ABSTRACT
Like all the operations of the organism in action, the notion of our conscious personality does not all at once arrive at the degree of complete perfection which it presents in the adult. During the first period of the life of the infant it is vague, indefinite, and as confused as the organic machinery which produces it. The plexuses of the sensorium are scarcely formed, cerebral biologic development waits upon that of the spinal axis, so that the automatic life then reigns alone. It is only little by little, by means of the development of the sensorial apparatuses and those of the cerebral activity, that the infant comes to distinguish his sensations, to see, to hear, and to keep a conscious memory of impressions perceived.
