Volume 1
The mind of the child : observations concerning the mental development of the human being in the first years of life / by W. Preyer ; translated, from the original German, by H.W. Brown.
- Date:
- 1890
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The mind of the child : observations concerning the mental development of the human being in the first years of life / by W. Preyer ; translated, from the original German, by H.W. Brown. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
354/396 (page 320)
![rectly, by hand-clapping and also by noiseless putting together of the hands, their satisfaction so far as they thereby beg for repetition. How it comes about that very small children are artificially taught, along with the “giving of the hand” (even in the twentieth to the twenty-fourth week some- times [Lindner]), to raise and put together the hands (not the feet), when they are to beg for anything, is not hard to understand. This gesture is indeed acquired by each individual through imitation and training, but probably has its foundation in this, that in the act of seizing, the arms are extended, and the hands, when the desired object is grasped, place themselves about it. Begging is also ultimately a desiring. And if we follow the history of the development of the seizing move- ments from the beginning (p. 241), we are easily con- vinced that the arms, which must be extended for seiz- ing, are, when this has been many times successful, ex- tended in ca.se of every strong desire (with and without sounds expressive of desire), because the thing desired is regarded as capable of being seized. What I have stated as to the interpretation of the retinal images (p. 62) confirms this view. At first the child expresses his desire only by cry- ing ; after he has begun to seize, also by stretching out the arms (in the case of my child for the first time on the one hundred and twenty-first day); then, by extend- ing the arms and putting the hands together. These hereditary expressional movements, originating in the practice of seizing, are made use of by educators, in or- der to teach the praying, begging attitudes, with folding of the hands, which in the beginning are not in the least](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21938994_0001_0354.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
