58 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



meditation on the part of the child. They do not enter into con- 

 sciousness during their performance, but are often remembered 

 after they have been performed. The images left in the memory 

 after these movements have been executed are a very great factor 

 in the development of the will, for the voluntary movements 

 which develop later are based upon these impulsive and reflex 

 movements. 



Beginning somewhat later than the impulsive and reflex move- 

 ments are the instinctive movements. We may say that the in- 

 stinctive movements are an advance on the reflex movements, as 

 they are more complex, they enter somewhat into consciousness, 

 and there is a purpose in them, though the child does not know at 

 the time he performs the movement the end that is to be attained. 



The first movements of the child are impulsive and reflex, and 

 no self-consciousness accompanies them. Yet every movement, 

 whether impulsive or reflex, leaves some slight trace in the devel- 

 oping brain, and when the movement is hit upon again, and then 

 again, and still many times again, this trace strengthens and asso- 

 ciates itself with the particular movement, and there arises in the 

 dawning consciousness an idea, the elements of which are very 

 largely motor ; and so numerous motor ideas arise. The three 

 classes of movements which I have described are involuntary, and 

 out of all these various involuntary movements spring up motor 

 ideas. The pleasure or pain necessarily accompanying these gives 

 rise in consciousness to desire to repeat these movements or to in- 

 hibit or stop them. Deliberative or voluntary movements are not 

 possible without motor ideas. Through these motor ideas the 

 child comes gradually to represent to himself some end to be at- 

 tained or avoided. To say, then, that the will develops first 

 through the motor side is warrantable. 



I have indicated how motor ideas are involved at the start in 

 the psychic or mental life, and how it is " ouly after a motion has 

 taken place that the child acquires any knowledge of its own 

 motor act." We must not, however, lose sight of the fact that 

 there is blended or associated with the motor acts sensations com- 

 ing from the eye and the ear and from other sensory avenues. 

 Involved in all these motor acts is an extensive part of the cortex 

 of the brain called the motor centers, because all muscular move- 

 ments are controlled from these centers. Not only do these motor 

 centers play a great part in the development of the psychic life 

 and the rise of the will, but all other parts of the brain come to be 

 developed in communication with them. Prof. Baldwin has ex- 

 pressed the idea that it is the motor which holds the sensory 

 elements together, and Dr. Crichton Browne has said that an 

 analysis of our ideas reveals to us that we have few if any of 

 purely sensory characteristics. All our ideas, then, have impor- 



