The Story of the Mind

J >> James Mark Baldwin >> The Story of the Mind

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1. The plays of animals are very largely instinctive, being indulged
in for the most part without instruction. The kitten leaps impulsively
to the game. Little dogs romp untaught, and fall, as do other animals
also, when they are strong enough, into all the playful attitudes
which mark their kind. This is seen strikingly among adult animals in
what are called the courtship plays. The birds, for example, indulge
in elaborate and beautiful evolutions of a playful sort at the mating
season.

2. It follows from their instinctive character that animal plays are
peculiar to the species which perform them. We find series of sports
peculiar to dogs, others to cats, and so on through all the species of
the zooelogical garden, whether the creatures be wild or tame. Each
shows its species as clearly by its sportive habits as by its shape,
cry, or any other of what are called its "specific" habits. This is
important not only to the zooelogist, as indicating differences of
evolution and scale of attainment, environment, etc., but also to the
psychologist, as indicating differences of what we may call animal
temperament. Animals show not only the individual differences which
human beings do, one liking this game and another that, one being
leader in the sport and another the follower, but also the greater
differences which characterize races. The Spaniards love the bull
fight; other nations consider it repulsive, and take their fun in less
brutal forms, although, perchance, they tolerate Rugby football! So
the animals vary in their tastes, some playing incessantly at
fighting, and so zealously as to injure one another, while others
like the milder romp, and the game with flying leaves, rolling stones,
or the incoming waves on the shore.

3. Psychologically, the most interesting characteristic of animal, as
of human, play is what is called the "make-believe" state of mind
which enters into it. If we consider our own sports we find that, in
the midst of the game, we are in a condition of divided consciousness.
We indulge in the scheme of play, whatever it be, as if it were a real
situation, at the same time preserving our sense that it is not real.
That is, we distinguish through it all the actual realities, but make
the convention with our companions that for the time we will act
together as if the playful situation were real. With it there is a
sense that it is a matter of voluntary indulgence that can stop at
anytime; that the whole temporary illusion to which we submit is
strictly our own doing, a job which we have "put up" on ourselves.
That is what is meant by make-believe.

Now it is clear that the animals have this sense of make-believe in
their games both with other animals and with man. The dog plays at
biting the hand of his master, and actually takes the member between
his teeth and mumbles it; but all the while he stops short of painful
pressure, and goes through a series of characteristic attitudes which
show that he distinguishes very clearly between this play biting and
the real. If perchance the master shows signs of being hurt, the dog
falls into attitudes of sorrow, and apologizes fulsomely. So also when
the animals play together, a vigorous squeal from a companion who is
"under" generally brings him his release.

The principal interest of this make-believe consciousness is that it
is considered by many to be an essential ingredient of AEsthetic
feeling. A work of art is said to have its effect through its tendency
to arouse in us a make-believe acceptance of the scene or motive
presented, while it nevertheless remains contrasted with the realities
of our lives. If this be true, the interesting question arises how far
the animals also have the germs of AEsthetic feeling in their
make-believe situations. Does the female pea-fowl consider the male
bird, with all his display of colour and movement, a beautiful object?
And does the animal companion say: How beautiful! when his friend in
the sport makes a fine feint, and comes up serene with the knowing
look, which the human on-looker can not fail to understand?

In some cases, at any rate, we should have to reply to this question
affirmatively, if we considered make-believe the essential thing in
aesthetic enjoyment.

_Theories of Animal Play._--The question of the meaning and value of
play to the animals has had very enlightening discussion of late.
There are two principal theories now advocated.

I. The older theory considered play simply the discharge of surplus
nerve force in the animal's organism. He was supposed to play when he
felt fresh and vigorous. The horse is "skittish" and playful in the
morning, not so much so at night. The dogs lie down and rest when they
are tired, having used up their surplus energies. This is called the
Surplus-Energy Theory of play.

The difficulty with this theory is that it is not adequate to explain
any of the characteristics of play which have been given above. Why
should play be instinctive in its forms, showing certain complex and
ingrained channels of expression, if it were merely the discharge of
surplus force? We are more lively in the morning, but that does not
explain our liking and indulging in certain sorts of complex games at
all hours. Moreover, animals and children will continue to play when
greatly fatigued. A dog, for example, which seems absolutely "used
up," can not resist the renewed solicitations of his friends to
continue the chase. Furthermore, why is it that plays are
characteristic of species, different kinds of animals having plays
quite peculiar to themselves? It is difficult to see how this could
have come about unless there had been some deeper-going reason in
accordance with which each species has learned the particular forms of
sport in which it indulges.

The advocates of this theory attempt to meet these objections by
saying that the imitative instinct accounts for the particular
directions in which the discharges of energy occur. A kitten's plays
are like those of the cat tribe because the kitten is accustomed to
imitate cats; when it falls to playing it is with cats, and so it
sheds its superfluous energies in the customary imitative channels. In
this way it grows to learn the games of its own species. There is a
good deal in this point; most games are imitative in so far as they
are learned at all. But it does not save the theory; for many animal
plays are not learned by the individual at all, as we have seen above;
on the contrary, they are instinctive. In these cases the animal does
not wait to learn the games of his tribe by imitation, but
starts-right-in on his own account. Besides this there are many forms
of animal play which are not imitative at all. In these the animals
co-operate, but do not take the same parts. The young perform actions
in the game which the mother does not.

All this goes to support another and most serious objection to this
theory--in the mind of all those who believe in the doctrine of
evolution. The Surplus-Energy Theory considers the play-impulse, which
is one of the most widespread characters of animal life, as merely an
accidental thing or by-product--a mere using-up of surplus energies.
It is not in any way important to the animals. This makes it
impossible to say that play has come to be the very complex thing that
it really is by the laws of evolution; for survival by natural
selection always supposes that the attribute or character which
survives is important enough to keep the animal alive in the struggle
for existence; otherwise it would not be continued for successive
generations, and gradually perfected on account of its utility.

On the whole, therefore, we find the Surplus-Energy Theory of play
quite inadequate.

II. Another theory therefore becomes necessary if we are to meet these
difficulties. Such a theory has recently been developed. It holds that
the plays of the animals are of the greatest utility to them in this
way: they exercise the young animals in the very activities--though in
a playful way--in which they must seriously engage later on in life. A
survey of the plays of animals with a view to comparing them in each
case with the adult activities of the same species, confirms this
theory in a remarkably large number of cases. It shows the young
anticipating, in their play, the struggles, enjoyments, co-operations,
defeats, emergencies, etc., of their after lives, and by learning to
cope with all these situations, so preparing themselves for the
serious onset of adult responsibilities. On this theory each play
becomes a beautiful case of adaptation to nature. The kitten plays
with the ball as the old cat handles the mouse; the little dogs
wrestle together, and so learn to fight with teeth and claws; the deer
run from one another, and so test their speed and learn to escape
their enemies. If we watch young animals at play we see that not a
muscle or nerve escapes this preliminary training and exercise; and
the instinctive tendencies which control the play direct the
activities into just the performances which the animal's later
life-habits are going on to require.

On this view play becomes of the utmost utility. It is not a
by-product, but an essential part of the animal's equipment. Just as
the infancy period has been lengthened in the higher animals in order
to give the young time to learn all that they require to meet the
harsh conditions of life, so during this infancy period they have in
the play-instinct a means of the first importance for making good use
of their time. It is beautiful to see the adults playing with their
young, adapting their strength to the little ones, repeating the same
exercises without ceasing, drilling them with infinite pains to
greater hardihood, endurance, and skill.

On this theory it is also easy to see why it is that the plays are
different for the different species. The actual life conditions are
different, and the habits of the species are correspondingly
different. So it is only another argument for the truth of this theory
that we find just those games natural to the young which train them
in the habits natural to the old.

This view is now being very generally adopted. Many fine illustrations
might be cited. A simple case may be seen in so small a thing as the
habit of leaping in play; the difference, for example, between the
mountain goat and the common fawn. The former, when playing on level
ground makes a very ludicrous exhibition by jumping in little
up-and-down leaps by which he makes no progress. In contrast with this
the fawn, whose adult life is normally in the plains, takes a long
graceful spring. The difference becomes clear from the point of view
of this theory, when we remember that the goat is to live among the
rocks, where the only useful jump is just the up-and-down sort which
the little fellow is now practising; while the deer, in his life upon
the plains, will always need the running jump.

Finally, on this theory, play becomes a thing for evolution to
cultivate for its utility in the progress of animal life, and for that
reason we may suppose it has been perfected in the remarkable variety
and beauty of form which it shows.

On the psychological side, we find a corresponding state of things.
The mind in the young animal or child gets the main education of early
life through its play situations. Games have an extraordinary
pedagogical influence. The more so because they are the natural and
instinctive way of getting an education in practical things. This
again is of supreme utility to the individuals.

Both for body and mind we find that play illustrates the principle of
Organic Selection explained above. It makes the young animal flexible,
plastic, and adaptable; it supplements all his other instincts and
imperfect functions; it gives him a new chance to live, and so
determines the course of evolution in the direction which the playful
animal represents. The quasi-social and gregarious habits of animals
probably owe much of their strength to the play-impulse, both through
the training of individual animals and through the fixing of these
tendencies as instincts in various animal species in the way just
mentioned.

In another place below I analyze a child's game and draw some
inferences from it. Here it may suffice to say that in their games the
young animals acquire the flexibility of mind and muscle upon which
much of the social co-operation, as well as the individual
effectiveness, of their later life depends. With children, it is not
the only agency, of course, though its importance is not less. We have
to carry the children further by other means; but the other means
should never interfere with this natural schooling. They should aim
the rather by supplementing it wisely to direct its operation and to
extend its sphere.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MIND OF THE CHILD--CHILD PSYCHOLOGY.

One of the most interesting chapters of modern psychology is that
which deals with the child. This is also one of the topics of general
concern, since our common humanity reacts with greater geniality upon
the little ones, in whom we instinctively see innocence and
simplicity. The popular interest in children has been, however--as
uncharitable as it may seem to say it--of very little service to the
scientific investigation of childhood. Even to-day, when a greater
body of valuable results are being secured, the main danger to the
proper study of the child's mind comes from the over-enthusiasm and
uninstructed assurance of some of its friends. Especially is this the
case in America, where "child study" has become a fad to be pursued by
parents and teachers who know little about the principles of
scientific method, and where influential educators have enlisted
so-called "observers" in taking indiscriminate notes on the doings of
children with no definite problem in view, and with no criticism of
their procedure. It is in place, therefore, to say clearly, at the
outset, that this chapter does not mean to stimulate parents or
unpsychological readers to report observations; and further to say
also that in the mind of the writer the publications made lately of
large numbers of replies to "syllabi" are for the most part worthless,
because they heap together observations obtained by persons of every
degree of competence and incompetence.

On the other hand, the requisites here, as in every other sphere of
exact observation, are clear enough. The student of the child's mind
should have a thorough knowledge of the principles of general
psychology, in order to know what is characteristic of the child when
he sees it, and what is exceptional; and he should also have enough
originality in his ideas and interpretations to catch the valuable in
the child's doings, distinguishing it from the commonplace, and to
plan situations and even experiments which will give him some control
upon those actions of the child which seem to be worth it. The need
of these qualities is seen in the history of the problems of the
child's growth which have been taken up even by the most competent
psychologists. The results show a gradual attainment of control over
the problem in hand, each observer criticising the method and results
of his predecessor until certain rules of observation and experiment
have been evolved which allow of the repetition and repeated
observation of the events of the child's life.

As illustrating the sort of problems in which there has been this
careful and critical work, I may instance these: the child's reflex
movements, the beginnings and growth of sensation, such as colour, the
rise of discrimination and preference, the origin of right and
left-handedness, the rise, mechanism, and meaning of imitation, the
acquisition of speech and handwriting, the growth of the child's sense
of personality and of his social consciousness, and the laws of
physical growth, as bearing upon mental development. In all these
cases, however, there is again a greater and a less exactness. The
topics with the reports of results which I am going on to give may be
taken, however, as typical, and as showing the direction of complete
knowledge rather than as having in any one case approached it.

Before we take up particular questions, however, a word may be allowed
upon the general bearings of the study of the child's mind. I do this
the more willingly, since it is still true, in spite of the hopeful
outlook for positive results, that it is mainly the willingness of
psychology to recognise the problems and work at them that makes the
topic important at present. To investigate the child by scientific
methods is really to bring into psychology a procedure which has
revolutionized the natural sciences; and it is destined to
revolutionize the moral sciences by making them also in a great
measure natural sciences. The new and important question about the
mind which is thus recognised is this: _How did it grow?_ What light
upon its activity and nature can we get from a positive knowledge of
its early stages and processes of growth? This at once introduces
other questions: How is the growth of the child related to that of the
animals?--how, through heredity and social influences, to the growth
of the race and of the family and society in which he is brought up?
All this can be comprehended only in the light of the doctrine of
evolution, which has rejuvenated the sciences of life; and we are now
beginning to see a rejuvenation of the sciences of mind from the same
point of view. This is what is meant when we hear it said that
psychology is becoming "genetic."

The advantages to be derived from the study of young children from
this point of view may be briefly indicated.

1. In the first place, the facts of the infant consciousness are very
simple; that is, they are the child's sensations or memories simply,
not his own observations of them. In the adult mind the disturbing
influence of self-observation is a matter of notorious moment. It is
impossible for me to report exactly what I feel, for the observation
of it by my attention alters its character. My volition also is a
complex thing, involving my personal pride and self-consciousness. But
the child's emotion is as spontaneous as a spring. The effects of it
in the mental life come out in action, pure and uninfluenced by
calculation and duplicity and adult reserve. There is around every one
of us adults a web of convention and prejudice of our own making. Not
only do we reflect the social formalities of our environment, and thus
lose the distinguishing spontaneities of childhood, but each of us
builds up his own little world of seclusion and formality with
himself. We are subject, as Bacon said, not only to "idols of the
forum," but also to "idols of the den."

The child, on the contrary, has not learned his own importance, his
pedigree, his beauty, his social place, his religion; he has not
observed himself through all these and countless other lenses of time,
place, and circumstance. He has not yet turned himself into an idol nor
the world into a temple; and we can study him apart from the complex
accretions which are the later deposits of his self-consciousness.

2. The study of children is often the only means of testing the truth
of our analyses. If we decide that a certain mental state is due to a
union of simpler elements, then we may appeal to the proper period of
child life to see the union taking place. The range of growth is so
enormous from the infant to the adult, and the beginnings of the
child's mental life are so low in the scale, in the matter of mental
endowment, that there is hardly a question of analysis now under
debate in psychology which may not be tested by this method.

At this point it is that child psychology is more valuable than the
study of the mind of animals. The latter never become men, while
children do. The animals represent in some few respects a branch of
the tree of growth in advance of man, while being in many other
respects very far behind him. In studying animals we are always
haunted by the fear that the analogy from him to man may not hold;
that some element essential to the development of the human mind may
not be in the animal at all. Even in such a question as the
localization of the functions of the brain described later on, where
the analogy is one of comparative anatomy and only secondarily of
psychology, the monkey presents analogies with man which dogs do not.
But in the study of children we may be always sure that a normal child
has in him the promise of a normal man.

3. Again, in the study of the child's mind we have the added advantage
of a corresponding simplicity on the bodily side; we are able to take
account of the physiological processes at a time when they are
relatively simple--that is, before the nervous system has grown to
maturity. For example, psychology used to hold that we have a "speech
faculty," an inborn mental endowment which is incapable of further
analysis; but support for the position is wanting when we turn to the
brain of the infant. Not only do we fail to find the series of centres
now known to be the "speech zone," but even those of them which we do
find have not yet taken up this function, either alone or together. In
other words, the primary object of each of the various centres
involved is not speech, but some other and simpler function; and
speech arises by development from a union of these separate functions.

4. In observing young children, a more direct application of
experiment is possible. By "experiment" here I mean both experiment
on the senses and also experiment directly on consciousness by
suggestion, social influence, etc. In experimenting on adults, great
difficulties arise through the fact that reactions--such as performing
a voluntary movement when a signal is heard, etc.--are complicated by
deliberation, habit, custom, choice, etc. The subject hears a sound,
identifies it, and presses a button--_if he choose_ and agree to do
so. What goes on in this interval between the advent of the incoming
nerve process and the discharge of the outgoing nerve process?
Something, at any rate, which represents a brain process of great
complexity. Now, anything that fixes or simplifies the brain process,
in so far gives greater certainty to the results. For this reason
experiments on reflex actions are valuable and decisive where similar
experiments on voluntary actions are uncertain and of doubtful value.
Now the child's mind is relatively simple, and so offers a field for
more fruitful experiment; this is seen in the reactions of the infant
to strong stimuli, such as bright colours, etc., as related further
on.

With this inadequate review of the advantages of infant psychology, it
is well also to point out the dangers of the abuse of it. Such dangers
are real. The very simplicity which seems to characterize the life of
the child is often extremely misleading, and this because the
simplicity in question is sometimes ambiguous. Two actions of the
child may appear equally simple; but one may be an adaptive action,
learned with great pains and really very complex, while the other may
be inadaptive and really simple. Children differ under the law of
heredity very remarkably, even in the simplest manifestations of their
conscious lives. It is never safe to say without qualification: "This
child did, consequently all children must." The most we can usually
say in observing single children is: "This child did, consequently
another child may."

Speaking more positively, the following remarks may be useful to those
who have a mind to observe children:

1. In the first place, we can fix no absolute time in the history of
the child at which a certain mental process takes its rise. The
observations, now quite extensively recorded, and sometimes quoted as
showing that the first year, or the second year, etc., brings such and
such developments, tend, on the contrary, to show that such divisions
do not hold in any strict sense. Like any other organic growth, the
nervous system may develop faster under more favourable conditions, or
more slowly under less favourable; and the growth of the mind is
largely dependent upon the growth of the brain. Only in broad outline
and within very wide limits can such periods be marked off at all.

2. The possibility of the occurrence of a mental state at a particular
time must be distinguished from its necessity. The occurrence of a
single clearly observed fact is decisive only against the theory
according to which its occurrence under the given conditions may not
occur. For example, the very early adaptive movements of the infant in
receiving its food can not be due to intelligence and will; but the
case is still open as to the question what is the reason of their
presence--i.e., how much nervous development is present, how much
experience is necessary, etc. It is well to emphasize the fact that
one case may be decisive in overthrowing a theory, but the conditions
are seldom simple enough to make one case decisive in establishing a
theory.

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