3 78 'Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology. 



sense of loss — of an attack on the self concept — and reacts as 

 violently and persistently as though the particular act had a high 

 potentiality for pleasure or pain. There is no question of habit 

 here nor of impulse with emotional value. Common sense says 

 the child is willful and it would seem that psychological analysis 

 might accept the dictum. But even though we may incline to 

 recognize will in a rudimentary form in a very early stage, there 

 can be no question that for each new voluntary act a pattern must 

 be set and we may recognize with Professor Baldwin the imitative 

 impulse as the pattern maker. The type of imitation with which 

 we are at first concerned may be called linked repetition, as 

 contrasted, on one hand, with chance repetitions, and, on the other, 

 with intended imitation, where one is conscious both of the imitated 

 act and the imitating effort. 



Two types of such repetition are to be distinguished. The 

 first is that related to the accommodation phenomena of sense 

 organs. Imitr.tion is said by PREYERtooccuras early as the third 

 or fourth month, while Baldwin was unable to detect unambig- 

 uous instances earlier than in the beginning of the ninth month. 

 But it is known that a moving light is followed as early as the 

 twenty-third day. During the latter part of the first month the 

 child turns the head as well as the eyes. It is plain that visual 

 fixation on a moving object is in so far imitative that it brings into 

 relation outward movements and subjective responses obeying 

 similar laws. I have elsewhere attempted to show that in coor- 

 dinated passive vision that part of the field of view which is in 

 the macula will seem most brilliant, at least until these differentia 

 are employed in forming local signs, and that the child's uncon- 

 scious eye-motions will occasion a loss or failure of retention of the 

 image which he will attempt to recover as the power of control is 

 gradually acquired. Now, when a brighter image is seen flitting 

 over the field of view the effect is the same as though the macula 

 image had again wandered and the effort at readjustment is made 

 with this new brighter spot rather than the macula image as the 

 goal. In this way the "seeking" motion of the eyes may have 

 arisen. How powerful and persistent this seeking or following 

 impulse is may be gathered from rotation phenomena. All visual 

 concepts of figure, form, extension, locality, etc., thus lay up 

 great store of dynamic vestiges. When one reads a description 

 there is always a retinue of such dynamic elements in process of 



