Page:First steps in mental growth (1906).djvu/47

 It will be the purpose of the paragraphs which follow to enumerate, and to outline the development of some of these infantile hand-movements, the learning of which the environment imposes upon the child with the same rigor that it requires the acquisition of certain kinds of knowledge as a condition of being at home in the world. In fact, learning to use the hands and storing the mind with ideas about the physical world are so intimately related, particularly in the early years, as we have seen already, that they must be regarded as two phases of the general developmental process.

Before proceeding with this outline, it will be in order to make two observations which apply to all acquired hand-movements. In the first place, they are all, on the physical side, repetitions or combinations and modifications of earlier movements performed many times at random, reflexly or instinctively. They are modifications of the earlier reaching, grasping, holding, pulling, pushing, shaking, threshing, throwing, turning, extending, patting, twisting, striking, rubbing, tossing, lifting—all of which had been performed countless times involuntarily before they were performed purposely, or became factors of purposive movements. These random, reflex, instinctive movements furnish the raw material out of which more complex hand-movements are built up. They stand in somewhat the same relation to ideational or purposive movements that the prelinguistic babbling,