646 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



thing like what we call sense-experience. Yet, however dim, con- 

 fused, and rudimentary the baby's consciousness may be, the in- 

 going nerve currents produce more or less definite movements, 

 and, as consciousness becomes more highly evolved, not merely 

 do the impressions of sense produce movements, but the ideas 

 also, or copies of those impressions, acquire control over the body. 

 The later history of volition merely records the steps by which 

 the inner control, through its gradually increasing complexity, 

 comes to supersede the outer. In the earlier years of life the 

 child may almost be said to be a slave to his environment. His 

 conduct is controlled for the most part either by what he actually 

 sees and hears or by his most recent memories and immediate 

 anticipations. The remote past and the distant future affect him 

 but little : he is a creature of the present. Consequently, one can 

 see the motor effects of sensations and ideas more directly in 

 children than in the adult. At first definite responses are limited 

 to a few reflexes. Sucking, winking, crying, swallowing, clutch- 

 ing, and one or two more, constitute the capital with which the 

 child begins life. Besides these we find a mass of random move- 

 ments out of which all later forms are evolved. At a somewhat 

 later period the child enters upon the imitative stage, to which 

 so much attention has been attracted of late; no sooner does be 

 see an act performed than he attempts to do it himself. Of the 

 mental and physiological conditions which lie at the basis of imi- 

 tation we know very little. It probably marks a period in which 

 the visible appearances of the grosser bodily movements are enter- 

 ing into associative union with those thoughts of how the move- 

 ments feel when performed which are the immediate psychical 

 antecedents of the movements which they represent. " Naughti- 

 ness," in children passing through this stage, is frequently noth- 

 ing more than sheer inability to overcome the imperative sug- 

 gestions of the environment by the relatively feeble thoughts 

 which its parents' commands suggest. For children, example is 

 indeed better than precept. 



As the child grows older and his mind becomes more richly 

 stored with memories, as his hereditary instincts come to view, 

 and his increasing power of imagination enables him to picture 

 the future more distinctly, he is little by little emancipated from 

 his slavery to the present. Yet in many children marked suggest- 

 ibility persists to a quite late period. In the normal adult the 

 store of memories has become so rich and the power of anticipat- 

 ing the future so great that the primitive suggestibility seems 

 almost to have disappeared. The man's conduct is no longer 

 mainly controlled by this or by that suggestion of his environ- 

 ment, but springs naturally from the steady stream of thoughts 

 and purposes that fill his mind. No suggestion can enter his 



