THE FOUR LAWS OF AGE 239 



quired them, and has already become a rudimentary 

 metaphysician. We see, also, at the end of the third 

 month, that the baby has made another remarkable 

 discovery. It has found not merely that its muscles 

 will contract and jerk and throw its parts about, which 

 surely was earlier a great delight to it; but that 

 the muscles can contract in such a way that the move- 

 ment will be directed ; there is a co-ordination of the 

 muscular movements. I should like to read to you 

 just these three or four lines from Miss Shinn, who 

 has given perhaps the best story of the development 

 of a baby which has yet been written. This is not 

 merely my opinion, but also the opinion of my psycho- 

 logical colleagues at Cambridge whom I consulted 

 before venturing to express the idea before you, and 

 I find that they take the view that Miss Shinn's book, 

 which is charmingly written, is really done with such 

 precision and understanding of the psychological pro- 

 blems involved that it may fairly be called the best of 

 the books treating of the mental development of a 

 baby. Miss Shinn says, referring to the condition of 

 the child at the end of two months "Such is the mere 

 life of vegetation the baby lived during the first two 

 months ; no grown person ever experienced such an 

 expansion of life such a progress from power to 

 power in that length of time." She is not thinking 

 of senescence, as we have been thinking of it, but she 

 makes precisely the assertion, which seems to me to 

 be true, that the baby in two months has accomplished 

 an amount of development which no adult is capable 



