Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/646

628 in time begin to walk without instruction. The efforts of walking, standing, and sitting can not be ascribed to any knowledge of the advantage of those actions. They rather arise from the growing power of the will in connection with the muscles and motor nerves, bringing those organs into the modes of action which will prove in later life to be of most advantage to the body, just as has regularly happened to our ancestors. So deeply have the traces of these motive impulses been impressed, so often has the will gone on these nerve paths and no others, that they are followed at once as soon as the motive impulses of the new-born man are developed. In other words, the efforts are instinctive. The child walks when the inclination to change place is so strong that creeping does not satisfy it, or when it wills to walk, as it sits up or stands when its will to do so is strong enough to command the requisite muscular action. A child observed by me, which could already stand well, all at once, at the end of the fifth quarter-year, for the first time ran around a table, unsteadily, like a drunken man, but without falling. From that day on it went erect, at first hurriedly, then trotting with extended arms, as if to keep from falling, then slower and more firmly. In the course of the next month it went over a door-sill an inch high between two rooms, but holding on to something, and frequently lifting its foot up too high or stamping it down, like one afflicted with a spinal disease. Its will had not yet full control of its muscles, and it could not measure the force of its efforts.

The movements of grasping afford interesting objects of observation. Their development has to be watched with care, for it sometimes takes place at a bound from a lower to a higher degree; at others, proceeds very slowly. A pencil put in the little hand was clasped by the fingers during the first quarter-year; the thumb participated in the action, but not independently—rather as if it were one of the fingers—and the infant did not seem to be aware that it had anything in its hand, holding the object mechanically, as it were. If, at this time, one puts his finger into the child's hand, it will seem to grasp it and hold it, the more so as it keeps a tight hold when the finger is moved back and forth. The action is, however, wholly reflex; there is no intended grasping. The first real effort to take hold of an object was observed in the seventeenth week, when the infant reached after a little India-rubber ball which was near it. When the ball was put into its hand it held it tight for a long time, brought it to its mouth, held it close before its eyes, and looked at it with a peculiar, novel, intelligent expression. On the next day it made many awkward but earnest attempts to take hold of objects of all kinds which were presented before it, fixing its eyes fast upon them, and reaching after things which were too far for it to seize. On the following day, it seemed to give it pleasure to take hold again and again of everything which was within its reach. Wonder was also mingled with its pleasure, and