INSTINCTS OF INFANCY. 



and offers greater attraction. The hand acquires the sense of touch 

 very slowly, and many ineffectual efforts may be observed in the 

 arms and fingers of the child, before it can estimate the direction 

 or distance of objects. Gradually the length of the arm, and the 

 extent of its motions, become the measure of distance, of form, of 

 relation, and perhaps of time. 



37. "Next in importance to the sensibility of the mouth, we 

 may consider that sense which is early exhibited in the infant, 

 the terror of falling. 



' ' The nurse will tell us that the infant lies composed in her arms, 

 while she carries it upstairs, but that it is agitated when she 

 carries it down. If an infant be laid upon the arms and dandled 

 up and down, its body and limbs will be at rest when it is raised, 

 but in descending it will struggle and make efforts. Here is the 

 indication of a sense, an innate feeling of danger, and we may. 

 perceive its influence when the child first attempts to stand or 

 run. When set upon its feet, the nurse's arms forming a hoop 

 around it, without touching it, the child slowly learns to balance 

 itself and stand ; but under a considerable apprehension. It will 

 only try to stand at such a distance from the nurse's knee, that if 

 it should fall, it can throw itself for protection into her lap. In 

 these, its first attempts to use its muscular frame, it is directed by 

 a fear which cannot as yet be attributed to experience. I>y 

 degrees it acquires the knowledge of the measure of its arm, the 

 relative distance to which it can reach, and the power of its 

 muscles. Children are, therefore, cowardly by instinct; they 

 show an apprehension of falling, and we may trace the gradual 

 efforts which they make under the guidance of this sense of 

 danger to perfect the muscular sense. We thus perceive how 

 instinct and reason are combined in early infancy ; how necessary 

 the first is to existence ; how it soon becomes subservient to 

 reason, and how it eventually yields to the progress of reason, 

 until obscured so much that we can hardly discern its influence." * 



38. At the moment of birth, twenty teeth already formed and 

 ossified are deposited, ten in the lower and ten in the upper jaw, 

 but are completely covered by the gums. The mouth is thus 

 constituted exclusively for application to the mother's breast 

 and for the suction of milk from it, and the stomach and intestines 

 are organised in accordance with this for the due digestion of that 

 aliment. The constituents of the healthy milk of voman are the 

 same as those of the body of the child, and enter into its com- 

 position in a corresponding proportion. By the process of digestion , 

 they are distributed among the several organs of the child's body, 



* Bell, On the Hand, p. 233. 



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