JASTJJVCT. 405 



Staiwting. 



Locomotion. The early movements of children's limbs 

 are more or less symmetrical. Later a baby will move his 

 legs in alternation if suspended in the air. But until the 

 impulse to walk awakens by the natural ripening of the 

 nerve-centres, it seems to make no difference how often the 

 child's feet may be placed in contact with the ground ; the 

 legs remain limp, and do not respond to the sensation of 

 contact in the soles by muscular contractions pressing doivn- 

 ivards. No sooner, however, is the standing impulse born, 

 than the child stiffens his legs and presses downward as 

 soon as he feels the floor. In some babies this is the first 

 locomotory reaction. In others it is jDreceded by the in- 

 stinct to creep, which arises, as I can testify, often in a very 

 sudden way. Yesterday the baby sat quite contentedly 

 wherever he was put ; to-day it has become impossible to 

 keep him sitting at all, so irresistible is the imjDulse, aroused 

 by the sight of the floor, to throw himself forward upon his 

 hands. Usually the arms are too weak, and the ambitious 

 little experimenter falls on his nose. But his perseverance 

 is dauntless, and he ends in a few days by learning to travel 

 rapidly around the room in the quadrujDedal Avay. The 

 position of the legs in ' creeping ' varies much from one 

 child to another. My own child, when creei3iug, was often 

 observed to pick up objects from the floor with his mouth, 

 a phenomenon which, as Dr. O. W. Holmes has remarked, 

 like the early tendency to grasp with the toes, easily lends 

 itself to interpretation as a reminiscence of prehuman an- 

 cestral habits. 



The walking instinct may awaken with no less sudden- 

 ness, and its entire education be completed within a week's 

 compass, barring, of course, a little ' grogginess ' in the 

 gait. Individual infants vary enormously ; but on the whole 

 it is safe to say that the mode of development of these 

 locomotor instincts is inconsistent with the account given 

 by the older English associationist school, of their being 

 results of the individual's education, due altogether to the 

 gradual association of certain perceptions with certain hap- 

 hazard movements and certain resultant pleasures. Mr 



