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MIND: a Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy. No. VII. July, 1877.

In this number of "Mind" Mr Darwin opens with "a Biographical Sketch of an Infant," in which, from observations made on one of his own children, he traces the rise and progress of mental phenomena –anger, fear, affection, association of ideas, moral sense, &c.

The facts are for the most part such as every one conversant with children is acquainted with; but it is not every one that can note and arrange like Darwin, nor is it every one that can see the philosophical bearing of the facts observed. Perhaps the most striking portions of the sketch are those that refer to association of ideas and to means of communication.

The last subject was treated by M. Taine in the April number of "Mind," and both writers insist very strongly on the highly expressive tones of the sounds made by an infant before he has learned to speak; Mr Darwin remarking, "I did not then see that this fact bears on the view which I have elsewhere maintained, that before man used articulate language he uttered notes; in a true musical scale, as does the anthropoid ape Hylobates." Under the former head we have the following interesting notes – "When four and a half months old, he repeatedly smiled at my image and his own in a mirror, and no doubt mistook them for real objects; but he showed sense in being evidently surprised at my voice coming from behind him.

Like all infants, he much enjoyed thus looking at himself, and in less than two months perfectly understood that it was an image; for if I made quite silently any odd grimace, he would suddenly turn round to look at me. He was, however, puzzled at the age of seven months, when being out of doors he saw me on the inside of a large plate-glass window, and seemed in doubt whether or not it was an image.

Another of my infants, a little girl, when from exactly a year old, was not nearly so acute, and seemed quite perplexed at the image a person in a mirror approaching her from behind. The higher apes which I tried with a once small looking-glass behaved differently; they placed their hands behind the glass, and in doing so showed their sense, but far from taking pleasure in looking at themselves they got angry and would look no more."

We are curious to know Mr Darwin's opinion on the infant's power of associating ideas. It is this: - "The facility with which associated ideas due to instruction and others spontaneously arising were acquired, seemed to me by far the most strongly, marked of all the distinctions between the mind of an infant, and that of the cleverest, full-grown dog that I have ever known. What a contrast does the mind of an infant present to that of the pike described by Professor Möbius, who, during three whole months dashed and stunned himself against a glass partition which separated, him from some minnows; and when, after at last learning that he could not attack them with impunity he was placed in the aquarium with these same minnows, then in a persistent and senseless manner he would not attack them!