The walking instinct may awaken with no less sudden-ness, and its entire education be completed within a week's compass, barring, of course, it little 'grogginess' in the gait.Individual infants vary enormously; but on the whole it is safe to say that the mode of development of these locomotor instincts is inconsistent with the account given by the older English associationist school, of their being results of the individual's education, due altogether to the gradual association of certain perceptions with certain hap-hazard movements and certain resultant pleasures.Mr Bain has tried, by describing the demeanor of new-born lambs, to show that locomotion is learned by a very rapid experience.But the observation recorded proves the faculty to be almost perfect from the first; and all others who have observed new-born calves, lambs, and pigs agree that in these animals the powers of standing and walking, and of interpreting the topographical significance of sights and sounds, are all but fully developed at birth.Often in animals who seem to be 'learning' to walk or fly the semblance is illusive.The awkwardness shown is not due to the fact that 'experience' has not yet been there to associate the successful movements and exclude the failures, but to the fact that the animal is beginning his attempts before the co-ordinating centres have quite ripened for their work.Mr.Spalding's observations on this point are conclusive as to birds.
"Birds," be says, A do not learn to fly.Two years ago I shut up five unfledged swallows in a small box, not much larger than the nest from which they were taken.
The little box, which had a wire front, was hung on the wall near the nest, and the young swallows were fed by their parents through the wires.In this confinement, where they could not even extend their wings, they were kept until after they were fully fledged....On going to set the prisoners free, one was found dead....The remaining four were allowed to escape one at a time.Two of these were perceptibly wavering and unsteady in their flight.One of them, after a flight of some ninety yards, disappeared among some trees." No.3 and No.4 " never flew against anything, nor was there, in their avoiding objects, any appreciable difference between them and the old birds.No.3 swept round the Wellingtonia, and No.4 rose over the hedge, just as we see the old swallows doing every hour of the day.
I have this summer verified these observations.Of two swallows I had similarly confined, one, on being set free, hew a yard or two close to the ground, rose in the direction of a beech-tree, which it gracefully avoided; it was seen for a considerable time sweeping round the beeches and performing magnificent evolutions in the air high above them.The other, which was observed to beat the air with its wings more than usual, was soon lost to sight, behind some trees.Titmice, tomtits, and wrens I have made the subjects of similar observations, and with similar results."
In the light of this report, one may well be tempted to make a prediction about the human child, slid say that if a baby were kept from getting on his feet for two or three weeks after the first impulse to walk had shown itself in him, -- a small blister on each sole would do the business, -- he might then be expected to walk about as well, through the mere ripening of his nerve-centres, as if the ordinary process of 'learning' had been allowed to occur during all the blistered time.It is to be hoped that some scientific widower, left alone with his offspring at the critical moment, may ere long test this suggestion on the living subject.Climbing on trees, fences, furniture, banisters, etc., is a well-marked instinctive propensity which ripens after the fourth year.
Vocalization.This may be either musical or significant.Very few weeks after birth the baby begins to express its spirits by emitting vowel sounds, as much during inspiration as during expiration, and will lie on its back cooing and gurgling to itself for nearly an hour.But this singing has nothing to do with speech.Speech is sound significant.
During the second year a certain number of significant sounds are gradually acquired; but talking proper does not set in till the instinct to imitate sounds ripens in the nervous system; and this ripening seems in some children to be quite abrupt.Then speech grows rapidly in extent and perfection.
The child imitates every word he hears uttered, and repeats it again and again with the most evident plea-sure at his new power.At this time it is quite impossible to talk with him, for his condition is that of 'Echolalia,'
--instead of answering the question, he simply reiterates it.The result is, however, that his vocabulary increases very fast; and little by little, with teaching from above, the young prattler understands, puts words together to express his own wants and perceptions, and even makes intelligent replies.
From a, speechless, he has become a speaking, animal.The interesting point with regard to this instinct is the oftentimes very sudden birth of the impulse to imitate sounds.Up to the date of its awakening the child may have been as devoid of it as a dog.Four days later his whole energy may be poured into this new channel.The habits of articulation formed during the plastic age of childhood are in most persons sufficient to inhibit the for- mation of new ones of a fundamentally different sort witness the inevitable 'foreign accent' which distinguishes the speech of those who learn a language after early youth.
