Two actions of the child may appear equally simple; but one may be an adaptive action, learned with great pains and really very complex, while the other may be inadaptive and really simple.

Children differ under the law of heredity very remarkably, even in the simplest manifestations of their conscious lives.

It is never safe to say without qualification: "This child did, consequently all children must." The most we can usually say in observing single children is: "This child did, consequently another child may." Speaking more positively, the following remarks may be useful to those who have a mind to observe children: 1.

In the first place, we can fix no absolute time in the history of the child at which a certain mental process takes its rise.

The observations, now quite extensively recorded, and sometimes quoted as showing that the first year, or the second year, etc., brings such and such developments, tend, on the contrary, to show that such divisions do not hold in any strict sense.