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.