228 CHILDHOOD OF ANIMALS 



written about some years ago. It is known that at least some very 

 young infants will seize firmly any object which they can grasp. If 

 one be given a broom-handle of which to lay hold, it will swing from 

 this by one hand or by both hands, and even, by bending the muscles 

 of the arms, pull itself up. When a little older an infant is unable 

 to do this. The suggestion was that in its extreme infancy 

 the young human being showed this sign of its monkey ancestry 

 and swung from the broom-handle as an ape would swing from 

 the branch of a tree. The objection was taken to such an interpreta- 

 tion that the action of the young infant was purely automatic, 

 that its brain-cells were not yet joined up to the lower centres which 

 control the automatic movements of the body. A frog the cerebrum 

 of which has been destroyed, if placed in a bowl of water, will go 

 on swimming indefinitely until it dies of exhaustion. The contact 

 of water with the skin makes the direct and automatic suggestion 

 to the lower nerve-centres which control the operation of swimming, 

 whilst if the brain were intact, sensations of hunger, of weariness, 

 of desire to escape and so forth would have come into play and 

 caused a change in the movement. The young infant is a brainless 

 creature, because the nerve-cells of its cerebrum are not yet linked 

 up with the rest of the body. On this view, however, the comparison 

 really becomes more interesting. The infant swinging from the 

 broomstick is not acting like full-grown apes, but like young apes 

 clinging to their mother. A new-born leopard, or mole, or hedgehog 

 would not cling to a broomstick in this way, but a new-born ape 

 or monkey does so. The automatism lasts longer in the ape than 

 in man and is less interfered with by the suggestions coming from 

 the brain, as throughout life there are fewer brain-cells and these 

 have less complete junctions with each other and with the lower 

 centres. There are many cases in the adult life of human beings 

 where the higher cells or some of them are temporarily thrown out 

 of action, so that they are in the same position as if they had ceased 

 to be joined up. And in such cases the behaviour of the patient 

 recalls that of apes and monkeys. When a normal healthy human 

 being is struggling or fighting with persons trying to seize him, he 

 uses only a small part of his muscular power, because the higher 

 centres of the brain are interfering and warning him that he has to 

 take care of himself, to avoid being hurt and even to avoid hurting 

 his opponents too much. But if he be mad, if some of the higher 

 brain-cells are temporarily put out of action, then he loses all 

 restraint, and fights, as a desperate animal fights, without any 



