“The directress of the Casa del Bambini at Milan constructed under one of the windows a long, narrow shelf, upon which she placed the little tables containing the metal geometric forms used in the first lesson in design.  But the shelf was too narrow, and it often happened that the children in selecting the pieces which they wished to use would allow one of the little tables to fall to the floor, thus upsetting with great noise all the metal pieces which it held.  The directress intended to have the shelf changed, but the carpenter was slow in coming, and while waiting for him she discovered that the children had learned to handle these materials so carefully that in spite of the narrow and sloping shelf, the little tables no longer fell to the ground.  The children, by carefully directing their movements, had overcome the defect in this piece of furniture.”

By slow degrees the child learns to command his movements.  If his efforts are aided and not thwarted, before he is two years old he will have become capable of conducting himself correctly, yet with perfect freedom.  The worst result of the continual repression which may be constantly practised in the mistaken belief that the grasping phase is a bad habit which persistent opposition will eradicate, is the nervous unrest and irritation which it produces in the child.  A passionate fit of crying is too often the result of the thwarting of his nature, and the same process repeated over and over again, day by day, almost hour by hour, is apt to leave its mark in unsatisfied longing, irritability, and unrest.  Above all, the child requires liberty of action.

We have here an admirable example of the effect of environment in developing the child’s powers.  A caged animal is a creature deprived of the stimulus of environment, and bereft therefore to a great extent of the skill which we call instinct, by which it procures its food, guarantees its safety from attack, constructs its home, cares for its young, and procreates its species.  If, metaphorically speaking, we encircle the child with a cage, if we constantly intervene to interpose something between him and the stimulus of his environment, his characteristic powers are kept in abeyance or retarded, just as the marvellous instinct of the wild animals becomes less efficient in captivity.

The grasping phase is but a preliminary to more complex activities.  Just as in schooldays we were taught with much labour to make pot-hooks and hangers efficiently before we were promoted to real attempts at writing, so before the child can really perform tasks with a definite meaning and purpose, he must learn to control the finer movements of his hands.  Once the grasping phase, the stage of pot-hooks, is successfully past—­and the end of the second year in a well-managed child should see its close—­the child sets himself with enthusiasm to wider tasks.  To him washing and dressing, fetching his shoes and buttoning his gaiters, all the processes of his simple little life,