40 



♦ KNOVSTLEDGE ♦ 



[December 1, 1887. 



misled by merely chance movements of the eyes, some 

 twenty hours eai'lier still. 



The last stage of eye direction " is that in which the child 

 is able to turn the eye towards an object, and to seek for new 

 objects in the field of view. This stage is reached (it should 

 be this stage was reached in the particular case in question) 

 in the first quarter. On the eighty-first day, the child 

 turned its eyes seeking an object (a drinking-glass) which 

 ■was emitting tones." 



The power of judging direction and distance is closely 

 associated with these first experiments in seeing. Professor 

 Preyer says that in the sixty-eighth v:ee.k the child still 

 grasped at objects lying beyond his reach. " On this," Mr. 

 Sully remarks, " it seems to me there must be great difler- 

 ences here. I tried a boy of mine with an object when just 

 six months old. If the object was held a foot or less beyond 

 his reach he made no movement. But as soon as it was 

 brought pretty near the accessible point he made a decided 

 grasping movement." A boy of mine, five months and a 

 few days old, amused himself in the early morning hours 

 (much too early for my comfort or his mother's) in grasping 

 and pulling towards him the red lining of our bed curtain, 

 which is carried round the top of his cot. He made no 

 attempts of the kind if (as in the warmer wcAther) it was 

 placed where it would be some five or six inches beyond his 

 reach. When he was five months and one day old he tried to 

 pull the lining ."io as to get it into his mouth, but could not, 

 because even with a stronger pull than he could give it 

 would only re:\ch within some three or four inches of his 

 mouth. On this he put two hands down beside him, and, 

 hoisting himself up, laid hold of the lining -with his not 

 quite " boneless gums." There mu>-t have been some judg- 

 ment of distance and direction here, because his eyes could 

 not guide the capture, as when it was made with the hands. 



Hearing is defective for several days after birth. Young 

 mothers should note this, by the way. I have known cases 

 where a mother has feared that her child was born deaf 

 because it paid no attention to noises not accompanied by 

 movements it could feel. In one sense every infant is born 

 deaf, owing to the condition of the aural conduits : and even 

 when the organs of hearing are no longer impeded there is 

 often no power of discriminating .sound for several days. 



Professor Preyer found, he says, that "the first un- 

 mistakable movements of the head in the direction of a 

 sound occurred in the eleventh week." (This seems not 

 quite consistent with his statement that on the eii;hty-fii>t 

 day the child tried to look at a drinking-glass which was 

 emitting sound.) At the end of the sixteenth week the 

 movement of the head in the direction of a sound — that is, 

 so that the eyes were directed towards the spot whence the 

 sound came — " had attained the precision and certainty of a 

 reflex movement." 



The sense of feeling is next dealt with by Professor 

 Preyer. His observations .seem to show that the surface of 

 the body is somewhat less sensitive to touch just after birth 

 than it afterwards becomes. So also the difference of 

 sensibility in diflerent parts of the body incre^ises for soiie 

 hours after birth. Immediately after birth the body seems 

 almost insensible to variations of temperature, but soon 

 becomes tolerably keen. Thus, when the bath was cooled 

 down to 32i° centigrade (90i° Fahrenheit) the child 

 appeared content, but with a further lowering of 1^° centi- 

 grade (2j° Fahrenheit) the child began to cry. 



The most perfect sense at birth is taste. " The discrimina- 

 tion of quality, namely, sweet, bitter, salt, and sour, is 

 possible from the fir.st, provided sufliciently strong stimuli 

 are employed. If weak solutions are iLsed the tactual sensa- 

 tion overpowers the gustatory, and the child is indiflerent." 



The sense of smell seems at first to be associated with the 



sense of taste. In the seventeenth month, when a hyacinth 

 was held to the child's nose, the youngster tried to fcike it 

 into its mouth. It is not altogether clear, however, 

 that the sense of smell is distinct from that of taste. 

 Professor Preyer considers that the first odour known to the 

 child, that of its mother's milk, is so inseparabh' bound up 

 with the pleasure of feeding and the sense of taste, that the 

 child argues in this case the smell is pleasant, therefore 

 this is something nice to eat. But the senses of touch and 

 sight are involved here, and it seems to me, from what I 

 have observed in a great number of cases, that they have at 

 least as much to do with the child's attempt to eat what is 

 offered to it as any sweet smell the hyacinth might have had. 

 If a piece of twisted paper, or a ball of cotton, is held to a 

 child's nose, he will take it into his mouth, tho\igh it has no 

 odour, pleasant or otherwise. This habit continues to the 

 middle of the second year, or even later, though after the 

 first eight or nine months the child's wish seems not so 

 much to taste as to test the object presented to it. 



Professor Preyer considers tliat fear is an inherited 

 instinct with young children. Of this there can be very 

 little doubt ; though it is to be noticed that children in the 

 same family differ very much as respects timidity, both in 

 regard to the degree of fear they show under the same con- 

 ditions and to the circumstances which chiefly aflfect them. 

 In some cases fear doubtless results from association, and 

 may often be ludicrously out of proportion to the exciting 

 cause. A boy of mine who during his first teething bad 

 been in charge of a strange nurse, showed .■■igns of anxiety 

 afterwards when she approached, as if (but of course the 

 interpretation may not be correct) he associated her appear- 

 ance with the pain he had sufl'ered when he first saw her. 

 Professor Preyer says that " the timidity of young children 

 before small animals can only be explained as the result of 

 inheritance." He noticed this first in the ninth month, 

 " and as late as the thirty. third month the child cried in a 

 ludicrous manner at the approach of a puppy only a week or 

 two old." The timidity, here, is rather anxiety in the 

 presence of the unknown and mysterious than an inherited 

 fear of small animals. I have noticed that an anxious, half- 

 frightened (but also half-curious) look always comes over a 

 child wlien it sees, hears, or feels anything of a striking 

 nature for the first time. 



Professor Preyer points out that blinking the eyes on the 

 sudden approach of an object does not necessarily imply an 

 intensified fear of danger. It seems rather to be a result of 

 experience, not being noticed during the first two months, 

 and is therefoi-e presumably an acquired habit. But he 

 regards the fear of falling when the child begins to walk as 

 instinctive. Here, it .seems to me, he is in error. If the 

 fear of falling were instinctive, we should, I imagine, see 

 more trace of stich fe^r in very young children when they 

 are held high in the air, and still more when they are tossed 

 up (as some will unwisely do with their children) to the 

 ceiling. But this is not usually, or indeed generally, the 

 case. I hold my youngest boy high up above the gi'ound, 

 and he only crows with pleasure. I let him down suddenly 

 from that height, and he shows no signs of fear, only a sort 

 of quaint perplexity at the sudden change of position. 



So, again, I agree with Sir. Sully in thinking that the 

 timidity displayed by Dr. Preyer's little boy in the twenty- 

 first month, when the child was taken close to the sea, is an 

 inherited fear. As Mr. Sully well remarks : " Much of 

 children's early shrinking is undoubtedly due to a kind 

 of shock which is given by certain things. One may easily 

 suppose that the vast expanse of water, especially when 

 attended by movement and the peculiar voluminous .sound, 

 would produce such an efleet ; and it is certain that some- 

 thing of children's fear of animals, especially of dogs, is 



