Page:First steps in mental growth (1906).djvu/24

 highly sensitized photographic plate to catch what actually happens, and ordinary language is too clumsy an instrument for adequate description. And this leads me to speak next of the difficulties and dangers which beset the scientific study of childhood and infancy.

One snare which marks the way of the student of infant ways is the desire to fix with exactness the dates of the first appearance of given abilities or functions. The search for beginnings, the absolutely first appearance of definite processes like turning the head when looking for the source of a sound, reaching for objects and grasping, anger, fear, imaging, recognizing and the like will always end in failure for the reason that there are no complete breaks in the chain of experience which warrant one in saying, "at that moment the child could not do so and so, at the next he could." And when one