The early pages of the record do not, one must confess, yield any very striking observations. This is, no doubt, due to the circumstance that the observer, not being a naturalist, was not specially interested in the dim mindless life of the first weeks. For the first few days Master C. appears to have been content to vegetate like other babies of a similar age. Although a bonny boy, he began life in the usual way—with a good cry; though we now know, on scientific authority, that this, being a purely reflex act, has not the deep significance which certain pessimistic philosophers have attributed to it. Science would probably explain in a similar way a number of odd facial movements which this baby went through on the second day of his earthly career, and which, the father characteristically remarks, were highly suggestive of a cynical contempt for his new surroundings.
Yet, though content in this early stage to do little but perform the vegetal functions of life, the infant comes endowed with a nervous system and organs of sense, and these are very soon brought into active play. According to this record, the sense of touch is the first to manifest itself.[[286]] Even when only two hours old, at a period of life when there is certainly no sound for the ear and possibly no light for the eye, C. immediately clasped the parental finger which was brought into the hollow of its tiny hand. The functional activity of touch was observed still more plainly on the second day, when the child was seen to carry out awkwardly enough what looked like exploring movements of the hands over his mouth and face. This early development in the child of the tactual sense agrees, says the biographer, with what Aristotle long since taught respecting the fundamental character of this sense, an idea to which the modern doctrine of evolution has given a new significance.
A distinct step is taken during the first four days towards acquiring knowledge of things through a progressive use of the eyes and hands. C.’s father noticed on the second day that a good deal of ocular movement was forthcoming. Much of this was quite irregular, each eye following its own path. Sometimes, however, the eyes moved harmoniously or symmetrically now to this side, now to that, and now and again seemed to converge and fix themselves on some near object in front of them. Sufficiently loud sounds increased these ocular movements.
On the third day the father, when chuckling and calling to the child at a short distance, fondly supposed that his offspring showed appreciation of these attentions by regarding him with a sweet expression and something like the play of a smile about the lips and eyelids. But it is possible that this apparent amiability was nothing but a purely animal satisfaction after a good meal. As to seeing his father’s face at that early age, there is room for serious doubt. Preyer found that long before the close of the first day his child wore a different expression when his face, turned towards the window, was suddenly deprived of light by the intervention of the professor’s hand. If the child is thus sensible to the pleasure of light it is, of course, conceivable that C.’s eyes, happening in their aimless wanderings to be brought together opposite the bright patch of the father’s face, might maintain that attitude under the stimulus of the pleasure. The father argues in favour of this view by quoting the fact that C.’s sister was observed on the fourth day to have her eyes arrested by a light or the father’s face if brought pretty near the child; yet such blank staring at mere brightness is, of course, a long way off from distinct vision of an object.
On the fourth day, continues the sanguine father, the child showed a distinct advance in the use of the hands. Having clasped his sire’s finger he now moved it in what looked like an abortive attempt to carry it to his mouth. There follow some remarks on the impulse of infants to carry objects to their mouths, in which again there seems an approach to frivolity in the conjecture that the human animal previous to education is all-devouring. It is to be noted, however, that these early movements are probably quite accidental. As we shall see, it is some weeks before the child learns to carry objects to his mouth. As to the connexion between this movement and infantile greed our observer is not so poor a psychologist as not to see that it may be due to the circumstance that the lips and the tip of the tongue form one of the most delicate parts of the tactual organ. It is not improbable that in the evolution of man before the tactual sensibility of the hand was developed these parts were chiefly employed as a tactual apparatus in distinguishing and rejecting what is hard, gritty and so forth in food. However this be, it is probable that, as Stanley Hall has suggested, an infant may get a kind of “æsthetic” pleasure by bringing objects into contact with the lips and the gums.
At this period, the diary remarks, the child was very cross for some weeks and not a good subject for observation. This new difficulty, added to that of overcoming natural scruples in his guardians, appears to have baffled the observer for a time, for the next observations recorded take up the thread of the child’s history at the sixth week.
About this date, the father notes, the power of directing the eyes had greatly improved. The child could now converge his eyes comfortably and without going through a number of unpleasant squinting-like failures on a near object. The range of sight had greatly increased, so that the boy’s universe, instead of consisting merely of a tiny circle of near objects, as his mother’s face held close to him, began to embrace distant objects, as the clock, the window, and so forth. He was observed, too, to carry out more precise movements of the head and eyes in correspondence with the direction of sounds. This ability to look towards the direction of a sound is an important attainment as implying that the infant mind has now come to learn that things may exist when not actually seen.
This new command of the visual apparatus led to a marked increase in observation. The boy may indeed be said to have begun about this date something like a serious scrutiny of objects. Like other children he was greatly attracted by brightly coloured objects. When just seven weeks old he acquired a fondness for a cheap showy card with crudely brilliant colouring and gilded border. When carried to the place where it hung, above the glass over the fire-place, he would look up to it and greet his first-love in the world of art with a pretty smile. By the ninth or tenth week, the father adds, he began to notice the pattern of the wall-paper and the like.
In these growing intervals of observation between the discharge of the vegetal functions of feeding and sleeping, C. was observed to examine not only any foreign object, such as his mamma’s dress, which happened to be within sight, but also the visible parts of his own organism. In the ninth week of his existence he was first surprised in the act of surveying his own hands. Why he should at this particular moment have woke up to the existence of objects which had all along lain within easy reach of the eye, is a question which has evidently greatly exercised the father’s ingenuity. He hints, but plainly in a half-hearted, sceptical way, at a possible dim recognition by the little contemplator of the fact that these objects belong to himself, forming, indeed, the outlying portion of the Ego. He also asks (and here he seems to grow positively frivolous) whether the child is taking after the somewhat extravagant ways of his mother and beginning to dote on the exquisite modelling of his tiny members.
Psychologists are now agreed that our knowledge of the properties of material objects is largely obtained by what they call active touch, that is, by moving the hands over objects and exploring the space around them. This is borne out by the observations made on C. at this period of his existence. While viewing things about him he actively manipulated them. The organs of sight and touch worked indeed in the closest connexion. Thus our little visitor was no mere passive spectator of his new habitat; he actively took possession of his surroundings: like the Roman general, he at once saw and conquered. From the eighth to the tenth week his manual performances greatly improved in quality. He was rapidly learning to carry the organ of touch to the point of which his eye told him. An account of his progress in reaching objects may however be postponed till we come to speak of the development of his active powers.