mate and play its part in the perpetuation of the race. Nature begins
early. As she plants in the tiny baby all the organs that shall be
needed during its lifetime, so she plants the rudiments of all the
impulses and tendencies that shall later be developed into the
full-grown instincts. There have been found to be four periods in the
love-life of the growing child, three of them preparatory steps
leading up to maturity; periods in which the main current of love is
directed respectively toward self, parents, comrades, and finally
toward lover or mate.

=Like Narcissus.= In the first stage, the baby's interest is in his
own body. He is getting acquainted with himself, and he soon finds
that his body contains possibilities of pleasurable sensations which
may be repeated by the proper stimulation. Besides the
hunger-satisfaction that it brings, the act of sucking is pleasurable
in itself, and so the baby begins to suck his thumb or his quilts or
his rattle. Later, this impulse to stimulate the nerves about the
mouth finds its satisfaction in kissing, and still later it plays a
definite part in the wooing process; but at first the child is
self-sufficient and finds his pleasure entirely within himself. Other
regions of the body yield similar pleasure. We often find a tiny child
rubbing his genital organs or his thighs or taking exaggerated
pleasure in riding on someone's foot in order to stimulate these
nerves, which he has discovered at first merely by chance. When he
begins to run around, he loves to exhibit his own body, to go about
naked. None of this is naughtiness or perversion; it is only Nature's
preparation of trends that she will later need to use. The child is
normally and naturally in love with himself.[11] But he must not
linger too long in this stage. None of the channels which his
life-force is cutting must be dug too deep, else in later life they