HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 85 



' ' As early as the second month it distinguishes its 

 mother's or nurse's touch in the dark. It learns 

 the characteristic methods of holding, taking up, 

 patting, and adapts itself to these personal varia- 

 tions. It is quite a different thing from the child's 

 behavior toward things which are not persons." 

 (Baldwin: "Mental Development in the Child," 

 335.) "When the child takes the next step from 

 recognition of personality to the development of 

 his own personality, he does so through the func- 

 tion of imitation. When the organism is ripe for 

 the enlargement of its active range by new ac- 

 commodations, then he begins to be dissatisfied 

 with . . . contemplation, and starts on his ca- 

 reer of imitation. And of course he imitates 

 persons." Thus the soul of the child and the 

 soul of the parent are in vital communication to 

 a degree not existing between him and things. 

 It is this ascertained law of vital relation between 

 parent and child that demands some intenser name 

 than the term environment conveys, and suggests 

 the propriety of calling it heredity. No physical 

 communication was ever more vital to him, even 

 when he formed a part of the physical organism of 

 the mother, than the spiritual tides that now flow 

 through him from the ardent spiritual nature of 

 father or mother. Much attention has been given 

 to pre-natal impressions perhaps not too much, 

 if we are thinking of the nervous system alone. 

 But the spirit of the mother has its supreme op- 

 portunity in the post-natal life, when the child has 



