Part 7

What was in the little mind? Was she beginning to discriminate and compare, for the first time setting apart as two separate things the two faces that had bent over her oftenest? Or was she simply using, on the most convenient object, a new power of adjusting her eyes, which filled her with serious interest by the new clearness it gave to what she saw? At all events, she would not have looked from one to the other with such long and attentive regard if she had not been able to focus both faces, at their different distances; so that I felt sure the power of accommodation was really there.

But there was more in the incident than just the advance in vision. Hitherto when the baby had turned her head to look, it had been only at something that she had already a glimpse of, off at the edge of the field of vision. Now she turned to look for something quite out of sight,--something, therefore, that must have been present as an idea in the little mind, or she could not have looked for it. And in view of what I have said of the mother’s face as the great educational appliance in the early months, it is worth noticing that it was this which gave the baby her first idea, so far as I could detect.

We come a step nearer, too, to true memory, when the baby can keep thus, even for a few minutes, the idea of something formerly seen. It was still mainly habit memory, however. She looked for an accustomed sight in an accustomed place, bringing it to the point of clear vision by an accustomed movement of the neck muscles. There was no evidence till considerably later that she was capable of remembering a single, special experience.

The next day she was singularly bright and sunny, smiling all day at every one. She stopped in the middle of nursing to throw her head back and gaze at the bow at her mother’s neck, and would not go on with the comparatively uninteresting business of food till the bow was put out of sight. That night she slept eight hours at a stretch, longer than she had ever done. Was the little brain, perhaps, wearied with the new rush of impressions, which came with the new power of focusing?

The day after she would lie a while unusually silent and sober, looking about her and moving her hands a little; then she would fret to be lifted and held against one’s shoulder, where she could hold her head up and look about. She was able now to hold it up a long time by resting it for a few seconds every half minute or so, against my cheek, which I held close to give her the chance. But to-day she was not satisfied with having her head erect: she persistently straightened her back up against the arm that supported her--a new set of muscles thus coming under control of her will. As often as I pressed her down against my shoulder, she would fret, and straighten up again and set to work diligently looking about her.

After this her progress in holding up her head was suddenly rapid, and by the end of the month, four days later, she could balance it for many minutes, with a little wobbling. This uncertainty soon disappeared, and the erect position of the head was accomplished for life.

During these last days of the month the baby was possessed by the most insatiate impulse to be up where she could see. It was hard to think that her fretting and even wailing when forced to lie down could mean only a formless discontent, and not a clear idea of what she wanted. Still, it is not uncommon, when an instinct is thwarted, to feel a dim distress that makes us perfectly wretched without knowing why. As soon as she was held erect, or propped up sitting amid cushions, she was content; but the first time that she was allowed to be up thus most of the day, she slept afterward nine unbroken hours, recuperating, probably, quite as much from the looking and the taking in that the little brain and eyes had been doing as from any muscular fatigue there may have been in the position.

Such is the “mere life of vegetation” the baby lived during the first two months. No grown person ever experiences such an expansion of life, such a progress from power to power in that length of time. Nor was our little girl’s development anything unusual for a healthy, well-conditioned child, so far as other records give material for comparison. Preyer’s boy was later than she in getting his head balanced, but he arrived at full accommodation (and that is the most important work of the first two months) at almost exactly the same age as she; and so did Mrs. Hall’s boy. I do not know of any other records that make a clear statement on this point.

PROGRESS TOWARD GRASPING.

The baby’s development, as I have said, consisted now mainly in forming association groups in her mind in two series, which we might call a sight-motor series and a touch-motor series. There had been a leap forward in the sight-motor series when “accommodation” was learned. Now the touch-motor series came to the front, and step by step led on to the great accomplishment of grasping.

First, when we laid the baby’s face up against ours, her little tongue was put out to lick the cheek that she felt, warm and smooth, against her lips. This was a more advanced use of active feeling than the mere passing of her tongue over her own lips, for that must have been done accidentally many times before she began to do it on purpose; and the association between the movement and the feeling had been helped by the double sensation--one feeling in the lips and another in the tongue every time they touched.

This doubling of sensation, which occurs every time one part of the body touches another part, often seemed to wake special attention in the baby, and thus help on a development. Later, it had a great part to play in teaching her the boundaries of her own body, and the difference between the Me and the Not-me. Even now, she must have been somewhat aware of a different feeling when she passed her tongue over her own sensitive lips, and when she passed it over the unresponsive cheek of some one else.

So far, the tongue, not the hand, was her organ of touch. But now the fingers were showing the first faint sign of their future powers--nothing more than a little special sensibility, such as the lips had shown in the first month: we would see the baby holding her finger tips together prettily (when by chance they had collided), as if there were a feeling there that interested her. Here again there was double sensation.

In these same early days of the third month there was beginning another development that was to end by making the hand the successful rival of lips and tongue for purposes of grasping and feeling. The baby was trying to get her fists to her mouth.

The movement of the hands toward the head is a common one in the first weeks, by reason of prenatal habit, and thus it had often happened that the little fists, or as much of them as could be accommodated, had blundered into the mouth; and interesting sensations (double sensations again, in fists and mouth) had been experienced. The baby had at the same time felt in her arms the movement that always went with these interesting sensations, and now she was trying to repeat it. Within a week she had mastered it, and could mumble and suck her fists at will--a great addition, naturally, to the comfort of life.

Meanwhile the reflex clasping, which had always taken place when an object was laid in the baby’s palm, was growing firmer and longer, and more like conscious holding; and I noticed that the thumb was now “opposed” in clasping--that is, shut down opposite the fingers, an important element in the skill of human grasping. And now, when the fingers came in contact with convenient things--folds of the towel, for instance--the hands would clasp them mechanically, just as the lips, since the first month, had laid hold on a breast or cheek that touched them.

This had an important result. The little hand would presently go to the mouth, still mechanically clasping the fold of towel or dress, which in consequence was sucked and mumbled, too. In this way the baby got sundry novel sensations, and a chain of associations began to form: she was to learn thus, by and by, that when she felt touch sensations in her fingers, she could get livelier ones in her mouth (and also the pleasant muscular feeling of sucking), by the movements of clasping, and of lifting her arm. But she had not yet learned it: objects (except her own hands) were still carried to her mouth only by accident.

By the twelfth week the baby had found that her thumb was better for sucking purposes than chance segments of fist, and could turn her hand and get the convenient little projection neatly into her mouth. She got hold of it more by diving her head down to it than by lifting the hand to the mouth. Seizing with the mouth, by motions of the head, like a dog, instead of using the hand to wait on the mouth, seemed still her natural way.

But the hands were gaining. In this same twelfth week I saw the little finger tips go fumbling and feeling over our hands and dresses. They, too, had learned active touch, as the tongue had learned it more than a month before.

Just at this time we began to bring the baby to the table--nominally so that no one need stay away from meals to look after her; really for the sake of her jovial company at our sober grown-up board, where she would sit, propped amid cushions in her high chair, gazing and smiling sociably at our faces, crowing and flourishing her arms in joy at the lights and the rattle of dishes, forming the sole topic of conversation to an extent that her bachelor uncle had his private and lonely opinion about. The high chair was one of those that have a wooden tray fastened across the front, and here were placed several handy objects--rattle, and ring, and string of spools. This was by the wisdom of grandma, who saw the approach of the power of grasping. One may often see the little hands fluttering empty, the little brain restless, craving its natural development (for grasping is much more a matter of brain development, through the forming of associations, than of hand development), when there is no wise grandma to see that rattle and ring and spools lie “handy by” a little before the baby is ready to use them. To wait till he knows how to grasp before giving him things to practice on is like keeping a boy out of the water till he knows how to swim. Such impeding of the natural activities is responsible for a good deal of the fretting of babies.

It was not three days till I saw the little hands go fumbling across the tray, seeking the objects they had become used to finding there; and when they touched rattle or spool, they laid hold on it. Nor was this the old mechanical clasping: it was voluntary action, and as clumsy as new voluntary action is apt to be, compared to involuntary. The baby did not know how to turn her hand and take up a thing neatly: if she touched it in such fashion that she could shut down her fingers on it somehow or anyhow, she would manage to lift it--stuck between two fingers from behind, once, when the back of her hand had touched it; if not, she would go on fumbling till she did. In two or three days more she was laying hold on things and carrying them to her mouth with plain intention.

Here was a sort of grasping, but it was grasping by feeling only. The baby had yet no idea of an object, which she could locate with the eye and then lay hold on with the hand. She had simply completed the chain of association I spoke of above: she had learned, that is, that after certain groping movements, feelings of touch appeared in her hands; and that then, after movements of clasping and lifting, these feelings reappeared in more lively and pleasing form in her mouth. She never looked at the objects she touched. There is no reason to think they could have been to her anything more than sensations in her own hands and mouth. The sight-motor and touch-motor series had not yet coalesced. But in these last days of the third month both had come to the point where they were ready to begin the fusing process, and give the baby her world of outer objects.

Before I go back to relate what had been going on meanwhile in the sight-motor series, I must stop to speak of some other developments of the month.

Memory, for one thing, had plainly advanced. By the tenth week the baby had shown some doubtful signs of knowing one face from another; and in the twelfth she plainly recognized her grandfather with a smile and joyous cry, as he came in. Her first recognition, therefore (it is worth while to notice), was not of the mother, the source of supplies, but of the face that had offered most entertainment to the dawning mental powers, not only because of the white beard, the spectacles, and the shining bald brow, but because of the boyish abandon with which grandpa played with her, ducking his face down to hers.

A few days later she showed that she knew at least the feeling of her mother’s arms. For some weeks no one else had put her to sleep; and now when sleepy she fretted in other arms, but nestled down contentedly and went to sleep as soon as she felt herself in her mother’s. The association of that especial feeling had become necessary to sleep.

The instinctive language of sign and sound had developed a good deal. From the first day of the month, the baby’s joy in sights began to be expressed more exuberantly, with flying arms and legs, with panting, murmuring, and babbling, smiles and even small chuckles, and sometimes little shouts and crows. A new look of grief, too, the parallelogram shaped mouth that all babies make in crying, appeared.

In the tenth week she began to turn her head aside in refusal or dislike--a gesture that one may see far down in the animal kingdom. A dog, for instance, uses it very expressively. It comes plainly from the simple effort to turn away from what is unpleasant, and develops later to our shake of the head for “No;” and when we notice how early the development of control over head and neck is, how much in advance of any use of the hands, we see that it is natural for this to be the oldest of all gestures.

In the last days of the month came two notable evidences of growing will. One was the baby’s persistent effort to get the tip of her rattle (it was set on a slender ivory shaft) into her mouth. Sometimes it went in by chance; sometimes it hit her lip, and in that case she would stretch her mouth to take it in, moving her head rather than the rattle. But if it brought up against her cheek, too far away to be captured by such efforts, after trying a little, she would lower the rattle, and make a fresh start for better luck.