The Biography of a Baby

Part 1

THE BIOGRAPHY OF A BABY

BY MILICENT WASHBURN SHINN

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge

COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY MILICENT WASHBURN SHINN

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. BABY BIOGRAPHIES IN GENERAL 1

II. THE NEW-BORN BABY: STRUCTURE AND MOVEMENTS 20

III. THE NEW-BORN BABY: SENSATIONS AND CONSCIOUSNESS 39

IV. THE EARLIEST DEVELOPMENTS 58

V. BEGINNINGS OF EMOTION AND PROGRESS IN SENSE POWERS 78

VI. PROGRESS TOWARD GRASPING 99

VII. SHE LEARNS TO GRASP, AND DISCOVERS THE WORLD OF THINGS 118

VIII. THE ERA OF HANDLING THINGS 141

IX. THE DAWN OF INTELLIGENCE 161

X. BEGINNINGS OF LOCOMOTION 182

XI. CREEPING AND STANDING 203

XII. RUDIMENTS OF SPEECH; CLIMBING AND PROGRESS TOWARD WALKING 224

XIII. WALKING ALONE; DEVELOPING INTELLIGENCE 238

THE BIOGRAPHY OF A BABY

BABY BIOGRAPHIES IN GENERAL

“It is a well recognized fact in the history of science that the very subjects which concern our dearest interests, which lie nearest our hearts, are exactly those which are the last to submit to scientific methods, to be reduced to scientific law. Thus it has come to pass that while babies are born and grow up in every household, and while the gradual unfolding of their faculties has been watched with the keenest interest and intensest joy by intelligent and even scientific fathers and mothers from time immemorial, yet very little has yet been done in the scientific study of this most important of all possible subjects--the ontogenetic evolution of the faculties of the human mind.

“Only in the last few years has scientific attention been drawn to the subject at all. Its transcendent importance has already enlisted many observers, but on account of the great complexity of the phenomena, and still more the intrinsic difficulty of their interpretation, scientific progress has scarcely yet commenced.

“What is wanted most of all in this, as in every science, is a body of carefully observed facts. But to be an accomplished investigator in this field requires a rare combination of qualities. There must be a wide intelligence combined with patience in observing and honesty in recording. There must be also an earnest scientific spirit, a loving sympathy with the subject of investigation, yet under watchful restraint, lest it cloud the judgment; keenness of intuitive perception, yet soberness of judgment in interpretation.”

I have appropriated these words of Dr. Joseph Le Conte because the general reader is not likely to see them where they were originally printed, in a little university study, and it is a pity to let the general reader miss so good an introduction to the subject. Not all learned men rate baby biography as highly as Dr. Le Conte does; but probably all biologists do, and those psychologists who are most strongly impressed with the evolutionary interpretation of life.

It is easy to see why one’s views of evolution affect the matter. In botany, for instance, we do not think that we can understand the mature plant by studying it alone, without knowledge of its germinating period. If we omitted all study of radicle and plumule and cotyledon, we should not only lose an interesting chapter from the science, but even the part we kept, the classification and morphology and physiology of the grown plant itself, would be seriously misunderstood in some ways. So in other sciences: it is necessary to understand how things came to be what they are, to study the process of becoming, so to speak, before the completed result can be understood. This is what we mean by “the genetic method” of studying a subject.

Part 2

Now, in proportion as one believes that the faculties of the human mind unfold by evolutionary law, like a plant from the germ, he will feel the need of studying these also genetically. As we find them in our grown selves, they are often perplexing. What seems a single complete, inborn faculty may really be made up of simpler ones, so fused together by long practice that they cannot be discerned. We know that this is the case with seeing. For instance, we give a glance at a ball, and see its form with a single act of mind. Yet that act became possible only after long drill in putting simpler perceptions together. Many a test of form, turning objects over and over, passing the hands round and round them, learning the absence of corners, the equality of diameters, did we go through in babyhood, many an inspection by eye, many an exercise of memory, connecting the peculiar arrangement of light and shade with the form as felt, before we could “see” a ball. Had this been understood in Froebel’s time, it would have made a material difference in his suggestions as to sense training in earliest infancy. So other powers that seem simple and inborn may perhaps be detected in the act of forming themselves out of simpler ones, if we watch babies closely enough, and it may lead us to revise some of our theories about education.

There are enthusiasts, indeed, who would have us believe that child study is going to revolutionize all our educational methods, but those who are surest of these wonderful results, and readiest to tell mothers and teachers what is the truly scientific thing to do with their children, are not the ones who have done the most serious first hand study of children. From indications so far, it is likely that the outcome of such study will oftener be to confirm some good old-fashioned ways of training (showing that they rested unconsciously on a sound psychological basis) than to discover new ways. No substitute has yet been found by scientific pedagogy for motherly good sense and devotion.

Yet the direct study of child minds does bring out some new suggestions of educational value, does give a verdict sometimes between old conflicting theories, and always makes us understand more clearly what we are doing with children. And on the purely scientific side there is one aspect of especial interest in genetic studies. That is, the possible light we may get on the past of the human race.

It has long been observed that there are curious resemblances between babies and monkeys, between boys and barbaric tribes. Schoolboys administer law among themselves much as a tribal court does; babies sit like monkeys, with the soles of their little feet facing each other. Such resemblances led, long before the age of Darwin, to the speculation that children in developing passed through stages similar to those the race had passed through; and the speculation has become an accepted doctrine since embryology has shown how each individual before birth passes in successive stages through the lower forms of life.

This series of changes in the individual is called by evolutionists the Ontogenic Series; and the similar series through which the race has passed in the myriads of ages of its evolution is called the Phylogenic.

Now, of these two versions of the great world history, the phylogenic is a worn and ancient volume, mutilated in many places, and often illegible. The most interesting chapter of all is torn out--that which records the passing over of man from brute to human, the beginning of true human reason, speech, and skill. The lowest living races are far beyond the transition line; the remains of the past can never tell us how it was crossed, for before man could leave anything more than bones--any products of his art, such as weapons, or signs of fire--he had traveled a long way from his first human condition.

But from the ontogenic record no chapter can be torn out: a fresh copy of the whole history, from alpha to omega, is written out every time an infant is conceived, and born, and grows to manhood. And somewhere on the way between the first cell of the embryo and maturity each one must repeat in his own life that wonderful transition into human intelligence. If we can thoroughly decipher tills ontogenic record, then, what may we not hope to learn of the road by which we human beings came?

We must not forget that the correspondence between these life books is only a rough one. They are versions of the same world story, but they have traveled far from their common origin, and have become widely unlike in details. The baby has to take many short cuts, and condense and omit inconceivably, to get through in a few brief years a development that the race took ages for. Even the order of development gets disarranged sometimes. For instance, primitive man probably reached a higher development before he could talk than babies have to now, after ages of talking ancestry: we must not look to a child just learning to talk, to get an idea of what the minds of men were like when they were just learning to talk. Again, the human child is carrying on under the influence of adults an evolution that primitive man worked out without help or hindrance from any one wiser than himself; and that makes a great difference in the way he does it.

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