CHAPTER IV.

THE MIND OF THE CHILD--CHILD PSYCHOLOGY.

One of the most interesting chapters of modern psychology is that

which deals with the child. This is also one of the topics of general

concern, since our common humanity reacts with greater geniality upon

the little ones, in whom we instinctively see innocence and

simplicity. The popular interest in children has been, however--as

uncharitable as it may seem to say it--of very little service to the

scientific investigation of childhood. Even to-day, when a greater

body of valuable results are being secured, the main danger to the

proper study of the child's mind comes from the over-enthusiasm and

uninstructed assurance of some of its friends. Especially is this the

case in America, where "child study" has become a fad to be pursued by

parents and teachers who know little about the principles of

scientific method, and where influential educators have enlisted

so-called "observers" in taking indiscriminate notes on the doings of

children with no definite problem in view, and with no criticism of

their procedure. It is in place, therefore, to say clearly, at the

outset, that this chapter does not mean to stimulate parents or

unpsychological readers to report observations; and further to say

also that in the mind of the writer the publications made lately of

large numbers of replies to "syllabi" are for the most part worthless,

because they heap together observations obtained by persons of every

degree of competence and incompetence.

On the other hand, the requisites here, as in every other sphere of

exact observation, are clear enough. The student of the child's mind

should have a thorough knowledge of the principles of general

psychology, in order to know what is characteristic of the child when

he sees it, and what is exceptional; and he should also have enough

originality in his ideas and interpretations to catch the valuable in

the child's doings, distinguishing it from the commonplace, and to

plan situations and even experiments which will give him some control

upon those actions of the child which seem to be worth it. The need

of these qualities is seen in the history of the problems of the

child's growth which have been taken up even by the most competent

psychologists. The results show a gradual attainment of control over

the problem in hand, each observer criticising the method and results

of his predecessor until certain rules of observation and experiment

have been evolved which allow of the repetition and repeated

observation of the events of the child's life.

As illustrating the sort of problems in which there has been this

careful and critical work, I may instance these: the child's reflex

movements, the beginnings and growth of sensation, such as colour, the

rise of discrimination and preference, the origin of right and

left-handedness, the rise, mechanism, and meaning of imitation, the

acquisition of speech and handwriting, the growth of the child's sense

of personality and of his social consciousness, and the laws of

physical growth, as bearing upon mental development. In all these

cases, however, there is again a greater and a less exactness. The

topics with the reports of results which I am going on to give may be

taken, however, as typical, and as showing the direction of complete

knowledge rather than as having in any one case approached it.

Before we take up particular questions, however, a word may be allowed

upon the general bearings of the study of the child's mind. I do this

the more willingly, since it is still true, in spite of the hopeful

outlook for positive results, that it is mainly the willingness of

psychology to recognise the problems and work at them that makes the

topic important at present. To investigate the child by scientific

methods is really to bring into psychology a procedure which has

revolutionized the natural sciences; and it is destined to

revolutionize the moral sciences by making them also in a great

measure natural sciences. The new and important question about the

mind which is thus recognised is this: _How did it grow?_ What light

upon its activity and nature can we get from a positive knowledge of

its early stages and processes of growth? This at once introduces

other questions: How is the growth of the child related to that of the

animals?--how, through heredity and social influences, to the growth

of the race and of the family and society in which he is brought up?

All this can be comprehended only in the light of the doctrine of

evolution, which has rejuvenated the sciences of life; and we are now

beginning to see a rejuvenation of the sciences of mind from the same

point of view. This is what is meant when we hear it said that

psychology is becoming "genetic."

The advantages to be derived from the study of young children from

this point of view may be briefly indicated.

1. In the first place, the facts of the infant consciousness are very

simple; that is, they are the child's sensations or memories simply,

not his own observations of them. In the adult mind the disturbing

influence of self-observation is a matter of notorious moment. It is

impossible for me to report exactly what I feel, for the observation

of it by my attention alters its character. My volition also is a

complex thing, involving my personal pride and self-consciousness. But

the child's emotion is as spontaneous as a spring. The effects of it

in the mental life come out in action, pure and uninfluenced by

calculation and duplicity and adult reserve. There is around every one

of us adults a web of convention and prejudice of our own making. Not

only do we reflect the social formalities of our environment, and thus

lose the distinguishing spontaneities of childhood, but each of us

builds up his own little world of seclusion and formality with

himself. We are subject, as Bacon said, not only to "idols of the

forum," but also to "idols of the den."

The child, on the contrary, has not learned his own importance, his

pedigree, his beauty, his social place, his religion; he has not

observed himself through all these and countless other lenses of time,

place, and circumstance. He has not yet turned himself into an idol nor

the world into a temple; and we can study him apart from the complex

accretions which are the later deposits of his self-consciousness.

2. The study of children is often the only means of testing the truth

of our analyses. If we decide that a certain mental state is due to a

union of simpler elements, then we may appeal to the proper period of

child life to see the union taking place. The range of growth is so

enormous from the infant to the adult, and the beginnings of the

child's mental life are so low in the scale, in the matter of mental

endowment, that there is hardly a question of analysis now under

debate in psychology which may not be tested by this method.

At this point it is that child psychology is more valuable than the

study of the mind of animals. The latter never become men, while

children do. The animals represent in some few respects a branch of

the tree of growth in advance of man, while being in many other

respects very far behind him. In studying animals we are always

haunted by the fear that the analogy from him to man may not hold;

that some element essential to the development of the human mind may

not be in the animal at all. Even in such a question as the

localization of the functions of the brain described later on, where

the analogy is one of comparative anatomy and only secondarily of

psychology, the monkey presents analogies with man which dogs do not.

But in the study of children we may be always sure that a normal child

has in him the promise of a normal man.

3. Again, in the study of the child's mind we have the added advantage

of a corresponding simplicity on the bodily side; we are able to take

account of the physiological processes at a time when they are

relatively simple--that is, before the nervous system has grown to

maturity. For example, psychology used to hold that we have a "speech

faculty," an inborn mental endowment which is incapable of further

analysis; but support for the position is wanting when we turn to the

brain of the infant. Not only do we fail to find the series of centres

now known to be the "speech zone," but even those of them which we do

find have not yet taken up this function, either alone or together. In

other words, the primary object of each of the various centres

involved is not speech, but some other and simpler function; and

speech arises by development from a union of these separate functions.

4. In observing young children, a more direct application of

experiment is possible. By "experiment" here I mean both experiment

on the senses and also experiment directly on consciousness by

suggestion, social influence, etc. In experimenting on adults, great

difficulties arise through the fact that reactions--such as performing

a voluntary movement when a signal is heard, etc.--are complicated by

deliberation, habit, custom, choice, etc. The subject hears a sound,

identifies it, and presses a button--_if he choose_ and agree to do

so. What goes on in this interval between the advent of the incoming

nerve process and the discharge of the outgoing nerve process?

Something, at any rate, which represents a brain process of great

complexity. Now, anything that fixes or simplifies the brain process,

in so far gives greater certainty to the results. For this reason

experiments on reflex actions are valuable and decisive where similar

experiments on voluntary actions are uncertain and of doubtful value.

Now the child's mind is relatively simple, and so offers a field for

more fruitful experiment; this is seen in the reactions of the infant

to strong stimuli, such as bright colours, etc., as related further

on.

With this inadequate review of the advantages of infant psychology, it

is well also to point out the dangers of the abuse of it. Such dangers

are real. The very simplicity which seems to characterize the life of

the child is often extremely misleading, and this because the

simplicity in question is sometimes ambiguous. Two actions of the

child may appear equally simple; but one may be an adaptive action,

learned with great pains and really very complex, while the other may

be inadaptive and really simple. Children differ under the law of

heredity very remarkably, even in the simplest manifestations of their

conscious lives. It is never safe to say without qualification: "This

child did, consequently all children must." The most we can usually

say in observing single children is: "This child did, consequently

another child may."

Speaking more positively, the following remarks may be useful to those

who have a mind to observe children:

1. In the first place, we can fix no absolute time in the history of

the child at which a certain mental process takes its rise. The

observations, now quite extensively recorded, and sometimes quoted as

showing that the first year, or the second year, etc., brings such and

such developments, tend, on the contrary, to show that such divisions

do not hold in any strict sense. Like any other organic growth, the

nervous system may develop faster under more favourable conditions, or

more slowly under less favourable; and the growth of the mind is

largely dependent upon the growth of the brain. Only in broad outline

and within very wide limits can such periods be marked off at all.

2. The possibility of the occurrence of a mental state at a particular

time must be distinguished from its necessity. The occurrence of a

single clearly observed fact is decisive only against the theory

according to which its occurrence under the given conditions may not

occur. For example, the very early adaptive movements of the infant in

receiving its food can not be due to intelligence and will; but the

case is still open as to the question what is the reason of their

presence--i.e., how much nervous development is present, how much

experience is necessary, etc. It is well to emphasize the fact that

one case may be decisive in overthrowing a theory, but the conditions

are seldom simple enough to make one case decisive in establishing a

theory.

3. It follows, however, from the principle of growth itself that the

order of development of the main mental functions is constant, and

normally free from great variations; consequently, the most fruitful

observations of children are those which show that such an act was

present _before another_. The complexity becomes finally so remarkable

that there seems to be no before or after at all in mental things; but

if the child's growth shows a stage in which any process is clearly

absent, we have at once light upon the laws of growth. For instance:

if a single case is conclusively established of a child's drawing an

inference before it begins to use words or significant vocal sounds,

the one case is as good as a thousand to show that thought may develop

in some degree independently of spoken language.

4. While the most direct results are acquired by systematic

experiments with a given point in view, still general observations

carefully recorded by competent persons, are important for the

interpretation which a great many such records may afford in the end.

In the multitude of experiences here, as everywhere, there is

strength. Such observations should cover everything about the

child--his movements, cries, impulses, sleep, dreams, personal

preferences, muscular efforts, attempts at expression, games,

favourites, etc.--and should be recorded in a regular daybook at the

time of occurrence. What is important and what is not, is, as I have

said, something to be learned; and it is extremely desirable that any

one contemplating such observations should acquaint himself beforehand

with the principles of general psychology and physiology, and should

seek also the practical advice of a trained observer.

As yet many of the observations which we have in this field were made

by the average mother, who knows less about the human body than she

does about the moon or the wild flowers, or by the average father, who

sees his child for an hour a day, when the boy is dressed up, and who

has never slept in the same room with him--let alone the same bed!--in

his life; by people who have never heard the distinction between

reflex and voluntary action, or that between nervous adaptation and

conscious choice. The difference between the average mother and the

good psychologist is this: she has no theories, he has; he has no

interests, she has. She may bring up a family of a dozen and not be

able to make a single trustworthy observation; he maybe able, from one

sound of one yearling, to confirm theories of the neurologist and

educator, which are momentous for the future training and welfare of

the child.

As for experimenting with children, only the psychologist should

undertake it. The connections between the body and the mind are so

close in infancy, the mere animal can do so much to ape reason, and

the child is so helpless under the leading of instinct, impulse, and

external necessity, that the task is excessively difficult--to say

nothing of the extreme delicacy and tenderness of the budding tendrils

of the mind. But others do experiment! Every time we send a child out

of the home to the school, we subject him to experiment of the most

serious and alarming kind. He goes into the hands of a teacher who is

often not only not wise unto the child's salvation, but who is,

perchance, a machine for administering a single experiment to an

infinite variety of children. It is perfectly certain that a great

many of our children are irretrievably damaged or hindered in their

mental and moral development in the school; but we can not be at all

sure that they would fare any better if they were taught at home! The

children are experimented with so much and so unwisely, in any case,

that possibly a little intentional experiment, guided by real insight

and psychological information, would do them good.

_Methods of experimenting with Children._--In endeavouring to bring

such questions as the degree of memory, recognition, association,

etc., present in an infant, to a practical test, considerable

embarrassment has always been experienced in understanding the child's

vocal and other responses. Of course, the only way a child's mind can

be studied is through its expressions, facial, lingual, vocal,

muscular; and the first question--i.e., What did the infant do? must

be followed by a second--i.e., What did his doing that mean? The

second question is, as I have said, the harder question, and the one

which requires more knowledge and insight. It is evident, on the

surface, that the further away we get in the child's life from simple

inherited or reflex responses, the more complicated do the processes

become, and the greater becomes the difficulty of analyzing them, and

arriving at a true picture of the real mental condition which lies

back of them.

To illustrate this confusion, I may cite one of the few problems which

psychologists have attempted to solve by experiments on children: the

determination of the order of rise of the child's perceptions of the

different colours. The first series of experiments consisted in

showing the child various colours and requiring him to name them, the

results being expressed in percentages of correct answers to the whole

number. Now this experiment involves no less than four different

questions, and the results give absolutely no clew to their

separation. It involves:

1. The child's distinguishing different colours displayed

simultaneously before it, together with the complete development of

the eyes for colour sensation. 2. The child's ability to recognise or

identify a colour after having seen it once. 3. An association between

the child's colour seeing and word hearing and speaking memories, by

which the proper name for the colours is brought up in his mind. 4.

Equally ready facility in the pronunciation of the various names of

the colours which he recognises; and there is the further

embarrassment, that any such process which involves association of

ideas, is as varied as the lives of children. The single fact that

speech is acquired long after objects and some colours are

distinguished, shows that results reached by this method have very

little value as far as the problem of the first perception of colours

is concerned.

That the fourth element pointed out above is a real source of

confusion is shown by the fact that children recognise many words

which they can not readily pronounce. When this was realized, a

second phase in the development of the problem arose. A colour was

named, and then the child was required to pick out that colour. This

gave results different from those reached by the first method, blue

and red leading the list in correct answers by the first method, while

by this second method yellow led, and blue came near the end of the

list.

The further objection that colours might be distinguished before the

word names are learned, or that colour words might be interchanged or

confused by the child, gave rise to what we may call the third stage

in the statement of the problem. The method of "recognition" took the

place of the method of "naming." This consisted in showing to a child

a coloured disk, without naming it, and then asking him to pick out

the same colour from a number of coloured disks.

This reduces the question to the second of the four I have named

above. It is the usual method of testing for colour blindness, in

which, from defects of vision, certain colours can not be perceived at

all. It answers very well for colour blindness; for what we really

want to learn in the case of a sailor or a signal-man is whether he

can recognise a given signal when it is repeated; that is, does he

know green or red to be the same as his former experience of green or

red? But it is evident that there is still a more fundamental question

in the matter--the real question of colour perception. It is quite

possible that a child might not recognise an isolated colour when he

could really very well distinguish the colours lying side by side. The

last question, then, is this: When does the child get the different

colour _Sensations_ (not recognitions), and in what order?

To solve this question it would seem that experiments should be made

upon younger children. The results described above were all secured

after the children had made considerable progress in learning to

speak.

To meet this requirement another method may be used which can be

applied to children less than a year old. The colours are shown, and

the child led to grasp after them. This method is of such a character

as to yield a series of experiments whose results are in terms of the

most fundamental movements of the infant; it can be easily and

pleasantly conducted; and it is of wide application. The child's hand

movements are nearly ideal in this respect. The hand reflects the

child's first feelings, and becomes the most mobile organ of his

volition, except his organs of speech. We find spontaneous arm and

hand movements, reflex movements, reaching-out movements, grasping

movements, imitative movements, manipulating movements, and voluntary

efforts--all these, in order, reflecting the development of the mind.

To illustrate this method, I may cite certain results reached by

myself on the questions of colour and distance perception, and

right-handedness in the child.

_Distance and Colour Perception._--I undertook at the beginning of my

child H.'s ninth month to experiment with her with a view to arriving

at the exact state of her colour perception, and also to investigate

her sense of distance. The arrangements consisted in this instance in

giving the infant a comfortable sitting posture, kept constant by a

band passing around her chest and fastened securely to the back of her

chair. Her arms were left bare and quite free in their movements.

Pieces of paper of different colours were exposed before her, at

varying distances, front, right, and left. This was regulated by a

framework, consisting of a horizontal rod graded in inches, projecting

from the back of the chair at a level with her shoulder and parallel

with her arm when extended straight forward, and carrying on it

another rod, also graded in inches, at right angles to the first. This

second rod was thus a horizontal line directly in front of the child,

parallel with a line connecting her shoulders, and so equally distant

for both hands. This second rod was made to slide upon the first, so

as to be adjusted at any desired distance from the child. On this

second rod the colours, etc., were placed in succession, the object

being to excite the child to reach for them. So far from being

distasteful to the infant, I found that, with pleasant suggestions

thrown about the experiments, the whole procedure gave her much

gratification, and the affair became one of her pleasant daily

occupations. After each sitting she was given a reward of some kind. I

give the results, both for colour and distance, of 217 experiments. Of

these 111 were with five colours and 106 with ordinary newspaper

(chosen as a relatively neutral object, which would have no colour

value and no association, to the infant).

_Colour._--The colours range themselves in the order of

attractiveness--blue, red, white, green, and brown. Disregarding

white, the difference between blue and red is very slight, compared

with that between any other two. This confirms the results of the

second method described above. Brown, to my child--as tested in this

way--seemed to be about as neutral as could well be. A similar

distaste for brown has been noticed by others. White, on the other

hand, was more attractive than green. I am sorry that my list did not

include yellow. The newspaper was, at reaching distance (9 to 10

inches) and a little more (up to 14 inches), as attractive as the

average of the colours, and even as much so as the red; but this is

probably due to the fact that the newspaper experiments came after a

good deal of practice in reaching after colours, and a more exact

association between the stimulus and its distance. At 15 inches and

over, the newspaper was refused in 93 per cent of the cases, while

blue was refused at that distance in only 75 per cent, and red in 83

per cent.

_Distance._--In regard to the question of distance, the child

persistently refused to reach for anything put 16 inches or more away

from her. At 15 inches she refused 91 per cent of all the cases, 90

per cent of the colour cases, and, as I have said, 93 per cent of the

newspaper cases. At nearer distances we find the remarkable uniformity

with which the safe-distance association works at this early age. At

14 inches only 14 per cent of all the cases were refused, and at 13

inches only about 7 per cent. There was a larger percentage of

refusals at 11 and 12 inches than at 13 and 14 inches, a result due to

the influence of the brown, which was refused consistently when more

than 10 inches away. The fact that there were no refusals to reach for

anything exposed within reaching distance (10 inches)--other

attractive objects being kept away--shows two things; (1) the very

fine estimation visually of the distance represented by the

arm-length; and (2) the great uniformity at this age of the phenomenon

of Motor Suggestion upon which this method of child study is based,

and which is referred to again below. In respect to the first point,

it will be remembered that the child does not begin to reach for

anything that it sees until about the fourth or sixth week; so it is

evident at what a remarkably fast rate those obscure factors of size,

perspective, light and shade, etc., which signify distance to the eye,

become associated with arm movements of reaching. This method, applied

with proper precautions, obviates many of the difficulties of the

others. There are certain requirements of proper procedure, however,

which should never be neglected by any one who experiments with young

children.

In the first place, the child is peculiarly susceptible to the appeals

of change, novelty, chance, or happy suggestion; and often the failure

to respond to a stimulus is due to distraction or to discomfort rather

than to lack of intrinsic interest. Again, fatigue is a matter of

considerable importance. In respect to fatigue, I should say that the

first signs of restlessness, or arbitrary loss of interest, in a

series of stimulations, is sufficient warning, and all attempts at

further experimenting should cease. Often the child is in a state of

indisposition, of trifling nervous irritability, etc.; this should be

detected beforehand, and then nothing should be undertaken. No series

longer than three trials should be attempted without changing the

child's position, resting its attention with a song, or a game, etc.,

and thus leading it fresh to its task again. Furthermore, no single

stimulus, as a colour, should be twice repeated without a change to

some other, since the child's eagerness or alertness is somewhat

satisfied by the first effort, and a new thing is necessary to bring

him out to full exercise again. After each effort or two the child

should be given the object reached for to hold or play with for a

moment; otherwise he grows to apprehend that the whole affair is a

case of "Tantalus." In all these matters very much depends upon the

knowledge and care of the experimenter, and his ability to keep the

child in a normal condition of pleasurable muscular exercise

throughout.

In performing colour experiments, several requirements would appear to

be necessary for exact results. Should not the colours chosen be equal

in purity, intensity, lustre, illumination, etc.? In reference to

these differences, I think only that degree of care need be exercised

which good comparative judgment provides. Colours of about equal

objective intensity, of no gloss, of relatively evident spectral

purity, under constant illumination--this is all that is required. The

variations due to the grosser factors I have mentioned--such as

condition of attention, physical unrest, disturbing noises, sights,

etc.--are of greater influence than any of these more recondite

variations in the stimulus. Intensity and lustre, however, are

certainly important. It is possible, by carefully choosing a room of

pretty constant daylight illumination, and setting the experiments at

the same hour each day, to secure a regular degree of brightness if

the colours themselves are equally bright; and lustre may be ruled out

by using coloured wools or blotting-papers. The papers used in the

experiments given above were coloured blotting-papers. The omission of

yellow is due to the absence, in the neighbourhood, of a satisfactory

yellow paper.

The method now described may be further illustrated by the following

experiments on the use of the hands by the young child.

_The Origin of Right-handedness._--The question, "Why are we right or

left-handed?" has exercised the speculative ingenuity of many men. It

has come to the front anew in recent years, in view of the advances made

in the general physiology of the nervous system; and certainly we are

now in a better position to set the problem intelligently and to hope

for its solution. Hitherto the actual conditions of the rise of

"dextrality" in young children--as the general fact of uneven-handedness

may be called--have not been closely observed. It was to gain light,

therefore, upon the facts themselves that the experiments described in

the following pages were carried out.

My child H. was placed in a comfortable sitting posture, the arms left

bare and free in their movement, and allowed to reach for objects placed

before her in positions exactly determined and recorded by the simple

arrangement of sliding rods already described. The experiments took

place at the same hour daily, for a period extending from her fourth to

her tenth month. These experiments were planned with very great care and

with especial view to the testing of several hypotheses which, although

superficial to those who have studied physiology, yet constantly recur

in publications on this subject. Among these theories certain may be

mentioned with regard to which my experiments were conclusive. It has

frequently been held that a child's right-handedness arises from the

nurse's or mother's constant method of carrying it, the child's hand

which is left free being more exercised, and so becoming stronger. This

theory is ambiguous as regards both mother and child. The mother, if

right-handed, would carry the child on the left arm, in order to work

with the right arm. This I find an invariable tendency with myself and

with nurses and mothers whom I have observed. But this would leave the

child's left arm free, and so a right-handed mother would be found with

a left-handed child! Again, if the mother or nurse be left-handed, the

child would tend to be right-handed. Or if, as is the case in civilized

countries, nurses largely replace the mothers, it would be necessary

that most of the nurses be left-handed in order to make most of the

children right-handed. Now, none of these deductions are true. Further,

the child, as a matter of fact, holds on with both hands, however it is

itself held.

Another theory maintains that the development of right-handedness is

due to differences in weight of the two lateral halves of the body;

this tends to bring more strain on one side than the other, and to

give more exercise, and so more development, to that side. This

evidently assumes that children are not right or left-handed before

they learn to stand. This my results given below show to be false.

Again, we are told that infants get right-handed by being placed on

one side too much for sleep; this can be shown to have little force

also when the precaution is taken to place the child alternately on

its right and left sides for its sleeping periods.

In the case of the child H., certain precautions were carefully

enforced. She was never carried about in arms at all, never walked

with when crying or sleepless; she was frequently turned over in her

sleep; she was not allowed to balance herself on her feet until a

later period than that covered by the experiments. Thus the conditions

of the rise of the right-handed era were made as simple and uniform as

possible.

The experiments included, besides reaching for colours, a great many

of reaching for other objects, at longer and shorter distances, and in

unsymmetrical directions. I give some details of the results of the

experiments in which simple objects were used, extending over a period

of four months, from the fifth to the ninth in her life. The number of

experiments at each sitting varied from ten to forty, the position of

the child being reversed as to light from windows, position of

observation, etc., after half of each series.

No trace of preference for either hand was discernible during this

period; indeed, the neutrality was as complete as if it had been

arranged beforehand, or had followed the throwing of dice.

I then conceived the idea that possibly a severer distance test might

affect the result and show a marked preferential response by one hand

over the other. I accordingly continued to use a neutral stimulus, but

placed it from twelve to fifteen inches away from the child. This

resulted in very hard straining on her part, with all the signs of

physical effort (explosive breathing sounds resulting from the setting

of the larynx, rush of blood to the head, seen in the flushing of the

face, etc.). The number of experiments in each series was

intentionally made very small, from one to twelve, in order to avoid

fatigue.

The results were now very interesting. During the month ending June

15th the child showed no decided preference for either hand in

reaching straight before her within the easy reaching distance of ten

inches, but a slight balance in favour of the left hand; yet she was

right-handed to a marked degree during the same period as regards

movements which required effort or strain, such as grasping for

objects twelve to fifteen inches distant. For the greater distances,

the left hand was used in only five cases as against seventy-four

cases of the use of the right hand; and further, all these five cases

were twelve-inch distances, the left hand being used absolutely not at

all in the forty-five cases at longer distances.

In order to test this further, I varied the point of exposure of the

stimulus to the right or left, aiming thus to attract the hand on one

side or the other, and so to determine whether the growth of such a

preference was limited to experiences of convenience in reaching to

adjacent local objects, etc.

The deviation to the left in front of the body only called out the

right hand to greater exertion, while the left hand fell into still

greater disuse. This seems to show that "dextrality" is not derived

from the experience of the individual in using either hand

predominantly for reaching, grasping, holding, etc., within the

easiest range of that hand. The right hand intruded regularly upon the

domain of the left.

Proceeding upon the clew thus obtained, a clew which seems to suggest

that the hand preference is influenced by the stimulus to the eye, I

introduced hand observations into a series of experiments already

mentioned above on the same child's perception of the different

colours; thinking that the colour stimulus which represented the

strongest inducement to the child to reach might have the same effect

in determining the use of the right hand as the increased distance in

the experiments already described. This inference is proved to be

correct by the results.

It should be added that in all cases in which both hands were used

together, each hand was called out with evident independence of the

other, both about the same time, and both carried energetically to the

goal. In many other cases in which either right or left hand is given

in the results, the other hand also moved, but in a subordinate and

aimless way. There was a very marked difference between the use of

both hands in some cases, and of one hand followed by, or accompanied

by, the other in other cases. It was very rare that the second hand

did not thus follow or accompany the first; and this was extremely

marked in the violent reaching for which the right hand was mainly

used. This movement was almost invariably accompanied by an objectless

and fruitless symmetrical movement of the other hand.

The results of the entire series of experiments on the use of the

hands may be stated as follows, mainly in the words in which they were

summarily reported some time ago:

1. I found no continued preference for either hand as long as there

were no violent muscular exertions made (based on 2,187 systematic

experiments in cases of free movement of hands near the body--i. e.,

right hand, 577 cases; left hand, 568 cases--a difference of 9 cases;

both hands, 1,042 cases; the difference of 9 cases being too slight to

have any meaning); the period covered being from the child's sixth to

her tenth month inclusive.

2. Under the same conditions, the tendency to use both hands together

was about double the tendency to use either (seen from the number of

cases of the use of both hands in the figures given above).

3. A distinct preference for the right hand in violent efforts in

reaching became noticeable in the seventh and eighth months.

Experiments during the eighth month on this cue gave, in 80 cases,

right hand, 74 cases; left hand, 5 cases; both hands, 1 case. This was

true in two very distinct classes of cases: first, reaching for

objects, neutral as regards colour (newspaper, etc.), at more than the

reaching distance; and, second, reaching for bright colours at any

distance. Under the stimulus of bright colours, from 86 cases, 84 were

right-hand cases and 2 left-hand. Right-handedness had accordingly

developed under pressure of muscular effort in the sixth and seventh

months, and showed itself also under the influence of a strong colour

stimulus to the eye.

4. Up to this time the child had not learned to stand or to creep;

hence the development of one hand more than the other is not due to

differences in weight between the two longitudinal halves of the body.

As she had not learned to speak or to utter articulate sounds with

much distinctness, we may say also that right or left-handedness may

develop while the speech centres are not yet functioning. Further, the

right hand is carried over after objects on the left side, showing

that habit in reaching does not determine its use.

_Theoretical_.--Some interesting points arise in connection with the

interpretation of these facts. If it be true that the order of rise of

mental and physiological functions is constant, then for this question

the results obtained in the case of one child, if accurate, would hold

for others apart from any absolute time determination. We should

expect, therefore, that these results would be confirmed by

experiments on other children, and this is the only way their

correctness can be tested.

If, when tested, they should be found correct, they would be

sufficient answer to several of the theories of right-handedness

heretofore urged, as has been already remarked. The rise of the

phenomenon must be sought, therefore, in more deep-going facts of

physiology than such theories supply. Furthermore, if we go lower in

the animal scale than man, analogies for the kinds of experience which

are urged as reasons for right-handedness are not present; animals do

not carry their young, nor pat them to sleep, nor do animals shake

hands!

A full discussion would lead us to the conclusion that dextrality is

due to a difference in development in the two hemispheres of the

brain, that these differences are hereditary, and that they show

themselves toward the end of the first year.

It is a singular circumstance that right-handedness and speech are

controlled by the same hemisphere of the brain and from contiguous

areas. It would explain this--and at the same time it seems probable

from other considerations--if we found that right-handedness was first

used for expression before speech; and that speech has arisen from

the setting aside, for further development, of the area in the brain

first used for right-handedness. Musical expression has its seat in or

near the same lobe of the brain.

_The Child's Mental Development in General_.--The actual development

of the child, as observations from many sources indicate it, may be

sketched very briefly in its main outlines. It is probable that the

earliest consciousness is simply a mass of touch and muscular

sensations experienced in part before birth. Shortly after birth the

child begins to connect his impressions with one another and to show

Memory. But both memory and Association are very weak, and depend upon

intense stimulations, such as bright lights, loud noises, etc. The

things which most effect him at these early stages are those which

bring him into conditions of sharp physical pain or give him acute

pleasure. Yet it is a remarkable fact that at birth the pain reflex is

wanting. His whole life up to about the fourth month turns upon his

organic and vegetative needs. At three months the young child will

forget his mother or nurse after a very few days. Attention begins to

arise about the end of the first quarter year, appearing first in

response to bright lights and loud sounds, and being for a

considerable time purely reflex, drawn here and there by the

successive impressions which the environment makes. With lights and

sounds, however, movements also attract the infant's attention very

early; and the passage from reflex attention to a sort of vague

interest seems to arise first in connection with the movements of the

persons about him. This interest goes on to develop very rapidly in

the second half year, in connection more particularly with the

movements which are associated with the child's own comfort and

discomfort. The association of muscular sensations with those of touch

and sight serves to give him his first clear indications of the

positions of his own members and of other objects. His discrimination

of what belongs to his own body is probably aided by so-called "double

touch"--the fact that when he touches his own body, as in touching his

foot with the hand, he has two sensations, one in the foot and the

other in the hand. This is not the case when he touches other objects,

and he soon learns the distinction, getting the outlines of his own

body marked out in a vague way. The learning of the localities on his

body which he can not see, however, lags far behind. The movements of

his limbs in active exploration, accompanied by sight, enables him to

build up his knowledge of the world about him. Learning this he soon

falls to "experimenting" with the things of space. Thus he begins to

find out how things fit together, and what their uses are.

On the side of his movements we find him going through a series of

remarkable adaptations to his environment. At the beginning his

movements are largely random discharges, or reflexes of an instinctive

character, such as sucking. Yet in the first month he shows the

beginning of adaptation to the suggestions of his daily life, the

first manifestations of acquired Habit. He learns when and how long he

is expected to sleep, when and how much to eat; he very soon finds out

the peculiar touch and vocal tones of this person or that, and acts

upon these distinctions. He gets to know the meaning of his food

bottle, to understand the routine movements of persons about the

room, and the results of violations of their order. His hat, wraps,

carriage, become in the first half year signals to him of the outdoor

excursion. He no longer bobs his head about when held erect, and

begins to control his natural processes. The remarkable thing about

all these adaptations is that they occur before the infant can in any

sense be said to have a Will; for, as has been said, the fibres of the

brain necessary to voluntary action--in the cortex of the

hemispheres--are not yet formed.

The realization of this extraordinary adaptiveness of the very young

child should save parents many an anxious day and sleepless night.

There is practically nothing more easy than to impress upon the child

whatever habits of daily--and nightly!--routine one wishes to give

him, if he be taken early enough. The only requirements are knowledge

of what is good for him, and then _inviolable regularity_ in

everything that concerns him. Under this treatment he will become as

"obstinate" in being "good" as the opposite so-called indulgent or

capricious treatment always make him in being "bad." There is no

reason whatever that he should be walked with or held, that he should

be taken up when he cries, that he should be trotted when he awakes,

or that he should have a light by night. Things like this are simply

bad habits for which the parents have themselves to thank. The child

adapts himself to his treatment, and it is his treatment that his

habits reflect.

During the second half-year--sooner or later in particular cases--the

child is ready to begin to imitate. Imitation is henceforth, for the

following few years, the most characteristic thing about his action.

He first imitates movements, later sounds, especially vocal sounds.

His imitations themselves also show progress, being at first what is

called "simple imitation" (repeating a distinction already spoken of

in the chapter on animals), as when the child lies in bed in the

morning and repeats the same sound over and over again. He hears his

own voice and imitates it. In this sort of imitation he simply allows

his instinct to reproduce what he hears without control or

interference from him. He does not improve, but goes on making the

same sounds with the same mistakes again and again. But a little later

he begins what is called "persistent imitation"--the "try-try-again,"

already spoken of--which is a very different thing. Persistent

imitation shows unmistakably the presence of will. The child is not

satisfied with simple imitation or mere repetition, whether it be good

or bad in its results. He now sees his errors and aims consciously to

improve. Note the child's struggles to speak a word right by imitation

of the pronunciation of others. And he succeeds. He gradually gets his

muscles under control by persistence in his try-try-again.

Then he goes further--about the beginning of his second year, usually.

He gets the idea that imitation is the way to learn, and turns all his

effort into imitations experimentally carried out. He is now ready to

learn most of the great processes of his later culture. Speech,

writing, this special accomplishment and that, are all learned by

experimental imitation.

The example of the child's trying to draw or write has already been

cited. He looks at the copy before him; sets all his muscles of hand

and arm into massive contraction; turns and twists his tongue, bends

his body, winds his legs together, holds his breath, and in every way

concentrates his energies upon the copying of the model. In all this

he is experimenting.

He produces a wealth of movements, from which, very gradually, as he

tries and tries again, the proper ones are selected out. These he

practises, and lets the superfluous ones fall away, until he secures

the requisite control over hand and arm. Or suppose a child

endeavouring, in the crudest fashion, to put a rubber on the end of a

pencil, after seeing some one else do it--just the sort of thing a

year-old child loves to imitate. What a chaos of ineffective

movements! But with repeated effort he gets nearer and nearer to it,

and finally succeeds.

On the side of action, two general principles have been formulated in

child psychology, both illustrated in the cases and experiments now

given: The one, Motor Suggestion, is, as we saw, a principle of

general psychology. Its importance to the child is that by it he forms

Habits, useful responses to his environment, and so saves himself many

sad blunders. The other principle is that of Imitation; by it the

child learns new things directly in the teeth of his habits. By

exercising in an excessive way what he has already learned through his

experimental imitations, he is continually modifying his habits and

making new adaptations. These two principles dominate the active life

of the adult man as well.

_Personality Suggestion._--A further set of facts may be cited to

illustrate the working of Suggestion, now in the sphere of the

receptive life. They are important as showing the child's progress in

learning the great features of personality.

One of the most remarkable tendencies of the very young child in its

responses to its environment is the tendency to recognise differences

of personality. It responds to what have been called Suggestions of

Personality. As early as the second month it distinguishes its

mother's or nurse's touch in the dark. It learns characteristic

methods of holding, taking up, patting, kissing, etc., and adapts

itself, by a marvellous accuracy of protestation or acquiescence, to

these personal variations. Its associations of personality come to be

of such importance that for a long time its happiness or misery

depends upon the presence of certain kinds of "personality

suggestion." It is quite a different thing from the child's behavior

toward things which are not persons. Things come to be, with some few

exceptions which are involved in the direct gratification of appetite,

more and more unimportant; things may be subordinated to regular

treatment or reaction. But persons become constantly more important,

as uncertain and dominating agents of pleasure and pain. The sight of

movement by persons, with its effects on the infant, seems to be the

most important factor in this peculiar influence; later the voice

comes to stand for a person's presence, and at last the face and its

expressions equal the person in all his attributes.

I think this distinction between persons and things, between agencies

and objects, is the child's very first step toward a sense of

personality. The sense of uncertainty or lack of confidence grows

stronger and stronger in his dealings with persons--an uncertainty

aroused by the moods, emotions, changes of expression, and shades of

treatment of the persons around it. A person stands for a group of

quite unstable experiences. This period we may, for brevity of

expression, assuming it to be first in order of development, call the

"projective" stage in the growth of the child's personal

consciousness.

It is from this beginning that the child goes on to become fully

conscious of what persons are. And when we observe his actions more

closely we find no less than four steps in his growth, which, on

account of the importance of the topic, may be stated in some little

detail.

1. The first thing of significance to him, as has been said, is

_movement_. The first attempts of the infant at anything like steady

attention are directed to moving things--a swaying curtain, a moving

light, a stroking touch, etc. And further than this, the moving things

soon become more than objects of curiosity; these things are just the

things that affect him with pleasure or pain. It is movement that

brings him his bottle, movement that regulates the stages of his bath,

movement that dresses him comfortably, movement that sings to him and

rocks him to sleep. In that complex of sensations, the nurse, the

feature of importance to him, of immediate satisfaction or redemption

from pain, is this--movements come to succour him. Change in his

bodily feeling is the vital requirement of his life, for by it the

rhythm of his vegetative existence is secured; and these things are

accompanied and secured always in the moving presence of the one he

sees and feels about him. This, I take it, is the earliest reflection

in his consciousness of the world of personalities about him. At this

stage his "personality suggestion" is a _pain-movement-pleasure_

state of mind; to this he reacts with a smile, and a crow, and a kick.

Undoubtedly this association gets some of its value from the other

similar one in which the movements are the infant's own. It is by

movements that he gets rid of pains and secures pleasures.

Many facts tend to bear out this position. My child cried in the dark

when I handled her, although I imitated the nurse's movements as

closely as possible. She tolerated a strange presence so long as it

remained quietly in its place; but let it move, and especially let it

usurp any of the pieces of movement-business of the nurse or mother,

and her protests were emphatic. The movements tended to bring the

strange elements of a new face into the vital association,

pain-movement-pleasure, and so to disturb its familiar course; this

constituted it a strange "personality."

It is astonishing, also, what new accidental elements may become parts

of this association. Part of a movement, a gesture, a peculiar habit

of the nurse, may become sufficient to give assurance of the welcome

presence and the pleasures which the presence brings. Two notes of my

song in the night stood for my presence to H., and no song from any

one else could replace it. A lighted match stopped the crying of E.

for food in her fourteenth week, although it was but a signal for a

process of food preparation lasting several minutes; and a simple

light never stopped her crying under any other circumstances.

2. With this first start in the sense of personality we find also the

beginning of the recognition of different personalities. It is

evident that the sense of another's presence thus felt in the infant's

consciousness rests, as all associations rest, upon regularity or

repetition; his sense of expectancy is aroused whenever the chain of

events is started. This is soon embodied largely in two indications:

the face and the voice. But it is easy to see that this is a very

meagre sense of personality; a moving machine which brought pain and

alleviated suffering might serve as well. So the child begins to

learn, in addition, the fact that persons are in a measure individual

in their treatment of him; that their individuality has elements of

uncertainty or _irregularity_ about it. This growing sense is very

clear to one who watches an infant in its second half year. Sometimes

its mother gives it a biscuit, but sometimes she does not. Sometimes

the father smiles and tosses the child; sometimes he does not. Even

the indulgence of the grandmother has its times and seasons. The child

looks for signs of these varying moods and methods of treatment; for

his pains of disappointment arise directly on the basis of that former

sense of regular personal presence upon which his expectancy goes

forth.

This new element of the child's sense of persons becomes, at one

period of its development, quite the controlling element. His action

in the presence of the persons of the household becomes hesitating and

watchful. Especially does he watch the face, for any expressive

indications of what treatment is to be expected; for facial expression

is now the most regular as well as the most delicate indication.

Special observations on H.'s responses to changes in facial expression

up to the age of twenty months showed most subtle sensibility to

these differences; and normal children all do. Animals are also very

expert at this.

All through the child's second year, and longer, his sense of the

persons around him is in this stage. The incessant "why?" with which

he greets any action affecting him, or any information given him, is

witness to the simple puzzle of the apparent capriciousness of

persons. Of course he can not understand "why"; so the simple fact to

him is that mamma will or won't, he knows not beforehand which. He is

unable to anticipate the treatment in detail, and he has not of course

learned any principles of interpretation of the conduct of father or

mother lying back of the details.

But in all this period there is germinating in his consciousness--and this

very uncertainty is an important element of it--the seed of a far-reaching

thought. His sense of persons--moving, pleasure-or-pain-giving, uncertain

but self-directing persons--is now to become a sense of agency, of power,

which is yet not the power of the regular-moving door on its hinges or the

rhythmic swinging of the pendulum of the clock. The sense of _personal

agency_ is now forming, and it again is potent for still further

development of the social consciousness. It is just here, I think, that

imitation becomes so important in the child's life. This is imitation's

opportunity. The infant watches to see how others act, because his own

weal and woe depends upon this "how"; and inasmuch as he knows not what to

anticipate, his mind is open to every suggestion of movement. So he falls

to imitating. His attention dwells upon details, and by the principle of

adaptation which imitation expresses, it acts out these details for

himself.

It is an interesting detail, that at this stage the child begins to

grow capricious himself; to feel that he can do whatever he likes.

Suggestion begins to lose the regularity of its working, for it meets

the child's growing sense of his own agency. The youthful hero becomes

"contrary." At this period it is that obedience begins to grow hard,

and its meaning begins to dawn upon the child as the great reality.

For it means the subjection of his own agency, his own liberty to be

capricious, to the agency and liberty of some one else.

3. With all this, the child's distinction between and among the

persons who constantly come into contact with him grows on apace, in

spite of the element of irregularity of the general fact of

personality. As he learned before the difference between one presence

and another, so now he learns the difference between one _character_

and another. Every character is more or less regular in its

irregularity. It has its tastes and modes of action, its temperament

and type of command. This the child learns late in the second year and

thereafter. He behaves differently when the father is in the room. He

is quick to obey one person, slow to obey another. He cries aloud,

pulls his companions, and behaves reprehensibly generally, when no

adult is present who has authority or will to punish him. This stage

in his "knowledge of man" leads to very marked differences of conduct

on his part.

4. He now goes on to acquire real _self-consciousness_ and _social

feeling_. This stage is so important that we may give to it a separate

heading below.

It may not be amiss to sum up what has been said about

Personality-Suggestion. It is a general term for the information which

the child gets about persons. It develops through three or four

roughly distinguished stages, all of which illustrate what is called

the "projective" sense of personality.[2] There is, 1. A bare

distinction _of persons from things_ on the ground of peculiar

pain-movement-pleasure experiences. 2. A sense of the irregularity or

capriciousness of the behaviour of these persons, which suggests

_personal agency_. 3. A distinction, vaguely felt perhaps, but

wonderfully reflected in the child's actions, between the modes of

behaviour or _personal characters_ of different persons. 4. After his

sense of his own agency arises by the process of imitation, he gets

what is really _self-consciousness_ and _social feeling_.

[Footnote 2: It is very remarkable that in the child's bashfulness we

find a native nervous response to the presence of persons. And it is

curious to note that, besides the general gregariousness which many

animals have, they show in many instances special responses of the

presence of creatures of their own kind or of other kinds. Dogs seem

to recognise dogs by _smell_. So with cats, which also respond

instinctively with strong repulsion to the smell of dogs. Horses seem

to be guided by _sight_. Fowls are notoriously blind to shapes of

fowls, but depend on hearing the cries of their kind or their young.]

_Self-consciousness._--So far as we have now gone the child has only a

very dim distinction between himself as a person and the other persons

who move about him. The persons are "projective" to him, mere bodies

or external objects of a peculiar sort classed together because they

show common marks. Yet in the sense of agency, he has already begun,

as we saw, to find in himself a mental nucleus, or centre. This comes

about from his tendency to fall into the imitation of the acts of

others.

Now as he proceeds with these imitations of others, he finds himself

gradually understanding the others, by coming, through doing the same

actions with them, to discover what they are feeling, what their

motives are, what the laws of their behaviour. For example, he sees

his father handle a pin, then suddenly make a face as he pricks

himself, and throws the pin away. All this is simply a puzzle to the

child; his father's conduct is capricious, "projective." But the

child's curiosity in the matter takes the form of imitation; he takes

up the pin himself and goes through the same manipulation of it that

his father did. Thus he gets himself pricked, and with it has the

impulse to throw the pin away. By imitating his father he has now

discovered what was inside the father's mind, the pain and the motive

of the action.

This way of proceeding in reference to the actions of others, of which

many examples might be given, has a twofold significance in the

development of the child; and because of this twofold significance it

is one of the most important facts of psychology. Upon it rest, in the

opinion of the present writer, correct views of ethics and social

philosophy.

1. By such imitation the child learns to associate his own sense of

physical power, together with his own private pleasures and pains,

with the personal actions which were before observed, it is true, in

other persons but not understood. The act of the father has now become

his own. So one by one the various attributes which he has found to be

characteristic of the persons of his social circle, become his, in

his own thought. He is now _for himself_ an agent who has the marks of

a Person or a Self. He now understands _from_ _the inside_ all the

various personal suggestions. What he saw persons do is now no longer

"projective"--simply there, outside, in the environment; it has become

what we call "subjective." The details are grouped and held together

by the sense of agency working itself out in his imitative struggles.

This is what we mean by Self-consciousness. It is not an inborn thing

with the child. He gradually acquires it. And it is not a sense of a

distinct and separate self, first known and then compared with other

persons. On the contrary, it is gradually built up in the child's mind

from the same material exactly as that of which he makes up his

thought of other persons. The deeds he can do he first sees others

doing; only then can he imitate them and find out that he also is a

being who can perform them.

So it goes all through our lives. Our sense of Self is constantly

changing, constantly being enriched. We have not the same thought of

self two days in succession. To-day I think of myself as something to

be proud of, to-morrow as something to be ashamed of. To-day I learn

something from you, and the thought that it is common to you and to me

is the basis of my sympathy with you. To-morrow I learn to commit the

unworthy act which Mr. A. commits, and the thought that he and I are

so far the same is the basis of the common disapproval which I feel of

him and me.

2. The second result of this imitative learning about personality is

of equal importance. When the child has taken up an action by

imitation and made it subjective, finding out that personality has an

inside, something more than the mere physical body, then he reads this

fact back into the other persons also. He says to himself: "He too, my

little brother, must have _in him_ a sense of agency similar to this

of mine. He acts imitatively, too; he has pleasures and pains; he

shows sympathy for me, just as I do for him. So do all the persons

with whom I have become so far acquainted. They are, then, 'subjects'

as I am--something richer than the mere 'projects' which I had

supposed." So other persons become essentially like himself; and not

only like himself, but identical with himself so far as the particular

marks are concerned which he has learned from them. For it will be

remembered that all these marks were at first actually taken up by

imitation from these very persons. The child is now giving back to his

parents, teachers, etc., only the material which he himself took from

them. He has enriched it, to be sure; with it he now reads into the

other persons the great fact of subjective agency; but still whatever

he thinks of them has come by way of his thought of himself, and that

in turn was made up from them.

This view of the other person as being the same in the main as the

self who thinks of the other person, is what psychologists mean when

they speak of the "ejective" self. It is the self of some one else as

I think of it; in other words, it is myself "ejected" out by me and

lodged in him.

_The Social and Ethical Sense._--From this we see what the Social

Sense is. It is the feeling which arises in the child or man of the

real identity, through its imitative origin, of all possible thoughts

of self, whether yourself, myself, or some one else's self. The bond

between you and me is not an artificial one; it is as natural as is

the recognition of personal individuality. And it is doing violence to

this fundamental fact to say, as social science so often assumes, that

the individual naturally separates himself or his interests from the

self or the interests of others. He is, on the contrary, bound up with

others from the start by the very laws of his growth. His social

action and feeling are natural to him. The child can not be selfish

only nor generous only; he may seem to be this or that, in this

circumstance or that, but he is really social all the time.

Furthermore, his sense of right and wrong, his Ethical Sense, grows up

upon this sense of the social bond. This I can not stop to explain

further. But it is only when social relationships are recognised as

essential in the child's growth that we can understand the mutual

obligations and duties which the moral life imposes upon us all.

_How to Observe Children, with Especial Reference to Observations of

Imitation._--There are one or two considerations of such practical

importance to all those who wish to observe children that I venture to

throw them together--only saying, by way of introduction, that nothing

less than the child's personality is at stake in the method and matter

of its imitations. The Self is really the form in which the personal

influences surrounding the child take on their new individuality.

1. No observations are of much importance which are not accompanied by

a detailed statement of the personal influences which have affected

the child. This is the more important since the child sees few

persons, and sees them constantly. It is not only likely--it is

inevitable--that he _make up his personality_, under limitations of

heredity, by imitation, out of the "copy" set in the actions, temper,

emotions, of the persons who build around him the social enclosure of

his childhood. It is only necessary to watch a two-year-old closely to

see what members of the family are giving him his personal "copy"--to

find out whether he sees his mother constantly and his father seldom;

whether he plays much with other children, and what in some degree

their dispositions are; whether he is growing to be a person of

subjection, equality, or tyranny; whether he is assimilating the

elements of some low unorganized social personality from his foreign

nurse. The boy or girl is a social "monad," to use Leibnitz's figure

in a new context, a little world, which reflects the whole system of

influences coming to stir his sensibility. And just in so far as his

sensibilities are stirred, he imitates, and forms habits of imitating;

and habits?--they are character!

2. A point akin to the first is this: the observation of each child

should describe with great accuracy the child's relations to other

children. Has he brothers or sisters? how many of each, and of what

age? Does he sleep in the same bed or room with them? Do they play

much with one another alone? The reason is very evident. An only child

has only adult "copy." He can not interpret his father's actions, or

his mother's, oftentimes. He imitates very blindly. He lacks the more

childish example of a brother or sister near himself in age. And this

difference is of very great importance to his development. He lacks

the stimulus, for example, of games in which personification is a

direct tutor to selfhood, as I shall remark further on. And while he

becomes precocious in some lines of instruction, he fails in variety

of imagination, in richness of fancy, at the same time that his

imaging processes are more wild and uncontrolled. The dramatic, in his

sense of social situations, is largely hidden. It is a very great

mistake to isolate children, especially to separate off one or two

children. One alone is perhaps the worse, but two alone are subject to

the other element of social danger which I may mention next.

3. Observers should report with especial care all cases of unusually

close relationship between children in youth, such as childish

favoritism, "platonic friendships," "chumming," in school or home,

etc. We have in these facts--and there is a very great variety of

them--an exaggeration of the social or imitative tendency, a narrowing

down of the personal sensibility to a peculiar line of well-formed

influences. It has never been studied by writers either on the genesis

of social emotion or on the practice of education. To be sure,

teachers have been alive to the pros and cons of allowing children and

students to room together; but that has been with view to the

possibility of direct immoral or unwholesome contagion. This danger is

certainly real; but we, as psychological observers, and above all as

teachers and leaders of our children, must go deeper than that.

Consider, for example, the possible influence of a school chum and

roommate upon a girl in her teens; for this is only an evident case of

what all isolated children are subject to. A sensitive nature, a girl

whose very life is a branch of a social tree, is placed in a new

environment, to engraft upon the members of her mutilated self--her

very personality; it is nothing less than that--utterly new channels

of supply. The only safety possible, the only way to conserve the

lessons of her past, apart from the veriest chance, and to add to the

structure of her present character, lies in securing for her the

greatest possible variety of social influences. Instead of this, she

is allowed to meet, eat, walk, talk, lie down at night, and rise in

the morning, with one other person, a "copy" set before her, as

immature in all likelihood as herself, or, if not so, yet a single

personality, put there to wrap around her growing self the confining

cords of unassimilated and foreign habit. Above all things, fathers,

mothers, teachers, elders, give the children room! They need all that

they can get, and their personalities will grow to fill it. Give them

plenty of companions, fill their lives with variety; variety is the

soul of originality, and its only source of supply. The ethical life

itself, the boy's, the girl's, conscience, is born in the stress of

the conflicts of suggestion, born right out of his imitative

hesitations; and just this is the analogy which he must assimilate and

depend upon in his own conflicts for self-control and social

continence. So impressively true is this from the human point of view

that, in my opinion--formed, it is true, from the very few data

accessible on such points, still a positive opinion--friendships of a

close exclusive kind should be discouraged or broken up, except when

under the immediate eye of the wise parent or guardian; and even when

allowed, these relationships should, in all cases, be used to entrain

the sympathetic and moral sentiments into a wider field of social

exercise.

One of the merits of the great English schools and of the free schools

of America is that in them the boys acquire, from necessity, the

independence of sturdy character, and the self-restraint which is

self-imposed. The youth brought up to mind a tutor often fails of the

best discipline.

4. The remainder of this section may be devoted to the further

emphasis of the need of close observation of children's games,

especially those which may be best described as "society games." All

those who have given even casual observation to the doings of the

nursery have been impressed with the extraordinary facility of the

child's mind, from the second year onward, in imagining and plotting

social and dramatic situations. It has not been so evident, however,

to these casual observers, nor to many really more skilled, that they

were observing in these fancy plays the putting together anew of

fragments, or larger pieces, of the adult's mental history. Here, in

these games, we see the actual use which our children make of the

personal "copy" material which they get from you and me. If a man

study these games patiently in his own children, and analyze them out,

he gradually sees emerge from within the inner consciousness a picture

of the boy's own father, whom he aspires to be like, and whose actions

he seeks to generalize and apply. The picture is poor, for the child

takes only what he is sensible to. And it does seem often, as Sighele

pathetically notices on a large social scale, and as the Westminster

divines have urged without due sense of the pathetic and home-coming

point of it, that he takes more of the bad in us for reproduction than

of the good! But, be this as it may, what we give him is all he gets.

Heredity does not stop with birth; it is then only beginning. And the

pity of it is that this element of heredity, this reproduction of the

fathers in the children, which might be used to redeem the new-forming

personality from the heritage of past commonness or impurity, is

simply left to take its course for the further establishing and

confirmation of it. Was there ever a group of school children who did

not leave the real school to make a play school, setting up a box for

one of their number to sit on and "take off" the teacher? Was there

ever a child who did not play "church," and force the improvised

"papa" into the pulpit? Were there ever children who did not "buy"

things from fancied stalls in every corner of the nursery, after they

had once seen an elder drive a trade in the market? The point is this:

the child's personality grows; growth is always by action; he clothes

upon himself the scenes of the parent's life and acts them out; so he

grows in what he is, what he understands, and what he is able to

perform.

In order to be of more direct service to observers of games of this

character, let me give a short account of an observation of the kind

made some time ago--one of the simplest of many actual situations

which my two little girls, Helen and Elizabeth, have acted out

together. It is a very commonplace case, a game the elements of which

are evident in their origin; but I choose this rather than one more

complex, since observers are usually not psychologists, and they find

the elementary the more instructive.

On May 2 I was sitting on the porch alone with the children--the two

mentioned above, aged respectively four and a half and two and a half

years. Helen, the elder, told Elizabeth that she was her little baby;

that is, Helen became "mamma," and Elizabeth the "baby." The younger

responded by calling her sister "mamma," and the play began.

"You have been asleep, baby. Now it is time to get up," said mamma.

Baby rose from the floor--first falling down in order to rise!--was

seized upon by "mamma," taken to the railing to an imaginary

washstand, and her face washed by rubbing. Her articles of clothing

were then named in imagination, and put on, one by one, in the most

detailed and interesting fashion. During all this "mamma" kept up a

stream of baby talk to her infant: "Now your stockings, my darling;

now your skirt, sweetness--O! no--not yet--your shoes first," etc.,

etc. Baby acceded to all the details with more than the docility which

real infants usually show. When this was done--"Now we must go tell

papa good-morning, dearie," said mamma. "Yes, mamma," came the reply;

and hand in hand they started to find papa. I, the spectator,

carefully read my newspaper, thinking, however, that the reality of

papa, seeing that he was so much in evidence, would break in upon the

imagined situation. But not so. Mamma led her baby directly past me to

the end of the piazza, to a column in the corner. "There's papa," said

mamma; "now tell him good-morning."--"Good-morning, papa; I am very

well," said baby, bowing low to the column. "That's good," said mamma,

in a _gruff, low voice_, which caused in the real papa a thrill of

amused self-consciousness most difficult to contain. "Now you must

have your breakfast," said mamma. The seat of a chair was made a

breakfast table, the baby's feigned bib put on, and her porridge

carefully administered, with all the manner of the nurse who usually

directs their breakfast. "Now" (after the meal, which suddenly became

dinner instead of breakfast), "you must take your nap," said mamma.

"No, mamma; I don't want to," said baby. "But you must."--"No; you be

baby, and take the nap."--"But all the other children have gone to

sleep, dearest, _and the doctor says you must_," said mamma. This

convinced baby, and she lay down on the floor. "But I haven't

undressed you." So then came all the detail of undressing; and mamma

carefully covered her up on the floor with a light shawl, saying:

"Spring is coming now; that'll be enough. Now shut your eyes, and go

to sleep."--"But you haven't kissed me, mamma," said the little one.

"Oh, of course, my darling!"--so a long siege of kissing! Then baby

closed her eyes very tight, while mamma went on tiptoe away to the end

of the porch. "Don't go away, mamma," said baby. "No; mamma wouldn't

leave her darling," came the reply.

So this went on. The nap over, a walk was proposed, hats put on, etc.,

the mamma exercising great care and solicitude for her baby. One

further incident to show this: when the baby's hat was put on--the

real hat--mamma tied the strings rather tight. "Oh! you hurt, mamma,"

said baby. "No; mamma wouldn't draw the strings too tight. Let mamma

kiss it. There, is that better, my darling?"--all comically true to a

certain sweet maternal tenderness which I had no difficulty in

tracing.

Now in such a case what is to be reported, of course, is the facts.

Yet knowledge of more than the facts is necessary, as I have said

above, in order to get the full psychological lesson. We need just the

information which concerns the rest of the family and the social

influences of the children's lives. I recognised at once every phrase

which the children used in this play, where they got it, what it meant

in its original context, and how far its meaning had been modified in

this process, called in a figure "social heredity." But as that story

is reported to strangers who have no knowledge of the children's

social antecedents, how much beyond the mere facts of imitation and

personification do they get from it? And how much the more is this

true when we examine those complex games of the nursery which show the

brilliant fancy for situation and drama of the wide-awake

four-year-old?

Yet we psychologists are free to interpret; and how rich the lessons

even from such a simple scene as this! As for Helen, what could be a

more direct lesson--a lived-out exercise--in sympathy, in altruistic

self-denial, in the healthy elevation of her sense of self to the

dignity of kindly offices, in the sense of responsibility and agency,

in the stimulus to original effort and the designing of means to

ends--and all of it with the best sense of the objectivity which is

quite lost in wretched self-consciousness in us adults, when we

personate other characters? What could further all this highest mental

growth better than the game by which the lessons of her mother's daily

life are read into the child's little self? Then, in the case of

Elizabeth also, certain things appear. She obeys without command or

sanction, she takes in from her sister the elements of personal

suggestion in their simpler childish forms. Certainly such scenes,

repeated every day with such variation of detail, must give something

of the sense of variety and social equality which real life afterward

confirms and proceeds upon; and lessons of the opposite character are

learned by the same process.

All this exercise of fancy must strengthen the imaginative faculty

also. The prolonged situations, maintained sometimes whole days, or

possibly weeks, give strength to the imagination and train the

attention. I think, also, that the sense of essential reality, and its

distinction from the unreal, the merely imagined, is helped by this

sort of symbolic representation. Play has its dangers also--very

serious ones. The adults sometimes set bad examples. The game gives

practise in cunning no less than in forbearance. Possibly the best

service of observation just now is to gather the facts with a view to

the proper recognition and avoidance of the dangers.

Finally, I may be allowed a word to interested parents. You can be of

no use whatever to psychologists--to say nothing of the actual damage

you may be to the children--unless you _know your babies through and

through_. Especially the fathers! They are willing to study everything

else. They know every corner of the house familiarly, and what is done

in it, except the nursery. A man labours for his children ten hours a

day, gets his life insured for their support after his death, and yet

he lets their mental growth, the formation of their characters, the

evolution of their personality, go on by absorption--if no worse--from

common, vulgar, imported and changing, often immoral attendants! Plato

said the state should train the children; and added that the wisest

man should rule the state. This is to say that the wisest man should

tend his children! Hugo gives us, in Jean Valjean and Cosette, a

picture of the true paternal relationship. We hear a certain group of

studies called the _humanities_, and it is right. But the best school

in the humanities for every man is in his own house.

With this goes, finally, the highest lesson of sport, drama,

make-believe, even when we trace it up into the art-impulse--the

lesson of _personal freedom_. The child himself sets the limitations

of the game, makes the rules, and subjects himself to them, and then

in time pierces the bubble for himself, saying, "I will play no more."

All this is the germ of self-regulation, of the control of the

impulses, of the voluntary adoption of the ideal, which becomes in

later life--if so be that he cling to it--the pearl of great price.