speak- 
 ing intelligence," and even after he has begun to speak, 
 thiiujs present themselves to his mind more than the signs, 
 terms, or gestures which express them. Everything is re- 
 produced in his mind in pictures; he thinks in images, 
 
 1 Jacques Vingtras, L' 'Enfant.
 
 156 THE FIHST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 measures the truth of things by the vivacity of his impres- 
 sions. Owing to their power of scenic imagination, which 
 brings before their mind's eyes the salient features of real 
 life, and awakens in their hearts the corresponding senti- 
 ments, little children who can speak, and doubtless also 
 those who cannot, have frequent moments of retrospection, 
 which affect in a greater or less degree their happiness and 
 their moral health, and consequently, also their physical 
 health. 
 
 A little girl, two-and-a-half years old, was heard relating 
 with all the seriousness of a grown person, with touching 
 sadness and with tears in her eyes, the acts of brutality 
 which her father sometimes committed towards her mother. 
 "Naughty papa," she said, "very naughty papa! He 
 always does like that to mother; he throws her down, and 
 then I cry. He is very naughty! " 
 
 A little boy, between three and four, saw some fir-cones 
 in a park. " Pretty fir-cones! " cried he; " there are some 
 like that at Arcachon, at the sea-side. I went last year to 
 Arcachon with papa and mamma. I played a great deal, 
 and was not much scolded." 
 
 What has struck all observers of little children is, that 
 with their aptitude in recalling, even with emotion, all that 
 they have seen and heard, they are unable to localize their 
 recollections in time or space. These Kantian forms of 
 understanding are very incomplete categories at this epoch 
 of rudimentary analysis, abstraction, and comparison. A 
 child of two years, who passed nearly every day along the 
 same street on the way to the Jardin des Tuileries, was one 
 day taken by his nurse to the garden of the Luxembourg 
 instead. The instant he caught sight of the garden railings 
 he cried out, "Ch&din Tin." Although young children are 
 chiefly engrossed with what they are doing at the present 
 moment, they have also a vague idea of the recent past as 
 such ; but this idea must have some actuality for them, in 
 order to interest them. They will say, "I did that yester- 
 day," when it was done in the morning. The future which 
 is not very near, or which does not appear so to them, has 
 no influence over their imagination. A child of two years 
 to his mother, "As we are going to Koyan to-morrow
 
 SPECIAL IMAGINATION. 157 
 
 to see grandmamma, why don't you dress at once?" But 
 at three years old, this same child, who was very happy in 
 a temporary residence, and who knew that his parents were 
 going to leave it in a week, tried to put back the day of 
 departure by an illusion of his imagination, which was 
 concerned in seeing that day deferred as long as possible. 
 He used to say to his aunt, "We are going to Bordeaux 
 in eight days, not to-morrow, no, but in a very long while." 
 Let it then be our endeavor to make this present, which is 
 everything to children, happy and joyous; let us by all 
 means insure to them that happiness which costs so little, 
 and which is the first condition of their moral progress, 
 Happy children are good children. 
 
 Eousseau has written some beautiful passages on the 
 happiness which is due to children, who may perhaps 
 never know it later. 
 
 One of the most terrible diseases that mankind is sub- 
 ject to is insanity, and facts authorize us in thinking that 
 the youngest child is not more proof against this form of 
 disease than against any other. All that we can say is, 
 that it is relatively less frequent in infancy. M. Coinpayre 
 has collected from writers on lunacy a number of observa- 
 tions to which we call the attention of our readers. Con- 
 vulsions may, up to a certain point, be considered as the 
 first stage of insanity in children, whether arising from 
 constitutional or accidental causes. They have all the 
 external characteristics, and often all the intellectual and 
 moral consequences of mental disease. Trousseau cites a 
 curious example. "A doctor, called in to attend a young 
 child in convulsions, advised that its cap should be taken 
 off. He then saw a piece of thread lying on the child's 
 head; and in trying to remove it he dragged out a long 
 needle which had been deeply buried in the cranium. The 
 instant the needle was taken out, the convulsions stopped. 
 Convulsions, however, more often arise from constitutional 
 causes, from cerebral affections transmitted by heredity. 
 They appear in individuals who are endowed with special 
 nervous susceptibility, which is transmitted by birth from 
 the forefathers to the children, and which manifests itself 
 now by one phenomenon, now by another by convulsions 
 in children, by epilepsy or hysteria in adults. On careful
 
 158 THE FIKST THREE YEAES OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 investigation, it will perhaps be found that there is not a 
 single family where madness exists in which convulsions 
 have not played a certain part. Even in families which 
 are only highly nervous, and who have yet had no cases 
 of madness in their midst, the appearance of infantine 
 eclampsia manifesting itself successively in several chil- 
 dren, should be considered a very bad symptom." It is, 
 as it were, the first signal of the possible invasion of in- 
 sanity in a family hitherto sane. ' 
 
 Hallucination, which is the second degree of insanity, 
 rarely shows itself in children by unmistakable signs. If 
 it does take possession of a child of three or six months, it 
 may easily be confounded with the disorders consequent on 
 over-excited sentiment. We can nevertheless point to 
 cases where the absorption of poisonous substances has 
 thrown young children into nervous states analogous to 
 the state of hallucination. Dr. Thore is our authority for 
 the following case : 
 
 "A little girl, fifteen months old, had swallowed, in her 
 mother's absence, a considerable number of grains of 
 Datura Stramonium. Almost instantly the child was 
 thrown into a state of agitation which frightened her 
 mother very much. The doctor who was called made the 
 following depositions: 'A great change has supervened 
 in the visual organs; the child seems to be deprived of 
 sight; she does not look at any of the objects around her, 
 and pays no attention to things which used to please her 
 and which she was in the habit of asking for. A watch is 
 shown to her, and some of her toys; but they do not 
 attract her attention, while, on the contrary, she appears 
 to be reaching after imaginary objects at some distance 
 from her, and which she tries to get hold of by constantly 
 stretching out her arms and clutching with her hands. 
 She even raises herself up by leaning on the sides of her 
 cradle, as if to get nearer to these objects. She tosses her 
 hands about in the air as if trying to catch objects that 
 are flying away.' " 2 
 
 1 Compavre' La Folie chez V Enfant. Revue Phil., Dec 1880, in the 
 Annales Medicates. 
 8 Quoted by M. Compayre', loc. citat.
 
 SPECIAL IMAGINATION. 159 
 
 Here are some more facts which, although indeed be- 
 longing to a rather more advanced period tiian that treated 
 of in this book, are none the less interesting to students of 
 infant psychology. 
 
 The most habitual form of inteUectual aberration in 
 children appears to be mania, that is to say, incoherence 
 and delirium of ideas, furious agitation or tranquil wan- 
 dering of the thoughts. On this point most authorities 
 are agreed. Dr. Delasiauve, J Dr. Paulmier (in his thesis 
 entitled "Mental Affections in Children, and Mania in par- 
 ticular"), 2 and Dr. Morel, 3 declare that insanity in chil- 
 dren generally takes the form of maniacal excitation. 
 
 The following are some remarkable cases collected from 
 the writings of mad-doctors. We will quote first the very 
 circumstantial case given by Dr. Chatelain, who has him- 
 self had occasion to study a child of four years and some 
 months, the daughter of a farmer of the Jura. Two 
 causes especially, the one entirely physical (viz., measles), 
 the other moral (a great fright caused by the sight of a 
 fire-engine), had acted on the feeble constitution of this 
 child, and determined the peculiar state from which she 
 was suffering. "Louise," Dr. Chatelain states, "is 'drole,' 
 singular, and distraite. She answers at cross-purposes to 
 the questions put to her. One day her father told her to 
 bring him her doll : she went to fetch it, but brought back 
 nothing, though saying at the same time, 'Here it is' ; the 
 hand and the arm made the gesture of a person giving 
 something, hut the hand was empty. Since her illness her 
 character has sensibly altered; she has entirely lost the 
 timidity natural to her age. In the presence of two phy- 
 sicians who were unknown to her, and who examined her, 
 she showed no shyness and no awkwardness. If asked a 
 question, she answered vivaciously and without hesitation, 
 but quite at random." And then follows a full-length 
 description of a conversation testifying to the complete 
 
 1 See Annales Medico-psychologiques, 1855, tome i., p. 527. Forme. 
 Maniaqtie special? chez les Enfants. 
 9 La These de M. Le Pan'mier. 1856- 
 3 See Annales Medico-psycholoyiQues, 1870, tome ii., pp. 260-269.
 
 1(50 THE FIKST THKEE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 disorder of ideas in a child otherwise very intelligent, and 
 whose ailment cannot be confounded with idiotcy. 
 
 The preceding example gives us a case of calm and 
 tranquil mania. The little girl in question, however, was 
 also subject to fits of furious mania, which took the form 
 of a need of perpetual movement, of tears and screams, 
 and threats of death to her parents. At other times, 
 agitation is the permanent characteristic. 
 
 With rather older children cases of maniacal madness 
 are still more frequent. Dr. Morel cites the case of a child 
 five years old, who, in consequence of a shock caused by 
 fear, fell into a state of "continual turbulence and maniacal 
 exacerbation." ' Dr. Guislain records, under the name of 
 furious monopathy, a malady of the same kind in a little 
 girl of seven years. Here the cause of the evil was a blow 
 on the head. 2 And as moral causes always alternate with 
 physical ones in the generation of insanity, we find in 
 Foville a case of a boy ten years old who lost his reason 
 through reading too much. 
 
 "It is a remarkable fact, that with all these numerous 
 examples of infant mania, the list of which we might pro- 
 long, not a single case of monomania can be recorded. 
 Fixity of ideas is quite as impossible in children in a state 
 of mania, as in their normal and rational state. The little 
 mad girl described by Dr. Chatelain was continually 
 undergoing a change ot ideas. 'Generally speaking, some 
 one idea would occupy her exclusively for a day or two, and 
 would then give way to another.' Monomania appears at 
 first sight to be a sign of great intellectual weakness, since 
 all the ideas and sentiments are, as it were, annihilated 
 before one single thought, which has become sole master 
 of the consciousness. And yet, if we think about it, mono- 
 mania presupposes a certain force of intelligence and 
 power of concentration, since it is a thoroughly systematic 
 delirium. Children, with their mobile, incoherent ideas, 
 their fluctuating, volatile impressions, may easily become 
 delirious i.e., puss from one idea to another without con- 
 
 1 Mprel, op. cit., p. 102. 
 
 2 Dictionnaire de Medecine, 1829.
 
 SPECIAL IMAGINATION. 161 
 
 nection or reasoii; but we can understand their not hav- 
 ing sufficient strength to group all their faculties round 
 one single mad conception in a permanent manner. This, 
 then, no doubt, is the reason why intellectual disorder 
 manifests itself in children by a rapid and incoherent suc- 
 cession of ideas, incessantly and distractedly chasing one 
 another, rather than by the obstinate concentration of all 
 the forces of the mind in one direction. " "' 
 
 One of the most curious forms of imagination is autom- 
 atism. It is one of the most important phenomena of 
 somnambulism, and one which will help us to realize what 
 goes on in a child's imagination. "If we ask a sleeping 
 person to say what he is thinking about, he will always 
 answer that he is not thinking of anything, and that he 
 has no ideas whatever. We must take this answer au pied 
 de la lettre. A somnambulist does not think at all. His 
 intelligence is a blank absolute vacuity. This psychic 
 inertia shows itself by the complete inertia of the face and 
 of the voluntary movements. But if, in the middle of this 
 utter blankness, an image or an idea is suddenly presented, 
 this idea will at once take possession of the entire imagina- 
 tion." 8 
 
 Thus in children, their relative psychic inertia explains 
 the vivacity of their impressions, their strong objectivity, 
 their temporary possession by some idea; they are, as it 
 were, at the mercy of momentary impressions, and espe- 
 cially of those of the greatest intensity. All that they see 
 they believe to be exactly as they see it. All that is told 
 to them, rises in vivid images before them. All the ideas 
 that are suggested to them appear to them in a visible form, 
 and they instantly proceed to execute or imitate them. All 
 tliis explains the powerful influence of example on these 
 pliable little spirits, and also the contagious effect on them 
 of sentiments expressed by words and gestures. As the 
 person magnetized is subject to the magnetizer, so, in a 
 lesser degree and without complete continuity, children are 
 
 1 These remarks are in accordance with those which I have made in the 
 chapter on Memory. 
 
 a Ch. Richt, Revue PhilosopU., Oct., 1880, p. 36L 
 12
 
 162 THE FIKST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 subject, physically, intellectually, and morally, to the sug- 
 gestions and influence of the people about them. They 
 are veritable automatons, obeying consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, with more or less entire docility, the tyrannical 
 influence of any image that suggests itself or is presented 
 to their minds. The following extract describes a hypno- 
 tized subject, whom the automatism of which we have 
 spoken reduces in some respects to the level of a child. 
 
 "I say to V., ' Stroke that dog.' Immediately she goes 
 up to the dog and strokes him. If the dog tries to escape 
 from her caresses, V. runs after him; if he goes out of the 
 room, she attempts to follow him. If you put an arm- 
 chair or a bench in front of her, to stop her from passing, 
 she either knocks it over, or, if she cannot do this, she gets 
 irritated with it, and pushes it angrily away. But at a 
 sign from me, she will stand still, trembling with rage and 
 indignation. I give her some object or other, a pencil for 
 instance, forbidding her to give it up to any one. If one 
 of the assistants tries to take it away, she will make a 
 desperate resistance, running across the room, fighting, 
 biting, and kicking, in a state of indignation which one 
 could hardly form an idea of if one had not witnessed such 
 scenes. Professional magnetizers take pleasure in exhibit- 
 ing such scenes m public, and sceptics decide that they are 
 impostors. This they might certainly be, for there is not 
 one of the phenomena which cannot be counterfeited. 
 These performances, however, are not necessarily trickery, 
 and nothing is more real than the complete subordination 
 of all the intellectual forces to a word of command. It 
 seems as if the sleeping or mesmerized subject had no 
 other concern than to conform to the intimations received. 
 One idea has taken possession of the intelligence and has 
 become sovereign master. All beside is as nothing. All 
 is darkness by the side of this one vivid idea, and every- 
 thing which hinders its execution is repulsed with anger. " ' 
 
 1 Ch. Richet, Revue Philosophiaue. Oct., 1880, p. 365.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ON THE ELABORATION OF IDEAS. 
 
 I. 
 JUDGMENT. 
 
 "!F intelligence cannot exercise itself without distinguish- 
 ing and comparing, neither can it do so without affirming, 
 either explicitly or implicitly, verbally or otherwise. In 
 other words, every intellectual operation presupposes a 
 judgment; for judgment, according to the definition of 
 Aristotle, is an operation which consists in affirming some- 
 thing about something. We cannot declare anything with- 
 out believing it; and to believe, to affirm, to judge, are all 
 one. What is it to perceive an object? It is to cognize 
 its shape, position, distance, dimensions, etc., etc. To 
 know, for example, the distance at which an object stands 
 from us, is this not to bring to bear on this object, men- 
 tally at any rate, a certain affirmation? Can we form a 
 general idea, without affirming that this idea extends to 
 such and such individuals, and comprehends such and such 
 qualities? We see, indeed, that imagination makes us 
 conceive fictions or chimeras; but even then we affirm 
 either the possibility of the things which we conceive, or 
 the desire that we have to see them realized. In short, we 
 affirm the subjective fact of these dreams, even when we 
 do not think that they correspond to anything external. 
 Thus, in a word, we can neither perceive, nor compare, 
 nor abstract, nor generalize, nor remember nor imagine, 
 without making an affirmation or a judgment." 1 
 
 1 Joly, Cours de Philosophic, p. 94. 
 
 163
 
 164 THE FIRST _THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 The above is a psychologist's definition of judgment. 
 A physiologist will perhaps explain, up to a certain point, 
 its origin and working. Judgment, according to M. Luys, 
 is only the reaction, the repercussion, the affirmation of 
 our personality "in the presence of an excitation from the 
 external world, either moral or physical. The action of 
 judging, so far as it is a physiological process accom- 
 plished by means of the cerebral activities in movement, 
 is decomposable into three phases, which areas follows: 
 
 "1. A phase of incidence, during which the external 
 excitation impresses the sensorium and rouses the conscious 
 personality to action. 
 
 "2. An intermediate phase, during which the person- 
 ality, seized upon and impressed, develops its latent capa- 
 cities and reacts in a specific manner. 
 
 "3. A final phase of reflection, during which the pro- 
 cess, continuing its progress through the cerebral tissue, is 
 projected outwards in phonetic or written co-ordinative 
 manifestations. The impressed human personality, in 
 fact, expresses itself, exhales itself in its entirety, in either 
 articulate or written language." 1 
 
 This interpretation accounts both for the diversity of 
 human judgments and their greater or less rapidity in 
 operating, and also for the necessity of these judgments 
 which are common to the species principles of common 
 sense, which correspond to whatever there is in common 
 in all cerebral organizations. 
 
 If to jtidge is to believe something about something, it 
 is evident that little children, like young animals, are con- 
 scious of their sensations, that they localize them else- 
 where than in some part of their own persons, that they 
 appreciate and differentiate them, that they know them- 
 selves without having seen themselves, and know their 
 mothers in a word, that they judge, i. c.,they believe some- 
 thing about something. 
 
 We have only to spend a few hours with an infant of 
 two or three months, to convince ourselves that it is capa- 
 
 1 Luys, Le Cerveau e.t sea Fonctions. See Eng. Trans. (Interaat. Scient. 
 Series,) p. 289.
 
 JUDGMENT. 165 
 
 ble of forming judgments. The little Tiedemann who, on 
 seeing his nurse take up her cloak, guessed that she was 
 going to take him out, and instantly showed signs of de- 
 light, went through several acts of judgment or belief. 
 He believed that the person who approached the chest of 
 drawers, raised her arms and took out her mantle, was 
 his nurse; he believed that she made all the movements 
 just stated; he still further believed, by virtue of familiar 
 association, that these acts would be followed by others 
 equally well known the going out of the house, the ride 
 in his perambulator between long lines of houses, amidst 
 the noise of the carriages, horses, and dogs, the sitting 
 under the trees, etc. . . . All the things which he 
 believes to be and which he sees, all the other incidents 
 which he believes will happen because he has generally seen 
 them follow the first, are modes, manners of being, forms 
 of persons and things which he remembers, and imagines 
 either as co-existent or as following each other; they are 
 so many sympathetic judgments d posteriori, as Kant might 
 have said. 
 
 When little Marie, at three months and a half old, dis- 
 tinguishes the various parts of her body, plays with her 
 mother and strokes her face, chatters to the flowers, 
 stretches out her eager little hands towards them, utters 
 admiring exclamations at the sight of their brilliant colors ; 
 turns round towards the bird cage if her mother says, 
 "Listen to Coco!" understanding the gestures, the tone of 
 voice, the faces of those who speak to her; laughs when 
 she is praised and cries when she is scolded; turns away 
 her face dejectedly so as not to see another child on her 
 mother's lap, etc., etc.; is there any need to demonstrate 
 that all these facts imply judgments of a very character- 
 istic nature? 
 
 Thus, in the case both of little children and young ani- 
 mals, the only debatable point is the degree in which they 
 possess this faculty of judging. They do not form abstract 
 judgments as grown-up people do, but they go through the 
 same mental operations as adults at the sight of anything 
 a person, an animal, fruit, toys, a piece of furniture, 
 etc. They recognize these objects as having been seen
 
 166 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OP CHILDHOOD. 
 
 before, they discern in them such and such qualities, they 
 distinguish them from the surrounding objects, they dis- 
 cover in them either a resemblance or a difference, they 
 range them in such or such a group ; and all these opera- 
 tions presuppose a judgment, or are in fact themselves the 
 judgment. 
 
 If all intellectual operations, even the most simple, 
 imply in a certain measure the operation of judging, it is 
 the association of ideas, added to the mental grasp of the 
 individual, which has most influence on the formation and 
 nature of the judgments. " Two minds, constituted exactly 
 alike and placed in exactly the same surroundings, would 
 develop in the same manner and would produce the same 
 thoughts. ... In the generation of an idea there are 
 two sorts of causes; the state of the organism, as depend- 
 ent upon anterior impressions, and this same state as 
 affected by physical conditions." 
 
 Now these two kinds of states vary in different indi- 
 viduals. The regions of the brain where ideas are elab- 
 orated, are not equally abundant in nervous elements; and 
 these elements are not endowed with such strong vitality, 
 are not so impressionable, and do not combine so well in 
 one individual as in another. Hence all the different de- 
 grees of brain power and aptitudes which show themselves 
 in differences of judgment. 
 
 Three little children, from eight to nine months, are 
 seated at play in the middle of the room. I speak very 
 loud to attract the attention of all three, and at the same 
 time I place at a distance of a yard from where they are 
 sitting a little white horse on wheels. One of them, A, 
 instantly utters a cry of admiration; B opens his mouth 
 and fixes his eyes on the toy; C looks at it with indiffer- 
 ence. Five seconds have now passed; A throws up his 
 arms and stretches his head forward; B also stretches out 
 his arms, but more tranquilly, and as if in imitation of A; 
 C looks on at the agitation of the other two, and then in 
 his turn utters a sort of warbling cry. Four more seconds 
 have passed. A can contain himself no longer; he pre- 
 cipitates himself forward, rolls over on his side, knocks 
 his head against the floor, and begins to cry. I help him
 
 JUDGMENT. 167 
 
 up again, whereupon he instantly recommences the same 
 gestures and movements, and tries to crawl on all fours 
 towards the horse ; B up to this moment has never taken 
 his eyes off the toy, but he now looks at me, makes be- 
 seeching gestures, and is on the point of crying. As for 
 C, he looks at A going on all fours, and seems more 
 engrossed with this than with the horse. This example 
 suffices to show how the aptitude for judging differs both 
 as to rapidity and quality of judgment according to the 
 difference of impressionability and personal reaction. The 
 older a child grows, the easier it is to observe these differ- 
 ences ; but when he arrives at the initial period of speech, 
 the most superficial observer cannot fail to notice them. 
 
 Whatever difference the varieties of organization and the 
 accidents of intellectual life produce in the judgments 
 formed by various minds, there are nevertheless analogies 
 common to the species, and also general similarities and 
 universal judgments, which constitute what is called com- 
 mon sense, or reason. There is no human intelligence 
 deficient in the ideas, more or less distinct, which certain 
 philosophers still call innate or primary, and which would 
 be better designated by the name of essential. These 
 categories of Aiistotle, subjective forms of thought, ideas 
 of quality, being, number, time, space, etc., etc., corre- 
 spond to the structure of the brain, the constitution of the 
 human mind, and the immutable properties of nature. 
 Every human being, in presence of external phenomena, 
 cannot fail to acquire them at an early age. We are all 
 born with intelligences capable of 'deducing them with 
 more or less rapidity and energy from our first impressions. 
 And tbus the theory of innate ideas can very well be recon- 
 ciled with that of the tabula rasa. There is a reason in 
 things which corresponds to human reason, the latter be- 
 ing only the product or image of the former. Reason as 
 a faculty for the production of pure ideas, does not exist. 
 
 We have seen that children of three months go through 
 a process of judging similar in many respects to that of 
 grown-up people. We must now show by what stages 
 they arrive at developing this faculty, which begins by 
 being a simple affirmation of existence, passes from the
 
 1(58 THE FIKST THKEE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 concrete to what is called the abstract, becomes compara- 
 tive judgment, and extends to the conception of similari- 
 ties more or less numerous. 
 
 The first form of judgment is the apprehension pure and 
 simple of a concrete object with one or several of its quali- 
 ties. This object may be the child's own person, or the 
 persons surrounding it. We cannot say by which of these 
 two kinds of apprehension the child begins. It is prob- 
 able, that at first he exercises both at once. The first 
 judgments are nothing else than the immediate application 
 of the child's mind to his own being and to other objects; 
 that is, to the sensations which he feels himself, and feels 
 or infers of other things. But just as the first judgments 
 are without distinction of subjective or objective, so they 
 are also without distinction of subject and attribute. For 
 children, as well as for inferior animals, these terms remain 
 for some time fused together. An oyster has some feeling 
 of itself, and some feeling of external objects; it does not 
 affirm its existence, but it feels it and believes in it 
 strongly. It also believes firmly in the existence, i. e., the 
 reality, of external objects. These are judgments of 
 existence, modality, and externality implicitly formed. In 
 like manner with the foetus, its own existence and that of 
 other foreign bodies affirm themselves to it from the time 
 of the first conscious sensations; they are implicit and 
 confused, but, at the same time, real judgments. In. the 
 period which follows birth, a child's judgments begin to be 
 a little more pronounced, without nevertheless going for a 
 long time beyond tke sphere of individual concretions. 
 This phase may last till the end of the second month, but 
 with a more or less marked tendency to pass from the 
 concrete to the abstract, from the individual to the gen- 
 eral. Noteworthy progress has been made in the faculty of 
 judging when a child begins to recognize images, and still 
 greater progress when he expects certain facts or sensa- 
 tions to follow certain appearances. This is what takes 
 place in all the examples cited at the beginning of this 
 chapter. Primitive judgment, in its first phase, is a dis- 
 cernment of perceptions ; the second phase is an associa- 
 tion of images, a suggestion accompanied by belief.
 
 JUDGMENT. 169 
 
 Judgment, properly so called, is already found in due 
 proportion in children three months old. When a child 
 of this age mentally applies an idea of quality to such and 
 such form and color of any object, for example, when he 
 distinguished one kind of food from another, one animal 
 from another, there is already established in his mind a 
 tendency to recognize likenesses and distinguish differ- 
 ences. This is a mode of judgment, very poor as far as 
 comparisons are concerned, and absolutely void of gener- 
 alities, but which none the less resembles the ordinary 
 judgments of an adult. A child of ten months begins to 
 have this judgment of existence, which I will not call 
 abstract in the philosophical sense, but which is separate 
 and distinct while remaining concrete. In fact, whatever 
 may have been said on the subject, judgments regarding 
 existence form no exception to the general rule. They 
 also have for their origin, condition, and occasion, those 
 collocations of images and representations which produce 
 in our minds ideas accompanied by evidence, belief and 
 recognition. 
 
 The presence and the absence of a person or a thing are 
 already very distinct facts, even for a child who cannot 
 yet speak; for him, to exist, is to be there; not to exist, is 
 to have disappeared. Hence he understands thoroughly 
 what is meant by the words a-pu (il ny en a plus), which 
 he soon learns to repeat himself, as well as peudu (perdu). 
 The judgment of existence is confused at first with that of 
 presence or absence, and relates always to something con- 
 crete. Children are capable of this. 
 
 It would be a mistake to suppose, that in order to deal 
 with the evidence which supports even tacit affirmation, 
 judgment needs the assistance of very wide generalizations. 
 A very distinct image, which the child connects with the 
 representation of an object, has for him the same force of 
 reality that it would have for an adult it is to him reality 
 itself. It is not necessary that the conception of always, 
 nor the whole number of known similarities, should be 
 added to this evidence; a few well-grounded experiences, a 
 few similarities, or even one very distinct one, will suffice 
 to constitute judgment in its fullest import. Thus we see
 
 170 THE FIRST THREE YEAKS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 that minds which are limited in their ideas, which contain 
 few images and few associations, are the most thorough 
 and often the most ardent in their affirmations. 
 
 If we look carefully into the matter, we find that gener- 
 ality of thought carries with it, if not a certain vagueness, 
 at any rate an amount of indecision, which may have the 
 appearance of breadth of judgment, which is often the 
 precursor of it, but which is a necessary stage before it 
 becomes an intellectual merit. The more the power of 
 generalizing is extended, and the more numerous are 
 the known examples of similarities, the more they suggest 
 ideas of real differences, and consequently of possible 
 affirmations. Thus the savant, or the man of experience, 
 will hesitate and suspend his judgments and actions, where 
 ignorant and inexperienced people, adult animals, and 
 children, will judge and act precipitately. 
 
 It is because we are ignorant of the natural course of 
 development of a young child's mind, that we imagine his 
 logic to be at fault when it is in opposition to that which 
 we practice, and the principles of which we inculcate on 
 him ready-made in our language. As our judgments relate 
 to comparatively general conceptions, at any rate more 
 extended and more numerous and quite different from 
 those of a child, the words which he uses have not the 
 same arbitrary signification which we attribute to them. 
 To him they represent facts, whereas we make them sig- 
 nify collections of similarities, general affinities, etc., etc. 
 He applies one of his general ideas, that is to say, a partic- 
 ular and empiric term, to a given sensation, but as our 
 interpretation of his judgment is not a relation between 
 two facts, but a relation between an idea and a fact, we 
 find the statement false. It is truth to him, but error to 
 us. Those who observe and bring up young children 
 ought to be convinced that the progress of thought at the 
 earliest age is in relation to that of the faculty of analysis 
 bearing on objects, rather than to the progress of speech. 
 Too often, it is true, we exaggerate this fact, and imagine, 
 like Condillac, that infants are capable of observing "down 
 to little details even," not external objects only, but even 
 the operations of the mind.
 
 JUDGMENT. 171 
 
 According to this old theory, but lately still in repute, 
 children, while learning to express their judgments in 
 words, also learn to analyze them bit by bit; the art of 
 thinking is, so to say, the art of speaking. Yes; if children 
 spoke their own language, and not ours. Condillac, how- 
 ever, by a slight contradiction of himself, admits that 
 children judge and reason before they have learnt to 
 speak. In truth, if abandoned "to the sole impulses of 
 nature," children fall into frequent and serious errors. 
 Animals, which some people look upon as a raw product 
 of nature, often make the greatest mistakes, even in things 
 which concern their own interests. The fallibility of in- 
 stinct is a fact ascertained by science. But in the case of 
 children, in addition to the errors which proceed from the 
 spontaneous use of their own faculties, there are a great 
 number which we must attribute to the mistaken meaning 
 which they attach to our language, and to our no less mis- 
 taken interpretation of theirs. 
 
 The first business of developing infant faculties is carried 
 on in great measure by nature alone; and her method is 
 by exciting cravings and desires ; which are the condition 
 of useful exercise of the faculties. A child learns chiefly 
 because he finds pleasure and use in it; he acquires dis- 
 tinct ideas through the need he feels of disentangling his 
 thoughts. He acquires them for himself, by the simple 
 method in which he uses his senses. But do not his mis- 
 takes arise from the urgency of his desires and needs, 
 which lead him to form hasty judgments? This may hap- 
 pen, and indeed does happen often. He has then used his 
 senses badly; but the error may be only momentary. 
 "Deceived in his expectation, he finds that it is necessary 
 to make a second judgment, and this time he judges 
 better; experience, which watches over him, corrects his 
 mistakes. Does he think he sees his nurse, because in the 
 distance he sees some one who resembles her? His error 
 does not last long. If a first look has deceived him, a 
 second undeceives him, and he again uses his eyes to seek 
 for her." In my opinion Condillac greatly exaggerates the 
 judicial power of children, especially of quite young ones, 
 and their power of reflection and of reaction from their
 
 172 THE FIKST THKEE YEABS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 first decisions. This correction of the errors of sense by 
 fresh observations is performed by children unconsciously; 
 they judge and tin judge quite mechanically. 
 
 What also appears to me extreme in this theory (adopted 
 in part by Rousseau and reproduced with eclat by H. 
 Spencer), is to suppose that young infants perceive clearly 
 "that pain follows a false judgment, just as pleasure follows 
 a true one." It is true that by the time children are five 
 or six months old (but not at the beginning of their exist- 
 ence) they will already have acquired, though in a very 
 limited degree, the power of understanding and utilizing 
 some of the lessons of experience. This is quite true. 
 But that pleasure and pain, "their first tutors," give them 
 infallible lessons, "because they teach them whether they 
 are judging rightly or wrongly," is an untenable theory. 
 Pain and pleasure are indeed teachers of most incontesta- 
 ble authority, but themselves also requiring to be trained. 
 It would be equally hazardous to hold absolutely by the 
 conclusion which springs naturally from these premises, 
 that during infancy we make rapid and astonishing prog- 
 ress because we make it under the direction of these mar- 
 velous teachers of wisdom. The inherent susceptibility 
 and retentiveuess of the organs in infancy, when they are 
 so elastic and almost free from impressions, the very 
 nature too of the impressions at this period, relating as 
 they do chiefly to the most essential needs and being 
 comparatively few in number and easy to discern, in 
 short, the preponderance of the power of absorption over 
 the power of digestion and combination, count for some- 
 thing with the teachings of nature in this rapid but super- 
 ficial progress. It must also be remembered that a child 
 scarcely a year old, whose faculties and claims have in- 
 creased, finds himself in presence of a vaster and more 
 difficult work, and it is thus natural that his progress 
 should appear proportionately small. Besides all these 
 causes of error, which are natural because they result 
 from the nature of things and from that of the mind, 
 and those special causes of false judgments which result 
 from particular organic predispositions or psychic consti- 
 tution, another important and constant one is the ueces-
 
 JUDGMENT. 173 
 
 sary imitation of our language and intellectual pro- 
 cesses. 
 
 Nature always gives serious warnings with a view to 
 rectifying the numerous errors committed in spite of her, 
 or even with her aid. But these warnings are specially 
 intended for adults, and intelligent mothers understand 
 how to introduce them into their training. I knew one 
 mother who, in order to prevent her child from going near 
 the fire, allowed him to burn himself slightly with a hot 
 iron which she held out for him to touch. The child thus 
 made this dangerous experiment for himself, but at the 
 same time safely under his mother's eye. He cried; and 
 his mother comforted him and said to him several times, 
 while showing him the iron: "It is hot, it will burn 
 Edmund." This experiment, repeated with variations and 
 always in the same safe manner, taught him very quickly, 
 and by the time he was twelve months old, to be afraid of 
 the fire and of any objects that were taken off it or out of 
 it. From hearing these two words, hot and bum, and see- 
 ing the simple action of blowing, which is both a visual 
 and an auditory sign, applied to a few well-defined objects, 
 he had learnt the meaning of them. He even acquired 
 the habit of making a gesture of repulsion and imitating 
 with his lips the noise of blowing when he saw anything 
 near him which smoked or seemed hot. Thus by experi- 
 ment of this sort, and by the simple play of association of 
 ideas, we may lead children to form right judgments 
 about a great many things, and to act in conformity with 
 these judgments. Nature and the child itself carry on 
 three-quarters of the work of natural education; we our- 
 selves must do the rest. 
 
 By attentive observation of children we obtain a multi- 
 tude of indications, not only concerning the genesis of 
 their faculties, but also as to the direction to be given to 
 them. For instance, children of their own accord judge 
 by comparison ; it is for us to watch over and help their 
 judgment without seeming to do so. 
 
 A child will go on tormenting a cat or a dog till sud- 
 denly the animal turns round and bites or scratches him , 
 and then he says : "Bad pussy," "bad doggie." It is for
 
 174 THE FIKST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 us then to make him correct the judgment by which he 
 has affirmed his conception of the relation between the 
 idea of cat or dog, and scratch or bite. When he says, 
 "Good baby" or "Naughty baby," he again makes a com- 
 parative judgment, bearing on the relation between such 
 and such actions and the qualification they generally 
 receive. Our part is to place the child frequently in posi- 
 tions to renew such judgments, with the use of the same 
 formula, a propos of actions and events of which we cannot 
 always actually bring about the occurrence, although we 
 can always turn it to profit. Thus, without crushing the 
 child's initiative, we shall be doing all in our power to 
 increase its store of observations, of terms of comparison, 
 and of similarities in one word, its intellectual sphere. 
 
 But here the great danger to be feared is, that we should 
 aim at developing children, not for themselves, but for 
 ourselves. How often we see people endeavoring to incul- 
 cate on children the judgments and the practices of adults, 
 Avithout stopping to consider how much their young minds 
 are capable of understanding or retaining. I will cite but 
 one example, of which I was a witness at a table d" hdte at 
 Luchon. It is the custom in good Spanish families always 
 to leave something on one's plate, in order not to appear 
 too great an eater. They accustom their children to this 
 habit by telling them frequently: "Politeness requires you 
 to leave something on your plate; don't forget this, it is 
 politeness." At the table where I was sitting, a little girl, 
 two-and-a-half years old, had reluctantly left a portion of 
 some sweet dish. She leaned toward her mother and 
 whispered in her -ear, but loud enough for every one to 
 hear: "Please, mamma, may I eat politeness to-day?" It 
 is thus we are understood by children whom we do not 
 take the trouble to seek to understand. We either give 
 them credit for too much or too little intelligence. 
 
 Arid here I must point out an error common enough in 
 moralists and educators, and doubtless also in parents, 
 viz., the idea that children are good observers and judges 
 of character. This requires explanation. Their faculty 
 of discernment, very limited in its scope, is always con- 
 fined in rather narrow subjective bounds. Like animals
 
 JUDGMENT. 175 
 
 and savages, they only direct this faculty of discernment 
 towards the most salient external qualities, and, above all, 
 those which have some interest for them, either actual or 
 near at hand. The attention, awakened by interest, 
 causes a child to notice a thousand differences, full of im- 
 portance for himself, though often of none whatever to 
 other people. That which generally takes hold of him at 
 first sight, is the expression of the gestures, the physiog- 
 nomy, the tone of the voice, the simple and common senti- 
 ments, the broad signification, rather than the delicate 
 shades even of emotions which closely touch his sympathy. 
 A child of six mouths knows very well with whom he has 
 to deal (but in respect to a few actions only) if he is with 
 a severe father or an indulgent one, a firm or yielding 
 mother, an uncle who is fond of playing with him, or a 
 sedate aunt, lively good-tempered companions, or dull and 
 surly ones. He knows very well, even at this age, but 
 better still a few months later, what he may venture with 
 the one and the other. In like manner, animals distin- 
 guish their prey a long way off, and proceed towards it in 
 a very different way than they do towards other animals. 
 In the same way too the acuteness of sense, or rather the 
 judicial sensibility, of savages is exclusively limited to the 
 kind of perceptions which they have had mos't interest in 
 discerning; just as a compositor can distinguish by the 
 mere touch the letters which he wants; or a seamstress 
 can pick out with a single glance the needle and thread of 
 the size she wants from amongst a quantity of others; or 
 a botanist will tell you the name of a plant which, either 
 from its distance or diminutive size, can hardly be seen by 
 other people. This faculty of discernment is a matter of 
 interested habit, but it is nevertheless liable to number- 
 less errors. ' 
 
 We may sometimes notice in quite young children judg- 
 ments which are as concrete and as little general as possi- 
 ble, which in an adult pass for general judgments. I will 
 
 1 As ideas scarcely exist without judgments, or judgments without rea- 
 sonings, we may say, that error is generally the result of faulty induction 
 or deduction. We 'shall therefore treat more particularly of error in the 
 chapter on Reasoning,
 
 176 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 give an example bearing on plurality of repetition, which is 
 almost always confounded with a definite number of times 
 in which an event has happened. I was walking with my 
 nephew Charles, then four years old. We were going 
 along a canal bordered with willows and alder-trees. 
 Charles, who was a born naturalist, and had his eye on 
 everything, talked on without ceasing in the most interest- 
 ing fashion, and suddenly showed me a dragon-fly with 
 blue gauzy wings which had just flown away at our ap- 
 proach. "Generally," Charles began to say (and I listened 
 attentively, asking myself what this fine- sounding adverb 
 might mean from a mouth of four years old), " generally," 
 he said a second time, "dragon-flies sit on the leaves in the 
 sunshine, but not always." I confess I was surprised to 
 find so young a child performing thus a process of applied 
 abstraction, or at least showing a tendency towards general 
 abstraction apropos of concrete facts, which had been in- 
 terpreted before him, and of which he had understood the 
 interpretation. 
 
 There is not a single specimen of this sort of abstrac- 
 tion, resulting in practical judgments, of which one cannot 
 discover the rudiments even in a child of twenty months. 
 But we must not surely expect them to distinguish between 
 the good and the evil, the qualities and faults of persons 
 and of things; or, if they do, it is only after the fashion of 
 so many ill-educated and not over-wise adults, without 
 knowing it and in a very slight measure. It is however 
 very certain that the ideas a child has of its father and 
 mother, and all the things it knows are not simple ideas; 
 but that he has formed general and dominant conceptions 
 of them mental wholes from which he is continually cut- 
 ting off abstractions proportioned to his judicial capacity. 
 The people he knows but little are wholly good or bad, 
 without modification, like the heroes of pseudo-classic 
 tragedy. Those whom he knows well, are sometimes one, 
 sometimes the other chiefly according to his own conduct. 
 Thus, within very narrow limits, his judgment proceeds 
 from the abstract to the general.
 
 ABSTRACTION. 177 
 
 H. 
 
 ABSTRACTION. 
 
 As all our ideas are produced by sensations, we may say 
 that each distinct idea is the result of analysis. " No one 
 sense presents to us all the qualities which we perceive in 
 a body. Sight presents colors; hearing, sounds, etc. . . 
 
 When we use our senses separately, the objects become 
 decomposed as it were : we observe successively the differ- 
 ent parts of a watch. ? Touch is, of all the senses, the one 
 which reveals to us the greatest number of qualities ; but 
 though it presents several of them synchronically, we only 
 note them successively." ' This necessity of analysis, in- 
 herent in our organization, may be considered as having 
 two principal degrees or forms, that which results in no- 
 tions of individuals, and that which results in notions of 
 modes, or qualities, or abstract ideas, as it has been agreed 
 to call them. We shall study both these forms of analysis 
 in the young child. 
 
 The most important stages in a child's progress take 
 place when the senses of sight and hearing have come to 
 the aid of touch and taste. It is at this period that we can 
 begin to take hold of some of the manifestations of the 
 young intelligence in process of development. We should 
 form a false conception of the first visual perceptions of a 
 little child, if we compared him to the blind youth whom 
 Cheselden operated on for cataract, and who saw different 
 objects placed before his eyes only as masses of color 
 spread over a plain surface. In the first place the sense of 
 touch, has not yet furnished the child with the conception 
 of a plane surface, and secondly, the field of vision only 
 opens out to him gradually. Tiedemann says of his little 
 son, when only two or three days old: "His eye already 
 moved in all directions, not by chance, but as if he 
 were looking out for objects, and they seemed to rest by 
 preference on things in motion." This observation is not 
 strictly accurate. I have never seen any infant before the 
 
 i Condillac, Cours d' Etudes, t. i., p. 47. Edit. Dufart. an II, de la Hep, 
 13
 
 178 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 age of eight days follow any object with its eyes except a 
 candle or the flame of a fire. But I have seen many at a 
 month old whose eyes could follow (their head all the 
 while remaining immovable) the movements of an object 
 waved about at a distance of a few inches, or who would 
 fix their eyes for a length of time on any brilliant object two 
 or three yards off. In proportion as a child's visual organs 
 are exercised and its field of vision enlarges, visual percep- 
 tions come to it as luminous or colored particles. 
 
 In what would be a picture to an adult, a child sees only 
 the salient points. His eye only distinguishes the different 
 colors little by little, and the want of adjusting power in his 
 sight prevents his seizing any but a few prominent objects 
 or even some parts of these objects. This must be the case 
 if the observations which I have recorded in the chapter on 
 attention are accurate. First of all, it is his mother's or 
 his nurse's breast, the bright flame or reflection of a candle, 
 the outline of a piece of furniture or* a window, anything 
 striking in form or color (these are everything to children) 
 which strike his retina and engrave themselves on his mem- 
 I ory. External impressions seem to make their way to a 
 ( child's eyes, as they do to all his other senses, bit by bit, 
 I color by color. Hence, to perceive sensations distinctly, 
 t to preserve a distinct recollection of them apart from the 
 vague complexity of the concomitant impressions which 
 have only very slightly affected the senses, this is a work 
 of separation which may be considered a sort of rudiment- 
 ary abstraction. 
 
 With these primary perceptions, parcelled out and ISO- 
 's lated, which we look upon as the first abstractions, there 
 / mingle by degrees secondary perceptions, the whole sum of 
 \ which make up the first concretions. Now one of the dom- 
 inant perceptions will recall to the child and lead him to 
 infer a whole group of secondary perceptions associated 
 ! with this dominant one.^ Such and such a color or sound, 
 or any particular tactile or sapid impression, will instantly 
 suggest the idea of such and such a form, object, or person.^ 
 The person of his nurse will at first have become known to 
 him by a continual succession of analytical perceptions. 
 Her breast, which afforded him the keenest enjoyment, and
 
 ABSTRACTION. 179 
 
 against which he nestled his little face, delighting in its 
 softness and warmth ; her warm caressing hands, so sym- 
 pathetic both to touch and sight; the different parts of her 
 face, her eyes, her cheeks, her lips, whence come the coax- 
 ing words and pretty songs, and the smile he so soon 
 learns to understand. The different parts of his cradle, 
 the bars and legs of the chairs, the polished surface and 
 shining edges of the table, and the surrounding pieces of 
 furniture, are all objects from which there have come to 
 him successions of detached impressions which will pres- 
 ently combine among themselves to form individual con- 
 ceptions. But these ideas of individuals and whole objects 
 are still extremely vague and incomplete. I knew a child 
 of two months old who could clearly distinguish a person 
 from an animal, or from a piece of furniture ; but he used 
 to smile indiscriminately at the first comer, and would 
 seek the breast of any woman who took him in her arms. 
 But at three months he could so well distinguish his nurse 
 from his mother that if, when his mother was holding 
 him, his nurse took another child on her lap, or he saw 
 her being embraced by any one, he would at once show his 
 jealousy by frowns and tears. At this age he also clearly 
 distinguished a cat from a dog, the former having scratched 
 him more than once, whereas the latter overwhelmed him 
 daily with caresses; the moment the dog appeared, he 
 always showed great delight. One month had thus suf- 
 ficed to fix clearly in his mind a large number of individ- 
 ual conceptions. 
 
 The necessity which children are under of seeing in a 
 detached and scrappy manner in order to see well, makes 
 them continually practice that kind of abstraction by which 
 we separate qualities from objects. From those objects 
 which the child has already distinguished as individual, 
 there come to him at different moments particularly vivid 
 impressions. Thus, I place a beautiful rose, in the light 
 of a shaded lamp, before a four-months-old child; his 
 mother holds him upright on her knees before the table 
 where T have placed the pretty flower; the child opens his 
 mouth, babbles, holds out his arms, jumps, throws himself 
 forward; his mother then places him on the table, and he
 
 180 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 twists and twirls himself about in the most curious fashion, 
 looking all the time at the rose. Is it not probable that 
 this color, which appears to his eye without any precise 
 form, and which has so keenly excited his attention, will 
 remain in his memory as a very vivid color, without any 
 definite concrete embodiment? A few minutes after, I 
 lifted up the shade, and the strong flood of light, very brill- 
 iant and soft, made him utter cries of joy and jump about 
 more vigorously than ever; the rose is forgotten he does 
 not even see it he is wholly taken up with the lovely 
 golden flame, which fascinates and dazzles his sight. We 
 may be sure that the memory of this bright and flickering 
 flame will be preserved with far greater vividness than 
 that of the nearer surrounding objects, which have only 
 produced very feeble and indefinite impressions on him. 
 Dominant sensations of this kind, by their energy or fre- 
 quency, tend to efface the idea of the objects from which 
 they proceed, to separate or abstract themselves. Some- 
 times even in their waking hours, but more especially dur- 
 ing their dreams, when there are no external impressions 
 to renew the chain of usual associations, there is no doubt 
 that children's brains are traversed by impressions as vivid 
 in themselves as they are vague and undetermined, and 
 that hallucinations corresponding to a sound, a color, a 
 tactile, muscular, or thermometric sensation, a form, a 
 dimension, or a taste, awaken vivid sensations in them 
 without being accompanied by those feebler sensorial im- 
 pressions which were grouped around them; i. e., with- 
 out the aid of any definite object. Here we see reproduc- 
 tive imagination assisting in the operation of modal 
 abstraction. 
 
 These acts of abstraction, resulting in individual or modal 
 conceptions, which the infant practices very early, have a 
 continual tendency to relapse into the confused masses, 
 the indistinct wholes, and the various concretions from 
 whence they were drawn. The series, I will not say of 
 impressions, but of habitual conceptions, regular and 
 natural, is that of synthetic vision for the child as well as 
 for the adult. The individual forms are so many and so 
 varied, that the memory allows them little by little to fall
 
 ABSTRACTION. 181 
 
 back into the great objective mass, vaguely but directly 
 seized, and from which they only detached themselves 
 under exceptional or temporary circumstances. The qual- 
 ities separately perceived in these entities, however striking 
 they may have been at first, are not always so in the same 
 degree, cannot always equally captivate the attention or 
 awaken the memory. The flame of a candle is not always 
 equally bright or flickering ; tactile, sapid, olfactory, and 
 auditive impressions do not always strike the child's sen- 
 sorium with the same intensity, nor during the same length 
 of time. This is why the recollections of individual forms, 
 although strongly graven on their intelligence, lose by 
 degrees their first precision, so that the idea of a tree, for 
 instance, furnished by direct and perfectly distinct mem- 
 ories, comes back to the mind in a vague and indistinct 
 form, which might be taken for a -general idea. In the 
 same way, the essential, constant, and necessary qualities 
 which analysis has discovered in different objects, are pre- 
 served in the mind with indelible marks ; but though the 
 remembrance of these qualities may very often be unac- 
 companied by any series of distinct impressions, there is 
 always mixed with it a vague and confused image of certain 
 perceptions which were associated with them. 
 
 Thus, however much we may try and it is the same, I 
 take it, with more than one psychologist it is impossible 
 for us to think of any abstract idea of white, red, a sharp 
 or flat sound, beauty, ugliness, goodness, vice, number, 
 space, extent, without imagining some particular object, 
 more or less determined in form, to which the abstraction 
 which we have conceived mentally joins itself, and thus 
 becomes a concretion. 
 
 This then being our conception of the process of abstrac- 
 tion which Locke, Condillac, and so many others only 
 regard as a consequence of language, it will not seem sur- 
 prising that we should allow this power to exist in yovmg 
 children. Language up to a certain point fixes and defines, 
 but it does not engender what are called abstract ideas. 
 The most abstract idea that we can conceive is equivalent 
 to the conception of the most abstract sign, i. e., to a material 
 idea to a kind of simplified and refined concrete. This
 
 182 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 means first, that such a thing as a pure idea does not exist, 
 that it is a conception of metaphysicians and algebraists 
 a logical convention; and, secondly, that relatively abstract 
 ideas (the only ones which we admit) are even in their 
 origin independent of the faculty of language. M. Vulpian 
 goes even further than we do; he is of opinion that ani- 
 mals as well as children possess this power of abstraction. 
 
 "There are," says M. Vulpian, "abstractions relative to 
 material things, or rather to the sensations which they 
 produce on us. There are, for instance, the abstractions 
 by which we form the ideas of trees, dogs, red, green, such 
 and such sounds, etc. In a word, there are tangible 
 abstractions, formed by the help of tangible properties. 
 Well then ! It seems to me difficult to refuse the capacity 
 for these abstract ideas, in a measure at least, to the 
 superior animals, for it is evident that their memory, 
 reflection, and reason are sometimes exercised on ideas of 
 this sort. 
 
 "As to general abstract ideas, it seems to me quite doubt- 
 ful whether animals have them whether they have the 
 slightest abstract idea of infinity, of time, of space, of di- 
 mension, number, connection, etc. What confirms me in 
 this conviction that they have none of these abstract ideas, 
 is, that I am not sure that man has them himself. We 
 are here at the mercy of an illusion which has been too 
 little insisted on. Animals, or at least, certain kinds of 
 animals, have a sort of language which enables them to 
 communicate with each other, by modulations and varia- 
 tions of the voice, or by other special sounds, or by grad- 
 uated contact. Concerning this latter mode, we know 
 nothing more remarkable than the antennal language of 
 ants, described by Huber. But, definitively speaking, 
 these modes of language are very different to those of man. 
 Man alone possesses real articulate language, he alone can 
 make very varied abstractions by the aid of this language; 
 he alone, I need hardly say, can also make metaphysical 
 abstractions. But from the fact that, by means of certain 
 words agreed upon, we have been able to designate these 
 abstractions, we must not deduce as a necessary conclu- 
 sion that man is capable of conceiving abstract metaphysi-
 
 ABSTRACTION. 183 
 
 cal ideas. There is no possibility of the existence of any 
 ideas unless there is the possibility of more or less distinct 
 intellectual representation of them. For instance, can we 
 represent to ourselves in an abstract manner time, space, 
 etc. ? If I am not mistaken, so-called general ideas do not 
 exist in reality, and they ought only to be considered as 
 algebraical abstractions, so to speak." 
 
 Thus, between the abstractions produced by the adult 
 and those which the child and the animal form, without 
 the aid of vocal signs, the difference is not qualitative, but 
 only quantitative. 
 
 If we take a child at the moment when he is beginning 
 to use language with tolerable ease, we see that, in spite 
 of the signs he gives of deliberation and efforts to remem- 
 ber, he is always, as he will still be when grown up, 
 indolent as to abstraction which does not rest on an 
 objective representation, sufficiently determinate. A child 
 of two years perfectly well understood the sense of these 
 phrases: "This glass is larger than this stopper;" "Baby 
 is a good boy;" "The dog is naughty." But at three years 
 of age he did not understand these expressions: "The 
 size of that house," "The goodness of papa," "The 
 naughtiness of the dog;" notwithstanding the resemblance 
 of sound between the abstract words and the correspond- 
 ing adjectives. A little girl of twenty-three months could 
 recite fluently the names of the principal colors, but she 
 could only identify a few of them on objects. Her father 
 pulled out one book after another from his shelves, and 
 showed them to her, saying: "What color is that?" "It 
 is white," "It is black," "It is blue," "It is red," she 
 replied, naming the colors quite rightly. But there was 
 one color which she could not determine. "It is not red 
 nor blue," she said, after several seconds' hesitation. Her 
 father insisted: "What color is it then?" She answered: 
 "Not red, nor blue, nor white, at all, at all." She could not 
 find the word yellow, although it was well imprinted in 
 her memory, and the color yellow was also well known to 
 her and clearly differentiated in her mind; for she added 
 presently: "Like little girl's hat." Her hesitation pro- 
 ceeded more from the difficulty of evolving an idea rela-
 
 184 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 tively abstract, than of recalling a well-known word. In 
 fact, another day, she made a mistake about green, not 
 being able to name the color of a green ribbon ; and another 
 time again about yellow. Her father having said to her, 
 "Go and look on my table for a yellow paper, " she brought 
 three of different colors, and none of them the right 
 one. l 
 
 We have already shown, in the chapter on association, 
 that young infants possess the rudiments of the ideas of 
 cause, place, time, etc. We may also observe, in them, 
 among other signs of judgments resulting in what we call 
 common-sense notions, the existence of the notion of 
 quantity, and in- particular of numeric quantity. A very 
 young baby, if we offer it a large piece of cake or fruit, to- 
 gether with a smaller piece, will stretch out its hand to the 
 larger piece. In like manner, a kitten two months old 
 to whom I had thrown a piece of meat, left this piece to 
 go after a larger piece which I had thrown to another cat. 
 As to ideas of number, children, and no doubt animals 
 also, confuse them for a long time with ideas of greater or 
 less quantity. I have been able to prove that a three- 
 months-old kitten had only the vaguest notion of num- 
 ber. The last time but one that she presented me with a 
 family of kittens, I only kept one of them; in her grief at 
 losing the others, she used to leave this one alone for 
 hours, or else carry it about from place to place ; it died 
 when ten days old, just as its eyes were opening, and there 
 was no doubt that its death was caused by want of care 
 and food. The next time I kept two out of five. She was 
 perfectly happy with these two, and did not trouble her- 
 self about the rest; and I could not but conclude that tiro 
 represented many to her, just as well as ft,ve did. 
 
 M. Houzeau does not deny this faculty to certain ani- 
 mals, but he reduces it to very narrow limits. "There is 
 no doubt," he says, "that certain animals are able to 
 count, whether it be a number of objects or the number of 
 times that a similar action is repeated, provided that the 
 
 1 Vulpian, Physiologic du Systeme Nei~veux, pp. 911, 912.
 
 ABSTRACTION. 185 
 
 number is not high. This is the case, for instance, with 
 the magpie (Pica caudata). When this bird is watched by 
 a party of sportsmen, it does not stir till they begin to 
 move away. If they go away one after the other, the bird 
 will wait till the fourth has gone ; but beyond this number 
 it seems to lose count, and sometimes flies out of its hid- 
 ing-place too soon, showing that it has made a mistake. 1 
 The following anecdote proves that mules can count up to 
 five at any rate. In some of the cities of the United States 
 many of the trams are drawn by mules. This is especially 
 the case at New Orleans, where mules are preferred to 
 horses. The St. Charles Street line has a short branch- 
 line, that of the Napoleon Avenue, where each mule makes 
 the journey five times before being unharnessed. The 
 veterinary surgeon of the line, the clever Dr. Louis, one 
 day called my attention to this fact, which I was able to 
 verify, that the mules on duty remain silent during the 
 first journeys; but at the end of the fifth, as soon as they 
 arrive at the station, they begin to neigh, knowing that it 
 is time for them to be unharnessed. 
 
 "There are some birds and quadrupeds that are capable 
 of appreciating number, at least up to four or five. How 
 do these animals, who have no conventional language, 
 succeed in counting up to five, and perhaps higher? They 
 must have a certain numerical medium, a means of dis- 
 tinguishing among their recollections. Is it by visual 
 memory and the juxtaposition of similar images, as we 
 might count by placing in thought a number of trees in 
 file, or again by putting counters in a line? We cannot 
 decide this question." ' 
 
 According to the same naturalist, "Children at first can 
 only distinguish between a single object and plurality. At 
 eighteen months they can tell the difference between one, 
 two, and several. At about three, or a little sooner, they 
 have learnt to understand one, two, and four two times 
 two. It is scarcely ever till a later age that they count 
 the regular series one, two, three, four; and here they stop 
 for a long time. In the Brahmin schools, children in the 
 
 1 Houzeau, Faculte.s Mentales des Animaux, t. ii, p. 207.
 
 186 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 first class are only taught to count up to four; in the 
 second class they go up to twenty. In Europe it has been 
 found that it takes six or seven years to get a child up to 
 a hundred. Children can no doubt repeat the numeration 
 tables learnt by heart before this age; but this does not 
 mean understanding numbers, or being able to determine 
 the numbers of any given collection of objects. The pre- 
 ceding examples apply to European children of medium 
 intelligence who are receiving the best instruction. 
 
 My personal observations with regard to little chil- 
 dren who cannot speak have not furnished me with any 
 indications contrary to the assertions of M. Houzeau. 
 When a child nearly three months old to whom two feed- 
 ing bottles are presented, seizes both at once; when he 
 takes two objects rather than one, three rather than two, 
 when, at eight months, seeing near him two cats resem- 
 bling each other, he takes one for the other, and thinks 
 there is only one cat, he is evidently confounding the idea 
 of -plurality with that of quantity. A little intelligent 
 child, two and a half years old, knew how to count up to 
 twelve; but he had not a clear idea of the length of time 
 represented by three days. "I shall come back in three 
 days," I said to him once; and he answered quickly: 
 "What does that mean, in three days? 11 I then said: "I 
 shall come back, not to-morrow morning, but to-morrow, 
 to-morrow, and again to-morrow," and he appeared satis- 
 fied with this explanation. When three years and three 
 months old, the same child told the gardener that he was 
 going away to-morrow, and that he should not come back 
 for a long time. "I shall come back," he said, "in many, 
 many, many to-morrows in a year." This last formula had 
 been learnt, but not understood; the first was within his 
 comprehension, and his own invention. The same child, 
 and I have remarked the same fact in many other chil- 
 dren, had still greater trouble in going backwards in time, 
 and it was only with great difficulty that, at three years of 
 age, he learnt to understand the idea of yesterday and the 
 day before yesterday. 
 
 Another child, at three years old, had only the most 
 hazy rudimentary conception of the abstract notions of
 
 ABSTKACTION. 187 
 
 truth, of moral goodness, and even of physical beauty or 
 ugliness. "What is truth?" he asked his aunt, who had 
 said to him: "Come, Charlie, tell me the truth." "It is 
 when one does not tell lies," she said. He knew very 
 well what telling lies meant, having been once severely 
 punished for saying something for fun which was not true. 
 "Being good," meant for him to be petted, not to do things 
 which caused him to be scolded, which made his mother 
 look sad and his father speak angrily and slap his hand. 
 To be naughty, on the contrary, was to do all these things. 
 But he confounded the idea of ugly and naughty. When 
 two and a half years old, he used to repeat over and over 
 again: "Such a person, such an animal, is very ugly;" 
 sometimes, but very rarely, he would say, Such and such 
 a person or thing was very pretty. I said to him one day, 
 in order to coax him to be quiet whilst he was being 
 dressed: "You are a nice little boy, you are very good and 
 very pretty." He answered, "Oh, no! I am not pretty; 
 mamma told me I was not pretty." "Then are you ugly?" 
 I said to him. "Yes, sometimes, when I give papa or 
 mamma trouble." He knew the difference between pretty 
 and ugly, but he confused pretty with gentle and good, 
 and ugly with naughty or disobedient. He had not yet 
 got a clear idea of moral goodness or badness, moral beauty 
 or ugliness, but he had very distinct ideas of physical 
 beauty or ugliness. He would look at some people with 
 more attention and pleasure than at others, because they 
 had prettier or pleasanter faces. But we have now said 
 enough concerning the existence in little children, in a 
 rudimentary and concrete state, of those ideas called 
 rational, which are both the result and the basis of the 
 most ordinary and most generalized judgments of adults. 
 In conclusion, if it is not quite accurate to consider 
 abstraction as a special case of attention operating on con- 
 cretions from the lowest to the highest rung of the ladder, 
 let us at least admit that there is an easy kind of abstrac- 
 tion and a more difficult one; one kind more obtuse and 
 more frequent, another subtler and rarer; in short, that 
 there are degrees in abstraction. An individual idea is a 
 synthesis in respect to the totality of its parts or qualities;
 
 188 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 it is analytic as regards the sum of individuals. The ideas 
 of red, blue, or white are abstract in respect to the ideas 
 of the flowers possessing these qualities of color; the idea 
 of color or of number generally, and independent of any 
 colored object or numerical collection, is still more abstract, 
 etc. In children we only have examples of the lowest 
 form of abstraction. The starting point of this faculty is 
 no other than the faculty of discrimination. A child who 
 distinguishes a certain number of persons and objects 
 his mother from his nurse, the dog from the cat, the table 
 from the book case, has already made abstractions. Every 
 time that, for one reason or another, he seizes in any 
 object one point of view, one concrete quality wbich stands 
 out in his eyes from all the others, he makes an abstrac- 
 tion. Abstraction of this sort affords a child intense and 
 absorbing sensations. If a candle is brought near him, 
 his attention is fixed for a moment on the flame, which is 
 the most brilliant part; if several objects of different colors 
 are shown him, he looks at the one whose color strikes 
 his eye most vividly, so that he gets an idea of the color 
 rather than the form of the object. \ This is the sort of 
 abstract ideas which are most familiar to young children. 
 They are detachments from concretions. ) The proof of 
 this is the difficulty that children, and often, too, adults, 
 have in retaining ideas of color, sound, form, and still 
 more of quantity, goodness, wickedness, beauty, ugliness, 
 etc., when the objects whence they have abstracted these 
 ideas are no longer in their presence. Even language, 
 notwithstanding its power of recalling the ideas of objects 
 and qualities, is not equivalent to the presence or the dis- 
 tinct recollection of the object itself for reminding the 
 child of the particular quality belonging to it which im- 
 pressed him most. 
 
 We may say that abstraction is a tendency to separate 
 which is always ideal and instantaneous; and it is by asso- 
 ciating these abstract ideas, which for a moment pre- 
 sented themselves as it were alone to the mind, with 
 some concrete idea, that memory will recall the ideas to 
 the child. Children understand very well, after their own 
 fashion, the words: "Papa good," "Baby nice," "Baby
 
 COMPARISON. 189 
 
 naughty," but they attach no meaning, during the first 
 two years at least, to the words goodness, wickedness, 
 ugliness, and many other familiar ideas, which moreover 
 very few adults would explain without the intervention of 
 concrete ideas. 
 
 It is not, therefore, accurate to say that children shrink 
 from abstractions; on the contrary, they understand and 
 like them when they cost them neither labor nor mental 
 effort /. e,, when they are the least abstract of abstrac- 
 tions. 
 
 "Children would be quite content only to look at things 
 as they pass. . . . We must not, however, exagger- 
 ate their indolence in this respect; it is not so great as 
 people think. All effort, in fact, has its charm; abstrac- 
 tion, moreover, quickly makes up to us for the trouble it 
 costs ; it produces those simple ideas which the mind above 
 all delights in, that clearness which is its chief good. 
 
 Abstraction, then, is not an enemy; quite the 
 contrary; and the mind becomes disciplined to it. This 
 is why it is well not to spare children the trouble of think- 
 ing under abstract forms, so long as we do not fatigue them 
 and disgust them with study." 
 
 These reflections, which apply to children generally, 
 must necessarily, in some measure, apply to children dur- 
 ing the period in which we are studying them. 
 
 in. 
 
 COMPARISON. 
 
 To clearly distinguish two individuals, alike or differ- 
 ent, as being two, is not to compare, but it is a step 
 towards comparison. To be effectual, comparison, or 
 the fixing of the attention successively on two or several 
 objects, or on two or several portions of objects, must be 
 combined with modal abstraction. It must lead to the 
 conception of a relation, either of resemblance or of differ- 
 ence, cognized between these various objects or parts of 
 objects. Comparison, properly so called, is impossible to 
 very young babies, at least for several weeks ; and it only
 
 190 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 becomes possible when their intelligence is sufficiently 
 developed to combine a tolerably distinct vision of details 
 with a power of attention sufficient to take in several 
 objects one after another in a short space of time. A 
 young baby has not a precise idea of the relations between 
 things, and does not look out for them. If comparisons 
 are formed in its mind, it is of themselves that they arise; 
 the terms come together in his mind and remain associated, 
 under the form of integration and disiutegration, of con- 
 crete resemblance and difference; but the child does not 
 complete the work begun by chance, he does not perceive 
 the bearings precisely, and he draws no conclusions. 
 
 A little child at two months old hesitates to take sugared 
 water in place of milk ; he will refuse plain water, and will 
 get angry, scream, and gesticulate wildly after having 
 swallowed a draught of bitter medicine. These are all so 
 many different sensations for him; but how many analo- 
 gous experiments must be repeated on a large number of 
 objects, before he gets a clear idea of the quality which 
 makes the difference, or begins to examine if such and 
 such an object has or has not this quality. In like man- 
 ner with young animals, if several bits of meat are thrown 
 near a puppy or a kitten two months old, they will take 
 any piece indifferently probably that which is nearest; 
 but when a little older they will instinctively choose the 
 largest piece, because the strongest visual impression 
 determines the strongest desire. But when they are a 
 good deal older, if these experiments have often been re- 
 peated, they will have acquired distinct ideas of size and 
 even of superiority of taste; and it will now be deliberate 
 reflection that makes them run after the largest piece and 
 fight for it with their companions. They become progress- 
 ively apt at comparison. 
 
 At three months old children seem to apprehend a large 
 number of resemblances and differences; but as yet to 
 compare very little, if at all. As I have related above, I 
 once offered a little girl of three months first a feeding- 
 bottle filled with milk, and then an empty one; she lifted 
 the second to her mouth with as much eagerness as she did 
 the first, I then offered them to her both at once, and
 
 COMPAKISON. 191 
 
 holding them close together, so that she could see the 
 white liquid moving in the one. She did what Buridan's 
 celebrated ass would perhaps have done, had he had two 
 hands, and been placed between a bucket of water and a 
 peck of hay; he would have seized them both. The little 
 girl, as well as her awkward little hands would let her, 
 seized both the bottles at one grasp. Soon, without letting 
 go the full bottle which she held in her right hand, she 
 lifted the empty one with her other hand to her lips. Was 
 this the result of mere chance, or because the empty bottle 
 was the easier to lift? It matters little to the question 
 with which we are concerned here. She made several 
 fruitless attempts at sucking, and then pursed up her 
 mouth and began to cry, letting fall the unsatisfactory 
 bottle. Soon, however, she became aware of what she 
 had in her right hand, applied it promptly to her lips, and 
 sucked in several drops of its contents with evident satis- 
 faction. Up to that moment the child had seen no differ- 
 ence between these two objects; and possibly even, as her 
 attention had only been superficially directed towards 
 them, she had seen but one object in these two so nearly 
 alike. 
 
 I wanted to vary my experiments on her; and knowing 
 her to be very fond of brilliant colors, I placed before her 
 in succession some engravings of different kinds. I began 
 with pale tints. The child, on seeing them, started for- 
 ward and uttered some joyous exclamations, and stretched 
 out her hands. But her joy was beyond bounds when I 
 placed more brightly colored ones before her; she felt them 
 all over, thumped them with her hands, rubbed and crum- 
 pled them up, put them in her mouth, and gazed at them 
 in ecstacy. I varied the experiment a second time. After 
 some minutes devoted to another amusement, I placed two 
 pictures before her, one of which was brilliantly colored. 
 She threw herself towards both, as if they were one single 
 object. I then -showed them to her separately; she evinced 
 great pleasure in looking at the more sombre one, but with 
 regard to the other her joy and excitement were indescrib- 
 able. But notwithstanding that she had been so strongly 
 impvessed by these striking differences, they had been
 
 192 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 nothing more to her than more or less vivid impressions; 
 there was no reversion of the attention to the objects which 
 had produced the impressions, not the slightest suspicion 
 of difference of quality, or even of quality possessed in 
 different degrees, not the slightest attempt at comparison. 
 
 From similar experiments I have come to the conclusion 
 that comparison, as we understand and practice it, is not 
 possible to a young brain of only three months. Is the 
 power acquired a little later? and, if so, in what measure? 
 Here again I leave facts to speak for themselves, without 
 hastening to draw conclusions. 
 
 Some years ago, I had two grey cats, mother and son, 
 alike in shape, color, and general appearance. One day, 
 a child of eight months old who was brought into my room, 
 perceived the she cat at a little distance from him, and 
 called out for it with expressive gestures and sounds. I 
 called the animal up to me, and friendly relations were 
 soon established between it and the child. The cat raised 
 her head and her back to be stroked, purred, and rubbed 
 itself backwards and forwards against the child's frock. 
 The child squeezed the cat in both his hands and pulled it 
 about to his heart's content. While this was going on, the 
 other cat came on the scene, approached the child, purring, 
 and demanded his share of the caresses. What was the 
 child's amazement at seeing on his left hand the same 
 animal that he saw on his right. He turns on one side 
 and sees a grey cat, he turns on the other and sees a grey 
 cat there also. He seemed as if he could not believe his 
 eyes, and could not make up his mind to see more than 
 one object, his mind being absorbed with the vivid con- 
 ception of one alone. What could have been passing in 
 that little brain? The eyes, the movements of the arms, 
 the bending expectant attitudes, all testified to very strong 
 amazement. But the uncertainty of his judgment did not 
 last long; and, before the end of the visit, having seen the 
 two cats before him, side by side, and at a distance, and in 
 different positions, he carried away the remembrance of 
 two similar animals, without however saying to himself 
 that they were alike. Experiments of this kind often 
 repeated, and they are repeated every day, provide
 
 COMPAKISON. 193 
 
 abundant materials for abstraction, and enable children to 
 detach from similar or different perceptions the conception 
 of analogous qualities, and stimulate them to make com- 
 parisons. 
 
 I knew a little child of ten months who made a great 
 distinction between cakes and potatoes, which he was very 
 fond of, and bread, which he liked less, and also between 
 meat and bread, milk and wine, and wine and water. I 
 subjected him to the following experiment: On one side 
 we placed a cake, on the other a piece of bread; without 
 hesitation he seized the cake and carried it to his mouth. 
 It was then taken away from him, and it was a sight to 
 see his wild agitation, the energetic movements of his 
 arms, his face purple with rage, and his eyes all the time 
 following with fixed attention the movements of the hand 
 which had ravished the cake. Soon the bread was offered 
 him; he fell into the snare and took it; but before biting 
 it he recognized his error and threw it away with signs of 
 violent anger. If one wants him to eat soup, one must 
 not allow him to see potatoes, meat, or fruit. He also 
 behaves differently with regard to his own playthings and 
 those of other children. He has no objection to taking 
 possession of their toys and piling them up with his own; 
 but if any one touches his, he snatches them violently 
 away, thus showing that he is able to distinguish his own 
 things from others'. Also, if two or more objects are held 
 just in front of his eyes, he sees clearly that one is not the 
 other, and he also sees in what they differ; he compares 
 almost without knowing or wishing it this is a great step 
 in advance. 
 
 This slow progress in the capacity for comparison, 
 properly so called, has to do with the nature of the atten- 
 tive power, which is so slight and fluctuating in little chil- 
 dren that they only observe objects superficially, even those 
 which interest them and appeal vividly to their sensibility ; 
 and generally they only observe them from the point of 
 view of the particular emotions they excite at a given 
 moment. A child of three months tries to take hold of, to 
 touch, to raise to his mouth, or to throw down anything 
 that comes to his hand; and, whether from curiosity or 
 
 14
 
 194 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 from the need of using his restless activity, one thing is 
 quickly abandoned for another, to be again perhaps taken 
 up in a few moments. A child of this age is relatively so 
 ignorant that he finds very little to see in any one object, 
 especially in inanimate objects, which have not the power 
 of living objects to modify themselves in all sorts of ways 
 and to keep continually alive the curiosity which they first 
 inspired. This is why very young children who cannot 
 yet speak are content with a cursory notice of the most 
 prominent analogies and differences. The past being of 
 less interest to them than the present, they feel but little 
 need of comparing. 
 
 But from the age of fifteen months, and especially be- 
 tween twenty months and two years, when words are 
 beginning to come to their aid, they begin to make large 
 
 1| use of their faculty of comparison. They are very little 
 I on the look-out for differences, although they are very 
 i much struck by them when they see them ; but everywhere 
 I they are on the look-out for resemblances. I have even 
 I noticed this in a little boy of thirteen months. As one of 
 his cousins was like his uncle, having the same sort of 
 beard and the same kind of figure and voice, the child 
 treated him at once as an old acquaintance. He called 
 him Toto, insisted on being taken to him, poked his finger 
 in his eyes, nose, and ears, wanted to sit by him at meals, 
 found his way to him crawling on his hands and knees, as 
 soon as he was awake, in order to play on his bed. After 
 meals he insisted on being taken on his cousin's lap, and 
 thence proceeded to climb on to the table, where he began 
 all the little games which he was accustomed to play with 
 his uncle. Seeing a pencil in his cousin's hand, he took 
 it from him, put it in his mouth, and made with his lips 
 the movements and sounds of a man who is smoking and 
 puffing the smoke into the air. His uncle used to smoke. 
 When he got down from the table, he took his cousin's 
 hand, and said in a tone of entreaty: " Lou, Ion, Ion, lou ;" 
 this was explained to the cousin as signifying that he was 
 to imitate the dog, as his uncle was in the habit of doing, 
 to the child's great delight. Out in the garden, the child 
 made another request which the cousin did not under-
 
 COMPARISON. 195 
 
 stand, much to the astonishment of the former, who was 
 accustomed to being instantly obeyed by his uncle. Thus 
 this child, only thirteen months old, reasoned and acted 
 on the ground of analogy; from certain resemblances in 
 objects he inferred others, or even complete similarity. 
 At first it would surprise him, not to find the other points 
 of resemblance combined with the first, and he would seek 
 for them with attention heightened by vexation. His 
 cousin, having been coached up in his part, humored as 
 far as possible all the habits which the uncle had made 
 necessary to the child; but some he replaced by ways of 
 his own; and the end of it was, that after being with his 
 cousin for three weeks, the child afterwards expected from 
 his uncle all the gestures, tones of voice, games, indul- 
 gences, and acts of obedience which the new Toto had 
 accustomed him to. The parts were changed, but the in- 
 telligence, the sensibility, and the will of the child worked 
 in the same fashion. 
 
 At the age of two and a half children compare a great 
 deal. They frequently use such phrases as these : " baby 
 tree" (little tree), "papa tree" (great tree), "mamma 
 duck," " baby duck," to signify that any one object is 
 larger or smaller than another. A child of the same age 
 once said to me: "You not naughty; baby much not 
 naughty," wishing to express that I was not naughty, and 
 he was still less so than I. He delighted in using meta- 
 phors to excite laughter: " You are . . ." then he 
 would pause to excite my curiosity, or to seek for an idea 
 which was perhaps slow in coming; " You are a duck, or 
 else a leaf, an acacia, a knife, etc." These were absurd- 
 ities, but they indicated habitual efforts to find out like- 
 nesses, however ridiculous they might be. When three 
 years old, wishing to say something pleasant to a little 
 girl he was very fond of, he said to her : " You a rat, a 
 real rat, a pretty little rat ! " Already, for several months, 
 he had been in the habit of looking fixedly and very at- 
 tentively at new faces, to take stock of them.; and after 
 having studied them for some moments he would say: 
 "Beard like papa, blue dress like mamma, watch like 
 grandpa. . . ." At this age he knew the names of
 
 196 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 more than twenty trees, and could indicate the most ap- 
 parent specific characteristics of each; this showed great 
 progress in the faculties of observation and comparison. 
 
 IV. 
 
 GENERALIZATION. 
 
 It has been for a long time admitted that language is a 
 necessary instrument for fixing, and indeed for forming, 
 general ideas. It seems to me, however, that we may ob- 
 serve the rudiments of these processes in animals and 
 children who cannot yet speak. 
 
 Animals furnish us with instances of an initial form of 
 generalization. The farm-dog, who, by virtue both of his 
 trade and his taste, 
 
 " Donne la chasse aux gens 
 Portant baton et mendiants," 
 
 recognizes them in the first instance by their dress and 
 their baton. These specific characters are engraved in the 
 dog's intelligence, and associated with the mechanical 
 necessity of barking. It is all very well for Bossuet and 
 his disciples to urge, that if dogs bark at people of a 
 certain aspect, it is because their masters have taught 
 them this quite mechanical habit. Why then do dogs not 
 confound one beggar with another beggar? Some beggars 
 will excite them to fury, while others, on the contrary, 
 have the power of gaining the dog's good- will. From a 
 distance, the dog will bark at the one as well as the other 
 this is the effect of the specific character; but on nearer 
 sight he will soften down this is the effect of individual 
 character. 
 
 In all garrison towns one sees dogs who are particularly 
 sympathetic towards soldiers; the sight of red trousers 
 will make them run up to their owner. But when close 
 to the soldier, they behave differently, according to the 
 individual; they will caress one with eager joy, another 
 they will treat with indifference, another perhaps with de- 
 fiance. After the general idea awakened by the sight of 
 the uniform, and which is equivalent to caresses, friend-
 
 GENERALIZATION. 197 
 
 ship and play, etc., there rise up remembrances of good or 
 had treatment associated with such and such a particular 
 resemblance. 
 
 M. Houzeau is of this same opinion. "While Huber 
 was making his splendid observation on bees, one of the 
 hives met with an unforeseen accident. Part of the 
 honeycomb became detached from the partition to which 
 it was fixed, and slipping down several inches rested on 
 the floor of the hive. It was not in the power of the bees 
 to raise it up ; its weight was too great for their physical 
 strength. So they confined themselves to making it 
 secure in its new position, by constructing fastenings of 
 wax, with here and there abutments or props. But at the 
 same time they thought of another necessary piece of 
 work, that of consolidating the different combs which had 
 not yet met with accidents. They fortified all the former 
 points of attachment with fresh wax mixed with propolis." 
 If this act of prudence does not attest the power of gen- 
 eralization, we should be glad to know under what name 
 it should be designated. Bees are not in the habit of 
 thus consolidating the fastenings of their honeycombs. 
 They resolved on this precaution after the failure of 
 their labors, and they extended it to all the combs 
 which still remained in their proper position. They 
 had evidently concluded from a particular case to the 
 general. 
 
 Here is an analogous example in the case of mammals. 
 " In October, 1859, I had made one day a long topograph- 
 ical examination of the watershed between the valleys of 
 Eio-Frio and the Nucces. My animals had been without 
 water from the time of my departure at four o'clock in the 
 morning. Towards three in the afternoon, I had finished 
 certain surveying operations ; and I mounted my horse and, 
 descending the side of the little hill on the summit of 
 which I had spent part of the day, I took the direction 
 which would lead me soonest to a watercourse. After 
 crossing a stretch of undulating ground, we entered a 
 large prairie almost bare of trees, and which stretched for 
 ten or twelve miles in front of us. The ground was 
 smooth, but furrowed at intervals by little tortuous
 
 198 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OP CHILDHOOD. 
 
 trenches, a few inches in depth, hollowed out by the rain 
 in the wet season, but dry at all other times. 
 
 " The land having no decided slope, these various fur- 
 rows did not unite in veins ; but ended in little ponds or 
 miniature lakes, which were scattered over the plain, 'like 
 the spots in the skin of a panther,' to borrow a compar- 
 ison from Strabo. But at the time when I was crossing, 
 all the little conduits were dried up, and there was not a 
 drop of water to be got from them. I had two dogs with 
 me, who were suffering cruelly from thirst. Scarcely did 
 they perceive the first of these furrows from a distance, 
 than they scampered towards it full gallop, descending 
 unhesitatingly in the direction in which the water had 
 once flowed. After a run of a few hundred yards they 
 reached the dried-up pond, and after a short examination 
 of its solid bottom returned to me, evidently disappointed. 
 The same thing went on during the whole journey across 
 the plain, which lasted till the close of day. In this space 
 of time the dogs explored between forty and fifty furrows. 
 They invariably recognized them from a long way off, 
 rushed eagerly towards them, and followed the dried-up 
 course to its end. One could not maintain in these cir- 
 cumstances, that the dogs were led to these lakes by the 
 smell, or by the effluvium of the water, because there was 
 not a drop to be found. They were not guided by the 
 character of the vegetation, for there was not a single tree 
 to be seen either along the furrows or by the ponds. 
 There was not even any particular kind of grass growing, 
 so short a time does moisture last there. The dogs in this 
 case were guided by general ideas, seconded to a certain 
 degree by experience, and of a very simple kind no doubt ; 
 but. in our conceptions of these furrows, of their origin, 
 and of their use, they and I evidently reasoned in the same 
 manner. 
 
 " I must add, moreover, that this observation is by no 
 means an isolated one. I have simply chosen it as a par- 
 ticular case which is safe from various objections. I have 
 many times seen, not only dogs, but horses, mules, oxen, 
 and goats begin to look for water in places where they 
 have never been before. They must have been guided by
 
 GENERALIZATION. 199 
 
 general principles, since they went to ponds or streams 
 which were, at the time, entirely dried up." l 
 
 In default of words, the actions and gestures of children 
 will often indicate to us what we are warranted in infer- 
 ring concerning their power of generalization. For in- 
 stance, a baby of eight months amuses himself for several 
 hours a day seated on a carpet in the middle of the room. 
 One of his favorite toys is a tin box which he likes because 
 of its metallic sound, but especially because of its opening, 
 into which it is his great delight to stuff anything that will 
 go in or won't go in! He has discovered that many of his 
 little possessions, such as a pail, a little cart, a bottle, a 
 trumpet, etc., etc., have this capacity for holding other 
 things, and so, when any fresh toy is given to him, he in- 
 stantly begins to examine it, to see if it has an opening. 
 
 The other day he got hold of a dressed doll ; and he tried 
 to stuff a smaller doll, a piece of bread, and a little phial 
 between its legs. Another time the stopper of a bottle was 
 given to him, and because it was transparent he persisted 
 in thinking there must be an opening at one end ; and he tried 
 to put several things into this supposed hole. One of his 
 favorite tricks is to put his forefinger in the eyes of people 
 who hold him on their knees; and this makes him laugh 
 very much. In short, he has acquired a general idea of 
 this quality of an opening and a capacity for holding things, 
 which he has discovered in so many objects, and which he 
 now seeks for in everything. 
 
 A child of eight months old always made starts of de- 
 light at the sight of any young or pretty person. Must 
 there not have been in this case a distinction between a 
 pleasant and an unpleasant appearance, which the child 
 seized at first sight in all persons who came under his no- 
 tice? This again was the germ of a general idea. The 
 same child, when a fortnight older, manifested a desire for 
 solid food, which he always recognized as such amongst 
 many other things; whether it were bread, cheese, butter, 
 fruit, meat, or sugar, he would lean towards it, stretching 
 
 1 Houzeau, Etudes sur les Facultes Mentales des Animaux, t. L, pp. 
 264, etc.
 
 200 THE FIRST THKEE YEAES OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 out his haud and making a vaguely articulate sound like 
 " wroua "; be never did tbis wbeu asking for bis feeding 
 bottle or bis mother's breast. At nine months old, the 
 sight of a dog, a cat, a chicken, or a bird would send him 
 into raptures ; and he would hold out his arms, and look 
 significantly at the person who was caressing the animal, 
 as much as to say that he wanted to go close up to it. His 
 movements for begging, and afterwards for showing his 
 joy, always finished up with the repetition of the syllables 
 appa ! appa '. appa '. Thus he had a distinct idea, which, 
 up to a certain point, was also a general one, of solid food 
 and of animal, although he did not yet designate any of the 
 individuals comprised in these two classes of objects by 
 special names corresponding to the special qualities he did 
 not fail to remark in them. At eleven months the excla- 
 mation expressing a general idea was changed into ah ! 
 and a few of his specific ideas were expressed by words of 
 his own which need not be quoted here. 
 
 At the time when every one admits that children possess 
 general ideas, that is, when they can express a good many 
 of them by words, we can observe in them other general 
 ideas which are not expressed by words. A little child of 
 thirteen months knows very well how to say matye 
 (marcher) when he wants some one to take his hand and 
 lead him about. But if his wish is refused, he knows how 
 to fall back on his own resources; he leaves the person 
 who is holding him, slips down on the ground, and crawls 
 along on his stomach. Whether he wants to go straight 
 along or to make detours, to go up stairs, or even down 
 stairs (which he does less adroitly, and not without tum- 
 bles), crawling is his general means of getting along by 
 himself. 
 
 If when he is seated on the ground, the fancy suddenly 
 seizes him to get up by leaning on his two hands, once 
 upright on his legs, he is very often much embarrassed by 
 his vertical position; and he will entreat the first comer 
 for a hand, whether it is a person he knows or not. Here 
 again is a clear idea of a general means of getting out of 
 his difficulty to take hold of the hand of another person. 
 This same child, who designates by the word
 
 GENERALIZATION. 20l 
 
 (chapeaii) every species of headgear, bonnet, hat, night-cap, 
 etc., etc., always puts on his head any object of the kind 
 that is within his reach. There are also a certain number of 
 things which he mistakes for this article of clothing, as for 
 instance his nurse's basket, a paper-bag, a dish-cover, a 
 lamp-shade, a handkerchief, and other objects, whose 
 shape recalls more or less the idea of an object suitable for 
 covering the head. This general idea has thus assumed 
 extensive dimensions in his mind. 
 
 From all these facts, which each one can multiply for 
 himself at pleasure, we infer the existence in quite young 
 children of general ideas independent of language. When 
 any particular characteristic has struck them vividly in a 
 certain number of objects, it begins to fix itself in their 
 intelligence in the shape of an abstraction, that is to say, 
 of a very clear idea but no longer associated with the pre- 
 cise idea of certain objects. It is a sort of analogy 
 summed up in a vivid conception which every object more 
 or less similar is capable of reviving. When a means of 
 fixing this conception is acquired, it assumes definite limits, 
 either contracting or expanding, and becomes a true gen- 
 eral conception. Words are only a more simple and 
 efficacious means of recall than the pure sensation which 
 was formerly wont to re-awaken this idea. Whatever may 
 have been said about it, language is more an instrument 
 for defining and fixing than for forming general ideas. 
 
 Let us observe a child generalizing after our example, 
 but in his own fashion, with the words which we have 
 taught him. To know things, is to distinguish the prin- 
 cipal boundaries which separate them into different classes. 
 To know a language, is not only to know words, but 
 things, to have at one's finger's end, ready for daily use, 
 all the observations, and experiences which language com- 
 prises. We can clearly see the part that words play in the 
 working of thought, by noticing the irrepressible tendency 
 of children, I do not say to classify, but at once to con- 
 nect a known term with the various objects they see. 
 With their unconscious and happy audacity they often 
 give us most interesting examples of inferior generaliza- 
 tion. Reason in children is, generally speaking, nothing
 
 202 THE FIEST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 more than comparison as little abstract as possible. The 
 town of Tarbes has a pretty public garden which bears the 
 name of the donor. A child from Bordeaux, twenty 
 months old, said to us: "There is & jar din Massey at Bor- 
 deaux." A child fifteen months old has a wooden horse 
 christened dada. He only needed one single example, one 
 single resemblance, to apply this word dada to one single 
 horse (in which he was somewhat aided by his parents), 
 and afterwards he would apply it instantly to every horse 
 he saw. Here again there are only particular similarities, 
 not conceptions that can be called general. In the middle 
 of a court- yard filled with all sorts of animals, the child 
 saw some chickens, which he called koko, from the name 
 of his canary and turtle-dove; he saw some ducks and 
 geese swimming in a pond, and he reduced them to one 
 and the same species the duck ; a swan also is to him a 
 duck. The broad lines of classification are already defi- 
 nitely acquired by the age of three; and a single point of 
 resemblance suffices for the first rough outline, an enumer- 
 ation (of instances) far from complete, for subsequently 
 extending and confirming them. 
 
 There is, I think, some subtlety in the following mode 
 of reasoning: "If it is true that the distinct general idea 
 is posterior to confused particular ideas, conversely it may 
 be true to say that the confused general idea is anterior to 
 the distinct particular idea. Thus the idea of man, in so 
 far as it is characterized by the abstract and classical 
 definition of a reasonable animal, or by the zoological 
 definition, presupposes doubtless a comparison between 
 many individual men ; but the confused sense of what there 
 is in common between all men is pre-existent to the defi- 
 nite distinction of individuals: for instance, it takes a 
 child some time to distinguish his father from other men; 
 it takes a dog some time to distinguish his master. It has 
 been said with reason, that the faculty of generalizing is 
 a characteristic of intelligence : it may also be said, that 
 the faculty of individualizing is no less essential a sign." 
 I accept the conclusion, but I make my reserve as to the 
 
 1 P. Janet, Traite Elementaire de Philosophic, p. 165.
 
 GENEKALIZATION. 203 
 
 premises. When a child applies the word papa to all the 
 individuals who resemble his father generally, he only 
 sees in them a particular resemblance. The author above 
 quoted sees in this an absolutely generalizing tendency, 
 and he confirms his opinion by adding: "One does not 
 find that little children generalize the word mamma like 
 the word papa. This no doubt is owing to the fact that, 
 being more with their mother than with their father, they 
 individualize her better." Might not one reason for this 
 difference (which must not be exaggerated) be, the habit 
 that the mother and the women about a child have of 
 making particular demonstrations at every appearance of 
 the father? "See, there's papa! Where is papa? Look at 
 papa. Say 'How do you do' to papa," etc. Thus in- 
 structed, the child sees papa everywhere, and when he 
 begins to speak brings out the word papa at all moments, 
 in season and out of season. Moreover, are there no ex- 
 amples of children generalizing the word "mamma" in 
 quite as elementary a fashion as the word "papa"? Here 
 is one, at any rate. A child, three years and five months 
 old, had returned with his parents from Tarbes, where he 
 had spent more than a month. At the beginning of the 
 journey, he asked every ten minutes where were his aunts 
 and his grandmother? What were they saying? When 
 would he go back to Tarbes? Afterwards he attracted the 
 attention of a lady, whom he amused by singing to her 
 "St. Anthony," "Little Ida," "Marlborough," and the 
 "Little Bird." Then he became confidential towards her. 
 He told her that he h&dfive mammas ; first of all his mother, 
 then Aunt P., Aunt V., Grandmamma of Tarbes, and 
 Grandmamma Louise; the mother of the latter, the great 
 grandmother, was not a mamma. "But," said the lady to 
 him, "Aunt V. is not your mamma!" "Oh x yes; because 
 she takes care of me." Then he began to imitate a 
 grocer, his mother's grocer, the only one he had ever seen. 
 Grandmamma Louise had given him a little grocer's shop. 
 He said that he had sold a great many goods. "M. Fran- 
 cois and Mme. Collette" (the heroes of a little story that 
 had been told to the child) "often have colds, and then 
 they come to buy the little black bonbons of me." Here
 
 204 THE FIKST THKEE YEAES OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 everything is particular the matter, the form, and even 
 the incidents, which may vary according to the characters 
 of the children, the vivacity of their imagination, the edu- 
 cation they receive, and above all the examples set them. 
 We can now affirm that children do not begin, either by 
 general conceptions or by terms which they transfer from 
 the individual to the general, in virtue of that primitive 
 tendency to generalization which, according to some philo- 
 sophers, is exercised before any individual discrimination. 
 Max Miiller has said, and M. Taine has repeated after him, 
 that there are no general ideas without words. "There is 
 in every language," says Max Miiller, "a certain layer of 
 words which may be called purely emotional. It is smaller 
 or larger according to the genius and history of each 
 nation, but it is never quite concealed by the later strata 
 of rational speech. Most interjections, most imitative 
 words belong to this class. They are perfectly clear in 
 their character and origin, and it could never be main- 
 tained that they rest on general concepts. But, if we 
 deduct that inorganic stratum, all the rest of language, 
 whether among ourselves or among the lowest barbar- 
 ians, can be traced back to roots, and every one of these 
 roots is the sign of a general concept. This is the most 
 important discovery of the science of language. 
 These concepts are formed by what is called the faculty of 
 abstraction, a very expressive term, which designates the 
 action of decomposing sensuous intuitions into their con- 
 stituent parts, of stripping each part of its momentary and 
 concrete character. . . . How is this work of the 
 human intellect, the forming and handling of concepts, 
 carried on? Are concepts possible, or, at least, are con- 
 cepts ever realized, without some outward form or body? 
 I say decidedly, No. If the science of language has proved 
 anything, it has proved that conceptual or discursive 
 thought can be carried on by words only. There is no 
 thought without words, as little as there are words with- 
 out thought!" ' 
 
 1 Lectures on Darwin's "Philosophy of Language." See Fraser's Maga- 
 zine, 1873, pp. 36 and 49.
 
 GENERALIZATION. 205 
 
 M. Taine, who quotes this passage from Max Miiller, 
 adopting the opinions it expresses, has considerably en- 
 larged on this interesting subject. In a chapter of his 
 book on "Intelligence," where he has collected together 
 observations of the same nature as those of Tiedemann, he 
 speaks appreciatively, as a free disciple of Locke, of a cer- 
 tain number of facts relative to the formation of general 
 ideas in children. He attributes the origin of general ideas 
 simultaneously with general terms, or on the occasion of 
 the latter, to an operation special to man, which he desig- 
 nates under the vague term of tendency to generalization. 
 The examples which he has brought forward in support of 
 his theory, will lead us to very different conclusions from his. 
 
 "The formation of these general names may be nar- 
 rowly watched; with little children, we take them in the 
 act. We name to them such and such a particular de- 
 termined object; and, with an instinct of imitation com- 
 mon to them with monkeys and parrots, they repeat the 
 name they have just heird. Up to this point they are 
 but as monkeys and parrots; but here there appears a 
 delicacy of impression which is special to man. We pro- 
 nounce the word papa before a child in its cradle, at the 
 same time pointing out his father. After a little he in 
 his turn lisps the word, and we imagine that he under- 
 stands it in the same sense that we do, or that his father's 
 presence only will recall the word. Not at all. When 
 another person, that is, one similar in appearance, with 
 a long coat, a beard, and a loud voice, enters the room, 
 he calls him also papa. The name was an individual one; 
 he has made it general. In our case, it is applicable to 
 one person only; in his, to a class. In other words, a 
 certain tendency corresponding to what there is in common 
 to all persons in long coats, with beards and loud voices, 
 is aroused in him in consequence of the experiences by 
 which he has perceived them. This tendency is not what 
 you were attempting to excite, it springs up spontaneously. 
 In it we have the faculty of language. It is wholly 
 founded on the consecutive tendencies which survive the 
 experience of similar individuals, and correspond precisely 
 to what they have in common.
 
 206 THE FIEST THKEE YEAKS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 We see these tendencies continually at work in children, 
 and leading to results differing from ordinary language; so 
 that we are obliged to correct their spontaneous and too 
 hasty attempts. A little girl, two years and a half old, had 
 a hlessed medal hung at her neck. She had been told, 
 "G'est le bon Dieu," and she repeated, "C'est le bo Du." 
 One day, on her uncle's knee, she took his eye-glass, and 
 said, "C'est le bo Du de mon oncle." It is plain that she 
 had involuntarily anl naturally constructed a class of 
 objects for which we have no name ; that of small round 
 objects, with a handle, through which a hole is pierced, 
 and hung round the neck by a ribbon ; that a distinct ten- 
 dency, corresponding to these four general characters, and 
 which we do not experience, was formed and acting in 
 her. A year afterwards, the same child, who was being 
 asked the names of different parts of her face, said, after 
 a little hesitation, on touching the eyelids, "These are the 
 eye-curtains." A little boy, a year old, had traveled a good 
 deal by railway. The engine, with its hissing sound and 
 smoke, and the great noise of the train, struck his atten- 
 tion; and the first word he learnt to pronounce was/a/er 
 (chemin de fer). Henceforward, a steamboat, a coffee-pot 
 with spirit-lamp everything that hissed, or smoked, or 
 made a noise, was a fafer. Another instrument to which 
 children have a great objection (excuse the detail and the 
 word I mean an enema) had, naturally enough, made a 
 strong impression on him. He had termed it, from its 
 noise, a zizi. Till he was two-and-a-half years old, all 
 long, hollow, slender objects, a scissor-sheath, a cigar- 
 tube, a trumpet, were for him zizi; and he treated them 
 all with distrust. These two reigning ideas, the zizi and 
 the fafer, were two cardinal points of his intelligence, and 
 from them he set out to comprehend and name other 
 things. 1 
 
 Let us call by their real name these tendencies corre- 
 sponding to what there is in common between similar individ- 
 uals or objects : they are embyro, if not complete acts of 
 generalization. There is a simpler, and to my thinking, a 
 
 1 Taine. L' Intelligence. See Eng. Trans, by F. D. Haye, p. 15.
 
 GENERALIZATION. 207 
 
 more accurate manner of interpreting the facts quoted 
 above, as well as the analogous facts which I myself have 
 been able to bring forward. Objects which are similar 
 awaken the same ideas in the intelligence of children. At 
 first, in consequence of their feeble capacity for analysis, 
 these ideas of similarity are particular; but by dint of fre- 
 quently seeing similar things, simultaneously or success- 
 ively, they perceive in them distinctive characteristics, or 
 differences; they cease to confound one with the other; 
 they no longer take every gentleman with a beard for 
 papa, all hissing objects for fafer, or every round object 
 for Bo-Du; yet they nevertheless retain the idea of resem- 
 blance which they had grasped at first, and which is 
 re-awakened at every fresh sight of the objects, since, while 
 now distinguishing them clearly from one another, they 
 still call them all by the same name. 
 
 Here language is much behind thought : if the common 
 term corresponds to the general conception, the particular 
 or individual idea has not yet its equivalent in the child's 
 vocabulary. A certain color, a certain form, have suddenly 
 made him aware of the presence of some sort of food, and 
 he pronounces the general term by which he expresses 
 the idea of good to eat; but at the second glance he has 
 distinguished cake from bread, potatoes from batter; thus 
 from the general idea tnere have been detached particular 
 ideas, which he does not know how to express. When he 
 has set terms to express them by, the first general terms 
 will merge more and more into the particular, and he will 
 invent or acquire other terms by which to express the 
 former general ideas, which, on their part, will go on en- 
 larging. 
 
 The capacity of children to generalize before they can 
 speak, seems to me to be precisely established by what 
 M. Taine calls this sudden tendency to generalize terms 
 which to us are individual. Such marvellous virtue in 
 words would be contrary to the law of intellectual evolu- 
 tion. If general ideas did not exist, in however rudi- 
 mentary a degree, before the terms which are their cor- 
 relatives, I should see in the latter an effect without a 
 cause, the less producing the greater, the sign, the thing
 
 208 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 signified. When you show a child his father, and say to 
 him, papa, you supply him with a word, which associates 
 itself in his mind with an already existing idea of a form 
 of such and such a kind. But this idea was not particu- 
 lar in the child's mind; he had already seen this form 
 before, and he sees it nearly every day; it is a vague idea 
 of resemblance, which is not abstract to him, but which 
 is re-awakened at the sight of all similar objects. The 
 words papa,fajer, etc., signify to him qualities which have 
 struck him, not in one object only, but in several. If the 
 child designates by the same name all similar objects after 
 having seen a certain number of them, and without taking 
 one for the other, it is incontestably shown that analogy 
 touches closely on generalization, and this for the reason 
 that analogy of ideas tends towards a certain generality. 
 Words progress like ideas and by means of ideas. 
 
 Generalization is, in fact, only more or less extended 
 similarity. It has not yet become (even when they begin 
 to exercise the function of speech easily) that superior 
 faculty of applying an abstract idea of quality to a whole 
 group of objects compared among themselves. The steps 
 which lead them to these distinct ideas of kind and species 
 will be very slow and gradual. 
 
 A child of three years old, of highly developed intelli- 
 gence, could not at all understand words signifying species 
 or class. "What does that mean, this animal is of the 
 same kind?" he persisted in asking me. I could only get 
 out of the difficulty by answering: "It means, that the 
 animal is almost the same." He understood that the one 
 was like the other, and that was all. There is nothing, 
 moreover, in which we find so much difference, even 
 among adults, as in general ideas, especially the way in 
 which they are understood. Take ten persons at hazard, 
 and mention in their presence the terms virtue, humanity, 
 force, law, nature, quantity, quality, or any other general 
 term; ask each person the sense which he or she attaches 
 to these words of every-day usage, and you will be aston- 
 ished at the differences there will be in the answers ; and 
 the reason is, that the greater the power of thought, the 
 more experience and analysis intervene in our intellectual
 
 REASONING. 209 
 
 operations, and the more general terms and ideas will 
 define themselves, whether by contracting or expanding. 
 Bo-Du will gradually cease to be the name of all round 
 hanging objects, papa of all men with coats, beards, etc. ; 
 and in proportion as objects assume their individual 
 names, or the names considered as such, they will take their 
 place with the corresponding ideas in other general cate- 
 gories. The analogies first noticed become less striking, 
 differences are more and more clearly perceived; classes 
 are divided into species, species into varieties, and indi- 
 vidualities into singularities. There is, as it were, a pro- t 
 gressive acuteness in the intellectual vision, which at first 
 grasps great masses only, afterwards the more important 
 details, and finally the small minutiae, and which corre- 
 sponds to our generalizations successively ascending and 
 descending. 
 
 V. 
 
 REASONING. 
 
 "The process of judgment has then for its special char- 
 acteristic, according as it advances, the privilege of extend- 
 ing itself; of determining the reaction of the surrounding 
 cerebral elements; of searching, to some extent, into the 
 archives of the past; of associating former notions with 
 those of the present; of creating partial local judgments, 
 established a priori as results of the inner experience of 
 the individual; and of permitting us, at a given moment, 
 to juxtapose and agglomerate partial judgments to agglu- 
 tinate them, in the form of arguments, into a complete 
 judgment, which resumes them all in a true synthesis." 1 
 
 If, then, reasoning consists in the fact that the presenta- 
 tion of certain phenomena (which already have their 
 equivalent in different psychic states produced by past 
 experiences) excites these psychic states to reproduce them- 
 selves, either wholly or in part; in other words, if reason- 
 
 i Luys, Le Cervewi el ses Fonctions. See Eng. Trans. (Internal, 
 Sclent. Series), pp. 293, 294, 
 15
 
 210 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 ing is nothing else than a series of consecutive judgments 
 co-ordinated according to the law of habitual associations, 
 it is evident that both little children and animals are able 
 to reason. 
 
 A child of seven months has already very well associated 
 in its mind the idea of the movements of mastication with 
 that of the agreeable sensations resulting therefrom. 
 When he sees his nurse lift any food to her mouth, and 
 sees her lips and jaws moving, he judges that she is eating; 
 that what she is eating is good to her taste, and would be 
 the same to his; and he knows by experience that his 
 nurse would probably let him share this pleasure if he 
 asked her in an irresistible manner, i. e., if he cried, or 
 pretended to be going to cry and he acts accordingly. 
 We can see here the origin both of the analogical reason- 
 ing by which he formed this chain of consecutive judg- 
 ments, and of the deductive reasoning which made him 
 apply these, experiences which he had generalized to the 
 present circumstances. Before continuing the examination 
 of the faculty of reasoning in little children, let us study 
 its analogous phenomena in animals. 
 
 A young dog, about six months old, had been given to 
 me. In order to form in him habits of cleanliness, which 
 his former master had neglected to teach him, I used to 
 whip him every time that he made a mess in a room. Soon 
 the idea of punishment becoming associated with that of a 
 particular need, excited in him the idea of acting in such a 
 way as to prevent punishment. He took to waking me up 
 every night, either by scratching vigorously at the door of 
 my room, or, if this did not have the desired effect, by 
 setting up a piteous howling. All the judgments which he 
 performed in this instance were linked together by such 
 close bonds that we have only to put them into words to 
 see in them the elements of perfect reasoning. Let us try 
 to utter his thoughts. " My master whips me soundly when 
 I make my bedroom dirty (first inductive reasoning). But 
 when, having opened the door, I go out for a little while 
 into the court below, he is pleased with me, and instead of 
 punishing me, he pats me and praises me (second induc- 
 tion), Now, when I make a loud howling, he wakes up
 
 REASONING. 211 
 
 and opens the door for me (third induction). Come then, 
 I'll bark with all my might, wake him up, and I shall not 
 be beaten." (Deductive reasoning.) 
 
 The following fact is not less conclusive. I borrow it 
 from the immense store of observations and quotations of 
 M. Houzeau, who was a witness of the incident. "It is 
 known that the milk-sellers of Brussels employ dogs, har- 
 nessed to little carts, to go every morning the round of 
 their customers. These dogs draw up of their own accord 
 at the different houses; but in this there is nothing more 
 than memory. One day in 1854, I was walking along the 
 Eue Saint- Gery, and I happened to follow one of these 
 dogs drawing its cart, while some steps behind him fol- 
 lowed the nulkwoman. A carriage with two horses was 
 also going along the street, at the same pace, side by side 
 with the milk-cart. This carriage formed a constant ob- 
 stacle on the dog's left hand, as it was between him and 
 the line of houses, one of which he had to stop at. The 
 problem in his mind was, whether to cross in front of the 
 horses, or to let them pass on and cross over behind them. 
 The dog went on walking at his usual pace, casting alter- 
 nate despairing glances at his mistress and at the door of 
 his customer. The expression of the animal's face said 
 unmistakably: ' What shall I do now? ' The interroga- 
 tion was so plain and positive that the milk woman not 
 only understood and answered it, but she solved the prob- 
 lem in the manner that the dog's look seemed to suggest. 
 She begged the coachman to stop his horses for a minute, 
 and the dog then instantly crossed over in front of them 
 and drew up at the right door. Any one who has wit- 
 nessed a similar scene cannot deny that dogs are capable 
 of reflection." 1 
 
 "At the time of the great inundation of the Loire, in 
 1836, the water spread over a garden where two nightin- 
 gales had built a nest in the hedge. The floods mounted 
 higher and higher, and threatened to submerge the young 
 family; for the little ones, but newly hatched, were not yet 
 capable of flying. Under these circumstances, we might 
 
 'Houzeau, Facultis Mentales des Animaux, vol. ii., p. 195.
 
 212 THE FIRST THREE YEARS Of CHILDHOOD. 
 
 assert that the old birds must have been able to reason in 
 order to understand the increasing danger. But, unques- 
 tionably, there was something more than automatic action 
 when the birds carried the nest bodily off, and placed it 
 at some distance, out of reach of the waters. This is, in 
 fact, what the parent birds did ; each took one side of the 
 nest by the beak, and with a swift and balanced flight the 
 nightingales accomplished the journey and saved their 
 little ones from the threatened drowning." 
 
 I will quote another example of a different kind, also 
 about birds. "I had received a present of a beautiful male 
 grossbeak," writes Audubon; "but the bird was in such an 
 exhausted state that one would have said he was simply an 
 inanimate mass of feathers. However, with careful feed- 
 ing, he soon recovered, and became so tame that he would 
 eat out of my hand without showing the least sign of fear. 
 To make captivity bearable to him, I allowed him to fly 
 about my bed-room, and on getting up in the morning, 
 my first care always was to give him some seed. It hap- 
 pened, however, that for three consecutive days I lay in 
 bed later than usual, and then the bird came to wake me 
 by fluttering on to my shoulder and demanding his usual 
 meal. The third day I let him flutter about for some time 
 before appearing to be awake. But he no sooner saw that 
 he had attained his end, than he retired to the window 
 and waited patiently till I had got up. " 
 
 Thus we perceive in animals a variety of intellectual 
 operations and intelligent actions which cannot be set 
 down to instinct. The examples above quoted do not be- 
 long to the class of habits common to a whole species, 
 which we might consider as dependent on the organic 
 constitution, but they are individual manifestations, under 
 exceptional circumstances, and varying with external 
 changes. It is human reasoning, with all its independ- 
 ence of automatism. We must, however, be careful, 
 whether as regards human beings or animals, not to attrib- 
 ute too much to spontaneity pure and simple. Are we 
 not constantly startled by the sudden apparition of some 
 faculty long buried in the depths of hereditary automat- 
 ism? and may not certain exceptional actions performed
 
 REASONING. 213 
 
 by animals proceed from the same mysterious source? 
 Are inundations, for instance, such rare events in the life 
 of the species, that they may not have determined in birds 
 up to a certain point the semi-instinctive faculty of trans- 
 porting their nests by the help of their beaks? In like 
 manner, in the case of the child above mentioned, who 
 watched his nurse eating with envious eyes, there must 
 have been combined with the conscious operations of the 
 intellect, with the process of pure reasoning, certain reflex 
 judgments and movements which were the result either of 
 individual or of transmitted habits. Might not the mere 
 sight of the movements of the jaws excite in a child un- 
 conscious and involuntary movements, such as opening the 
 mouth, holding out the arms, leaning forward, and even 
 crying? It is very difficult to determine how much be- 
 longs to unconscious and how much to conscious cerebra- 
 tion, in this aggregate of apparently rationally co-ordin- 
 ated organic sentiments, ideas, and impulses. It is cer- 
 tain, however, that consciousness enters largely into the 
 matter. In fact, as we have already said, all instinctive 
 movements, all reflex actions, come in course of time to 
 be consciously realized by their agent, provided they are 
 important enough in themselves, or that by quickly recur- 
 ring reiteration they are brought out, so to say, in relief, 
 in adults we see the consciousness suddenly roused by 
 great crises or theatrical climaxes, whereas ordinary events 
 leave them indifferent. In like manner, if children are 
 encouraged to reproduce these movements, which at first 
 have passed unnoticed by them, or to perform them with 
 varying or increased intensity or complexity, their atten- 
 tion is sure to be attracted sooner or later, as is proved by 
 the fact that they will modify these actions under the 
 counteracting influence of particular impressions or senti- 
 ments. 
 
 A little child of ten months wished very much to hold in 
 his arms a kitten which his elder sister was playing with 
 on her lap; he held out his arms towards the animal, look- 
 ing alternately at it and at his sister, and uttering cries 
 which sounded like hiccoughing. His sister did not grant 
 his desire, not wishing to subject her pet kitten to the
 
 214 THE FIKST THREE YEAKS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 awkward hugging of the baby. The latter then began to 
 scream. His sister remained calm and impassive. The 
 baby then became more urgent, shook his whole body vio- 
 lently, struggled, writhed, sobbed aud howled. His sister 
 said to him: "Be quiet, you naughty child, you shall not 
 have pussy, you will hurt him;" but the child's passion 
 only increased in fury, and finally reached such a pitch of 
 intensity that his consciousness quite disappeared in the 
 hurly-burly of moral and physical excitement, and he 
 ended by forgetting the cause of his rage in the rage 
 itself. He went on screaming and holding out his arms 
 without knowing what he was doing, for the kitten, terrir 
 fied by this turbulent scene, had escaped and hidden behind 
 a bed. To calm her little brother, the sister called the 
 kitten back and took it to him ; he instantly became quiet, 
 but after a few seconds he began to cry again ; the sister 
 then kissed and petted him, and tried to make him stroke 
 the kitten. When at last he was a little tranquillized, he 
 took no more notice of the kitten, but asked his sister 
 for a bonbon. Here we see the fluctuating and capricious 
 procedure of a child's judgments and movements, which, 
 though co-ordinated by the law of habit, are shifted and 
 changed in a thousand unexpected ways at the beck of 
 intervening impressions and associations of ideas which 
 alternately present them to and withdraw them from the 
 consciousness. 
 
 If automatism passes back to consciousness in certain 
 determined cases, consciousness is equally ready to relapse 
 into automatism. A child of two years was accustomed 
 to see his mother's lodger (Mme. Jillet) re-enter the house 
 nearly every day on her return from market. Whenever 
 he saw his mother come back with a basket on her arm he 
 used to call out, "Where M6 Gile? Me want see Gile. 
 Call me Gile." Are not all the acts of judgment expressed 
 by these baby phrases linked together in such a way as to 
 constitute a chain of concrete but effectual reasonings? 
 Well, then, the child has already acquired the habit of 
 repeating these phrases several times a day, and no matter 
 at what hour, and quite mechanically, like a parrot, every 
 time he sees his mother take up a basket. What was
 
 REASONING. 215 
 
 rational has become automatic, by dint of constant repe- 
 tition. I observed other examples of the same nature in 
 this child. When the lady in question comes to pay her 
 morning visit after marketing, the child runs up to her, 
 hangs on to her gown, and says: "Maman dear Gil6;" then 
 he pulls open a corner of the basket, forages about with 
 his hands among the provisions, and pulling out no matter 
 what, says, "Want this, I do; I say, I want this." All 
 these natural operations of judgment happen in so constant 
 an automatic order, that one would suppose that the child 
 had no consciousness of them. 
 
 But here are two examples of a contrary nature, fur- 
 nished by the same child, from which we shall see the 
 intervention of consciousness in a collection of judgments 
 and movements performed chiefly in a reflex manner. His 
 father is a workman who often goes out fishing, and the 
 child is accustomed to eating fried fish. The other day, 
 the father, who had returned home after the hour for the 
 family supper, was eating some fish by himself. "Me 
 want fish, papa, me want fish." The father turned a deaf 
 ear for a few moments. "Me want fish," again said the 
 little one, pulling his father's sleeve and trying to attract 
 his attention. The father went on eating without speak- 
 ing a word (up to this point all the child's words, as well 
 as its actions and gestures, had expressed ideas automat- 
 ically associated and co-ordinated) ; but finding his efforts 
 fruitless, he suddenly got under the table, and pulling his 
 father's leg began again: "Me want fish, not pussy have 
 fish, me want fish." He had suddenly reflected that the 
 cat generally went under the table; and by a sudden in- 
 spiration of his consciousness, which made him imagine 
 and execute movements quite new to him, he assumed the 
 character of a cat. 
 
 The mother of this child has accustomed him to call 
 Madame Jillet, towards twelve o'clock, and to ask her to 
 throw down the newspaper, in order to save her the 
 trouble of coming down-stairs. The child discharges this 
 duty very solemnly, and will not let any one else do it for 
 him, " Me Gile, give paper!" He repeats this formula 
 with very little variation until the paper is thrown, out of
 
 216 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OP CHILDHOOD. 
 
 the window. One day his brother wanted to call out for 
 the paper instead of him. The child became crimson 
 with rage; his rights were being invaded. He set off 
 screaming with all his might: "Me Gile, give paper! " 
 and then, turning to his brother, " You not to call out, 
 mustn't call out, me cry out, me Gile! " The paper fell 
 at this moment, and the elder boy picked it up; the 
 younger one instantly snatched it from him, saying: 
 "Give paper, me take mamma." Two or three innova- 
 tions had here crept into his accustomed routine; but he 
 returned to this immediately, shaking the paper which had 
 fallen, and saying, " Not dirty; " this had become an almost 
 unconscious habit with him. 
 
 It is in this faculty of assimilating past experiences with 
 new ones, of continually extending the chain of induc- 
 tions and deductions, that children and animals show 
 endless power of invention and resource of imagination 
 a power which adults, more accustomed to act on ready- 
 made arguments, acquired or learnt, than to construct 
 new ones, might envy them. A propos of this example, 
 we may observe that Locke and Mill have with reason 
 maintained that there is a mode of reasoning founded 
 on the particular. 
 
 M. L. Ferri, in his interesting study on Les Trois Pre- 
 mieres Annees d'une Enfant, 1 has introduced some observa-. 
 tions which confirm this opinion. 
 
 Young children are incessantly giving proofs of their 
 force of invention, and of the elasticity of their reasoning 
 power. All their intellectual, moral, and physical progress, 
 their games, their caresses, their little tricks, all bear the 
 mark of the practical and ingenious nature of their 
 reasoning powers. We will quote a few more instances 
 selected out of thousands, and of the kind which every 
 one may have observed, without however noticing or ap- 
 preciating them systematically, and with a view to the 
 right direction to be given to infant faculties. The 
 word direction does not rightly express my meaning. 
 Everything bursts forth so spontaneously in the evolution 
 
 In the Filosophia delle Scuole Italians, Oct. 1879.
 
 REASONING. 217 
 
 of young human beings, the experiences they are contin- 
 ually accumulating respond with such marvellous activity 
 and diversity to the excitations and necessities of acci- 
 dental circumstances, that the great art of education, even 
 at the most tender age, seems to me to consist rather in 
 attentive and watchful neutrality than in partial and 
 domineering interference. Woe to the child cast in the 
 mold of conventional routine and maxims, however wise 
 and specious a form they may assume ! " Let be, " " Let 
 pass," " Let live," and do not force or repress, except 
 when absolutely necessary, or you run the risk of hinder- 
 ing the diffusion of the sap destined to produce, suc- 
 cessively and simultaneously, precious flowers and exquisite 
 fruit. 
 
 Here are some more examples from the category of 
 children who can already speak and walk, and thus 
 reveal in a more evident manner the workings of the un- 
 seen phenomena which are going on within them. The 
 child I am about to speak of is two years and one month 
 old. When his father, whose night duties oblige him to 
 sleep rather late in the morning, seems to him to have 
 slept too long, he tries to wake him up, if left alone with 
 him for a moment, either by pulling off the counterpane 
 or making a noise with a chair, or by getting up on the 
 chair and shaking his father's head. The other day, 
 mounted on the chair, he took his father by the neck, and 
 then pinched and pulled his ear. The father pretended to 
 be asleep, in order to see what would happen. At last the 
 child lifted up one of his father's eyelids and cried out, 
 "Daddy, isn't it light?" This was a device that the 
 father would have to guard against in future. Another time 
 the father had just come in, and was waiting for supper; 
 the child was watching his mother's preparations; she had 
 just filled a plate with soup and left the room for a 
 moment. The child profited by her absence to take up 
 the plate in both hands; and, notwithstanding its weight, 
 he carried it to his father, saying to him: "Monsieur 
 papa, mangez soupe." This action was altogether new, 
 and caused a burst of laughter from both parents. The 
 Monsieur papa was the most comical part of the entertain-
 
 218 THE FIEST THREE YEAES OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 ment. Sometimes, when his father pretends to be angry, 
 the boy soon guesses, from his expression, and the curve 
 of his lip, and other familiar signs, that the anger is only 
 feigned, and he calls out, laughing, " Not angry, papa play, 
 not angry." This child has taken to a trick of slily steal- 
 ing something from his neighbor's plate at meals. When 
 he has transferred the bit of stolen meat or pudding to his 
 own plate, he pats and presses it up against the rest, so 
 that it should not be seen. This little trick has already 
 procured him several scoldings, which have not yet quite 
 cured him of it. He knows that his brother, who is past 
 five, and goes to school, does not like him to touch his 
 playthings, because he disarranges and spoils them. But, 
 no sooner is his brother gone, than he goes off to the 
 corner where the box of toys is hidden, or manages by 
 coaxing and tears to get them from his indulgent mother. 
 But he is on the qui vive all the time, and often runs to 
 the top of the staircase to see who is coming up; and the 
 instant he recognizes his brother's step he begins with 
 both hands to bundle all the toys pell-mell into the box, 
 and to put them back in their place. Although it is indis- 
 putable that in many cases adult animals reason more 
 promptly and justly than do children from one to four 
 years, or even older, this is assuredly an example of con- 
 trivance superior to that which is ordinarily shown in the 
 most intelligent animals. 
 
 As children grow in strength and experience, their judg- 
 ment gains in accuracy, their reason becomes stronger, 
 more precise, and more subtle, more abstract, so to say, 
 and the verbal expression of their trains of reasoning, 
 which relate generally to their desires and fears, acquires 
 fluency and logic. 
 
 When I was a child of five years I had abused my right 
 of strongest, and taken away from a little girl cousin, two 
 years younger, a magnificent pear which our grandmother 
 had given her. The tears and screams and despair of the 
 poor little victim may be imagined. She related what had 
 happened very eloquently and circumstantially to my 
 grandmother, and the latter tried to appease her by giving 
 her a fine bunch of grapes. When I came out of the hid-
 
 REASONING. 219 
 
 ing place where I had been enjoying my stolen fruit, the 
 little girl had not yet come to the end of her grapes or of 
 her grief. My grandmother scolded me very severely, and 
 then addressing my cousin- " Never mind, my child," she 
 said, " I will fetch you a very nice pear, and your cousin 
 shall not have one." This promise, and my disconcerted 
 air, restored my cousin's cheerfulness, and she ran off 
 merrily to her play. An hour passed by, and I had not 
 left the house; probably I was waiting to see whether our 
 grandmother would have the courage to fulfil her threat, 
 and to give my cousin a pear in my presence without 
 giving me one. The little girl, on her part, had not for- 
 gotten the promise either; she kept coming back every 
 ten minutes, fidgeting round the old lady, and saying 
 pretty coaxing things, asking if she could do anything for 
 her, talking to her about flowers, vegetables, etc., but the 
 word pear never passed her lips. She knew by experience 
 that our grandmother did not like importunity, especially 
 in regard to things to eat, and she avoided displeasing her 
 by appearing too eager for the promised fruit. At last, 
 however, at the end of half an hour, she screwed up all 
 her courage, and nerving herself for all risks, came jump- 
 ing into the room from the court-yard, and laying a 
 coaxing hand on her grandmother's shoulder, said: "It 
 will be very nice, won't it? " My grandmother understood 
 very well what this astute remark meant, but purposely 
 made her repeat it; and the child, thus encouraged, went 
 even further: " It will be nice, grandmamma, the pear! " 
 My grandmother was charmed with this proceeding, and 
 calling to my grandfather, who was in an adjoining room, 
 asked him if he had time to go into the garden. " Will 
 you go and look for a fine pear which I have promised this 
 little girl? " My grandfather went into the garden, and 
 my cousin accompanied him, holding his hand; I too 
 made one of the party, but keeping at a respectful distance 
 behind my grandfather. My cousin had a beautiful pear 
 given her; and she was so much engrossed with the pleas- 
 ure of eating it, that she forgot to say that I was not to 
 have one. So we all three enjoyed our pears together, 
 and then we had a good game among the trees in the
 
 220 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 garden with our grandfather two little children and one 
 big one!" 
 
 Children are thus capable of reasoning from their very 
 cradles; if it were not so, they would never acquire the 
 power: according to the saying of Laromiguiere : " Se- 
 duced to pure sensations, which they could neither disen- 
 tangle nor compare nor combine nor analyze, they would 
 be destitute of all ideas, and would never take rank among 
 intelligences." 1 But the natural logic of young children is 
 very limited in its grasp and very uncertain in its methods. 
 If in the sphere of analogical relations it goes straight to 
 the end, as if by an imaginative glance ; if in the rather 
 more complex relations of particular similitudes, which lead 
 towards induction, it follows the course, sometimes tol- 
 erably regular, of psychic associations; and if it applies 
 somewhat resolutely some of these analogical and inductive 
 conceptions to new cases, it is the primitive, summary, and 
 irreflective method which suits children best. This method 
 is confounded with the most elementary acts of dis- 
 crimination and classification ; often it is only a similitude 
 applied to a passing fact, the most simple adaptation of 
 movements to representations. Many of the above exam- 
 ples are proofs of this. But it is a satisfaction to me to see 
 my own interpretations confirmed by observations analo- 
 gous to mine. Darwin, although he does not fix the pos 
 itive beginning of association of ideas in children before 
 the age of five months, nevertheless notices a sign of prac- 
 tical reasoning in his little son at the age of a hundred 
 days, when he slipped his hand along the finger held out 
 to him in order to introduce it into his mouth. 2 A child 
 who cannot yet speak, but is beginning to walk, stumbles 
 in passing from the bare floor to the carpet. A moment 
 comes when it occurs to him to raise his foot to a sufficient 
 height to step over the border of the carpet without stum- 
 bling. Here is a middle term inserted between the end 
 conceived and the point of departure. 3 A little girl nine- 
 
 1 Dwcours sur laLangiie, du Raisonnement, p. 185. 
 
 2 Biographical Sketch of a Little Child. Scientific Review, July 
 1877 
 
 ' See the Revue, PhUQsqphique, April, 1880, on the above-cited paper, 
 by If. Ferri,
 
 SEASONING. 221 
 
 teen months old wanted to have my hat, which was placed 
 on a table too high for her to reach: impatience, screams, 
 tears. I get up and give it to her. Her first impulse is to 
 put it on her head; then, after a few minutes, during 
 which she seemed to be thinking, she went to fetch her 
 own hat, which was on a chair within her reach, and pre- 
 sented it to me with a most serious expression. Was it a 
 mode of thanking me, or an invitation to me to take her 
 out? It matters little; but it was evidently analogical or 
 even inductive reasoning. 1 
 
 These are the modes of reasoning in which children ex- 
 cel, even after they have begun to talk. They seem less 
 sure of themselves in those which they attempt at our dic- 
 tation, on our system, and by means of the analogies and 
 inductions which are imposed on them by our language. 
 They judge often very wrongly, from simple similitudes 
 and forced analogies. "If they dislike a person very much 
 every one else who at all resembles that person will be re- 
 pugnant to them : they would readily lay down this axiom : 
 All persons of such-and-such an aspect are bad. A pre- 
 mature and unscientific induction, yet nevertheless, at 
 bottom, of the same nature as those of savants." It is 
 not indeed very certain whether most of the trains of rea- 
 soning that children prefer and succeed in best from two to 
 three years old, generally surpass the average reasoning of 
 adult animals. I had a cat which, from the time she was 
 a year old, was in the habit of taking her dinner with me. 
 The instant dinner was ready she used to begin frisking 
 about, from me to the table and from the table back to me, 
 and try by persuasive looks to make me come to it. Do 
 we find any superior element in the reasoning attributed 
 by M. Egger to his son? 3 "From the age of eighteen 
 months, as soon as meals were ready he used to summon 
 all the absent members of the family and drag them by 
 
 1 Paul Rousselet, Pedagogie a I' Usage de. V Enseignement Primaire, 
 p. 246. 
 
 2 Henri Marlon, Lecons de Psychologic appliquee a V Education, 
 p. 340. 
 
 3 Observations et Reflexion^ sur V Deoetoppement de I' Intelligence et 
 du Langage chez les Enfants.
 
 222 THE FIKST THREE YEAKS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 their clothes to join the meal. ... At twenty-eight 
 months I observed the scope of his reasoning powers ex- 
 tend. He now guessed that any person who took up his 
 hat was preparing to go out, that in going out he would 
 pass through the court-yard, and that he could see him 
 pass there; the instant any one takes up his hat, he goes 
 to the window to see him go." There is nothing in this, 
 whatever M. Egger may think, which indicates any supe- 
 riority of infant over animal intelligence. 
 
 The faculty of reasoning is always very limited in its 
 logical scope during the whole three years of which we are 
 treating. If language brings a child new elements of in- 
 duction, new facilities, and especially, under the example 
 of his elders, the to him new faculty of argumentation, it 
 most often only serves to bring out in relief his intellectual 
 feebleness; and a very useful result this is, both for us and 
 for the child for us, who are thus enabled better to con- 
 trol the child's progress, and for the child, who has thus 
 the opportunity to take stock of himself, and to realize the 
 limits and the scope of his budding intelligence. No one 
 has better demonstrated than M. Egger these characteris- 
 tic facts of intellectual weakness in children who so often 
 astonish us by the precocity of their reason and the sagac- 
 ity of their judgment. The instances which we borrow 
 from him have moreover a double interest, psychological 
 and moral observation being closely bound up with the lex- 
 icological considerations which they embody. 
 
 "The younger sister of Emile said to me: ' I shall carry 
 Emile when he gets little. ' She had noticed that, of two 
 people, the biggest only can carry the smallest; she has 
 also been told that she will become big . . . the con- 
 ditional and the future are confused together in her mind. " 
 This observation is of real value from all points of view, 
 and lean say as much for the two following: "The re- 
 versing of relations is very habitual with children at this 
 period of life. At four years, and even at five years of age, 
 a child will take correlative ideas one for the other, like 
 that of lending and borrowing. 'Will you borrow your seal 
 to me?' He said to me one day: ' I am very generous 
 to-day,' meaning to say: ' You have been very generous to
 
 EKROKS AND ILLUSIONS. 223 
 
 me.' " We must however add that these infantine confu- 
 sions take place rather in words than in things. Let us 
 study the natural limits and the most common deficiencies 
 of infant reasoning in circumstances almost independent 
 of the admixture of speech. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE ERROBS AND ILLUSIONS OF CHILDREN. 
 
 Children are subject to the same kinds of error and illu- 
 sion as adults ; the only difference between them is, that 
 particular kinds of error are more natural and unavoidable 
 in the former, owing to the imperfect development of their 
 faculties, which nevertheless from the beginning of life 
 tend to exercise themselves according to the specific laws 
 of human thought. Apart from this difference, we find in 
 children all the most common errors, false inductions ap- 
 plied to the impressions of the various senses, the para- 
 logisms occasioned by precipitation and prejudice, and 
 above all, what we still call, after the logicians of Port 
 Koyal, sophisms of antour-prnpre, of interest and passion. 
 To point out some few of these different errors, often anal- 
 ogous in children and adults, will not be a work of idle 
 curiosity it will throw a flood of light on the operations 
 of the infant mind and afford us knowledge as useful for 
 us who live in the life of our children, as for the children 
 whom we have to prepare for life. 
 
 Plato has indicated very poetically and accurately the 
 principal source of our errors, viz., ignorance: "Let us 
 suppose our soul to be a sort of dove-cot for birds of every 
 species; some are gregarious, others that consort in small 
 numbers, some that fly by themselves through all the 
 others, this way or that as it may happen. By these 
 birds we must conceive that different kinds of knowledge 
 are meant. While we are children the dove-cot is empty; 
 but every time that we acquire a piece of knowledge we let 
 it loose in the dove-cot. When we want to 'recapture' one 
 of these pieces of knowledge, it may often happen that we 
 get hold of one by mistake instead of the other ; as for in-
 
 224 THE FIKSTJHKEE YEAKS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 stance, if we were seeking the total of seven and five, we 
 might get hold of eleven instead of twelve our ring-dove, 
 as it were, instead of our rock pigeon. But in this case 
 it would be knowledge that would make us ignorant." 1 
 However subtle these last remarks may be, we may accept 
 their imagery and profound meaning. It is, in fact, on 
 the strength of a little knowledge that we judge rightly or 
 wrongly; and the reasonings, whether conscious or intu- 
 itive, which lead us to error and to false judgments apply 
 to the simplest phenomena of the mind and even to our 
 perceptions. We shall find numerous examples of the 
 truth of this amongst children. 
 
 Let us first examine the errors which the exercise of our 
 senses gives rise to. The illusions of sight have to do with 
 the color, the localization in space, the form, the dimensions, 
 the distance, the nature, the number of all objects which are 
 illumined by light. The sensation of light produces the 
 notion or judgment of color; the reality appears to us 
 under colors with which we ourselves invest it by virtue of 
 anterior judgments. What a time it must take a young 
 child to accustom itself to recognize the colors belonging 
 to the different surrounding objects, susceptible as they 
 are of a thousand variations and transformations, accord- 
 ing to their reciprocal actions on each other, the 
 action on them of different surroundings and accord- 
 ing to their distance and position. A child of six months 
 will gaze fixedly at, and then stretch out his hands en- 
 treatingly towards, the flattened sphere of a door-handle 
 which he mistakes for the suspended ball with which his 
 nurse has amused him in his cradle. He will take a flat 
 disk with gradations of light and shade for a globe-of uni- 
 form color; as, later on, he will mistake a sphere for a 
 square. At this age, however, his most frequent error is 
 to take all the surfaces he sees for bulks. He wants to 
 hold in his hands everything of which the brightness at- 
 tracts him; and the reason of this is, that owing to his 
 limited knowledge of perspective, he does not judge of the 
 distance of far-off objects in comparison with the relative 
 
 1 Theaetetus.
 
 ERRORS AND ILLUSIONS. 225 
 
 distances of the objects which surround him: his scale of 
 height and length is entirely circumscribed by the environs 
 of his own person and the few places well known to him, 
 like his room or some parts of his room. 
 
 As early as ten months, or a year, it seems to us as if 
 children were enchanted by the solemn appearance of the 
 sun or moon, when setting or rising; this, however, is an 
 illusion on our part. A child who is not in the habit of 
 contemplating these luminaries afc other times, does not 
 invest them at rising and setting with the voluminous ap- 
 pearance which we see in them on these occasions. I 
 have even remarked that a child's attention is scarcely at- 
 tracted by the brightness (much more relative than real) 
 of the stars: their scintillation, to eyes which only see 
 them as near objects, is very trifling. Children are con- 
 stantly making strange mistakes respecting the height, the 
 distance, and the form of numbers of things. Mountains, 
 forests, horizons, which we see and reckon to be eight or 
 ten miles from us, to a child even of fifteen months old, 
 will seem no larger or more distant than such-and-such a 
 neighboring tree or house. Far-off objects seem to him as 
 smaller objects near by, while near objects he almost in- 
 variably thinks to be much larger than their real size. 
 
 A little later on, when a child is four or five years old, 
 for instance, his sense of perspective, being now a little 
 more developed, will lead him into quite opposite errors. 
 I remember that when I was five or six years old, I ac- 
 companied my mother and an uncle to Bagneres-de- 
 Bigorre. We had been for a walk on Mount Bedat, whose 
 base is planted with trees, shading winding paths. My 
 uncle having left us for a moment, disappeared amongst 
 the trees, and we did not see him till he reappeared on a 
 footpath a little higher up. I thought he was an immense 
 way off, but I have since verified that he could not have 
 been more than a hundred yards distant. It is in conse- 
 quence of psychical (and not optical) errors that young 
 children judge very falsely of real forms, of movement, 
 and of the distance of objects, when the object is some 
 little way off. If they are moving along in a carriage or a 
 boat, they go on for a long time believing that the trees 
 
 15
 
 226 THE FIRST THKEE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 and houses they pass are moving ; when they see a long 
 avenue, they think that the trees join and touch each 
 other. If two buildings at different distances off appear 
 to them of the same height, they think they are at the 
 same distance, and of the same height. As for rather 
 distant objects, they are not capable of estimating their 
 real size by comparing their apparent size with the dis- 
 tance at which they are. The utmost they can do, even at 
 two years old, is to estimate the distance, dimension, and 
 movement of near objects, within the reach of eye and 
 hand. But it has been noticed that the more intelligent 
 children are, and the more they are accustomed to games 
 and exercises which call forth strength, skill, and quick- 
 ness of sight, the greater is their certainty of visual ap- 
 preciation. 
 
 The most frequent illusions of sight, normal illusions 
 i. e,, not pathological ones, are those which relate to the 
 relief of objects, to the confusion of what is visible with 
 what can be held in the band, and to the number of 
 objects within the field of vision. Children refuse for a 
 long time to believe in the solidity of objects. They feel 
 them all round and all over to find some cavity; and they 
 try to put all sorts of things one inside the other. A child 
 of fifteen months who was very fond of hoisting himself 
 up to the second landing of the staircase at home, on an- 
 other staircase stopped at the first landing because the 
 landing was so large that he thought the staircase ended 
 there. There is no doubt that children, even after a 
 certain number of experiences, will be very puzzle-pated 
 in making distinctions, which we determine at first sight, 
 between such things as the ledge of a chimney-piece, a 
 roof, a portion of a wall, the facing of a bridge, and the 
 plane surfaces which are contiguous to them. We can 
 also well understand that a child, even of three years old, 
 and who has some idea of concrete numerical quantities, 
 will yet often make mistakes in estimating the number of 
 objects presented to him. Is it not the same with adults? 
 We know that to each one of us when we look up at the 
 sky on a fine starry night the number of stars we seem to 
 see is immensely exaggerated. Here we have an illusion
 
 ERRORS AND ILLUSIONS. 227 
 
 entirely mental. An illusion of this kind takes place in a 
 child's mind when it wishes to count a number of objects 
 close to each other, even when but little removed from 
 himself. At the age of three years he will perhaps be able 
 to count, up to four or five, the trees which are quite near 
 him; beyond that limit the number becomes many trees, 
 and the number increases with the distance of the objects. 
 That which is true of numeric magnitude is also true of 
 magnitude of extent. A pool of water seems like an ocean 
 to an infant of two or three, and the sea is much, very 
 much water; but this vague idea of the indefinite is much 
 more limited in children than in adults. 
 
 The sense of sight, like that of touch, must be exercised 
 in recognizing the intrinsic properties of objects; in other 
 words, the intuitive appearance only becomes an object of 
 real cognition when it is referred to a genus which deter- 
 mines the object. When a child sees his nurse, at a few 
 yards distance from his cradle, take up her bonnet and 
 cloak, fill his bottle with milk, stroke the cat or dog, etc., 
 these are forms of thought rather than visual perceptions. 
 At the sight of these objects, or, let us rather say, on the 
 evidence of his sight which brings to him some of the 
 sensations which cause him habitually to infer these 
 objects, the child affirms to himself believes that he sees 
 them. By virtue of judgments and reasonings as rapid 
 as they are unconscious, the child immediately refers these 
 tangible qualities to a known genus; this is why the num- 
 ber of his errors, relatively to this specific appreciation of 
 objects, is in inverse ratio to his accurate experiences and 
 his well- drawn inductions. 
 
 Finally, we must not forget those hallucinations, in 
 some sort legitimate, which are produced in a child's mind 
 by undecided combinations of light and shade, a sudden 
 passage from light to darkness, the juxtaposition of certain 
 colors. These illusions are more optical than mental; but 
 from the tendency which all animals have to clothe in an 
 objective form any sensations that are rather vivid, chil- 
 dren, and sometimes, too, adults, are led to create 
 chimerical spectres, real phantoms, out of these optical 
 spectres. Nothing is more hurtful than to leave children
 
 228 THE FIRST THEEE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 alone in badly-lighted rooms, or to let them pass suddenly 
 and alone from light into darkness. Some children, from 
 a false conception of the relations between light and dark- 
 ness especially if the light flickers at all have been the 
 victims of terrors resulting from illusions which have 
 taken bodily shape. We should try to accustom them 
 gradually to the changing effects of light and shadow, and 
 teach them to produce for themselves strange effects which 
 they will no longer be frightened at when they have become 
 accustomed to produce them themselves and to laugh at 
 them. Thus a child of two years used to beg his mother 
 to leave the candle till he was asleep, so that he might 
 make dogs, elephants, and jaguars with the shadow of his 
 fingers on the wall. 
 
 The sensations of hearing give rise to special errors, but 
 not such numerous or important ones as those caused by 
 visual sensations. The great difficulty for children, is not 
 so much to localize sound in space, as to refer it to its 
 right cause; but these two cases seem often confounded in 
 one. As it is not essentially useful for a child to make 
 this localization in the absence of impressions of sight, he 
 does not acquire the power till rather late, and after he 
 has had a great many combined experiences of hearing, 
 sight, and touch, and that his faculty of comparison has 
 developed to some extent. Thus we see a child of a year 
 old very easily mistaken as to the distance of a sound 
 otherwise familiar. Nurses and other people who are 
 about children will often amuse themselves by raising or 
 lowering their voice, remaining all the while hidden, to 
 make the children think they are either quite near or far 
 off. As to the errors relating to the fusion in one 
 whole of various sensations, either synchronic or success- 
 ive, whatever importance they may have as regards the 
 musical education of little children, they belong to the 
 chapter of infant esthetics, and we abstain from alluding 
 to them here. Suffice it to say, that the spiritual ear, or 
 the faculty of judging sonorous sounds, plays many tricks, 
 even if it renders good service to the material ear. 
 
 It is difficult to say how much harm is done to children 
 by people who do not scruple to give vent violently before
 
 ERRORS AND ILLUSIONS. 229 
 
 them to their tempers and passions. Children generally 
 imagine that this or that angry tone of voice means dis- 
 pleasure with them, and that they are going to be scolded 
 and punished. It is the same with dogs and cats whose 
 masters lose their temper about every trifle ; when they 
 begin to storm or to swear, the animals hide themselves in 
 terror. I knew a little girl of five months who used to 
 be constantly whipped and scolded to cure her of a dirty 
 habit; and often the mere sight of an angry face, an angry 
 gesture or voice, would be enough, from some mysterious 
 association of ideas, to make her commit the fault in spite 
 of herself. Another little thing of fifteen months, whose 
 father used to scold her unreasonably often, whenever she 
 heard a heavy step on the stairs thought it was her father, 
 and ran trembling to her mother. 
 
 Smell and taste are liable to numberless causes of error. 
 In the first place we know that the nervous excitability of 
 the sense of smell very quickly wears off, so that we only 
 enjoy pleasant odors or suffer from bad ones at the mo- 
 ment and during short periods. For each scent in its turn 
 to be fully appreciated, they must succeed each other in a 
 certain order. We know also that smell and taste are 
 closely connected and that they deceive conjointly. We 
 can tell the taste of cinnamon from its smell, and if we 
 pinch our nose while eating it, we find no taste in it but 
 that of fir- wood. Many other substances lose their flavors 
 in the same way. Thus, nurses act scientifically without 
 knowing it, when they pinch the babies' noses to make 
 them swallow disagreeable medicine. Taste deceives us in 
 a similar manner. When we eat or drink substances of 
 different flavors in quick succession, without giving the 
 nerves of taste time to rest from their first sensations, how- 
 ever different the flavors may be, we are no longer able to 
 distinguish them. By drinking alternately, with our eyes 
 bandaged, buttermilk and Bordeaux wine, it becomes im- 
 possible after several repetitions of the experiment, to dis- 
 cover any difference between the two liquids. These are 
 illusions which children's doctors do not fail to avail them- 
 selves of. 
 
 Finally, as to errors of touch. They are generally easily
 
 230 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 corrected by the attentive use of the tactilo-muscular 
 organs. This is at any rate the case with regard to im- 
 pressions of surfaces, their smoothness or roughness, hol- 
 lowness or relief, etc. The exercise of our organs pure and 
 simple corrects more or less quickly and completely the 
 errors of the child in this respect. Needless to say that 
 the intelligence of the child and the intelligence of the 
 educator contribute much to hastening on progress of this 
 sort. It is, moreover, often difficult, even for adults, to 
 rectify the vague or determinate indications of the sense, 
 or the senses, of which we are treating. 
 
 The appreciation of different weights is not an easy thing. 
 If we take up two things together, we cannot always say 
 which of the two is the heavier; or, if the weights are 
 almost equal, we cannot determine whether they are exactly 
 equal or not. This explains to us the confusion made by 
 a three-months-old child, between a full and an empty 
 bottle. It also explains to us why a rather more experienced 
 child either attacks all objects alike and tries to lift them, 
 or else hesitates to touch even the lightest objects, fancy- 
 ing they must be heavy. 
 
 The sense of touch is also subject to frequent errors with 
 regard to appreciating the different degrees of heat in 
 different bodies. But here children are scarcely more at 
 fault than adults. Doctors tell us that the heat which 
 exists in bodies in a latent state does not affect us. The 
 temperature of our bodies remaining the same, as well as 
 that of external objects, different objects affect us thermally 
 in an unequal manner. In a room where all the objects 
 are at a temperature of 120 degrees, we feel a lower degree 
 of warmth if we put our naked foot on the carpet than if 
 we touch the marble chimney-piece or any metallic object. 
 At the same degree of temperature the walls and the wood- 
 work appear much hotter than the clothes we have on. If 
 we suppose the same objects to be all of them at a much 
 lower temperature, the relative degrees will be reversed, 
 and the objects will appear colder and colder, in the same 
 order in which before they appeared to be warmer and 
 warmer. These singular phenomena are explained in the 
 first instance by the greater or less facility which different
 
 ERRORS OWING TO MORAL CAUSES. 231 
 
 bodies have of communicating heat, and of producing on 
 us the different impressions of heat and cold. It is for the 
 same reason that when one takes a cold bath, the water 
 seems colder than the air, and the air colder than our 
 clothes, although all these objects are of the same tem- 
 perature. In the same way, again, a child who comes out 
 of a warm bath, and is wrapped up in towels of the same 
 temperature, feels all the same a chill; it is because air 
 and stuffs transmit heat more slowly than water. 
 
 vn. 
 
 EBKORS OWING TO MORAL CAUSES. 
 
 Hitherto we have only considered illusions and errors 
 arising from physiological or purely intellectual causes. 
 But for children, as well as for adults, there are also moral 
 causes of error. So many sentiments and inclinations, so 
 many sources of error. It would take too long to pass 
 them all in review, so we will content ourselves with a few 
 prominent examples. 
 
 One frequent cause of error in children, is their feverish 
 need of movement and action, their passionate instinct of 
 exercise and of play. They often observe very well (but 
 only up to a certain point) things which interest them, 
 because they pay attention to them. But it is not a search 
 for truth which interests them, it is the need of acting, and 
 of acting quickly to arrive at such-and-such an end. Thus 
 they form their decisions, so to speak, by inspiration. 
 They do not trouble themselves about the real bearing, or 
 the limits or the distant results of things ; they have seen, 
 or half-seen what they wanted to see the means of pro- 
 ducing a certain result, and that is enough for them; they 
 believe and they act. Too much precipitation is as detri- 
 mental to action as to thought, as they often find out at their 
 own cost, but only to fall back again soon into the same 
 errors. Experience comes slowly. Here is an example of 
 this kind of errors, which at the same time marks "the 
 intimate connection of thought and of language, and the 
 mutual help they give each." With children, as with ani-
 
 232 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 ma!s, actions which appear to us sensible, make us suppose 
 them to be more intellectually developed than they are. 
 When a child, for instance, perceives that the pin which 
 fastens the wheel of his little carriage is loose, he soon 
 comes to foresee that the slightest shake will cause it to 
 fall out, and that then the wheel will fall also. From that 
 moment the idea of making the pin secure naturally pre- 
 sents itself to him; but we are not sure that there is any- 
 thing in his mind but a simple succession of images. By 
 his action he realizes the image of a linch-pi.ii and a wheel 
 securely fastened, because he does not wish for the contin- 
 uance of the other image in which these same objects in 
 their unsteady condition presage a catastrophe. In order 
 for him to set to work to seek out the causes, which would 
 be a real exercise of reason, it would be necessary for his 
 intellect to make another step in advance. 
 
 "Without presuming to decide that this progressive step 
 depends entirely on language, I maintain at any rate that 
 words will be the means of establishing it. Ask a child to 
 give you his reason for what he did to mend his cart. The 
 words which he will use in reply, will lead him to think 
 that he acted thus in consequence of certain laws which 
 may be applied to many things besides his cart. The par- 
 ticular image will become effaced in the presence of more 
 general ideas. He will tell us that, the pin being loose, 
 the wheel would certainly fall ; and this word loose, the 
 designation of a quality separable from the object itself, 
 applicable to a thousand other objects, and suggesting a 
 necessary event, has already become a germ of general 
 ideas. Notions of the effects of weight, of friction, in 
 short, of all the immutable laws of nature, will in time 
 result from this imperfect explanation which he has 
 given us." 
 
 Vanity, self-consciousness, and obstinacy also lead chil- 
 dren into a number of errors. Marie is on the swing, 
 where she makes more noise than aU the three children 
 who are looking at her and awaiting their turn. In five 
 minutes, she manages to get in more than twenty phrases, 
 all beginning or ending with the word 7 or me. "Look at 
 me, how fast I swing myself ! No one can go as high as I
 
 ERRORS OWING TO MORAL CAUSES. 233 
 
 can ! Look, I am swinging myself all alone ! " She fancies 
 all this is true, whereas none of it is; it is illusion of 
 judgment produced by an exaggerated feeling of personal 
 skill. "My pleasures, my troubles, my pains, and my 
 happiness," are all exaggerated by the child, through inex- 
 perience, through want of foresight, and through a strong 
 sense of personality. 
 
 It is needless to enlarge on the perpetual illusions and 
 errors which self-interest, especially when connected with 
 the palate, give rise to in children. They are patent to 
 every one. But it is curious to observe the facility with 
 which their tendencies or their self-seeking habits lead 
 them unconsciously, from the best intentions, into error, 
 and even into the practice of sophistry. Two children, one 
 seven and the other four years old, were often very quarrel- 
 some together, either from jealousy or thoughtlessness. 
 The younger, formerly rather ruled over by his brother, is 
 now no longer afraid of him, and often provokes him. It 
 is only by fits and starts that they are kind to each other, 
 and then they say, "Shall we be friends?" The treaty 
 concluded, it lasts as long as one could expect. The other 
 day we were witness of a very droll scene. Some one had 
 promised at dessert to divide a piece of sugar between 
 them. The younger one said to his mother, "Mamma, I 
 want to be kind to Charles; you must give him the biggest 
 piece. " The mother, however, cut the sugar as equally as 
 possible, and there was hardly any difference to be seen 
 between the two pieces. There was a slight difference, 
 however, which both children noticed. Charles said,. 
 "They are the same size," preparing at the same time to 
 take the larger bit. But Fernand was quicker, and pre- 
 sented him the smaller piece, saying to him: "Here you 
 are, Charles, here's the largest piece." And Charles, not 
 daring to contradict him, but very much vexed, accepted it 
 without a word.
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 ON EXPRESSION AND LANGUAGE. 
 I. 
 
 HUMAN language, or speech, is only a superior kind of 
 the faculty of expression which all, or nearly all, animals 
 possess. Birds by their attitudes and their song, dogs, by 
 their barking and howling, ants by the contact of their 
 moving antennas, certain kinds of fish by sounds, probably 
 related to their instinct of propagation, in short, the greater 
 number of animate beings are able to communicate to 
 each other, species with species, and individual with indi- 
 vidual, by ocular, auricular, or tactile signs, their sorrows 
 and their joys, their desires, their love and their anger. For 
 man and for other animals, language has the same origin 
 a complex origin, and one in which direct observation of 
 little children at the period of lingual evolution may give 
 us much valuable light. 
 
 The principle of language, or of expression, in general, is 
 the correspondence of certain organic movements, strongly 
 marked outwardly, with the inward sensations and senti- 
 ments experienced. The internal modifications of the 
 machine are revealed by peripheric modifications, as con- 
 stant as they are varied in each species. Such are most of 
 the movements, the sobs, the laughter, the babbling of 
 children, mechanically executed from the first months. 
 They necessarily become conscious of them after they have 
 performed them a certain number of times; but they attach 
 no significance to them, and produce them at first without 
 
 234
 
 ON EXPRESSION AND LANGUAGE. 235 
 
 the slightest intention. These are neither more nor less 
 than reflex actions of the organism. But, with intelligent 
 beings, these unconscious utterances soon develop into 
 signs. This result is the work of the association of ideas. 
 The animal or the infant learns to associate the idea of 
 these organic phenomena, -guttural or other sounds, move- 
 ments of the limbs, screams, sobs, laughter, and tears, 
 with the idea of the accompanying sentiments or sensa- 
 tions. By a kind of natural selection these movements are 
 changed from spontaneous to conscious, from mechanical 
 to voluntary. The child, who produced them at first from 
 sheer necessity of his nature, now repeats and perfects 
 them for pleasure or use. An infant of three months, 
 who makes intentional gestures with his little arms in 
 order to ask for or to repulse some object, knowing by ex- 
 perience that these gestures will be understood, already 
 exercises the innate, organic, and hereditary faculty of ex- 
 pression. When he cries in order to get his feeding-bottle, 
 to be taken up, to be held in the arms, to refuse a disa- 
 greeable dose, the action, which was at first automatic, has 
 now become conscious and intentional ; it is even so much 
 a matter of habit that it might be called reflex. When 
 tears of this sort are too promptly attended to, and the 
 desires expressed by gestures, screams, or other signs too 
 readily granted, children are apt to repeat the process 
 from caprice and habit, without desire or intention ; they 
 do not always shed tears without a motive, but it happens 
 very often. 
 
 The best proof of how much natural affinities and he- 
 reditary influences have to do with the first progress in 
 speech, is, that little children appear, from the very first, 
 to understand the simple language of their mother, and can 
 distinguish their different tones of joy and anger, of coax- 
 ing or threatening. Tiedemann says of his son at the age 
 of one month: "When any one spoke to him he tried to 
 produce sounds, very simple ones it is true, and quite in- 
 articulate, but nevertheless varied." A little girl, three 
 weeks old, who is by my side as I write these lines, stops 
 screaming and crying instantly when her mother speaks 
 coaxingly to her. I have also often noticed that quite young
 
 236 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 kittens will begin to whine if left for a moment alone; 
 but they stop directly they hear their mother coining back. 
 But to return to our children. A little girl who began to 
 smile at fifteen days old used also at this early age to 
 express by particular sounds that she wanted to be fed. 
 At three months she would utter little cries of joy and 
 admiration when she saw flowers or birds, or any brilliant 
 or moving object. If her mother called her attention to 
 things of this sort, saying: Look at this pretty flower!" 
 "See pretty Coco," or "this pretty thing," she would in- 
 stantly begin this joyous babbling, accompanied by little 
 graceful actions, expressive of desire, admiration, and 
 delight. She attached a meaning to a number of words 
 repeated to her by her mother, turning her head towards 
 the dog, when told to "Look at Medor!" or towards the 
 bird-cage at the words, "See Coco." No doubt also she 
 attached some vague sense to the varied sounds by which 
 she expressed joy or anger, or violent desire. But she did 
 not appear to produce these with the same decided inten- 
 tion that her movements or her screams, sobs, and tears 
 indicated at certain moments. 
 
 A child of seven months, who had never before seen me, 
 smiled at me as if I were an old acquaintance, on hearing 
 me pronounce his name. Here at any rate we have an 
 instance of a vocal sign joined to the memory of caresses 
 lavished on him by his nurse or mother while calling him 
 by his name ; or else perhaps the sign is associated with 
 the idea, already confusedly conceived, of his own person- 
 ality. When I called him by his name, or gave him some- 
 thing he wanted, or if he procured for himself some much- 
 desired object, he would instantly turn to his mother 
 smiling; or if he was frightened, astonished, or uneasy, he 
 also turned to her in a significant manner. It was as if 
 he wished his mother to know when he was happy or in 
 trouble. At nine months he uttered little cries of pleasure, 
 or cries to attract attention, some of which were evidently 
 imitated, at the sight of a dog, a cat, or a bird, and even 
 once of a fly which had crawled on the edge of his plate, 
 and which his eyes followed for a long time after it had 
 flown away. At eleven months he understood the mean-
 
 ON EXPRESSION AND LANGUAGE. 237 
 
 ing of a great many words, and even of a few little phrases; 
 and he used to gesticulate with much expression. One of 
 his intentional gestures, which consisted in clasping his 
 two hands together, interested me very much. He would 
 stand upright in front of an arm-chair against which he 
 supported himself slightly ; his mother, three steps behind 
 him, would show him a piece of cake, or something that 
 he wished for. If she did not bring it to him he 
 moved his whole body round, making eloquent signs that 
 he wanted some one to help him to walk to her. His 
 mother would wait a little longer, and then he would join 
 his hands several times successively, crying at the same 
 time. He had been for some time in the habit of mak- 
 ing this gesture when he very much wanted anything 
 which he either noticed of himself, or which was shown 
 to him. His parents liked to designate it as the gesture 
 of supplication, which it would be very easy to explain in 
 his case as the result of heredity, and which it is impos- 
 sible to refer to the influences of imitation, the action 
 never having been performed before him. It has seemed 
 to me that the action of mechanically bringing the hands 
 together to seize or to retain an object, may have remained 
 even when the object was refused; in fact, in the violence 
 of desire, imagination tends to confound the idea and the 
 sight and the possession of a thing. 
 
 This gesture, at first unconscious, may easily become 
 intentional on the part of young children, and develop into 
 the gesture of prayer, provided that their desires are satis- 
 fied when they make it. The child I have been speaking 
 of had nearly arrived at this point. I think this remark- 
 able gesture should be connected with analogous move- 
 ments that are so frequently seen in young animals. A 
 kitten, six weeks old, seeing its mother and two bigger 
 sisters standing on their hind paws and catching with their 
 front paws the food that was being thrown to them, tried 
 to imitate them ; but she tumbled awkwardly on her side 
 without accomplishing any result. Then she took to 
 climbing up our trousers or petticoats to get at our hands. 
 A few days later, having become a little firmer on her 
 hind-quarters, she made another attempt at catching htx
 
 238 THE FIKST THEEE YEAES OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 food, and half raised herself, bringing her front paws to- 
 gether as she saw the other cats do. Often, however, the 
 movement of prehension was made before the bit of food 
 had been thrown or after it had fallen, or been caught by 
 more skilful hands; the kitten's paws still remained 
 clasped together, as if the wished-for prize had been 
 obtained. As in the case of the child above mentioned, 
 the ideas of the desired object and of its possession get 
 confused : the gestures are finished in the air. 
 
 Let us take another child of eleven months. He has a 
 little cardboard horse on wheels, which he treats as a sort 
 of scapegoat. He knocks it about, strangles it, pinches it 
 with all his might, etc., etc. These interesting exercises 
 are habitually accompanied by the exclamations, Hue, hue, 
 which he learned about a month ago. When any one 
 says to him, "Beat the horse," he takes his little wooden 
 spade, and belabors the back of the insensible quadruped. 
 A lady friend of his often sets the child astride on her 
 knees, saying, broum! broum! words which the little rider 
 imitates as well as he can, while performing his imaginary 
 gallop. He also says distinctly, papa, papa, without at- 
 taching any sense to the words, as he has not seen his 
 father, even in a photograph. He has been taught to 
 make with his hand the gesture which corresponds to the 
 words au revoir. He cannot yet pronounce these words, 
 but he makes the gesture mechanically, through simple 
 association of ideas, and only when h is told to do so, to 
 any one who is going away. He also performs a little 
 comedy of his own. If one says to him, Prise, he sniffs 
 like a person about to sneeze, with an irresistibly droll 
 curl of the lips and the tip of his nose. This is the first 
 act, which is followed by a second more complicated and 
 not less curious. An empty snuff-box is given to him 
 into which he inserts his fingers, carries them to his nose, 
 and recommences the performance of which we have just 
 spoken. The more one laughs at him, the more ceremony 
 he makes about conveying his fingers from the snuff-box 
 to his nose, the more he sniffs and turns up the tip of his 
 nose. He understands the meaning of such phrases as: 
 "Give this;" "Take that;" "Drink this;" "Eat that,"etc.
 
 ON EXPRESSION AND LANGUAGE. 239 
 
 He has thus acquired not only knowledge of signs repre- 
 senting individual objects, but, as we can see, he also 
 understands signs representing fairly complex ideas and 
 actions, and a few of which he has succeeded in imitating. 
 He understands the value of a word, and every day he 
 makes fresh progress in the art of speaking. 
 
 n. 
 
 Thus then we see imitative and oral language develop- 
 ing side by side; the former, however, thrown back for a 
 time because of the rapid progress of the latter, which is 
 the necessary, universal, and, so to say, official instrument 
 of human expression. This is also the more interesting 
 language for the psychologist to study, and it will be con- 
 venient here to give it special attention. Let us go over 
 briefly the first lines of this branch of study, and, checking 
 our own observations by those of eminent observers, let us 
 attempt in broad outlines a sketch of infant glossology. 
 
 First of all, it is necessary to decide which are the dif- 
 ferent parts played by instinct, organization, heredity, and 
 education i. e. , imitation in the acquisition of language. 
 Man, like other animals, utters sounds and produces spon- 
 taneous movements which soon become conscious and vol- 
 untary signs of what he feels and thinks: from the moment 
 of his birth he begins to speak the language of nature, and 
 possibly the language of his forefathers. "The intimate 
 connection between the brain, as it is now developed in us, 
 and the faculty of speech, is well shown by those curious 
 cases of brain disease in which speech is specially affected, 
 as when the power to remember substantives is lost, whilst 
 other words can be correctly used. There is no more im- 
 probability in the effects of the continued use of the vocal 
 and mental organs being inherited, than in the case of 
 hand-writing, which depends partly on the structure of 
 the hand, and partly on the disposition of the mind ; and 
 hand- writing is certainly inherited. " l 
 
 The part played by heredity in language, side by side 
 
 1 Darwin, Descent of Man, vol. L, p. 58,
 
 240 THE FIRST THBEE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 with that of imitation, and which appears to us so consid- 
 erable, is far from being established by experimental proofs, 
 either in the case of men or of animals. 
 
 "The experiment has never been fairly tried, of turning 
 out a pah" of birds into an enclosure covered with netting, 
 and watching the result of their untaught attempts at nest - 
 making. With regard to the song of birds, however, which 
 is thought to be equally instinctive, the experiment has 
 been tried; and it is found that young birds never have 
 the song peculiar to their species if they have not heard it, 
 whereas they acquire very easily the song of almost any 
 other bird with which they are associated." l 
 
 " The sounds uttered by birds offer in several respects 
 the nearest analogy to language, for all the members of 
 the same species utter the same instinctive cries, expressive 
 of their emotions; and all the kinds that have the power 
 of singing exert this power instinctively; but the actual 
 song, and even the call-notes, are learnt from their parents 
 or foster-parents. These sounds, as Daines Harrington 
 has proved, ' are no more innate than language is in man.' 
 The first attempts to sing ' may be compared to the im- 
 perfect endeavor in a child to babble.' The young males 
 continue practicing, or, as the bird-catchers say, recording, 
 for ten or eleven months. Their first essays show hardly 
 a rudiment of the future song; but as they grow older we 
 can perceive what they are aiming at, and at last they are 
 said ' to sing their song round.' Nestlings which have 
 learnt the song of a distinct species, as with the canary 
 birds educated in the Tyrol, teach and transmit their new 
 song to their offspring. The slight natural differences of 
 song in the same species inhabiting different districts may 
 be appositely compared, as Barrington remarks, ' to pro- 
 vincial dialects ; ' and the songs of all allied though dis- 
 tinct species may be compared with the languages of 
 distinct races of man."* 
 
 We see in like manner that human beings only speak as 
 they have been taught; but it would be interesting to know 
 
 1 Natural Selection, Esaavsby A. Russel Wallace, p. 220, 
 
 2 Darwin, l)esQ?nt of Mar^, vijl. l.,p. 55.
 
 ON EXPRESSION AND LANGUAGE. 241 
 
 if, in the existing stage of the development of the human 
 brain, they would not of themselves evolve a sort of hered- 
 itary language, of which the first efforts of infant lan- 
 guage would be the basis. The experiment made, 
 according to Herodotus, by king Psammetichus, is not, in 
 this respect, either sufficient or even authentic. The king 
 of Egypt, curious to know what was the most ancient na- 
 tion of the world, had two new-born children shut up in 
 a cottage, where they could hear no one speak, and where 
 they saw no other living beings than the goats who nour- 
 ished them. At the age of two years, when some one 
 went into their room, these two little savages uttered the 
 word beccos, which signifies bread in the Phrygian tongue. 
 Psammetichus, so runs the legend, then thought himself 
 sufficiently authorized in proclaiming the Phrygians to be 
 the most ancient people of the world. We shall be more 
 exacting than this royal experimentalist. We declare our- 
 selves to be absolutely incapable of deciding d, priori, 
 whether children subjected for a sufficient length of time 
 to a like treatment would work out for themselves any- 
 thing like a real language, what sort of language it would 
 be, and what sort of ideas would be evolved in their brains, 
 abandoned solely to the resources of hereditary transmis- 
 sion and imitation of nature. 
 
 Most of the recorded facts relating to the sequestration 
 of human beings at a tender age, and-which some philoso- 
 phers think conclusive, we regard simply as not having 
 happened, as far as science is concerned. 
 
 "We read sometimes in the newspaper, of the brutal 
 state of those unfortunate beings whom avarice or cruelty 
 had from their early childhood kept confined in dark cel- 
 lars, and excluded from all social intercourse and intel- 
 lectual excitement. The physical and mental state of 
 such individuals is mere vegetation, not a developed hu- 
 man existence. ... It was impossible to impart to 
 the well-known Caspar Hauser the idea of a horse. When 
 the word was pronounced, he thought of a wooden toy 
 which he played with during his imprisonment, being un- 
 able to attach any meaning to the word horse but in this 
 connection. . . . Corresponding observations have 
 17
 
 242 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 been made on men, who from their earliest childhood had 
 lived and grown up among animals, removed from the 
 society of men. They lived and supported themselves 
 like animals, they had no spiritual wants ; they could not 
 speak, and exhibited not a trace of that ' divine spark,' 
 which is said to be innate in man." 1 The observations of 
 this well-known German materialist have no semblance of 
 scientific experiment. That an infant hidden away in a 
 dark cell, that a young savage nurtured by goats, and who 
 actually lived and grew up in the woods, should not be 
 able to speak, or show by the ordinary means of those who 
 can speak, that they have any general or specific ideas of 
 existence, is not at all surprising. But is it certain that 
 they did not possess ideas even general ones though 
 they had no means of expressing them? If five or six 
 children were shut up together, would they not evolve a 
 common language? This has not yet been tried. This 
 experiment, easier to make and less barbarous than might 
 be supposed, would no doubt enable us to arrive at some- 
 thing more than conjectures on the origin and nature of 
 language, and on those interesting problems of psycho- 
 genesis, which contemporary philosophy approaches with 
 so much reserve and so few results, but of which natural 
 science is preparing the probable solutions. 
 
 The ideas propounded by M. Taine on the acquisition of 
 language by children* are a mixture, somewhat confused at 
 times, of the theory of Condillac and the modern theory 
 of selection. 
 
 According to him, children begin to exercise their vocal 
 organs by a continuous series of cries and varied exclama- 
 tions; for several months they do not get beyond vowels; 
 " by perpetual groping and attempts, and by gradual selec- 
 tion, consonants are added to the vowels, and the exclama- 
 tions become more and more articulate." At twelve 
 months old, his daughter appears to him to have acquired 
 the material of language, without attaching any sense to 
 the sounds which she uttered. "All the initiative," he 
 
 1 Bttchner, Force and Matter, See English translation by J. Ft 
 . 164.
 
 ON EXPRESSION AND LANGUAGE. 243 
 
 says, " is her own; it is personal, accidental, and moment- 
 ary invention which have caused her to find and to repeat 
 such sounds as mm, kraaau, papapa; example and education 
 have only served to direct her attention to sounds which 
 she had either attempted or found out for herself. " I must 
 say that in my opinion the list of sounds originated by 
 children is a very limited one, and little adapted for the 
 basis of any solid argument, touching the respective roles 
 of personal initiative and of imitation in the acquisition of 
 language. 
 
 Pleading still the cause of the spontaneity of invention 
 or re-invention, which precedes in children the work of as- 
 similation, M. Taine affirms (no doubt with reason) that 
 this infantine babble is of astounding flexibility and variety 
 of meaning, and that every shade of emotion, astonish- 
 ment, gaiety, vexation, sadness, etc., is expressed in its 
 various tones. 
 
 Mr. Darwin also contributes some observations on the 
 means of communication possessed by children. These 
 are, at first, instinctive cries intended to express suffering 
 in general; after a time, the tones vary according as pain 
 or hunger is the cause of the utterances ; a little later, the 
 power of voluntary tears is added ; at the age of forty-six 
 days there are little varied sounds produced, as if by 
 pleasure; at 113 days, we see the first attempt at a smile, 
 and possibly at the same date efforts to imitate sounds. 
 The articulate sound da is formed at five-and-a-half 
 months. "When a year old, he tried to invent a word to 
 designate his food, and produced the sound mum; and 
 henceforth this syllable signified: 'Give me something to 
 eat.' This word corresponds to the ham used by M. 
 Taine's child, so Mr. Darwin tells us, and he seems to at- 
 tribute it wholly to spontaneity and not to imitation, for 
 he adds that he does not know "what led the child to 
 adopt that particular syllable." 
 
 M. Egger notices at five weeks old the transition from 
 the cry to the voice. The cry is the first sound that the 
 human organ makes; it proceeds from the bottom of the 
 larynx and dates from the moment of the first breath. 
 For several weeks it is the only sound a child can make
 
 244 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OP CHILDHOOD. 
 
 when he is in pain. "Towards the fifth week I observe 
 the mouth and tongue beginning to move (especially when 
 joy is felt), and to produce sounds which cannot be repre- 
 sented by any letters in our alphabet, but which are cer- 
 tainly less guttural than the previous sounds. These last 
 sounds, as they go on perfecting themselves, become real 
 articulations. . . . With Felix this distinct utterance 
 of a cry of pain was scarcely heard before the end of the 
 second month." 
 
 As regards the infant voice, M. Egger makes one obser- 
 vation which does not appear to me to be borne out by 
 facts; it is, "that the voices of children in earliest infancy 
 are not characterized by an individual timbre. The voice 
 acquires a distinct character at the same time that it be- 
 comes articulate, and that we can distinguish vowels and 
 consonants in it." I have no contrary observation to op- 
 pose to this statement, but I read in a pamphlet of Dr. 
 Laurent's, that "the particular timbre of the infant's cry 
 varies like the human voice. In each child it exhibits 
 particular modifications, which language cannot express, 
 but which the ear can seize ; and a mother can distinguish 
 her own child's cry from that of others." This point 
 then, more interesting to the philologist and the naturalist 
 than to the psychologist, calls for fresh information. 
 
 M. Egger, like M. Taine, assigns a large share in the 
 development of language to personal initiative and inven- 
 tion. Besides the natural language of tears, cries, smiles, 
 and gestures, "which becomes the commencement of artifi- 
 cial language when intention is mixed with it," he admits 
 the involuntary play of the voice, which, from the age of 
 six months, causes infinite variety in the attempted sounds 
 and articulations. Thus we seem to have an instinctive, 
 natural language, common to all times and all people, 
 which recedes gradually before the progress of another 
 language, invented by the child and susceptible of a host 
 of individual variations. Neither M. Egger nor M. Taine 
 have noted the forms of this language, which, according 
 to them, is spontaneous. Their observations have too 
 vague and general a character for their conclusions to be 
 definite. One must undoubtedly admit, even in the first
 
 ON EXPRESSION AND LANGUAGE. 245 
 
 period of infant babbling, that there is an hereditary 
 instinct which urges the young nursling, like the young 
 bird, to try its voice, according to the measure of the feeble 
 resources of its organs, for pleasure rather than necessity, 
 and from chance rather than voluntary imitation. But 
 already, even at this period, involuntary imitation, organic 
 sympathy, and musical contagion have their part in the 
 work. As to this first period of artificial language, par- 
 ticular to each child, useful for inter-communication with 
 other children, and especially with his nurse and his par- 
 ents, it seems to me rash to affirm, without the slightest 
 experimental proof, that "there is not one of his wants for 
 which he does not invent one or several articulate sounds, 
 without any example being set him, intentionally or other- 
 wise." 
 
 One of the most competent observers, M. A. de la Calle, 
 has just made a notable contribution to the store of pub- 
 lished observations on the formation of infant speech. 
 According to him it is very difficult during the first three 
 months to observe any appreciable phonetic phenomena. 
 This difficulty, however, has not discouraged him, and we 
 have his permission to quote some of his important obser- 
 vations. In one of his children he noticed on the forty- 
 fifth day a little bleating sound which accompanied his 
 smiles ; and from this date the child seemed to take pleas- 
 ure in exercising his phonetic organ. "At this period of 
 life," he says, "the faculty of imitation has not yet shown 
 itself, and one cannot admit that these babblings represent 
 attempts to imitate any sounds heard, or the songs with 
 which the nurses lull them to sleep." He attributes the 
 pleasure which the child finds in this babbling, which 
 is as yet neither expressive nor musical, rather to a 
 combination of reflex actions associated for the first time 
 with conscious effort. He has, moreover, remarked that 
 his children produced these babblings with varied tones, 
 more particularly under the influence of some agreeable 
 impression; he adds with reason: "What is certain is, that 
 these sounds, reiterated and more or less continuous, have 
 more affinity with the sounds of laughter than of tears. 
 . . . Natural selection ought to bear principally on the
 
 246 THE FIRST THEEE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 sounds expressing agreeable sensations, in virtue of the 
 principle that all pleasurable states mean an augmenta- 
 tion of part or the whole of the vital functions." 
 
 M. de la Calle has endeavored to arrive at an exact 
 summary of the variety, number, and value of the different 
 sounds which a child utters before the appearance of any- 
 thing approaching to an articulate syllable; and though he 
 could only succeed, he says, in obtaining a statement of 
 the fact, he endeavors to determine the eight different 
 sounds which compose the musical scale which a child 
 goes through several times in a day. He notes in the first 
 place the apparition of the vowel a, which he calls the 
 vocal or sounding cellule ; the sound ai, e, is produced next, 
 and sometimes at the same time, as au, and 6, which are 
 only the first differentations of the primitive sound a. 
 
 "At the age of six months, Fernando used to execute a 
 very characteristic series of sounds; with the help of this 
 single sound a he could sometimes keep up a conversation 
 for a quarter of an hour with his mother or nurse, laugh- 
 ing, gesticulating, and babbling all on this same vowel, 
 which he varied with infinite shades of meaning, with 
 modulations and particular inflections, and with a fluidity, 
 so to say, which our organs, stiffened with use, would be 
 altogether incapable of. The intensity, swiftness, dura- 
 tion, and pitch of the sound were varied by insensible 
 gradations, with alternations and repetitions excessively 
 curious to study. 
 
 "A little later, at eight or nine months (and now he 
 had the additional help of physiognomic and imitative ex- 
 pression), he still used by preference this same vowel a, 
 though he already knew how to articulate several sylla- 
 bles, for pointing out, naming, calling, and asking for 
 all sorts of things and objects: ah (inspiration) signified 
 astonishment and content; ah (expiration), a call or indi- 
 cation of all things and objects; ha,.ha, ha, very short and 
 repeated, to ask for something which he saw and wanted; 
 hd, hd, sustained, when he thought something very pretty, 
 and to express admiration generally. Hd, hd, hd, to inti- 
 mate a wish that some one should hold his hand to walk; 
 sometimes too that he wanted to be taken out of doors.
 
 ON EXPKESSION AND LANGUAGE. 247 
 
 Gestures and the expression of the countenance came in 
 noticeably to the help of his interjections, the child point- 
 ing out the desired object, or else extending his hand and 
 contracting his fingers several times as if to seize it; the 
 direction of the eyes and the expression of the look, the 
 movements of the body, in short, all the expressive 
 manifestations that we have already studied, are used by 
 children with more or less skill. 
 
 "I have also remarked that in certain cases the sound ai 
 was produced at the same time, especially on the higher 
 notes; but I have not been able to distinguish o very pure 
 in any of my children. It was only when they were cry- 
 ing that I ever noticed it, and then it was like a compound 
 sound or diphthong; o absolutely pure I have only been 
 able to observe in the articulate voice, before or after eight 
 or nine months, according to the individual. The follow- 
 ing have seemed to me accurate transcriptions of my chil- 
 dren's crying sounds. After the third month [the sounds 
 are French! ct,-hd, d-hd, d-hd, e-he, heu!! dh, dh, ceu!! oheu, 
 d-hd, d-hd, d-hd, oheu! e-he, e-he, e-he, d-Jid, etc., etc. But 
 these cries are not those of the sharp grief, which is ex- 
 pressel by dh or eh! . . . always deep and screech- 
 ing. 
 
 "This preference, eminently physiological in children, ( 
 for the vowel a, inspired or expired, as the case may be, \ 
 is significant of the part that it plays in all rudimentary ! 
 and primitive tongues. It is the simole cellule, the phono- 
 logical embryo of spoken language." 
 
 It would take too long to give even a simple resume of 
 all the observations made by M. de la Calle on the first 
 phonations, on the vowels, diphthongs, gutturals, and 
 labials. We must be content to mention the principal 
 phases of this evolution. 
 
 "At four months and a half, he articulated the first 
 explosive sound joined to the phonetic a, saying dp' pd, 
 dp' pd, with an effort, which was evidently very great, for 
 he opened his eyelids wide and his eyes became very 
 bright. 
 
 "Some days after, he produced the sounds mam' ma, 
 mam md with less effort, or I should perhaps say with an 
 effort already better localized in the organs of speech ; for
 
 248 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 though his eyes again sparkled, his eyelids did not move ; 
 the effort is here characterized by the nasal sound itself, 
 as if the child wanted to speak and yet could not. It is in 
 fact the mu-mu of the deaf and dumb, by which they inform 
 us that they are not able, or do not know how to speak. 
 The English have a word mum, which means, "Hold your 
 tongue!" 
 
 "At five months he had in a slight degree conquered the 
 difficulty, and could accomplish the articulation during 
 the expiration of a breath, and he could say papa (sharp), 
 mama (a little less sharp), but both words were very short 
 and staccato. 
 
 "When he was in a passion, he gave out a prolonged 
 staphylin-guttural cry, clenching his fists and getting very 
 red in the face; one would have said it was the cry of a 
 monkey; but when he felt very joyous, or if any one 
 tickled him for any length of time, and his laugh became 
 spasmodic, the sound was prolonged from the expiration to 
 the inspiration of the breath, and he then produced a 
 sharp khr-ahr, exactly like the sound of an animal. I 
 myself provoked the repetition of this performance two or 
 three times in order to be quite certain about it; then he 
 put himself in a rage again, pouted his lips, began to cry, 
 and I was obliged quickly to kiss him in order to gain par- 
 don for my strange behavior. Often, when he was happy 
 and satisfied, but not over-excited, he would articulate the 
 vowel e with a little explosive sound, medio-lingual, medio- 
 palatal ke-cke, and he would amuse himself by repeating 
 it for some time while he was apparently carefully examin- 
 ing his fingers and hands which he turned round and 
 round, or else inspecting all over some object which had 
 been given him to play with. 
 
 "The modulations were often changed unconsciously 
 and without signification; it was a vocal exercise which 
 he practiced for pleasure, and which had gradually taken 
 the place of the babblings of earlier days; but consider- 
 able progress had been made by means of these articula- 
 tions, for the child now possessed all the materials for 
 words. 
 
 "The sound ke-cke became now kd-ckd, now ak-kd, now,
 
 ON EXPRESSION AND LANGUMfc. 249 
 
 td,-td,-td,, d-td-td, a-bd-bd-bd, dd-dd-dd, 
 be-be-be, etc. A kind of gentle plaint, eftfefef *ttfc8ii he was 
 worried by being dressed, or in any '<Jtfe!dr r -'Wtty, for 
 instance, if he was hungry and was mttft&W'tv&i&a little 
 for his food ; ay&' ya ! aya' ya ! aya' ya ! W&s" W ><lifferentia- 
 tion which I think I have only remarked M 'iiinW^&onths 
 old; nevertheless 1 seem to have heard ii ttAg^fc^y deal 
 sooner in my other children. However that 1 m&y'Jti^this 
 discovery was very important to the child, 1 '&fl(fr r tee < > was 
 probably aware of it, for he enriched his langiilage with a 
 greater variety of compound sounds while making use of 
 this new scale. 
 
 "Thus, hd-hd, he-he, kd-kd, which were already a great 
 advance in facility of articulation during expiration, were 
 varied by differentiating and lending themselves to new 
 phonetic combinations; hd hd became oyd! yd; he he, eye 
 eye; kd kd; kayd? yd kayd yd, and so forth ; and the song 
 would begin again with these new variations." 
 
 ni. 
 
 We have now come to the period of the most important 
 acquisitions of words. 
 
 For more than a fortnight I have been observing a child 
 of twelve months who is backward in walking, and can 
 only toddle along when held by the hand, but who is very 
 precocious in talking. A month ago he could walk alone, 
 but he had several falls and he is now afraid to repeat the 
 experiment, and if any one tries to make him do so he sits 
 down on the ground and says; grid, gn6 (no, no). He 
 knows the meaning of a large number of words which he 
 hears, and he uses some of them himself in the ordinary 
 sense; he says painm, to ask for bread (pain)', when his 
 frock is being put on, and he sees his hand coming out 
 through the sleeve, he calls out mainm. His brother 
 Charles, whose games and mischievous tricks delight him, 
 he calls at every instant : "Kiah, kiah." Meat (viande) 
 he calls miamiam; mene mene'mene, indicates the desire to 
 go from one place to another; peudii, (perdu) indicates an 
 object that has fallen, or been thrown away or disappeared;
 
 250 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 sometimes he says a pu (il riy a plus) to express that a 
 thing is either eaten, finished, hidden, or taken away. He 
 imitates donkeys, cats, cocks, and especially pigs; when 
 he wishes very much to be taken out by a particular person, 
 and has gained his desire, he expresses his great pleasure 
 by mimicking that interesting animal. The other day, I 
 was very much astonished at hearing him reproduce the first 
 syllable of a word spoken in his presence. "Will you 
 have some cake (ydteau) ?" his nurse had said to him, and 
 he instantly answered: Ga, ga, and directed the attention 
 of his nurse towards the dining-room, the use of which he 
 already knew, although he had only been in the house two 
 days. He also knows the meaning of many of the simple 
 phrases which are used in speaking to him. There is no 
 occasion to give examples of these, which are analogous to 
 those already quoted. But what is more important, I 
 heard him the other day attempting a thoroughly synthetic 
 phrase by putting two names together; his accompanying 
 tones> gestures, and movements left no doubt of his mean- 
 ing. He had been walking with me for several minutes, 
 when he saw his mother and wanted to go to her, and as 
 I did not instantly take him to her, he pulled hold of me, 
 pointed to his mother, and with a supplicating look said 
 several times: papa maman (papa, lead me to mamma). 
 A little later, and he would have interposed the word mene 
 (lead) between the two names. The advance, however, was 
 not made this same day, perhaps because I had not the 
 patience to wait, but obeyed the child's wish too quickly. 
 Besides the movement of the head from left to right to 
 signify no, and that of pointing out an object with the 
 hand, I have uoticed another very characteristic one. 
 When any one sings or plays the piano, he sways back- 
 wards and forwards rhythmically and almost in time; he 
 has been accustomed to do this since he was five months 
 old ; and he sometimes accompanies the movements with a 
 musical brumm. 
 
 In another child, thirteen months old, I have noticed an 
 expressive gesture which I Jiave not yet quite made up my 
 mind about. His parents assure me that they have not 
 taught him a movement of indication with the forefinger,
 
 ON EXPRESSION AND LANGUAGE. 251 
 
 which might be hereditary, or might proceed by selection 
 and simplification from the act of prehension. Here is 
 another action whose evolutionary origin does not appear 
 to me to be absolutely demonstrated. In the same child, 
 the gesture of negation, which consisted in waving the 
 hand backwards and forwards, may be considered in prin- 
 ciple as a derivation of the action of pushing away any 
 disagreeable thing. Two months ago there was no differ- 
 ence between the movements with which this child pushed 
 away anything on the table which he did not want, and 
 his refusal of anything that was offered to him which did 
 not suit him. At present he uses this gesture in the fol- 
 lowing way also; if he sees some one out of doors who 
 reminds him of his father or mother, he considers the 
 person attentively, and after perceiving his mistake he 
 says: mamma, papa, accompanying the word with this 
 gesture of refusal or repulsion, which is his way of saying 
 no. The gesture of the head meaning yes, he made at a 
 very early age, I am told, without having seen it made. 
 It is a gesture evidently reflex, like the half-shutting of the 
 eyelids which accompanies it. 
 
 A little girl, nineteen months old, has already accom- 
 plished three-quarters of this important and relatively 
 rapid process of evolution, which is the initiation into lan- 
 guage. She cannot yet say any phrases, however short, 
 though she understands the meaning of a great many 
 tolerably long ones; but she pronounces a quantity of 
 words intelligibly. There was no difficulty in making her 
 pass from inarticulate to articulate sounds; she felt after 
 them instinctively, but she needed the help of imitation to 
 enunciate them easily and distinctly. 
 
 Some months ago, when she was beginning the acqui- 
 sition of her vocabulary (now a very rich one), she could 
 only reproduce the last emphasized syllable of a word ; and 
 she used to alter its articulation according to the rule of 
 what was least effort. It is noteworthy, that in the 
 language of children as of primitive races, the roots or 
 first attempts are monosyllabic sounds; in young animals 
 the voice itself is only a single guttural or labial intona- 
 tion, prolonged or repeated at short intervals. The puppy
 
 252 THE FIRST THKEE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 does not at once give forth the characteristic bark of the 
 dog, which the French represent as wrrona (with a gut- 
 tural r), nor the kitten the miaou of the cat, nor the young 
 house-sparrow or swallow, their kiou-kiou or tyi tyiri. 
 Their first vocal attempts are rudely simple and monosyl- 
 labic. The same with children; they more easily pro- 
 nounce reduplicated monosyllables, as in papa, mama, than 
 dissyllables such as gdteau, minet. They will sometimes 
 even bring out diphthongs, which are varieties of monosyl- 
 lables like oua, inia, mie, etc. For a long time they rebel 
 against real dissyllables, and still longer against polysyl- 
 lables. For a long time this little girl, whom I have ob- 
 served ever since her birth, up to the twenty- second 
 month, but unfortunately without noting each step of 
 her progress, could only say bou for tambour, fe for cafe, ye 
 for Pierre, etc. By perseveringly separating each syllable 
 for her very clearly, her mother at last succeeded in mak- 
 ing her pronounce the distinct syllables of the words. 
 The mother repeated slowly and distinctly, tambour, 
 Geonjet, pom me, pain, ndteau ; and after a considerable 
 number of fruitless lessons, the little pupil succeeded in 
 articulating, a-bou, o-ye, om, pai, a-teau, etc. It was the 
 same with a number of other words, which she now pro- 
 nounces distinctly enough, save for the modifications of 
 the consonants, which vary with every child. There are 
 no rules in children's pronunciation of the sounds which 
 they imitate. A child of fifteen months who says a-to for 
 bateau, for ijdteau says ca-co or cacou, or even a-ca-cou, 
 when in a very voluble mood. He says tu-tu for tortue 
 (tortoise), and also for comjiture (jam). The same syllable 
 pronounced in one way, in one word, is often pronounced 
 differently in another word, or doubled, or augmented by 
 a useless syllable. 
 
 In general, we see clearly in infant language, the appli- 
 cation of certain rules which philosophy has long recog- 
 nized in the transformations of language; and among 
 others, the modifications produced by the tendency of in- 
 dividuals to diminish the muscular efforts of pronuncia- 
 tion. It is a very common thing in France among French 
 people to hear particulier pronounced like particuyer,
 
 ON EXPRESSION AND LANGUAGE. 253 
 
 cuiller like cuye ; and this tendency to pronounce // like y 
 is on the increase, by virtue of the law of the least > 
 effort. 
 
 In the like manner children begin by pronouncing the 
 consonants which are easiest to articulate, and they modify 
 them little by little in proportion as their organs become 
 stronger and more practiced. 
 
 Mr. F. Pollock has been one of the first to try and 
 systematize in phonetic as well as logical order the first 
 infant gropings after language. His interesting study on 
 the " The Child's Progress in Language," comprehends 
 the period between the twelfth and the twenty-fourth 
 month. We quote here the most essential points : 
 
 " Age, twelve months. M-m often repeated! bd bd re- 
 peated an indefinite number of times. 
 
 " M-m generally indicated a want of something. Bdbd 
 was (1) a sort of general demonstrative, standing for the 
 child herself, other people or the cat (I do not think she 
 applied it to inanimate objects); (2) an interjection, ex- 
 pressing satisfaction. Both sounds, however, seemed often 
 to be made without distinct intention, as mere exercise of 
 the vocal organs. 
 
 " Thirteen months. Dd da was used, at first as a vague 
 demonstrative (and about six weeks later it became a dis- 
 tinct proper name for the child's father). Wa wa, meant 
 water, drink ; wah wall, with a gutteral sound distinct from 
 the foregoing, was said to figures of animals dogs or cats, 
 which she now recognized in pictures. This fact is curi- 
 ous, having regard to the inability of adult savages, as re- 
 ported by travellers, to make anything of even the simplest 
 representations of objects. Xa-nd, signified nurse of 
 course as proper, not generic name. 
 
 " Fifteen months. M-m discontinued. Bd bd was 
 sometimes used instead, and sometimes she simply cried 
 for a desired object. Wah wah, mian, soon became generic 
 names of dog and cat (u:ah wah, which at first included 
 cat, becoming appropriated to dog). I think, however, 
 wah wah would include any middling-sized quadruped 
 other than a cat or a sheep. As to cat, her name for it 
 became a few mouths later aya,-m or ay-din, which, so far
 
 254 THE FIRST THKEE YEAES OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 as I know, she invented for herself. The conventional 
 ' gee gee ' for horse was very soon understood by her. 
 though she could not form the j sound. She recognized 
 a zebra in a picture alphabet as 'gee gee' and showed 
 marked dissent when told it was a zebra. 
 
 " These imitative sounds were all learnt on the sugges- 
 tion of adults, but studied from the real sounds; for, as 
 made by the child, they are decidedly nearer to the real 
 sounds than the baa baa, etc., used by adult voices. 
 
 " ' Baby ' (or rather be bi), was now formed with fair 
 success, but soon dropped for a time. About a month 
 afterwards it was resumed, and became the child's name 
 for herself. This was long before she attempted any 
 other dissyllable. It was pronounced, however, rather as 
 a reduplicated monosyllable. 
 
 " Seventeenth to eighteenth month. Her vocabulary is 
 now increasing fast, and almost any word proposed to the 
 child is imitated with some real effort at correctness. The 
 range of articulate sounds is still very limited; a, d, i 
 (short and long) are the only vowels fully under command; 
 d occurs in a few words, and is the result of attempts to 
 form o : thus, nd = nose. The long sound of English i 
 (ai) cannot be pronounced; when she tries to imitate it, 
 she says id or i-a. No approach is yet made to the pecu- 
 liar short English sound of a in such words as hat, bat. Of 
 consonants, g, /, r (the true consonant initial sound), the 
 final semi-vowel, as in more, poor, is easy enough to her, 
 and sibilants, aspirates, and palatals are not yet mastered. 
 ' Guy ' (a younger cousin's name) is called dd produced far 
 back in the mouth ; k is also produced far back in the 
 mouth, with an approach to t. Final consonants are 
 seldom or never given. With the exception of ' baby ' 
 nd-ni, nd-nd, the vocabulary is essentially monosyllabic. 
 She once said ' lady ' pretty well, but did not take it into 
 use. No construction is yet attempted. But even with 
 these resources the child already contrives to express a 
 good deal, filling up the meaning of her syllables with a 
 great variety of tone, and also with inarticulate interjec- 
 tions. Impatience, satisfaction, amusement, are all very
 
 ON EXPRESSION AND ' LANGUAGE. 255 
 
 well marked; and perhaps even intellectual dissent (in the 
 case of ' zebra ' and 'gee gee '), see previous page." 
 
 Amongst other acquisitions (from fifteenth to nineteenth 
 month) we may notice the word poor, with no appreciable 
 difference from ordinary adult pronunciation, and which 
 was taught as an expression of pity, but extended to mean 
 any kind of loss, damage, or imperfection in an object, real 
 or supposed. 
 
 "Nineteen months. O sound now distinctly made, and 
 g distinct by the end of the month. 'Guy' is now yd in- 
 stead of dd. L and t, final, and even p, are pronounced 
 more or less distinctly. The monosyllabic form still pre- 
 vails. K is a favorite sound, and she has several words 
 formed with it which are kept carefully distinct. Ku 
 stool, kah (later &ad)=cod [liver oil], which she considers 
 a treat. .STo^'cosy' (or tea-pot), M=cold. ^LdM=choc- 
 olate, khien, or Alien, =clean. S, sh, ch,j, are on 
 
 the whole indistinct. . . . W, v, /, are now formed, 
 but not well distinguished." (Mr. Pollock thinks, with M. 
 Taine, that infant pronunciation has some shades which 
 escape adult ears.) 
 
 "Twenty months. Dash or ddsk=d\ist, Ta'sh or td'sh, 
 learnt, I think, from ' touch ' but soon dropped. Tdsh, 
 however, is adopted for [mousjtache. Final sibilants are 
 more under command than initial. ... A sudden 
 advance made to dissyllables, several being produced with 
 success on or about the same day. Fanny, honey, money; 
 fd-wd, flower; la-ta, letters; ha-pi, happy; bd-ta, butter; 
 A' -si, Alice. R is still very impracticable, and attempts to 
 form it sometimes give d; but this was very transient, and I 
 soon became the constant substitute. . . ." (I omit a 
 few other stages of progress of the same kind, to pass on to 
 two or thre'e more important ones, between the twenty-first 
 and twenty-second months). "The child is now more or 
 less able to answer direct, as distinguished from leading 
 questions. Thus, when she had been paying a visit to some 
 relations and cried to go home, she gave afterwards (March 
 17) a pretty connected account of it in monosy'labic 
 
 answers. 'What did you do to-day at ?' ' Klai,' 
 
 (cry). ' What did you cry for?' Ham,' (home). Also,
 
 256 THE FIKST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 when told not to handle a forbidden object, such as a knife, 
 she will say, in a tone of intelligent acquiescence ; no dd-dd 
 (i. e., I may not have that, but dd-dd may). One trisylla- 
 ble is in common use : re?im=Tennyson, an illustrated 
 edition which divides her attention with Vats (Watts). 
 
 "At twenty-one months I noticed a distinct attempt at 
 grammatical construction, by the use of a real predicate so 
 as to form a complete proposition. The child had been 
 told, half in joke, that cabs were dirty as compared with 
 her perambulator. For some days she had been accustomed 
 to say 'dirty' on the mention of perambulator. Now she 
 made the whole statement for herself; Kabz dati, Mam klm, 
 (Cabs dirty, peram' clean). . . . (We must also notice 
 progress with regard to generic names.) 
 
 "Twenty-two months. Vocabulary and power of expres- 
 sion are gradually and steadily extending. Zhdtis is often 
 said for 'There it is;' ' Out-pull-baby -pecs (spectacles) ; 'Eun 
 away, man;' 'Mamma get Bessie' (her doll). . . . The 
 consonants ch, j, and th are still imperfect, and consonantal 
 r is not yet formed at all. . . ." Mr. Pollock also 
 records some expressions indicative of the dramatic faculty 
 in the child, and he adds: "I may observe on this, that I 
 have no reason to doubt that all the play with her doll is 
 purely and consciously dramatic, not animistic; in other 
 words, I have seen nothing to indicate a belief that the 
 doll is really alive; nor is there, so far as I can observe, 
 any tendency to attribute life to other inanimate objects. I 
 think the child is perfectly aware of the difference between 
 animals and things, though I am unable to give specific 
 reason for this impression." ' 
 
 (At this age there appears a decided tendency to imita- 
 tion of grown-up people's actions, and to asking questions.) 
 
 "Twenty-three mouths. The palatals, dental aspirates, 
 and the peculiar English short a (as in ' hat ') are still im- 
 perfect, and r is represented by L When s comes before 
 another consonant, one of the two is dropped. K is in 
 some words confused with/? or t. She says oken for 'open.' 
 kek for 'take,' . . ." etc. 
 
 See Mind, July, 1878, vol. ill., pp. 392-395.
 
 ON EXPRESSION AND LANGUAGE. 257 
 
 M. de la Calle also has just added to this branch of 
 study a useful contribution of personal researches, which 
 are all the more valuable as he explains the facts collected 
 by the scientific laws of language. We quote as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 " I have observed, for instance, an absolutely constant 
 fact : Hard consonants are very difficult for a child to pro- 
 nounce simultaneously in the same word ; he will suppress 
 the one and change the other, or perhaps replace both, if 
 they require hard expiration, by an analogous sound with 
 soft expiration. They will often insert a vowel sound be- 
 tween the two. This proceeding reminds us of the theory 
 admitted by philologists, that certain double consonants 
 must have been originally separated by vowels and after- 
 wards have become re-united, sometimes even fused in one, 
 like the Greek 4' (psi)> and the Latin x (gs). 
 
 " I have also remarked this same process in the separa- 
 tion of diphthongs by an interpolated consonant, sometimes 
 amounting to a sort of harmonious reiteration of the 
 altered syllables; transposition and contraction are also 
 very frequent. For instance, I find in my journal that 
 Adolphus at the age of twenty-two months said cou for 
 clou, ot-ta for dte-toi, cioute for crotite, toujer for tuer, bau- 
 grete for brouette, liff for livre, anoir for armoire, la-lo for 
 Ict-haut. Then rghonise for nourrice, youaselle for mademoi- 
 selle, acquelocque for enveloppe, cacquette for casquette, poet- 
 erre for pomme de terre. Corresponding phenomena are re- 
 corded concerning the language of the eldest girl. Pepita 
 used to say lache for vache, loture for voiture, chelal for che- 
 val., zdme for dame, zenetre for fenetre, aristrocate for aris- 
 tocrate, pa pi bo for pas PLUS beau, les sansan for les enfants. 
 Another little girl whom I observed at about the same age 
 used to say les fanfans; but the harmonic phenomenon in 
 the alteration was identical. 
 
 "The confusion of I and r is also a characteristic phe- 
 nomenon of infant language; children often mechanically 
 change or replace the one by the other; but it is the great 
 difficulty in the pronunciation of the r which we are spe- 
 cially concerned with here. This consonant, pronounced 
 by a vibration of the tip of the tongue against the middle 
 
 18
 
 258 THE FIKST THEEE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 of the palate, requires a certain amount of muscular exer- 
 cise, and is not mastered till much later. I have noticed 
 that children begin by sounding it in the middle of words, 
 then at the end, and finally when it is initial. But for a 
 long time there will be confusion between these two letters, 
 and sometimes I will be substituted for r, sometimes r for /. 
 This reminds me that in certain romanized Latin words 
 this tendency to confusion of r and I has produced some 
 alterations which have been set down to an etymological 
 law, such as chapitre from capitulum; pupitre from pulpit- 
 um; epUre from epistola', apotre from apostolus; and, vice 
 versd, peregrinus has become pelerin. It appears, also, that 
 the ancient Egyptians did not very clearly distinguish be- 
 tween these two consonants." 
 
 M. de la Calle has also gone into the interesting question 
 of the primitiveness of monosyllabism. Contrary to the 
 ideas which obtain at the present day among philologists, 
 he has observed in his three children, "that monosylla- 
 bism is no more than pollysyllabism, an absolutely con- 
 stant phenomenon." 
 
 The words which children retain most easily, are those 
 which express the most salient qualities of things, or those 
 parts of them which produce the dominant impression. 
 Thus, a little girl of twenty months, when I took off my 
 hat and said to her, "What is it?" answered "bonrtet"(c&p). 
 This is her generalized name for every kind of head-gear, 
 masculine or feminine; it is an object which has often at- 
 tracted her attention on her mother's head, and on her 
 own, when she looks at herself in the glass. She calls the 
 carafe, ve (verre), while a bottle of wine is a lit (litre); the 
 word verre designating a quality which has struck her both 
 in the tumblers and the decanter, while the bottle, 
 although also glass, appears to her under a very different 
 aspect. She also calls a little medicine-bottle which hardly 
 holds a decilitre, lit. Her general idea of glass will go on 
 enlarging every day, while that of litre will gradually con- 
 tract as she gains fresh experiences. 
 
 A little child of two and a half calls all dogs oua-otia, 
 except his grandfather's dog Cambo, although he cannot 
 pronounce this name : he does not class him with the ordi-
 
 ON EXPRESSION AND LANGUAGE. 259 
 
 nary oua-ouas. He also gives this name to all his wooden 
 toy animals the dog, goat, wolf, hyena, and lion. But 
 when I called a stuffed lion an oua-oua, he seemed puzzled, 
 and looked at me as if he thought I was mistaken. Though 
 he can quite well distinguish donkeys and horses and oxen 
 in the street, in his wooden menagerie they are all called 
 mod (ox). The other day I had set him up on my table, 
 with a pencil in his hand and a piece of paper before him. 
 I drew for him roughly the outline of a quadruped, and he 
 instantly said moil, thus showing that it is the dominant 
 impressions which translate themselves, as general and 
 individual ideas, into the words most easily and firmly 
 retained. Other words are useless to the child; they do 
 not interest him, and signify nothing to him. If he is 
 forced to learn them like a parrot, he forgets them more 
 easily than those which represent something to his intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 These facts show that we should be much mistaken in 
 considering rapidity of progress in speaking setting aside 
 the question of the organs as a sign of precocious intelli- 
 gence; the contrary indeed seems to me often true. I 
 have noticed remarkable backwardness in respect to the 
 exercise of speech, in several children of both sexes, born 
 of cultured parents, who expressed themselves with great 
 ease. The father of one of these even confided to me his 
 great fear lest his child would be dumb or partly dumb, 
 because at the age of thirteen months he could hardly 
 stammer out two or three words. This child began to 
 speak late, and he took his time even then in learning; 
 but when three years old, the little man had a vocabulary 
 as rich as it was accurate, and expressed himself with 
 very great facility and precision. I could quote many 
 similar examples; and it seems to me, therefore, that the 
 more intelligent a child is, the less he uses words, the 
 more necessary is it to him that words should signify 
 something if he is to learn them, and this is why he only 
 learns words in proportion as he gains ideas about objects. 
 With children of little intelligence, but who are gifted 
 with flexible organs and with a memory in advance of 
 their judgment, words precede ideas, and often take their
 
 260 THE FIRST THKEE YEAES OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 place; they are retained as sounds and associations of 
 sounds, rather than as representations of personal ideas. 
 And thus, when the children come to understand the 
 sense of these words so long pronounced for their sound, 
 they find that their minds are filled with other people's 
 ideas, whereas more intelligent children, slow in learning 
 to speak, have got a large store of original ideas, which 
 have come to them, not through the channel of words, but 
 by means of direct observation and experience. 
 
 Besides the habit of parrot-like repetition, which I have 
 explained as being caused by the fact that certain ideas 
 and sounds take possession of children, we may also 
 notice in the most intelligent of them a mania for jabber- 
 ing strings of syllables without any meaning, jumbled to- 
 gether at hazard. A little girl, two years and two months 
 old, went on repeating from morning to night for a fort- 
 night, toro, toro, toro, rapapi, rapapi, rapapi, a rhythmic 
 monotone which caused her great delight. Another child, 
 nearly three years old, has a stock of such refrains, which 
 he either speaks or screams, and which he sometimes 
 produces for fun in answer to any one speaking to him. 
 For three months he went on repeating these three 
 syllables, articulated in a sonorous voice, tabille, tabille, 
 tabille. No one understood the meaning of them, nor did 
 they seem to have any meaning for him. His father con- 
 fided to me his anxiety as to the child's intelligence. "I 
 do not know if I am mistaken," he said, "but I am less 
 satisfied with his intelligence than I was. Formerly he 
 seemed to be observing and thoughtful; but perhaps this 
 was only a passing and deceptive ray of light. I now find 
 him heedless and incapable of attention, or of following 
 out an idea. Sometimes I fear that his brain is soften- 
 ing." I succeeded in reassuring the father by giving him 
 the following explanation of his child's jabbering propen- 
 sity: The feebleness of his intellectual organs, over- 
 exerted at the time of his first attempts at speaking, cause 
 him to seek rest and amusement in these mechanical 
 babblings without any sense, which he has no trouble in 
 producing, and which do not excite his brain, and which, 
 moreover, charm and please his ear. Savages, in like
 
 ON EXPRESSION AND LANGUAGE. 201 
 
 manner, will go on for several hours at a time making a 
 monotonous melopoeia, whose easy rhythm distracts their 
 minds from care, and allows their imagination to disport 
 itself agreeably. It is no doubt, for a similar reason, that 
 the dreamy and idle peasants in the south of Europe, 
 while watching their flocks or working in their fields, will 
 repeat either a song, or a couplet, or a refrain, a hundred 
 times in the same afternoon. This is habitual, agreeable, 
 and easy to them ; a triple reason why they delight in the 
 practice. There is nothing in this meaningless reiteration 
 to cause anxiety with regard to children, when it does not 
 fill up all their time. It merely distracts them and relieves 
 the fatigue of their brain. 
 
 It is a universal fact that children always take hold of 
 the superficial qualities of things rather than their sub- 
 stance, of the simple rather than the complex, of what is 
 easy before what is more difficult. Thus we find them 
 more apt at imitating the emotional tone, the emphasis, 
 and the most sonorous syllables of words, than the entire 
 words. I have already said, their attention and powers of 
 enunciation are chiefly directed to accentuated syllables 
 and terminations. "If a child is not able to reproduce a 
 phrase it has just heard, it will at any rate reproduce the 
 emphasis, which is, as it were, its music. If we try to 
 teach a child the habit of expressing thanks for anything 
 he receives, and if he cannot repeat the phrase of thanks 
 that is taught him, he sings it without words, or at any 
 rate without the consonants, and generally on a single 
 vowel." 1 
 
 Philologists who have studied children, mention a num- 
 ber of similar facts, all of which they refer to the general 
 laws which govern the formation of languages. We would 
 specially refer our readers to two philologists, already 
 cited, M. Egger and M. de La Calle, in whose works they 
 will find an abundant collection of valuable observations 
 on the progressive evolution of infant logic and dialect, 
 showing the gradual extension and generalization of the 
 meaning of the words they have learnt ; their first attempts 
 
 i E. Egger, op. cit.
 
 262 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OP CHILDHOOD. 
 
 in the art of forming phrases without the use of the verb 
 to be, by the simple juxtaposition of a noun, a pronoun, or 
 an attribute ; the inflexible logic of analogy, which makes 
 them confuse in their mind the thing, the person, and the 
 action, so that -they soon begin to designate them by uni- 
 form and general appellations; the incoherence and in- 
 definiteness of their notions of time and mood, of number 
 and of person, which makes them first use all verbs in the 
 infinitive, and afterwards, by dint of analogy, put them in 
 the times and persons used by tbose who are speaking to 
 them, i. e., taking the second person for the first, and the 
 first for the second; and so forth. On all these cases of 
 progressive and parallel development, often contradictory 
 in appearance, the writers above mentioned have contrib- 
 uted valuable information.
 
 CHAPTER XH. 
 
 THE AESTHETIC SENSE IN UTTLE CHILDEEN. 
 
 I. 
 THE MUSICAL SENSE, 
 
 As soon as a child begins to distinguish sounds clearly, 
 we notice that some appear to please and others to dis- 
 please him; this may arise either from the fact that par- 
 ticular tones correspond to certain conformations in the 
 child's acoustic apparatus, or, by virtue of hereditary pre- 
 disposition, to certain innate conditions of his personality. 
 We have also said that children very easily accommodate 
 themselves to sounds which are very disagreeable to adults, 
 provided they possess some sort of rhythm, however rude. 
 In short, we have traced in young children the awakening 
 of a kind of musical sentiment, manifested either by their 
 rhythmic movements and joyous expression of face when 
 anyone sings or plays on the piano, or by the evident enjoy- 
 ment with which they imitate the cry of an animal or the 
 song of a person. We must now endeavor to define these 
 indications more precisely, and to show the genesis and 
 the nature of the musical sense in young children. 
 
 The primary element of musical impressions lies in the 
 emotional character of the sounds. The vibrations of 
 matter transmit themselves to the ear under the form of 
 sounds. In these sounds then the ear seizes certain vibra- 
 tions of the bodies producing them, something, i. e., of 
 their life, so to speak. It is, first and foremost, this ex- 
 
 263
 
 264 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 pressive power of the inner nature of things which 
 awakens sympathetic sentiments in the hearer; and with 
 it are combined the three essential characteristics of sound 
 pitch, intensity, and tone, and the quality resulting from 
 the duration of the note, rhythm, measure, and movement. 
 In proportion as the pitch is high, a note or sound be- 
 comes more distinct, more striking, and, within certain 
 limits, more agreeable. The medium intensity between a 
 feeble sound which is hardly perceptible to the auditory 
 nerves, and a violent one which shocks them, is also pro- 
 ductive of agreeable sensations for the ear. The subtle 
 relations of tone and feeling afford one of the most power- 
 ful means of expression. With regard to rhythm, which 
 is both a soothing and a stirring influence, though it 
 strikes the nerves as a shock, its periodicity and order ap- 
 peal to the intelligence. 
 
 Let us examine the first manifestations of musical senti- 
 ment in children on the lines of these aesthetic principles. 
 There is no doubt that the pleasure they experience in 
 listening to singing or pianoforte playing springs from all 
 the causes we have enumerated above; the human voice 
 pleases in itself, and so in a lesser degree does the sound 
 of an instrument, because both convey a vague expression 
 of existence. But this expressive character of music is 
 very confusedly apprehended by infants or animals. I doubt 
 even whether, before the age of six weeks, a child distin- 
 guishes at all clearly the tones of caressing, of pity, or of 
 affection, from those of calling, threatening, command, or 
 anger; he soon arrives at understanding them, thanks to 
 the inherited powers of adaptation in which his organization 
 is so rich ; but the differences he feels in them at first are 
 physical rather than moral. It is necessary that associa- 
 tions of ideas of pleasure and well-being, of pain and un- 
 easiness should intervene in the development of these 
 functions, latent in the organization. By the time a child 
 is three months old a slight advance has already been made 
 in this direction. The child begins to distinguish with 
 clearness and with pleasure certain sounds which to him 
 are expressive; but he is quite indifferent to others, 
 whether clear, harsh, or grave, which on an adult would
 
 THE MUSICAL SENSE. 265 
 
 produce either pleasure or painful impressions. The tones 
 of authority and anger in his nurse's voice (and still more 
 in his father) are clearly distinguished by the child from 
 those of coaxing or fun. If light, sharp sounds enliven 
 him, it is more on account of their pitch than their timbre. 
 But sounds of all sorts, sharp or flat, intense or feeble, 
 impressive or not, give him pleasure, provided they are 
 accompanied by rhythm. 
 
 Of these different musical elements those which will 
 have made most way by the age of six months, are those 
 which appeal in some sort to physical sensibility. I mean 
 to say, that sounds which transmit to our nervous system 
 the very vibrations of the matter itself will be more differ- 
 entiated and more keenly felt by the ear. It is the same 
 with the sonorous vibrations which not only affect the 
 tympanum but which shake the whole body more or less 
 strongly. 1 Sweet and clear sounds, or harsh, jingling 
 ones, always please children in themselves; but they please 
 them much more when they are rhythmic or reiterated. A 
 child placed close to a grand organ will cry and writhe 
 under the sonorous vibrations which shake its whole body; 
 the noise of a drum very near has often the same effect. 
 But heard a little way off, the same sound, softened by 
 distance, will please him immensely. Thus it is the strik- 
 ing forms of emotional music rather than its expression, 
 the purely physical percussions and sensations of sound, 
 and above all the physical excitement produced by the 
 mechanical excitation of sound, that a child of six months 
 feels the most keenly. 
 
 At this early period it would be premature to look for 
 genuine musical intentions in the first monotonous bab- 
 blings which children seem to make with no other motive 
 than delight in the exercise of their little voices. The 
 utmost we can admit is, that lively airs and harmonious 
 sounds produce more marked impressions on them than 
 do grave, sweet, and even melodious sounds; and that 
 their irregularly rhythmic utterances, vaguely and feebly 
 
 1 G. Gu^ronlt, Du Role du Mouvement dans 'es Emotions Esthetiquet. 
 Jtevue Philosophique, Juin, 1881.
 
 266 THE FIKST THREE YEA.RS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 expressed, are perhaps an attempt to reproduce those 
 sounds which please them. There is no doubt that in 
 addition to the immediate pleasure of exercising the vocal 
 organs, there comes in a vague discernment of the variety 
 of sounds, a subtle sense of pleasure in this variety, and 
 the still more subtle pleasure of attempting to imitate 
 sounds his nurse's voice when singing, or the notes of an 
 instrument. 
 
 Both language and music are in their origin but one and 
 the same thing; they are first and foremost the expression 
 of sentiments little or not at all denned. Thus children 
 during the first few months practice the two simultan- 
 eously, and more for pleasure than to express any wants. 
 Adults, however, soon teach them the separate use of these 
 two arts which in primitive man also were fused in one, 
 but which have been brought singly to perfection by the 
 slow elaboration of ages. First, between the ages of one 
 and three, children learn a very great number of oral signs 
 and combinations of signs representing concrete ideas. 
 But during the same period they will scarcely learn to dis- 
 tinguish the abstract scale of sounds better than that of 
 colors. The child's vocal music is of a different kind, and 
 cannot accommodate itself to ours. Not that his ear does 
 not seize with tolerable clearness the more delicate shades 
 of sound, provided people sing to him in tune ; but his ear 
 at this age is more natural than musical it distinguishes 
 musical sounds more from their accent and rhythm than 
 their expression. A child must first have learnt by a long 
 apprenticeship of hearing and sight to distinguish the 
 nature and origin of any sounds whatever, to recognize the 
 voices of different people, to imitate their speech and their 
 songs, or to mimic the cries of animals or the most strik- 
 ing sounds produced by objects, before notes sung by the 
 human voice will have any marked expression for him. 
 And further, the development of the musical ear is quite 
 as much aided by the personal exercise of the voice as by 
 hearing the songs of other people. Now, the larynx of a 
 child, though it contains at birth all the same parts as it 
 does in an adult, is only a rough sketch of what it will be. 
 During the first months the cartilage is in an essentially
 
 THE MUSICAL SENSE. 267 
 
 fibrous state. It is not until after the second year that the 
 thyroid cartilage assumes more marked forms, and that 
 the arytenoids begin to take shape. At the age of five or 
 six years the posterior extremities of the thyroid and other 
 parts acquire the character of true cartilage. It is natural 
 that the development of the voice should follow that of 
 the organs. As the fibres harden by slow degrees, the 
 shrill screams and wailings of early days give place to more 
 sonorous sounds ; and by the development of the muscles 
 the vocal pipe is placed in favorable conditions for modi- 
 fying the discordant sounds of the reed. . . . Towards 
 the first year the voice begins to acquire a more decidedly 
 sonorous quality; speech becomes an incessant medium of 
 gymnastics for the voice, and contributes enormously to 
 its development. 1 
 
 From one to three years of age the development of the 
 voice appears to coincide with that of the brain, rather than 
 of the general organization. With regard to its sonorous 
 quality, it is pretty much at a standstill ; and it remains so 
 till the age of five or six. It is from the age of four or 
 five that the ear begins really to form, and learns most 
 easily to distinguish sounds; 2 and its progress has been 
 greatly aided by the gradual development and constant 
 exercise of the voice. A child of a year old may listen 
 with profit to music of a simple kind, moderately express- 
 ive and, above all, lively; it will conduce to form his 
 musical ear. But his real musical education, that which 
 will produce the most manifest fruits, scarcely ever begins 
 before the age of five or six ; and even then his best model 
 for vocal music will not be a man, whose voice is an octave 
 lower than his, but the sweet voice of his mother or nurse, 
 or of an older child whose voice is already formed. As for 
 instrumental music, we know what it is, what it may be, 
 and also what it should not be at this age of animal 
 virtuosite. We have already seen, according to Houzeau, 
 that the first rudiments of instrumental music are not 
 unknown to certain animals ; and that their first attempts 
 
 1 De la Calle, op. cit., p. 14*. 
 8 Dupaigne, Conferences Pe 
 
 'edagogiques, 1878.
 
 268 THE FIEST THREE YEAKS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 in this line are of the nature of drum performances, that 
 is to say, they consist in striking sonorous objects with 
 sticks. The drum, according to Houzeau, is the universal 
 instrument, the symbol of musical art in the savage, and, 
 perhaps we may also add, in the quadrumana also. To 
 this instrument of barbarous percussion, the offspring of 
 the civilized bnnana adds the trumpet, symbol of a more 
 refined savageness. The use of the first of these instru- 
 ments has been suppressed in France for adults, let us 
 hope that it will not be long before children also are for- 
 bidden its use. As to the suppression of the trumpet, 
 this last vestige of animal combativeness, it will come in 
 its turn, though the time does not yet seem near at hand. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE SENSE OF MATERIAL BEAUTY. 
 
 At the end of the first month or towards the middle of 
 the second, the fixity of expression, the sustained attention, 
 the smile, the automatic gestures of the head, arms, and 
 legs, which we notice in children when they see before 
 them brightly colored or luminous objects, or objects 
 moved briskly about, do not appear to signify anything 
 more than the pleasure resulting from very exciting sensa- 
 tions. At this period also the sight of a candle, or anything 
 of pronounced color, will cause starts and tremblings and 
 babblings, which are the child's ordinary expression of joy, 
 admiration, or desire. For some time already the sight of 
 his feeding-bottle, his nurse's breast, his parents and 
 friends, will have evoked from the child analogous cries, 
 gestures, and attitudes. During the first month, there- 
 fore, we may assume that the child confuses the beautiful 
 with what he likes. The child is at the stage of the first 
 purely animal emotions, the accumulation of which has 
 produced the hereditary instinct called aesthetic. We are 
 already able to affirm that the intensity of these visual 
 pleasures is in relation to the individual impressionability, 
 and we can perhaps also vaguely foresee the degree of the 
 future development of this force. Psychologists, however, 
 must observe extreme caution and reserve in their diagnosis,
 
 THE SENSE OF MATERIAL BEAUTY. 2G9 
 
 for these first indications have only a very limited object; 
 they only bring into evidence the feeblest of the elements 
 of which the {esthetic sense will eventually be composed; 
 besides which, inherited tendencies, especially when pre- 
 cociously displayed, are apt to become very mediocre in 
 quality. 
 
 Let us study a child at the age of ten months. A great 
 number of visual perceptions have become associated in his 
 brain with the admiration, joy, sympathy, and desire which 
 the sight of anything good or pleasant awakens in him; 
 nevertheless, in spite of some progress which he has made 
 in the habits of imagining, comparing, abstracting, and 
 generalizing, it seems that the legacy of the ideal inherited 
 from his parents has not yet become amplified. The 
 aesthetic pleasure of admiration and purely sensual pleas- 
 ures seem still blended together. I give a cake to a child 
 of nine months; he reddens with emotion, and his whole 
 being is agitated; he stretches out his hands eagerly, and 
 carries the cake to his mouth with the most unconcealed 
 delight. I then present him with a plaything his sister's 
 doll ; his delight and admiration are shown at first by the 
 same signs as before; but very soon discovering that this 
 charming object is only good to be looked at and handled, 
 he confines himself to enjoying it with the two senses of 
 sight and touch, and presently even invites me to share 
 his pleasure. Here we have a sentiment less egoistical 
 or rather an egoism which takes him out of himself and 
 which the very nature of the object has led the child to 
 experience. We can see in this a progress, though very 
 slight, of the aesthetic sense. 
 
 I see a child of ten months in a high state of delight just 
 after his nurse has put him on his smart new frock and 
 shoes. But I also observed that in putting them on she said, 
 "Pretty, pretty," a word which he applies in his mind to 
 everything that is good or pleasant; I also reflect that 
 every change relating to his person makes him happy, 
 especially if the people about him appear to share his joy. 
 But then I remember also that he seems always very happy 
 in his everyday frock and shoes, and I can no longer 
 attribute this momentary excitement to a sentiment, ex-
 
 270 THE FIBST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 cept perhaps a very obscure one, of the beauty of his 
 clothes. The color of the stuff no doubt pleases, as that 
 of a flower or piece of colored paper would; the rustling 
 affects his tympanum pleasantly; the click-clack of the 
 little new shoes amuses him, as any new sound would; but 
 this is probably all. 
 
 Another child of ten months and his cousin of thirteen 
 months can distinguish easily amongst five or six other 
 kinds of food the cake or dainty they prefer; and if they 
 seize hold of them it is with full consciousness of what they 
 are doing. But if I present to them at the same time 
 several toys and dolls of unequal prettiness, they generally 
 make a grab at hap-hazard and without choice. If they 
 do make a choice, it is anything but an aesthetic one ; it is 
 size, smartness, and novelty which attracts and fascinates 
 them. 
 
 With regard to animal beauty, and the highest kind 
 especially, that of the human form, there is a sympathy 
 of origin and similarity, combined with the influence of 
 familiar experiences, which predisposes children to take 
 lively delight in it. But there is little more than this. 
 
 I have often studied little children in the presence of 
 animals at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, or the Zoolog- 
 ical Gardens of other great towns, and it is evident to me 
 that they take great notice of them and delight in looking 
 at them big ones and little ones, pretty or ugly, and 
 especially those which resemble animals they are already 
 acquainted with. But I have examined the expression of 
 their eyes and faces, their gestures and exclamations, to 
 learn if they made any distinction, in virtue of hereditary 
 instinct, between the different representatives of zoological 
 species, and I confess that, to my great astonishment, I 
 could discover nothing of the kind. They showed quite as 
 much delight at the tricks of the monkeys as at the gam- 
 bols of the bears, or the grave and ponderous attitudes of 
 the elephant; they admired with equal enthusiasm the 
 brilliant cockatoos, the hideous vultures, the grotesque 
 ostrich, and the graceful ichneumon ; and would gaze with 
 pleasure quite unmixed with horror at the awful boa-con- 
 strictor and the scaly lizards. The child has not yet got
 
 THE SENSE OF MATERIAL BEAUTY. 271 
 
 beyond isolated perceptions, and is incapable of concep- '. 
 tions of wholes or masses ; and that is why his ideas of the 
 beautiful and his correlative ideas of ugliness are so incom- 
 plete, variable, and fleeting. 
 
 The idea of proportion and suitability, which is a wholly 
 intellectual perception, takes longer to form itself than the 
 discernment of expression, which is almost entirely sen- 
 sory. The attitude of these little children in the presence 
 of people whose faces are unknown to them, seems to 
 indicate this. They are attracted at first sight by certain 
 faces, which also please adults; and other faces which do 
 not please us seem also to frighten and repel them. But 
 the readiness with which they become reconciled to the 
 latter, provided they discover in them signs of benevolence, 
 and the equal readiness with which they withdraw their 
 favor from the others if they only find coldness in them, 
 authorize us in supposing that if hereditary influences and, 
 up to a certain point, personal experience, dispose the 
 child to feel the charm of a beautiful face, of a harmonious 
 arrangement of form and color, a stronger tendency makes 
 them capable of understanding and feeling the true ex- 
 pression of sentiments which are not very complex. Even 
 with adults expression ranks before beauty of proportion. 
 The best proportioned face, if wanting in expression, says 
 nothing to us, whereas the most irregular features even 
 the most repelling if lighted up with expression, interest 
 and please. It is not surprising then that to children the 
 intellectual elements of the beautiful should be subordi- 
 nated to the sensory ones, or even entirely absent. 
 
 We have now come to a fresh stage in the slow evolution 
 of the aesthetic sense. The child is eighteen months old; 
 his mind is stored with a considerable number of percep- 
 tions more or less well differentiated and generalized ; he 
 has made, and has heard made, quantities of judgments 
 implying a conception of the beautiful; and this term, often 
 used by him or in his hearing, may have assumed the form 
 of an elementary abstraction. But how undetermined still 
 and fluctuating is this idea in his mind! To him the 
 beautiful still means only what is pretty, but it is also what 
 is nice, and in both cases it is the concrete expression of
 
 272 THE FIEST THREE YEAES OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 the known. All his aesthetic judgments refer always to 
 himself; pretty applies to everything that is part of him- 
 self, that belongs to him, that is for him or near him; his 
 person, his clothes, his toys, his parents, his friends, his 
 animals, flowers, and trees. Sometimes, however, all 
 these things cease to be pretty himself, when he gets 
 angry, or has been disobedient, or given pain to some one; 
 his toys when he is tired of them or has broken them or 
 made them dirty; then nothing is pretty or good. Thus 
 we see that the dominant elements in the infant's sense of 
 beauty are the primary judgments and sentiments, or those 
 immediately derived from them, which make up his young 
 personality. 
 
 A very few examples will show how very limited is that 
 part of his ideality which may be called rational, and 
 quasi-universal. A gaudy picture-book will drive children 
 wild with delight, even at the age of three, while the paint- 
 ings of a master do not appeal to them at all. Beautiful 
 statuary leaves them indifferent ; but they will watch with 
 the greatest interest the tricks and antics of a dog, the 
 flight of a bird, a boat gliding along. A little girl twenty 
 months old, who had been accustomed to looking at pict- 
 ures at home, and took pleasure in recognizing the objects 
 they represented, escaped from her father when he tried 
 to make her look at the animals and people in the pictures 
 of the Louvre. Her chief delight here in public was to 
 run about, laughing and calling to me in a little shrill 
 voice, and getting in the way of the visitors. Another 
 child, three years old, after having looked at an Italian 
 picture with very bright coloring, partly from imitation 
 and partly from obedience, expressed his admiration thus : 
 "It's very pretty, papa! There's lots of gold, lots of red, 
 and lots of blue; and then, down there, there is a papa 
 and a mamma; there is no baby; and there is a papa tree 
 and a mamma duck." 
 
 Children appreciate rural scenery as little as they do 
 pictorial or sculpturesque beauty. In Touraine, a beautiful 
 and open country greets the eye at every turn. A young 
 child will pass some time in the midst of its beauties, and 
 will perceive only himself or his parents. The latter
 
 THE SENSE OF MATEBIAL BEAUTY. 273 
 
 adroitly lead the conversation to the subject of the lovely 
 country; the child mechanically repeats some fragments 
 of their discourse. Then the parents, seated on some 
 rising ground, invite the child to look at what they were 
 admiring. His reply is very brief : "Oh! yes, it is very 
 beautiful, very beautiful, much more lovely than at home, 
 and than where grandmamma lives too." Before a thun- 
 dering cascade, glowing with rainbow tints, a child of the 
 same age cried out: "Say, mamma, why is the cascade of 
 the mill-stream at Tarbes not bigger than this?" Another 
 child, about three years of age, imitating her mother's ex- 
 ample, always admired the beautiful Pic de Ger, which 
 towers in the distance far above the mountains, surround- 
 ing Eaux-Bonnes. This mountain, situated nearly to the 
 south of the town, changes its aspect according to the time 
 of day. The child had heard this spoken of, and repeated 
 the words in his own fashion: "The mountain is very 
 large ! This morning it was quite white, yesterday it was 
 quite black, and the other yesterday it was all rose-color. 
 Oh! the lovely mountain. It is a great deal bigger than 
 our house, perhaps it is four times as big. " Of a beautiful 
 animal, this same child said it was of such and such a 
 color, and then, very large or very good, not naughty or 
 bad at all; of a very fine poplar, that it was very tall or 
 very pretty, but not so large as the fig-tree, the big fig-tree 
 in grandma's garden. 
 
 Children begin by feeling pleasure and admiration for 
 isolated objects, and so much the more as they appear to 
 them to be good or pleasant. The measure of their ap- 
 probation does not go beyond their familiar experiences. 
 Of masses they only perceive the general bulk ; of harmo- 
 nies in nature or in art, only the colors and the most 
 salient points. The ideality transmitted through ancestors, 
 develops according to the laws of general evolution, adapt- 
 ing itself gradually to more distant objects, analyzing and 
 combining them more and more. The more persons and 
 objects recall real connections and distinct associations of 
 agreeable and intense sensations, the more we may say 
 that the sense of the intellectual element of the beautiful, 
 or ideality, has progressed. 
 
 19
 
 274 THE FIEST THKEE YEAKS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 m. 
 
 THE CONSTRUCTIVE INSTINCT. 
 
 "Creative imagination," under the form of constructive 
 or destructive mania, "shows itself at a very tender age," 
 says Father Girard; "for if the little child likes to give 
 proof of his strength by destroying, he also delights in 
 producing, after his own fashion, things new and beautiful. 
 See how he ranges his little soldiers, his toy horses and 
 sheep, etc.; how he rejoices in new combinations! And 
 he calls to his mother, that she too may share in his pleas- 
 ure." 1 The instinct of imitation, so active in all young 
 animals, conduces to the rapid development of this hered- 
 itary faculty. Tiedemann points out to us in his child, 
 thirteen months old, a rare aptitude for combining the 
 ideas he had acquired and of applying them to actual per- 
 ceptions, with the evident intention of representing the 
 first by the second. 
 
 On the 29th of October the child got hold of ' some cab- 
 bage stalks and amused himself with making them repre- 
 sent different persons visiting each other. The philosopher 
 rightly sees in this the germ of the poetic genius, which he 
 says "seems to consist in transferring known images to 
 strangers." But he forgets to tell us how far this perform- 
 ance was genuinely spontaneous, and whether the child 
 had ever seen this done before, or whether it was his orig- 
 inal idea for representing scenes which he remembered. It 
 is true, however, that even if the action did proceed from 
 mechanical imitation, as consciousness would soon inter- 
 vene, it would assume a certain personal character. Pos- 
 sibly also a future savant was exceptionally gifted with 
 precocious talents. 
 
 However this may be, this imaginative faculty shows 
 itself, with greater or less force, in all children from the 
 age of eight or ten months. A child of nine months 
 seated on the floor in the middle of a room, seemed like a 
 creating and despotic deity in the midst of his playthings, 
 
 1 De V Enseignement R4gulier dc la Langue Maternelle^li'v. ill., p. 88.
 
 THE CONSTRUCTIVE INSTINCT. 275 
 
 and anything else that was given him or that he could get 
 hold of by crawling along. Trumpets, drums, balls, paper, 
 books, cakes, fruit, were piled up together, ranged side by 
 side, separated, put back higgledy-piggledy, pushed away, 
 fetched back again, hugged up, kissed, gnawed, etc., etc., 
 and all this with an accompaniment of shouts, gestures 
 of admiration, and bursts of joy, which showed his im- 
 perative need of exercising his physical powers, of satisfy- 
 ing an ever-new curiosity, and of imitating; and also his 
 intellectual and moral necessity of realizing an ideal cor- 
 responding to his faculties, "of producing, to the best of 
 his ability, something new and pretty." Thus the infant- 
 man constructs and destroys in play, but with a seriousness 
 and purpose which reminds one of Sallust's patricians, 
 who unceasingly constructed in order to demolish, and 
 demolished in order to construct. 
 
 The {esthetic faculty may even at this early age receive 
 an appropriate kind of culture, through the development 
 of the constructive instinct. Give a child of twenty months 
 or two years a spade and a little pail, set him down on a 
 sandy beach, and you will have reason to admire his inde- 
 fatigable and ever- varying efforts at building and demolish- 
 ing and rebuilding. His imagination outstrips ours, in 
 that it does not know how to, or cannot limit itself. I saw 
 the other day in one of the squares which I frequently 
 visit, a little girl seated by her nurse's side, who, during a 
 quarter of an hour, never ceased filling her little pail and 
 turning out moulds of sand. After she had turned the 
 pail over, before lifting it up, she always patted it several 
 times with her spade; this, the nurse told me, was to make 
 the mould even. But she did not always succeed in pro- 
 ducing a perfect shape, and then she would turn to her 
 nurse and hold out the spade and pail to her, as if inviting 
 her to share her labors. To let children work at what 
 they can do and what pleases them, seems to me an ex- 
 cellent plan. 
 
 Whilst encouraging, however, we must be on our guard 
 not to over-cultivate this constructive instinct, which is as 
 imitative as it is inventive, and as clumsy as it is irrepres- 
 sible.
 
 276 THE FIKST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 One day, thinking that I should greatly interest one of 
 my nephews, a little fellow rather more than three, and 
 very intelligent for his age, I said to him in the garden, 
 that we would make the river Adour, with the bridge, and 
 the poplars on its banks. With the end of my cane I 
 scooped out a long furrow several inches wide. I broke 
 off some arbutus twigs and planted them on each side of 
 the furrow to represent the poplars ; and I constructed the 
 bridge with the lid of a box supported on heaps of stones 
 which represented the piles. When it was finished I asked 
 my nepnew if it was not very pretty. He replied: "No, it 
 is not pretty." I was not discouraged, however; I emptied 
 two large pails of water into the furrow, and the water 
 trickled slowly down producing a stream which I dignified 
 with the appellation of the Adour. Still, however, I got 
 no admiration for my pains. I then made two paper boats 
 and launched them on my river, which I had first replen- 
 ished with another supply of water. The boy, who was 
 very fond of boats, instantly seized one of them and put it 
 back on the river, now almost dry again. I poured in a 
 fresh torrent, which, being too impetuous and abundant, 
 submerged the frail craft. The child cried out: "But 
 there are no boats on the Adour! They are on the Ga- 
 ronne, and they don't do like that on the Garonne. No, 
 that is not amusing, no, not at all." I thought it 
 was useless to argue the matter, and I walked off, 
 laughing to myself over my clumsy attempt at infant 
 construction. I had already often read in books, but this 
 time I had learnt experimentally, that the initiative of chil- 
 dren is always superior to what we try to devise for them. 
 This experiment and many others have taught me that 
 their creative or poetic force is much weaker than is com- 
 monly supposed. 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE DRAMATIC INSTINCT. 
 
 The imitation of gestures, sounds, and the cries of ani- 
 mals, also indicates in all children a first awakening of
 
 THE DKAMATIC INSTINCT. 277 
 
 the aesthetic sense. One child of eleven months used to 
 clasp his hands together, as he had seen other people do, 
 to express astonishment or joy. He used to imitate all 
 that pleased him in other people ; and very often the mere 
 fact of imitation was a pleasure to him. I had given him 
 a little bucket, which he used to hold in his hand while 
 walking with me in the garden. One day I threw a pebble 
 into the bucket; instantly the child picked up another 
 pebble and threw it in also, and then he rattled the bucket 
 with all his might. One lesson was enough to teach him 
 a game which he repeats frequently; it consists in covering 
 his head with a table-napkin or shawl, and saying, "apt/" 
 (iln'y est plus), and then popping his head out again. 
 
 His aptitude for imitation showed itself very curiously; 
 up to a certain day he had always needed some one to help 
 him walk, but only one person. If he was with his father, 
 directly he saw me, he would call me papa, ask for my 
 hand, and leave his father as soon as he had hold of mine. 
 He would do the same to all new-comers let go the hand 
 he was holding to take theirs. One day I noticed that he 
 kept his eyes fixed on my feet all the time we were walk- 
 ing, and to amuse him I began taking very long strides, 
 which made him laugh very much and jump about with 
 delight. I repeated this amusement the next day; the 
 child then, to imitate me, stretched out his legs till they 
 were almost horizontal. Naturally he lost his balance and 
 fell down. Then he asked for the hand of the next person 
 he saw, and without letting go of mine, he began to take 
 these iong steps again. Now, if there are two people near 
 him, he must always have a hand from each, in order to 
 perform this peculiar walk. 
 
 We know how early children's games take the form of 
 dramatic scenes. When only three or four months old, 
 their whole bodies become agitated and they utter cries of 
 delight if their mother or sister hides for a minute behind 
 a handkerchief or an apron. They will repeat before vis- 
 itors the games which amused their parents. Almost all 
 children display, in varying degrees, a tendency to perform 
 monkey tricks, to say absurdities, and to repeat strange 
 sounding syllables, for the edification of those around
 
 278 THE FIRST THEEE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 them, and especially to win the admiration of strangers. 
 I know two such children, the eldest of whom is more than 
 three, whose mania for this kind of thing renders them 
 almost insupportable : the presence of a visitor excites them 
 to such a degree that they have to be sent out of the room. 
 
 The eldest especially never makes a gesture or move- 
 ment without turning round to the visitors to see if they 
 are looking at him; he seems to think they have no eyes 
 or ears for any but him ; and that they are only there to 
 laugh at him and his tricks. 
 
 We must endeavor to preserve in children and their 
 games their primitive character of innocent mischief and 
 fun. Mockery, which is an odious tendency, borders very 
 closely on the fun which delights us. I think that in gen- 
 eral this fault, even when hereditary, does not appear in 
 children under the age of three unless it has been devel- 
 oped by example and encouragement. The sense of the 
 ridiculous seems to be very weak at this age. We must 
 not imagine that because children very early show a ten- 
 dency to pick out and imitate the physical defects of people, 
 they have any notion that they are defects or absurdities. 
 It is only that they are astonished at singular appearances 
 and shapes and want to know the reason of them. 
 
 A child four years old, having seen in the street a man 
 very much bent, and at another time a very little old man, 
 observed them very attentively and afterwards asked how 
 they were made like that. His brother, two years and a 
 half, made remarks of the same kind: "Why does he walk 
 like that, mamma?" But there was no perception of the 
 grotesque, as such, in either of the children. 
 
 A. child of three years, having stayed for three weeks 
 with some relations, brought back with him some ugly 
 mocking habits. He had sometimes seen in his walks a 
 little old hunchback, and he had taken to mimicking him, 
 bending his back double and taking little hurried steps; 
 and the servants had laughed at and encouraged this pan- 
 tomime. The family too treated it as a laughing matter. 
 From this time forth the child's chief delight was to act 
 the little old man. Numbers of parents are too ready to en- 
 courage this love of caricature because they see in it the
 
 THE DKAMATIC INSTINCT. 279 
 
 sign of a vivacious nature and an observing turn of mind. 
 But this is one of the worst uses that intelligence can be 
 put to. Bidiculing and caricaturing, unless for legitimate 
 ends, are anything but pleasing in adults, and certainly 
 not in children, who have no call to practice them. 
 "These mocking, comedian manners," says Fenelon, "have 
 something in them that is low taste and contrary to all 
 good feeling." 
 
 Plenty of fun in their games, and plenty of merri- 
 ment, but no mockery, is the best rule for all infant 
 dramatizing. 
 
 This tendency to imitate and dramatize may easily have 
 been derived from imitations which were both harmless 
 and instructive. Before they are fifteen months old, most 
 children will counterfeit very drolly the voices, the songs, 
 and cries of a certain number of animals. This is a very 
 innocent use of the comic faculty, and it has the advantage 
 of developing the vocal organs, and of leading children 
 to study the cries and habits of animals. It is very easy 
 to prevent this tendency from degenerating later into an 
 unkind, unbecoming habit.
 
 PERSONALITY. REFLECTION. MORAL SENSE. 
 
 THE idea of the eyo is a very obscure one for both psy- 
 chologists and physiologists ; for each individual, however, 
 it is very distinct. Human beings and animals very 
 quickly learn not to confound themselves with the people 
 around them. This idea, moreover, is only a progressive 
 development of the innate sense of personality which we 
 have alluded to before. We may consider it up to a cer- 
 tain point as innate and hereditary, and as being already 
 exercised and nourished by impressions during the foetal 
 life; in short, as forming part of the cerebral predisposi- 
 tions which the child brings with him into the world. It 
 strengthens afterwards, and becomes more defined in pro- 
 portion as the organs develop, as experiences multiply and 
 comparisons extend, and as the power of abstraction and 
 of generalization progresses. 
 
 In the new-born child the personality is, or seems to 
 be, especially concentrated in the emotional sphere. He 
 does not distinctly recognize any object or himself; but he 
 feels the presence of objects, and he feels himself live and 
 feel and act. A baby of one month has just been brought 
 into my room. He scarcely knows his mother's voice, 
 and he does not respond to it by any gesture, nor by smil- 
 ing, which action he still performs automatically and with- 
 out any meaning. But he is beginning to know his 
 mother's breast by sight. For the last ten days he has 
 been able to see sufficiently to distinguish objects. Before 
 this he only followed with his eyes the movements of a 
 
 280
 
 PERSONALITY. 281 
 
 candle; now he follows all brilliant or moving objects. 
 He has followed the movement of my finger which I waved 
 before him a few centimetres off; he has also followed a 
 sheet of white paper which I shook a little further off. 
 But nearly all the time he has been in the room his eyes 
 have been fixed on an object placed near the window, or 
 the window itself; I think it must have been a picture - 
 frame which glittered in the light from the window which 
 riveted his attention. It seemed to me for a moment that 
 he turned his head towards me, i.e.,, to the left, to listen 
 when I spoke; I placed myself on the other side, and 
 spoke in a loud voice; he turned again, but slowly, per- 
 haps because the sound came rather from behind. He 
 performed, as if unconsciously, a balanced movement from 
 up to down with his left arm ; I touched his cheek with 
 my finger and then with a pen-holder; he reversed the 
 automatic movement, but his arm did not go up to his 
 cheek. He made the same movement when I rubbed the 
 tip of his nose gently, accompanying it with a very rapid 
 twitch of his left nostril and a puckering of his forehead, 
 which lasted for three or four seconds. His mother hav- 
 ing pushed his cap a little aside, and then covered his 
 head with a veil, he puckered his forehead, opened his 
 mouth with a grimace, and uttered a little cry of discon- 
 tent. When he has a stomach-ache, which very often 
 happens, he is very much disturbed, and throws his arms 
 about, as if to repulse an unknown evil. I put my finger 
 under his, his hand trembled a little at first, and then he 
 squeezed my finger very tightly; I pretended to withdraw 
 it, and he held it still more firmly, and when at last I 
 gave it up to him, he lifted it up to his lips. But he only 
 sucked it for a few seconds, very quickly realizing that it 
 was not the teat which nourished him. Thus then a 
 child's impressions, ideas, and actions at this age are en- 
 tirely vegetative and rudimentary, and almost exclusively, 
 though vaguely personal. His only persistent and con- 
 tinuous idea of consciousness seems to be of himself; all 
 else is fleeting, dimly seen, vaguely remembered, anything 
 but distinct. 
 
 Let us now take a child of three months. What
 
 282 THE FIKST THBEE YEAKS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 progress we now find 'has been made in all the functions, 
 and in the idea of its own personality ! This small infant 
 distinguishes his mother from the other people of the 
 house, when they are with him at the same time as his 
 mother; he holds out his arms to her in preference to any 
 one else. He is not yet sufficiently advanced in compari- 
 son to distinguish a feeding-bottle full of milk from one 
 full of water; but when his sister tries to take away his 
 bottle he gets angry. He knows that coco is a name for 
 the bird, .and he turns towards its cage when he hears the 
 word. He bends down towards his feet, and stretches his 
 arms towards the bottom of his frock when any one asks 
 him where his feet or his frock are. His mother's fond- 
 ling often stops his tears when he is in pain. He smiles 
 when any one smiles at him, and strokes his mother. 
 Here we see all the faculties, sensibility, intelligence, 
 and intentional motricity, already exercising themselves 
 with delicacy, strength, and facility, and consciously into 
 the bargain. He distinguishes different objects from one 
 another and also from himself, and he can distinguish the 
 various parts of his body. Two months more, and the 
 association of his name with the impressions connected 
 with his personality will be a real symbol to him, dis- 
 tinctly representing his personality and nothing else. 
 
 The concrete notion of personality which succeeds the 
 primitive sentiment of this personality seems to me 
 already completely formed when the child begins to ex- 
 press his thoughts. This is why I think it a mistake to 
 attempt too much to find out what he is thinking by what 
 he says. For instance, although the contrary is generally 
 held to be true, I cannot admit that, because children 
 speak of themselves in the third person, therefore the 
 notion of their personality and the term which they use to 
 express it, are not yet completely detached from external 
 objectivity. When the child learns to say / or me, instead 
 of Charles or Paul, the terms I or me are not more abstract 
 to him than the proper names which he has been taught 
 to replace by / and me. Both the pronouns and the 
 names equally express a very distinct and very concrete 
 idea of individual personality. When a three-years-old
 
 PERSONALITY. 283 
 
 child says, I want that, it is only a translation of Paul 
 wants that; and I, like Paul, indicates neither the first nor 
 the third person, but the person who is himself, his own 
 well-known personality, which he continually feels in 
 his emotions and actions. An abstract notion of person- 
 ality does not exist in a young child's mind. 
 
 May we not also believe that animals have quite as dis- 
 tinct an idea of their own personality as we ourselves 
 have? I have a cat which answers to the name of Mimi, 
 which she knows very well only designates herself; not 
 only does she come when she is called by this name, but 
 if any one mentions the name casually in her presence, she 
 pricks up her ears and looks up with a significant expres- 
 sion of countenance; and more than this, although she is 
 never addressed as mother, if any one says the mother, she 
 shows plainly that she has learnt, impossible to say 
 how, that this word also is qualificative of her individu- 
 ality. 
 
 " No one supposes," says Darwin, "that one of the 
 lower animals reflects whence he comes or whither he 
 goes what is death and what is life, and so forth. But 
 can we feel sure that an old dog with an excellent mem- 
 ory and some power of imagination, as shown by his 
 dreams, never reflects on his past pleasures in the chase? 
 And this would be a form of self-consciousness. On the 
 other hand, as Biichner remarked, how little can the hard- 
 worked wife of a degraded Australian savage, who hardly 
 uses an abstract word and cannot count above four, exert 
 her self-consciousness, or reflect on the nature of her own 
 existence. 
 
 "That animals retain their mental individuality is un- 
 questionable. When my voice awakened a train of old 
 associations in the mind of the above-mentioned dog, he 
 must have retained his mental individuality, although 
 every atom of his brain had undergone change more than 
 once during the interval of five years. This dog might / 
 have brought forward the argument lately advanced to 7 
 crush all evolutionists, and said : 'I abide amid all mental j 
 moods and all material changes.' " ' 
 
 1 Darwin, Descent of Man, etc., vol i., p. 62.
 
 284 THE FIKST THREE YEAES OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 This being conceded, we do not think we are detracting 
 from the dignity of infant man, if, in spite of his intel- 
 lectual predispositions and the incontestably superior im- 
 pressions which result from education, we recognize in 
 him no higher notion of personality, or power of reflec- 
 tion on his states of being and his operations, than what 
 we may suppose to exist in the superior animals when 
 young; while, in comparison to adult and experienced 
 animals, we think the young human being inferior in this 
 respect. 
 
 Between the ages of two and four, the personal senti- 
 ment manifests itself in an extreme degree, even in the 
 gentlest and best-brought- up children. A child I knew 
 who is now a little over three, was extremely thin-skinned 
 up to his twenty-sixth month : he would cry and scream 
 for the slightest fall, and thought himself done for if he 
 got a scratch. He has been cured through his amour 
 propre. The other day he had a heavy faU in my presence; 
 he picked himself up quickly, however, after first going on 
 all fours to make believe he had not fallen. Another time 
 he stumbled on the staircase, and rolled over several times, 
 bumping his head pretty hard. I ran up to him, but he 
 had already got up and was struggling his hardest not to 
 cry. "Did you fall?" I said. "No, no," he answered 
 indignantly, "I'm not crying, I tumbled down for fun." 
 
 This personal feeling and instinct of reflection, some- 
 times occasioned in him, even before the age of three, 
 naif and touching fits of inward retrospection. He had a 
 bad cold and headache one day. He had been promised 
 that some little girl friends should come that evening to 
 tea with him. In spite of his suffering he was awaiting 
 them impatiently, and was determined not to go to bed. 
 It was piteous to see him holding his little head in his 
 hands and saying, "I should like to die; when one is dead, 
 one cannot have a headache. If I had not been born, I 
 should not suffer. But I don't want to die, mamma 
 would be so sad." When the expected playfellows arrived, 
 he ran up to them, and kissed them, and then brought 
 chairs to the fire and said to them, " Sit down and warm 
 yourselves; cold gives you headache;" then addressing the
 
 THE MORAL SENSE. 283 
 
 little one he liked best among them, he said, "Perhaps you 
 don't much want to dance? Have you got a headache?" 
 The suffering which had thrown him back on himself in so 
 touching a manner, had opened up in his heart a well of 
 sympathy, which quality is not so rare as one would sup- 
 pose in these shallow and egoistic little beings. 
 
 The sense of personality is so strong in young children 
 that it is always on the verge of excess. It amounts in 
 them to egoism, self sufficiency, and assertiveness, though 
 they now and then have sudden rebounds of sympathy, 
 tenderness, credulity, and self -distrust. It is from this 
 personal feeling, the natural tendencies of which have both 
 to be encouraged and checked, that the moral sent>e 
 springs, or, in so far as it is hereditary, that it draws ma- 
 terial for its development. 
 
 H. 
 
 THE MORAL SENSE. 
 
 The wholly objective notion of good and evil, the in- 
 tellectual germ of the moral sense, cannot be determined 
 before the age of six or seven months. I have seen a 
 child seven months old, whose mother had taught by 
 scolding and shaking him, that he must not scream to be 
 taken out of bed or nursed, if his gestures and articulations 
 to this end were not instantly attended to. But how 
 many children are there not at this age, and even later, 
 who, the more one tries to exact silence from them, the 
 less they will obey? A slight thwarting of their wills re- 
 sults often in tremendous scenes of passion, tears, sobs, 
 and screams. A child of ten months (and many well- 
 trained children arrive at this earlier) knew very well how 
 to make himself understood when he was afraid of making 
 a mess in his cradle. He knew, too, that when he wanted 
 anything which was refused him, it was naughty to persist 
 in wanting it, and especially to cry in order to get it. He 
 had a habit of scratching the face of people who took him 
 in their arms, half in play and half from unconscious 
 naughtiness; but he had at last been taught obedience in
 
 286 THE FIEST THREE YEAES OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 this matter. In all this we see the germ of the moral 
 sense. 
 
 The first dawning of the moral sense appears in the 
 child as soon as he understands the signification of certain 
 intonations of the voice, of certain attitudes, of a certain 
 expression of countenance, intended to reprimand him for 
 what he has done or to warn him against something he 
 was on the point of doing. This penal and remunerative 
 sanction gives rise hy degrees to a clear distinction of con- 
 crete good and evil. As soon as the child begins to obey 
 from fear or from habit, he enters on the possession of the 
 moral sense; as soon as he obeys in order to be rewarded 
 or praised, or to give pleasure, he has advanced further in 
 this possession. 
 
 The moral sense, in its objective form, is still very in- 
 complete in little children, even between the ages of two 
 and four. They have, however, a very advanced idea of 
 what is allowed and what forbidden, of what they must 
 or may, and what they must not do, as regards their 
 physical and moral habits. Moral law is for them em- 
 bodied in their parents, in the mother especially, even 
 during their absence. 
 
 Last summer we had a little nephew stayiug with us for 
 two months. Just at first he was very reserved and very 
 good, as if he were on the defensive, or as if he were tak- 
 ing stock of his surroundings. He behaved well at table, 
 asked politely for what he wanted, and when he had had 
 enough, said, "I have finished." But when the meal was 
 ended, excited by a certain amount of indulgence which he 
 had received (unconsciously on our part), but which he 
 had fully appreciated, he said: "At home, when I have 
 done eating, mamma lets me leave the table." We hast- 
 ened to gratify this desire, which seemed very legitimate. 
 Then we began to play with him, and succeeded in amus- 
 ing him for half an hour. At last he grew tired and 
 burst into tears, saying: "Mamma puts me to bed when I 
 cry." He was then taken to the bedroom and undressed. 
 Then he began to cry again and to gesticulate in a despe- 
 rate manner; he talked about his mother, and we thought 
 he was fretting for her; but he hastened to explain that
 
 THE MOKAL SENSE. 287 
 
 his mother did this, and that, and the other when she put 
 him to bed ; and then followed a string of prescriptions, 
 relative to his going to bed, which he evidently regarded 
 as so many obligations we were bound to fulfil. Thus, 
 whatever was ordinarily done for him was his idea of 
 what was right to do. It was the same with his own ac- 
 tions. He said to us : "It is very wicked to tell stories 
 or to disobey; it gives mamma pain, and makes her cry." 
 
 Thus, for the young child, as well as for animals, good 
 is what is permitted; evil, what is forbidden. And hence 
 arises frequent uncertainty with regard to new actions or 
 to habitual ones under new circumstances. At the end of 
 several days, the good habits of the child became modified 
 according to his new impressions and according^ to the 
 character of the persons who surrounded him. At first I 
 inspired him with great respect. It was I who brought him 
 to the house ; and no doubt I reminded him of his father, 
 whom he feared more than his mother. He always looked 
 at. me before doing anything that he knew was not right; 
 he was more at his ease and less circumspect with other 
 members of my family, who inspired him with less awe. 
 He acquired some habits contrary to those he had formed 
 at home. He was sometimes disobedient, and he got into 
 the way of crying for what he wanted. I found myself 
 henceforth compelled to make a departure from one of my 
 principles regarding infant education, which is, to turn 
 children's attention as much as possible away from their 
 illegitimate desires or their little sorrows arising from 
 trifles, and to reprimand them as little as possible and only 
 in extreme cases. I was now obliged to raise my voice 
 very often, and to make a gesture which he recognized as 
 a dreaded gesture of his father's, but which I did not go 
 the length of putting into effect. 
 
 The preceding observations show that the morality learnt 
 by the young child is an edifice built up at the cost of great 
 labor, patience, and prudence, and which may crumble 
 away in a few weeks in the midst of different circumstances 
 and surroundings. 
 
 The moral sense, then, is one of the hereditary faculties 
 most liable to be modified by circumstances. It is not in
 
 288 THE FIBST THKEE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 vain that we appeal to this social instinct, this individual 
 impressionability and sympathy, this innate desire to 
 please, which plays such an important part in the culture 
 of the young moral faculties. A little girl fourteen months 
 old was always very unhappy when her mother said, ."I 
 am angry, baby. " But she was indifferent to most of the 
 scoldings of her father, whom she was accustomed to hear 
 rage and threaten. When two years and five months old, 
 the son of Tiedemann, if he thought he had done some- 
 thing very good, used to cry out: "People will say, That 
 is a very good boy!" When he was naughty, if any one 
 said to him, "The neighbor will see it," he desisted immedi- 
 ately. There are delicacies of sensibility innate in chil- 
 dren which are never appealed to in vain by good educators, 
 and which even with children who are the least gifted in 
 this respect are the best auxiliaries and the most efficacious 
 substitutes for coercive means. I saw a woman yesterday 
 passing in the street who had been shopping with her little 
 girl about three years old. The child was walking a step 
 or two in advance of her mother, and kept on turning round 
 to catch a look or gesture of approval; she had been 
 charged with the execution of a task which she considered 
 very serious, and she thought herself very meritorious for 
 performing it well. She was carrying on the palms of 
 both her hands a parcel of very large circumference but very 
 thin and light, and which must have seemed exceedingly 
 large to her in comparison with her own small dimensions; 
 and to carry it without stumbling or letting it fall seemed 
 to her a great feat of skill. She was taking all this trouble 
 to please her mother, and to win her admiration and praise. 
 Passive obedience, and the fear of being punished or 
 scolded, would scarcely have obtained a result like this, 
 which is so easily and surely gained by an appeal to the 
 benevolent and generous sentiments of our nature.. 
 
 The sentiment of justice sometimes manifests itself with 
 great force in young children, especially at the period when 
 they have become able to express distinctly what they feel. 
 The first time that a certain child of my acquaintance, 
 now four years old, told a deliberate falsehood, his mother 
 thought it her duty to punish him. She told him that she
 
 THE MORAL SENSE. 12 M9 
 
 was going to shut him up in the cellar, and she made him 
 go with her down the stairs which led to it. On the way 
 down, the child, whose imagination was struck with the 
 importance attached to his fault, and who had begun to 
 feel very guilty, said to his mother. "But, mamma, per- 
 haps I am not sufficiently punished for such a great 
 fault?" 
 
 Some months afterwards, he was sent to his grand- 
 mother's, where he used to behave as a little despot and 
 tyrant. One day, when he had perpetrated some mischief 
 or other which was considered very serious, his grand- 
 mother shut him up in a dark room close to the kitchen. 
 Five minutes had hardly passed when, notwithstanding 
 her deafness, the old lady heard shrill screams like those 
 of a peacock. She hurried to open the door of the prison, 
 and the child rushed out, his face bathed in tears and con- 
 vulsed with fear and anger. As he was only half-afraid 
 of his grandmother, who was much too indulgent to him, 
 he thought she had not the right to punish him so severely, 
 and he protested against what he considered an injustice: 
 "Oh! naughty grandmamma, you are very naughty! I 
 said I would never go back there, and you have shut me 
 in there again ! You want the rats to eat me ! They would 
 first of all have eaten my feet, and then I should have 
 died. Mamma would have been very unhappy; she would 
 never have come back here, nor my father either. I will 
 tell him about it." It is noteworthy that children at first 
 only apply the idea of justice to other people's actions, ac- 
 cording to the nature of the sentiments which these actions 
 awaken in themselves. They are irritated when any one 
 takes away their toys ; and it is by dint of experiencing 
 this annoyance and also from hearing it said that it is 
 naughty to take other people's things, that they end by 
 forming, first a concrete notion and then a tolerably gen- 
 eral one, of illicit appropriation. Again, if one of his 
 brothers or sisters is punished, he will come and tell you 
 all about the punishment, the fault which was committed, 
 and above all the manner in which the culprit bore the 
 punishment; and he will not fail to qualify the faulty 
 action by some general epithet; and all this because he 
 
 20
 
 290 THE FIEST THEEE YEAES OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 himself has committed like faults and consequently under- 
 gone like punishments. Children, moreover, detest in- 
 justice, especially when perpetrated, or supposed to be 
 perpetrated, against themselves ; but they see nothing more 
 in it than disagreement between the habitual and the acci- 
 dental way of treating them. 
 
 It is the same with all other moral habits, and also with 
 the moral sense, which in children indeed also in adults 
 is generally nothing more than the theory of their 
 thoughts and actions. "This psychological law should 
 never be lost sight of, of so great consequence is it. All 
 our tendencies, innate or acquired, good or bad, and conse- 
 quently all our habits, in whatever way we have con- 
 tracted them, not only tend to determine our conduct as a 
 matter of fact and as actual motives, but also to impose 
 themselves as reasons to the deliberative will, or at any 
 rate to suggest justifying sophisms, of which the corrupted 
 judgment finally becomes a dupe almost in good faith." 1 
 Actions influence thoughts, and thoughts influence actions. 
 Hence interest, self-love, and passion have their good 
 share in the best resolutions of children. They seek to 
 determine the motives of their actions, even when they are 
 not asked for them. "I did this or that because. . . ." 
 This formula is constantly on their lips. They try to 
 obtain our praises for numbers of insignificant actions 
 which they think meritorious. They imagine motives, 
 sometimes utterly improbable, for the actions of others, 
 which they judge according to their own; but above all 
 they imagine specious reasons for explaining their own 
 most blamable actions. What is true of habits, is also 
 true of the moral sense ; if in one way they tend to dis- 
 interestedness, they are always "interested in some way or 
 other." 2 
 
 If then we wish to understand the meaning of the 
 actions of little children, and to direct their wills in a use- 
 ful and progressive manner, we must bear in mind that 
 all their tendencies, whatever they may be, begin and end 
 
 1 H. Marion, La fiolidarite Morale, p. 109. 
 
 2 V. M. Guyau, La Morale a' Epicure, p. 220.
 
 THE MORAL SENSE. 291 
 
 with egoism. We must especially beware of attributing 
 to the moral sense, and with children still less than with 
 adults, a power of determination which it does not pos- 
 sess. If man is far from being able to do what he wills, 
 d fortiori is he far from being able to will that of which 
 he may have a very distinct idea. 
 
 The moral sense simply furnishes the more or less con- 
 scious will with motives more or less strong according to 
 individuals, places, times, and situations. The business 
 of psychological educators is much more concerned with 
 the habits that children may acquire, and with their wills, 
 which are also developed by habitual practice, than with 
 the development of their moral conscience. The latter is 
 the blossom which will be followed by fruit; but the for- 
 mer are the roots and branches. 
 
 With the development of intelligence and thought, the 
 primitive distinction of good and evil enlarges and 
 becomes better denned. Submission to authority, and 
 docility, also increase with experience and reflection. 
 With the tendency to reflection there spring up also, little 
 by little, sympathy, the love of praise, amour-propre, the 
 susceptibility to example, the fear of reproach, the desire 
 not to be scolded and to give pleasure to those belonging 
 to one. And thus that state of mind is constituted in 
 which reflection dominates the contrary tendency and 
 renders possible the government of self. Out of all these 
 diverse elements the moral conscience is gradually formed, 
 which means to say that good intention and the moral 
 sentiment are added to the moral habits at first acquired. 
 A child may have been trained more or less easily or com- 
 pletely according to the innate dispositions of its character; 
 but at this point it is still incapable of managing itself. It 
 begins, however, to reconsider its impulsive tendencies, it 
 has a vague sentiment of its still very limited liberty, and 
 it can co-operate in the guidance of its small personality. 
 
 What touching examples we see even in little children 
 barely two years old, of self-introspection accompanied by 
 well-grounded mistrust of themselves, and the moral pain 
 of meliora video, deteriora sequor! The daughter of L. Terri, 
 while still at the age of thorough impulsiveness, when en-
 
 292 THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 treated by her mother to be good, answered more than 
 once: "I feel that I cannot be good," thus giving proof of 
 self -introspection with a sense of her weakness. "At five 
 years old, having one day been praised by her mother, she 
 said : 'To-morrow I should like to please you still more. 
 I should like to be always good. But tell me why I can't 
 be always good.' " l It must not be supposed that even at 
 five years old the most gifted and best-brought-up children 
 will always be able to keep at this relatively high level of 
 moral sentiment. Even considerably later on, they will 
 often fall back below what they may have been or seemed 
 to be at the early age of three or even two years. The 
 / important point is, that at so tender an age it should be 
 \ possible to awaken at intervals the ever fitful light of 
 ' moral reason. 2 
 
 1 Osservazioni sopra una Bambino,, in La Filosofia delle Scuole Ital- 
 ians, Oct. 1881. 
 
 2 For further development of this subject see in my book L' Education 
 des le Eerceau, chap. viL, on the "Moral Habits and the Moral Sense," 
 from page 265 to 300. 
 
 THE END.
 
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