That it should do so seems to be the gradual result of a habit, unconsciously acquired. Those who study such things tell us that we began to perceive things, not through the sense of sight, but by the sense of touch. The baby reaches out its little hand to feel for the mother’s breast; it burrows its way to her warm body; is comforted by the feel of her arms around it. When the child is older and you present her with a doll, you may be disappointed that she does not at once show pleasure. Instead of her face lighting up with joy, as you hoped it would, she stares at the doll in rather a dull way. But presently she stretches out her hands, and takes the doll into them and begins to feel it all over, and at length clasps it in her arms against her body. It is by the sense of touch that she seems to have assured herself that the doll is “real.” When she is older, however, if you offer her a new doll, immediately her face lightens with gladness of welcome. For, in the meantime she has learned to know a doll by sight, and now when she gets it into her hands she turns it round and round that she may look at it, patting the face, however, and the dress, and lifting up the lace of the petticoats and handling the sash, because, although she has grown to recognize things by her sense of sight, she has not lost her delight in the sense of touch. Nor will she, I hope, as she grows older. Indeed, artists, knowing how much pleasure people derive from the feel of things, take great pains, as we shall see in another chapter, to paint the surfaces, or, as they suggest it, the _texture_ of objects, in such a way as to make us feel how pleasant it would be to touch them. Besides, it makes the figure seem so much more real, if they suggest to us that, if we touched the face, it would feel like flesh; or, if we could pass our hand over the dress, it would seem soft and mossy like velvet, or smooth and polished like satin.