As regards the greater or less suggestibility of different persons there is, of course, no distinct line between the normal and the abnormal; it is simply a matter of the greater or less efficiency of the higher mental organization. Most people, perhaps, are so far suggestible that they make no energetic and persistent attempt to interpret in any broad way the elements of life accessible to them, but receive the stamp of some rather narrow and simple class of suggestions to which their allegiance is yielded. There are innumerable people of much energy but sluggish intellect, who will go ahead—as all who have energy must do—but what direction they take is a matter of the opportune suggestion. The humbler walks of religion and philanthropy, for instance, the Salvation Army, the village prayer-meeting, and the city mission, are full of such. They do not reason on general topics, but believe and labor. The intellectual travail of the time does not directly touch them. At some epoch in the past, perhaps in some hour of emotional exaltation, something was printed on their minds to remain there till death, and be read and followed daily. To the philosopher such people are fanatics; but their function is as important as his. They are repositories of moral energy—which he is very likely to lack—they are the people who brought in Christianity and have kept it going ever since. And this is only one of many comparatively automatic types of mankind. Rationality, in the sense of a patient and open-minded attempt to think out the general problems of life, is, and perhaps always must be, confined to a small minority even of the most intelligent populations.
CHAPTER III
SOCIABILITY AND PERSONAL IDEAS
The Sociability of Children—Imaginary Conversation and its Significance—The Nature of the Impulse to Communicate—There is No Separation Between Real and Imaginary Persons—Nor Between Thought and Intercourse—The Study and Interpretation of Expression by Children—The Symbol or Sensuous Nucleus of Personal Ideas—Personal Physiognomy in Art and Literature—In the Idea of Social Groups—Sentiment in Personal Ideas—The Personal Idea is the Immediate Social Reality—Society Must be Studied in the Imagination—The Possible Reality of Incorporeal Persons—The Material Notion of Personality Contrasted with the Notion Based on a Study of Personal Ideas—Self and Other in Personal Ideas—Personal Opposition—Further Illustration and Defence of the View of Persons and Society Here Set Forth.
To any but a mother a new-born child hardly seems human. It appears rather to be a strange little animal, wonderful indeed, exquisitely finished even to the finger-nails; mysterious, awakening a fresh sense of our ignorance of the nearest things of life, but not friendly, not lovable. It is only after some days that a kindly nature begins to express itself and to grow into something that can be sympathized with and personally cared for. The earliest signs of it are chiefly certain smiles and babbling sounds, which are a matter of fascinating observation to anyone interested in the genesis of social feeling.
Spasmodic smiles or grimaces occur even during the first week of life, and at first seem to mean nothing in particular. I have watched the face of an infant a week old while a variety of expressions, smiles, frowns, and so on, passed over it in rapid succession: it was as if the child were rehearsing a repertory of emotional expression belonging to it by instinct. So soon as they can be connected with anything definite these rudimentary smiles appear to be a sign of satisfaction. Mrs. Moore says that her child smiled on the sixth day “when comfortable,”[[12]] and that this “never occurred when the child was known to be in pain.” Preyer notes a smile on the face of a sleeping child, after nursing, on the tenth day.[[13]] They soon begin to connect themselves quite definitely with sensible objects, such as bright color, voices, movements, and fondling. At the same time the smile gradually develops from a grimace into a subtler, more human expression, and Dr. Perez, who seems to have studied a large number of children, says that all whom he observed smiled, when pleased, by the time they were two months old.[[14]] When a child is, say, five months old, no doubt can remain, in most cases, that the smile has become an expression of pleasure in the movements, sounds, touches, and general appearance of other people. It would seem, however, that personal feeling is not at first clearly differentiated from pleasures of sight, sound, and touch of other origin, or from animal satisfactions having no obvious cause. Both of my children expended much of their early sociability on inanimate objects, such as a red Japanese screen, a swinging lamp, a bright door-knob, an orange, and the like, babbling and smiling at them for many minutes at a time; and M., when about three months old and later, would often lie awake laughing and chattering in the dead of night. The general impression left upon one is that the early manifestations of sociability indicate less fellow-feeling than the adult imagination likes to impute, but are expressions of a pleasure which persons excite chiefly because they offer such a variety of stimuli to sight, hearing, and touch; or, to put it otherwise, kindliness, while existing almost from the first, is vague and undiscriminating, has not yet become fixed upon its proper objects, but flows out upon all the pleasantness the child finds about him, like that of St. Francis, when, in his “Canticle of the Sun,” he addresses the sun and the moon, stars, winds, clouds, fire, earth, and water, as brothers and sisters. Indeed, there is nothing about personal feeling which sharply marks it off from other feeling; here as elsewhere we find no fences, but gradual transition, progressive differentiation.
I do not think that early smiles are imitative. I observed both my children carefully to discover whether they smiled in response to a smile, and obtained negative results when they were under ten months old. A baby does not smile by imitation, but because he is pleased; and what pleases him in the first year of life is usually some rather obvious stimulus to the senses. If you wish a smile you must earn it by acceptable exertion; it does no good to smirk. The belief that many people seem to have that infants respond to smiling is possibly due to the fact that when a grown-up person appears, both he and the infant are likely to smile, each at the other; but although the smiles are simultaneous one need not be the cause of the other, and many observations lead me to think that it makes no difference to the infant whether the grown-up person smiles or not. He has not yet learned to appreciate this rather subtle phenomenon.
At this and at all later ages the delight in companionship so evident in children may be ascribed partly to specific social emotion or sentiment, and partly to a need of stimulating suggestions to enable them to gratify their instinct for various sorts of mental and physical activity. The influence of the latter appears in their marked preference for active persons, for grown-up people who will play with them—provided they do so with tact—and especially for other children. It is the same throughout life; alone one is like fireworks without a match: he cannot set himself off, but is a victim of ennui, the prisoner of some tiresome train of thought that holds his mind simply by the absence of a competitor. A good companion brings release and fresh activity, the primal delight in a fuller existence. So with the child: what excitement when visiting children come! He shouts, laughs, jumps about, produces his playthings and all his accomplishments. He needs to express himself, and a companion enables him to do so. The shout of another boy in the distance gives him the joy of shouting in response.
But the need is for something more than muscular or sensory activities. There is also a need of feeling, an overflowing of personal emotion and sentiment, set free by the act of communication. By the time a child is a year old the social feeling that at first is indistinguishable from sensuous pleasure has become much specialized upon persons, and from that time onward to call it forth by reciprocation is a chief aim of his life. Perhaps it will not be out of place to emphasize this by transcribing two or three notes taken from life.
“M. will now [eleven months old] hold up something she has found, e. g., the petal of a flower, or a little stick, demanding your attention to it by grunts and squeals. When you look and make some motion or exclamation she smiles.”
“R. [four years old] talks all day long, to real companions, if they will listen, if not to imaginary ones. As I sit on the steps this morning he seems to wish me to share his every thought and sensation. He describes everything he does, although I can see it, saying, ‘Now I’m digging up little stones,’ etc. I must look at the butterfly, feel of the fuzz on the clover stems, and try to squawk on the dandelion stems. Meanwhile he is reminded of what happened some other time, and he gives me various anecdotes of what he and other people did and said. He thinks aloud. If I seem not to listen he presently notices it and will come up and touch me, or bend over and look up into my face.”