Here, too, the analogy between the child and the uncultured nature-man is evident. The savage has no æsthetic sentiment for nature as a whole, though he may feel the charm of some of her single features, a stream, a mountain, the star-spangled sky, and may even be affected by some of the awful aspects of her changing physiognomy. Are we not told, indeed, that a true æsthetic appreciation of the picturesque variety of nature’s scenes of the weird charm of wild places, and of the sublime fascinations of the awful and repellent mountain, are quite late attainments in the history of our race?[[206]]
Early Attitude towards Art.
We may now look at the child’s attitude towards those objects and processes of human art which from the first form part of his environment and make an educative appeal to his senses; and here we may begin with those simple musical effects which follow up certain impressions derived from the natural world.
It has been pointed out that sounds form a chief source of the little child-heart’s first trepidations. Yet this prolific cause of disquietude, when once the first alarming effect of strangeness has passed, becomes a main source of interest and delight. Some of nature’s sounds, as those of running water, and of the wind, early catch the ear, and excite wonder and curiosity. Miss Shinn illustrates fully in the case of her niece how the interest in sounds developed itself in the first years.[[207]] This pleasure in listening to sounds and in tracing them to their origin forms a chief pastime of babyhood.
Æsthetic pleasure in sound begins to be differentiated out of this general interest as soon as there arises a comparison of qualities and a development of preferences. Thus the sound of metal (when struck) is preferred to that of wood or stone. A nascent feeling for musical quality thus emerges which probably has its part in many of the first likings for persons; certain pitches, as those of the female voice, and possibly timbres being preferred to others.
Quite as soon, at least, as this feeling for quality of sound or tone, there manifests itself a crude liking for rhythmic sequence. It is commonly recognised that our pleasure in regularly recurring sounds is instinctive, being the result of our whole nervous organisation. We can better adapt successive acts of listening when sounds follow at regular intervals, and the movements which sounds evoke can be much better carried out in a regular sequence. The infant shows us this in his well-known liking for well-marked rhythms in tunes which he accompanies with suitable movements of the arms, head, etc.
The first likings for musical composition are based on this instinctive feeling for rhythm. It is the simple tunes, with well-marked easily recognisable time-divisions, which first take the child’s fancy, and he knows the quieting and the exciting qualities of different rhythms and times. Where rhythm is less marked, or grows highly complex, the motor responses being confused, the pleasurable interest declines. It is the same with the rhythmic qualities of verses. The jingling rhythms which their souls love are of simple structure, with short feet well marked off, as in the favourite, ‘Jack and Gill’.
Coming now to art as representative we find that a child’s æsthetic appreciation waits on the growth of intelligence, on the understanding of artistic representation as contrasted with a direct presentation of reality.
The development of an understanding of visual representation or the imaging of things has already been touched upon. As Perez points out, the first lesson in this branch of knowledge is supplied by the reflexions of the mirror, which, as we have seen, the infant begins to take for realities, though he soon comes to understand that they are not tangible realities. The looking-glass is the best means of elucidating the representative function of the image or ‘Bild’ just because it presents this image in close proximity to the reality, and so invites direct comparison with this.
In the case of pictures where this direct comparison is excluded we might expect a less rapid recognition of the representative function. Yet children show very early that picture-semblances are understood in the sense that they call forth reactions similar to those called forth by realities. A little boy was observed to talk to pictures at the end of the eighth month. This perhaps hardly amounted to recognition. Pollock says that the significance of pictures “was in a general way understood” by his little girl at the age of thirteen months.[[208]] Miss Shinn tells us that her niece, at the age of forty-two weeks, showed the same excitement at the sight of a life-size painting of a cat as at that of real cats.[[209]] Ten months is also given me by a lady as the date at which her little boy recognised pictures of animals by naming them ‘bow-wow,’ etc., without being prompted.