The bony enclosures of the middle ear are unfinished and the eyes also are unfinished.  It is a question yet to be settled, whether a new-born baby is blind and deaf or not.  At a rate, he soon acquires a sensitiveness to both light and sound, although it is three years or more before he has amassed sufficient experience to estimate with accuracy the distance of objects seen or herd.  He can cry, suck, sneeze, cough, kick, and hold on to a finger.  All of these acts, though they do not yet imply personality, or even mind, give evidence of a wonderful organism.  They require the co-operation of many delicate nerves and muscles—­a co-operation that has as yet baffled the power of scientists to explain.

Although the young baby is in almost constant motion while he is awake, he is altogether too weak to turn himself in bed or to escape from an uncomfortable position, and he remains so for many weeks.  This constant motion is necessary to his muscular development, his control of his own muscles, his circulation, and, very probably, to the free transmission of nervous energy.  Therefore, it is of the first importance that he has freedom to move, and he should be given time every day to move and stretch before the fire, without clothes on.  It is well to rub his back and legs at the same time, thus supplementing his gymnastics with a gentle massage.

[Sidenote:  Educational Beginnings.]

By the time he is four or five weeks old it is safe to play with him, a little every day, and Froebel has made his “Play with the Limbs” one of his first educational exercises.  In this play the mother lays the baby, undressed, upon a pillow and catches the little ankles in her hands.  Sometimes she prevents the baby from kicking, so that he has to struggle to get his legs free; sometimes she helps him, so that he kicks more freely and regularly; sometimes she lets him push hard against her breast.  All the time she laughs and sings to him, and Froebel has made a little song for this purposes.  Since consciousness is roused and deepened by sensations, remembered, experienced, and compared, it is evident that this is more than a fanciful play; that it is what Froebel claimed for it—­a real educational exercise.  By means, of it the child may gain some consciousness of companionship, and thus, by contrast, a deeper self-consciousness.

[Sidenote:  First Efforts]

The baby is at first unable to hold up its head, and in this he is just like all other animals, for no animal, except man, holds up its head constantly.  The human baby apparently makes the effort, because he desires to see more clearly—­he could doubtless see clearly enough for all physical purposes with his head hung down, but not enough to satisfy his awakening mentality.  The effort to hold the head up and to look around is therefore regarded by most psychologists as one of the first tokens of an awakening intellectual life.  And this is true, although the first effort seems to arise from an overplus