Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/675

Rh in response to another dog's howl; similarly a child of nine and a half months has been known to cry violently when its mother or father pretends to cry.

One curious manifestation of this early imitative sympathy is the impulse to do what the mother does and to be what she is. Much of early imitative play shows this tendency. It is more than a cold, distant copying of another's doings; it is full of the warmth of attachment, and it is entered on as a way of getting nearer the object of attachment. Out of this, too, there springs the germ of a higher sympathy. It will be remembered that Laura Bridgman bound the eyes of her doll with a bandage similar to the one she herself wore. Through this sharing in her own experience the doll became more a part of herself. Conversely, a child, on finding that her mother's head ached, began imitatively to make believe that her own head was hurt. Imaginative sympathy rests on community of experience, and it is curious that a child, before he can fully sympathize with another's trouble and make it his own by the sympathetic process itself, should thus show the impulse to procure by a kind of childish acting this community of experience.

From this imitative acting of another's trouble so as to share in it, there is but a step to a direct sympathetic apprehension of it. How early a genuine manifestation of concern at another's misery begins to show itself, it is almost impossible to say. Children probably differ greatly in this respect. I have, however, one case which is so curious that I can not forbear to quote it. It reaches me, I may say, by a thoroughly trustworthy channel.

A baby, aged one year and two months, was crawling on the floor. An elder sister, Katherine, aged six, who was working at a wool mat, could not get on very well, and began to cry. Baby looked up and grunted, "On! on!" and kept drawing its fingers down its own cheeks. Here the aunt called Miss Katherine's attention to baby, a device which merely caused a fresh outburst of tears. Whereupon baby proceeded to hitch itself along to Katherine with many repetitions of the grunts and the finger gestures. Katherine, fairly overcome by this, took baby to her and smiled. At which baby began to clap its hands and to crow, tracing this time the course of the tears down its sister's cheeks.

This pretty nursery picture certainly seems to illustrate a rudiment of genuine fellow-feeling. Similarly, it is hard not to recognize the signs of a sincere concern when a child of two will run spontaneously and kiss the place that is hurt, even though it is not to be doubted that the graceful action was learned through imitation.

Very sweet and sacred to the mother are the child's first clear indications of concern for herself. These are sporadic, springing