Herrick, Itnitatioii and Volition. 377 



reaction or as a result of physiological suggestion. It would be 

 interesting to have further data as to the origin of this habit. Surely 

 there must have been some reenforcement oi the originally seem- 

 ingly aimless impulse; and one could wish to know its nature before 

 excluding the volitional element finally. One would be prompted 

 to ask whether the result of the first accidental scratch was not of 

 a nature to awaken the child's interest. Did it not produce some 

 exaggerated expression of surprise, mock fright, or simulated 

 reproof, such as mother or nurse would naturally indulge ? li so, 

 the child would be strongly prompted to repeat an act associated 

 with a highly exciting sensori-motor reaction. 



Taking now a still more simple example, we may hope to elimin- 

 ate the uncertainty and ambiguity. A child, presumably of the 

 age of "H," in the instance recorded by Professor Baldwin, acci- 

 dentally places its hand on the window^ pane. The act was un- 

 prompted and would never have been intentionally repeated and 

 could never have formed a habit if no notice had been taken ot it. 

 But the nurse, with some ostentation, removes the hand and places 

 it in the child's lap with words of reproof. What does the child 

 then do but repeat the operation, looking into the nurse's face with 

 an airof "I will to put it there." From this point on the phenomena 

 are essentially the same as in the case cited by Professor Baldwin. 

 Now is this deliberative suggestion or is it will } Baldwin supposes 

 that "suggestion is as original a motor stimulus as pleasure or 

 pain," and that in the case cited these two classes of stimuli are in 

 direct conflict. It is important, first of all, to be sure that "self in 

 any form" is really absent. What is the basis of self ? Is not the ego 

 concept compounded from non-localizable sensory stimuli (stimuli 

 which accordingly have not lost their feeling quale) and vestiges 

 of the eftbrt-sense .^ It is always "I" who suffers and "I" who 

 does. It seems impossible to believe that during the early non- 

 localizmg period — the period when feeling is in the ascendancy — 

 the self feeling should not have evolved, even if not clearly ex- 

 pressed. The ego sense must arise in an exceedingly early stage 

 and gradually, as the constant among the fleeting, it usurps the 

 highest associational seat. Every new experience is brought to 

 adjudication here. When the child replaces its hand on the win- 

 dow pane it has merely fused the consciousness of a particular 

 irrelevant "doing" with the autocratic "I." When the attempt 

 is made to divorce these two elements the child is conscious of a 



