758 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The plasticity of the child is hardly less. By causing it to 

 perform a certain motion and habitually preventing it from mak- 

 ing the opposite one, we act in a wonderful degree on its feelings 

 and ideas. Is not making it talk, eat, and move in a more lively 

 way a means of shaking off the inertness of which we just spoke ? 

 Hence the possibility of that moral training, which should not be 

 confounded with moral education proper, for it is in one sense 

 the opposite, but which is, nevertheless, not unrelated to it ; for 

 there is mechanism, one part of training, at the beginning in all 

 education. It is thus important to study the motions of the little 

 child first, in order to interpret them correctly as signs, and 

 thereby to read in its consciousness ; and, second, to know how to 

 regulate them practically, to favor or repress them according to 

 circumstances, and in this way to act upon the child's character. 

 Let us try, then, to retrace in outline the progress of the faculty of 

 motion in the child till it learns how to walk, dwelling preferably 

 upon the movements the more direct relation of which with the 

 will gives them a special importance. The general truth prevails 

 through the whole subject that motions which become voluntary 

 begin by not being so ; that intentional activity, the nascent will, 

 does but gain possession of acts which were at first not willed. 

 We are about to inquire how this takes place. 



Involuntary motions appear to be of four kinds automatic, 

 reflex, instinctive, and imitative. The motions which I call auto- 

 matic are not inspired or guided by any representation, but pro- 

 ceed exclusively from the energy accumulated from nutrition in 

 the nervous centers. They occur when that energy is disengaged 

 outwardly by the motor nerves without peripheric excitation of 

 the sensitive nerves, and of course without a mental representa- 

 tion, of which the subject is not yet capable. These uncoordi- 

 nated movements, including motions before and just after birth, 

 the first motions of the eyelids, eyes, hands, arms, and legs, and 

 all sorts of grimaces, have in themselves but little psychological 

 interest ; but they are the ones of which the will gains the most 

 complete possession. The more indeterminate and characterless 

 they are in their origin, the more conscious energy, awaking in 

 them, will be able to make them its own. The case is different 

 with the motions of the next two categories; regulated and 

 limited by nature, the will will never absolutely dispose of them 

 or resist them without difficulty. It would be no small effort for 

 it to prevent reflex actions and contend against the instincts. 



The reflexes are motions which are produced instantaneously 

 and mechanically after certain peripheral impressions ; of such is 

 sneezing, the first act of the infant in coming into the world, and 

 coughing. Although they fall more or less under consciousness, 

 in that it is informed of them as they occur or immediately after- 



