Here was not only strength of arms, but the ability to perform quite skillfully an action, that required the working together of a number of muscles to a definite end,--the action namely, of clasping an object with the hand. This is one of several actions that come ready-made to the baby at birth, before he can possibly have had any chance to learn them, or any idea of what they are for. Babies sneeze, swallow, and cry on the first day; they shut their eyes at a bright light, or at a touch. On the first day, moreover, they have been seen to start at a sound or a jar; Preyer observed hiccoughing, choking, coughing, and spreading the toes when the soles were tickled; and Darwin saw yawning and stretching within the first week, though I do not know that any one has seen it on the first day. These movements are all of the class called reflex,--movements, that is, in which the bodily mechanism is set off by some outside action on the senses, as a gun is set off by a touch on the trigger. Thus, when a tickling affects the mucous membrane, a sneeze executes itself without any will of ours; when our sense of sight perceives a swift missile coming, the neck muscles mechanically jerk the head to one side. We grown people have, however, a good deal of power of holding in our reflexes,--“inhibiting” them, as the technical expression is,--but the baby has none at all. If they had a highly developed reflex activity, babies would be in real danger from the unrestrained acts of their own muscles, as we see in the case of convulsions, which show reflex action at its extreme. But the actions I have mentioned are about all the reflex movements that have been noted in new-born babies, except what are called the periodic reflexes, such as breathing, the heartbeat, the contractions of the arteries, and all the regular muscular actions of organic life. That so complex a system of movement as these periodic reflexes should be so readily touched into motion upon contact with air and food, to maintain itself afterward by the interplay of the bodily mechanism and external forces, shows a ready-made hereditary activity far more than the sudden reflexes do. It does not work quite smoothly at first, however: the establishment of breathing, for instance, is irregular, and often difficult. Even the sudden reflexes are slower and less perfect than with older people.