Il6 THE NEXT GENERATION 



information pours in upon the baby, and by the end of one 

 month he has learned that certain sensations are pleasant 

 and certain other sensations unpleasant. He fastens his eyes 

 on this or that and stares without winking. How babies stare ! 



After two months he has learned to expect definite things 

 at definite times. Three months, and the baby has learned 

 that he can so guide his muscles as to accomplish definite 

 movements. This is a very great discovery. He seizes his 

 own toes. He clutches other things and pulls them. At the 

 fourth month he finds he can really do things. He shows 

 purpose. " His movements are no longer purely accidental. 

 ... At four months he discovers that the face and the back 

 of the head belong to the same object. He has acquired the 

 idea of objects existing in the world around him. He has no 

 instructor. He is finding out these things by his own unaided 

 efforts. Then, at five months, begins the age of handling, 

 when the baby feels of everything." The first five months, 

 as Dr. Minot says, " constitute the first period of the baby's 

 development. Its powers are formed and the foundations of 

 knowledge have been laid. The second period is a period of 

 amazing research, constant, uninterrupted, untiring, renewed 

 the instant the baby wakes up, and kept up until sleep over- 

 takes it. In the six-months baby we find already the notion 

 of cause and effect." 



Dr. Minot's description grows more and more vivid. " By 

 eight months the baby is upon the full career of experiment 

 and observation. Everything with which he comes in con- 

 tact interests him. He looks at it, he seizes hold of it, tries 

 to pull it to pieces, studies its texture, its tensile strength, 

 and every other quality it possesses. Not satisfied with this, 

 he will turn and apply his tongue to it, putting it in his 

 mouth for the purpose of finding out if it has a taste. At 



