Standing.
Locomotion. The early movements of children's limbs are more or less symmetrical. Later a baby will move his legs in alternation if suspended in the air. But until the impulse to walk awakens by the natural ripening of the nerve-centres, it seems to make no difference how often the child's feet may be placed in contact with the ground; the legs remain limp, and do not respond to the sensation of contact in the soles by muscular contractions pressing downwards. No sooner, however, is the standing impulse born, than the child stiffens his legs and presses downward as soon as he feels the floor. In some babies this is the first locomotory reaction. In others it is preceded by the instinct to creep, which arises, as I can testify, often in a very sudden way. Yesterday the baby sat quite contentedly wherever he was put; to-day it has become impossible to keep him sitting at all, so irresistible is the impulse, aroused by the sight of the floor, to throw himself forward upon his hands. Usually the arms are too weak, and the ambitious little experimenter falls on his nose. But his perseverance is dauntless, and he ends in a few days by learning to travel rapidly around the room in the quadrupedal way. The position of the legs in 'creeping' varies much from one child to another. My own child, when creeping, was often observed to pick up objects from the floor with his mouth, a phenomenon which, as Dr. O. W. Holmes has remarked, like the early tendency to grasp with the toes, easily lends itself to interpretation as a reminiscence of prehuman ancestral habits.
The walking instinct may awaken with no less suddenness, and its entire education be completed within a week's compass, barring, of course, a little 'grogginess' in the gait. Individual infants vary enormously; but on the whole it is safe to say that the mode of development of these locomotor instincts is inconsistent with the account given by the older English associationist school, of their being results of the individual's education, due altogether to the gradual association of certain perceptions with certain haphazard movements and certain resultant pleasures. Mr. Bain has tried,[370] by describing the demeanor of new-born lambs, to show that locomotion is learned by a very rapid experience. But the observation recorded proves the faculty to be almost perfect from the first; and all others who have observed new-born calves, lambs, and pigs agree that in these animals the powers of standing and walking, and of interpreting the topographical significance of sights and sounds, are all but fully developed at birth. Often in animals who seem to be 'learning' to walk or fly the semblance is illusive. The awkwardness shown is not due to the fact that 'experience' has not yet been there to associate the successful movements and exclude the failures, but to the fact that the animal is beginning his attempts before the co-ordinating centres have quite ripened for their work. Mr. Spalding's observations on this point are conclusive as to birds.
"Birds," he says, "do not learn to fly. Two years ago I shut up five unfledged swallows in a small box, not much larger than the nest from which they were taken. The little box, which had a wire front, was hung on the wall near the nest, and the young swallows were fed by their parents through the wires. In this confinement, where they could not even extend their wings, they were kept until after they were fully fledged.... On going to set the prisoners free, one was found dead.... The remaining four were allowed to escape one at a time. Two of these were perceptibly wavering and unsteady in their flight. One of them, after a flight of some ninety yards, disappeared among some trees." No. 3 and No. 4 "never flew against anything, nor was there, in their avoiding objects, any appreciable difference between them and the old birds. No. 3 swept round the Wellingtonia, and No. 4 rose over the hedge, just as we see the old swallows doing every hour of the day. I have this summer verified these observations. Of two swallows I had similarly confined, one, on being set free, flew a yard or two close to the ground, rose in the direction of a beech-tree, which it gracefully avoided; it was seen for a considerable time sweeping round the beeches and performing magnificent evolutions in the air high above them. The other, which was observed to beat the air with its wings more than usual, was soon lost to sight, behind some trees. Titmice, tomtits, and wrens I have made the subjects of similar observations, and with similar results."[371]
In the light of this report, one may well be tempted to make a prediction about the human child, and say that if a baby were kept from getting on his feet for two or three weeks after the first impulse to walk had shown itself in him,—a small blister on each sole would do the business,—he might then be expected to walk about as well, through the mere ripening of his nerve-centres, as if the ordinary process of 'learning' had been allowed to occur during all the blistered time. It is to be hoped that some scientific widower, left alone with his offspring at the critical moment, may ere long test this suggestion on the living subject. Climbing on trees, fences, furniture, banisters, etc., is a well-marked instinctive propensity which ripens after the fourth year.
Vocalization. This may be either musical or significant. Very few weeks after birth the baby begins to express its spirits by emitting vowel sounds, as much during inspiration as during expiration, and will lie on its back cooing and gurgling to itself for nearly an hour. But this singing has nothing to do with speech. Speech is sound significant. During the second year a certain number of significant sounds are gradually acquired; but talking proper does not set in till the instinct to imitate sounds ripens in the nervous system; and this ripening seems in some children to be quite abrupt. Then speech grows rapidly in extent and perfection. The child imitates every word he hears uttered, and repeats it again and again with the most evident pleasure at his new power. At this time it is quite impossible to talk with him, for his condition is that of 'Echolalia,'—instead of answering the question, he simply reiterates it. The result is, however, that his vocabulary increases very fast; and little by little, with teaching from above, the young prattler understands, puts words together to express his own wants and perceptions, and even makes intelligent replies. From a speechless, he has become a speaking, animal. The interesting point with regard to this instinct is the oftentimes very sudden birth of the impulse to imitate sounds. Up to the date of its awakening the child may have been as devoid of it as a dog. Four days later his whole energy may be poured into this new channel. The habits of articulation formed during the plastic age of childhood are in most persons sufficient to inhibit the formation of new ones of a fundamentally different sort—witness the inevitable 'foreign accent' which distinguishes the speech of those who learn a language after early youth.
Imitation. The child's first words are in part vocables of his own invention, which his parents adopt, and which, as far as they go, form a new human tongue upon the earth; and in part they are his more or less successful imitations of words he hears the parents use. But the instinct of imitating gestures develops earlier than that of imitating sounds,—unless the sympathetic crying of a baby when it hears another cry may be reckoned as imitation of a sound. Professor Preyer speaks of his child imitating the protrusion of the father's lips in its fifteenth week. The various accomplishments of infancy, making 'pat-a-cake,' saying 'bye-bye,' 'blowing out the candle,' etc., usually fall well inside the limits of the first year. Later come all the various imitative games in which childhood revels, playing 'horse,' 'soldiers,' etc., etc. And from this time onward man is essentially the imitative animal. His whole educability and in fact the whole history of civilization depend on this trait, which his strong tendencies to rivalry, jealousy, and acquisitiveness reinforce. 'Humani nihil a me alienum puto,' is the motto of each individual of the species; and makes him, whenever another individual shows a power or superiority of any kind, restless until he can exhibit it himself. But apart from this kind of imitation, of which the psychological roots are complex, there is the more direct propensity to speak and walk and behave like others, usually without any conscious intention of so doing. And there is the imitative tendency which shows itself in large masses of men, and produces panics, and orgies, and frenzies of violence, and which only the rarest individuals can actively withstand. This sort of imitativeness is possessed by man in common with other gregarious animals, and is an instinct in the fullest sense of the term, being a blind impulse to act as soon as a certain perception occurs. It is particularly hard not to imitate gaping, laughing, or looking and running in a certain direction, if we see others doing so. Certain mesmerized subjects must automatically imitate whatever motion their operator makes before their eyes.[372] A successful piece of mimicry gives to both bystanders and mimic a peculiar kind of æsthetic pleasure. The dramatic impulse, the tendency to pretend one is someone else, contains this pleasure of mimicry as one of its elements. Another element seems to be a peculiar sense of power in stretching one's own personality so as to include that of a strange person. In young children this instinct often knows no bounds. For a few months in one of my children's third year, he literally hardly ever appeared in his own person. It was always, "Play I am So-and-so, and you are So-and-so, and the chair is such a thing, and then we'll do this or that." If you called him by his name, H., you invariably got the reply, "I'm not H., I'm a hyena, or a horse-car," or whatever the feigned object might be. He outwore this impulse after a time; but while it lasted, it had every appearance of being the automatic result of ideas, often suggested by perceptions, working out irresistible motor effects. Imitation shades into
Emulation or Rivalry, a very intense instinct, especially rife with young children, or at least especially undisguised. Everyone knows it. Nine-tenths of the work of the world is done by it. We know that if we do not do the task someone else will do it and get the credit, so we do it. It has very little connection with sympathy, but rather more with pugnacity, which we proceed in turn to consider.
Pugnacity; anger; resentment. In many respects man is the most ruthlessly ferocious of beasts. As with all gregarious animals, 'two souls,' as Faust says, 'dwell within his breast,' the one of sociability and helpfulness, the other of jealousy and antagonism to his mates. Though in a general way he cannot live without them, yet, as regards certain individuals, it often falls out that he cannot live with them either. Constrained to be a member of a tribe, he still has a right to decide, as far as in him lies, of which other members the tribe shall consist. Killing off a few obnoxious ones may often better the chances of those that remain. And killing off a neighboring tribe from whom no good thing comes, but only competition, may materially better the lot of the whole tribe. Hence the gory cradle, the bellum omnium contra omnes, in which our race was reared; hence the fickleness of human ties, the ease with which the foe of yesterday becomes the ally of to-day, the friend of to-day the enemy of to-morrow; hence the fact that we, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with us, ready at any moment to burst into flame, the smouldering and sinister traits of character by means of which they lived through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves unharmed.