116 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 



pacity to be can be measured only in divine units 

 of being. The psalmist's conception is justified by 

 the latest conclusions of research: "Thou hast 

 made him a little lower than God." "The baby 

 lives in a sort of coelentareate stage of almost 

 vegetative life. His whole business seems to be 

 to eat, digest, breathe and sleep, to survive and 

 grow. His education consists very largely in 

 making his physical surroundings as favorable to 

 bodily health as they possibly can be. But the 

 baby gives dim promise of something higher and 

 better. . . . He kicks and wriggles; he will soon 

 run and walk. The young child wishes to be con- 

 tinually in motion. He can not sit still long. The 

 muscular system is the seat and center of his de- 

 velopment. . . . This muscular exercise is lift- 

 ing all his vital organs, heart, lungs, digestive 

 system, and is giving him the first elements of 

 power a tough body. It is tuning up the nerv- 

 ous system and stimulating the brain. . . . He 

 is still in the muscular stage, but curiosity and 

 wonder and some thought show the dawn of the 

 era of mind which quickly follows." (Tyler: 

 "Man in Evolution," 87.) 



The first childhood is the period of the first 

 dentition; it is the instinctive period. Virchow 

 calls a child at this stage a "spinal reflex being." 

 He has a purely reflex activity up to about the 

 third month. That means that his actions have 

 no volitional element, and consequently no moral 

 quality, any more than the motions of a frog un- 



