It is from this beginning that the child goes on to become fully
conscious of what persons are. And when we observe his actions more
closely we find no less than four steps in his growth, which, on
account of the importance of the topic, may be stated in some little
detail.
1. The first thing of significance to him, as has been said, is
_movement_. The first attempts of the infant at anything like steady
attention are directed to moving things--a swaying curtain, a moving
light, a stroking touch, etc. And further than this, the moving things
soon become more than objects of curiosity; these things are just the
things that affect him with pleasure or pain. It is movement that
brings him his bottle, movement that regulates the stages of his bath,
movement that dresses him comfortably, movement that sings to him and
rocks him to sleep. In that complex of sensations, the nurse, the
feature of importance to him, of immediate satisfaction or redemption
from pain, is this--movements come to succour him. Change in his
bodily feeling is the vital requirement of his life, for by it the
rhythm of his vegetative existence is secured; and these things are
accompanied and secured always in the moving presence of the one he
sees and feels about him. This, I take it, is the earliest reflection
in his consciousness of the world of personalities about him. At this
stage his "personality suggestion" is a _pain-movement-pleasure_
state of mind; to this he reacts with a smile, and a crow, and a kick.
Undoubtedly this association gets some of its value from the other
similar one in which the movements are the infant's own. It is by
movements that he gets rid of pains and secures pleasures.
Many facts tend to bear out this position. My child cried in the dark
when I handled her, although I imitated the nurse's movements as
closely as possible. She tolerated a strange presence so long as it
remained quietly in its place; but let it move, and especially let it
usurp any of the pieces of movement-business of the nurse or mother,
and her protests were emphatic. The movements tended to bring the
strange elements of a new face into the vital association,
pain-movement-pleasure, and so to disturb its familiar course; this
constituted it a strange "personality."
It is astonishing, also, what new accidental elements may become parts
of this association. Part of a movement, a gesture, a peculiar habit
of the nurse, may become sufficient to give assurance of the welcome
presence and the pleasures which the presence brings. Two notes of my
song in the night stood for my presence to H., and no song from any
one else could replace it. A lighted match stopped the crying of E.
for food in her fourteenth week, although it was but a signal for a
process of food preparation lasting several minutes; and a simple
light never stopped her crying under any other circumstances.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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