PRENATAL AND INFANTILE CULTURE. 4 i 



education of the most general sense, the touch, is ill-satisfied with the 

 uniformity of the materials at hand, as exemplified at Vienna or Paris. 

 (In November last I saw a similar exhibition, a pavilion de V enfant, 

 in the Champs Elysees, but it was no improvement on that of the 

 Prater.) 



In this respect, the child of poor people fares better, having the 

 opportunity of amusing himself for hours in experiencing the rude or 

 soft, warm or cold, contacts of his miscellaneous surroundings ; 

 whereas the hand of the offspring of the rich finds all around the 

 sameness of smooth tissues, which awake in his mind no curiosity ; 

 he calls for some one to amuse him, gets first angry, then indifferent, 

 and does not improve the main and surest sense of knowledge, his 

 touch. 



But soon other senses are awakened : audition of which here- 

 after and vision, for the enjoyment of which the cradle becomes a 

 kind of theatre. For a mother must be very destitute or despondent 

 who does not try to enliven it with some bright things laid on, or 

 flapping above. One may benevolently smile at the extravagancies 

 of colors and patterns intended to express this feeling, but these ex- 

 aggerations must also give a serious warning. 



Physiologically viewed, this is a grave matter. The form of the 

 cradle demands fitness ; its ornamentation requires a more extended 

 knowledge. When planning it, a mother must remember that the 

 fixity of the eye upon any object particularly upon a bright one, 

 and more so if that object is situated upward and sideways from the 

 ordinary range of vision and through the eye the fixedness of the 

 mind while the body is in a state of repose, constitute a concurrence 

 of conditions eminently favorable to the production of hypnotism, and 

 its terrible sequels, strabismus and convulsions. Hypnotism, which, 

 when unsuspected, is not controlled, is often mistaken for tranquil 

 happiness or natural sleep. 



Psychologically viewed, the decoration of the cradle is of equal 

 moment. To surround an infant with highly wrought or colored 

 figures, often grotesque, or at least untrue to Nature, may, by day, 

 attract more attention than his faculties of perception can safely 

 bestow ; hence fatigue of the brain, or worse ; but it will, by night, 

 evoke other than the perceptive and rational powers, for, when the 

 lights and shadows of dusk alter all the forms and deepen every 

 color, the faculty of imprinting images being led astray, it photo- 

 graphs distorted imprints from confused, often moving, sometimes 

 rustling, ornaments. In this way the mind is made the subject of hal- 

 lucinations, which it accepts as objective, without inquiring into their 

 causes, till it comes to the fatal credo quia absurdum (I believe, be- 

 cause it is absurd). The seeds of most of the insanities are sown at 

 or before this time. 



These were the first impressions that forced themselves upon my 



