Emotion soon begins to manifest itself, too, in connexion with the child’s peerings into his new world. As the little brain grows stronger and the organs of sense come under better management, the child spends more time in examining things, and this examination is accompanied by a profound wonder. C. would completely lose himself in marvelling at some new mystery, as the face of a clock, to which he appeared to talk as to something alive, or the play of the sunlight on the wall of his room; and the closeness of his attention was indicated by the occurrence of a huge sigh when the strain was over.
The directions of this early childish attention are, as in the example of the clock and the sunlight, towards what has some attraction of brightness, or other stimulating quality. The fascination of bright colour for C. has already been referred to. Sounds, too, very soon began to capture his attention and hold it spellbound. Thus it is recorded that in the tenth week the sound produced by striking a wine-glass excited an agreeable wonder. The sound of the piano, by-the-bye, made him cry the first time he heard it, presumably because it was strange and disconcertingly voluminous. But he soon got to like it, and his mother remarked that when his father played the child seemed to grow heavier in her lap, as if all his muscles were relaxed in a delicious self-abandonment.[[290]]
Certain things became favourite objects of this quasi-æsthetic contemplation. When six weeks old the child got into the way of taking special note of one or two rather showy coloured pictures on the wall. In these it seemed to be partly the brightness of colouring in the picture or the frame, partly the reflexions of objects in the glass covering, which attracted him. Other things which appeared to give him repeated and endless enjoyment of a quiet sort were the play of sunlight and of shadow on the walls of his room, the reflexion of the shooting fire-flame sent back by the window-pane or the glass covering of a picture, the swaying of trees, and the like. He soon got to know the locality of some of his favourite works of art, and to look out expectantly, when taken into the right room, for his daily show.
Yet the new does not always awaken this pleasurable admiration. The child’s organism soon begins to adapt itself to what is customary, and sudden departures from the usual order of things come as a shock, jar the nerves, and produce the first crude form of fear. C.’s sensitiveness to the disturbing effect of new and loud sounds has been referred to in speaking of the first impression of the piano. A strong wind making uproar in the trees quite upset him when he was about five months old, though he soon got over his dislike and would laugh at the wind even when it blew cold. In like manner he appeared to be much put out by the voices of strangers, especially when these were loud. A similar effect of shock showed itself when something in the familiar scene was suddenly transmuted. For example, when just twelve weeks old, he was quite upset by his mother donning a red jacket in place of the usual flower-spotted dress. He was just proceeding to take his breakfast when he noticed the change, at the discovery of which all thoughts of feasting deserted him, his lips quivered, and he only became reassured of his whereabouts after taking a good look at his mother’s face.
This clinging to the familiar and alarm at a sudden intrusion of the new into his little world showed themselves in a curious way in his attitude towards strangers. When ten weeks old he would still greet new faces with a gracious smile. But this amiable disposition soon underwent a change. When he began to discriminate people one from another and to single out particular faces, those of the mother, father, sister, etc., as familiar, he took up what looked like a less hospitable attitude towards strangers. By the fifteenth week he no longer greeted their advent with his welcoming smile. A month later the diary chronicles a new development of timidity. He now turned away from a stranger with all the signs of shrinking.[[291]]
That this repugnance to the new depends on a kind of shock-like effect on the nervous system seems to be borne out by the fact that the same object would produce now joyous admiration, now something indistinguishable from fear, according to the boy’s varying condition of health and spirits.
Changes of sentiment analogous to those which marked his behaviour towards strangers occurred in his treatment of inanimate objects. For instance, a not very alarming-looking doll belonging to his sister, after having been a pleasant object of regard, suddenly acquired for him, when he was nearly five months old, a repulsive aspect. Instead of talking to it and making a sort of amiable deity of it as heretofore, he now shrieked when it was brought near. There seems to have been nothing in his individual experience which could account for this sudden accession of fear.
These observations led C.’s father to some characteristic speculations as to the inheritance of certain feelings. Thus he hints that the eerie sort of interest taken by his child in the reflexions of things in the glass may be a survival of the primitive feeling of awe for the ghosts of things which certain anthropologists tell us was first developed in connexion with the phenomena of reflected images and shadows. He goes on to ask whether the fear called forth by the doll and the face of strangers at a certain stage of the child’s development is not clearly due to an instinct now fixed in the race by the countless experiences of peril in its early, pre-social, and Ishmaelitic condition. But here, too, perhaps, his speculations appear, in the light of what has been said above, a little wild.
Among other feelings displayed by the child was that of amusement at what is grotesque and comical. When between four and five months old he was accustomed to watch the antics of his sister, an elfish being given to flying about the room, screaming, and other disorderly proceedings, with all the signs of a sense of the comicality of the spectacle. So far as the father could judge, this sister served as a kind of jester to the baby monarch. He would take just that distant, good-natured interest in her foolings that Shakespeare’s sovereigns took in the eccentric unpredictable ways of their jesters. The sense of the droll became still more distinctly marked at six months. About this date the child delighted in pulling his sister’s hair, and her shrieks would send him into a fit of laughter. Among other provocatives of laughter at this time were sudden movements of one’s head, a rapid succession of sharp staccato sounds from one’s vocal organ (when these were not disconcerting by their violence), and of course sudden reappearances of one’s head after hiding in the game of bo-peep.[[292]]
It is hardly necessary to follow the diary into its record of the first stirrings of what psychologists used to call the Will (with capital W of course). If a baby in the first months can be said to have a will in any sense it must be that unconscious metaphysical “will to live” about which we have recently heard so much. On the other hand it is certainly true that the child manifests in the first weeks certain active impulses, the working out of which leads in about four months to the acquisition of the power of carrying out movements for a purpose. Reference has already been made to this progress in motor activity when speaking of the senses. It may suffice to add one or two further observations.