20 MORALS AND MOEAL SENTIMENTS. 







of mind which \ve call amicable feeling : this, too, has a 

 physiological interpretation. 1 



Let us pass now from the infant in arms to the chil 

 dren in the nursery. &quot;What have the experiences of each 

 one of these been doing in aid of the emotional develop 

 ment we are considering ? &quot;While its limbs have been 

 growing more agile by exercise, its manipulative skill 

 increasing by practice, its perceptions of objects growing 

 by use quicker, more accurate, more comprehensive ; the 

 associations between these two sets of impressions received 

 from those around, and the pleasures and pains received 

 along with them, or after them, have been by frequent 

 repetition made stronger, and their adjustments better. 

 The dim sense of pain and the vague glow of delight 

 which the infant felt, have, in the urchin, severally taken 

 shapes that are more definite. The angry voice of a 

 nurse-maid no longer arouses only a formless feeling of 

 dread, but also a specific idea of the slap that may follow. 

 The frown on the face of a bigger brother, along with the 

 primitive, indefinable sense of ill, brings the sense of ills 

 that are definable in thought as kicks, and cuffs, and 

 pullings of hair, and losses of toys. The faces of parents, 

 looking now sunny, now gloomy, have grown to be re 

 spectively associated with multitudinous forms of gratifi 

 cation and multitudinous forms of discomfort or privation. 

 Hence these appearances and sounds, which imply amity 

 or enmity in those around, become symbolic of happiness 

 and misery ; so that eventually perception of the one set 

 or the other can scarcely occur without raising a wave of 

 pleasurable feeling or of painful feeling. The body of 

 this wave is still substantially of the same nature as it was 



1 Hereafter I hope to elucidate at length these phenomena of expression. 

 For the present, I can refer only to such further indications as are contained 

 in two essays on The Physiology of Laughter and the Origin and Function of 

 Music. 



