l of his activities of thinking and action.

So now it is no longer difficult to see, I trust, why it is that the
child or youth of this sort has the characteristics which he has. It
is a familiar principle that attention to the thought of a movement
tends to start that very movement. I defy any of my readers to think
hard and long of winking the left eye and not have an almost
irresistible impulse to wink that eye. There is no better way to make
it difficult for a child to sit still than to tell him to sit still;
for your words fill up his attention, as I had occasion to say above,
with the thought of movements, and these thoughts bring on the
movements, despite the best intentions of the child in the way of
obedience. Watch an audience of little children--and children of an
older growth will also do--when an excited speaker harangues them with
many gestures, and see the comical reproduction of the gestures by the
children's hands. They picture the movements, the attention is fixed
on them, and appropriate actions follow.

It is only the generalizing of these phenomena that we find realized
in the boy or girl of the motor type. Such a child is constantly
thinking of things by their movement equivalents. Muscular sensations
throng up in consciousness at every possible signal and by every train
of association; so it is not at all surprising that all informations,
instructions, warnings, reproofs, suggestions, pass right through such
a child's consciousness and express themselves by the channels of
movement. Hence the impulsive, restless, domineering, unmeditative
character of the child. We may now endeavour to describe a little more
closely his higher mental traits.

1. In the first place the motor mind tends to _very quick
generalization_. Every teacher knows the boys in school who anticipate
their conclusions, on the basis of a single illustration. They reach
the general notion which is most broad in extent, in application, but
most shallow in intent, in richness, in real explaining or descriptive
meaning. For example, such a boy will hear the story of Napoleon,
proceed to define heroism in terms of military success, and then go
out and try the Napoleon act upon his playfellows. This tendency to
generalize is the mental counterpart of the tendency to act seen in
his conduct. The reason he generalizes is that the brain energies are
not held back in the channels of perception, but pour themselves right
out toward the