nature its distinctive character as human. Character is nothing more
than the sum and co-ordination of those mechanisms which we call habit
and which are formed on the basis of the inherited and instinctive
tendencies and dispositions which we share in so large a measure with
the lower animals.

4. The Natural Man[61]

"Its first act is a cry, not of wrath, as Kant said, nor a shout of joy,
as Schwartz thought, but a snuffling, and then a long, thin, tearless
a-a, with the timbre of a Scotch bagpipe, purely automatic, but of
discomfort. With this monotonous and dismal cry, with its red,
shriveled, parboiled skin (for the child commonly loses weight the first
few days), squinting, cross-eyed, pot-bellied, and bow-legged, it is not
strange that, if the mother has not followed Froebel's exhortations and
come to love her child before birth, there is a brief interval
occasionally dangerous to the child before the maternal instinct is
fully aroused."

The most curious of all the monkey traits shown by the new-born baby is
the one investigated by Dr. Louis Robinson. It was suggested by _The
Luck of Roaring Camp_. The question was raised in conversation whether a
limp and molluscous baby, unable so much as to hold up its head on its
helpless little neck, could do anything so positive as to "rastle with"
Kentuck's finger; and the more knowing persons present insisted that a
young baby does, as a matter of fact, have a good firm hand-clasp. It
occurred to Dr. Robinson that if this was true it was a beautiful
Darwinian point, for clinging and swinging by the arms would naturally
have been a specialty with our ancestors if they ever lived a
monkey-like life in the trees. The baby that could cling best to its
mother as she used hands, feet, and tail to flee in the best time over
the trees, or to get at the more inaccessible fruits and eggs in time of
scarcity, would be the baby that lived to bequeath his traits to his
descendants; so that to this day our housed and cradled human babies
would keep in their clinging powers a reminiscence of our wild treetop
days.

There is another class of movements, often confused with the
reflex--that is, instinctive movements. Real grasping (as distinguished
from reflex grasping), biting, standing, walking, are examples of this
class. They are race movements, the habits of the species to which the
animal belongs, and every normal member of the species is bound to come
to them; yet they are