in quickly lowering the child backward. The fear of falling, which shows itself on the child's first attempting to stand, comes, it must he remembered, as an accompaniment of a new and highly strange situation. The first experience of using the legs for support must, one supposes, involve a profound change in the child's whole bodily consciousness—a change which may well be accompanied with a sense of disturbance. Not only so, it comes after a considerable experience of partial failings, as in trying to turn over when lying, half climbing the sides of the cradle, etc., and still ruder bumpings when the crawling stage is reached. These would, I suspect, be quite sufficient to produce the timidity which is observable on making the bolder venture of standing.[1]
Fears excited by visual impressions come later than those excited by sounds. The reason of this seems pretty obvious. Visual sensations do not produce the strong effect of nervous shock which auditory ones produce. Let a person compare the violent and profound jar which he experiences on suddenly hearing a loud sound with the slight surface agitation produced by a sudden movement of an object across the field of vision. The latter has less of the effect of nervous jar and more of the characteristics of fear proper—that is, vague apprehension of evil. We should accordingly expect that eye-fears would only begin to show themselves in the child after experience had begun its educative work.[2]
At the outset it is well, as in the case of ear-fear, to keep before us the distinction between mere dislike to a sensation and a true reaction of fear. We shall find that children's quasi-aesthetic dislikes to certain colors may readily simulate the appearance of fears.
Among the earliest manifestations of fear excited by visual impressions we have those called forth by the presentation of something new and strange, especially when it involves a rupture of customary arrangement. Although children love and delight in what is new, their disposition to fear is apt to give to new and strange objects a disquieting if not distinctly alarming character. This apprehension shows itself as soon as the child has begun to be used or accustomed to a particular state of things.
Among the more disconcerting effects of the ruder departure from the customary we have that of change of place. At first the infant betrays no sign of disturbance on being carried into a
- ↑ Preyer seems to regard this as instinctive. Op. cit., p. 131.
- ↑ M. Perez (op. cit., p. 65) calls in the evolution hypothesis here, suggesting that the child, unlike the young animal, is so organized as to be more on the alert for dangers which are near at hand (auditory impressions) than for those at a distance (visual impressions). I confess, however, that I find this ingenious writer not quite convincing here.
