Chapter IV: Part 4

The increasing ownership of her body that this toe feat showed was evident in several other ways. The baby’s sitting up grew imperceptibly firmer and more independent of support: at nineteen weeks old, she was sitting alone in our laps a quarter of a minute at a time; four days later, a minute at a time, provided she did nothing to upset herself, such as flourishing her arms, or reaching after things; two days later yet, she balanced successfully for a few seconds on the table--and this was real sitting alone at last, for on the table there could be no least support from the yielding of the surface under her. All babies can sit alone earlier on the lap or a cushion than on a perfectly flat, hard surface.

At just about nineteen weeks old, too, the baby began to roll over to her side when she was laid on her back on the floor, and to squirm and bend around into a variety of positions, instead of lying where she was put.

The period was coming to an end in which the main activity of development was in the senses, and in coming through the coöperation of the senses to a bodily consciousness of herself in a world of objects, of distances, and directions. Now the baby had to learn to use that body, and explore that world. But before this second great period of activity fully began, there was a transition month, a month of vigorous practice in the powers already gained, and of gathering forces for the new developments.

IX

THE DAWN OF INTELLIGENCE

The sixth month, though it lay between two great development periods,--that of learning to use the senses, and that of learning to carry the body,--was not in itself a period of suspended development. It is true that its progress, being more purely mental, could not be so continuously traced as that which came before and after, but rather cropped up to the surface every now and then in a more or less broken way; still, no doubt, it really went on in the same gradual method, one thread and another knitting together into the fabric of new powers.

It was to this month, as I said in closing the last chapter, that the beginnings of adaptive intelligence belonged; and this alone marks it a great epoch.

There is a great deal of discussion about the use of the words “intelligence,” “reason,” “instinct,” “judgment,” “inference,” and the like: what these faculties and acts really are, how they come about, where the line is to be drawn between their manifestations (in the minds of animals and of man, for instance), and many other problems. But I think that all agree upon recognizing two types of action that come under the discussion: one, that which shows merely the ability to adapt means to ends, to use one’s own wit in novel circumstances; the other, that which rests on the higher, abstract reasoning power, such as is hardly possible without carrying on a train of thought in words. Whether these two types are to be called intelligence and reason, as Professor Lloyd Morgan calls them, or whether both come under the head of reason, lower and higher, we need not trouble to decide. If we call them adaptive intelligence and higher or abstract reason, we are safe enough.

Even if it be true that any glimmer of the higher reason penetrates back into the grades of life below the attainment of speech, it must be only into those just below, and is not to be looked for in our baby for a long time yet. But the mere practical intelligence that I am now speaking of seems to appear in babies close on the completion of a fair mastery of their senses, about the middle of the first year, and it goes pretty far down in the animal kingdom. Darwin thought the lowest example of it he knew was in the crab, who would remove shells that were thrown near the mouth of his burrow, apparently realizing that they might fall in.

Recent psychologists have shown strong reason for thinking that such acts as this are at bottom only the same old hit and miss trick that we have seen from the first, of repeating lucky movements; only in a higher stage, as the associations that guide the movements become more delicate and complicated, and memory and imagination enter in. However this may be as a matter of theoretic analysis, there is in practice a clear test of difference between the unintelligent earlier type of actions and those that all agree in calling intelligent: I have indicated it above, in saying that in intelligent action one’s own wit must be used “in novel circumstances.” The case must be such that one cannot fall back on race instinct nor on his own previous habit.

Our baby, for instance, first used her intelligence to steer her toe into her mouth, and the way she did it, compared with the way she slowly settled on the proper movements for getting her rattle into her mouth, shows clearly the practical difference between unintelligent and intelligent action, even if both are at bottom made of the same psychological stuff.

It was just before the sixth month began that the baby accomplished this feat, but it belongs with the developments of that month. She was already fond of playing with her toes; and sitting unclad that evening in her mother’s lap, she first tried to pull them straight to her mouth. This was, of course, the mere repetition of a frequent movement, learned by simple association. But when it failed--for the toes would kick away, just as her arms used to do, carrying the thumb from her lips--the little one put her mind on corralling them. She took them in one hand, clasped the other hand about her instep, and so brought the foot safely up. Still it escaped, and at last she clasped ankle and heel firmly, one with each hand, and after several attempts brought the elusive toe triumphantly into her mouth. It is true that by looking up to us for sympathy in her success, and relaxing attention, she promptly lost it once more; but she recaptured it, and from this time on, for weeks, had immense satisfaction in it every time she was undressed.

There may have been a certain element of instinct in this--getting the toe to the mouth is so persistent a habit with babies that it seems as if there must be some inheritance about it; but inheritance could hardly have given the special devices for managing the insubordinate foot; there was clearly some use of individual intelligence. All through the process of learning to manage the body, the baby showed instinct and intelligence most intricately mingled; and, indeed, we do so ourselves our lives long.

Of all a baby’s doings this toe business is the one that people find it most impossible to regard with scientific seriousness. But its indirect usefulness is considerable. The coöperation of different parts of the body that it teaches is remarkable; and it must have great influence in extending the sense of self to the legs and feet, where it has hitherto seemed but weakly developed. This is important in getting the body ready for standing and walking.

The baby now showed intelligence in her actions in several little ways, such as tugging with impatient cries at her mother’s dress when she wanted her dinner, and leaning over to pluck at the carriage blanket, under which her mother had laid some flowers to keep them from her. She slipped a long-handled spoon farther down in her hand to get the end of the handle into her mouth (almost exactly the same act as the one that Darwin thought first showed “a sort of practical reflection” in his child at about the same age: the boy slipped his hand down his father’s finger, in order to get the finger tip into his mouth). In the second week of the month she began to watch things as they fell, and then to throw them down purposely, to watch them falling.

I have already mentioned certain doubtful imitations in the fourth month, and a clearer one in the fifth. Now the baby began to imitate unmistakably. Her uncle had a fashion of slapping his hand down on the table by way of a salutation to her, and one day (when she had passed a week of her sixth month) she slapped down her little hand in return. The next day as soon as her uncle came in, she began to slap her hand down, watching him, delighted to repeat the movement back and forth, as long as he would keep it up. She would imitate me also when I did it; and in the course of the month several other little imitations occurred.

I have already spoken of the great importance psychologists attach to imitation. Professor Baldwin makes it the great principle of development in child and race--all evolution one long history of its workings; but he uses the word in a far wider sense than the ordinary one, tracing “imitation” from the mechanical repetition of life-preserving motions by the lowest living things, up to the spiritual effort of men and women to live up to their own highest ideals. Even using the word in its ordinary sense, we know what a potent force in the little one’s education imitation is. The age, however, at which it is most efficient is considerably later than the sixth month, and it did not count for much yet with our baby.

Her sounds had been more various and expressive from the first days of the month. She had taken up a curious puppy-like whine of desire or complaint, and a funny little ecstatic sniffing and catching her breath, to express some shades of delight; and she had also begun to pour out long, varied successions of babbling sounds, which expressed content, interest, or complaint very clearly. She would “talk to” any interesting object (a hedge in gorgeous bloom, for instance) with this expressive babble, sometimes holding out her arms to it at the same time. But now, in the second week of the month, the day after the first decisive imitation, a surprising advance beyond these means of communication took place.

I must explain that the wise grandma, who believed in encouraging babies to creep, as the best possible preparation for standing and walking, had begun to set the little one on her hands and knees on the big dining-table, putting a hand against her feet as a brace in case she should be moved to struggle forward. The baby had a habit of pushing with her feet when she felt anything against her soles; and pushing thus, thrust herself forward; and as the table-cover slid with her movement, she would half slide with it, half shove herself, across the table, grunting with exertion, and highly pleased.

On the day in question I was sitting with her by this table, and she pulled at the table-cover, as she was wont to pull and handle anything she could reach. Suddenly she threw herself back on my arm, and looked earnestly in my face; sat up and pulled at the cover again, then threw herself back and looked at me again.

“What does she want?” I said, surprised, and hardly able to think that the little thing could really be trying to say something to me. But grandma interpreted easily, and when I put the baby on the table accordingly, to make her sliding sprawl across the surface, she was satisfied.

This remarkable advance in sign language comes well under our definition of intelligent action: it was not a stereotyped sign, already fixed in her mind in association with a certain wish, like holding out her arms to be taken, but a device of her own, to meet the special occasion.

Her increased power of communication was not the only way in which her mind showed itself more wide awake to other people. A rather uncomfortable phase of this development was timidity. In the first week of the month, she was frightened by some one who came in suddenly between her and her mother, in a strange house, and spoke abruptly, in a deep, unfamiliar voice; and after that she often cried or became uneasy when strange men took her, or came near her, especially if they were abrupt. She drew distinct lines, according to some principle of her own, and certain people were affably accepted at once, while others, no more terrific that we could see, made the little lip quiver every time they came near. This timidity toward people was not at all deeply fixed in her temperament, and though it lasted all this month, it was never very marked afterward.

Some indications of the dawn of affection also appeared now. The baby’s desire to touch our faces with her mouth and hands seemed to have a certain element of attachment in it. The touches were often soft and caressing, and they were bestowed only on her especial friends, or on one or two strangers that she had taken at once into notable favor. Once she leaned out of her baby carriage, calling and reaching to me, as if she wished to be taken; but when I came to her, she wanted only to get hold of me, to put her hands and mouth softly on my face.

Up to about the middle of the month, in spite of her daily exercises with her toe, the baby had not altogether annexed her legs to her conscious self and brought them under her orders. She still had to hold the foot forcibly with her hands all the time her toe was in her mouth, or it would have kicked away from her as if it was none of hers. It is likely, too, that she had scarcely any idea of those parts of her body which she could not see and did not often touch. Indeed, the psychologists tell us that we ourselves have a decidedly inferior bodily consciousness in such parts--say between the shoulder blades. Even her own head must have been mainly unknown territory to the baby still, in spite of the curiosity she had felt about it the month before. But now she discovered by a chance touch that she could investigate it with her hands, and proceeded at once to do so, with a serious face.

In the latter half of the month, she went a good deal farther toward getting a roughly complete knowledge and control of her body. She investigated her ear, her cheek, and the back and sides of her head, from time to time. She became quite expert in using legs and hands, head and mouth, together, in get getting hold of her toe. She sat alone longer and longer, and by the end of the month could have done so by the half hour, if she had not always upset herself in five minutes or so by turning and reaching about. She had become very free in bending, squirming, and changing her position when she lay on the floor, and early in the third week of the month she had turned clear over, from back to stomach, in reaching after something. She followed up the lesson at once, and soon was rolling over whenever she wished--at first having much ado to get her arm disentangled from under her, but managing it nicely before long.

It is possible she would have begun creep creeping at this time but for the impediment of her clothes. She did stumble once upon almost the right movement, in trying to get forward to something she wanted; but her feet and knees became entangled in her skirts, and she gave it up. A week later, she was put into short skirts, but by that time the ability to roll over had diverted her mind from creeping.

Babies must lose a great deal of their normal activity through clothes. They are retracing a stage of human history in which clothes had no part, and this new element must hamper the repetition immensely. Clothes they must wear--they do not live in tropic forests nor own hair coverings; but we ought to leave the little limbs as free as we can without risk from cold. A chance to roll about nude in a room that is safely warm is a great thing for a baby.

She did not again use any sign language as advanced as when she had asked to be put on the table; that incident was a sort of herald of a later stage of development. But in the latter part of the month her regular means of communication were decidedly better developed than in the first part. She would coax for a frolic by leaning forward with an urgent “Oo! oo!” and expressive movements of her body; but if she was asking instead for an object she wished, or to be taken into her mother’s arms, there were small but quite definite differences in tone, expression, and movement, so that we usually knew at once which she meant.

About a week before the end of the month a great step toward intercommunication by speech took place. We began to suspect that the baby knew her own name, she turned to look so often just after it had been spoken. To test it I stood behind her, and in an ordinary tone accosted her as Bobby, Tom, Kitten, Mary, Jacob, Baby, and all sorts of other names. Whenever I said Ruth, Toodles, or Toots, she turned and looked expectantly at me, but not at any other name. Now, Ruth is our baby’s proper name; so it was evident that she really did have some inkling of the sound that meant her.

Not that she could rise yet to any such abstract conception as that of a person or of a name. But she had learned that this sound was connected with interesting experiences--with frolics, and caresses, and trips outdoors, with relief from discomforts, with dinners, and all the other things that happened when people were attending to her. It was out of such a beginning as this that full understanding of articulate speech, in all its logical intricacy, was to develop.

One of the most marked traits of the latter weeks of this month was the surprising rapidity with which things were grouping themselves in the baby’s mind by association, in a way that came nearer and nearer to definite memory. She coaxed for a spoon, and when she got it was still discontented, till we found that she wished it to have milk in, as she knew befitted a spoon--though for the milk itself she did not care at all. She understood what particular frolic was to be expected from each of us. She turned, when she saw reflections, to look for the real object. She made demonstrations of joy when she saw her baby carriage, knowing well what it portended.

In two or three cases, there was at last unmistakable evidence of true memory, for at least a few minutes. For instance, in the last week of the month, sitting on her mother’s lap, the baby caught sight of a knot of loops that adorned the centre of an ottoman close by, and reached her arms for it. By way of a joke on her, her mother set her on the ottoman. It was quite beyond the baby’s sense of locality to divine what had become of the knot, and she looked all about her diligently to find it, leaning this way and that. By and by her mother took her back into her arms to nurse; but all the time she was nursing, she would stop now and then, sit up, and lean over to look for the lost knot.

At another time, when her mother came into the room with a new hat on, she reached out her hands for it with delight; her mother retreated at once, and put the hat safely out of sight, but when some minutes later the baby saw her again, her first look was at the top of her head, and seeing it now bare of lace and buttercups, she broke into a disappointed whimper.

All this time practice in her earlier attainments went vigorously on. She was watching, handling, reaching after things, all day long. Especially she watched all the movements of people; often, now, as they went in and out of doors, as they were seen through windows, came into sight or disappeared around corners. She must have been getting thus some idea of the way walls acted in shutting out her view, and of the relation of visible and invisible positions.

She had perhaps more troubles in this month than ever before, what with some fear of people, and the discomforts connected with her first pair of teeth, and also with the beginning of the weaning period. There were a number of days when her health and spirits were considerably depressed, and there was a good deal of fretting. When the teeth were fairly through, and the insufficient food supplemented, her spirits came up with a bound, and she was more joyous than ever.

She had her first skin pain in this month--a scratched finger from a clasp on my shoulder--and wailed with vigor; yet it was forgotten in a few moments, and never thought of again. It was evident that skin sensitiveness was still low, and that hurts left no after soreness.

It was about ten days before the end of the month that she first showed a decided emotional dependence on her mother. She had been separated from her for some time (by a tedious dentist’s engagement), had become hungry and sleepy, and had been frightened by an abrupt stranger. At last she settled into a pitiful, steady crying--stopping at every angle in the corridor where I walked with her, and watching eagerly till it was turned, then breaking out anew when her mother did not prove to be around the corner. This tragic experience left a much deeper mark than the physical woes, and for some days the baby watched her mother rather anxiously, as if she feared she might lose her again unless she kept her eyes constantly upon her.

And so she was come to the end of her first half year. The breathing automaton had become an eager and joyous little being, seeing and hearing and feeling much as we do, knowing her own body somewhat, and controlling it throughout to a certain extent, laughing and frolicking, enjoying the vision of the world with a delicious zest, clinging to us not so much for physical protection as for human companionship, beginning to show a glimmer of intelligence, and to cross over with sign and sound the abyss between spirit and spirit.

X

BEGINNINGS OF LOCOMOTION

When a baby has learned to see things clearly, and has known the joys of handling them, it is natural that he should soon come to feel the need of getting to them when they chance to lie beyond arm reach. Apparently the first impulse to move the whole body does always come from this desire to get at something; but I doubt if this remains a very important motive throughout the whole process of learning. There is so much in that process that is instinctive that the baby seems to be in great part taken up and carried on by a current of blind impulse. Then, too, the whole structure of bone, and joint, and muscle is so fitted to certain positions and movements that in the mere chance exercising of his limbs he is steadily brought nearer to the great race acts of balance and locomotion.

One might suppose that with babies sprawling, creeping, and toddling on every hand, we should not lack evidence on the beginnings of human locomotion; but as a matter of fact, the stage that precedes walking is involved in a good deal of confusion. Records are scanty, and children seem to vary a good deal in their way of going at the thing. Most of them “creep before they gang”; but there seems to be a stage before creeping, when, if the child is given full freedom of movement, he will get over the floor in some cruder way, rolling, hitching, dragging himself by the elbows, humping forward measure-worm fashion, or wriggling along like a snake. Perhaps, as I have already suggested, this is because skirts delay the natural beginning of creeping, and these other movements require less freedom of the legs; perhaps there is some deeper reason connected with race history. Sometimes the baby makes these less efficient movements answer till walking is acquired, and never creeps at all.

Our baby, as we have seen, had already made her first ineffective attempts to pull herself forward and reach something; and lying face down, unable to turn over, had so propped herself with hands and knees that when she tried to move she almost stumbled on creeping unawares. But soon after she was six months old, she discovered the other half of the trick of rolling--reversing herself from front to rear as well as from rear to front; and this gave her such an enlarged freedom that it stopped all aspirations in other directions.

She did not deliberately turn over and over to get anywhere. She simply rolled and kicked about the floor, turning over when she felt like it or when she wished to reach something, highly content, and asking odds of nobody. If by chance she turned in the same direction a number of times in succession, she would drift halfway across the room, meeting no end of interesting things by the way--mamma’s slipper tips, chair rockers, table legs, waste basket, petals dropped from the vases, and so on. It was a great enlargement of life, and kept her happy for six or seven weeks.

During this time, her balance in sitting grew secure, so that she could sit on the floor as long as she chose, occupied with playthings; but she cared more for the rolling.

It was in these weeks, too, that two great new interests came into our baby’s life. The first was a really passionate one, and it seized her suddenly, the week after she was half a year old. The door had just opened to admit a guest, amid a bustle of welcome, when a cry of such desire as we had never heard from our baby in all her little life called our attention to her. Utterly indifferent to the arrival of company (she who had always loved a stir of coming and going, and taken more interest in people than in anything else!) she was leaning and looking out of the window at the dog, as if she had never seen him before--though he had been before her eyes all her life. She would think of nothing else; the guest, expert in charming babies, could not get a glance.

Day after day, for weeks, the little thing was filled with excitement at sight of the shaggy Muzhik, moving her arms and body, and crying out with what seemed intensest joy and longing. When he came near, her excitement increased, and she reached out and caught at him; her face lighted with happiness when he stood close by; she showed not the least fear when he put his rough head almost in her face, but gazed earnestly at it; she watched for him at the window, or from her baby carriage. No person or thing had ever interested her so much. Muzhik, on his part, soon learned to give the snatching little hands a wide berth; and his caution may have enhanced his charm.

Later in the month, she showed somewhat similar excitement at sight of a cow. About the same time, too, she first noticed the pigeons as they flew up from the ground.

This was the beginning of a lasting interest in animals, animal pictures, animal stories. It is not easy to account fully for this interest, appearing in such intense degree, at so early an age. All children show it to some extent, though in many it is mingled with a good, deal of fear. One is tempted to connect both the fear and the interest with race history--the intimate association of primitive man with animals; but a six-month baby is traversing a period of development far earlier than that of the primitive hunter. Professor Sully has some good suggestions about the sympathy between children and animals, but these, too, fail of application to a baby so young. Probably to her the main charm was the movement, the rough resemblance to people, joined with so many differences, now first noticed with the interest of novelty--and (as later incidents made me suspect) the quantity of convenient hair to be pulled.

The other new interest waked late in the seventh month: that joy in outdoors that was for many months of the little one’s life her best happiness. Up to this time, she had liked to be taken out in her baby carriage, but mainly for the motion. Now, one morning, grandma took her and sat down quietly on the veranda, saying that she wanted her to learn to love the sunshine, the birds and flowers and trees, without needing the baby carriage and its motion. The little one sat in her lap, looking about with murmurs of delight; and after that, her happiness in rolling about freely was much greater when we spread a blanket on veranda or lawn, and laid her there. Within two weeks, she would coax to be taken outdoors, and then coax till she was put down out of arms, and left to her own happiness. She would roll about by the hour, the most contented baby in the world, breaking occasionally into cries and movements of overflowing joy.

I did not think that at this age the novel sights and sounds outdoors had much to do with her pleasure; she did not yet notice them much. Nor could it have been the wideness and freedom of outlook, for she had not yet come to distant seeing--a hundred feet was as far as I had ever seen her look. Later, all this counted; but now I thought that the mere physical effect of activity in the fresh air, together with the bright light, and perhaps the moving and playing of lights in the leaves, must make up most of the charm.

In the early weeks of the seventh month idle baby’s rollicking spirits were striking; in fact, she became for a time quite a little rowdy, ho-ho-ing and laughing in loud, rough tones, snatching this way and that, clutching at our hair with exultant shouts and clamor. In the latter part of the month, her manners were better--indeed, it was fully a year before I saw them as bad again; but she was much given to seizing at our faces, flinging herself at them with cries and growls (exactly as if she had been playing bear), and mouthing and lightly biting them. And indeed it must be confessed that while our baby’s behavior was often very pretty for weeks together, she had many fits of rough play and hoydenish spirits, and our faces and hair were never quite safe from romping attacks before she was two years old. This boisterousness was not overflowing spirits (real joyousness showed itself more gently) and I could never trace its psychological origin.

At intervals during the month, she continued to improve her bodily knowledge of herself, investigating her head and face and even the inside of her mouth, with her fingers; she rubbed her forefinger curiously with her thumb; she ran out her tongue and moved it about, trying its motions and feeling her lips. And the very first day of the month there had appeared that curious behavior that we call “archness” and “coquetting” in a baby (though anything so grown up as real archness or coquetry is impossible at this age), looking and smiling at a person who was somewhat strange, but very amusing, to her, then ducking down her head when he spoke, and hiding her face on her mother’s shoulder. Whatever the real reason of such behavior may be, there is plainly self-consciousness in it. So, too, when, at seven months old, she began to try deliberately to attract the interest of callers, wrinkling up her nose with a friendly grimace till they paid attention to her.

Both these forms of self-consciousness were common after this. Neither is what we could call human or rational self-consciousness. Any dog or kitten will show them. But they certainly are something more than mere bodily feeling of self. If we need a name for it, we might call it a beginning of _intelligent self-perception_, as distinguished both from bodily self-feeling, and rational self-knowledge--in which the mind, years later, will say to itself clearly, “This is _I_.”

We now began to suspect (as she ended her seventh month) that the baby was beginning to connect our names with us; and when we tried her by asking, “Where is grandpa?” or “mamma” or “aunty,” she really did look at the right one often enough to raise a presumption that she knew what she was about. The association of name and person was still feeble and shaky, but it proved to be real. In a few days it was firm as to grandpa (who was quite _persona grata_, because he built up blocks for her to knock down, and carried her about from object to object, to let her touch and examine); and in a week or two as to the rest of us.

Professor Preyer complains of teaching babies mere tricks, which have no real relation to their development; and certainly it is a sound rule that self-unfolding, not teaching, is the way in which a baby should develop in the earliest years. But Preyer’s baby learned to wave his hand, and play “patacake,” and show “How big is baby?” and the rest of it, just as other babies do; mammas and nurses cannot resist it. And as long as the babies like it, I do not see that it can do any harm, if it is not overdone. Besides, it may be said that these standard tricks are all closely related to the sign language, and so fall in well with the natural development at this stage. And again, the extreme teachability of the human child is his great superiority over the brute--all our civilization rests on it; and when the time comes that he is capable of receiving training, it may be as well that his power of doing so should be used a little, and that these simple gesture tricks of immemorial nursery tradition are good exercises to begin with. It is possible to make a fetich of “self-development,” beyond all common sense.

At all events, as our baby approached seven months old, her mamma had begun to teach her to wave by-by. For a couple of weeks, the mother would hold up the little hand and wave it at the departing guest, and before long the baby would give a feeble waggle or two after her mother had let go; next, she would need only to be started; and a week after she was seven months old she waved a spontaneous farewell as I left the room. There was a long history of the gesture after that, for it was lost and regained, confused with other hand tricks and straightened out, and altogether played a considerable part in the story of sign language and of memory, which I shall not have time to relate. But at all times it paid for itself in the delight it gave the baby: it reconciled her to almost any parting, and even to going to bed.

Her objection to going to bed, which had been evident since the fifth month, was because she thought sleeping was a waste of good playtime, not because she had any associations of fear and repugnance connected with it. She had never been left to cry herself to sleep alone, but was rocked and sung to in good old fashion. But she did show signs at this time of timidity and distress in waking from sleep, clinging piteously to her mother and crying. She had waked and cried alone a number of times, and, as I have already said, she seemed to have formed some associations of fear in this way. But I think there were deeper reasons for the confused distress on waking, which from now until halfway through the third year appeared at times.

I have spoken several times of the ease with which even we grown people lose our sense of personal identity; and changes in brain circulation make such confusions especially likely at first waking from sleep. With babies, whose feeling of identity is but insecurely established, this must be much more common; moreover, a baby’s conditions of breathing are less regular than ours, and it is probable that as he comes out of sleep, and the circulation and respiration of the waking hours slowly reestablish themselves, he has all sorts of queer, lost feelings. I was pretty sure, from our baby’s behavior I in the next two years, that she struggled back to the firm shores of waking consciousness through dark waters of confusion, and needed a friendly hand to cling to. This, I suspect, is the secret of the wild crying in the night, which doctors call “night terror”: it is not terror, I think, but vague distress, increased by the darkness--loss of self, of direction, of all one’s usual bodily feeling.

In these sensitive states attending sleep it is likely that some of the emotional conditions for life are formed, and the ties between mother and child knit firmest. My observation is that the one the baby loves most is the one that sleeps close by, that bends over him as he struggles confusedly back to waking, and steers him tenderly through the valley of the shadow of sleep; and next, the one that plays most patiently and observantly with him--not the one that feeds him.

In her absorption in her growing bodily activity, the baby had taken no marked steps in intellectual development, though in skill of handling, and in ability to understand what went on about her and put two and two together, she made steady progress. Early in the eighth month, some definite instances of this appeared. She showed a discreet preference at bedtime for anybody rather than her mother, and clung vigorously round my neck or her grandfather’s when that messenger of fate came for her. She dropped things to watch them fall, with a persistent zeal and interest such as she had not shown in earlier experiments of the sort. She knew what it meant if one of us put a hat on, and pleaded with outstretched hands and springing motion to go too. Once she found that in moving a long stick she was moving some twigs at its farther end, and kept up the experiment with curiosity.

It was about this time--the first fortnight of the eighth month--that taste first became a source of pleasure to our baby. She had been given an experimental taste of several things before, but beyond the grimace of surprise (it looks like utmost disgust, but there seems no doubt that it really means surprise only) with which little babies greet new tastes, she had shown no great interest in them. Now, as nature’s supply grew scant, she was introduced more seriously to several supplementary foods, and at least once rejoiced over the taste a good deal. Still, she was apt soon to tire of them, and on the whole taste did not at any time in her first year take a large place among her interests.

As the middle of the eighth month approached, it was evident that an advance in power of movement was coming. The baby was getting up on hands and knees again; she made daily a few aimless creeping movements; and in her bath she would draw herself to her knees, and partly to her feet, holding by the edge of the tub, and somewhat supported by the water. A few days later she drew herself forward a few inches, flat on her stomach, to get something. But she still did not catch the idea of creeping, and rolling remained her great pleasure for another fortnight.

In this fortnight, which brought our baby to eight months old, the rolling grew very rapid and free. She would now roll over and over in the same direction, not to get anywhere in particular (she never learned to use rolling for that purpose), but just for fun. She varied the exercise with the most lively kicking--heels raised in air and brought down together with astonishing vigor and zest; and with twisting about and getting on hands and knees, or even on hands and feet, prattling joyously, and having a beautiful time all by herself, for as long as the authorities would leave her alone. I have no note or memory that she ever tired of it, or asked for attention or change; it was always some one else who interfered, because meal-time or nap-time or something had come.

In the last week of the month she learned to raise herself to a sitting position; and as she could now sit up or lie down at will, she tumbled about the floor with still more variety and enjoyment. In the same week she began to pull herself daily quite to her feet in the tub. It was an ordinary wooden wash-tub which was bridging the interval between her own outgrown one and the grown-up bath-tub; and she would stand, leaning her weight partly on her hands, on the edge of the tub, with her feet planted wide apart, quite on the opposite side, giving her a pretty secure base.

In this fortnight the baby’s understanding of us and feeling of nearness to us were noticeably greater. Her attachment to her favorites was striking. She would cling to us with all the strength of her little arms, sometimes pressing her lips against our faces in a primitive sort of kiss. Her desire for our attention was intense--little arms stretched out, face full of desire, while she uttered urgent cries. Now and then she was entirely unwilling to eat a meal till the person she had set her heart on at the moment had yielded to her pleading, and come to sit close beside her, for company.

She understood one or two little directions--“by-by,” and “patacake”; or, at least, associated them with the acts. She had some idea of what “No, no!” meant, and she knew perfectly that she must not keep paper or flower petals in her mouth, and after biting off a bit would put out her tongue, laughing, to have the forbidden scrap removed. And one day when I said to her, “Don’t you want to come to aunty?” without any gesture, she surprised me by leaning forward and putting out her hands to me, exactly as if I had reached my arms out for her. She could not have understood the whole question, for she hardly understood words at all at the time; but she must have made out “come,” and, putting it with “aunty,” which she had known for weeks, got at my meaning.

On the day she was eight months old, at last, the baby half sprawled, half crept, forward to get something. The early, aimless stages of locomotion were over, and she was about to start in in good earnest to learn to creep and to stand.

XI

CREEPING AND STANDING

Now, at eight months old, began a fortnight of rapid development in movements, all branching out from the position on hands and knees which the baby often took as she sprawled on the floor.

First she hit on two ways of sitting up, beginning on hands and knees. One of them, in fact, had appeared in the last days of the preceding month. She would tilt over sidewise till she was half sitting, leaning on one hand, then straighten up, raising the hand--and there you are, sitting. The other way, a few days later, was to begin as before on hands and knees, separate the knees, and lift herself over backward till she was sitting, turning the legs out at the knee. No grown person but a contortionist could do it, for our hips have not enough play in the socket to carry the movement through the last inch or two; but babies’ joints are flexible. This became our baby’s regular method, and the position it left her in--legs spread out before her, bent directly out at the knee--was her every-day one for many months. Most babies, I believe, sit monkey fashion--legs straight, with soles turned in.

Watching carefully, we were sure that the baby did not at first use either method intelligently; she wanted to sit up, and shifted and lifted her body, scolding with impatience, and never knowing whether she would bring up in the desired position or not, till she found herself by luck where she wanted to be. In a few days, however, the right movements were sifted out from the useless ones, and she sat up and lay down at will.

In the same early days of the ninth month, another movement came of experimenting while on hands and knees--a backward creeping, pushing with the hands. The baby at once tried to utilize it to get to people and things, and it was funny to hear her chattering with displeasure as she found herself borne off the other way--backing sometimes into the wall, and pushing helplessly against it, like a little locomotive that had accidentally got reversed. She soon gave up trying to get anywhere by this “craw-fishing,” however, and then she enjoyed it, merely as movement.

The only reason I have heard suggested for this curious back-action creeping (which is not uncommon just before real creeping) is that the baby’s arms are stronger than the legs, and as a pushing movement with them is more natural than a stepping one, a backward impulse is given, which the baby, as a rule, resents with comical displeasure.

Next, from hands and knees the baby learned to rise to hands and feet; to kneel, and then to sit back on her heels; and to make sundry variations on these positions, such as kneeling on one knee and one foot, or sitting on one heel, with the other foot thrust out sidewise, propping her.

In spite of two or three chance forward steps, she was eight and a half months old before she hit at last on real creeping; then one day I saw her several times creep forward a foot or two, and presently she was rolling an orange about and creeping after it. I tried in vain to lure her more than a couple of feet, to come to me or to get a plaything; she would creep a step or two, then sit back on her heels and call me to take her. Until almost the end of this month, indeed, she would creep for but very short distances, and always to reach something, not for pleasure in the movement.

But while she fumbled in such chance fashion towards creeping, she was carried on towards standing by strong and evident instinct. She pulled herself up daily, not to reach anything, but from an overwhelming desire to get to her feet; and when she found herself on them she rejoiced and triumphed. At this stage she almost invariably used a _low_ object to pull up by, so that she could lean over it, propping her weight with her hands--or with one hand, as she grew more confident. It was after the middle of the month that she first drew herself up, her knees shaking, by a chair, to reach a favorite plaything; but thereafter chairs became her great “stand by,” in a very literal sense.

In kneeling, too, she showed joy. She could not keep her balance on her knees for more than a few seconds, but while she did she exulted in the exploit, and patted and waved her hands in glee. Aside from standing and kneeling, her advances in movement were made with a curious lack of intelligent consciousness of what she was about, as well as of clear, compelling instinct. She seemed to progress by blind experimenting, selecting gradually out of a medley of others the acts and positions that were most useful and best fitted to the structure of her joints and muscles.

Many babies before this stage show the walking instinct quite clearly. If they are held from above, so that their soles press lightly on a flat surface, the legs will begin to make good stepping movements. Our baby had failed to make this response hitherto; in this fortnight, however, it appeared, very imperfectly and irregularly, but steadily better; and with another week she took great delight in the exercise.

Amid all these new movements, rolling rapidly declined and disappeared. The baby was absorbed in her new powers, and during the latter half of the month her joy in them was exquisite. She was a thing to remember for a lifetime as she played on a quilt spread on the lawn in the hot June days--sitting and looking about her with laughter and ejaculations of pleasure, gazing up with wonder and interest at the branches swaying in the warm breeze, watching the dog, creeping about and examining the grass with grave attention, pulling to her feet at our knees as we sat by with our reading and sewing. And when we let her take the benefit of the warm weather, and creep about the floor stripped to the inmost layer of garments, arms and legs bare, she was at the height of joy. She would go from one position to another, sitting and kneeling, tumbling and scrambling and creeping about in endless content.

That she paid her price for all this in increased knowledge of pain I hardly need say. From the time she began to roll freely, she had collided with table legs and the like; and from then until she could walk, bumps and scratches and pinches were almost daily experiences. Her early creeping was so awkward that she would lose her footing, so to speak, and come down hard on her face, and her later and quicker creeping brought collisions; in standing by chairs she would lose hold and topple over; and in investigating rockers, window blinds, lids, and all manner of things, she did not fail to get her fingers hurt now and then, in spite of all vigilance.

In the main, she was surprisingly indifferent to these mishaps; even when the blow had reddened the skin, she would look sober only a minute, then, at a laugh and encouraging word, would smile and go on with her play. This was doubtless partly temperament: babies cry with nervous fright more than with the actual pain of a bump, and she was a baby of tranquil nerves. But her skin sensitiveness was probably still low.

With experience of pain, either her sensitiveness or her timidity grew, and she made more fuss than she did at first; and over some especially severe hurts she screamed with lusty good-will. Still, it was noticeable on the whole how little she was troubled in learning to balance and move about by the pains that strewed the way; and this, I think, must be the normal condition with healthy children.

I have spoken just now of the pride and joy that were shown over kneeling and standing. The joy, of course, was an old story: we have seen that every stage of advancing power had been accompanied by lively pleasure. But this feeling of pride, this exultation in herself as actor, was a new emotion, and quite characteristic of the higher type of self-consciousness the baby had entered on at about seven months old, as I have already related. In going through her little hand movements, too, she showed much consciousness and pride, looking prettily into our faces for approval, as she patted or waved her hands.

As the baby now approached nine months old, there was an indescribable dawning appearance of comprehension about her--an air of understanding her surroundings and getting into touch with our minds. She watched our movements not merely with curiosity, but with an apparent attempt to interpret them, sometimes with a curious, puzzled drawing of the mouth that looked like mental effort. Many things she did interpret perfectly well: for instance, if I picked a rose and held it up, smiling, she knew that it was for her, and broke into jubilation accordingly. She volunteered to play peekaboo from early in the month, holding up a cloth, basket lid, or whatever she had at hand, before her face, and peeping out with smiles. She made intelligent little adaptations in her own actions, such as pulling at the tablecloth to bring to her a paper that lay on it.