ART. V. THE MENTAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE

INFANT OF TO-DAY.

IF it be true that the mental phenomena of the infant have been sometimes misunderstood and misinterpreted, and that psychology has not always received the full benefit of the correction which a faithful observation of them would have furnished, might it not conduce to the interests of that science to put on record another attempt to carefully study the mental development of an infant from its birth to the age of two years?

The aim in the education of this infant has been to watch the direction of its mind, without coercing it; to strengthen the brain by systematic gymnastic exercises, begun at the age of four months; and in every way to attempt to act indirectly upon the brain through the muscles, thus keeping up the true equilibrium of the nervous system. The facts which have been lately so powerfully brought forward by Dr. Crichton Browne, to show that the growth of a large district of the brain is apparently dependent on muscular exercise, and that if that be withheld at the growth period the development of the brain will be stunted, and perhaps the whole series of ideas connected with form, distance, resistance, weight, &c., rendered faulty or incomplete, were by no means realised in this experimental essay in the physical education of infancy; the dominant idea rather was, that during the whole period of dentition tendencies existed, more or less, in all children, to either congestion or irritation of the brain, and that such a plan of exercise might tend to keep it in a healthy and vigorous state. Success seemed to attend the effort; the infant cut its first teeth very easily at eight months, and then weighed 21 lbs.; it was very muscular, stood firmly at nine months, and walked freely soon afterwards; it was always fearless in taking exercise; disdained all help in learning to walk, and grew exceedingly self-reliant. Its height when nearly two years old was 2 feet 10 inches; the expression of its countenance was bright and intelligent, but infantine, and by no means precocious.

It may be interesting to notice, first, the moral development of this infant, and then

intellectual and consider some of

its instinctive acts. Fair average intellectual powers seemed easily discernible in it, even during the first week of its life,

and were recognised by the strong and healthy development of its animal instincts and good muscular mechanism, and by its ability to kick vigorously, to lift its head slightly from the pillow, to clench its hand and grasp anything firmly, and to drink easily out of a spoon. Its earliest intuitive perceptions seemed to be of colour, odour, form (at two months), distance, and combination (at four months). Some knowledge of numbers, classification, recognition of places, a good memory, and articulate speech, including the use of pronouns, conjunctions, and the inflections of verbs were all observed at ten months, and even earlier, whilst imagination did not appear to come into play until eighteen months, and logical reasoning was not attempted until the infant was nearly two years old.

Warm affection was the moral faculty the earliest exhibited (four months), kindness of heart, love of animals, and of other children at five months. Sympathy, bold truthfulness, selfesteem, and a sense of justice at nine months. Self-denial was noticed at the same time as imagination.

By the end of the second month the infant showed decided determination of character, perseverance, and strong will; it would firmly hold down a hand to prevent its wishes being interfered with; it then for the first time noticed with delight the colour blue, together with birds and flowers, and liked to smell a hyacinth; it was pleased with a toy bird; would feel over the outlines of small animals in pictures, but especially loved to feel the forms in bronze of a horse and of a dog; a little later on it noticed much the latter animals when it was carried out of doors. At four months it cried passionately when missing its nurse towards evening, after she had been absent a whole day it looked all around its nursery and began to cry again each time it had failed to find the familiar face. It also showed at this age an unmistakable need for toys by the many combinations it devised with boxes and all small objects, that came within its reach, balancing them, and placing them in novel and strange positions. Taken to a toy shop it chose its toys, showing a strong preference for a horse and for a dog. At five months it began to talk, using constantly its limited vocabulary of six words of its own accord to express a want or an intention. "Ning" was then its word to ask for milk, and it used it still at two years old; it said "going" when intending to get down on to the floor or crawl to any given place. When allowed to get off the lap, a sofa, or a bed, it was balanced by a sash firmly tied around its waist; and its ability to judge distance, especially height, and the way in which it cautiously put out its hand and watched how far it was from the ground before trying to get down was most curious; it seemed able to

measure distance with something like infallible accuracy. At nine months, when it had returned from a drive, it told how it had seen "pretty things," meaning cattle. At ten months it told about "pretty men," and in the evening found pictures of hunting scenes with men in pink coats, and pointed them out as the "pretty men" it had seen; it called itself "little kitten,” gave distinctive names to five dolls, one of which was "Pretty Baby," another “Peter Piper," and a third "Didn't," a word it often used when making persevering efforts after repeated failures to carry its point or climb somewhere.

It talked a great deal at this age, saying: "Take me, mama, take little kitten, take me with you,' "Give me little lime (lime flower water), mama mine lime," "Show me pretty picture of pretty baby," "Do let me," "I'm going," "Show me that," "Papa gave that to me," &c. Delaroche's picture of "Moïse exposé sur le Nil," it called "Pretty baby tumbling out of bed." At this age, too, it used to resent the absence of its nurse or any prolonged absence of either father or mother, and show it by treating them with perfect indifference when they returned, and this display of wounded affection was repeated many times. It would always boldly avow any mischief it had done, and seemed incapable of deceit in any form. It was always fond of china and glass, and cried if by accident it broke any. It would take everything needed for tea from a nursery cupboard and place them on the table, remove many little objects from an étagère and place them again on the right shelves and in order; missed one from its ninepins in a moment. It was never allowed to use the right hand only, sɔ always threw two balls at once, and learnt to feed itself equally well with either hand. It was dexterous with its hands, and seemed to easily understand keys, handles of doors, &c. Self-denial was shown by its feeding animals with sugar which it greatly longed to eat. When wanting to wake the sleeping cat it would patiently sit beside it, and do it very gradually for five minutes; when feeding a doll with milk would hold the doll's dress so that it might not get wet at the neck; both these were actions it had never seen or felt. It imagined little dramas amongst its animals. It would say "I'm a pretty bird," and then pick up threads, pretending to make a nest, or else say, "I'm a fly."

It divided all birds and animals whose names it did not know into two distinct classes: "bockies," those with large box-like bodies—an elephant for instance-and" mongrels." On being shown a little chicken a day old, and asked to name it, the infant instantly examined its feet carefully (it had seen young ducks) and promptly replied "It is a mongrel." It

would not listen to verses sung about the sky and stars alone, but said "The sun and the moon must come first." It would miss in a moment any one of its ten animals, and say "Where is my cow? it is such a funny cow to get away like that." When wanting to show that its throat was sore, and that it would like embrocation rubbed in, it took an animal, rubbed its throat, and said "Mama, do as I do to my barkie." It could say dog, but called all dogs "barkies," and all cats "minnies." It talked to a tortoiseshell cat, saying "Unkind mama, wouldn't come down on the floor to me; I get down to my dear minnie' and to my barkie."

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It was able to give long continued attention to the same thing. Driving on several occasions a two-year-old cob for nearly a mile, it held the reins very firmly, and touched it lightly of its own accord with the whip when it shyed. It showed its recognition of weight and resistance by saying when the kitten had grown rapidly, "Minnie is so strong now, like a barkie, too strong for me."

Many acts which might truly be called instinctive were traced in this infant. At ten months it drank water from the hollow of its hand, and recognised the sufferings and approaching death of a blind kitten, crying piteously at the sight of it, and then covering it over with a cloth. It sickened for an attack of scarlet fever at sixteen months on the same day that it had for the first time tasted beef-tea, and ever afterwards refused gravy altogether, however disguised. A wasp it insisted was "only a minnie fly," so that although warned that they would sting, it would remain quite passive eating fruit whilst six or more settled upon its clothes, and would even stroke them on the window pane, with the left hand ready to guard its eyes from attack, saying "I don't mind them; I can catch them for you." It did not appear to be ever stung by one, but had suffered much from the bites of gnats, and saw everyone around it nervous and afraid of wasps, and beating them off.

It seems probable that most infants who have inherited brains at all well developed have distinct thoughts associated with the language that they hear long before they gain much power of audible articulation; that there are, in fact, four stages in the growth of an infant's knowledge.

1st. The infant takes up unconsciously into its mind what it sees and hears, much of this remaining there ready for future use. 2nd. The infant awakens to the consciousness of the possession of these thoughts and facts; if intelligent, but unable to speak, it is yet well able, by looks and gesture-language, to convey its knowledge to other young children.

PART I. VOL. VII. NEW SERIES.

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3rd. The infant makes its earliest attempts at nerve action in the auditory perceptive centres, followed by an imperfect muscular action not sufficiently well combined or not complex enough to form articulate utterance. This muscular action or vibration of muscular feeling may be often noticed as just visible when no word is audible, if the infant be closely watched whilst some little rhyme is repeated to it.

4th. The infant attempts audible articulation, sometimes the sounds appear to be meaningless jabber to those around, but they are really the expression of perfect thought to the child, who gives an immediate motor outlet to the words when it fancies it has attained perfection through repeated mental trials and failures.

It is a rapturous moment in an infant's life when it first finds the power to articulate in words what it has so long done as a mental process alone-a pleasure which probably surpasses that which a great orator can feel from his grandest effort.

The infant who at eighteen months merely looked at its animals, and said the name of the missing one, showed a little later how it had been enabled to mentally do this so quickly, by rapidly repeating aloud the names in a given order when it wished to see if they were all together. It was evident, too, how its meaningless sounds, with words here and there rhyming, which seemed like mimic reading, were really associated with distinct thought, for at two years of age it began to repeat very many nursery rhymes, most of which no one in the house knew. It had never been with other children, and said that it had learnt them from a former nurse, whom it had not seen since the time when it was twenty-one months old; thus it was perfecting its power of utterance for several weeks before it was understood. It showed its pleasure at its first recognised achievement by saying to a horse, "White Nose, you can run very fast, but you can't say Jack and Jill."

It was very noticeable that this infant's articulatory capacity was never confined to mimicking, that is to say, to repeating such words only as had just been spoken to it; and from this several curious questions arise. For instance, would it usually follow that, articulate speech being a highly complex muscular act, any system of infant exercise, which should carefully and equally develop every muscle, would hasten on the more perfect performance of the mental and motor processes involved in the acquirement of language? Or has speech really now become a "truly automatic act for human beings, so that, if children do not speak at birth, it is in main due to the fact that their nervous systems are still too immature?" And if the more highly-wrought nervous system and rapidly increasing com