Before considering the manifold outgoings of fear produced by
impressions of the eye, we may glance at another form of early
disturbance which has some analogy to the shock-like effects of certain
sounds. I refer here to the feeling of bodily insecurity which appears
very early when the child is awkwardly carried, or let down
back-foremost, and later when he begins to walk. One child in her fifth
month was observed when carried to hold on to the nurse’s dress as if
for safety. And it has been noticed by more than one observer that on
dandling a baby up and down in one’s arms, it will on descending, that
is when the support of the arms is being withdrawn, show signs of
discontent in struggling movements.[135] Bell, Preyer, and others regard
this as an instinctive form of fear. Such manifestations may, however,
be merely the result of sudden and rude disturbances of the sense of
bodily ease which attends the habitual condition of adequate support. A
child accustomed to lie in a cradle, on the floor, or on somebody’s lap,
might be expected to be put out when the supporting mass is greatly
reduced, as in bad carrying, or wholly removed, as in quickly lowering
him backwards. The fear of falling, which shows itself during the first
attempts to stand, comes, it must be remembered, as an accompaniment of
a new and highly strange situation. The first experience of using the
legs for support must, one supposes, involve a profound change in the
child’s whole bodily consciousness, a change which may well be
accompanied with a sense of disturbance. Not only so, it comes after a
considerable experience of partial fallings, as in trying to turn over
when lying, half climbing the sides of the cradle, etc., and still
harder bumpings when the crawling stage is reached. These would, I
suspect, be quite sufficient to produce the timidity which is observable
on making the bolder venture of standing.[136]
-----
Footnote 135:
See the quotations from Sir Ch. Bell, Perez, _First Three Years of
Childhood_, p. 63.
Footnote 136:
Preyer seems to regard this as instinctive. _Op. cit._, p. 131.
-----
_Fear of Visible Things._
Fears excited by visual impressions come later than those excited by
sounds. The reason of this seems pretty obvious. Visual sensations do
not produce the strong effect of nervous shock which auditory ones
produce. Let a person compare the violent and profound jar which he
experiences on suddenly hearing a loud sound, with the slight
surface-agitation produced by the sudden movement of an object across
the field of vision. The latter has less of the effect of nervous jar
and more of the characteristics of fear proper, that is, apprehension of
evil. We should accordingly expect that eye-fears would only begin to
show themselves in the child after experience had begun its educative
work.[137]
-----
Footnote 137:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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