the task of the psychologist begins. Grant the self-consciousness of
the individual, although still very obscure; grant the sentient
perception; everything else that we call mind is the result of a
development, which we must follow historically in order to understand that
it could not come about in any other way. But where are the facts, where
the monuments, where the trustworthy documents, from which we can draw our
knowledge of this wonderful development?

Four sources have been propounded for the study of psychogenesis. It has
been said that to investigate the development of the human mind, the
following objects must be scientifically observed: (1) The mind of a
child; (2) the mind of the lower animals; (3) the survivals of the oldest
culture, as we find it in ethnological collections; (4) the mind of still
living savages. I formerly entertained similar hopes, but in my own
melancholy experience all these studies end in delusion, in so far as they
are applied to explain the genesis of the human mind. They do not reach
far enough, they give us everywhere only the products of growth, the
result of art, not the natural growth, or the real evolution. The
observations on the development of a child's mind are very attractive,
especially when they are made by thoughtful mothers. But this nursery
psychology is wanting in all scientific exactness. The object of
observation, the child that cannot yet speak, can never be entirely
isolated. Its environment is of incalculable influence, and the petted
child develops very differently from the neglected foundling. The early
smile of the one is often as much a reflex action as the crying and
blustering of the other, from hunger or inherited disease. Much as I
admire the painstaking effort with which the first evidences of perception
or of mental activity in a child have been recorded from day to day, from
week to week, these observations prove untrustworthy when we endeavour to
control them independently. It has been said that the mental activities of
a child develop in the following order:--

After three weeks fear is manifested;

After seven weeks social affections;

After twelve weeks jealousy and anger;

After five months sympathy;

After eight months, pride, sentiment, love of ornament;

After fifteen months, shame, remorse, a sense of the ludicrous.(45)

We may generalise this scale as much as we please, and gradually permit
the gradations to vanish, but I doubt if ev