STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 5 



A complete explanation of these early vague alarms of the ear 

 may as yet not be possible. Children show in the matter of sound 

 capricious repugnances which it is exceedingly difficult to account 

 for. They seem sometimes to have their pet aversions like older 

 folk. But I think a general explanation is possible. 



To begin with, then, it is probable that in many of these cases, 

 especially those occurring in the first six months, we have to do 

 with an organic phenomenon, with a sort of jar to the nervous sys- 

 tem. To understand this we have to remember that the ear is, in the 

 case of man at least, the sense-organ through which the nervous 

 system is most powerfully and profoundly acted on. Sounds seem 

 to go through us, to pierce us, to shake us, to pound and crush us. 

 A child of four or six months has a nervous organization still 

 weak and unstable, and we should naturally expect loud sounds 

 to produce a disturbing effect on it. 



To this it is to be added that sounds have a way of taking us 

 by surprise, of seeming to start out of nothing ; and this aspect of 

 them, as I have pointed out above, may well excite vague alarm 

 in the small creatures to whom all that is new and exceptional is 

 apt to seem uncanny. The fact that most children soon lose their 

 fear by getting used to the sounds seems to show how much the 

 new and the mysterious has to do with the effect. 



Whether heredity plays any part here in the fear of the dog's 

 barking and other sounds of animals seems to me exceedingly 

 doubtful. This point will, however, come up for closer considera- 

 tion presently, when we deal with children's fear of animals. 



Before considering the manifold outgoings of fear produced 

 by impressions of the eye, we may glance at another form of early 

 disturbance which has some analogy with the shocklike effects 

 of certain sounds. I refer here to the feeling of bodily insecurity 

 which appears very early when the child is awkwardly carried, 

 or let down back foremost, and later when it begins to walk. One 

 child in her fifth month was observed, when carried, to hold on 

 to the nurse's dress as if for safety. And it has been noticed by 

 more than one observer that on dandling a baby up and down on 

 one's arms, it will on descending that is, when the support of the 

 arms is being withdrawn show signs of discontent in struggling 

 movements.* Bell, Preyer, and others regard this as an instinct- 

 ive form of fear. Such manifestations may, however, be merely 

 the result of sudden and rude disturbances of the sense of bodily 

 ease which attends the habitual condition of adequate support. 

 A child accustomed to lie in a cradle, on the floor, or in some- 

 body's lap, might be expected to be put out when the supporting 

 mass is greatly reduced, as in bad carrying, or wholly removed, as 



* See the quotation from Sir Charles Bell, Perez, First Three Years of Childhood, p. 63. 



