extraordinary phenomenon produces a vague sense of some one acting with
a given purpose, and hence of an actual fetish. A man will sometimes
address the things which surround him, and act towards them as if they
possessed consciousness and will. Children, who are still without
experience and reflection, will often invest external objects with
solidity.

A child, as soon as it can guide its own motions, will grasp anything
which is pliant and yielding as firmly as if it were solid, thus
implicitly judging the thing from its appearance. In the same way, a
child confidently relies on any support, however weak and insufficient
it may be, arguing as usual from the appearance to the thing itself. Nor
must it be said that experience is necessary to correct these errors.
The implicit faculty of apprehension is prior to experience, which only
becomes possible by means of this faculty. The elements of this faculty
unconsciously fulfil and pursue their office in the child, aided by the
reflex motions which are cerebro-spinal and peripheral, as they have
been produced and organized in the species by evolution; but they, as
well as these reflex physiological motions, are prior to the same
temporary experience.[23]

Thus the new-born infant sucks the milk which serves for its nourishment
from its mother's breast; it is impossible in this case that such a
class of elements should not be spontaneously developed; the child feels
the nipple and adapts its mouth and mode of breathing to it, while
pressing the breast with its hands to express the milk. If much in this
operation might be ascribed to reflex movements, yet in association with
them, supplementing and rendering them possible, there is an implicit
perception of the external phenomenon through the sense of touch, and he
becomes conscious of the object, and of its causative power; such power