208 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN 



Nevertheless, there is some reason to think that when this 

 growth has attained a certain point, it makes, so to speak, a 

 sudden leap of progress, which may be taken to bear the same 

 relation to the development of the mind as the act of birth 

 does to that of the body. In neither case is the development 

 anything like completed. Midway between the slowly 

 evolving phases in utero and the slowly evolving phases of 

 after-growth, there is in the case of the human body a great and 

 sudden change at the moment when it first becomes separated 

 from that of its parent. And so, there is some reason to 

 believe, it is in the case of the human mind. Midway between 

 the gradual evolution of receptual ideation and the no less 

 gradual evolution of conceptual, there appears to be a critical 

 moment when the soul first becomes detached from the 

 nutrient body of its parent perceptions, and wakes up in the 

 new world of a consciously individual existence. " Die 

 Schlussprozesse, durch welche jene Trennung des Ich von 

 der Aussenwelt vor sich geht, geschehen allmalig. Es ist eine 

 langsame Arbeit, durch die sich die Scheidung bewerkstelligt. 

 Doch diese Scheidung selber ist stets eine plotzliche That : es 

 ist ein bestimmter Moment, in welchem das Ich mit einem Mai 

 mit voller Klarheit in der Seele aufblitzt, und es ist derselbe 

 Moment, in welchem das bewusste Gedachtniss beginnt, 

 Sehr haufig ist es daher, dass gerade diesses erste blitzahn- 

 liche Aufleuchten des Selbstbewusstseins bis in spate Jahre 

 noch als deutliche Erinnerung zuriickbleibt." * 



Of course the evidence upon this point must always be 

 more or less unsatisfactory — first, because the powers of 

 introspective analysis at the particular time when they first 

 become nascent must be most incompetent to report upon 

 the circumstances of their own birth ; and next, because we 

 know how precarious it is to rely on adult reminiscences 



* Wundt, /(?f. «V., ii, 289, 290. He gives cases where such a definite memory 

 of the moment has persisted, and elsewhere states that such is the case in his own 

 experience. The circumstance which here was connected with the sudden birth 

 of self-consciousness consisted in rolling down stairs into a cellar — an event which 

 no doubt was well calculated forcibly to impress upon infant consciousness that it 

 was itself, and nobody else. 



