EVOLUTION AND PSYCHOLOGY 261 



words which, I believe, can not possibly be ex- 

 plained as imitations, and which have been used 

 consistently by the child for some time and occa- 

 sionally for a nmnber of years. So in infantile 

 drawing we have undoubted, though dwindling, 

 traces of what Verworn calls the physioplastic 

 stage of paleohthic man, before the idioplastic 

 stage of the neolith, who ceased to draw directly 

 from the object itself but rather copied his own 

 mental image of it. Here, again, a well-recog- 

 nized phyletic stage has dwindled to Httle more 

 than a filmy vestige in the modern infant, but is 

 as recognizable as the rudimentary gill-shts in 

 the embryo. The swinaming, paddhng move- 

 ments, too, by new-born infants if supported in 

 tepid water; the wonderful power to cling and 

 support the weight for a minute or two during 

 the first few weeks after birth, a power soon lost 

 but reminscent of arboreal hfe; the phobias of 

 infants of a few weeks or months seen often in 

 nervous shudders at the first impressions of fur, 

 big teeth and eyes; the joy experienced by toss- 

 ing and other levitation movements, creeping, 

 and the processes of assuming the erect position; 

 the very intricate and interesting stages of the 

 progressive acquirement of the complex sense of 

 self; the loud cry of the human infant from birth 

 on as contrasted with the silence of the new-born 

 of other animals, so eloquent of the early power 

 of the parent to protect; and for older children 

 fetishisms galore, gangs corresponding to the 



