In a report of the results of a questionnaire concerning children’s sense of self, to which over 500 replies were received, Stanley Hall thus summarizes the main facts ascertained with reference to the feet:  “A special period of noticing the feet comes somewhat later than that in which the hands are discovered to consciousness.  Our records afford nearly twice as many cases for feet as for hands.  The former are more remote from the primary psychic focus or position, and are also more often covered, so that the sight of them is a more marked and exceptional event.  Some children become greatly excited whenever their feet are exposed.  Some infants show signs of fear at the movement of their own knees and feet covered, and still more often fright is the first sensation which signalizes the child’s discovery of its feet....  Many are described as playing with them as if fascinated by strange, newly-discovered toys.  They pick them up and try to throw them away, or out of the cradle, or bring them to the mouth, where all things tend to go....  Children often handle their feet, pat and stroke them, offer them toys and the bottle, as if they, too, had an independent hunger to gratify, an ego of their own....  Children often develop [later] a special interest in the feet of others, and examine, feel them, etc., sometimes expressing surprise that the pinch of the mother’s toe hurts her and not the child, or comparing their own and the feet of others point by point.  Curious, too, are the intensifications of foot-consciousness throughout the early years of childhood, whenever children have the exceptional privilege of going barefoot, or have new shoes.  The feet are often apostrophized, punished, beaten sometimes to the point of pain for breaking things, throwing the child down, etc.  Several children have habits, which reach great intensity, and then vanish, of touching or tickling the feet, with gales of laughter, and a few are described as showing an almost morbid reluctance to wear anything upon the feet, or even to having them touched by others....  Several almost fall in love with the great toe or the little one, especially admiring some crease or dimple in it, dressing it in some rag of silk or bit of ribbon, or cut-off glove fingers, winding it with string, prolonging it by tying on bits of wood.  Stroking the feet of others, especially if they are shapely, often becomes almost a passion with young children, and several adults confess a survival of the same impulse which it is an exquisite pleasure to gratify.  The interest of some mothers in babies’ toes, the expressions of which are ecstatic and almost incredible, is a factor of great importance.” (G.  Stanley Hall, “Some Aspects of the Early Sense of Self,” American Journal of Psychology, April, 1898.) In childhood, Stanley Hall remarks elsewhere (Adolescence, vol. ii, p. 104), “a form of courtship may consist solely in touching feet under the desk.”  It would seem that