highly sensitized photographic plate to catch what actually happens, and ordinary language is too clumsy an instrument for adequate description. And this leads me to speak next of the difficulties and dangers which beset the scientific study of childhood and infancy.
One snare which marks the way of the student of infant ways is the desire to fix with exactness the dates of the first appearance of given abilities or functions. The search for beginnings, the absolutely first appearance of definite processes like turning the head when looking for the source of a sound, reaching for objects and grasping, anger, fear, imaging, recognizing and the like will always end in failure for the reason that there are no complete breaks in the chain of experience which warrant one in saying, "at that moment the child could not do so and so, at the next he could."[1] And when one
- ↑ During a period of three and a half years of pretty constant watching of my own two children, I saw only one acquired ability which had the appearance of coming "all at once," and that was the child J.'s creeping on hands and knees, which I first noticed on the first day of his second year. The child's first method of getting about the room was to lie flat on his stomach, extend his arms in front of him, and then pull himself forward by the fore-arms and elbows, the hands playing only a small part in the movement. This method of creeping began near the middle of the eleventh month, and continued to the end of the first year. During the forenoon of the first day of the second year, I saw the child creeping in the usual way, i. e., lying flat on his stomach and pulling himself forward by his arms. In the afternoon of the same day, I saw him lean forward from a sitting position to his hands and knees, and creep a distance of two feet. From that time, I never saw him use the first method of getting
