they reach, the mouth, they are sucked;
the child feels himself suck its own fist; he feels his fist being
sucked. Some day it will occur to him that that fist belongs to
the same being who owns the sucking mouth. But at this point, Miss
Shinn[C] has observed, the baby is often surprised and indignant that
he cannot move his arms around and at the same time suck his fist.
This discomfort helps him to make an effort to get his fist into his
mouth and keep it there, and this effort shows his will, beginning to
take possession of his hands and arms.

[Sidenote: Growth of Will]

Since any faculty grows by its own exercise, just as muscles grow by
exercise, every time the baby succeeds in getting his hands to his
mouth as a result of desire, every time that he succeeds in grasping
an object as result of desire, his will power grows. Action of this
nature brings in new sensations, and the brain centers used for
recording such sensations grow.

As the sensations multiply, he compares them, and an idea is born. For
the beginnings of mental development no other mechanism is actually
needed than a brain and a hand and the nerves connecting them. Laura
Bridgeman and Helen Keller, both of them deaf and blind, received
their education almost entirely through their hands, and yet they
were unusually capable of thinking. The child's hands, then, from the
beginning, are the servants of his brain-instruments by means of
which he carries impressions from the outer world to the seat of
consciousness, and by which in turn he imprints his consciousness upon
the outer world.

[Sidenote: Intentional Grasping]

The average baby does not begin to grasp objects with intention before
the fourth month. The first grasping seems to be done by feeling,
without the aid of the eye, and is done with the fingers with no
attempt to oppose the thumb to them. So closely does the use of the
thumbs set opposite the fingers in grasping coincide with the first
grasping with the aid of sight, that some observers have been led to
believe that as soon as the baby learns to use its thumb in this way
he proves that he is beginning to grasp with intention.

[Sidenote: Order of Development]

The order of development seems to be, _first_, automatism, the muscles
contracting of themselves in response to nervous stimuli; _second_,
instinct, the inherited wisdom of the race, which discovered ages ago
that the hand could be used to greater advantage when the thum