early. There is the feeling of clothes, for instance, made up of
warmth, of touch and pressure sensations all over his skin, and of
changes in the muscular feelings from constraint, and in the internal
feelings from the effect on circulation. There are feelings of fatigue
in one position, made up of sensations of touch, of the pressure of the
body’s weight on the under surfaces of skin, of some muscular tensions,
and perhaps of several other elements. Our baby’s nurse saved her much
fretting by simply changing the position of the little body from time
to time. We ourselves are constantly moving and shifting our positions,
to relieve a pressure on the skin here, or a muscular tension there,
but the wee baby cannot so much as turn his head or move a limb at will.
Vaguest and most composite of all is what is called “common sensation,”
or “general sensation”--that feeling of comfort or discomfort, vigor
or languor, diffused through the whole body, with which we are all
familiar. It seems to be very primitive in origin--indeed, the
speculation is that this dim, pervasive feeling is the original one,
the primitive way in which animal tissue responded to light and heat
and everything, before the special senses developed, gathering the
light sensations to one focus, the sound sensations to another, and so
on. But in its present development it is also largely made up of the
sum of all the organic sensations, and even of dim overflows of feeling
from the special senses.
It is with older people notably connected with emotional states. It
varies, of course, with health and external conditions; yet each person
seems from birth to be held to a certain fixed habit in this complex
underlying condition of feeling--pleasant with one, unpleasant with
another. This fixed habit of general sensation is perhaps the secret
of what we call temperament; while its surface variations seem to be
mainly responsible for moods.
Our baby showed temperament--luckily of the easy-going and cheerful
kind--from her first day (though we could hardly see this except by
looking back afterward); and there is no reason to doubt that she
experienced some general sensation from the first. It was evidently of
a pretty neutral sort, however: the definite appearance of high comfort
and well-being did not come till later; nor were moods apparent at
first.
Now in all this one significant thing appears. Sensations had from the
first the quality of being agreeable or disagreeable. The baby could
not wish, prefer, and choose, for she had not learned to remember and
compare; but she could like and dislike. And this was shown plainly
from the first hour by expressions of face--reflex facial movements,
so firmly associated in the human race with liking and disliking that
the most inexperienced observer recognizes their meaning at once. It
is said that facial expression comes by imitation, and that the blind
are therefore deficient in it; but this is not true of these simplest
expressions: they come by inheritance, and are present in the first
hour of life. A look of content or discontent, the monotonous cry, and
vague movements of limbs, head, and features,--these are the limits of
expression of feeling in the earliest days.
It would seem that in this sense condition there was nothing that could
give the baby any feeling of inner or outer, of space or locality. We
have some glimpse of the like condition ourselves,--when people say
after an explosion, for instance, that it “seemed to be inside their
own heads,” or when we try to locate a cicada’s note, or when we feel
diffused warmth.
Here is the conception I gathered of the dim life on which the little
creature entered at birth. She took in with a dull comfort the gentle
light that fell on her eyes, seeing without any sort of attention or
comprehension the moving blurs of darkness that varied it. She felt
motions and changes; she felt the action of her own muscles; and,
after the first three or four days, disagreeable shocks of sound now
and then broke through the silence, or perhaps through an unnoticed
jumble of faint noises. She felt touches on her body from time to time,
but without the least sense of the place of the touch (this became
evident enough later, as I shall relate in its order); and steady
slight sensations of touch from her clothes, from arms that held her,
from cushions on which she lay, poured in on her.
From time to time sensations of hunger, thirst, and once or twice of
pain, made themselves felt through all the others, and mounted till
they became distressing; from time to time a feeling of heightened
comfort flowed over her, as hunger and thirst were satisfied, or
release from clothes, and the effect of the bath and rubbing on her
circulation, increased the net sense of well-being. She felt slight
and unlocated discomforts from fatigue in one position, quickly
relieved by the watchful nurse. For the rest, she lay empty-minded,
neither consciously comfortable nor uncomfortable, yet on the whole
pervaded with a dull sense of well-being. Of the people about her, of
her mother’s face, of her own existence, of desire or fear, she knew
nothing.
Yet this dim dream was flecked all through with the beginnings of later
comparison and choice. The light was varied with dark; the feelings
of passive motion, of muscular action, of touch, of sound, were all
unlike each other; the discomforts of hunger, of pain, of fatigue,
were different discomforts. The baby began from the first moment to
accumulate varied experience, which before long would waken attention,
interest, discrimination, and vivid life.
IV
THE EARLIEST DEVELOPMENTS
Out of the new-born baby’s dim life of passivity the first path was
that of vision. I noticed about the end of the second week that her
eyes no longer wandered altogether helplessly, but rested with a long
and contented gaze on bright surfaces they chanced to encounter, such
as the shining of the lamp on the white ceiling, or our faces turned
toward the light as she lay on our knees. It was not active looking,
with any power to direct the eyes, but mere staring; when the gaze
fell by chance on the pleasant light, it clung there. But something
must have come to pass, that it _could_ stop and cling to what gave it
pleasure.
I think no one has yet analyzed this earliest stage in progress toward
real seeing, though Professor Sully touches on an explanation when
he says that the eyes “maintain their attitude under stimulus of the
pleasure.”
We know that muscular action is normally caused by stimulus received
from the nerve centres, and that in the earliest days there seems
to be a good deal of random discharge of stimulus, developed by the
growth of the centres, and causing aimless movements. Now there are
two fundamental and profoundly important things about this nervous
discharge. One is that pleasure, attention, or intensity of sensation
seems to have the power of increasing it, and thus influencing the
action of the muscles. The other is that the discharge always tends to
seek the same paths it has used before, and more and more easily each
time; so that physiologists speak of it as a current deepening its
channels. It is really nothing like a flowing liquid, nor the nerve
threads along which it passes like channeled watercourses. Still, just
as a current of water will deepen a gully till it drains into itself
all the water that had spread about in shallower ditches, so the wave
of molecular change running along a nerve somehow so prepares that
nerve that by and by, instead of spreading about through any fibres
that come handy, the whole energy will drain into the accustomed ones.
Then, of course, the muscles to which these run will perform more and
more easily the accustomed acts. Some of these channels--even whole
connected systems of them--are already well prepared by inheritance,
and hence come instinctive and reflex actions; many are still to be
deepened by the baby’s own experience.
Now suppose the aimless impulse straying to the baby’s eye muscles,
making the eyes roam hither and yon; but as they reach a certain
position, they fall upon a lighted surface, and a pleasant brightness
flows back into the consciousness; and something stirs within that has
power to send an intenser current through those same fibres. For the
time, at least, that channel is deepened, the wandering impulses are
drained into it, and the eye muscles are held steady in that position.
And, in fact, with the beginning of staring the irregular movements of
head and eyes did decline, and gradually disappear.
It is an important moment that marks the beginning of even a passive
power to control the movements; and when my grandmother handed down the
rule that you should never needlessly interrupt a baby’s staring, lest
you hinder the development of power of attention, she seems to have
been psychologically sound.
A fuller and pleasanter life now seemed to pervade the whole little
body. The grimaces of vague discomfort were disappearing, and the baby
began to wear a look of satisfaction as she lay, warm and fed and dry,
gazing at some light surface. In the bath, where the release from
clothes and the stimulus to circulation from the warm water heightened
the pleasant condition of general sensation, her expression approached
real delight; the movements of her limbs were freer, and all her
muscles tenser.
The neck muscles, especially, were so far “innervated”--that is,
supplied with nervous energy--as fairly to lift her head from the
supporting hand. This was probably not as yet a real effort to hold
up the head, only a drafting of surplus energy into the neck muscles,
partly because of inherited aptitude, partly because the pleasure
received from the lifted head and better seeing tended to draw the
energy thither, just as it was drawn to the eye muscles in the case
of the staring. At least one careful observer, Mrs. Edith Elmer Wood,
records this action of the neck muscles on the first day.
It was at this period that the baby first smiled; but being forewarned
of the “colic smile,” which counterfeits so exactly the earliest
true smiles,--fleeting as these are, just touching the mouth and
vanishing,--I never felt sure whether the baby was smiling for general
contentment with life, or whether a passing twinge had crossed her
comfort and drawn her lips into the semblance of a smile; and so never
dared to record the expression till it first occurred for unmistakable
pleasure.
There must have been rapid progress going on in the clearness of
muscular and touch sensations, and in the forming of associations in
the baby’s mind; but no plain evidence of these inner processes came
till the fourth week. Then I noticed that the baby, when crying with
hunger, would hush as soon as she was taken in the arms in the position
usual in nursing, as if she recognized the preliminaries, and knew she
was about to be satisfied. She could not, in fact, have remembered or
expected anything as yet; it was not memory, but a clear instance of
the working of that great law of association by which the raw material
of the senses was to be wrought up into an orderly mental life.
The substance of the law is that when experiences have repeatedly been
had together, the occurrence of one of them (still more, of several
out of a group, as in this case) tends to bring up into consciousness
the others. It is a law that underlies psychic life as profoundly as
the law that nerve energy seeks its old channels underlies physical
life. Indeed, it is in a sense the psychic side of the same law; for
it implies that when a group of nerve centres have formerly acted
together, the action of one tends to bring on that of the rest. So,
since the baby had often experienced the feeling of that particular
position (a combination of tactile and muscular and organic sensations)
in connection with the feeling of satisfied hunger, that comfortable
feeling, the missing member of the group, came into her consciousness
along with the rest, some moments in advance of the actual satisfaction.
I have said that this is not memory, yet there is in it a germ of
memory. A past experience is brought back to consciousness; and if it
were brought back as a definite idea, instead of a vague feeling, it
would be memory.
Close on this came another great advance in vision. This was on the
twenty-fifth day, toward evening, when the baby was lying on her
grandmother’s knee by the fire, in a condition of high well-being
and content, gazing at her grandmother’s face with an expression of
attention. I came and sat down close by, leaning over the baby, so that
my face must have come within the indirect range of her vision. At that
she turned her eyes to my face and gazed at it with the same appearance
of attention, and even of some effort, shown by a slight tension of
brows and lips, then turned her eyes back to her grandmother’s face,
and again to mine, and so several times. The last time she seemed to
catch sight of my shoulder, on which a high light struck from the lamp,
and not only moved her eyes, but threw her head far back to see it
better, and gazed for some time, with a new expression on her face--“a
sort of dim and rudimentary eagerness,” says my note. She no longer
stared, but really looked.
Clear seeing, let us here recall, is not done with the whole retina,
but only with a tiny spot in the centre, the so-called “yellow spot,”
or “macula lutea.” If the image of an object falls to one side of this,
especially if it is far to one side, we get only a shapeless impression
that something is there; we “catch a glimpse of it,” as we say. In
order really to look at it we turn our eyeballs toward the object till
the image falls on the spot of clear vision. We estimate the distance
through which to turn the balls, down to minute fractions of an inch,
by the feeling in the eye muscles.
This was what the baby had done, and I do not dare to say how many
philosophical and psychological discussions are involved in her
doing it. Professor Le Conte thinks that it shows an inborn sense of
direction, since the eyes are turned, not toward the side on which
the ray strikes the retina, but toward the side from which the ray
enters the eye; that is, the baby thinks out along the line of the ray
to the object it comes from, thus putting the object outside himself,
in space, as we do. Professor Wundt, the great German psychologist, is
positive that the baby has no sense of space or direction, but gains it
by just such measurements with the eye muscles; that there is no right
nor left, up nor down, for him, but only associations between the look
of things off at one side, and the feel of the eye action that brings
them to central vision.
This means that before a baby can carry the eye always through just
the right arc to look at an object, he must have made this association
between the look of things and the feel of the action separately for
each point of the retina. It is a great deal for a baby to have learned
in three weeks; still, babies have to learn fast if they are ever to
catch up with the race; and in the early roamings of the eye they
experience over and over all manner of transits of images to and fro
across the retina. Probably, too, it was still only partially learned.
I watched now for what Preyer’s record had led me to expect as the next
development in vision--the ability to follow a moving object with the
eyes; that is, to hold the yellow spot fixed on the object as it moved,
moving the eyeball in time with it in order to do so. I used my hand to
move to and fro before the baby, and could not satisfy myself that she
followed it, though she sometimes seemed to; but the day after she was
a month old I tried a candle, and her eyes followed it unmistakably;
she even threw her head back to follow it farther. In trying this
experiment, one should always use a bright object, should make sure
the baby’s eyes are fixed on it, and then should move it very slowly
indeed, right and left.
So far, there is no necessary proof of will. Longet found that the
eyes and head of a pigeon whose cerebrum had been removed would follow
a moving light. We ourselves can sit absorbed in thought or talk, yet
follow unconsciously with our eyes the movement of a lantern along a
dark road; and if something appears on the outer edge of our vision we
often turn quite involuntarily to look. But the baby’s new expression
of intelligence and interest showed that whether she willed the
movements or not, she attended to the new impressions she was getting.
Professor Preyer noticed the same dawn of intelligence in his baby’s
face at about the same stage. And it is worth while to observe that
when I came to study my record I was surprised to find how often such
an awakening look, an access of attention, wonder, or intelligence, in
the baby’s face, had coincided with some marked step in development and
signalized its great mental importance. I should advise any one who is
observing a baby to be on the lookout for this outward and visible
sign of an inward and spiritual unfolding.
In both these visual developments the baby had proved able to use
her neck in coöperation with her eyes, throwing back her head to see
farther. It began at the same time to seem that she was really and
deliberately trying to hold up her head for the same purpose of seeing
better. She not only straightened it up more and more in the bath, but
when she was laid against one’s breast she would lift her head from
the shoulder, sometimes for twenty seconds at a time, and look about.
Preyer sets this down as the first real act of will.
The baby’s increased interest in seeing centred especially on the
faces about her, at which she gazed with rapt interest. Even during
the period of mere staring, faces had oftenest held her eyes, probably
because they were oftener brought within the range of her clearest
seeing than other light surfaces. The large, light, moving patch of
the human face (as Preyer has pointed out) coming and going in the
field of vision, and oftener chancing to hover at the point of clearest
seeing than any other object, embellished with a play of high lights
on cheeks, teeth, and eyes, is calculated to excite the highest degree
of attention a baby is capable of at a month old. So from the very
first--before the baby has yet really seen his mother--her face and
that of his other nearest friends become the most active agents in his
development, and the most interesting things in his experience.
Our baby was at this time in a way aware of the difference between
companionship and solitude. In the latter days of the first month she
would lie contentedly in the room with people near by, but would fret
if left alone. But by the end of the month she was apt to fret when she
was laid down on a chair or lounge, and to become content only when
taken into the lap. This was not yet distinct memory and desire, but it
showed that associations of pleasure had been formed with the lap, and
that she felt a vague discomfort in the absence of these.
Just before she was a month old came an advance in hearing. So far
this sense had remained little more than a capacity for being startled
or made restless by harsh sounds. I had tested it on the twenty-third
day, and found that the baby scarcely noticed the sound of an ordinary
call bell unless it was struck within about six inches of her ear, and
suddenly and sharply at that; and on the twenty-sixth day she showed no
sign of hearing single notes of the piano, struck close to her, from
the highest to the lowest. But the next day, at the sound of chords,
strongly struck, she hushed when fretting with hunger, and listened
quietly for five minutes--her first pleasant experience through the
sense of hearing.
In the following days she would lie and take in the sound of the chords
with a look of content, staring at the same time into the face of
the person who held her, as if she associated the sound with that.
Only a few days later, when she was a month old, I thought that her
pleasure in companionship was increased if she was talked and crooned
to; and it is likely that by this time, though she had not hitherto
noticed voices, she was beginning to get them associated with the human
face--probably to the enhancement of its charm.
There were signs now, too, that touch sensations, in their principal
seat, the lips, were becoming a source of pleasure. The first smile
that I could conscientiously record occurred the day before the
baby was a month old, and it was provoked by the touch of a finger
on her lip; and a day or two later she smiled repeatedly at touches
on her lip. The day before she was a month old, also, when her lips
were brought up to the nipple, she laid hold upon it with them--the
first seizing of any sort, for her hands were still in their original
helplessness, waving vaguely about at the will of the nerve currents.
It is plain that the eyes led in the development of the psychic life.
Yet the baby was still far from real seeing. Professor Preyer believes
that there is at this stage no “accommodation” of the eyes to near
and far, although they can now be focused for right and left: that
is, both yellow spots can be brought to bear in unison on an object,
but the lenses do not yet adjust themselves to different distances.
Though the baby may have perceived direction, then, she could not have
perceived depth in space. It was only when an object chanced to be at
the distance for which her eyes were naturally adjusted that she could
have seen it clearly.
Nor is it likely that even then she saw anything as a definite outline,
but only as an undefined patch. The spot of clear vision in our eyes
is very small (a twenty-five cent piece would cover all the letters I
can take in at once on this page, if I do not let my eyes move in the
least), and the only way we ourselves see anything in definite outline
is by running our eyes swiftly over its surface and around its edges,
with long trained and unconscious skill. The baby had not yet learned
to do this. Her world of vision, much as it pleased her, was still only
patches of light and dark, with bits of glitter and motion. She could
turn her eyes and lift her head a little to make the vision clearer;
but except about her neck, eyes, and in a slight degree her lips,
she had no control of her body. She had gained much in grouping and
associating together her experiences, yet on the whole she still lived
among disjointed impressions.
In the light of such interpretations, the speculative attempts to
arrange a system of cradle education become futile. What can a swinging
ball do for a pupil whose sense apparatus is not yet in condition to
see the outline of the ball definitely? Froebel himself could not
have been expected to know much of the condition of a baby’s sense
apparatus; but modern Froebelians would be better apostles of his
almost Messianic inspiration if they were willing to throw frankly
aside his unfounded speculations and his obsolete science. The letter
killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
Meanwhile, nature has provided an educational appliance almost
ideally adapted to the child’s sense condition, in the mother’s
face, hovering close above him, smiling, laughing, nodding, with all
manner of delightful changes in the high lights; in the thousand
little meaningless caressing sounds, the singing, talking, calling,
that proceed from it; the patting, cuddling, lifting, and all the
ministrations that the baby feels while gazing at it, and associates
with it, till finally they group together and round out into the idea
of his mother as a whole.
Our baby’s mother rather resented the idea of being to her baby only a
collection of detached phenomena, instead of a mamma; but the more you
think of it the more flattering it is to be thus, as it were, dissolved
into your elements and incorporated item by item into the very
foundations of your baby’s mental life. Herein is hinted much of the
philosophy of personality; and Professor Baldwin has written a solid
book, mainly to show from the development of babies and little children
that all other people are part of each of us, and each of us is part of
all other people, and so there is really no separate personality, but
we are all one spirit, if we did but know it.
V
BEGINNINGS OF EMOTION AND PROGRESS IN SENSE POWERS