them. Our habits, it is clear, are not wholly private creations, for they are in large part required of us if we are to use the objects provided by our group in the fashions that our group prescribes.

In many ways the uses to which objects are put is the chief factor in determining how the objects shall be known. This is suggested by the manner in which little children define words. A spoon is defined as "You eat with it"; being naughty as "You get spanked"; God as "You pray to him." We never lose this tendency-and in fact we might reasonably define a thing as the sum of its functions or uses, were it not for the fact that we naturally think of things, not only as complexes of possible uses, but also as complexes of possible enjoyments.

(3) The organization of enjoyments. Here organization is regarded as centering around the development of significancesof interests, allegiances, and appreciations. The primitive direct appropriation of the mother's breast by the infant already spoken of is no doubt just as much a matter of enjoyment as of use. Be that as it may, we are continually enjoying ourselves—as we very wisely say, for enjoyment always contains a large organic element, as can be seen by placing persons of different temperamental bias in the same situation. At the same time our emotional equipment, including our temperaments, is very largely created for us by our group, and the particular things to which we are expected to react with desire, interest, apathy, aversion, or the like are named long before the reactions take place. Every culture pattern includes certain enjoyment systems, just as it also involves certain use systems and knowledge systems, and all developed interest and attention, except in the rarest instances, will be associated therewith. A catalogue of these enjoyment systems would have to include all the arts, and especially those arts that we call "fine," all human pursuits that are capable of yielding pleasure or pain, the various types of social relationships, all games, sports, and recreations, as well as many other human activities.

It is useful to distinguish these three phases of human behavior so that we may realize more fully what is going on when we act, but the distinction would be in the highest degree pernicious if it led the reader to suppose that knowing, using, or enjoying ever existed apart, or were more than three different ways of analyzing one unified experience. Sometimes one phase of the process will be more apparent and sometimes another, and it may not infrequently happen that a very considerable flow of energy can the better be traced in terms of one of the categories than by the use of the other two, but this does not sub

tract from their organic unity. A thing is not merely perceived for whatever it may intellectually be worth; it is perceived in the process of use and for the sake of enjoyments. A habit is more than a way of acting; it is as well a settled way of regarding things and of feeling towards them. Belief is not only a mode of feeling or enjoying things; it is also a mode of knowledge and a mode of action. Every psychological category gains in vividness and significance when viewed from all three of these perspectives. Organic basis of the distinction between knowing, using, and enjoying.

The distinction between knowing, using, and enjoying seems to be a corollary of the division of the reflex arc into three parts, especially when this division is considered in relation to the distinction between the autonomic and the central nervous systems. Put briefly, using seems to be a function of the motor end of the reflex arc, and characteristically of the motor phase of the reflex arcs of the central nervous system-i.e., of the skeletal muscles; enjoyment seems to be a function of the sensory end of the reflex arc, both as respects the central nervous system and the autonomic system-i.e., as respects both external and visceral sensory endings; while knowing seems to be a function of the central portions of reflex arcs, and characteristically of those of the central nervous system which are located in the brain. Knowing, using, and enjoying would seem to form an acting unit because the reflex arc itself is such a functioning unit.

REFERENCES

1 W. H. Thomson, Brain and Personality, or The physical relations of the brain and the mind (N. Y., Dodd, Mead, 1907), 202.

2 G. M. Stratton, Experimental Psychology and its Bearing upon Culture (N. Y., Macmillan, 1903), 149.

3 William James, The Principles of Psychology (N. Y., Holt, 1890), Vol. 1, 488. 4 William Stern, The Psychology of Early Childhood up to the Sixth Year of Age (3 ed., Holt, 1924), 107.

5 For a general description of a few of the processes involved in so simple an act as learning how to spell, see Leta S. Hollingworth, Special Talents and Defects, Their significance for education (N. Y., Macmillan, 1923), 99-100.

6 R. T. Ely, etc., Outlines of Economics (3 ed., N. Y., Macmillan, 1916), 4.

CHAPTER 5

THE EARLY YEARS

In this chapter and the one that follows we turn to a closer inspection of the events by which a baby is almost imperceptibly transformed into a mature individual. Our present ignorance prohibits much being said about many interesting topics, but it will help to a better understanding of the developed individual and his problems if we run hastily over the period of immaturity and catch a few glimpses of the man in the making. This chapter will tell the story of the early years, while the next will be devoted to an account of sexual development, which will necessitate not only an extension of the materials already presented down through the period of puberty, but also a reinterpretation of these materials from the point of view of the place of sex in the life of the individual.

Transition periods in growth.

It will be advisable to begin by mapping out the field to be covered, for, although life runs on without break or intermission, it does not at all times move in exactly the same direction, and some acquaintance with its transition points will clarify many things. It has always been clear that puberty is such a period of transition, for the fact is signalized in many cultures by complex initiation ceremonies or "rites of passage," but it is less commonly recognized that the years preceding puberty exhibit analogous phenomena of changes in interest and activity patterns. Green in his recent studies of the daydreams of children throws a flood of light on this subject.1 Daydreams furnish a superb body of materials for discovering what children are really interested in at a given age, for it is through these dreams that they supplement the inadequacies of everyday life. Of course not all children create dream fantasies, but a study of a considerable number discloses the following broad life-periods:

(1) Babyhood (to about the third year). In this period daydreams are either missing or are incommunicable. Life is almost entirely given over to the satisfaction of nutritional needs,

and to the attainment of those early orientations of the eyes, the hands, and the language apparatus that form the essential basis of all later activity. Habits of digestion, of sleep, of manipulation, and of response that may have to serve the individual to the end of his days are at this time formed, and the emotional patterns of most future activity laid down. Not a few infants have been observed with some care throughout the whole of this period, and there exist scattered data for yet others, but no attempt has to date been made to subject a group of infants to really close observation under controlled conditions during the first three years of life. Yet the achievements of this period, as Preyer long ago pointed out, perhaps equal in mere bulk those of all the rest of life put together, and in importance easily overshadow those of any other time.

(2) Childhood (from about the third to about the tenth years). In this period appears the daydream of the imaginary companion or the imaginary country. The imaginary companion fantasy indicates that the child by this time has framed the preliminary outlines of a self or ideal, so far at least as his affective or emotional life is concerned. He is now acquainted with a rôle that he would like to play, and he proceeds to play it with a person of his own creation who is so made as to conform to his requirements. Either the child himself or the imaginary companion, or both, may take the leading part, for the child easily experiences the relationship from either side, as can be seen from Green's analysis of the naughty companion: 2

The presence of an imaginary companion, who is 'naughty,' enables the child to act in desired ways, vicariously, and at the same time to assume the appearance of virtue that she imagines her parents appreciate. She is able to use their words and their gestures, to make use of the same punishments that have been employed by her parents in her own case, in dealing with the 'naughty' companion. But all the 'naughtiness' has to originate in her own mind: she has to plan it, and in idea she has to execute it. In this way she 'projects' her own naughtiness into the companion, and is able to carry out her wishes in an ideal form, free of all fear of punishment. In certain extreme cases, the imaginary companion is really blamed by the child for real acts that have been committed.

The same point is brought home by the fact that the imaginary companion can be of either sex, and be possessed of almost any qualities. The really important thing is the use to which the fantasy is being put, and not the abstract nature of the contents of the fantasy. This is undoubtedly the reason why a child so often prefers a nondescript and dilapidated doll to one which is measurably realistic, and it also explains why little children are able to have as much fun with odds and ends as

with the most elaborate toys. They are really playing with themselves.

Of course the child's self at this time is extremely rudimentary, for it contains few of the social components that are later to be introduced into it through the dialectic of growth. Though it is primarily egoistic, it is by no means a purely personal creation, but rather a result of the interaction of the developing organism with the complex social milieu in which it is imbedded, as clearly appears when specific daydreams are considered in relation to the environments which produced them. The child will learn much, as a result of further social contacts and enlarged experience with things, but the estimate he will always hold as to his powers and his worth can easily date from these early days. Even the employment of the mechanism of the imaginary companion as a means of handling an unsatisfactory situation need not disappear with the passing of the years, for it is often noted in adults, as in the case of the appeal to posterity. Many a man whose proposals do not now win acclaim consoles himself with the reflection that future ages will recognize the merit of the schemes he has been advocating, and thereby achieves company in his loneliness.

(3) Boyhood and girlhood (from about the tenth to about the fourteenth years). This is the period of the daydream of the gang or the team, and it usually takes the form of an adventure or escapade in which the dreamer leads his group through to victory and success. The imagined activity is now socialized to this extent at least, that it involves a number of other individuals, some of whom are usually real friends of the dreamer, engaged in an enterprise involving cooperative endeavor and requiring some degree of give and take within the group. At the same time the group is usually thought of as at odds with other groups or as engaged in some essentially nonsocial (if not unsocial) undertaking. The spirit of this period is also to be noted in the more popular children's games, for they require the choosing of sides and the pitting of one group against another. Boys during these years frequently form real gangs or clubs for purposes that they like to keep to themselves, and which, indeed, they would often find it difficult to name were they to make the attempt; while girls run in cliques and groups, have secrets, and in general exhibit the same attitudes as the boys. It will be observed that boys tend to flock with boys and girls with girls during this period, whereas throughout the greater part of childhood the sex of one's playments is irrelevant.

In a multitude of ways the group acts upon the growing boy and girl to mold their natures in this process of self-realization.