300 
competent to deal with the necessarily simpler mental 
processes of lower creatures, must surely feel itself in an 
uncomfortably anomalous position. 
It is, however, on the first-mentioned circumstance, theim- 
maturity of the infant at birth, that most stress can be laid. 
The newly-born babe cannot raise its hand to its mouth, 
and doubtless for a long time after birth it has no con- 
sciousness of the axiom “things that are equal to the same 
thing are equal to one another.” The helplessness of in- 
fancy is pointed to as furnishing ocular demonstration of 
the doctrine that, whatever may be the case with the ani- 
mals, all humanknowledge, all human ability to perform use- 
ful actions, must be wholly the resultof associations formed 
in the life-history of each individual. But it can surely 
require little argument to show that this is an entirely 
unwarranted assumption. It might as well be main- 
tained that because a child is born without teeth and 
without hair, the subsequent appearance of these must be 
referred wholly to the operation of external forces. Of 
the several lines of argument that might here be em- 
ployed, let us, for the sake of freshness, take the analogy 
from the lower animals. We are not aware that it can be 
asserted as the result of prearranged and careful ob- 
servations, that any creature at the instant of birth ex- 
hibits any of the higher instincts. A number of isolated 
and more or less accidental observations have been re- 
corded; and apparently on the strength of these Mr. 
Spencer has made the following unqualified statement :— 
“A chick, immediately it comes out of the egg, not only 
balances itself and runs about, but picks up fragments of 
food, thus showing us that it can adjust its muscular 
movements in a way appropriate for grasping an object 
in a position that is accurately perceived.” The fact is, 
that on emerging from the shell, the chick can no more 
do anything of all this than can the new-born child run 
about and gather blackberries, But between the two 
there is this great difference, that whereas the chick can 
pick about perfectly in less than twenty-four hours, the 
child is not similarly master of its movements in as many 
months. Our present point is, that it can be shown by 
experiment that the performances of the chick a day old, 
which involve the perceptions of distance and direction 
by the eye and the ear, and of many other qualities of 
external things, are not in any degree the results of its 
individual experiences. Let it now be remembered that, 
in the absence of conclusive evidence to the contrary, it 
has been considered a safe position to hold that the early 
knowledge and intelligent action of the chicken “may 
be, after all, nothing more than very rapid acquisitions, 
the result of that experimentation, prompted by the 
inborn or spontaneous activity.” May we now, on the 
other side, similarly presume, until the contrary is shown, 
that the more tardy progress of the infant is not because 
its mental constitution has to be built up from the foun- 
dation out of the primitive elements of consciousness, 
which the chicken’s has not, but rather because the child 
comes into the world in a state of greater physical, and 
therefore mental immaturity? The progress of the infant, 
however, has been so continually spoken of as if it werea 
visible process of unaided acquisition, that it may give 
some surprise when it is asserted from the other side that 
we have no sufficiently accurate acquaintance with the 
alleged acquisitions of infancy to justify the doctrine that 
NATURE 
i eee: 
(Feb. 20, 1873 
they are different in kind from the unfolding of the in- 
herited instincts of the chicken. ‘To give definiteness to 
the attitude taken up, we would say, for example, that the 
facts concerning the early movements of the two lambs 
and the calf observed by Prof. Bain, and which, looked at 
from his point of view, were stfong confirmation of the 
doctrine of individual acquisition, may be just as readily 
interpreted as the unfolding of inherited powers ; which, 
as far as we know, start into perfect action at the moment 
of birth, in no single instance. From observations on — 
several newly-dropped calves, the facts corresponding 
substantially with those recorded by Prof. Bain, the pre- 
sent writer could draw no conclusive evidence in favour 
of either the one theory or the other. One observation, 
however, may here be mentioned that seemed rather to 
favour the doctrine of inheritance. A calf one hour old, 
which had been staggering about on its legs forten minutes, 
stepped out at the open door of the byre. It no sooner 
found itself in the open air, than it began to frisk and 
dance ; it was left entirely to itself, and whenit had been 
on its legs fifteen minutes, it—apparently in obedience to 
the feeling of fatigue—deliberately lay down, folding in 
its limbs after the established manner of its kind. This 
is all we know about calves; about children we know 
nothing at all. And it may fairly be asked how, when 
called in question, the assumption that underlies such 
statements as the following can be made good. We quote 
from Prof, Bain’s account of the growth of voluntary power. 
He says :—“ The infant is unable to masticate; a morsel 
putinto its mouth at first usually tumbles out, But ifthere 
occur spontaneous movements of the tongue, mouth, or 
jaw, giving birth to a strong relish, these movements are 
sustained, and begin to be associated with the sensations; 
so that after a time there grows up a firm connection,’ 
Bearing in mind that when born the child has no occa- 
sion for the power of masticating solid food ; that the 
ability to suck, which involves an equally complex series 
of muscular adjustments, is what it requires, and this it 
has by instinct ; bearing all this in mind, the question is, 
why may not the innate ability to masticate be developed 
by the time it is required quite as spontaneously as the 
teeth used in the operation? Takeaparallel. The feeble 
nestling when it leaves the shellis blind. One ofthe seve- 
ral very pronounced and interesting instincts it exhibits at 
this stage is, that in response to certain sounds it opens 
its mouth and struggles to hold up its head to be fed. 
Several weeks later it begins to pick for itself. Now we 
put the question, is this second mode of filling its stomach 
to be considered a pure acquisition, while its original 
plan must certainly be regarded as pure instinct? No 
one, we think, will venture to answer in the affirmative ; 
the more so as this is a case that may any day be put to 
the test of experiment. Where, then, is the evidence that 
the analogous progress from drawing milk to masticating 
solid food is of a different kind? 
DoucLas A. SPALDING 
OUR BOOK SHELF 
Beitrige zur Biologie der Pflanzen. 
von Dr. Ferdinand Cohn. 
1872.) 
THIS part contains the following memoirs :—Dr, 
Ciesielski, “ Investigations on the downward Curvature 
L Herausgegeben 
Zweites Heft: (Breslau, 
