International Education Series

EDITED BY

WILLIAM T. HARRIS, A. M., LL. D.

VOLUME IX.

THE

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INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES

THE MIND OF THE CHILD

PART II

T H E    D E V E L O P M E N T
O F  T H E   I N T E L L E C T

OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING
THE MENTAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN BEING
IN THE FIRST YEARS OF LIFE

BY
W. PREYER
PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY IN JENA

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL GERMAN
By H. W. BROWN
TEACHER IN THE STATE NORMAL SCHOOL AT WORCESTER, MASS.

NEW YORK
D.  A P P L E T O N  A N D  C O M P A N Y

1895

Copyright, 1889,

BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

EDITOR’S PREFACE.

This second volume contains the further investigations of Professor
Preyer on the mind of the child. The former volume contained the first
and second portions, devoted respectively to the development of the
senses and of the will. The present volume contains the third part,
treating of the development of the intellect; and three appendixes are
added containing supplementary matter.

Professor Preyer considers that the development of the power of using
language is the most prominent index to the unfolding of the intellect.
He differs with Professor Max Müller, however, on the question whether
the operation of thinking can be carried on without the use of words
(see the recent elaborate work of the latter on “The Science of
Thought”).

At my suggestion, the painstaking translator of this book has prepared a
full conspectus, showing the results of Professor Preyer’s careful
observations in a chronological order, arranged by months. This
considerable labor will render the book more practical, inasmuch as it
will enable each reader to see at a glance the items of development of
the child in the [Page vi] several departments brought together in epochs. This
makes it possible to institute comparative observations under the
guidance of Professor Preyer’s method. I think that I do not exaggerate
the value of this conspectus when I say that it doubles the value of the
work to the reader.

William T. Harris.

Concord, Mass., November, 1888.

CONTENTS.

THIRD PART.

CONTENTS.

APPENDIXES.

A CONSPECTUS OF

THE OBSERVATIONS OF PROFESSOR PREYER ON

THE MIND OF THE CHILD.

ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY BY MONTHS, FOR THE CONVENIENCE OF

THOSE WHO WISH TO VERIFY THESE OBSERVATIONS, OR TO

USE THEM AS A GUIDE IN THEIR OWN INVESTIGATIONS.

By H. W. BROWN.

FIRST MONTH.

SENSES.[A]

Sight.—Light.—Five minutes after birth, slight sensibility
to light (2). Second day, sensitiveness to light of candle (3). Sixth
and seventh days, pleasure in moderately bright daylight (3, 4). Ninth
and tenth days, sensitiveness greater at waking than soon afterward (3).
Sleeping babes close the eyes more tightly when light falls on the eyes
(4). Eleventh day, pleasure in light of candle and in bright object (3).

Discrimination of Colors.—Twenty-third day, pleasure in sight of
rose-colored curtain (6).

Movements of Eyelids.—First to eleventh day, shutting and opening of
eyes (22). Irregular movements (23). Lid closed at touch of lashes from
sixth day on (26). Twenty-fifth day, eyes opened and shut when child is
spoken to or nodded to (30).

Pleasure shown by opening eyes wide, displeasure by shutting them
tightly; third, sixteenth, and twenty-first days (31).

Movements of Eyes.—First day, to right and left (35). Tenth [Page x] day,
non-coördinated movements (36). Third week, irregularity prevails (37).

Direction of Look.—Eleventh day, to father’s face and to the light
(43). Upward look (43). Twenty-third day, active looking begins (44).
Twenty-third and thirtieth days, a moving light followed (44).

Seeing Near and Distant Objects.—Twelfth day, hypermetropia (60).

Hearing.—First days, all children deaf (72). Fourth day, child
hears noises like clapping of hands (81). Eleventh and twelfth days,
child quieted by father’s voice: hears whistling. Twenty-fifth day,
pulsation of lids at sound of low voice. Twenty-sixth day, starting at
noise of dish. Thirtieth day, fright at loud voice (82).

Feeling.—Sensitiveness to Contact.—At birth (97-105).
Second and third days, starting at gentle touches. Seventh day, waked by
touch on face (105). Eleventh day, lid closed at touch of conjunctiva
more slowly than in adults (103).

Perception of Touch.—First gained in nursing (110).

Sensibility to Temperature.—At birth, cooling unpleasant. Warm bath
agreeable. Seventh day, eyes opened wide with pleasure from bath (112).
First two or three years, cold water disagreeable (114). Mucous membrane
of mouth, tongue, lips, very sensitive to cold and warmth (115).

Taste.—Sensibility.—At birth (116-118). First day, sugar
licked (118). Second day, milk licked (119). Differences among
newly-born (120). Sensation not merely general (122).

Comparison of Impressions.—During nursing period child prefers sweet
taste (123). Second day, child accepts food that on the fourth he
refuses (124).

Smell.—Faculty at Birth.—Strong-smelling substances produce
mimetic movements (130).

Discrimination.—Eighth day, groping about for nipple (134).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Pleasure.—First day, in
nursing; in the bath; in the sight of objects; in the light (141).

Discomfort.—First days, from cold, wet, hunger, tight clothing, etc.
(147).

Hunger.—First days, manifested in sucking movements, crying,
restlessness (152). Cry differs from that of pain or of satisfaction.
Other signs of hunger (153).

Satiety.—Third to fifth week, the nipple pushed away with the [Page xi] lips:
mouth-piece of bottle ditto. Tenth day, smile after eating. Fourth week,
signs of satisfaction; laughing, opening and half shutting eyes;
inarticulate sounds (157).

Fatigue.—From crying and nursing (159). Second and third weeks, from
use of senses (160). First month, sleep lasts two hours; sixteen of the
twenty-four hours spent in sleep (162).

WILL.

Impulsive Movements.—Outstretching and bending of arms and legs just
after birth; contractions, spreading and bending of fingers (205).
Grimaces (207). Wrinkling of forehead (309). First day, arms and legs
take same position as before birth (206). Second week, stretching of
limbs after waking (205).

Reflex Movements.—In case of light-impressions (34-42). First cry
(213). Sneezing of newly-born (214). Coughing, ditto. (216). Seventh
day, yawning (215). First day, spreading of toes when sole of foot is
touched (224). First day, hiccough (219). First five days, choking
(218). Wheezing, yawning (215). Seventh day, respiration irregular
(217). Ninth day, clasping (243). Tenth day, lips protruded (283).
Fourteenth day, movement of left hand toward left temple (220).
Twenty-fourth day, snoring (215).

Instinctive Movements.—First to third day, hands to face. Fifth day,
fingers clasp firmly; toes do not. Sixth day, hands go into eye (244).
Seventh day, pencil held with toes, but no seizing. Ninth day, no
clasping by sleeping child (245). Sucking (257-261). At end of first
week, lateral movements of head (264). Third week, clasping with
fingers, not with thumb (245).

Expressive Movements.—Twenty-sixth day, smile of contentment (296).
Twenty-third day, tears flow (307). Crying, with tears, and whimpering,
become signs of mental states (308).

INTELLECT.[B]

Memory first active in the departments of taste and of smell; then in
touch, sight, hearing (5). Comparison of tastes (I, 123). Vowel-sounds
in first month (67). Sounds in first six months (74). Sounds made in
crying and screaming, u-ä (101). Twenty-second day, association of the
breast with nursing (I, 260).

[Page xii]

SECOND MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Light.—Bright or highly-colored objects give
pleasure (4).

Discrimination of Colors.—Forty-second day, pleasure in sight of
colored tassels (7).

Movements of Eyelids.—Fifth week, irregular movements of lids. Eighth
week, lid covering iris (23). Twenty-fifth day, opening and shutting
eyes in surprise (30). Fifty-seventh and fifty-eighth days, winking.
Sixtieth day, quick opening and shutting in fright (26).

Movements of Eyes.—Thirty-first day, strabismus rare. Forty-sixth to
fiftieth day, very rare. Fifty-fifth day, irregular movements rare, but
appearing in sleep till the sixtieth day (37).

Direction of Look.—Fifth week, toward the Christmas-tree (45).
Thirty-ninth day, toward tassels swinging (46). Seventh week, moving
lamp or bright object followed (45).

Hearing.—Fifth week, child does not sleep if persons walk or
speak. Starting at noises. Sixth week, starting at slight noises even in
sleep; quieted by mother’s singing. Seventh week, fright at noise is
greater (83). Sensibility to musical tones, ditto. Eighth week, tones of
piano give pleasure (84).

Touch.—Thirty-eighth day, movements caused by touch of water
(107). Forty-first day, reflex movement of arms caused by a general
slight agitation (105, 106). Fiftieth and fifty-fifth days, closing of
eyelid at touch of eyelash (103). Seventh week, upper lip sensitive
(100).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Pleasure in musical sounds
(141); in sight of human face (142). Reflexive laughing (145). Sixth
week, fretfulness and hunger (155). Eighth week, fatigue after hearing
piano-playing (160). Sleep of three, sometimes of five or six hours
(162).

WILL.

Impulsive Movements.—Of eyes before waking, also twistings and
raisings of trunk (206). Seventh week, number of respirations
twenty-eight to the minute (217).

Reflex Movements.—Of right arm at touch of left temple (220).
Forty-third day, sneezing caused by witch-meal (215). Fifth week,
vomiting (219). Eighth week, laughing caused by tickling (225).[Page xiii]

Instinctive Movements.—Seventh week, clasping not yet with thumb.
Eighth week, the four fingers of the child embrace the father’s finger
(245).

INTELLECT.

Speech.—Forty-third day, first consonant; child says am-ma; also
vowel-sound ao. Forty-fourth day, syllables ta-hu; forty-sixth day,
gö, örö; fifty-first day, ara; eighth and ninth weeks, örrö,
arra, frequent (102).

THIRD MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Movements of the Eyelids.—Eyelid not completely
raised when child looked up (23). Irregular movements of eyes appear
(though rare) up to tenth week; at three months are no more observed
(37).

Direction of Look.—Sixty-first day, child looked at his mother and
gave a cry of joy; the father’s face made the child gay. Sixty-second
day, look directed at a swinging lamp (46).

Seeing Near and Distant Objects.—Ninth week, accommodation apparent
(54).

Hearing.—Ninth week, sound of watch arouses attention; other
noises (84). Eleventh week, head moved in direction of sound (85).
Eighty-first day ditto. (47). Twelfth week, sudden turning of head
toward sounding body (85).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Pleasure.—Smile at sight
of the mother’s face (145).

Unpleasant Feeling.—From some internal cause (151).

Fatigue.—Sucking tiresome (159). Sleep of four or five hours without
waking (162).

Hunger.—Tenth week, child hungry three times or more in a night
(155).

WILL.

Reflex Movements.—Respirations, thirteenth week, twenty-seven to the
minute (217). Hiccough frequent; stopped by use of sweetened water
(219).

Instinctive Movements.—Eleventh week, pencil held, but mechanically;
thumb not used in clasping (245). Twelfth week, eighty-fourth day,
contra-position of thumb reflexive (245, 246). Thirteenth week, thumb
follows fingers more readily (246). Eleventh week, head balanced
occasionally. Twelfth week, some gain in holding[Page xiv] head. Thirteenth week,
head tolerably well balanced (264). Seizing merely apparent (246). No
voluntary movement (266).

INTELLECT.

Eighty-first day, seeking direction of sound (I, 47).

Speech.—Consonant m frequent (67). Sixty-fourth day, ma (102).
Sixty-fifth day, nei nei nei and once a-omb. Sixty-sixth day, la,
grei, aho, ma. Sixty-ninth day, mömm and ngö. Seventy-first
day, ra-a-ao. Seventy-sixth day, nä and nāi-n. Seventy-eighth
day, habu. Twelfth week, a-i and uāo, ä-o-a, ä-a-a and
o-ä-ö (103).

Feeling of Self.—Eleventh week, child does not see himself in mirror
(197).

FOURTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Movements of Eyelids.—Ninety-eighth day, brow
wrinkled when look is upward (24). Fifty-seventh day, winking (26).
Fifteenth and sixteenth weeks, ditto (27). Seventeenth week, objects
seized are moved toward eyes; grasping at objects too distant (55).

Movements of Eyes.—No more non-coördinated (37).

Direction of Look.—Fourteenth week, following person moving. One
hundred and first day, following pendulum. Sixteenth week, gazing at
sides and ceiling of carriage and at objects (48).

Hearing.—Sixteenth week, head turned toward sound with
certainty of reflex (85).

Feeling.—Seventeenth week, eyes are closed when a drop of
water touches lashes (103). Fourteenth week, sleeping child throws up
arms at sudden touch (106).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Pleasure in grasping at
objects (142). Fifteenth week, intervals between meals three or four
hours (155). Sleep lasts five or six hours (162). Twenty-second week,
astonishment at seeing father after separation (173). Fourteenth week,
smile of satiety. Seventeenth week, joy in seeing image in mirror (297).

WILL.

Reflex Movements.—Fourteenth week, right hand to right eye (220).

Instinctive Movements.—Fourteenth week, hands hold objects longer and
with contra-position of thumb. Fifteenth and sixteenth[Page xv] weeks, no
intentional seizing. One hundred and fourteenth day, ditto (246).
Seventeenth week, efforts to take hold of ball; ball moved to mouth and
eyes. One hundred and eighteenth day, frequent attempts at seizing;
following day, grasping gives pleasure (247). Fourteenth week, head
seldom falls forward. Sixteenth week, head held up permanently (264),
this the first distinct manifestation of will (265). Fourteenth week,
child sits, his back supported (267). Seventeenth week, biting (261).

Imitative Movements.—Fifteenth week, beginnings of imitation; trying
to purse the lips (283). Seventeenth week, protruding tip of tongue
(284).

Expressive Movements.—Sixteenth week, turnings of head and nodding,
not significant; head turned away in refusal (314).

Deliberate Movements.—Fourteenth week, attentive looking at person
moving; one hundred and first day, at pendulum swinging (48). Fifteenth
week, imitation, pursing lips (283). Sixteenth and seventeenth weeks,
voluntary gazing at image in mirror (343).

INTELLECT.

Intellect participates in voluntary movements (I, 338).

Speech.—Fourteenth week, ntö, ha, lö, na. Fifteenth
week, nan-nana, nā-nā, nanna, in refusal (103).
Sixteenth week, in screaming, ä-ŭ ä-ŭ ä, ā–ŭ ā–ŭ,
ŭ-ä ŭ-ä, ū–ū–ā-ö, amme-a; in discomfort,
ūă–ūă–ūă–ūă (104).

Feeling of Self.—Seventeenth week, child gazes at his own hand (193).
One hundred and thirteenth day, for the first time regards his image
with attention (197). One hundred and sixteenth day, laughs at his image
(198).

FIFTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Direction of Look.—Looking inquiringly (48).

Seeing Near and Distant Objects.—Reaching too short (55).

Hearing.—Nineteenth week, pleasure in sound of crumpling of
paper by himself. Twenty-first week, beating of gong enchains attention
(85). Disturbed by noise (86).

Touch.—Auditory canal sensitive (106).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Pleasure in crumpling paper,
tearing newspapers and rolling them into balls, pulling at glove or
hair, ringing of a bell (142, 143). Eighteenth week, dis[Page xvi]comfort shown
by depressing angles of mouth (149). Eighteenth week, nights of ten to
eleven hours without taking food (155). Eighteenth week, desire shown by
stretching out arms (247).

WILL.

Instinctive Movements.—Eighteenth week, objects seized are held
firmly and carried to the mouth (247). Nineteenth week, child takes bit
of meat and carries to mouth. One hundred and twenty-third day, lips
protruded in connection with seizing (248).

INTELLECT.

Speech.—Consonant k, gö, kö, ăggĕggĕkö. First five
months, screaming sounds u, ä, ö, a, with ü and o; m
almost the only consonant (104).

Feeling of Self.—Discovery by child that he can cause sensations of
sound (192). Looking at his own fingers very attentively (194).

SIXTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Movements of Eyelids.—Twenty-fifth-week, winking
caused by puff of wind in face (27).

Interpretation of what is seen.—Child laughs when nodded to by
father; observes father’s image in mirror, etc. (62).

Taste.—Medicine taken if sweetened (124). One hundred and
fifty-sixth day, child refuses breast, having had sweeter milk. End of
twenty-third week, milk of new nurse taken, also cow’s milk, meat-broth
(125).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Pleasure in grasping
increases (142). Arms moved up and down when child is nodded to (144).
Twenty-third week, depression of angles of mouth and cry of distress
caused by harsh address (149). Hunger apparent in persistent gaze at
bottle, crying, and opening of mouth (154). Sleep of six to eight hours
(162). Astonishment at seeing father after separation, and at sight of
stranger (173).

WILL.

Reflex Movements.—Sneezing caused, on one hundred and seventieth day,
by blowing on the child (215).

Instinctive Movements.—Twenty-second week, child raised him[Page xvii]self to
sitting posture (267). Twenty-third week, ditto; pleased at being placed
upright (275).

Expressive Movements.—Laugh accompanied by raisings and droppings of
arms when pleasure is great (299). Arm-movements that seemed like
defensive movements (314). “Crowing” a sign of pleasure (II, 104).

INTELLECT.

Use of means to cause flow of milk (12).

Speech.—Twenty-second week, ögö, ma-ö-ĕ, hă, ā,
ho-ich. “Crowing” and aspirate ha, and brrr-há, signs of pleasure
(104). So aja, örrgö, ā–ā-i-ŏ–ā, eu and oeu
(French) and ä and ö (German), also ijä; i and u rare (105).

Feeling of Self.—Twenty-third week, discrimination between touch of
self and of foreign object (194; I, 109). Twenty-fourth week, child
gazes at glove and at his fingers alternately (194). Twenty fourth week,
sees father’s image in mirror and turns to look at father. Twenty-fifth
week, stretches hand toward his own image. Twenty-sixth week, sees image
of father and compares it with original (198).

SEVENTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Movements of Eyelids.—End of seventh month, opening
and shutting of fan causes opening and shutting of eyes (30).

Direction of Look.—Twenty-ninth week, looking at flying sparrow (48).
Thirtieth week, child does not look after objects let fall (49).

Seeing Near and Distant Objects.—Accommodation is perfect (55).

Interpretation of what is seen.—Staring at strange face (62).

Hearing.—Gaze at person singing; joy in military music (86).

Feeling.—Child became pale in bath (115).

Taste.—New tastes cause play of countenance (124). One hundred
and eighty-fifth day, cow’s milk boiled, with egg, is liked; leguminous
food not (125).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Pleasure in his image in
mirror (142). Child laughs when others laugh to him (145). Twenty-ninth
week, crying with hunger; spreading out tongue (153). Satiety shown by
thrusting mouth-piece out (157).[Page xviii]

WILL.

Impulsive Movements.—Nose becomes mobile. Babes strike about them
vigorously (207).

Reflex Movements.—Sighing appears (216).

Instinctive Movements.—Thirtieth week, seizing more perfect (249).
Child places himself upright on lap, twenty-eighth week (275).

Imitative Movements.—Imitation of movements of head; of pursing lips
(283).

Expressive Movements.—Averting head as sign of refusal; thrusting
nipple out of mouth (313, 314). Astonishment shown by open mouth and
eyes (55).

INTELLECT.

Child did not recognize nurse after absence of four weeks (7); but
children distinguish faces before thirtieth week (6).

Speech.—When hungry, child screams mä, ä, ŭä, ŭäĕ;
when contented, says örrö; lä, ŭ–ā–ŭ-i-i; t seldom, k
only in yawning, p very rarely (106).

EIGHTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Movements of Eyelids.—Brow not wrinkled invariably
in looking upward (24). Play of lid on hearing new noises; no lifting of
eyebrows (30, 31). Thirty-fourth week, eyes opened wide with longing
(31).

Direction of Look.—Thirty-first week, gaze turned in direction of
falling object. Thirty-third week, objects moved slowly downward are
followed with close gaze. Thirty-fourth week, objects let fall by him
are seldom looked after (49).

Interpretation of what is seen.—Interest in bottles (62).

Hearing.—Quick closing of lids at new impressions of sound
(86).

Taste.—Pleasure in the “prepared food” (125).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Discomfort accompanied by
square form of the mouth (149). Craving for food shown by cooing sound
(155). Strongest feeling connected with appeasing of hunger (157).
Restless nights (162). Astonishment at new sounds and sights; with
fright (86). Thirty-first week, at clapping of fan. Thirty-fourth week,
at imitation of voices of animals (173).[Page xix]

WILL.

Impulsive Movements.—Accompanying movement of hand (210).
Thirty-fourth week, stretchings of arms and legs accompanying utterance
(II, 108).

Instinctive Movements.—Thirty-second week, seizing with both hands
more perfect; attention more active (248). In same week, legs stretched
up vertically, feet observed attentively, toes carried to mouth with the
hands (249). Pulling objects to him; grasping at bottle (250).
Thirty-fourth week, carrying things to mouth (251).

Expressive Movements.—Laugh begins to be persistently loud (299).
Thirty-second week, child no longer sucks at lips when he is kissed, but
licks them (305). Eyelid half closed in disinclination (315). Interest
in objects shown by stretching out hands (321).

INTELLECT.

Speech.—Variety of sounds made in the first eight months at random
(76). Concept of bottle before language (79). Sounds in screaming
different (106). Once the sound hā-upp; frequently a-e͡i,
a-a͡u, ă-ha͡u–ă, hörrö. Also ntĕ-ö, mi-ja mija;
once oŭāĕi (107).

Feeling of Self.—Thirty-second week, child looks at his legs
and feet as if they were foreign to him (194).

NINTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Movements of Eyes.—Eyes converged easily (38).

Direction of Look.—Thirty-sixth week, objects that fall are not
regularly looked after, but slowly moving objects, e. g., tobacco-smoke,
are followed (49).

Interpretation of what is seen.—Boxes are gazed at (62). More
interest shown in things in general (63).

Hearing.—Winking and starting at slamming noise (86).

Taste.—Yolk of egg with cane-sugar taken with expression of
surprise. Water and bread liked (126).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Striking hands together and
laughing for joy (145). Eyes shut when something disagreeable is to be
endured; head turned away also (148). Cooing, as in eighth month (155).
Fear of dog (167, 168).[Page xx]

WILL.

Reflex Movements.—Number of respirations (in fever) forty and
forty-two in a minute (217).

Instinctive Movements.—Teeth-grinding (262). Turning over when laid
face downward (266). Thirty-fifth week, child places himself on arm and
hand of nurse, and looks over her shoulder (275). Thirty-ninth week,
likes to sit with support (267). Thirty-ninth week, stands on feet a
moment without support (269).

Expressive Movements.—Loud laughing at new, pleasing objects (299).
Turns head to light when asked where it is (321).

Deliberate Movements.—Things brought to mouth are put quickly on
tongue (329).

INTELLECT.

Question understood before child can speak (I, 321).

Speech.—Voice more modulated: screaming varies with different causes
(107). Delight shown by crowing sounds: mä-mä, ämmä, mä, are
expressions of pleasure; ā-au-ā–ā, ā–ŏ, a-u-au,
na-na; apa, ga-au-ă, acha (108).

Feeling of Self.—Feet are felt of, and toes are carried to
mouth (190). Thirty-fifth week, foot grasped and carried to mouth.
Thirty-sixth week, other objects preferred to hands and feet.
Thirty-ninth week, in the bath his own skin is looked at and felt of,
also his legs (194). Thirty-fifth week, his image in mirror is grasped
at gayly (198).

TENTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Movements of Eyelids.—Brow invariably wrinkled at
looking upward (24).

Movements of Eyes.—Convergence of lines of vision disturbed (38).

Direction of Look.—Forty-third week, objects thrown down are looked
at (49).

Interpretation of what is seen.—Visual impressions connected with
food best interpreted (63).

Hearing.—Head turned at noise (87).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Joy at lighting of lamp
(145).[Page xxi]

WILL.

Reflex Movements.—Inhibition of reflex (229).

Instinctive Movements.—Forty-third week, carrying objects to mouth
(252). Taking a hair from one hand into the other (253). Finger bitten
(261). Bread crunched and swallowed (262). Turning over when laid on
face (266). Fortieth and forty-first weeks, trying to sit without
support (267). Forty-second week, sitting up without support in bath and
carriage (267, 268). Forty-first week, first attempts at walking (275).
Forty-second week, moving feet forward and sidewise; inclination to
walk. Forty-third week, foot lifted high; moving forward (276).

Imitative Movements.—Beckoning imitated (285).

Expressive Movements.—Laughing becomes more conscious and intelligent
(299). Crying in sleep (308). Striking hands together in sleep (319).
Object pointed at is carried to mouth and chewed (322). Body
straightened in anger (324). This not intentional (326).

INTELLECT.

Forty-third week, knowledge of weight of bodies (I, 50). A child missed
his parents when they were absent, also a single nine-pin of a set (7,
8).

Speech.—Child can not repeat a syllable heard (77). In monologue,
syllables are more distinct, loud, and varied when child is left to
himself than when other persons entertain him: ndäĕ
bāë-bāë, ba ell, arrö. Frequent are mä, pappa, tatta,
appapa, babba, tätä, pa, rrrr, rrra. Hints at imitation
(108).

Feeling of Self.—Forty-first week, striking his own body and foreign
objects (191). Forty-first to forty-fourth week, image in mirror laughed
at and grasped at (198).

ELEVENTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Direction of Look.—Forty-seventh week, child throws
down objects and looks after them (49).

Seeing Near and Distant Objects.—Forty-fourth week, new objects no
longer carried to eyes, but gazed at and felt. Forty-seventh week,
accommodation perfect (55).

Interpretation of what is seen.—Trying to fixate objects (63).

Hearing.—Screaming is quieted by a “Sh!” or by singing.[Page xxii] Three
hundred and nineteenth day, difference in sound of spoon on plate when
plate was touched by hand (87).

Taste.—Meat-broth with egg taken; scalded skimmed milk
rejected; dry biscuit liked (126).

Organic Sensations And Emotions.—Forty-fourth week,
astonishment at strange face (173).

WILL.

Instinctive Movements.—Forty-fifth week, grasping at flame of lamp;
forty-seventh, at objects behind a pane of glass; gain in moving muscles
of arm; shreds of paper handled (252). Biting father’s hand (261).
Smacking lips (262). Sitting becomes habit for life (268). Standing
without support; stamping; but standing only for a moment (269). End of
forty-seventh week, feet well placed, but lifted too high and put down
too hard (276).

Expressive Movements.—Grasping at his image with laugh; jubilant
noise at being allowed to walk (299).

Deliberate Movements.—Striking spoon against object and exchanging
objects (326, 327). Child takes biscuit, carries it to mouth, bites off
a bit, chews and swallows it; but can not drink from glass (329).

INTELLECT.

Syllables correctly repeated; intentional sound-imitation on the three
hundred and twenty-ninth day. Forty-fifth week, response made for
diversion: whispering begins (109). Three kinds of r-sounds: new
syllables, ta-he͡e, dann-tee, a͡a-ne͡e, ngä, tai, bä,
dall, at-tall, kamm, akkee, praï-jer, tra, ā-he͡e.
Some earlier sounds frequent; consonants b, p, t, d, m, n,
r; l, g, k: vowel a most used, u and o rare, i very rare
(110). Accentuation not frequent (111). Association of idea with
utterance in one case (111, 122). Forty-fifth week, to word “papa,”
response rrra (113).

Feeling of Self.—Forty-fifth to fifty-fifth week, discovery of his
power to cause changes (192).

TWELFTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Seeing Near and Distant Objects.—Fifty-first week,
pleasure in seeing men sawing wood at distance of more than one hundred
feet (55).

Hearing.—Screaming quieted by “Sh!” (87). Three hundred[Page xxiii] and
sixty-third day, hears noise in next room and looks in direction of
sound (88).

Taste.—Fastidious about food (126).

Organic Sensations And Emotions.—Grunting as indication of
pleasure (144). Fifty-second week, astonishment at new sound (173).

WILL.

Impulsive Movements.—Accompanying movement of hand in drinking (209).

Instinctive Movements.—Child seized father’s hand, carried it to
mouth and bit it (261). Forty-eighth week, standing without support a
moment; stamping; pushing a chair (276). Forty-ninth week, child can not
raise himself without help or stand more than an instant. Fiftieth week,
can not place himself on his feet, or walk without help (277).

Imitative Movements.—Trying to strike with spoon on tumbler; puffing
repeated in sleep (287).

Expressive Movements.—End of year, imitative laughing; crowing (299).
Laughing in sleep (300). Opening of mouth in kissing (305). Arms
stretched out in desire (322).

Deliberate Movements.—Biscuit put into mouth with few failures;
drinking from glass, breathing into the water (329).

INTELLECT.

Ideas gained before language (78). Logical activity applied to
perceptions of sound (I, 88). Abstraction, whiteness of milk (18).

Speech.—Imitation more successful, but seldom correct. Articulate
sounds made spontaneously: haja, jajajajaja, aja, njaja,
naïn-hopp, ha-a, pa-a, dēwär, han-na, mömma, allda,
alldaï, apa-u-a, gägä, ka, ladn; atta is varied, no more
dada; w for the first time. Ability to discriminate between words
(112). Fifty-second week, child of himself obeys command, “Give the
hand!” Quieting effect of sounds “sh, ss, st, pst” (113).

Feeling of Self.—Striking hard substances against teeth; gnashing
teeth (189). Tearing of paper continued (192).

THIRTEENTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Hearing.—Child strikes on keys of piano; pleased with singing
of canary-bird (89).[Page xxiv]

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Laughing almost invariably
follows the laugh of others (145). Sleep, fourteen hours daily (162).

WILL.

Instinctive Movements.—Standing some moments without support (270).
Fifty-third week, creeping. Fifty-fourth week, walking, with support;
movements in creeping asymmetrical (277).

Expressive Movements.—No idea of kissing (305). Shaking head in
denial (315). Begging sound along with extending of hands in desire
(323).

INTELLECT.

Trying door after shutting it (15, 16). Hears the vowel-sounds in word
(68).

Speech.—Desire expressed by ä-na, ä-nananana (112). Awkwardness
continues; attention more lively. Tries to repeat words said for him.
Three hundred and sixty-ninth day, papa repeated correctly (113, 114).
Syllables most frequent, nja, njan, dada, atta, mama, papaï,
attaï, na-na-na, hatta, meenĕ-meenĕ-meenĕ, mömm,
mömma, ao-u: na-na denotes desire, mama, mother. Fifty-fourth
week, joy expressed by crowing, some very high tones; first distinct
s, three hundred and sixty-eighth day (114). Understanding of words
spoken (115). Confusion of associations; first conscious act of
obedience (116).

Feeling of Self.—Rapping head with hand (191). Finding himself a
cause; shaking keys, etc. (192). Fifty-fifth week, strikes himself and
observes his hands; compares fingers of others with his own (195).

FOURTEENTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Seeing Near and Distant Objects.—Fifty-eighth week,
grasping at lamp above him (55).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Fear of falling (169).
Fifty-eighth week, astonishment at lantern (173).

WILL.

Instinctive Movements.—Child could be allowed to bite paper to
pieces; he took the pieces out of his mouth (253). Fifty-seventh week,
he hitches along on hands and knees; can not walk without support.
Sixtieth week, raises himself by chair (277).[Page xxv]

Imitative Movements.—For imitating swinging of arms an interval of
time was required (287). Coughing imitated (288). Nodding not imitated
(315).

Expressive Movements.—Confounding of movements (322). Affection shown
by laying hand on face and shoulders of others (324).

Deliberate Movements.—Child takes off and puts on the cover of a can
seventy-nine times (328).

INTELLECT.

Wrong understanding of what is heard (89).

Speech.—No doubt that atta means “going”; brrr, practiced and
perfected; dakkn, daggn, taggn, attagn, attatn; no special
success in repeating vowels and syllables (117). Child tries and laughs
at his failures, if others laugh; parrot-like repetition of some
syllables (118). Gain in understanding of words heard; association of
definite object with name (119). More movements executed on hearing
words (120). Confounding of movements occurs, but grows rare; begging
attitude seen to be useful (121).

Feeling of Self.—Four hundred and ninth day, child bit himself on the
arm (189). Pulling out and pushing in a drawer, turning leaves of book,
etc. (192). Fifty-seventh week, child looks at his image in hand-mirror,
puts hand behind glass, etc. (198). Fifty-eighth week, his photograph
treated in like manner; he turns away from his image in mirror; sixtieth
week, recognizes his mother’s image in mirror as image (199).

FIFTEENTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Direction of Look.—Sixty-third to sixty-fifth week,
objects thrown down and looked after (50).

Interpretation of what is seen.—Grasps at candle, puts hand into
flame, but once only (63).

Hearing.—Laughing at new noises, as gurgling or thunder (89).

Smell.—Coffee and cologne make no impression till end of month
(134).

WILL.

Instinctive Movements.—Sixty-second week, child stands a few seconds
when support is withdrawn. Sixty-third week, walks, hold[Page xxvi]ing on to a
support (277). Sixty-fourth week, can walk without support, if he thinks
he is supported; sixty-fifth week, walks holding by one finger of
another’s hand; raises himself to knees, stands up if he can hold to
something (278).

Imitative Movements.—Coughing. Learns to blow out candle (288).
Opening and shutting of hand (289).

Expressive Movements.—Laughing at new sounds (299). The words “Give a
kiss” produce a drawing near of head and protruding of lips (306).
Wrinkling of brow in attempts at imitation (310). Deprecating movement
of arm (314). Sixty-fourth week, nodding sometimes accompanies the word
“no”; four hundred and forty-fifth day, an accompanying movement (316).
First shrugging of shoulders (317). Begging gesture made by child when
he wants something (318). Same made in asking for amusement (319). Wish
expressed by handing a ring, looking at glasses to be struck, and saying
hay-ŭh (323).

INTELLECT.

Hunting for scraps of paper, etc. (17). After burning his finger in
flame of candle, the child never put it near the flame again, but would,
in fun, put it in the direction of the candle. He allowed mouth and chin
to be wiped without crying (20).

Speech.—New sound wa; astonishment expressed by
hā–ā–ĕā–ĕ, joy by crowing in high and prolonged tones,
strong desire by häö, hä-ĕ, pain, impatience, by screaming in
vowels passing over into one another (121). The atta still used when a
light is dimmed (122). Advance in repeating syllables. Child is vexed
when he can not repeat a word. One new word, heiss (hot) (123). The
s is distinct; th (Eng.) appears; w; smacking in sixty-fifth week;
tongue the favorite plaything (124). Understands words “moon,” “clock,”
“eye,” “nose,” “cough,” “blow,” “kick,” “light”; affirmative nod at “ja”
in sixty-fourth week; negative shaking at “no”; holding out hand at
words “Give the hand” or “hand”; more time required when child is not
well (125).

Feeling of Self.—Child bit his finger so that he cried out with pain
(191). Sixty-second week, playing with his fingers as foreign objects;
pressing one hand down with the other (195). Sixty-first week, trying to
feel of his own image in the mirror (199).[Page xxvii]

SIXTEENTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Seeing Near and Distant Objects.—Sixty-eighth week,
reaching too short, too far to left or right, too high or too low (56).

Interpretation of what is seen.—Grasping at jets of water (63).

Hearing.—Child holds watch to his ear and listens to the
ticking (89).

Smell.—Smell and taste not separated; a flower is taken into
mouth (135).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Fear of high tones (169).

WILL.

Impulsive Movements.—Sleeping child raised hand to eye (202).
Accompanying movement of fingers in drinking (210).

Reflex Movements.—Respirations, in sleep, twenty-two to twenty-five a
minute (217).

Instinctive Movements.—Sixty-sixth week, four hundred and
fifty-seventh day, child runs alone (278). Next day, stops and stamps.
Four hundred and sixty-first day, can walk backward, if led, and can
turn round alone. At the end of the week can look at objects while
walking. Sixty-seventh week, a fall occurs rarely. Sixty-eighth week,
walking becoming mechanical (279).

Imitative Movements.—A ring put on his head in imitation (289).
Waiting attitude (318).

Expressive Movements.—Lips protruded almost like a snout (302).
Shaking head meant “No” and “I do not know” (316). Child shrugs
shoulders when unable to answer (317). Waiting attitude becomes a sign
(318).

Deliberate Movements.—Opening and shutting cupboards, bringing
objects, etc. Holding ear-ring to ear (327).

INTELLECT.

Child holds an ear-ring to his ear with understanding (I, 327). A
begging movement at seeing box from which cake had come (11). Small
understanding shown in grasping at ring (13).

Speech.—Progress in repeating words spoken for him and in
understanding words heard. Desire expressed by hä! hä-ö! hä-ĕ!
hĕ–ĕ! More seldom hi, gö-gö, gö, f-pa, a͡u; more
frequently, ta, dokkn, tá-ha, a-bwa-bwa, bŭā-bŭā;
once dagon. Child “reads” the newspaper (126). Pain expressed by
screaming; joy by crowing[Page xxviii] with vowel i; a repeated on command; mö
and ma; imitation tried (127). Touches eye, ear, etc., when these are
named—not with certainty (128). Understands “bring,” “give,” etc.
(129).

Feeling of Self.—Putting thumbs against the head and pushing,
experimenting (191). Sixty-sixth week, child strikes at his image in
mirror. Sixty-seventh week, makes grimaces before mirror; turns round to
see his father, whose image appeared in mirror (199). Sixty-ninth week,
signs of vanity (200).

SEVENTEENTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Interpretation of what is seen.—Child grasps at
tobacco-smoke (64).

Hearing.—Holding watch to ear (89).

Taste.—Surprise at new tastes (119).

Smell.—Inability to separate smell and taste (135).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Prolonged sleep; ten hours at
a time (162).

WILL.

Reflex Movements.—Right hand moved when right nostril is touched
(221).

Instinctive Movements.—Clasping of finger in sleep (243). Seventieth
week, child raises himself from floor alone; seventy-first week, steps
over threshold (279).

Expressive Movements.—Shaking head means “I do not wish” (316).
Throwing himself on floor and screaming with rage (323).

INTELLECT.

Child brings traveling-bag to stand upon in order to reach (12). Play of
“hide and seek” (17).

Speech.—Screaming, whimpering, etc. (101). Increase of
discrimination: bibi, nä-nä-nä, t-tó, höt-tó; voluntary
imitation (129). Associations of words heard with objects and movements
(130).

Feeling of Self.—Making grimaces before mirror (200).

EIGHTEENTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Direction of Look.—Seventy-eighth week, throwing
away of playthings is rare (50).[Page xxix]

Interpretation of what is seen.—Anxiety on seeing man dressed in
black (64).

Smell.—Objects no longer carried to mouth (135).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Laughing at thunder (170).

WILL.

Impulsive Movements.—Holding little finger apart from others (209).

Instinctive Movements.—Walks over threshold by holding on (275).
Seventy-seventh week, runs around table; seventy-eighth, walks over
threshold without holding on (280).

Imitative Movements.—Blowing horn (290).

Expressive Movements.—Trying to hit with foot, striking, etc. (315).
Waiting attitude (318).

Deliberate Movements.—Full spoon carried to mouth with skill (329).

INTELLECT.

Memory of towel (8). Watering flowers with empty pot (16). Plays (17).
Giving leaves to stag, etc. (18). Stick of wood put in stove (20).

Speech.—Understanding of words increases (130). Repeating of
syllables is rare; atta becomes tto, t-tu, ftu; feeling
recognized by tone of voice (131).

Feeling of Self.—Recognition of himself as cause of changes (192).

NINETEENTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Hearing.—Hearing watch on his head (89).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Fear of strangers ceases
(150). Laugh at thunder and lightning (170).

WILL.

Imitative Movements.—Combing and brushing hair, washing hands, etc.
(290).

Expressive Movements.—Fastidious about kissing (306). Pride in
baby-carriage (324).

Deliberative Movements.—Spoon taken in left hand (329).[Page xxx]

INTELLECT.

Father recognized after absence (8). Bringing cloth for wrap and begging
for door to be opened (12). Grunting in order to be taken away (13).
Induction, watch and clock (18). Crying seen to be useless (20).

Speech.—Imitation of whistle (91). Spontaneous sound imitations more
frequent (131). Gazing after objects thrown and whispering, reading
newspaper (132). Response to pa correctly given (133). Objects
correctly pointed out; memory of tricks (134).

Feeling of Self.—Attempt to give his foot (190).

TWENTIETH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Discrimination of Colors.—First color-tests.
Eighty-fifth week, no discrimination (7). Eighty-sixth and
eighty-seventh weeks, no results (8).

Movements of the Eyes.—Readiness of convergence, pupils very wide
open (38).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Prolonged sleep habitual,
etc. (163).

WILL.

Reflex Movements.—Respirations twenty-two and more (217).

Instinctive Movements.—Eighty-fifth week, thresholds stepped over
quickly; inclines forward in running (280).

Imitative Movements.—Use of comb and brush, putting on collar (290).
Scraping feet, putting pencil to mouth, marking on paper (291).

Expressive Movements.—Proximity essential in kissing; bends head when
“kiss” is said (306). Antipathy expressed by turning head at approach of
women in black (315).

Deliberate Movements.—Carries spoon with food to mouth cleverly
(329).

INTELLECT.

As in nineteenth month, grunting (12,13).

Speech.—Rodi, otto, rojo (93). Understanding of the word
“other” (128, 129). Five hundred and eighty-fourth day, important
advance in repeating words said (135). Imagination; can not[Page xxxi] repeat
three syllables; laughs when others laugh (136). Single words more
promptly understood (137). One new concept, expressed by dā and
ndā, or tā and ntā. Eighty-seventh week, attah said on
railway-train; papa and bät or bit (for “bitte”) rightly used;
much outcry (138). Crowing tones not so high; loud readings continued
(139).

TWENTY-FIRST MONTH.

SENSES.

Hearing.—Dancing not rhythmical (89, 90).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Fear of the sea (170).

WILL.

Instinctive Movements.—Eighty-ninth week, running is awkward, but
falling rare (280).

Imitative Movements.—Imitation without understanding (290, 291).

Expressive Movements.—Ninetieth week, pointing as expression of wish
(321).

INTELLECT.

Recognition of father (8). Association of biscuit with coat and wardrobe
(11).

Speech.—Imitations more frequent. Eighty-ninth week, babbling
different, more consonants; ptö-ptö, pt-pt, and verlapp, also
dla-dla; willfulness shown in articulate sounds and shaking head
(139). Unlike syllables not repeated, dang-gee and dank-kee;
tendency to doubling syllables, tete, bibi; babbling yields great
pleasure; bibi for “bitte” rightly used. New word mimi, when hungry
or thirsty (140). Understands use and signification of sound, neinein;
and answers of his own accord jaja to question in ninety-first week.
Strength of memory for sounds; points correctly to nose, mouth, etc.
(141). Astonishing progress in understanding what is said. Few
expressions of his own with recognizable meaning, jāĕ excepted.
Att, att, att, unintelligible. Tried to imitate sound of steam of
locomotive (142).

Feeling of Self.—Placing shells and buttons in rows (193). Puts lace
about him; vanity; laughs and points at his own image in mirror (200).
The same on six hundred and twentieth day (201).[Page xxxii]

TWENTY-SECOND MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—New impressions enchain attention; the mysterious more
attractive (64).

INTELLECT.

Speech.—Progress in understanding; orders executed with surprising
accuracy (142). Strength of word-memory; facility of articulation;
spontaneous utterance of pss, ps, ptsch, pth; pa-ptl-dä-pt;
greeting with hāā-ö, ada and ana. Singing, rollo, mama,
mämä, etc. More certainty in reproducing sounds: “pst, anna, otto,
lina,” etc. Three-syllabled words correctly repeated, a-ma-ma,
a-pa-pa (143). Words too hard are given back with tapĕta,
pĕta, pta, ptö-ptö or rateratetat. Ja ja and nein nein,
with da and bibi and mimi, used properly in request. Cry of pain a
strong contrast with the crowing for joy (144).

TWENTY-THIRD MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Seeing Near and Distant Objects.—Ninety-sixth week,
does not appreciate distance (56).

WILL.

Imitative Movements.—Imitative impulse seems like ambition;
ceremonious movements imitated (291).

Expressive Movements.—Kiss given as a mark of favor (306). Striking
hands together in applause and desire for repetition (319). Tears of
sorrow instead of anger; tries to move chair to table, etc. (324).

INTELLECT.

Joy at seeing playthings after absence of eleven and a half weeks (8).
Concept of “cup” not sharply defined (16). Use of adjective for the
first spoken judgment (96).

Speech.—Heiss (hot) means “The drink is too hot,” and “the stove is
hot” (144). Watja and mimi; mimmi, mömö, māmā, mean
food; atta, disappearance; spontaneous articulation, o͡i, e͡u,
ana, ida, didl, dadl, dldo-dlda; in singing-tone, opojö,
apojopojum aui, heissa; calls grandparents e-papa and e-mama;
knows who is meant when these are spoken of. Understands words more
easily, as “drink, eat, shut, open” (145). Word-memory becoming firm;
imagination.[Page xxxiii] Great progress in reproducing syllables and words (146).
Child’s name, “Axel,” is called Aje, Eja. “Bett, Karre, Kuk,”
repeated correctly. Echolalia reappears (147). Words are best pronounced
by child when he is not called upon to do it (148).

Feeling of Self.—Child holds biscuit to his toes (190).

TWENTY-FOURTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Interpretation of what is seen.—Moving animals
closely observed (64).

Hearing.—Trying to sing, and beating time (90).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Astonishment more seldom
apparent (174).

WILL.

Instinctive Movements.—Child turns, of himself, dancing in time to
music; beats time (280).

Imitative Movements.—Ceremonious movements imitated, salutation,
uncovering head (291).

Expressive Movements.—Roguish laughing first observed (299).

INTELLECT.

Understanding of actions and of use of utensils more developed than
ability to interpret representations of them (I, 64, 65).

Speech.—Voluntary sound-imitations gain in frequency and accuracy;
genuine echolalia (148). Imperfect imitations (149). Multiplicity of
meanings in the same utterance (150). Distinguishing men from women.
Combination of two words into a sentence, seven hundred and seventh day;
words confounded; also gestures and movements; but not in the expression
of joy and grief (151, 152).

TWENTY-FIFTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Discrimination of Colors.—Color-tests, red and
green; seven hundred and fifty-eighth day, eleven times right, six
wrong; seven hundred and fifty-ninth, seven right, five wrong; seven
hundred and sixtieth, nine right, five wrong (8). Does not yet know
what blue and green signify. Moves and handles himself well in twilight
(21).[Page xxxiv]

Seeing Near and Distant Objects.—One hundred and eighth week, power
of accommodation good; small photographic likenesses recognized (56).

INTELLECT.

Speech.—Progress is extraordinary. Does not pronounce a perfect “u.”
All sound-imitations more manifold, etc.; begins saying “so” when any
object is brought to appointed place (152). Has become more teachable,
repeats three words imperfectly. Evidence of progress of memory,
understanding and articulation in answers given. No word invented by
himself; calls his nurse wolá, probably from the often-heard “ja
wohl.” Correct use of single words picked up increases surprisingly
(153). Misunderstandings rational; words better understood; reasoning
developed (154). Inductive reasoning. Progress in forming sentences.
Sentence of five words. Pronouns signify objects or qualities (155,
156).

TWENTY-SIXTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Discrimination of Colors.—Seven hundred and
sixty-third day, 15 right, 1 wrong. Three colors pointed out;
disinclination to continue (8). Seven hundred and sixty-fifth day, green
confounded with yellow. One hundred and tenth week, right 73, wrong 22.
Blue added. End of one hundred and tenth week to one hundred and twelfth
week, right 124, wrong 36. Yellow more surely recognized than other
colors. Violet added (9). Colors taken separately. One hundred and
twelfth week, right 44, wrong 11. Tests in both ways; attention not
continuous. Gray is added. One hundred and twelfth and one hundred and
thirteenth weeks, right 90, wrong 27 (10, 11). Child does not know what
“green” means in one hundred and twelfth week (21).

Seeing Near and Distant Objects.—One hundred and thirteenth week,
articles of furniture recognized in pictures at distance of three inches
or three feet (56).

WILL.

Instinctive Movements.—First attempts at climbing (331).

INTELLECT.

Child points out objects in pictures, and repeats names given to them;
list of results (156). Points out of his own accord, with cer[Page xxxv]tainty, in
the picture-book. Appropriates many words not taught him, tola for
“Kohlen,” dals for “Salz.” Others correctly said and used (157). Some
of his mutilated words not recognizable; “sch” sometimes left out,
sometimes given as z or ss. Independent thoughts expressed by words
more frequently; “Good-night” said to the Christmas-tree (158). Verb
used (in the infinitive) showing growth of intellect; learning of tricks
decreases (159). No notion of number; does not understand “Thank you,”
but thanks himself. More names of animals, learned from adults; no
onomatopœia (160).

TWENTY-SEVENTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Discrimination of Colors.—Color-tests, from one
hundred and fourteenth to one hundred and sixteenth week, four trials,
colors mixed; result, 59 right, 22 wrong (11). Blue especially
confounded with violet, also with green. Four trials in one hundred and
fourteenth and one hundred and fifteenth weeks; result, 58 right, 32
wrong (12). Two trials in one hundred and fifteenth week; result, 25
right, 16 wrong (13).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Uncomfortable feeling through
pity; child weeps if human forms cut out of paper are in danger of
mutilation (150, 151).

WILL.

Instinctive Movements.—Pleasure in climbing begins (280).

INTELLECT.

Speech.—Activity of thought. Observation and comparison. Gratitude
does not appear (161). Wishes expressed by verbs in the infinitive or by
substantives. Adverbs; indefinite pronouns. Seven hundred and
ninety-sixth day, makes the word Messen (162). Wolà and atta have
almost disappeared. Independent applications of words (163). Monologues
less frequent. Begs apple to give to a puppet. Echolalia prominent.
Tones and noises imitated (164). Laughing when others laugh; fragments
of a dialogue repeated. Feeble memory for answers and numbers. Eight
hundred and tenth day, gave his own name for first time in answer to a
question (165). No question yet asked by the child. The article is not
used. Pronunciation slowly becoming correct (166).[Page xxxvi]

TWENTY-EIGHTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Discrimination of Colors.—One hundred and
twenty-first week, greater uncertainty (13).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Fear of pigs (168).

WILL.

Instinctive Movements.—Going on all-fours; jumping, climbing gives
pleasure (280).

INTELLECT.

Speech.—Rapid increase of activity in forming ideas, and greater
certainty in use of words. Ambition; observation and combination;
beginning of self-control; use of his own name and of names of parents;
independent thinking (167). Increase in number of words correctly
pronounced; attempt to use prepositions; first intelligent use of the
article (168). Questioning active; first spontaneous question on eight
hundred and forty-fifth day. “Where?” is his only interrogative word.
Reproduction of foreign expressions (169). Imagination lively; paper
cups used like real ones. Articulation better, but still deficient. Many
parts of the body named correctly (170). Child makes remarks for a
quarter of an hour at a time concerning objects about him, sings,
screams in sleep (171).

TWENTY-NINTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Discrimination of Colors.—One hundred and
twenty-fourth week, right, 58; wrong, 49. Eight hundred and sixty-eighth
day, child takes colors of his own accord and names them; confounding
rose, gray, and pale-green, brown and gray, blue and violet. One hundred
and twenty-fourth and one hundred and twenty-fifth weeks, right, 80;
wrong, 34 (14). Red and yellow generally named rightly; blue and green
not. Red and yellow are removed; child is less interested. One hundred
and twenty-fifth and one hundred and twenty-sixth weeks, right, 80;
wrong, 63. Orange confounded with yellow, blue with violet, green with
gray, black with brown. Failure of attempt to induce child to put like
colors together, or to select colors by their names (15).[Page xxxvii]

Direction of Look.—One hundred and twenty-fourth week, gaze follows
ball thrown (50).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Fear of dogs (168).

INTELLECT.

Personal pronoun used in place of his own name. Inflection of verbs
appears, but the infinitive is generally used for imperative; regular
and irregular verbs begin to be distinguished (171). Desire expressed by
infinitive. Numbering active; numerals confounded. Eight hundred and
seventy-eighth day, nine-pins counted “one, one, one,” etc. (172).
Questioning increases; “too much” is confounded with “too little.” Yet
memory gains (173). Sounds of animals well remembered. Slow progress in
articulation (174).

Feeling of Self.—Personal pronoun in place of his own name; “me” but
not yet “I” (202).

THIRTIETH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Discrimination of Colors.—One hundred and
twenty-sixth, one hundred and twenty-seventh, and one hundred and
twenty-eighth weeks, four trials with single color at a time; 75 right,
34 wrong. Eight hundred and ninety-eighth day, every color rightly
named; some guessing on blue and green (16).

Interpretation of what is seen.—Persistent desire daily to “write”
locomotives (66).

Hearing.—While eating, by chance puts hand to ear while kettle
of boiling water stood before him; notices diminution in force of sound
(88).

WILL.

Instinctive Movements.—Mounting a staircase without help; ten days
later with hands free (280, 281).

INTELLECT.

Speech.—Independent activity of thought. When language fails, he
considers well (174). Deliberation without words; concepts formed.
Intellectual advance shown in first intentional use of language (175).
Only interrogative word is still “Where?” “I” does not appear, but “me”
is used. Sentences independently applied[Page xxxviii] (176). More frequent use of
the plural in nouns; of the article; of the strong inflection;
auxiliaries omitted or misemployed. Twofold way of learning correct
pronunciation (177). Memory for words denoting objects good; right and
left confounded (178).

THIRTY-FIRST MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Discrimination of Colors.—Nine hundred and
thirty-fourth day, child says he can not tell green and blue. Green
mostly called gray; blue, violet (17).

Feeling.—Sensibility to Temperature.—Child laughs joyously
in cold bath (115).

WILL.

Weakness of will shown by ceasing to eat when told that he has had
enough (344).

INTELLECT.

Speech.—Onomatopœia: imitation of locomotive-whistle (91). Two new
questions. Indefinite article more frequent. Individual formations of
words, as comparative of “high”; “key-watch.” Confounding of “to-day”
and “yesterday” (178). Forming of sentences imperfect. Reporting of
faults. Calls things “stupid” when he is vexed by them. Changes
occupation frequently. Imitation less frequent. Singing in sleep. “Sch”
not yet pronounced (179).

Feeling of Self.—Causing change in objects, pouring water into and
out of vessels (193). Laughing at image of self in mirror (201).

THIRTY-SECOND MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Discrimination of Colors.—One hundred and
thirty-eighth and a few previous weeks, six trials, child taking colors
and naming them; right 119, wrong, 38 (16, 17). Green and blue called
“nothing at all.” Unknown colors named green; leaves of roses called
“nothing,” as are whitish colors. One hundred and thirty-eighth and one
hundred and thirty-ninth weeks, three trials; right, 93, wrong, 39 (17,
18). Green begins to be rightly named, blue less often (18).[Page xxxix]

INTELLECT.

Speech.—”I” begins to displace the name of child. Sentence correctly
applied. Clauses formed. Particle separated in compound verbs. Longer
names and sentences distinctly spoken, but the influence of dialect
appears (180). Memory improved, but fastidious; good for what is
interesting and intelligible to child (181).

Feeling of Self.—Fourfold designation of self (202).

THIRTY-THIRD MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Discrimination of Colors.—One hundred and
thirty-ninth, one hundred and forty-first, and one hundred and
forty-sixth weeks, took colors of his own accord and named them; result
of three trials, 66 right, 19 wrong (18).

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Fear of even smallest dog
(168).

INTELLECT.

Understanding that violations of well-known precepts have unpleasant
consequences (21).

Speech.—Strength of memory shown in characteristic remarks Narrative
of feeding fowls (181). Interest in animals and other moving objects;
lack of clearness in concepts of animal and machine; meaning of word
“father” includes also “uncle”; selfhood more sharply manifested.
Confounds “too much” with “too little,” etc. (182).

Feeling of Self.—”I” especially used in “I want that,” etc. (202).

THIRTY-FOURTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Discrimination of Colors.—”Green” rightly applied to
leaves and grass (18). Order in which colors are rightly named up to
this time; right, one thousand and forty-four; wrong, four hundred and
forty-two: right, 70.3 per cent; wrong, 29.7. Yellow and red much sooner
named rightly than green and blue (19).

WILL.

Instinctive Movements.—First gymnastic exercises (281).[Page xl]

Expressive Movements.—Kissing an expression of thankfulness (306).

INTELLECT.

Speech.—Repeating, for fun, expressions heard. Calls, without
occasion, the name of the nurse; calls others by her name, sometimes
correcting himself. Seldom speaks of himself in third person; gradually
uses “Du” in address; uses “What?” in a new way. One thousand and
twenty-eighth day, “Why?” first used; instinct of causality expressed in
language (183). Questioning repeated to weariness. Articulation
perfected, with some exceptions (184).

Feeling of Self.—Repeats the “I” heard, meaning by it “you” (202).

THIRTY-FIFTH MONTH.

WILL.

Reflex Movements.—Responsive movement in sleeping child (221).

INTELLECT.

Speech.—Fondness for singing increases; pleasure in compass and power
of his voice (185).

THIRTY-SIXTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Hearing.—Musical notes C, D, E, could not be rightly named by
child, in spite of teaching (90).

INTELLECT.

“When?” not used until close of the third year (184). Great pleasure in
singing, but imitation here not very successful, though surprisingly so
in regard to speech. Grammatical errors more rare. Long sentences
correctly but slowly formed. Ambition manifested in doing things without
help (185).

Invention in language rare. Participles well used (186).

THIRTY-SEVENTH MONTH.

SENSES.

Sight.—Discrimination of Colors.—Colors named correctly
except very dark or pale ones (21).[Page xli]

Organic Sensations and Emotions.—Night’s sleep from eleven to
twelve hours; day-naps no longer required (163). Fear (in sleep) of pigs
(168).

INTELLECT.

Speech.—Child’s manner of speaking approximates more and more rapidly
to that of the family (186).

FORTIETH MONTH.

INTELLECT.

Feeling of Self.—Fortieth month, pleased with his shadow (201).

THE MIND OF THE CHILD.

THIRD PART.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTELLECT.

The development of the intellect depends in so great measure upon the
modification of innate endowments through natural environment and
education, even before systematic instruction begins, and the methods of
education are so manifold, that it is at present impossible to make a
complete exposition of a normal intellectual development. Such an
exposition would necessarily comprise in the main two stages:

1. The combination of sensuous impressions into perceptions
(Wahrnehmungen); which consists essentially in this—that the sensation,
impressing itself directly upon our experience, is by the intellect, now
beginning to act, co-ordinated in space and time.

2. The combination of perceptions into ideas; in particular into
sense-intuitions and concepts. A sense-intuition (Anschauung) is a
perception together with its cause, the object of the sensation; a
concept (Begriff) results from the union of the previously separated
perceptions, which are then called separate marks or qualities.

The investigation of each of these stages in the child[Page 2] is in itself a
great labor, which an individual may indeed begin upon, but can not
easily carry through uniformly in all directions.

I have indeed tried to collect recorded facts, but have found only very
little trustworthy material, and accordingly I confine myself
essentially to my own observations on my child. These are not merely
perfectly trustworthy, even to the minutest details (I have left out
everything of a doubtful character), but they are the most
circumstantial ever published in regard to the intellectual development
of a child. But I have been acquainted with a sufficient number of other
children to be certain that the child observed by me did not
essentially differ from other healthy and intelligent boys in regard
to the principal points, although the time at which development takes
place, and the rapidity of it, differ a good deal in different
individuals. Girls often appear to learn to speak earlier than boys; but
further on they seem to possess a somewhat inferior capacity of
development of the logical functions, or to accomplish with less ease
abstractions of a higher order; whereas in boys the emotional functions,
however lasting their reactions, are not so delicately graduated as in
girls.

Without regard to such differences, of which I am fully aware, the
following chapters treat exclusively of the development of purely
intellectual cerebral activity in both sexes during the first years. I
acknowledge, however, that I have found the investigation of the
influence of the affectional movements, or emotions, upon the
development of the intellect in the child during the first years so
difficult, that I do not for the present enter into details concerning
it.[Page 3]

The observations relate, first, to the non-dependence of the child’s
intellect upon language; next, to the acquirement of speech; lastly, to
the development of the feeling of self, the “I”-feeling.

CHAPTER XVI.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD’S INTELLECT INDEPENDENTLY
OF LANGUAGE.

A wide-spread prejudice declares, “Without language, no understanding”!
Subtile distinctions between understanding and reason have limited the
statement to the latter term. But even in the restricted form, “Without
verbal language, no reason,” it is at least unproved.

Is there any thinking without words? The question takes this shape.

Now, for the thinker, who has long since forgotten the time when he
himself learned to speak, it is difficult, or even impossible, to give a
decided answer. For the thinking person can not admit that he has been
thinking without words; not even when he has caught himself arriving at
a logical result without a continuity in his unexpressed thought. A
break occurred in the train. There was, however, a train of thought.
Breaks alone yield no thought; they arise only after words have been
associated with thoughts, and so they can by no means serve as evidence
of a thinking without words, although the ecstasy of the artist, the
profundity of the meta-physician, may attain the last degree of
unconsciousness, and a dash may interrupt the thought-text.[Page 4]

But the child not yet acquainted with verbal language, who has not been
prematurely artificialized by training and by suppression of his own
attempts to express his states of mind, who learns of himself to
think, just as he learns of himself to see and hear—such a child
shows plainly to the attentive observer that long before knowledge of
the word as a means of understanding among men, and long before the
first successful attempt to express himself in articulate words—nay,
long before learning the pronunciation of even a single word, he
combines ideas in a logical manner—i. e., he thinks. Thinking is, it
is true, “internal speech,” but there is a speech without words.

Facts in proof of this have already been given in connection with other
points (Vol. I, pp. 88, 327, 328); others are given further on.

It will not be superfluous, however, to put together several
observations relating to the development of the childish intellect
without regard to the acquirement of speech; and to present them
separately, as a sort of introduction to the investigation of the
process of learning to speak.

Memory; a causative combination of the earliest recollections, or
memory-images; purposive, deliberate movements for the lessening of
individual strain—all these come to the child in greater or less
measure independently of verbal language. The, as it were, embryonic
logic of the child does not need words. A brief explanation of the
operation of these three factors will show this. Memory takes the first
place in point of time.

Without memory no intellect is possible. The only[Page 5] material at the
disposal of the intellect is received from the senses. It has been
provided solely out of sensations. Now a sensation in itself alone, as a
simple fundamental experience affecting primarily the one who has the
sensation, can not be the object of any intellectual operation whatever.
In order to make such activity possible there must be several
sensations: two of different kinds, of unequal strength; or two of
different kinds, of the same strength; or two of the same kind unequally
strong; in any case, two unlike sensations (cf. my treatise “Elemente
der reinen Empfindungslehre,” Jena, 1876), if the lowest activity of the
intellect, comparison, is to operate. But because the sensations that
are to be compared can not all exist together, recollection of the
earlier ones is necessary (for the comparison); that is, individual or
personal memory.

This name I give to the memory formed by means of individual impressions
(occurrences, experiences) in contrast with the phyletic memory, or
instinct, the memory of the race, which results from the inheritance of
the traces of individual experiences of ancestors; of this I do not here
speak.

All sensations leave traces behind in the brain; weak ones leave such as
are easy to be obliterated by others; strong ones, traces more enduring.

At the beginning of life it seems to be the department of taste (sweet)
and of smell (smell of milk) in which memory is first operative (Vol. I,
p. 124). Then comes the sense of touch (in nursing). Next in order the
sense of sight chiefly asserts itself as an early promoter of memory.
Hearing does not come till later.[Page 6]

If the infant, in the period from three to six months of age, is brought
into a room he has not before seen, his expression changes; he is
astonished. The new sensations of light, the different apportionment of
light and dark, arouse his attention; and when he comes back to his
former surroundings he is not astonished. These have lost the stimulus
of novelty—i. e., a certain reminiscence of them has remained with
the child, they have impressed themselves upon him.

Long before the thirtieth week, healthy children distinguish human faces
definitely from one another; first, the faces of the mother and the
nurse, then the face of the father, seen less often; and all three of
these from every strange face. Probably faces are the first thing
frequently perceived clearly by the eye. It has been found surprising
that infants so much earlier recognize human faces and forms, and follow
them with the gaze, than they do other objects. But human forms and
faces, being large, moving objects, awaken interest more than other
objects do; and on account of the manner of their movements, and because
they are the source from which the voice issues, are essentially
different from other objects in the field of vision. “In these movements
they are also characterized as a coherent whole, and the face, as a
whitish-reddish patch with the two sparkling eyes, is always a part of
this image that will be easy to recognize, even for one who has seen it
but a few times” (Helmholtz).

Hence the memory for faces is established earlier than that for other
visual impressions, and with this the ability to recognize members of
the family. A little girl, who does not speak at all, looks at pictures
with[Page 7] considerable interest in the seventh month, “and points meantime
with her little forefinger to the heads of the human figures” (Frau von
Strümpell).

My child in the second month could already localize the face and voice
of his mother, but the so-called knowing (“Erkennen”) is a recognition
(Wiedererkennen) which presupposes a very firm association of the
memory-images. This fundamental function attached to the memory can
have but a slow development, because it demands an accumulation of
memory-images and precision in them.

In the second three months it is so far developed, at least, that
strange faces are at once known as strange, and are distinguished from
those of parents and nurse; for they excite astonishment or fear
(crying) while the faces of the latter do not. But the latter, if
absent, are not yet, at this period, missed by most children. Hence it
is worthy of note that a girl in her twelfth month recognized her nurse
after six days’ absence, immediately, “with sobs of joy,” as the mother
reports (Frau von Strümpell); another recognized her father, after a
separation of four days, even in the tenth month (Lindner).

In the seventh month my child did not recognize his nurse, to whom he
had for months been accustomed, after an absence of four weeks. Another
child, however, at four months noticed at evening the absence of his
nurse, who had been gone only a day, and cried lustily upon the
discovery, looking all about the room, and crying again every time after
searching in vain (Wyma, 1881). At ten months the same child used to be
troubled by the absence of his parents, though he[Page 8] bore himself with
indifference toward them when he saw them again. At this period a single
nine-pin out of the whole set could not be taken away without his
noticing it, and at the age of a year and a half this child knew at once
whether one of his ten animals was missing or not. In the nineteenth and
twenty-first months my boy recognized his father immediately from a
distance, after a separation of several days, and once after two weeks’
absence; and in his twenty-third month his joy at seeing again his
playthings after an absence of eleven and a half weeks (with his
parents) was very lively, great as was the child’s forgetfulness in
other respects at this period. A favorite toy could often be taken from
him without its being noticed or once asked for. But when the child—in
his eighteenth month—after having been accustomed to bring to his
mother two towels which he would afterward carry back to their place, on
one occasion had only one towel given back to him, he came with
inquiring look and tone to get the second.

This observation, which is confirmed by some similar ones, proves that
at a year and a half the memory for visual and motor ideas that belong
together was already well developed without the knowledge of the
corresponding words. But artificial associations of this sort need
continual renewing, otherwise they are soon forgotten; the remembrance
of them is speedily lost even in the years of childhood.

It is noteworthy, in connection with this, that what has been lately
acquired, e. g., verses learned by heart, can be recited more fluently
during sleep than in the waking condition. At the age of three years and
five months a girl recited a stanza of five lines on the occa[Page 9]sion of a
birthday festival, not without some stumbling, but one night soon after
the birthday she repeated the whole of the rhymes aloud in her sleep
without stumbling at all (Frau von Strümpell).

It is customary, generally, to assume that the memory of adults does not
extend further back than to the fourth year of life. Satisfactory
observations on this point are not known to exist. But it is certainly
of the first consequence, in regard to the development of the faculty of
memory, whether the later experiences of the child have any
characteristic in common with the earlier experiences. For many of these
experiences no such agreement exists; nothing later on reminds us of the
once existing inability to balance the head, or of the former inability
to turn around, to sit, to stand, to walk, of the inborn difficulty of
hearing, inability to accommodate the eye, and to distinguish our own
body from foreign objects; hence, no man, and no child, remembers these
states. But this is not true of what is acquired later. My child when
less than three years old remembered very well—and would almost make
merry over himself at it—the time when he could not yet talk, but
articulated incorrectly and went imperfectly through the first,
often-repeated performances taught by his nurse, “How tall is the
child?” and “Where is the rogue?” If I asked him, after he had said
“Frühstücken” correctly, how he used to say it, he would consider, and
would require merely a suggestion of accessory circumstances, in order
to give the correct answer Fritick and so with many words difficult to
pronounce. The child of three and even of four years can remember
separate experiences of his second year, and a person that will take[Page 10]
the pains to remind him frequently of them will be able easily to carry
the recollections of the second and third years far on into the more
advanced years of childhood. It is merely because no one makes such a
useless experiment that older children lose the memory-images of their
second year. These fade out because they are not combined with new ones.

At what time, however, the first natural association of a particular
idea with a new one that appears weeks or months later, takes place
without being called up by something in the mean time, is very hard to
determine. On this point we must first gather good observations out of
the second and third half-years, like the following:

“In the presence of a boy a year and a half old it was related that
another boy whom he knew, and who was then in the country far away, had
fallen and hurt his knee. No one noticed the child, who was playing as
the story was told. After some weeks the one who had fallen came into
the room, and the little one in a lively manner ran up to the new-comer
and cried, ‘Fall, hurt leg!'” (Stiebel, 1865).

Another example is given by G. Lindner (1882): “The mother of a
two-year-old child had made for it out of a postal-card a sled
(Schlitten), which was destroyed after a few hours, and found its way
into the waste-basket. Just four weeks later another postal-card comes,
and it is taken from the carrier by the child and handed to the mother
with the words,’Mamma, Litten!‘ This was in summer, when there was
nothing to remind the child of the sled. Soon after the same wish was
expressed on the receipt of a letter also.”[Page 11]

I have known like cases of attention, of recollection, and of
intelligence in the third year where they were not suspected. The child,
unnoticed, hears all sorts of things said, seizes on this or that
expression, and weeks after brings into connection, fitly or unfitly,
the memory-images, drawing immediately from an insufficient number of
particular cases a would-be general conclusion.

Equally certain with this fact is the other, less known or less noticed,
that, even before the first attempts at speaking, such a generalizing
and therefore concept-forming combination of memory-images regularly
takes place.

All children in common have inborn in them the ability to combine all
sorts of sense-impressions connected with food, when these appear again
individually, with one another, or with memory-images of such
impressions, so that adaptive movements suited to the obtaining of fresh
food arise as the result of this association. In the earlier months
these are simple and easier to be seen, and I have given several
examples (Vol. I, pp. 250, 260, 329, 333). Later such movements, through
the perfecting of the language of gesture and the growth of this very
power of association, become more and more complicated: e. g., in his
sixteenth month my boy saw a closed box, out of which he had the day
before received a cake; he at once made with his hands a begging
movement, yet he could not speak a word. In the twenty-first month I
took out of the pocket of a coat which was hanging with many others in
the wardrobe a biscuit and gave it to the child. When he had eaten it,
he went directly to the wardrobe and looked in the right coat for a
second biscuit. At this period also the[Page 12] child can not have been
thinking in the unspoken words, “Get biscuit—wardrobe, coat, pocket,
look,” for he did not yet know the words.

Even in the sixth month an act of remarkable adaptiveness was once
observed, which can not be called either accidental or entirely
voluntary, and if it was fully purposed it would indicate a
well-advanced development of understanding in regard to food without
knowledge of words. When the child, viz., after considerable experience
in nursing at the breast, discovered that the flow of milk was less
abundant, he used to place his hand hard on the breast as if he wanted
to force out the milk by pressure. Of course there was here no insight
into the causal connection, but it is a question whether the firm laying
on of the little hand was not repeated for the reason that the
experience had been once made accidentally, that after doing this the
nursing was less difficult.

On the other hand, an unequivocal complicated act of deliberation
occurred in the seventeenth month. The child could not reach his
playthings in the cupboard, because it was too high for him; he ran
about, brought a traveling-bag, got upon it, and took what he wanted. In
this case he could not possibly think in words, since he did not yet
know words.

My child tries further (in the nineteenth and twentieth months) in a
twofold fashion to make known his eager wish to leave the room, not
being as yet able to speak. He takes any cloth he fancies and brings it
to me. I put it about him, he wraps himself in it, and, climbing
beseechingly on my knee, makes longing, pitiful sounds, which do not
cease until after I have opened[Page 13] a door through which he goes into
another room. Then he immediately throws away the cloth and runs about
exulting.

The other performance is this: When the child feels the need of
relieving his bowels, he is accustomed to make peculiar grunting sounds,
by means of a strain of the abdomen, shutting the mouth and breathing
loud, by jerks, through the nose. He is then taken away. Now, if he is
not suited with the place where he happens to be, at any time, he begins
to make just such sounds. If he is taken away, no such need appears at
all, but he is in high glee. Here is the expectation, “I shall be taken
away if I make that sound.”

Whether we are to admit, in addition, an intentional deception in this
case, or whether only a logical process takes place, I can not decide.
In the whole earlier and later behavior of the child there is no ground
for the first assumption, and the fact that he employs this artifice
while in his carriage, immediately after he has been waited on, is
directly against it.

To how small an extent, some time previous to this, perceptions were
made use of to simplify his own exertions, i. e., were combined and
had motor effect, appears from an observation in the sixteenth month.
Earlier than this, when I used to say, “Give the ring,” I always laid an
ivory ring, that was tied to a thread, before the child, on the table. I
now said the same thing—after an interval of a week—while the same
ring was hanging near the chair by a red thread a foot long, so that the
child, as he sat on the chair, could just reach it, but only with much
pains. He made a grasp now, upon getting the sound-impression “ring,”
not at the thread,[Page 14] which would have made the seizure of the ring,
hanging freely, very easy for him, but directly at the ring hanging far
below him, and gave it to me. And when the command was repeated, it did
not occur to him to touch the thread.

It is likewise a sign of small understanding that the mouth is always
opened in smelling of a fragrant flower or perfume (Vol. I, p. 135).
Deficiencies of this kind are, indeed, quite logical from the standpoint
of childish experience. Because, at an earlier period the pleasant smell
(of milk) always came in connection with the pleasant taste, therefore,
thinks the child, in every case where there is a pleasant smell there
will also be something that tastes good. The common or collective
concept taste-smell had not yet (in the seventeenth month) been
differentiated into the concepts taste and smell.

In the department of the sense of hearing the differentiation generally
makes its appearance earlier; memory, as a rule, later. Yet children
whose talent for music is developed early, retain melodies even in
their first year of life. A girl to whom some of the Froebel songs were
sung, and who was taught appropriate movements of the hands and feet,
always performed the proper movement when one of the melodies was merely
hummed, or a verse was said (in the thirteenth month), without
confounding them at all. This early and firm association of sound-images
with motor-images is possible only when interest is attached to it—i.
e., when the attention has been directed often, persistently, and with
concentration, upon the things to be combined. Thus, this very child (in
the nineteenth month), when her favorite song, “Who will go for a
Soldier?” (“Wer will[Page 15] unter die Soldaten?”) was sung to her, could not
only join in the rhyme at the end of the verse, but, no matter where a
stop was made, she would go on, in a manner imperfect, indeed, but
easily intelligible (Frau Dr. Friedemann).

Here, however, in addition to memory and attention, heredity is to be
considered; since such a talent is wholly lacking in certain families,
but in others exists in all the brothers and sisters.

In performances of this kind, a superior understanding is not by any
means exhibited, but a stronger memory and faculty of association. These
associations are not, however, of a logical sort, but are habits
acquired through training, and they may even retard the development of
the intellect if they become numerous. For they may obstruct the
formation, at an early period, of independent ideas, merely on account
of the time they claim. Often, too, these artificial associations are
almost useless for the development of the intellect. They are too
special. On this ground I am compelled to censure the extravagancies,
that are wide-spread especially in Germany, of the Froebel methods of
occupying young children.

The logic of the child naturally operates at the beginning with much
more extensive, and therefore less intensive, notions than those of
adults, with notions which the adult no longer forms. But the child does
not, on that account, proceed illogically, although he does proceed
awkwardly. Some further examples may illustrate.

The adult does not ordinarily try whether a door that he has just bolted
is fast; but the one-year-old[Page 16] child tests carefully the edge of the
door he has shut, to see whether it is really closed, because he does
not understand the effect of lock and bolt. For even in the eighteenth
month he goes back and forth with a key, to the writing-desk, with the
evident purpose of opening it. But at twelve months, when he tries
whether it is fast, he does not think of the key at all, and does not
yet possess a single word.

An adult, before watering flowers with a watering-pot, will look to see
whether there is water in it. The child of a year and a half, who has
seen how watering is done, finds special pleasure in going from flower
to flower, even with an empty watering-pot, and making the motions of
pouring upon each one separately, as if water would really come out. For
him the notion “watering-pot” is identical with the notion “filled
watering-pot,” because at first he was acquainted with the latter only.

Much of what is attributed to imagination in very young children rests
essentially on the formation of such vague concepts, on the inability to
combine constant qualities into sharply defined concepts. When, in the
twenty-third month, the child holds an empty cup to his mouth and sips
and swallows, and does it repeatedly, and with a serene, happy
expression, this “play” is founded chiefly on the imperfect notion
“filled cup.” The child has so often perceived something to drink,
drinking-vessel, and the act of drinking, in combination with one
another, that the one peremptorily demands the other when either appears
singly; hence the pleasure in pouring out from empty pitchers into empty
cups, and in drinking out of empty cups (in second to[Page 17] fifth years).
When adults do the same in the play of the theatre, this action always
has a value as language, it signifies something for other persons; but
with the child, who plays in this fashion entirely alone, the pleasure
consists in the production of familiar ideas together with agreeable
feelings, which are, as it were, crystallized with comparative clearness
out of the dull mass of undefined perceptions. These memory-images
become real existences, like the hallucinations of the insane, because
the sensuous impressions probably impress themselves directly—without
reflection—upon the growing brain, and hence the memory-images of them,
on account of their vividness, can not always be surely distinguished
from the perceptions themselves. Most of the plays that children invent
of themselves may be referred to this fact; on the other hand, the play
of hide-and-seek (especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth months),
and, nearly allied to this, the hunting after scraps of paper, bits of
biscuit, buttons, and other favorite objects (in the fifteenth month),
constitute an intellectual advance.

By practice in this kind of seeking for well-known, purposely concealed
objects, the intelligence of little children can easily be increased to
an astonishing degree, so that toward the end of the second year they
already understand some simple tricks of the juggler; for example,
making a card disappear. But after I had discontinued such exercises for
months, the ordinary capacity for being duped was again present.

This ease with which children can be deceived is to be attributed to
lack of experience far more than to lack of intelligence. When the child
of a year and a[Page 18] half offers leaves to a sheep or a stag, observes the
strange animal with somewhat timid astonishment, and a few days after
holds out some hastily plucked grass-blades to a chaffinch he sees
hopping across the road, supposing that the bird will likewise take them
from his hand and eat them—an observation that I made on my child
exactly as Sigismund did on his—it is not right to call such an act
“stupid”; the act shows ignorance—i. e., inexperience—but it is not
illogical. The child would be properly called stupid only in case he did
not learn the difference between the animals fed. When, on the other
hand, the child of two and a half years, entirely of his own accord,
holds a watch first to his left ear, then to his right, listens both
times, and then says, “The watch goes, goes too!” then, pointing with
his finger to a clock, cries with delight, “The clock goes too,” we
rightly find in such independent induction a proof of intellect. For the
swinging of the pendulum and the ticking had indeed often been
perceived, but to connect the notion of a “going clock” with the visible
but noiseless swinging, just as with the audible but invisible ticking
of the watch, requires a pretty well advanced power of abstraction.

That the ability to abstract may show itself, though imperfectly, even
in the first year, is, according to my observations, certain. Infants
are struck by a quality of an object—e. g., the white appearance of
milk. The “taking away” or “abstracting” then consists in the isolating
of this quality out of innumerable other sight-impressions and the
blending of the impressions into a concept. The naming of this, which
begins months later, by a rudimental word, like mum, is an outward[Page 19]
sign of this abstraction, which did not at all lead to the formation of
the concept, but followed it, as will be shown in detail further on (in
the two following chapters).

It would be interesting to collect observations concerning this
reasoning power in the very earliest period, because at that time
language does not interfere to help or to hinder. But it is just such
observations that we especially lack. When a child in the twelfth month,
on hearing a watch for the first time, cries out, “Tick-tick,” looking
meantime at the clock on the wall, he has not, in doing this, “formed,”
as G. Lindner supposes, “his first concept, although a vague and empty
one as yet,” but he had the concept before, and has now merely given a
name to it for the first time.

The first observation made in regard to his child by Darwin, which
seemed to him to prove “a sort of practical reflection,” occurred on the
one hundred and forty-fourth day. The child grasped his father’s finger
and drew it to his mouth, but his own hand prevented him from sucking
the finger. The child then, strangely enough, instead of entirely
withdrawing his hand, slipped it along the finger so that he could get
the end of the finger into his mouth. This proceeding was several times
repeated, and was evidently not accidental but intentional. At the age
of five months, associations of ideas arose independently of all
instruction. Thus, e. g., the child, being dressed in hat and cloak, was
very angry if he was not at once taken out of doors.

How strong the reasoning power without words may be at a later period,
the following additional observations show:[Page 20]

From the time when my child, like Sigismund’s (both in the fifteenth
month), had burned his finger in the flame of the candle, he could not
be induced to put his finger near the flame again, but he would
sometimes put it in fun toward the flame without touching it, and he
even (eighteen months old) carried a stick of wood of his own accord to
the stove-door and pushed it in through the open slide, with a proud
look at his parents. There is surely something more than an imitation
here.

Further, my child at first never used to let his mouth and chin be wiped
without crying; from the fifteenth month on he kept perfectly quiet
during the disagreeable operation. He must have noticed that this was
finished sooner when he was quiet.

The same thing can be observed in every little child, provided he is not
too much talked to, punished, yielded to, or spoiled. In the nineteenth
month it happened with my child that he resisted the command to lie down
in the evening. I let him cry, and raise himself on his bed, but did not
take him up, did not speak to him, did not use any force, but remained
motionless and watchful near by. At last he became tired, lay down, and
fell asleep directly. Here he acquired an understanding of the
uselessness of crying in order to avoid obedience to commands.

The knowledge of right (what is allowed and commanded) and of wrong
(what is forbidden) had been long since acquired. In the seventeenth
month, e. g., a sense of cleanliness was strongly developed, and later
(in the thirty-third month) the child could not, without lively protest,
behold his nurse acting contrary to the[Page 21] directions that had been given
to himself—e. g., putting the knife into her mouth or dipping bread
into the milk. Emotions of this kind are less a proof of the existence
of a sense of duty than of the understanding that violations of
well-known precepts have unpleasant consequences—i. e., that certain
actions bring in their train pleasant feelings, while other acts bring
unpleasant feelings. How long before the knowledge of words these
emotions began to exist I have, unfortunately, not succeeded in
determining.

But in many of the above cases—and they might without difficulty be
multiplied by diligent observation—there is not the least indication of
any influence of spoken words. Whether no attempt at speaking has
preceded, or whether a small collection of words may have been made, the
cases of child-intelligence adduced in this chapter, observed by myself,
prove that without knowledge of verbal language, and independently of
it, the logical activity of the child attains a high degree of
development, and no reason exists for explaining the intelligent actions
of children who do not yet speak at all—i. e., do not yet clothe their
ideas in words, but do already combine them with one another—as being
different specifically from the intelligent (not instinctive) actions of
sagacious orangs and chimpanzees. The difference consists far more in
this, that the latter can not form so many, so clear, and so abstract
conceptions, or so many and complicated combinations of ideas, as can
the gifted human child in the society of human beings—even before he
has learned to speak. When he has learned to speak, then the gap widens
to such an extent that what before was in some[Page 22] respects almost the
equal of humanity seems now a repulsive caricature of it.

In order, then, to understand the real difference between brute and man,
it is necessary to ascertain how a child and a brute animal may have
ideas without words, and may combine them for an end: whether it is
done, e. g., with memory-images, as in dreaming. And it is necessary
also to investigate the essential character of the process of learning
to speak.

Concerning the first problem, which is of uncommon psychogenetic
interest and practical importance, a solution seems to be promised in
the investigation of the formation of concepts in the case of those born
deaf, the so-called deaf and dumb children. On this point I offer first
the words of a man of practical experience.

The excellent superintendent of the Educational Institute for the Deaf
and Dumb in Weimar, C. Oehlwein (1867), well says:

“The deaf-mute in his first years of life looks at, turns over, feels of
objects that attract him, on all sides, and approaches those that are at
a distance. By this he receives, like the young child who has all his
senses, sensations and sensuous ideas;[C] and from the objects
themselves he apprehends a number of qualities, which he compares with
one another or with the qualities of other objects, but always refers to
the object which at the time attracts him. Herein he has a more correct
or less correct sense-intuition of this object, according as he has
observed, compared, and comprehended more or less attentively. As this
object has affected him through[Page 23]sight and feeling, so he represents it to other persons also by
characteristic signs for sight and indirectly for feeling also. He
shapes or draws a copy of the object seen and felt with life and
movement. For this he avails himself of the means that Nature has placed
directly within human power—the control over the movement of the facial
muscles, over the use of the hands, and, if necessary, of the feet also.
These signs, not obtained from any one’s suggestion, self-formed,
which the deaf-mute employs directly in his representation, are, as it
were, the given outline of the image which he has found, and they stand
therefore in the closest relation to the inner constitution of the
individual that makes the representation.

“But we find not only that the individual senses of the deaf-mute, his
own observation and apprehension, are formative factors in the
occurrences of sensation and perception, as is of course the case, but
that the qualities of the objects observed by him, and associated,
according to his individual tendencies, are also raised by him, through
comparison, separation, grouping—through his own act, therefore—to
general ideas, concepts, although as yet imperfect ones, and they are
named and recognized again by peculiar signs intelligible to himself.

“But in this very raising of an idea to a general idea, to a concept—a
process connected with the forming of a sign—is manifested the
influence of the lack of hearing and of speech upon the psychical
development of the deaf-mute. It appears at first to be an advantage
that the sign by which the deaf-mute represents an idea is derived from
the impression, the image, the idea, which the user of the sign himself
has or has had; he[Page 24] expresses by the sign nothing foreign to him, but
only what has become his own. But this advantage disappears when
compared with the hindrance caused by this very circumstance in the
raising of the individual idea to a general idea, for the fact that the
latter is designated by the image, or the elements of the image in which
the former consists, is no small obstacle to it in attaining complete
generality. The same bond that unites the concept with the conceiver
binds it likewise to one of the individual ideas conceived—e. g., when,
by pointing to his own flesh, his own skin, he designates the concept
flesh, skin (in general also the flesh or the skin of animals); whereas,
by means of the word, which the child who has all his senses is obliged
to learn, a constraint is indeed exercised as something foreign, but a
constraint that simply enforces upon his idea the claim of generality.

“One example more. The deaf-mute designates the concept, or general
idea, ‘red’ by lightly touching his lips. With this sign he indicates
the red of the sky, of paintings, of dress-stuffs, of flowers, etc.
Thus, in however manifold connection with other concepts his concept
‘red’ may be repeated, it is to him as a concept always one and the
same only. It is common to all the connections in which it
repeatedly occurs.”

But before the thinking deaf-mute arrived at the concept “red,” he
formed for himself the ideas “lip, dress, sky, flower,” etc.

For a knowledge of intellectual development in the child possessed of
all the senses, and of the great extent to which he is independent of
verbal language in the formation of concepts, it is indispensable to
make a col[Page 25]lection of such concepts as uneducated deaf-mutes not
acquainted either with the finger-alphabet or with articulation express
by means of their own gestures in a manner intelligible to others. Their
language, however, comprises “not only the various expressive changes of
countenance (play of feature), but also the varied movements of the
hands (gesticulations), the positions, attitudes, bearing, and movements
of the other parts of the entire body, through which the deaf-mute
naturally, i. e., untouched by educational influences, expresses his
ideas and conceptions.” But I refrain from making such a catalogue here,
as we are concerned with the fact that many concepts are, without any
learning of words whatever, plainly expressed and logically combined
with one another, and their correctness is proved by the conduct of any
and every untaught child born deaf. Besides, such a catalogue, in order
to possess the psychogenetic value desired by me, needs a critical
examination extremely difficult to carry through as to whether the
“educational influences” supposed to be excluded are actually wholly
excluded in all cases as they really are in some cases, e. g., in regard
to food.

Degerando (1827) has enumerated a long list of concepts, which
deaf-mutes before they are instructed represent by pantomimic gesture.
Many of these forms of expression in French deaf-mutes are identical
with those of German. It is most earnestly to be wished that this
international language of feature and gesture used by children entirely
uninstructed, born deaf, may be made accessible to psycho-physiological
and linguistic study by means of pictorial representations—photographic
best of all. This should be founded on the ex[Page 26]periences of German,
French, English, Russian, Italian, and other teachers of deaf-mutes.

For there is hardly a better proof that thinking is not dependent on the
language of words than the conduct of deaf-mutes, who express, indeed,
many more concepts of unlike content in the same manner than any verbal
language does—just as children with all their senses do before they
possess a satisfactory stock of words—but who, by gesticulation and
pantomime before receiving any instruction, demonstrate that concepts
are formed without words.

With reference to the manner in which uneducated deaf-mutes speak, the
following examples are characteristic performances in gesture-language:

One deaf-mute asks another, “Stay, go you?” (look of inquiry). Answer:
“Go, I” (i. e., “Do you stay or go?” “I go”). “Hunter hare shoots.”

“Arm, man, be strong,” means, “The man’s arm is strong.”

“N., spectacles, see,” means, “N. sees with the spectacles.”

“Run I finished, go to sleep,” means, “When I had finished running, I
went to sleep.” “Money, you?” means, “Have you money?”

One of the most interesting sights I know of, in a psychological and
physiological point of view, is a conversation in gesture and pantomime
between two or three children born totally deaf, who do not know that
they are observed. I am indebted to Director Oehlwein, of Weimar, for
the opportunity of such observations, as also for the above questions
and answers. Especially those children (of about seven years) not yet
instructed[Page 27] in articulation employ an astonishing number of looks and
gestures, following one upon another with great rapidity, in order to
effect an understanding with one another. They understand one another
very easily, but, because their gestures, and particularly their
excessively subtilized play of feature, do not appear in ordinary life,
these children are just as hard to understand for the uninitiated as are
men who speak a wholly foreign language without any gestures. Even the
eye of the deaf-mute has a different expression from that of the person
who talks. The look seems more “interested,” and manifestly far fewer
unnecessary movements of the eyes and contractions of the facial muscles
are made by the deaf-mute than by the child of the same age who has his
hearing.

Further, deaf-mutes, even those of small ability, imitate all sorts of
movements that are plainly visible much better, in general, than do
persons with all their senses. I made, in presence of the children,
several not very easy crossings of the fingers, put my hands in
different positions, and the like—movements that they could not ever
have seen—and I was surprised that some of the children at once made
them deftly, whereas ordinary children, first consider a long time, and
then imitate clumsily. It is doubtless this exaltation of the imitative
functions in deaf-mute children which makes it appear as if they
themselves invented their gestures (see above, p. 23). Certainly they do
not get their first signs through “any one’s suggestion,” they form them
for themselves, but, so far as I see, only through imitation and the
hereditary expressive movements. The signs are in great part themselves
unabridged imitations. The agreement,[Page 28] or “convention,” which many
teachers of deaf-mutes assume, and which would introduce an entirely
causeless, not to say mysterious, principle, consists in this, that all
deaf-mutes in the beginning imitate the same thing in the same way.
Thus, through this perfectly natural accord of all, it comes to pass
that they understand one another. When they have gained ideas, then they
combine the separate signs in manifold ways, as one who speaks combines
words, in order to express new ideas; they become thereby more and more
difficult to be understood, and often are only with difficulty
understood even among themselves; and they are able only in very limited
degree to form concepts of a higher order. “Nothing, being dead,
space”—these are concepts of a very high order for them.

For this reason it is easy to comprehend that a deaf-mute child,
although he has learned but few words through instruction in
articulation, weaves these continually into his pantomimic conversation
in place of his former elaborate gestures. I observed that individual
children, born totally deaf, preferred, even in conversation with one
another, and when ignorant of the fact that I was observing them, the
articulate words just learned, although these were scarcely
intelligible, to their own signs.

Thus mighty is the charm of the spoken word, even when the child does
not himself hear it, but merely feels it with his tongue.

But the schooling the deaf-mute must go through in order to become
acquainted with the sensations of sight, touch, and movement that go
with the sound, is unspeakably toilsome.[Page 29]

W. Gude says in his treatise, remarkable alike for acuteness and
clearness, “Principles and Outlines of the Exposition of a Scheme of
Instruction for an Institution for Deaf-Mutes” (“Grundsätze und
Grundzüge zur Aufstellung eines Lehrplans für eine Taubstummen-Anstalt,”
1881): “The utterances of tones and of articulate sounds called forth by
involuntary stimulus during the first years, in deaf-mutes, are such
unimportant motor phenomena that they are not immediately followed by a
motor sensation. But when the deaf-mute child is more awake mentally, he
perceives that his relatives make movements of the mouth in their
intercourse, and repeated attempts of those about him to make themselves
intelligible by pronouncing certain words to him are not entirely
without effect upon the deaf-mute that is intellectually active. When
such deaf-mutes now direct their attention to the matter, they succeed
in regard to only a part of the sounds—those that are conspicuous to
the eye in their utterance—in getting a tolerable imitation. Individual
deaf-mutes go so far, in fact, as to understand various words correctly
without repeating them; others succeed gradually in repeating such words
as ‘papa, mamma,’ so that one can understand what is meant. Those who
are deaf-mutes from birth do not, however, of themselves, succeed in
imitating accurately other vocal sounds in general.”

A deaf-mute, who had not been instructed, explained to Romanes, at a
later period when he had learned the sign-language, that he had before
thought in “images,” which means nothing else than that he, in place of
the words heard (in our case) and the digital signs seen (in his case),
had made use of memory-images gained from[Page 30] visual impressions, for
distinguishing his concepts. Laura Bridgman, too, a person in general
the subject of very incorrect inferences, who was not blind and deaf
from birth, could form a small number of concepts that were above the
lowest grade. These originated from the materials furnished by the sense
of touch, the muscular sense and general sensibility, before she had
learned a sort of finger-language. But she had learned to speak somewhat
before she became dumb and blind. Children with sight, born deaf, seem
not to be able to perform the simplest arithmetical operations, e. g.,
214-96 and 908 X 70 (according to Asch, 1865), until after several years
of continuous instruction in articulate speaking. They do succeed,
however, and that without sound-images of words, and perhaps, too,
without sight-images of words; in mental arithmetic without knowledge of
written figures, by help of the touch-images of words which the tongue
furnishes.

In any case uneducated persons born deaf can count by means of the
fingers without the knowledge of figures; and, when they go beyond 10,
the notched stick comes to their aid (Sicard and Degerando).

The language of gesture and feature in very young children, born dumb
and not treated differently from other children, shows also, in most
abundant measure, that concepts are formed without words. The child born
deaf uses the primitive language of gesture to the same extent as does
the child that has his hearing; the former makes himself intelligible by
actions and sounds as the latter does, so that his deficiency is not
suspected. This natural language is also understood by the child born
deaf, so far as it is recognizable by his eye. In[Page 31] the look and the
features of his mother he reads her mood. But he very early becomes
quiet and develops for himself, “out of unconscious gesticulation, the
gesture language, which at first is not conventional, nay, is not in the
strict sense quite a sign-language, but a mimetic-plastic representation
of the influences experienced from the external world,” since the
deaf-mute imitates movements perceived, and the attitude of persons and
the position of objects. Upon this pantomime alone rests the possibility
of coming to an understanding, within a certain range, with deaf-mutes
that have had no instruction at all. It can not, therefore, in its
elementary form be conventional, as Hill, to whom I owe these data,
rightly maintains. He writes concerning the child born deaf: “His voice
seems just like that of other children. He screams, weeps, according as
he feels uncomfortable; he starts when frightened by any noise. Even
friendly address, toying, fun, serious threats, are understood by him as
early as by any child.” But he does not hear his own voice; it is not
sound that frightens him, but the concussion; it is not the pleasant
word that delights him, but the pleasant countenance of his mother. “It
even happens, not seldom, that through encouragement to use the voice,
these children acquire a series of articulate sounds, and a number of
combinations of sounds, which they employ as the expression of their
wishes.” They not only point out the object desired, not only
imitate movements that are to procure what they want, but they also
outline the forms of objects wished for. They are able to conduct
themselves so intelligently in this, that the deaf-mute condition is not
discovered till the second year, or even later, and[Page 32] then chiefly by
their use of the eye, because in case of distant objects only those seen
excite their attention.

From this behavior of infants born deaf it manifestly follows that even
without the possibility of natural imitation of sounds, and without the
knowledge of a single word, qualities may be blended with qualities into
concepts. Thus, primitive thinking is not bound up with verbal
language. It demands, however, a certain development of the cerebrum,
probably a certain very considerable number of ganglionic cells in the
cerebral cortex, that stand in firm organic connection with one another.
The difference between an uninstructed young deaf-mute and a cretin is
immense. The former can learn a great deal through instruction in
speaking, the latter can not. This very ability to learn, in the child
born deaf, is greater than in the normal child, in respect to pantomime
and gesture. If a child with his hearing had to grow up among
deaf-mutes, he would undoubtedly learn their language, and would in
addition enjoy his own voice without being able to make use of it; but
he would probably be discovered, further on, without testing his
hearing, by the fact that he was not quite so complete a master of this
gesture-language as the deaf-mutes, on account of the diversion of his
attention by sound.

The total result of the foregoing observations concerning the capacity
of accomplishment on the part of uneducated deaf-mutes in regard to the
natural language of gesture and feature, demonstrates more plainly than
any other fact whatever that, without words and without signs for words,
thought-activity exists—that thinking takes place when both words and
signs for words[Page 33] are wanting. Wherefore, then, should the logical
combination of ideas in the human being born perfect begin only with the
speaking of words or the learning to speak? Because the adult supposes
that he no longer thinks without words, he easily draws the erroneous
conclusion that no one, that not even he himself, could think before the
knowledge of verbal language. In truth, however, it was not language
that generated the intellect; it is the intellect that formerly invented
language: and even now the new-born human being brings with him into the
world far more intellect than talent for language.

CHAPTER XVII.

LEARNING TO SPEAK.

No human being remembers how he learned his mother-tongue in early
youth, and the whole human race has forgotten the origin of its
articulate speech as well as of its gestures; but every individual
passes perceptibly through the stage of learning to speak, so that a
patient observer recognizes much as conformable to law.

The acquisition of speech belongs to those physiological problems which
can not be solved by the most important means possessed by physiology,
vivisection. And the speechless condition in which every human being is
born can not be regarded as a disease that may be healed by instruction,
as is the case with certain forms of acquired aphasia. A set of other
accomplishments, such as swimming, riding, fencing, piano-play[Page 34]ing, the
acquirement of which is physiological, are learned like articulate
speech, and nobody calls the person that can not swim an anomaly on that
account. The inability to appropriate to one’s self these and other
co-ordinated muscular movements, this alone is abnormal. But we can not
tell in advance in the case of any new-born child whether he will learn
to speak or not, just as in the case of one who has suffered an
obstruction of speech or has entirely lost speech, it is not certain
whether he will ever recover it.

In this the normal child that does not yet speak perfectly, resembles
the diseased adult who, for any cause, no longer has command of
language. And to compare these two with each other is the more
important, as at present no other empirical way is open to us for
investigating the nature of the process of learning to speak; but this
way conducts us, fortunately, through pathology, to solid, important
physiological conclusions.

1. Disturbances of Speech in Adults.

The command of language comprises, on the one hand, the understanding of
what is spoken; on the other hand, the utterance of what is thought. It
is at the height of its performance in free, intelligible, connected
speech. Everything that disturbs the understanding of words heard must
be designated disturbance of speech equally with everything that
disturbs the production of words and sentences.

By means of excellent investigations made by many persons, especially by
Broca, Wernicke, Kussmaul, it has become possible to make a topical
division of most of the observed disturbances of speech of both kinds.[Page 35]
In the first class, which comprises the impressive processes, we have
to consider every functional disturbance of the peripheral ear, of the
auditory nerve and of the central ends of the auditory nerve; in the
second class, viz., the expressive processes, we consider every
functional disturbance of the apparatus required for articulation,
including the nerves belonging to this in their whole extent, in
particular the hypoglossus, as motor nerve of the tongue, and certain
parts of the cerebral hemispheres from which the nerves of speech are
excited and to which the sense-impressions from without are so conducted
by connecting fibers that they themselves or their memory-images can
call forth expressive, i. e., motor processes. The diagram, Fig. 1,
illustrates the matter.

Fig. 1.

The peripheral ear o, with the terminations of the auditory nerve, is
by means of sensory fibers a, that are connected with the auditory
nerve, in connection with the storehouse of sound-impressions, K. This
is connected by means of the intercentral paths v with the motor
speech-center M. From it go out special fibers of communication, h, to
the motor nerves of speech which terminate in the external instruments
of articulation, z.

The impressive nerve-path, o a K, is centripetal; the expressive, M
h z, centrifugal; v, intercentral.

When the normal child learns to speak, o receives the
sound-impressions; by a the acoustic-nerve excitations are passed
along to K, and are here stored up, every distinctly heard sound (a
tone, a syllable, a word) leav[Page 36]ing an impression behind in K. It is very
remarkable here that, among the many sounds and noises that impress
themselves upon the portions of the brain directly connected with the
auditory nerve, a selection is made in the sound-field of speech, K,
since all those impressions that can be reproduced, among them all the
acoustic images necessary for speech, are preserved, but many others are
not, e. g., thunder, crackling. Memory is indistinct with regard to
these. From K, when the sound-images or sound-impressions have become
sufficiently strong and numerous, the nerve-excitement goes farther
through the connecting paths v to M, where it liberates motor
impulses, and through h sets in activity the peripheral apparatus of
speech, z.

Now, speech is disturbed when at any point the path o z is
interrupted, or the excitation conducted along the nerve-fibers and
ganglionic cells upon the hearing of something spoken or upon the
speaking of something represented in idea (heard inwardly) is arrested,
a thing which may be effected without a total interruption of the
conduction, e. g., by means of poison and through anatomical lesions.

On the basis of these physiological relations, about which there is no
doubt, I divide, then, all pure disturbances of speech, or
lalopathies, into three classes:

(1) Periphero-Impressive or Perceptive Disturbances.

The organ of hearing is injured at its peripheral extremity, or else
the acusticus in its course; then occurs difficulty of hearing or
deafness. What is spoken is not correctly heard or not heard at all:
the utterance is correct only in case the lesion happened late. If it
is[Page 37] inborn, then this lack of speech, alalia, is called deaf-mutism,
although the so-called deaf and dumb are not in reality dumb, but only
deaf. If words spoken are incorrectly heard on account of acquired
defects of the peripheral ear, the patient mis-hears, and the abnormal
condition is called paracusis.

(2) Central Disturbances.

a. The higher impressive central paths are disturbed: centro-sensory
dysphasia and aphasia, or word-deafness. Words are heard but not
understood. The hearing is acute. “Patients may have perfectly correct
ideas, but they lack the correct expression for them; not the thoughts
but the words are confused. They would understand the ideas of others
also if they only understood the words. They are in the position of
persons suddenly transported into the midst of a people using the same
sounds but different words, which strike upon their ear like an
unintelligible noise.” (Kussmaul.) Their articulation is without defect,
but what they say is unintelligible because the words are mutilated and
used wrongly. C. Wernicke discovered this form, and has separated it
sharply from other disturbances of speech. He designated it sensory
aphasia. Kussmaul later named this abnormal condition word-deafness
(surditas verbalis).

b. The connections between the impressive sound-centers and the motor
speech-center are injured. Then we have intercentral conductive
dysphasia and aphasia. What is spoken is heard and understood correctly
even when v is completely interrupted. The articulation is not
disturbed, and yet the patient utters no word of[Page 38] himself. He can,
however, read aloud what is written. (Kussmaul.) The word that has just
been read aloud by the patient can not be repeated by him, neither can
the word that has been pronounced to him; and, notwithstanding this, he
reads aloud with perfect correctness. In this case, then, it is
impossible for the patient of his own motion, even if the memory of the
words heard were not lost, to set in activity the expressive mechanism
of speech, although it might remain uninjured.

c. The motor speech-center is injured. Then we have centro-motor
dysphasia and aphasia. If the center is completely and exclusively
disturbed, then it is a case of pure ataxic aphasia. Spontaneous
speaking, saying over of words said by another, and reading aloud of
writing, are impossible. (Kussmaul.) On the other hand, words heard are
understood, although the concepts belonging with them can not be
expressed aloud. The verbal memory remains; and the patient can still
express his thoughts in writing and can copy in writing what he reads or
what is dictated to him.

(3) Periphero-Expressive or Articulatory Disturbances.

The centrifugal paths from the motor speech-center to the motor nerves
of speech and to their extremities, or else these nerves themselves, are
injured. Then occurs dysarthria, and, if the path is totally
impassable at any place, anarthria. The hearing and understanding of
words are not hindered, but speaking, repeating the words of others, and
reading aloud are, as in the last case (2, c), impossible. In general
this form can not be distinguished from the foregoing when both are
devel[Page 39]oped in an extreme degree, except in cases of peripheral
dysarthria, i. e., dyslalia, since, as may be easily understood, it
makes no difference in the resulting phenomena whether the motor center
itself is extirpated or its connections with the motor outlet are
absolutely cut off just where the latter begins; but if this latter is
injured nearer to the periphery, e. g., if the hypoglossus is paralyzed,
then the phenomena are different (paralalia, mogilalia). Here belongs
all so-called mechanical dyslalia, caused by defects of the peripheral
speech-apparatus.

Of these five forms each occurs generally only in connection with
another; for this reason the topical diagnosis also is often
extraordinarily difficult. But enough cases have been accurately
observed and collected to put it almost beyond a doubt that each form
may also appear for a short time purely by itself. To be sure, the
anatomical localization of the impressive and expressive paths is not
yet ascertained, so that for the present the centripetal roads from the
acusticus to the motor speech-center, and the intercentral fibers that
run to the higher centers, are as much unknown as the centrifugal paths
leading from them to the nuclei of the hypoglossus; but that the
speech-center discovered by Broca is situated in the posterior portion
of the third frontal convolution (in right-handed men on the left, in
left-handed on the right) is universally acknowledged.

Further, it results from the abundance of clinical material, that the
acoustic-center K must be divided into a sound-center L, a
syllable-center S, a word-center W, each of which may be in itself
defective, for cases have been observed in which sounds were still
recog[Page 40]nized and reproduced, but not syllables and words, also cases in
which sounds and syllables could be dealt with but no words; and,
finally, cases in which all these were wanting. The original diagram is
thereby considerably complicated, as the simple path of connection
between K and M has added to it the arcs L S M and L S W M (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.

The surest test of the perfect condition of all the segments is afforded
by the repetition of sounds, syllables, and words pronounced by others.

Syllables and sounds, but no words, can be pronounced if W is missing or
the path S W or W M is interrupted; no syllables if S is missing or L S
or S M is interrupted. If L is missing, then nothing can be repeated
from hearing. If L M is interrupted, then syllables and words are more
easily repeated than simple sounds, so far as the latter are not
syllables. If L S is[Page 41] interrupted, then simple sounds only can be
repeated. All these abnormal states have been actually observed. The
proofs are to be found in Kussmaul’s classic work on the disturbances of
speech (1877). Even the strange case appears in which, L M being
impracticable, syllables are more easily repeated than simple sounds.

If a is interrupted before the acquirement of speech, and thus chronic
deafness is present in very early childhood, articulation may still be
learned through visual and tactile impressions; but in this case the
sound-center L is not developed. Another, a sound-touch-center, comes in
its place in deaf-mutes when they are instructed, chiefly through the
tactile sensations of the tongue; and, when they are instructed in
reading (and writing), a sound-sight-(or letter) center. This last is,
on the contrary, wanting to those born blind; and both are wanting to
those born blind and deaf. Instead is formed in them through careful
instruction, by means of the tactile sensations of the finger-tips, a
center for signs of sound that are known by touch (as with the printed
text for the blind).

Accordingly, the eye and ear are not absolutely indispensable to the
acquirement of a verbal language; but for the thorough learning of the
verbal language in its entire significance both are by all means
indispensable. For, the person born blind does not get the significance
of words pertaining to light and color. For him, therefore, a large
class of conceptions, an extensive portion of the vocabulary of his
language, remains empty sound. To the one born deaf there is likewise an
extensive district of conceptions closed, inasmuch as[Page 42] all words
pertaining to tone and noise remain unintelligible to him.

Moreover, those born blind and deaf, or those born blind and becoming
deaf very early, or those born deaf and becoming blind very early,
though they may possess ever so good intelligence, and perhaps even
learn to write letters, as did the famous Laura Bridgman, will
invariably understand only a small part of the vocabulary of their
language, and will not articulate correctly.

Those born deaf are precisely the ones that show plainly how necessary
hearing is for the acquirement of perfectly articulate speech. One who
is deaf from birth does not even learn to speak half a dozen sounds
correctly without assistance, and the loss of speech that regularly
follows deafness coming on in children who have already learned to
speak, shows how inseparably the learning and the development of perfect
articulation are bound up with the hearing. Even the deafness that comes
on in maturer years injures essentially the agreeable tone, often also
the intelligibility, of the utterance.

2. The Organic Conditions of Learning to Speak.

How is it, now, with the normal child, who is learning to speak? How is
it as to the existence and practicability of the nervous conduction, and
the genesis of the centers?

In order to decide these questions, a further extension of the diagram
is necessary (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3.

For the last diagram deals only with the hearing and pronouncing of
sounds, syllables, and single words,[Page 43] not with the grammatical formation
and syntactical grouping of these; there must further be a center of
higher rank, the dictorium, or center of diction (Kussmaul), brought
into connection with the centers L S and W. And, on the one hand, the
word-image acquired (by hearing) must be at the disposition of the
diction-center, an excitation, therefore, passing from W to D (through
m); on the other hand, an impulse must go out from the diction-center
to pronounce the word that is formed and placed so as to correspond to
the sense (through n). The same is true for syllables and sounds,
whose paths to and from are indicated by k and l, as well as by g
and i. These paths of connection must be of twofold sort. The
excitement can not pass off to the[Page 44] diction-center D on the same
anatomical path as the return impulse from D, because not a single case
is known of a nerve-fiber that in natural relations conducts both
centrifugally and centripetally, although this possibility of double
conduction does occur under artificial circumstances. Apart, then, from
pathological experience, which seems to be in favor of it, the
separation of the two directions of the excitement seems to be justified
anatomically also. On the contrary, it is questionable whether the
impulse proceeding from D does not arrive directly at the motor
speech-center, instead of passing through W, S, or L. The diagram then
represents it as follows (Fig. 4). Here the paths of direct connection
i, l, and n from D to M represent that which was just[Page 45] now
represented by i L d and l S e and n W f, respectively; in
Fig. 4, i conducts only sound-excitations coming from L, l only
excitations coming from S, and n only those coming from W, as impulses
for M. For the present, I see no way of deciding between the two
possibilities. They may even exist both together. All the following
statements concerning the localization of the disturbances of speech and
the parallel imperfections of child-speech apply indifferently to either
figure; it should be borne in mind that the nerve-excitement always goes
only in the direction of the arrows, never in the opposite direction,
through the nervous path corresponding to them. Such a parallel is not
only presented, as I have found, and as I will show in what follows, by
the most superficial exhibition of the manifold deviations of
child-speech from the later perfect speech, but is, above all, necessary
for the answering of the question: what is the condition of things in
learning to speak?

Fig. 4.

3. Parallel between the Disturbances of Speech in Adults and the
Imperfections of Speech in the Child.

In undertaking to draw such a parallel, I must first of all state that
in regard to the pathology of the subject, I have not much experience of
my own, and therefore I rely here upon Kussmaul’s comprehensive work on
speech-disturbances, from which are taken most of the data that serve to
characterize the individual deviations from the rule. In that work also
may be found the explanations, or precise definitions, of almost all the
names—with the exception of the following, added here for the sake of
brevity—skoliophasia, skoliophrasia, and pa[Page 46]limphrasia. On the other
hand, the statements concerning the speech of the child rest on my own
observations of children—especially of my own son—and readers who give
their attention to little children may verify them all; most of them,
indeed, with ease. Only the examples added for explaining mogilalia and
paralalia are taken in part from Sigismund, a few others from Vierordt.
They show more plainly (at least concerning rhotacism) than my own
notes, some imperfections of articulation of the child in the second
year, which occur, however, only in single individuals. In general the
defects of child-speech are found to be very unequally distributed among
different ages and individuals, so that we can hardly expect to find all
the speech-disturbances of adults manifested in typical fashion in one
and the same child. But with very careful observation it may be done,
notwithstanding; and when several children are compared with one another
in this respect, the analogies fairly force themselves upon the
observer, and there is no break anywhere.

The whole group into which I have tried to bring in organic connection
all the kinds of disturbances and defects of speech in systematic form
falls into three divisions:

1. Imperfections not occasioned by disturbance of the intelligence—pure
speech-disturbances or lalopathies.

2. Imperfections occasioned solely by disturbances of the
intelligence—disturbances of continuous speech or discourse
(Rede)—dysphrasies.

3. Imperfections of the language of gesture and feature— dysmimies.[Page 47]

I. LALOPATHY.

A. The Impressive Peripheral Processes Disturbed.

Deafness.—Persons able to speak but who have become deaf do not
understand what is spoken simply because they can no longer hear. The
newly born do not understand what is spoken because they can not yet
hear. The paths o and a are not yet practicable. All those just born
are deaf and dumb.

Difficulty of Hearing.—Persons who have become hard of hearing do not
understand what is spoken, or they misunderstand, because they no
longer hear distinctly. Such individuals easily hear wrong (paracusis).

Very young infants do not understand what is spoken, for the reason that
they do not yet hear distinctly; o and a are still difficult for
the acoustic nerve-excitement to traverse. Little children very easily
hear wrong on this account.

B. The Central Processes Disturbed.

Dysphasia.—In the child that can use only a small number of words,
the cerebral and psychical act through which he connects these with his
ideas and gives them grammatical form and syntactical construction in
order to express the movement of his thought is not yet complete.

(1) The Sensory Processes centrally disturbed.

Sensory Aphasia (Wernicke), Word-Deafness (Kussmaul).—The child, in
spite of good hearing and sufficiently developed intelligence, can not
yet understand spoken words because the path m is not yet[Page 48] formed and
the storehouse of word images W is still empty or is just in the stage
of origination.

Amnesia, Amnesic Dysphasia and Aphasia, Partial and Total Word-Amnesia,
Memory-Aphasia.—The child has as yet no word-memory, or only a weak
one, utters meaningless sounds and sound-combinations. He can not yet
use words because he does not yet have them at his disposal as acoustic
sound-combinations. In this stage, however, much that is said to him can
be repeated correctly in case W is passable, though empty or imperfectly
developed.

(2) The Sensori-motor Processes of Diction disturbed.

Acataphasia (Steinthal).—The child that has already a considerable
number of words at his disposal is not yet in condition to arrange
them in a sentence syntactically. He can not yet frame correct
sentences to express the movement of his thought, because his
diction-center D is still imperfectly developed. He expresses a whole
sentence by a word; e. g., hot! means as much as “The milk is too hot
for me to drink,” and then again it may mean “The stove is too hot!”
Man! means “A strange man has come!”

Dysgrammatism (Kussmaul) and Agrammatism (Steinthal).—Children can
not yet put words into correct grammatical form, decline, or
conjugate. They like to use the indefinite noun-substantive and the
infinitive, likewise to some extent the past participle. They prefer the
weak inflection, ignore and confound the articles, conjunctions,
auxiliaries, prepositions, and pronouns. In place of “I” they say their
own names, also tint (for “Kind”—child or “baby”). Instead of “Du,
er, Sie” (thou,[Page 49] he, you), they use proper names, or man, papa, mamma.
Sometimes, too, the adjectives are placed after the nouns, and the
meaning of words is indicated by their position with reference to
others, by the intonation, by looks and gestures. Agrammatism in
child-language always appears in company with acataphasia, often also in
insane persons. When the imbecile Tony says, “Tony flowers taken,
attendant come, Tony whipped” (Tony Blumen genommen, Wärterin gekommen,
Tony gehaut), she speaks exactly like a child (Kussmaul), without
articles, pronouns, or auxiliary verbs, and, like the child, uses the
weak inflection. The connection m of the word-image-center W with the
diction-center D, i. e., of the word-memory with grammar, and the
centers themselves, are as yet very imperfectly developed, unused.

Bradyphasia.—Children that can already frame sentences take a
surprising amount of time in speaking on account of the slowness of
their diction. In D and W m in the cerebral cortex the hindrances are
still great because of too slight practice.

(3) The Motor Processes centrally disturbed.

a. Centro-motor Dysphasia and Aphasia, Aphemia, Asymbolia,
Asemia.—Children have not yet learned, or have hardly learned, the use
of language, although their intelligence is already sufficient. There is
no longer any deficiency in the development of the external organs of
speech, no muscular weakness, no imperfection of the nervous structures
that effect the articulation of the separate sounds, for intelligence
shows itself in the child’s actions; he forms the separate[Page 50] sounds
correctly, unintentionally; his hearing is good and the sensory
word-memory is present, since the child already obeys. His not yet
speaking at this period (commonly as late as the second year) must
accordingly be essentially of centro-motor character.

In the various forms of this condition there is injury or lack of
sufficient relative development either in the centro-motorium M or in
the paths that lead into it, d, e, f as well as i, l, n.

α. Central Dysarthria and Anarthria.—In the child at the stage
of development just indicated articulation is not yet perfect,
inasmuch as while he often unintentionally pronounces correctly sounds,
syllables, and single words, yet he can not form these intentionally,
although he hears and understands them aright. He makes use of gestures.

Ataxic Aphasia (Verbal Anarthria).—The child that already understands
several words as sound-combinations and retains them (since he obeys),
can not yet use these in speech because he has not yet the requisite
centro-motor impulses. He forms correctly the few syllables he has
already learned of his future language, i. e., those he has at the time
in memory as sound-combinations (sensory), but can not yet group them
into new words; e. g., he says bi and te correctly, learns also to
say “bitte,” but not yet at this period “tibe,” “tebi.” He lacks still
the motor co-ordination of words.

At this period the gesture-language and modulation of voice of the child
are generally easy to understand, as in case of pure ataxic aphasia (the
verbal asemia or asymbolia of Finkelnburg) are the looks and gestures[Page 51]
of aphasic adults. Chiefly n, f, and M are as yet imperfectly
developed.

Central Stammering and Lisping (Literal Dysarthria).—Children just
beginning to form sentences stammer, not uttering the sounds correctly.
They also, as a rule, lisp for a considerable time, so that the words
spoken by them are still indistinct and are intelligible only to the
persons most intimately associated with them.

The paths d and i, and consequently the centro-motorium M, come
chiefly into consideration here; but L also is concerned, so far as from
it comes the motor impulse to make a sound audible through M.

The babbling of the infant is not to be confounded with this. That
imports merely the unintentional production of single disconnected
articulate sounds with non-coördinated movements of the tongue on
account of uncontrolled excitement of the nerves of the tongue.

Stuttering (Syllabic Dysarthria).—Stutterers articulate each separate
sound correctly, but connect the consonants, especially the explosive
sounds, with the succeeding vowels badly, with effort as if an obstacle
were to be overcome. The paths i and l are affected, and hence M is
not properly excited. S, too, comes under consideration in the case of
stuttering, so far as impulses go out from it for the pronunciation of
the syllables.

Children who can not yet speak of themselves but can repeat what is said
for them, exert themselves unnecessarily, making a strong expiratory
effort (with the help of abdominal pressure) to repeat a syllable still
unfamiliar, and they pause between the doubled or tripled consonant and
vowel. This peculiarity, which soon[Page 52] passes away and is to be traced
often to the lack of practice and to embarrassment (in case of threats),
and which may be observed occasionally in every child, is stuttering
proper, although it appears more seldom than in stutterers. Example: The
child of two years is to say “Tischdecke,” and he begins with an
unnecessary expiratory effort, T-t-itt-t, and does not finish.

Stuttering is by no means a physiological transition-stage through which
every child learning to speak must necessarily pass. But it is easily
acquired, in learning to speak, by imitation of stutterers, in frequent
intercourse with them. Hence, stutterers have sometimes stuttering
children.

β. Stumbling at Syllables.—Children that already articulate
correctly separate sounds, and do so intentionally, very often put
together syllables out of the sounds incorrectly, and frame words
incorrectly from the syllables, where we can not assume deficient
development of the external organs of speech; this is solely because the
co-ordination is still imperfect. The child accordingly says beti
before he can say bitte; so too grefessen instead of gefressen.

The tracts l and n are still incompletely developed; also S and W,
so far as impulses come thence to utter syllables by means of M.

b. Paraphasia.—Children have learned some expressions in their future
language, and use them independently but wrongly; they put in the place
of the appropriate word an incorrect one, confounding words because they
can not yet correctly combine their ideas with the word-images. They
say, e. g., Kind instead of “Kinn,” and Sand instead of “Salz”; also
Netz for[Page 53] “Nest” and Billard for “Billet,” Matrone for “Patrone.”

The connection of D with M through n is still imperfect, and perhaps
also M is not sufficiently developed.

Making Mistakes in Speaking (Skoliophasia).—In this kind of
paraphasia in adults the cause is a lack of attention; therefore purely
central concentration is wanting, or one fails to “collect himself”;
there is distraction, hence the unintentional, frequently unconscious,
confounding of words similar in sound or connected merely by remote,
often dim, reminiscences. This kind of mis-speaking through carelessness
is distinguished from skoliophrasia (see below) by the fact that there
is no disturbance of the intelligence, and the correction easily
follows.

Skoliophasia occurs regularly with children in the second and third
years (and later). The child in general has not yet the ability to
concentrate his attention upon that which is to be spoken. He wills to
do it but can not yet. Hence, even in spite of the greatest effort,
occur often erroneous repetitions of words pronounced for him (aside
from difficulties of articulation, and also when these are wanting);
hence confounding (of words), wrong forms of address, e. g., Mama or
Helene instead of “Papa,” and Papa instead of “Marie.”

c. Taciturnity (Dumbness).—Individual human beings of sound physical
condition who can speak very well are dumb, or speak only two or three
words in all for several years, because they no longer will to speak
(e. g., in the belief that silence prevents them from doing wrong).

This taciturnity is not to be confounded with the[Page 54] paranoic aphrasia in
certain insane persons—e. g., in catatonia, where the will is
paralyzed.

It also occurs—seldom, however—that children who have already learned
to speak pretty well are dumb, or speak only a few words—among these
the word no—during several months, or speak only with certain
persons, because they will not speak (out of obstinacy, or
embarrassment). Here an organic obstacle in the motor speech-center is
probable. For voluntary dumbness requires great strength of will, which
is hardly to be attributed to the child. The unwillingness to speak that
is prompted by fun never lasts long.

C. The Expressive Peripheral Processes
Disturbed.

(1) Dyslalia and Alalia (Peripheral Dysarthria and Anarthria).

The infant can not yet articulate correctly, or at all, on account of
the still deficient development, and afterward the lack of control, of
the nerves of speech and the external organs of speech. The complete
inability to articulate is called alalia. The newly born is alalic.
Dyslalia continues with many children a long time even after the
learning of the mother-tongue. This is always a case simply of
imperfections in h and z.

a. Bulbo-nuclear Stammering (Literal Bulbo-nuclear Dysarthria and
Anarthria).—Patients who have lost control over the muscles of speech
through bulbo-nuclear paralysis, stammer before they become speechless,
and along with paralysis and atrophy of the tongue occur regularly
fibrillar contractions of the muscles of the tongue. The tongue is no
longer regulated by the will.[Page 55]

The child that has not yet gained control over his vocal muscles
stammers before he can speak correctly, and, according to my
observations, regularly shows fibrillar contractions of the muscles of
the tongue along with an extraordinary mobility of the tongue. The
tongue is not yet regulated by the will. Its movements are aimless.

b. Mogilalia.—Children, on account of the as yet deficient control of
the external organs of speech, especially of the tongue, can not yet
form some sounds, and therefore omit them. They say, e. g., in for
“hin,” ätz for “Herz,” eitun for “Zeitung,” ere for “Schere.”

Gammacism.—Children find difficulties in the voluntary utterance of K
and Ks (x), and indeed of G, and therefore often omit these sounds
without substituting others; they say, e. g., atsen for “Klatschen,”
atten for “Garten,” asse for “Gasse,” all for “Karl,” ete for
“Grete” (in the second year), wesen for “gewesen,” opf for “Kopf.”

Sigmatism.—All children are late in learning to pronounce correctly
S, and generally still later with Sch, and therefore omit both, or in a
lisping fashion put S in place of Sch; more rarely Sch in place of S.
They say, e. g., saf. in place of “Schaf,” int for “singt,” anz
for “Salz,” lafen and slafen for “schlafen,” iss for “Hirsch,”
pitte for “Splitter,” tul for “Stuhl,” wein for “Schwein,”
Tuttav for “Gustav,” torch for “Storch” (second year), emele for
“Schemel,” webenau for “Fledermaus,” but also Kusch for “Kuss.” But
in no case have I myself heard a child regularly put “sch” in place of
s, as Joschef for “Josef.” This form, perhaps,[Page 56] occurs in Jewish
families; but I have no further observations concerning it as yet.

Rhotacism.—Many children do not form R at all for a long time and put
nothing in place of it. They say duch for “durch,” bot for “Brot,”
unte for “herunter,” tautech for “traurig,” ule for “Ruhe,”
tänen for “Thränen,” ukka for “Zucker.” On the contrary, some form
early the R lingual, guttural, and labial, but all confound now and then
the first two with each other.

Lambdacism.—Many children are late in learning to utter L, and often
omit it. They say, e. g., icht for “Licht,” voge for “Vogel,”
atenne for “Laterne,” batn for “Blatt,” mante for “Mantel.”

(2) Literal Pararthria or Paralalia.

Children who are beginning to repeat intentionally what is said, often
put another sound in place of the well-known correct (no doubt intended)
one; this on account of deficient control of the tongue or other
peripheral organs of speech. e. g., they say t in place of p, or b
for w (basse for “Wasser” and for “Flasche”), e for i and o
for u, as in bete for “bitte,” and Ohr for “Uhr.”

Paragammacism.—Children supply the place of the insuperably difficult
sounds G, K, X by others, especially D and T, also N, saying, e. g.,
itte for “Rike,” finne for “Finger,” tein for “Klein,” toss for
“gross,” atitte for “Karnickel,” otute for “Kuk,” attall for
“Axel,” wodal for “Vogel,” tut for “gut,” tatze for “Katze.”

Parasigmatism.—Children are late in learning to[Page 57] utter S and Sch
correctly. They often supply the place of them, before acquiring them,
by other sounds, saying, e. g., tule for “Schule,” ade for “Hase,”
webbe for “Wasser,” beb for “bös,” bebe for “Besen,” gigod for
“Schildkröte,” baubee for “Schwalbe.”

Pararhotacism.—Most children, if not all, even when they have very
early formed R correctly (involuntarily), introduce other sounds in
place of it in speaking—e. g., they say moigjen for “morgen,” matta
for “Martha,” annold for “Arnold,” jeiben for “reiben,” amum for
“warum,” welfen for “werfen.”

Paralambdacism.—Many children who do not learn until late to utter L
put in its place other sounds; saying, e. g., bind for “Bild,” bampe
for “Lampe,” tinne for “stille,” degen for “legen,” wewe for
“Löwe,” ewebau for “Elephant.”

(3) Bradylalia or Bradyarthria.

Children reciting for the first time something learned by heart speak
not always indistinctly, but, on account of the incomplete
practicability of the motor-paths, slowly, monotonously, without
modulation. Sounds and syllables do not yet follow one another
quickly, although they are already formed correctly. The syllables
belonging to a word are often separated by pauses like the words
themselves—a sort of dysphasia-of-conduction on account of the more
difficult and prolonged conduction of the motor-impulse. I knew a boy
(feeble-minded, to be sure) who took from three to eight seconds for
answering even the simplest question; then came a regular explosion of
utterance. Yet he did not stutter or stammer. When he had only yes[Page 58] or
no to answer, the interval between question and answer was shorter.

Here belong in part also the imperfections of speech that are occasioned
by too large a tongue (macroglossia). When a child is born with too
large a tongue, he may remain long alalic, without the loss of
intellectual development, as was observed to be the case by Paster and
O. von Heusinger (1882).

II. DYSPHRASIA (DYSLOGICAL DISTURBANCES OF
SPEECH).

The child that can already speak pretty correctly deforms his speech
after the manner of insane persons, being moved by strange caprices,
because his understanding is not yet sufficiently developed.

Logorrhœa (Loquaciousness).—It is a regular occurrence with
children that their pleasure in articulation and in vocal sound often
induces them to hold long monologues, sometimes in articulate sounds and
syllables, sometimes not. This chattering is kept up till the grown
people present are weary, and that by children who can not yet talk; and
their screaming is often interrupted only by hoarseness, just as in the
case of the polyphrasia of the insane.

Dysphrasia of the Melancholy.—Children exert themselves perceptibly
in their first attempts to speak, answer indolently or not at all, or
frequently with embarrassment, always slowly, often with drawl and
monotone, very frequently coming to a stop. They also sometimes begin to
speak, and then lose at once the inclination to go on.

Dysphrasia of the Delirious (Wahnsinnigen).[Page 59]—Children that have begun
to speak often make new words for themselves. They have already invented
signs before this; they are also unintelligible often-times because they
use the words they have learned in a different sense.

Dysphrasia of the Insane (Verrückten).—The child is not yet
prepared to speak. He possesses only non-co-ordinated sounds and
isolated rudiments of words, primitive syllables, roots, as the
primitive raw material of the future speech.

In many insane persons only the disconnected remains or ruins of their
stock of words are left, so that their speech resembles that of the
child at a certain stage.

Dysphrasia of the Feeble-minded.—The child at first reacts only upon
strong impressions, and that often indolently and clumsily and with
outcry; later, upon impressions of ordinary strength, without
understanding—laughing, crowing, uttering disconnected syllables.

So the patient reacts either upon strong impressions only, and that
indolently, bluntly, with gestures that express little and with rude
words, or he still reacts upon impressions of ordinary strength, but in
flat, silly, disconnected utterances.

Dysphrasia of Idiots.—Children have command at the beginning of no
articulate sounds; then they learn these and syllables; after this also
words of one syllable; then they speak short words of more than one
syllable and sentences, but frequently babble forth words they have
heard without understanding their meaning, like parrots.

Imbeciles also frequently command only short words and sentences or
monosyllabic words and sounds, or, final[Page 60]ly, they lack all articulate
sound. Many microcephalous idiots babble words without understanding
their meaning, like little children.

Echo-speech or Echolalia (Imitative Reflex Speech).—Children not
yet able to frame a sentence correctly like to repeat the last word of a
sentence they have heard; and this, according to my observations and
researches, is so general that I am forced to call this echolalia a
physiological transition stage. Of long words said to them, the children
usually repeat only the last two syllables or the last syllable only.
The feeble-minded also repeat monotonously the words and sentences said
by a person in their neighborhood without showing an awakened attention,
and in general without connecting any idea with what they say.
(Romberg.)

Interjectional Speech.—Children sometimes have a fancy for speaking
in interjections. They express vague ideas by single vowels (like ä),
syllables (e. g., na, da), and combinations of syllables, and
frequently call out aloud through the house meaningless sounds and
syllables. D and W are as yet undeveloped.

Often, too, children imitate the interjections used by members of the
family—hop! patsch, bauz! an interjectional echolalia. Many
deranged persons express their feelings in like manner, in sounds,
especially vowels, syllables, or sound-combinations resembling words,
which are void of meaning or are associated merely with obscure ideas
(Martini). Then D is connected with M only through L and S, and so
through i and e.

Embolophrasia.—Many children, long after they have overcome
acataphasia and agrammatism, delight[Page 61] in inserting between words sounds,
syllables, and words that do not belong there; e. g., they double the
last syllable of every word and put an eff to it: ich-ich-eff, bin
in-eff, etc., or they make a kind of bleat between the words
(Kussmaul); and, in telling a story, put extra syllables into their
utterance while they are thinking.

Many adults likewise have the disagreeable habit of introducing certain
words or meaningless syllables into their speech, where these do not at
all belong; or they tack on diminutive endings to their words. The
syllables are often mere sounds, like eh, uh; in many cases they
sound like eng, ang (angophrasia—Kussmaul).

Palimphrasia.—Insane persons often repeat single sounds, syllables,
or sentences, over and over without meaning; e. g., “I am-am-am-am.”

“The phenomenon in many cases reminds us of children, who say or sing
some word or phrase, a rhyme or little verse, so long continuously, like
automata, that the by-standers can endure it no longer. It is often the
ring of the words, often the sense, often both, by which the children
are impressed. The child repeats them because they seem to him strange
or very sonorous.” (Kussmaul.)

Bradyphrasia.—The speech of people that are sad or sleepy, and of
others whose mental processes are indolent, often drags along with
tedious slowness; is also liable to be broken off abruptly. The speaker
comes to a standstill. This is not to be confounded with bradyphasia or
with bradyarthria or bradylalia (see above).

In children likewise the forming of the sentence takes a long time on
account of the as yet slow rise and combination of ideas, and a simple
narrative is only[Page 62] slowly completed or not finished at all, because the
intellectual processes in the brain are too fatiguing.

Paraphrasia.—Under the same circumstances as in the case of
bradyphrasia the (slow) speech may be marred and may become
unintelligible because the train of thought is confused—e. g., in
persons “drunk” with sleep—so that words are uttered that do not
correspond to the original ideas.

In the case of children who want to tell something, and who begin right,
the story may be interrupted easily by a recollection, a fresh train of
thought, and still they go on; e. g., they mix up two fairy tales,
attaching to the beginning of one the end of another.

Skoliophrasia.—Distracted and timid feeble-minded persons easily make
mistakes in speaking, because they can not direct their attention to
what they are saying and to the way in which they are saying it, but
they wander, allowing themselves to be turned aside from the thing to be
said by all sorts of ideas and external impressions; and, moreover, they
do not notice afterward that they have been making mistakes (cf. p. 53).

Children frequently put a wrong word in place of a right one well known
to them, without noticing it. They allow themselves to be turned aside
very easily from the main point by external impressions and all sorts of
fancies, and often, in fact, say the opposite of what they mean without
noticing it.

III. DYSMIMIA.

Disturbances of Gesture-Language (Pantomime).

Perceptive Asemia.—Patients have lost the ability to understand
looks and gestures (Steinthal).[Page 63]

Children can not yet understand the looks and gestures of persons about
them.

Amnesic Amimia.—Aphasic persons can sometimes imitate gestures, but
can not execute them when bid, but only when the gestures are made for
them to imitate. Children that do not yet speak can imitate gestures if
these are made for them to see, but it is often a long time before they
can make them at the word of command.

Ataxic Dysmimia and Amimia (Mimetic Asemia).—Patients can no
longer execute significative looks and gestures, on account of
defective co-ordination.

Children can not express their states of desire, etc., because they do
not yet control the requisite co-ordination for the corresponding
looks and gestures.

Paramimia (Paramimetic Asemia).—Many patients can make use of looks
and gestures, but confound them.

Children have not yet firmly impressed upon them the significance of
looks and gestures; this is shown in their interchanging of these; e.
g., the head is shaken in the way of denial when they are affirming
something.

Emotive Language (Affectsprache) in Aphrasia.—In Aphrasia it
happens that smiling, laughing, and weeping are no longer controlled,
and that they break out on the least occasion with the greatest
violence, like the spinal reflexes in decapitated animals.
(Hughlings-Jackson.)

Emotive language may continue when the language of ideas
(Begriffssprache) is completely extinguished, and idiotic children
without speech can even sing.

In children, far slighter occasions suffice normally[Page 64] to call forth
smiles, laughter, and tears, than in adults. These emotional utterances
are not yet often voluntarily inhibited by the child that can not yet
speak; on the contrary, they are unnecessarily repeated.

Apraxia.—Many patients are no longer in condition, on account of
disturbed intellect, to make right use of ordinary objects, the use of
which they knew well formerly; e. g., they can no longer find the way to
the mouth; or they bite into the soap.

Children are not yet in condition, on account of deficient practice,
to use the common utensils rightly; e. g., they will eat soup with a
fork, and will put the fork against the cheek instead of into the mouth.

4. Development of Speech in the Child.

We may now take up the main question as to the condition of the child
that is learning to speak, in regard to the development and
practicability of the nerve-paths and of the centers required for
speech. For the comparison of the disturbances of speech in adults with
the deficiencies of speech in the child, on the one hand, and the
chronological observation of the child, on the other hand, disclose to
us what parts of the apparatus of speech come by degrees into operation.
First to be considered are the impressive and expressive paths in
general.

All new-born human beings are deaf or hard of hearing, as has already
been demonstrated. Since the hearing but slowly grows more acute during
the first days, no utterances of sound at this period can be regarded as
responses to any sound-impressions whatever. The first cry is purely
reflexive, like the croaking of the[Page 65] decapitated frog when the skin of
his back is stroked (Vol. I, p. 214). The cry is not heard by the
newly-born himself and has not the least value as language. It is on a
par with the squeaking of the pig just born, the bleating of the
new-born lamb, and the peeping of the chick that is breaking its shell.

Upon this first, short season of physiological deaf-mutism follows the
period during which crying expresses bodily conditions, feelings such as
pain, hunger, cold. Here, again, there exists as yet no connection of
the expressive phenomena with acoustic impressions, but there is already
the employment of the voice with stronger expiration in case of strong
and disagreeable excitations of other sensory nerves than those of
general sensation and of the skin. For the child now cries at a dazzling
light also, and at a bitter taste, as if the unpleasant feeling were
diminished by the strong motor discharge. In any case the child cries
because this loud, augmented expiration lessens for him the previously
existing unpleasant feelings, without exactly inducing thereby a
comfortable condition.

Not until later does a sudden sound-impression, which at first called
forth only a start and then a quivering of the eyelids, cause also
crying. But this loud sign of fright may be purely reflexive, just like
the silent starting and throwing up of the arms at a sudden noise, and
has at most the significance of an expression of discomfort, like
screaming at a painful blow.

It is otherwise with the first loud response to an acoustic impression
recognized as new. The indefinable sounds of satisfaction made by the
child that hears music for the first time are no longer reflexive, and
are not[Page 66] symptoms of displeasure. I see in this reaction, which may be
compared with the howling of the dog that for the first time in his life
hears music—I see in this reaction of the apparatus of voice and of
future speech, the first sign of the connection now just established
between impressive (acoustic) and expressive (having the character of
emotive language) paths. The impressive, separately, were long since
open, as the children under observation after the first week allowed
themselves to be quieted by the singing of cradle-songs, and the
expressive, separately, must likewise have been open, since various
conditions were announced by various sorts of crying.

Everything now depends on a well-established intercentral
communication between the two. This is next to be discussed.

The primitive connection is already an advance upon that of a reflex
arc. The sound-excitations arriving from the ear at the central endings
of the auditory nerve are not directly transformed into motor
excitations for the laryngeal nerves, so that the glottis contracts to
utter vocal sound. When the child (as early as the sixth to the eighth
week) takes pleasure in music and laughs aloud, his voice can not in
this case (as at birth) have been educed by reflex action, for without a
cerebrum he would not laugh or utter joyous sounds, whereas even without
that he cries.

From this, however, by no means follows the existence of a speech-center
in the infant. The fact that he produces sounds easily articulated,
although without choice, like tahu and amma, proves merely the
functional capacity of the peripheral apparatus of articulation (in the
seventh week) at a period long before it is inten[Page 67]tionally used for
articulation. The unintentionally uttered syllables that make their
appearance are, to be sure, simple, at least in the first half-year. It
is vowels almost exclusively that appear in the first month, and these
predominate for a long time yet. Of the consonants in the third month
m alone is generally to be noted as frequent. This letter comes at a
later period also, from the raising and dropping of the lower jaw in
expiration, an operation that is besides soon easy for the infant with
less outlay of will than the letter b, which necessitates a firmer
closing of the lips.

But in spite of the simplicity of all the vocal utterances and of the
defectiveness of the articulatory apparatus, the child is able (often
long before the seventh month) to respond to address, questions,
chiding, either with inarticulate sounds or with vowels or by means of
simple syllables, like pa, ta, ma, na, da, mä, mö, gö,
rö [a as in father; ä as in fate; ö like i in bird.] Since
these responses are entirely, or almost entirely, lacking in
microcephali and in children born deaf, they are not purely reflexive,
like sneezing, e. g.; therefore there must be in the case of these a
cerebral operation also, simple indeed, but indubitably intellectual,
interposed between sound-perception and vocal utterance, especially as
the infant behaves differently according to what he hears, and he
discriminates very well the stern command from the caress, forbidding
from allowing, in the voice of the person speaking to him. Yet it is
much more the timbre, the accent, the pitch, the intensity of the
voice and the sounds, the variation of which excites attention, than it
is the spoken word. In the first half-year the child hears the vowels
much[Page 68] better than he does the consonants, and will imperfectly
understand or divine the sense of a few sounds only—e. g., when his
name is uttered in a threatening tone he will hear merely the accented
vowel, for at the first performance taught him, purposely postponed to a
very late period (in his thirteenth month), it made no difference to my
child whether we asked without changing a feature, “Wie gross?” (how
tall?) or “ooss?” or “oo?” In all three cases he answered with the same
movement of the hand.

Now, although all infants in normal condition, before they can repeat
anything after others or can understand any word whatever, express
their feelings by various sounds, even by syllables, and distinguish
vowels and many consonants in the words spoken to them, yet this does
not raise them above the intelligent animal. The response to friendly
address and loud chiding by appropriate sounds is scarcely to be
distinguished as to its psychical value from the joyous barking and
whining of the poodle.

The pointer-dog’s understanding of the few spoken utterances that are
impressed upon him in his training is also quite as certain at least as
the babe’s understanding of the jargon of the nurse. The correctly
executed movements or arrests of movement following the
sound-impressions “Setz dich! Pfui! Zurück! Vorwärts! Allez! Fass!
Apporte! Such! Verloren! Pst! Lass! Hierher! Brav! Leid’s nicht! Ruhig!
Wahr Dich! Hab Acht! Was ist das! Pfui Vogel! Pfui Hase! Halt!” prove
that the bird-dog understands the meaning of the sounds and syllables
and words heard as far as he needs to understand them. The training in
the[Page 69] English language accomplishes the same result with “Down! Down
charge! Steady! Toho! Fetch! Hold up!” as the training in the French
language, with yet other words—so that we can by no means assume any
hereditary connection whatever between the quality of the sound heard
and the movement or arrest of movement to be executed, such as may
perhaps exist in the case of the chick just hatched which follows the
clucking of the hen. Rather does the dog learn afresh in every case the
meaning of the words required for hunting, just as the speechless child
comprehends the meaning of the first words of its future language
without being able to repeat them himself—e. g., “Give! Come! Hand! Sh!
Quiet!” Long before the child’s mechanism of articulation is so far
developed that these expressions can be produced by him, the child
manifests his understanding of them unequivocally by corresponding
movements, by gestures and looks, by obedience.

No doubt this behavior varies in individual cases, inasmuch as in some
few the imitative articulation may be to some extent earlier developed
than the understanding. There are many children who even in their first
year have a monkey-like knack at imitation and repeat all sorts of
things like parrots without guessing the sense of them. Here, however,
it is to be borne in mind that such an echo-speech appears only after
the first understanding of some spoken word can be demonstrated; in no
case before the fourth month. Lindner relates that when he one day
observed that his child of eighteen weeks was gazing at the swinging
pendulum of the house-clock, he went with him to it, saying,
“Tick-tack,” in time with the pendulum; and when he[Page 70] afterward called
out to the child, who was no longer looking at the clock, “Tick-tack!”
this call was answered, at first with delay, a little later immediately,
by a turning of the look toward the clock. This proved that there was
understanding long before the first imitation of words. Progress now
became pretty rapid, so that at the end of the seventh month the
questions, “Where is your eye? ear? head? mouth? nose? the table? chair?
sofa?” were answered correctly by movements of hand and eyes. In the
tenth month this child for the first time himself used a word as a means
of effecting an understanding, viz., mama (soon afterward, indeed, he
called both parents papa). The child’s inability to repeat distinctly
syllables spoken for him is not to be attributed, shortly before the
time at which he succeeds in doing it, to a purely psychical adynamy
(impotence), not, as many suppose, to “being stupid,” or to a weakness
of will without organic imperfections determined by the cerebral
development, for the efforts, the attention, and the ability to repeat
incorrectly, show that the will is not wanting. Since also the
peripheral impressive acoustic and expressive phonetic paths are intact
and developed, as is proved by the acuteness of the hearing and the
spontaneous formation of the very syllables desired, the cause of the
inability to repeat correctly must be solely organic-centro-motor. The
connecting paths between the sound-center and the syllable-center, and
of both these with the speech motorium, are not yet or not easily
passable; but the imitation of a single sound, be it only a, can not
take place without the mediation of the cerebral cortex. Thus in the
very first attempt to repeat something heard there[Page 71] exists an
unquestionable advance in brain development; and the first successful
attempt of this kind proves not merely the augmented functional ability
of the articulatory apparatus and of the sound-center, and the
practicability of the impressive paths that lead from the ear to the
sound-center—it proves, above all, the establishment of intercentral
routes that lead from the sound-center and the syllable-center to the
motorium.

In fact, the correct repeating of a sound heard, of a syllable, and,
finally, of a word pronounced by another person, is the surest proof of
the establishment and practicability of the entire impressive, central,
and expressive path. It, however, proves nothing as to the
understanding of the sound or word heard and faultlessly repeated.

As the term “understanding” or “understand” is ambiguous, in so far as
it may relate to the ideal content (the meaning), and at the same time
to the mere perception of the word spoken (or written or touched)—e.
g., when any one speaks indistinctly so that we do not “understand”
him—it is advisable to restrict the use of this expression.
Understand shall in future apply only to the meaning of the word;
hear—since it is simply the perceiving of a word through the hearing
that we have in view—will relate to the sensuous impression. It is
clear, then, that all children who can hear but can not yet speak,
repeat many words without understanding them, and understand many words
without being able to repeat them, as Kussmaul has already observed. But
I must add that the repeating of what is not understood begins only
after some word (even one that can not be repeated) has been understood.

Now it is certain that the majority, if not all, of[Page 72] the children that
have good hearing develop the understanding more at first, since the
impressive side is practiced more and sooner than the
expressive-articulatory. Probably those that imitate early and
skillfully are the children that can speak earliest, and whose cerebrum
grows fastest but also soonest ceases to grow; whereas those that
imitate later and more sparingly, generally learn to speak later, and
will generally be the more intelligent. For with the higher sort of
activity goes the greater growth of brain. While the other children
cultivate more the centro-motor portion, the sensory, the intellectual,
is neglected. In animals, likewise, a brief, rapid development of the
brain is wont to go along with inferior intelligence. The intelligence
gets a better development when the child, instead of repeating all sorts
of things without any meaning, tries to guess the meaning of what he
hears. Precisely the epoch at which this takes place belongs to the most
interesting in intellectual development. Like a pantomimist, the child,
by means of his looks and gestures, and further by cries and by
movements of all sorts, gives abundant evidence of his understanding and
his desires, without himself speaking a single word. As the adult, after
having half learned a foreign language from books, can not speak
(imitate) it, and can not easily understand it when he hears it spoken
fluently by one that is a perfect master of it, but yet makes out
single expressions and understands them, and divines the meaning of
the whole, so the child at this stage can distinctly hear single words,
can grasp the purport of them, and divine correctly a whole sentence
from the looks and gestures of the speaker, although the child himself
makes audible no articulate[Page 73] utterance except his own, for the most part
meaningless, variable babble of sounds and syllables and outcries.

The causes of the slowness of the progress in expressing in articulate
words what is understood and desired, on the part of normal children, is
not, however, to be attributed, as it has often been, to a slower
development of the expressive motor mechanism, but must be looked for in
the difficulty of establishing the connection of the various central
storehouses of sense-impressions with the intercentral path of
connection between the acoustic speech-centers and the speech-motorium.
For the purely peripheral articulatory acts are long since perfect,
although as yet a simple “a” or “pa” can not be repeated after
another person; for these and other sounds and syllables are already
uttered correctly by the child himself.

The order of succession in which these separate sounds appear, without
instruction, is very different in individual cases. With my boy, who
learned to speak rather late, and was not occupied with learning by
heart, the following was the order of the perfectly pure sounds heard by
me:

On the left are the sounds or syllables indicated by one letter; on the
right, the same indicated by more than one letter; and it is to be borne
in mind that the child needs to pronounce only fourteen of the nineteen
so-called consonants of the German alphabet in order to master the
remaining five also; for

[Page 74]
and of the fourteen four require no new articulation, because

Of the ten positions of the mouth required for all the consonants of the
alphabet, nine are taken by the child within the first six months:*

*Pronounce the letters in the tabular view as in German.

[Page 75]

Every such chronological view of the sequence of sounds is uncertain,
because we can not observe the child uninterruptedly, and hence the
first appearance of a new sound easily escapes notice. The above
synopsis has a chronological value only so far as this, that it
announces, concerning every single sound, that such sound was heard in
its purity by me at least as early as the given month. The sound may,
however, have been uttered considerably earlier without my hearing it. I
know from personal experience that in other children many sounds appear
much earlier; in my child, e. g., ngä was observed too late, and I
have no doubt that the first utterance of f and w was unobserved,
although I was on the lookout for them. When it is maintained, on the
contrary, that m is not heard from a normal child until the tenth
month, then the am and mö which appear universally in the first
half-year have escaped notice. Earlier tabular views of this sort, which
have even served as a foundation for instruction of deaf-mutes in
speaking, do not rest exclusively on observation. Besides, in this
matter, even two children hardly agree. According to my observations, I
am compelled in spite of this disagreement to lay down the proposition
as valid for all[Page 76] healthy children, that the greatly preponderating
majority of the sounds the child makes use of after learning verbal
language, and many other sounds besides these, are correctly formed by
him within the first eight months, not intentionally, but just as much
at random as any other utterance of sound not to be used later in
speech, not appearing in any civilized language. I will only mention as
an example the labio-lingual explosive sound, in which the tip of the
tongue comes between the lips and, with an expiration, bursting from its
confinement is drawn back swiftly (with or without tone). All children
seem to like to form this sound, a sound between p, b, and t, d;
but it exists in few languages.

Among the innumerable superfluous, unintentional, random, muscular
movements of the infant, the movements of the muscles of the larynx,
mouth, and tongue take a conspicuous place, because they ally themselves
readily with acoustic effects and the child takes delight in them. It is
not surprising, therefore, that precisely those vibrations of the vocal
cords, precisely those shapings of the cavity of the mouth, and those
positions of the lips, often occur which we observe in the utterance of
our vowels, and that among the child-noises produced unconsciously and
in play are found almost all our consonants and, besides, many that are
used in foreign languages. The plasticity of the apparatus of speech in
youth permits the production of a greater abundance of sounds and
sound-combinations than is employed later, and not a single child has
been observed who has, in accordance with the principle of the least
effort (principe du moindre effort) applied by French authors to this
province, advanced in regular sequence from the[Page 77] sounds articulated
easily—i. e., with less activity of will—to the physiologically
difficult; rather does it hold good for all the children I have
observed, and probably for all children that learn to speak, that many
of the sounds uttered by them at the beginning, in the speechless season
of infancy, without effort and then forgotten, have to be learned afresh
at a later period, have to be painstakingly acquired by means of
imitation.

Mobility and perfection in the technique of sound-formation are not
speech. They come into consideration in the process of learning to speak
as facilitating the process, because the muscles are perfected by
previous practice; but the very first attempts to imitate voluntarily a
sound heard show how slight this advantage is. Even those primitive
syllables which the child of himself often pronounces to weariness, like
da, he can not at the beginning (in the tenth month in my case) as yet
say after any one, although he makes manifest by his effort—a regular
strain—by his attention, and his unsuccessful attempts, that he would
like to say them, as I have already mentioned. The reason is to be
looked for in the still incomplete development of the sensori-motor
central paths. In place of tatta is sounded tä or ata; in place of
papa even taï, and this not once only, but after a great many trials
repeated again and again with the utmost patience. That the sound-image
has been correctly apprehended is evident from the certainty with which
the child responds correctly in various cases by gestures to words of
similar sound unpronounceable by him. Thus, he points by mistake once
only to the mouth (Mund) instead of the moon (Mond), and points
correctly to the ear (Ohr) and the clock (Uhr) when[Page 78] asked where these
objects are. The acuteness of hearing indispensable for repeating the
sounds is therefore present before the ability to repeat.

On the whole, the infant or the young child already weaned must be
placed higher at this stage of his mental development than a very
intelligent animal, but not on account of his knowledge of language, for
the dog also understands very well single words in the speech of his
master, in addition to hunting-terms. He divines, from the master’s
looks and gestures, the meaning of whole sentences, and, although he has
not been brought to the point of producing articulate sounds, yet much
superior in this respect is the performance of the cockatoo, which
learns all articulate sounds. A child who shows by looks and gestures
and actions that he understands single words, and who already pronounces
correctly many words by imitation without understanding them, does not
on this account stand higher intellectually than a sagaciously
calculating yet speechless elephant or an Arabian horse, but because he
already forms many more and far more complex concepts.

The animal phase of intellect lasts, in the sound, vigorous, and not
neglected child, to the end of the first year of life at the farthest;
and long before the close of this he has, by means of the feelings of
pleasure and of discomfort, very definitely distinguishable by him even
in the first days of life, but for which he does not get the verbal
expressions till the second and third year, formed for himself at least
in one province, viz., that of food, ideas more or less well defined.
Romanes also rightly remarks that the concept of food arises in us
through the feeling of hunger quite inde[Page 79]pendently of language. Probably
this concept is the very first that is formed by the quite young infant,
only he would not name it “food,” if indeed he named it at all, but
would understand by it everything that puts an end to the feeling of
hunger. It is of great importance to hold firmly to this fact of the
origination of ideas, and that not of sensuous percepts only but of
concepts, without language, because it runs contrary to prevailing
assumptions.

He who has conscientiously observed the mental development of infants
must come to the conclusion that the formation of ideas is not bound up
with the learning of words, but is a necessary prerequisite for the
understanding of the words to be learned first, and therefore for
learning to speak. Long before the child understands even a single
word, before he uses a single syllable consistently with a definite
meaning, he already has a number of ideas which are expressed by looks
and gestures and cries. To these belong especially ideas gained through
touch and sight. Associations of objects touched and seen with
impressions of taste are probably the first generators of concepts. The
child, still speechless and toothless, takes a lively interest in
bottles; sees, e. g., a bottle that is filled with a white opaque liquid
(Goulard water), and he stretches out his arms with desire toward it,
screaming a long time, in the belief that it is a milk-bottle (observed
by me in the case of my child in the thirty-first week). The bottle when
empty or when filled with water is not so long attractive to him, so
that the idea of food (or of something to drink, something to suck,
something sweet) must arise from the sight of a bottle with certain
contents without[Page 80] the understanding or even utterance of any words. The
formation of concepts without words is actually demonstrated by this;
for the speechless child not only perceived the points of identity of
the various bottles of wine, water, oil, the nursing-bottle and others,
the sight of which excited him, but he united in one notion the contents
of the different sorts of bottles when what was in them was white—i.
e., he had separated the concept of food from that of the bottle. Ideas
are thus independent of words.

Certain as this proposition is, it is not, however, supported by the
reasons given for it by Kussmaul, viz., that one and the same object is
variously expressed in various languages, and that a new animal or a new
machine is known before it is named; for no one desires to maintain that
certain ideas are necessarily connected with certain words, without
the knowledge of which they could not arise—it is maintained only that
ideas do not exist without words. Now, any object has some appellation
in each language, were it only the appellation “object,” and a new
animal, a new machine, is already called “animal,” “machine,” before it
receives its special name. Hence from this quarter the proof can not be
derived. On the other hand, the speechless infant certainly furnishes
the proof, which is confirmed by some observations on microcephalous
persons several years old or of adult age. The lack of the power of
abstraction apparent in these persons and in idiots is not so great that
they have not developed the notion “food” or “taking of food.”

Indeed, it is not impossible that the formation of ideas may continue
after the total loss of word-memory,[Page 81] as in the remarkable and
much-talked-of case of Lordat. Yet this case does not by any means prove
that the formation of concepts of the higher order is possible without
previous mastery of verbal language; rather is it certain that concepts
rising above the lowest abstractions can be formed only by him who has
thoroughly learned to speak: for intelligent children without speech are
acquainted, indeed, with more numerous and more complex ideas than are
very sagacious animals, but not with many more abstractions of a higher
sort, and where the vocabulary is small the power of abstraction is wont
to be as weak in adults as in children. The latter, to be sure, acquire
the words for the abstract with more difficulty and later than those for
the concrete, but have them stamped more firmly on the mind (for, when
the word-memory fails, proper names and nouns denoting concrete objects
are, as a rule, first forgotten). But it would not be admissible, as I
showed above, to conclude from this that no abstraction at all takes
place without words. To me, indeed, it is probable that in the most
intense thought the most abstract conceptions are effected most rapidly
without the disturbing images of the sounds of words, and are only
supplementarily clothed in words. In any case the intelligent child
forms many concepts of a lower sort without any knowledge of words at
all, and he therefore performs abstraction without words.

When Sigismund showed to his son, not yet a year old and not able to
speak a word, a stuffed woodcock, and, pointing to it, said, “Bird,” the
child directly afterward looked toward another side of the room where
there stood upon the stove a stuffed white owl, repre[Page 82]sented as in
flight, which he must certainly have observed before. Here, then, the
concept had already arisen; but how little specialized are the first
concepts connected with words that do not relate to food is shown by the
fact that in the case of Lindner’s child (in the tenth month) up
signified also down, warm signified also cold. Just so my child
used too much also for too little; another child used no also for
yes; a third used I for you. If these by no means isolated
phenomena rest upon a lack of differentiation of the concepts, “then the
child already has a presentiment that opposites are merely the extreme
terms of the same series of conceptions” (Lindner), and this before he
can command more than a few words.

But to return to the condition of the normal child, as yet entirely
speechless. It is clear that, being filled with desire to give
expression in every way to his feelings, especially to his needs, he
will use his voice, too, for this purpose. The adult likewise cries out
with pain, although the “Oh!” has no direct connection with the pain,
and there is no intention of making, by means of the outcry,
communication to others. Now, before the newly-born is in condition to
seek that which excites pleasure, to avoid what excites displeasure, he
cries out in like fashion, partly without moving the tongue, partly with
the sound ä dominant, repeated over and over monotonously till some
change of external conditions takes place. After this the manner of
crying begins to vary according to the condition of the infant; then
come sounds clearly distinguishable as indications of pleasure or
displeasure; then syllables, at first to some extent spontaneously
articulated without mean[Page 83]ing, afterward such as express desire,
pleasure, etc.; not until much later imitated sounds, and often the
imperfect imitation of the voices of animals, of inorganic noises, and
of spoken words. The mutilation of his words makes it seem as if the
child were already inventing new designations which are soon forgotten;
and as the child, like the lunatic, uses familiar words in a new sense
after he has begun to learn to talk, his style of expression gets an
original character, that of “baby-talk.” Here it is characteristic that
the feelings and ideas do not now first arise, though they are now
first articulately expressed; but they were in part present long since
and did not become articulate, but were expressed by means of looks and
gestures. In the adult ideas generate new words, and the formation of
new words does not cease so long as thinking continues; but in the child
without speech new feelings and new ideas generate at first only new
cries and movements of the muscles of the face and limbs, and, the
further we look back into child-development proper, the greater do we
find the number of the conditions expressed by one and the same cry. The
organism as yet has too few means at its disposal. In many cases of
aphasia every mental state is expressed by one and the same word (often
a word without meaning). Upon closer examination it is found, however,
that for the orator also, who is complete master of speech, all the
resources of language are insufficient. No one, e. g., can name all the
colors that may be perceived, or describe pain, or describe even a
cloud, so that several hearers gain the same idea of its form that the
speaker has. The words come short, but the idea is clear. If words
sufficed to express clearly[Page 84] clear conceptions, then the greater part of
our philosophical and theological literature would not exist. This
literature has its basis essentially in the inevitable fact that
different persons do not associate the same concept with the same word,
and so one word is used to indicate different concepts (as is the case
with the child). If a concept is exceptionally difficult—i. e.,
exceptionally hard to express clearly in words—then it is wont to
receive many names, e. g., “die,” and the confusion and strife are
increased; but words alone render it possible to form and to make clear
concepts of a higher sort. They favor the formation of new ideas, and
without them the intellect in man remains in a lower stage of
development just because they are the most trustworthy and the most
delicate means of expression for ideas. If ideas are not expressed at
all, or not intelligibly, their possessor can not use them, can not
correct or make them effective. Those ideas only are of value, as a
general thing, which continue to exist after being communicated to
others. Communication takes place with accuracy (among human beings)
only by means of words. It is therefore important to know how the child
learns to speak words, and then to use them.

I have above designated, as the chief difficulty for the child in the
formation of words, the establishment of a connection between the
central storehouse for sense-impressions—i. e., the sensory centers of
higher rank—with the intercentral path of connection between the
center-for-sounds and the speech-motorium. After the establishment of
these connections, and long after ideas have been formed, the
sound-image of the word spoken by the mother, when it emerges in the
center-for-sounds[Page 85] directly after the rise of a clear idea, is now
repeated by the child accurately, or, in case it offers insurmountable
difficulties of articulation for pronunciation, inaccurately. This fact
of sound-imitation is fundamental. Beyond it we can not go. Especially
must be noted here as essential that it appears to be an entirely
indifferent matter what syllables and words are employed for the first
designation of the child’s ideas. Were one disposed to provide the child
with false designations, he could easily do it. The child would still
connect them logically. If taught further on that two times three are
five, he would merely give the name five to what is six, and would
soon adopt the usual form of expression. In making a beginning of the
association of ideas with articulate syllables, such syllables are, as a
rule, employed (probably in all languages) as have already been often
uttered by the child spontaneously without meaning, because these
offered no difficulties of articulation; but only the child’s family put
meaning into them. Such syllables are pa, ma, with their doubled
form papa, mama, for “father” and “mother,” in connection with which
it is to be observed that the meaning of them is different in different
languages and even in the dialects of a language. For mamán, mamá,
máma, mamme, mammeli, mömme, mam, mamma, mammeken,
memme, memmeken, mammĕlĕ, mammi, are at the same time
child-words and designations for “mother” in various districts of
Germany, whereas these and very similar expressions signify also the
mother’s breast, milk, pap, drink, nursing-bottle; nay, even in some
languages the father is designated by Ma-sounds, the mother by
Ba-and Pa-sounds.[Page 86]

It is very much the same with other primitive syllables of the babe’s
utterance, e. g., atta. Where this does not denote the parents or
grandparents it is frequently used (táta, tatta, tatá, also in
England and Germany) in the sense of “gone” (“fort”) and “goodby.”

These primitive syllables, pa-pa, ma-ma, tata and apa, ama,
ata, originate of themselves when in the expiration of breath the
passage is stopped either by the lips (p, m) or by the tongue (d,
t); but after they have been already uttered many times with ease,
without meaning, at random, the mothers of all nations make use of them
to designate previously existing ideas of the child, and designate by
them what is most familiar. Hence occurs the apparent confounding of
“milk” and “breast” and “mother” and “(wet-) nurse” or “nurse” and
“bottle,” all of which the child learns to call mam, amma, etc.

But just at this period appears a genuine echolalia, the child,
unobserved, repeating correctly and like a machine, often in a whisper,
all sorts of syllables, when he hears them at the end of a sentence. The
normal child, before he can speak, repeats sounds, syllables, words, if
they are short, “mechanically,” without understanding, as he imitates
movements of the hands and the head that are made in his sight. Speaking
is a movement-making that invites imitation the more because it can be
strictly regulated by means of the ear. Anything more than regulation is
not at first given by the sense of hearing, for those born deaf also
learn to speak. They can even, like normal children, speak quite early
in dreams (according to Gerard van Asch).[Page 87] Those born deaf, as well as
normal children, when one turns quietly toward them, often observe
attentively the lips (and also touch them sometimes) and the tongue of
the person speaking; and this visual image, even without an auditory
image, provokes imitation, which is made perfect by the combination of
the two. This combination is lacking in the child born blind, pure
echolalia prevailing in this case; in the one born deaf, the combination
is likewise wanting, the reading-off of the syllables from the mouth
coming in as a substitute. With the deaf infant the study of the
mouth-movements is, as is well known, the only means of understanding
words spoken aloud, and it is sight that serves almost exclusively for
this, very rarely touch; and the child born deaf often repeats the
visible movements of lips and tongue better than the hearing child that
can not yet talk. It is to be observed, in general, that the hearing
child makes less use, on the whole, of the means of reading-off from the
mouth than we assume, but depends chiefly on the ear. I have always
found, too, that the child has the greatest difficulty in imitating a
position of the mouth, in case the sound belonging to it is not made,
whereas he easily achieves the same position of the mouth when the
acoustic effect goes along with it.

Accordingly, the connection between the ear and the speech-center must
be shorter or more practicable in advance (hereditarily) than that
between the eye and the speech-center. With regard to both associations,
however, the gradually progressive shortening or consolidating is to be
distinguished in space and time. With the child that does not yet speak,
but is beginning[Page 88] to repeat syllables correctly and to associate them
with primitive ideas, the act of imitation takes longer than with the
normal adult, but the paths in the brain that he makes use of are
shorter, absolutely and relatively—absolutely, because the whole brain
is smaller; relatively, because the higher centers, which at a later
period perform their functions with consciousness and accessory ideas,
are still lacking. Notwithstanding this, the time is longer than at a
later period—often amounting to several seconds—because the working up
of what has been heard, and even the arrangement of it in the center for
sound-images, and of what has been seen in the center for sight-images,
takes more time apart from a somewhat less swift propagation of the
nerve-excitement in the peripheral paths. The child’s imitation can not
be called fully conscious or deliberate. It resembles the half-conscious
or unconscious imitation attained by the adult through frequent
repetition—i. e., through manifold practice—and which, as a sort of
reminiscence of conscious or an abbreviation of deliberate imitation,
results from frequent continuous use of the same paths. Only, the
child’s imitations last longer, and especially the reading-off from the
mouth. The child can not distinguish the positions of the mouth that
belong to a syllable, but can produce them himself very correctly. He is
like the patients that Kussmaul calls “word-blind,” who can not, in
spite of good sight, read the written words they see, but can express
them in speech and writing. For the same word, e. g., atta, which the
child does not read off from the mouth and does not repeat, he uses
himself when he wants to be taken out; thus the inability is not
expressive-motor,[Page 89] but central or intercentral. For the child can
already see very well the movement of mouth and tongue; the impressive
sight-path has been long established.

Herein this sort of word-blindness agrees fully with the physiological
word-deafness of the normal child without speech, whose hearing is good.
For he understands wrongly what he hears, when, e. g., in response to
the order, “No! no!” he makes the affirmative movement of the head,
although he can make the right movement very well. Here too, then, it is
not centrifugal and centripetal peripheral lines, but intercentral paths
or centers, that are not yet sufficiently developed—in the case of my
child, in the fourteenth month. The path leading from the word-center to
the dictorium, and the word-center itself, must have been as yet too
little used.

From all this it results, in relation to the question, how the child
comes to learn and to use words, that in the first place he has ideas;
secondly, he imitates sounds, syllables, and words spoken for him; and,
thirdly, he associates the ideas with these. e. g., the idea
“white+wet+sweet+warm” having arisen out of frequent seeing, feeling,
and tasting of milk, it depends upon what primitive syllable is selected
for questioning the hungry infant, for talking to him, or quieting him,
whether he expresses his desire for food by möm, mimi, nana,
ning, or maman, or mäm, or mem, or mima, or yet other
syllables. The oftener he has the idea of food (i. e., something that
banishes hunger or the unpleasant feeling of it), and at the same time
the sound-impression “milk,” so much the more will the latter be
associated with the former, and in[Page 90] consideration of the great
advantages it offers, in being understood by all, will finally be
adopted. Thus the child learns his first words. But in each individual
case the first words acquired in this manner have a wider range of
meaning than the later ones.

By means of pure echolalia, without associating ideas with the word
babbled in imitation, the child learns, to be sure, to articulate words
likewise; but he does not learn to understand them or to use them
properly unless coincidences, intentional or accidental, show him this
or that result when this or that word is uttered by him. If the child,
e. g., hearing the new word “Schnee,” says, as an echo, nee, and then
some one shows him actual snow, the meaningless nee becomes associated
with a sense-intuition; and later, also, nothing can take the place of
the intuition—i. e., the direct, sensuous perception—as a means of
instruction. This way of learning the use of words is exactly the
opposite of that just discussed, and is less common because more
laborious. For, in the first case, the idea is first present, and only
needs to be expressed (through hearing the appropriate word). In the
second case, the word comes first, and the idea has to be brought in
artificially. Later, the word, not understood, awakens curiosity, and
thereby generates ideas. But this requires greater maturity.

The third way in which the first words are learned is this: The idea and
the word appear almost simultaneously, as in onomatopoetic designations
and interjections. Absolutely original onomatopoetic words are very rare
with children, and have not been observed by me except after the
children already knew some words. The names of animals, bow-wow,
moo-moo, peep-peep (bird),[Page 91] hotto (horse), from the expression of
the carter, “hott-ho” (“tt,” instead of Haut (the skin), i. e.,
“left,” in contrast with “aarr”—Haar, Mähne (the mane)—i. e.,
“right”), are spoken for the child by the members of his family. Some
names of animals, like kukuk (cuckoo), also kikeriki (cock) and
kuak (duck, frog), are probably formed often without having been heard
from others, only more indistinctly, by German, English (American), and
French children. Ticktack (tick-tick) has also been repeated by a
boy of two years for a watch. On the other hand, weo-weo-weo (German,
ŭio) for the noise of winding a watch (observed by Holden in a boy
of two years) is original. Hüt, as an unsuccessful imitation of the
locomotive-whistle by my boy of two and a half years, seems also
noteworthy as an onomatope independently invented, because it was used
daily for months in the same way merely to designate the whistle. The
voice of the hen, of the redstart, the creaking of a wheel, were
imitated by my child of his own accord long before he could speak a
word. But this did not go so far as the framing of syllables. It is not
easy in this to trace so clearly the framing of a concept as attaching
itself directly to onomatopoetic forms as it is in a case communicated
by Romanes. A child that was beginning to talk, saw and heard a duck on
the water, and said quack. Thereafter the child called, on the one
hand, all birds and insects, on the other hand, all liquids, quack.
Finally, it called all coins also quack, after having seen an eagle on
a French sou. Thus the child came, by gradual generalization, to the
point of designating a fly, wine, and a piece of money by the same
onomatopoetic word, although only the first per[Page 92]ception contained the
characteristic that gave the name.

Another case is reported by Eduard Schulte: A boy of a year and three
quarters applied the joyous outcry ei (which may be an imitated
interjection), modifying it first into eiz, into aze, and then into
ass, to his wooden goat on wheels, and covered with rough hide; eiz,
then, became exclusively a cry of joy; ass, the name for everything
that moved along—e. g., for animals and his own sister and the wagon;
also for everything that moved at all; finally, for everything that had
a rough surface. Now, as this child already called all coverings of the
head and covers of cans huta, when he saw, for the first time, a fur
cap, he at once christened it ass-huta. Here took place a decided
subordination of one concept to another, and therewith a new formation
of a word. How broad the comprehensiveness of the concept designated
huta was, is perceived especially in this, that it was used to express
the wish to have objects at which the child pointed. He liked to put all
sorts of things that pleased him upon his head, calling them huta. Out
of the huta, for “I should like to have that as a hat” grew, then,
after frequent repetition, “I should like that.” There was in this case
an extension of the narrower concept, after it had itself experienced
previously a differentiation, and so a limitation, by means of the
suffix ass. These examples show how independent of words the formation
of concepts is. With the smallest stock of words the concepts are yet
manifold, and are designated by the same word when there is a lack of
words for the composition of new words, and so for fresh
word-formation.[Page 93]

The formation of words out of interjections without imitation has not
been observed. Here belongs the rollu, rollolo, uttered by my boy,
of his own accord, on seeing rolling balls or wheels; and (in the
twentieth month) rodi, otto, rojo, where the rotation perceived by
the child occasions at once the one or the other exclamation containing
l or r. In the case of Steinthal, it was lu-lulu; in the case of a
boy a year and a half old, observed by Kussmaul, it was golloh. In
these cases the first interjection is always occasioned by a noise,
not simply by the sight of things rolling without noise. The
interjection must accordingly be styled imitative. A combination of the
original—i. e., inborn—interjectional sounds into syllables and groups
of syllables, without the assistance of members of the family, and
without imitation, for the purpose of communicating an idea, is not
proved to exist.

On the whole, the way in which the child learns to speak not merely
resembles the way in which he learns at a later period to write, but is
essentially completely in accord with it. Here, too, he makes no new
inventions. First are drawn strokes and blurs without meaning; then
certain strokes are imitated; then signs of sounds. These can not be at
once combined into syllables, and even after the combination has been
achieved and the written word can be made from the syllables it is not
yet understood. Yet the child could see, even before the first
instruction in writing or the first attempt at scribbling, every
individual letter in the dimensions in which he writes it later. So,
too, the speechless child hears every sound before he understands
syllables and words, and he understands them before he can speak[Page 94] them.
The child commonly learns reading before writing, and so understands the
sign he is to write before he can write it. Yet the sign written by
himself is often just as unintelligible to him as the word he himself
speaks. The analogy is perfect.

If the first germs of words, after ideas have begun to become clear by
means of keener perception, are once formed, then the child fashions
them of his own effort, and this often with surprising distinctness; but
in the majority of cases the words are mutilated. In the first category
belongs the comparative hocher for höher in the sentence hocher
bauen (build higher)! (in the third year uttered as a request when
playing with building-stones). The understanding of the comparative is
plainly manifest in this. When, therefore, the same child in his fifth
year, to the improper question, “Whom do you like better, papa or
mamma?” answers, “Papa and mamma,” we should not infer a lack of that
understanding, as many do (e. g., Heyfelder); but the decision is
impossible to the child. Just so in the case of the question, “Would you
rather have the apple or the pear?”

Other inventions of my child were the verb messen for “mit dem Messer
schneiden” (to cut with the knife); schiffern, i. e., “das Schiff
bewegen” (move the ship), for “rudern,” (row). And the preference of the
weak inflection on the part of all children is a proof that after the
appropriation of a small number of words through imitation,
independent—always logical—changes of formation are undertaken.
Gegebt, gegeht, getrinkt (gived, goed, drinked), have never been
heard by the child; but “gewebt, geweht, gewinkt” (as in Eng[Page 95]lish,
waved, wafted, beckoned), have been known to him as models (or other
formations corresponding to these). Yet this is by no means to say that
every mutilation or transformation the child proposes is a copy after an
erroneously selected model; rather the child’s imagination has a wide
field here and acts in manifold fashion, especially by combinations. “My
teeth-roof pains me,” said a boy who did not yet know the word “palate.”
Another in his fourth year called the road (Weg) the “go” (Gehe). A
child of three years used the expression, “Just grow me” (wachs mich
einmal) for “Just see how I have grown” (Sieh einmal wie ich gewachsen
bin) (Lindner). Such creations of the childish faculty of combination,
arising partly through blending, partly through transference, are
collected in a neat pamphlet, “Zur Philosophie der Kindersprache,” by
Agathon Keber, 1868. The most of them, however, are from a later time of
life than that here treated of. So it is with the two “heretical”
utterances communicated by Rösch. A child said unterblatte
(under-leaf) for “Oblate,” because he saw the wafer (Oblate) slipped
under the leaf of paper (Blatt); and he called the “American chair,”
“Herr-Decaner-chair,” because somebody who was called “Herr Decan” used
to sit in it. Here may be seen the endeavor to put into the acoustic
impression not understood a meaning. These expressions are not
inventions, but they are evidence of intellect. They can not, of course,
appear in younger children without knowledge of words, because they are
transformations of words.

On the other hand it is of the greatest importance for the understanding
of the first stage of the use of[Page 96] words in their real significance,
after the acquirement of them has once begun, to observe how many
different ideas the child announces by one and the same verbal
expression. Here are some examples: Tuhl (for Stuhl, chair)
signifies—1. “My chair is gone”; 2. “The chair is broken”; 3. “I want
to be lifted into the chair”; 4. “Here is a chair.” The child
(Steinthal’s) says (in the twenty-second month), when he sees or hears a
barking dog, bellt (barks), and thinks he has by that word designated
the whole complex phenomenon, the sight-perception of the dog and of a
particular dog, and the sound-perception; but he says bellt also when
he merely hears the dog. No doubt the memory-image of the dog he has
seen is then revived for him.

Through this manifold significance of a word, which is a substitute for
a whole sentence, is exhibited a much higher activity of the intellect
than appears in the mutilation and new formation of words having but one
meaning to designate a sense-impression, for, although in the latter is
manifested the union of impressions into perceptions and also of
qualities into concepts, wherein an unconscious judgment is involved,
yet a clear judgment is not necessarily connected with them. The union
of concepts into conscious clear judgments is recognized rather in the
formation of a sentence, no matter whether this is expressed by one word
or by several words.

In connection with this an error must be corrected that is wide-spread.
It consists in the assumption that all children begin to speak with
nouns, and that these are followed by verbs. This is by no means the
case. The child daily observed by me used an adjective for the first
time in the twenty-third month in order to ex[Page 97]press a judgment, the
first one expressed in the language of those about him. He said “hot”
for “The milk is too hot.” In general, the appropriation and employment
of words for the first formation of sentences depends, in the first
instance, upon the action of the adults in the company of the child. A
good example of this is furnished by an observation of Lindner, whose
daughter in her fourteenth month first begged with her hands for a piece
of apple, upon which the word “apple” was distinctly pronounced to her.
After she had eaten the apple she repeated the request, re-enforcing her
gesture this time by the imitated sound appn, and her request was
again granted. Evidently encouraged by her success, the child from that
time on used appn for “eat, I want to eat,” as a sign of her desire to
eat in general, because those about her “accepted this signification and
took the word stamped by her upon this concept for current coin, else it
would very likely have been lost.” This also confirms my statement (p.
85) that a child easily learns to speak with logical correctness with
wrong words. He also speaks like the deaf-mute with logical correctness
with quite a different arrangement of words from that of his speech of a
later period. Thus the child just mentioned, in whom “the inclination to
form sentences was manifest from the twenty-second month,” said, “hat
die Olga getrinkt,” when she had drunk!

But every child learns at first not only the language of those in whose
immediate daily companionship he grows up, but also at first the
peculiarities of these persons. He imitates the accent, intonation,
dialect, as well as the word, so that a Thuringian child may be[Page 98] surely
distinguished from a Mecklenburg child even in the second and third
year, and, at the same time, we may recognize the peculiarities of the
speech of its mother or nurse, with whom it has most intercourse. This
phenomenon, the persistence of dialects and of peculiarities of speech
in single families, gives the impression, on a superficial observation,
of being something inherited; whereas, in fact, nothing is inherited
beyond the voice through inheritance of the organic peculiarities of the
mechanism of phonation. For everything else completely disappears when a
child learns to speak from his birth in a foreign community.

Hereditary we may, indeed, call the characteristic of humanity, speech;
hereditary, also, is articulation in man, and the faculty of acquiring
any articulate language is innate. But beyond this the tribal influence
does not reach. If the possibility of learning to speak words
phonetically is wanting because ear or tongue refuses, then another
language comes in as a substitute—that of looks, gestures, writing,
tactile images—then not Broca’s center, but another one is generated.
So that the question whether a speech-center already exists in the
alalic child must be answered in the negative; the center is formed only
when the child hears speech, and, if he does not hear speech, no center
is developed. In this case the ganglionic cells of the posterior third
of the third frontal convolution are otherwise employed, or they suffer
atrophy. In learning to speak, on the contrary, there is a continuous
development, first of the sound-center, then of the syllable-center,
then of the word-center and the dictorium. The brain grows through its
own activity.[Page 99]

CHAPTER XVIII.

FIRST SOUNDS AND BEGINNINGS OF SPEECH IN THE CASE
OF A CHILD OBSERVED DAILY DURING HIS FIRST
THREE YEARS.

The observations bearing upon the acquirement of speech recorded by me
in the case of my boy from the day of his birth, the 23d of November,
1877, are here presented, so far as they appear worthy of being
communicated, in chronological order. They are intended to serve as
authenticated documents.

The points to which the attention is to be directed in these
observations are determined by the organic conditions of the acquirement
of speech, which have been treated previously. First, the expressive
processes, next the impressive, last the central processes, claim the
attention. (1) To the expressive beginnings of speech belongs the sum
total of the inarticulate sounds—crying, whimpering, grunting, cooing,
squealing, crowing, laughing, shouting (for joy), modulation of the
voice, smacking, and many others, but also the silent movement of the
tongue; further, articulation, especially before imitation begins; the
formation of sound, and so the gradual perfecting of the vowels,
aspirates, and consonants; at the same time the forming of syllables.
The last is especially easy to follow in the babbling monologues of the
infant, which are often very long. The reduplication of syllables,
accentuation, and inflection, whispering, singing, etc., belong likewise
here. (2) The impressive processes are discerned in the looks and
gestures of the[Page 100] child as yet speechless; later, the ability to
discriminate in regard to words and noises, and the connection of the
ear with the speech-center, are discerned in the first imitations of
sounds and in the repeating after others—i. e., in word-imitation. Here
belong also the onomatopoetic attempts of children, which are simply a
sort of imitation. Later, are added to these the answers to simple
spoken questions, these answers being partly interjectional, partly
articulate, joined into syllables, words, and then sentences. The
understanding of words heard is announced especially by the first
listening, by the association of certain movements with certain
sound-impressions, and of motionless objects with other
sound-impressions, before speaking begins. Hereby (3) the central
processes are already shown to be in existence. The childish logic,
especially induction from too few particulars, the mutilation of words
reproduced, the wrong applications of expressions correctly repeated,
the confounding of opposites in the verbal designation of concepts of
the child’s own formation, offer an abundance of noteworthy facts for
the genesis of mind. Moreover, the memory for sounds and words, the
imagination, especially in filling out, as well as the first acts of
judging, the forming of propositions, questioning—all these are to be
considered. As for the order in which the separate classes of words
appear, the training in learning-by-heart, speculations as to which
spoken word is first perfectly understood, to these matters I have paid
less attention, for the reason that here the differences in the child’s
surroundings exert the greatest influence. My report must, in any event,
as a rough draft of the history of the development of language in[Page 101] the
child, be very imperfect. It, however, contains nothing but perfectly
trustworthy matter of my own observation.

During the first weeks the child often cried long and vigorously from
discomfort. If one were to try to represent by written vowels the
screaming sounds, these would most nearly resemble, in the majority of
cases, a short u (oo in book), with a very quickly following prolonged
ä (ai in fair); thus, uä, uä, uä, uä, were the first sounds
that may be approximately expressed. They were uttered after the lapse
of five months exactly as at the beginning, only more vigorously. All
the other vowel-sounds were at first undefined.

Notwithstanding this uniformity in the vowel-sounds, the sounds of the
voice are so varied, even within the first five weeks, that it may be
told with certainty from these alone whether the child feels hunger or
pain or pleasure. Screaming with the eyes firmly closed in hunger,
whimpering in slight indisposition, laughing at bright objects in
motion, the peculiar grunting sounds which at a later period are joined
with abdominal pressure and with lively arm-movements, as the
announcement of completed digestion and of wetness (retained for the
first of these states even into the seventeenth month), are manifold
acoustic expressions of vitality, and are to be looked upon as the first
forerunners of future oral communication, in contrast with the
loud-sounding reflex movements of sneezing and of hiccough, and with the
infrequent snoring, snuffling (in sucking), and other loud expirations
observed in the first days, which have just as little linguistic value
as have coughing and the later clearing of the throat.[Page 102]

The voice is very powerful as early as the sixth day, especially when it
announces feelings of discomfort. Screaming is much more frequent,
persistent, and vigorous also when diluted cow’s milk is given instead
of that from the breast. If one occupies himself longer than usual with
the infant (in the first two months), the child is afterward more
inclined to cry, and cries then (as in the case of hunger) quite
differently from what he does when giving notice of something
unpleasant—e. g., wetness. Directly upon his being made dry, the crying
ceases, as now a certain contentment is attained. On the other hand, the
inclination to cry serves very early (certainly from the tenth week on)
as a sign of well-being (or increase in the growth of the muscles). At
least a prolonged silence at this season is wont to be connected with
slight ailment. But it is to be remarked that during the whole period no
serious illness, lasting more than one day, occurred.

On the forty-third day I heard the first consonant. The child, in a
most comfortable posture, uttering all sorts of obscure sounds, said
once distinctly am-ma. Of vowels, ao was likewise heard on that day.
But, on the following day, the child surprised me and others by the
syllables, spoken with perfect distinctness, ta-hu.

On the forty-sixth day, in the otherwise unintelligible babble of the
infant, I heard, once each, gö (ö nearly like i in bird), örö,
and, five days later, ara.

In the eighth and ninth weeks, the two utterances, örrö, arra,
became frequent, the ö and a being pure and the r uvular.

The syllable ma I heard by itself (it was during his crying) for the
first time on the sixty-fourth day. But[Page 103] on the following day was
sounded, during persistent, loud crying, often and distinctly (it
returned in like manner months after), nei, nei, nei, and once,
during his babbling, a-omb.

On the day after, distinctly, once each, la, grei, aho, and,
besides, ma again.

On the sixty-ninth day, the child, when hungry, uttered repeatedly and
very distinctly, mömm and ngö.

Of the syllables earlier spoken, only örrö is distinctly repeated in
the tenth week. On the seventy-first day, the child being in the most
comfortable condition, there comes the new combination, ra-a-ao, and,
five days later, in a hungry and uncomfortable mood, nä, and then
nāi-n.

The manifest sign of contentment was very distinct (on the
seventy-eighth day): habu, and likewise in the twelfth week a-i and
uāo, as well as ä-o-a, alternating with ä-a-a, ando-ä-ö.

It now became more and more difficult to represent by letters the
sounds, already more varied, and even to distinguish the vowels and
repeat them accurately. The child cries a good deal, as if to exercise
his respiratory muscles. To the sounds uttered while the child is lying
comfortably are added in the fourteenth week ntö, ha. The last was
given with an unusually loud cry, with distinct aspiration of the h,
though with no indication that the child felt any particular pleasure.
At this period I heard besides repeatedly lö, na, the latter along
with screaming at disagreeable impressions more and more frequently and
distinctly; in the fifteenth week, nannana, nā-nā, nanna in
refusal. On the[Page 104] other hand, the earlier favorite örrö has not been
heard at all for some weeks.

Screaming while waiting for his food to be prepared (milk and water) or
for the nurse, who had not sufficient nourishment for the child, is
marked, in the sixteenth week—as is also screaming on account of
unpleasant feelings—in general by predominance of the vowels, ä-ŭ,
ä-ŭ ä, ā–ŭ, ā–ŭ, ŭ-ä, ŭ-ä,
ū–ū–ā-ö, but meantime is heard amme-a, and as a sign of
special discomfort the persistent ill-sounding
ūă–ūă–ūă–ūă (ŭ = Eng. o͞o).

Screaming in the first five months expresses itself in the main by the
vowels u, ä, ö, a, with ü and o occurring more seldom, and
without other consonants, for the most part, than m.

In the fifth month no new consonants were developed except k; but a
merely passive gö, kö, aggeggĕkö, the last more rarely than the
first, was heard with perfect distinctness during the child’s yawning.

While in this case the g-sound originates passively, it was produced,
in connection with ö, evidently by the position of the tongue, when
the child was in a contented frame, as happens in nursing; ögö was
heard in the twenty-second week, as well as ma-ö-ĕ, hă,
ā, ho-ich. The i here appeared more distinct than in the third
month. The soft ch, which sounded like the g in “Honig,” was
likewise quite distinct.

About this time began the amusing loud “crowing” of the child, an
unmistakable expression of pleasure. The strong aspirate sound ha, and
this sound united with the labial r in brrr-há; corresponding in
force to the voice, which had become exceptionally powerful, must
likewise be regarded as expressions of pleasure.[Page 105] So with the sounds
aja, örrgö, ā–ā-i-ŏ–ā, which the child toward the end
of the first half-year utters as if for his own gratification as he lies
in comfort. With these belongs also the frequently repeated “eu” of the
French “heure,” and the “œu” of the French “cœur,” which is not
found in the German language, also the primitive sounds ä and ö
(German). The lips contract very regularly, and are protruded equally in
the transition from ä to ö. I heard also ijä cried out by the
child in very gay mood. In the babbling and crowing continued often for
a long time without interruption, consonants are seldom uttered, pure
vowels, with the exception of a, less often than ä and ö; i and
u are especially rare.

When the child lies on his back, he moves his arms and legs in a lively
manner even without any external provocation. He contracts and expands
all the muscles he can command, among these especially the muscles of
the larynx, of the tongue, and of the aperture of the mouth. In the
various movements of the tongue made at random it often happens that the
mouth is partly or entirely closed. Then the current of air that issues
forth in breathing bursts the barrier and thus arise many sounds, among
them some that do not exist in the German language, e. g., frequently
and distinctly, by means of labio-lingual stoppage, a consonant-sound
between p and t or between b and d, in the production of which
the child takes pleasure, as he does also in the labial brr and m.
By far the greater part of the consonant-sounds produced by the
exercises of the tongue and lips can not be represented in print; just
as the more prolonged and more manifold movements of[Page 106] the extremities,
movements made by the child when he has eaten his fill, and is not
sleepy and is left to himself, can not be drawn or described. It is
noteworthy that all the utterances of sound are expiratory. I have not
once observed an attempt to form sounds while drawing in the breath.

In the seventh month the child at one time screamed piercingly, in very
high tones, from pain. When hungry and desiring milk, he said with
perfect distinctness, mä, ä, ŭä, ŭäĕ; when contented he
would say örrö too, as at an earlier period. The screaming was
sometimes kept up with great vigor until the child began to be hoarse,
in case his desire, e. g., to leave his bed, was not granted. When the
child screams with hunger, he draws the tongue back, shortens it and
thereby broadens it, making loud expirations with longer or shorter
intervals. In pain, on the other hand, the screaming is uninterrupted
and the tones are higher than in any other screaming. During the
screaming I heard the rare l distinctly in the syllable lä. The
vowels ŭ–ā–ŭ-i-i also appeared distinctly, all as if coming
by accident, and not often pure. The t also was seldom heard; f,
s, sch, st, sp, sm, ts, ks, w, not once yet; on the
other hand, b, d, m, n, r, often; g, h, more seldom; k,
only in yawning; p, but very rarely, both in screaming and in the
child’s babble to himself or in response to friendly address.

In the eighth month the screaming sounds were for the most part
different from what they had been; the disagreeable screaming no longer
so intense and prolonged, from the time that the food of the child
consisted exclusively of pap (Kindermehl) and water. Single vowels,[Page 107]
like u and ä, are very often not to be heard pure. Often the child
does not move the lips at all when with mouth shut he lifts and drops
the larynx, and with eager desire for the pap howls; or coos like a
dove, or grunts. The prattling monologues become longer when the child
is alone, lying comfortably in bed. But definite consonants can only
with difficulty be distinguished in them, with the exception of r in
the örrö, which still continues to be uttered, though rarely and
unintentionally. Once the child, while in the bath, cried out as if
yawning, hā-upp, and frequently, when merry, a-e͡i, a-a͡u,
ă-ha͡u–ă, hörrö. When he babbles contentedly in this manner,
he moves the tongue quickly, both symmetrically, e. g., raising the
edges equally, and asymmetrically, thrusting it forward to right or
left. He often also puts out the tongue between the lips and draws it
back during expiration, producing thereby the before-mentioned
labio-lingual explosive sounds. I also heard ntĕ-ö, mi-ja, mija
(jlike Eng. y) and once distinctly oŭāĕi.

In the ninth month it is still difficult to recognize definite syllables
among the more varied utterances of sound. But the voice, often indeed
very loud and inarticulate, is already more surely modulated as the
expression of psychical states. When the child, e. g., desires a new,
especially a bright object, he not only stretches both arms in the
direction of it, indicating the direction by his gaze, but also makes
known, by the same sound he makes before taking his food, that he wants
it. This complex combination of movements of eye, larynx, tongue, lips,
and arm-muscles appears now more and more; and we can recognize in his
screaming the desire for a change of position, discomfort[Page 108] (arising from
wet, heat, cold), anger, and pain. The last is announced by screaming
with the mouth in the form of a square and by higher pitch. But delight
at a friendly expression of face also expresses itself by high crowing
sounds, only these are not so high and are not continued long. Violent
stretchings of arms and legs accompany (in the thirty-fourth week first)
the joyous utterance. Coughing, almost a clearing of the throat, is very
rare. Articulate utterances of pleasure, e. g., at music, are mä-mä,
äm-mä, mä.

Meantime the lip-movements of the m were made without the utterance of
sound, as if the child had perceived the difference. Other expressions
of sound without assignable cause are ā-au ā–ā, ā–ŏ,
a-u-au, na-na, the latter not with the tone of denial as formerly,
and often repeated rapidly in succession. As separate utterances in
comfortable mood, besides örrö came apa, ga au-ă, acha.

The tenth month is marked by the increasing distinctness of the
syllables in the monologues, which are more varied, louder, and more
prolonged when the child is left to himself than when any one tries to
entertain him. Of new syllables are to be noted ndäĕ,
bāë-bāë, ba ell, arrö.

From the forty-second week on, especially the syllables mä and
pappa, tatta, appapa, babba, tätä, pa, are frequently
uttered, and the uvular rrrr, rrra, are repeated unweariedly. The
attempts to make the child repeat syllables pronounced to him, even such
syllables as he has before spoken of his own accord, all fail. In place
of tatta he says, in the most favorable instance, tä or ata; but
even here there is progress, for in the pre[Page 109]vious month even these hints
at imitating or even responding to sound were almost entirely lacking.

In the eleventh month some syllables emphatically pronounced to the
child were for the first time correctly repeated. I said “ada” several
times, and the attentive child, after some ineffectual movements of the
lips, repeated correctly ada, which he had for that matter often said
of his own accord long before. But this single repetition was so decided
that I was convinced that the sound-imitation was intentional. It was
the first unquestionable sound-imitation. It took place on the three
hundred and twenty-ninth day. The same day when I said “mamma,” the
response was nanna. In general, it often happens, when something is
said for imitation, and the child observes attentively my lips, that
evident attempts are made at imitation; but for the most part something
different makes its appearance, or else a silent movement of the lips.

In the forty-fifth week everything said to the child, in case it
received his attention, was responded to with movements of lips and
tongue, which gave the impression of being made at random and of serving
rather for diversion.

Further, at this period the child begins during his long monologues to
whisper. He produces sounds in abundance, varying in force, pitch, and
timbre, as if he were speaking an unknown tongue; and some single
syllables may gradually be more easily distinguished, although the
corresponding positions of the mouth pass into one another, sometimes
quite gradually, sometimes rapidly. The following special cases I was
able to establish by means of numerous observations:[Page 110]

In crying rrra, there is a vibration on both sides of the edges of the
tongue, which is bent to a half-cylinder with the ridge upward. In this
way the child produces three kinds of r-sounds—the labial, the
uvular, and this bilateral-lingual.

New syllables of this period are ta-he͡e, dann-tee,
a͡a-ne͡e, ngä, tai, bä, dall, at-tall, kamm, akkee,
praï-jer, tra, ā-he͡e. Among them tra and pra are
noteworthy as the first combination of t and p with r. The
surprising combinations attall and akkee and praijer, which made
their appearance singly without any occasion that could be noticed, like
others, are probably the first attempts to reproduce the child’s own
name (Axel Preyer) from memory. Of earlier sounds, syllables, and
combinations of these, the following are especially frequent: Mammam,
apapa, örrö, papa, tata, tatta, na͡a, rrra, pata,
mmm, nă, ā, ä, a͡u, anna, attapa, dadada, ja,
ja-ja, eja, jaë. The last syllables are distinguished by the
distinct e, which is now more frequent.

All the pains taken to represent a babbling monologue perfectly by
letters were fruitless, because these distinct and oft-repeated
syllables alternated with indistinct loud and soft ones. Still, on the
whole, of the consonants the most frequent at this period are b, p,
t, d, m, n, and the new r; l, g, k, not rare. Of vowels
the a has a decided preponderance. Both u and o are rare; i very
rare. Yet a vowel is not repeated, either by itself or in a syllable,
more than five times in succession without an interval. Commonly it is
twice or three times. I have also noticed that the mechanical repetition
of the same syllable, e. g., papapa, occurs far more often than the
alternation of a distinctly spoken syllable[Page 111] with, another distinctly
spoken one, like pata. In the mean time it is certain that the child
during his various movements of lips and tongue, along with contraction
and expansion of the opening of the mouth, readily starts with surprise
when he notices such a change of acoustic effect. It seems as if he were
himself taking pleasure in practicing regularly all sorts of symmetrical
and asymmetrical positions of the mouth, sometimes in silence, sometimes
with loud voice, then again with soft voice. In the combinations of
syllables, moreover, palpable accentuation somewhat like this, appápapa
atátata, is by no means frequent. The surprisingly often repeated
dadada has generally no accent.

With regard to the question whether in this period, especially important
for the development of the apparatus of speech, any articulate utterance
of sound stands in firm association with an idea, I have observed the
child under the most varied circumstances possible without disturbing
him; but I have ascertained only one such case with certainty. The
atta, hödda, hatta, hataï, showed itself to be associated with
the perception that something disappeared, for it was uttered when some
one left the room, when the light was extinguished, and the like; also,
to be sure, sometimes when such remarkable changes were not
discoverable. Thus, the eleventh month ends without any other
indubitable firm association of articulation and idea.

In the next four weeks, up to the end of the first year of life, there
was no progress in this respect to record; but, from this time on, an
eager desire—e. g., for a biscuit seen, but out of reach—was regularly
an[Page 112]nounced by ä-na, ä-nananana, uttered loudly and with an
expression of indescribable longing.

The attempts at imitation, too, are somewhat more successful, especially
the attention is more strained. When, e. g., in the fifty-first week, I
sang something for the child, he gazed fixedly more than a minute, with
immovable countenance, without winking, at my mouth, and then moved his
own tongue. Correct repetition of a syllable pronounced to him is,
however, very rare. When I laugh, and the child observes it, he laughs
likewise, and then crows, with strong abdominal pressure. This same loud
expression of joy is exhibited when the child unexpectedly sees his
parents at a distance. This peculiar pressure, with strong expiration,
is in general associated with feelings of pleasure. The child almost
seems to delight in the discovery of his own abdominal pressure, when he
produces by means of it the very high crowing sounds with the vowel i
or a genuine grunt.

Of articulate sounds, syllables, and combinations, made without
suggestion from others in the twelfth month, I have caught the following
particularly with accuracy: haja, jajajajaja, aja, njaja,
naïn-hopp, ha-a, pa-a, dēwär, han-na, mömma, allda,
alldaï, apa-u-a, gägä, ka, ladn. Besides, the earlier atta
variously modified; no longer dada.

More important than such almost meaningless sound-formations, among
which, by the way, appears for the first time w is the now awakened
ability to discriminate between words heard. The child turns around
when his name is spoken in a loud voice; he does this, it is true, at
other loud sounds also, but then with a dif[Page 113]ferent expression. When he
hears a new tone, a new noise, he is surprised, opens his eyes wide, and
holds his mouth open, without moving.

By frequent repetition of the words, “Give the hand,” with the holding
out of the hand, I have brought the child, in the fifty-second week, to
the point of obeying this command of himself—a sure proof that he
distinguishes words heard. Another child did the same thing in the
seventh month. In this we can not fail to see the beginning of
communication by means of ordinary language, but this remained a
one-sided affair till past the third half-year, the child being simply
receptive. During this whole period, moreover, from birth on, special
sounds, particularly “sch (Eng., sh), ss, st, pst,” just the ones not
produced by the child, had a remarkable effect of a quieting character.
If the child heard them when he was screaming, he became quiet, as when
he heard singing or instrumental music.

In the first weeks of the second year of life, the child behaves just
as awkwardly as ever in regard to saying anything that is said to him,
but his attention has become more lively. When anything is said to him
for him to say—e. g., papa, mama, atta, tatta—he looks at the
speaker with eyes wide open and mouth half open, moves the tongue and
the lips, often very slightly, often vigorously, but can not at the same
time make his voice heard, or else he says, frequently with an effort of
abdominal pressure, attaï. Earlier, even in the forty-fifth week, he
had behaved in much the same way, but to the word “papa,” pronounced to
him, he had responded rrra. Once only, I remember, papa was repeated
correctly, in a faint tone, on the three[Page 114] hundred and sixty-ninth day,
almost as by one in a dream. With this exception, no word could be
repeated on command, notwithstanding the fact that the faculty of
imitation was already active in another department. The syllables most
frequently uttered at this stage were nja, njan, dada, atta,
mama, papaï, attaï, na-na-na, hatta,
meenĕ-meenĕ-meenĕ, mömm, mömma, ao-u.

Of these syllables, na-na regularly denotes a desire, and the arms are
stretched out in connection with it; mama is referred to the mother
perhaps in the fifty-fourth week, on account of the pleasure she shows
at the utterance of these syllables, but they are also repeated
mechanically without any reference to her; atta is uttered now and
then at going away, but at other times also. His joy—e. g., at
recognizing his mother at a distance—the child expresses by crowing
sounds, which have become stronger and higher than they were, but which,
can not be clearly designated; the nearest approach to a representation
of them is ăhijă. Affirmation and negation may already be
recognized by the tone of voice alone. The signification of the cooing
and the grunting sounds remains the same. The former indicates desire of
food; the latter the need of relieving the bowels. As if to exercise the
vocal cords, extraordinarily high tones are now produced, which may be
regarded as signs of pleasure in his own power. An imperfect language
has thus already been formed imperceptibly, although no single object is
as yet designated by a sound assigned to it alone. The articulation
has made progress, for on the three hundred and sixty-eighth day
appeared the first distinct s, in the syllable ssi; quite
incidentally, to be sure.[Page 115]

The most important advance consists in the now awakened understanding
of spoken words. The ability to learn, or the capability of being
trained, has emerged almost as if it had come in a night.

For it did not require frequent repetition of the question, “How tall is
the child?” along with holding up his arms, in order to make him execute
this movement every time that he heard the words, “Wie gross?” (“How
tall?”) or “ooss,” nay, even merely “oo.” It was easy, too, to induce
him to take an ivory ring, lying before him attached to a thread, into
his hand, and reach it to me prettily when I held out my hand and said,
“Where is the ring?” and, after it had been grasped, said, “Give.” In
the same way, the child holds the biscuit, which he is carrying to his
mouth, to the lips of the person who says pleasantly to him, “Give”; and
he has learned to move his head sidewise hither and thither when he
hears “No, no.” If we say to him, when he wants food or an object he has
seen, “Bitte, bitte” (say “Please”), he puts his hands together in a
begging attitude, a thing which seemed at first somewhat hard for him to
learn. Finally, he had at this time been taught to respond to the
question, “Where is the little rogue?” by touching the side of his head
with his hand (a movement he had often made of himself before).

From this it appears beyond a doubt that now (rather late in comparison
with other children) the association of words heard with certain
movements is established, inasmuch as upon acoustic impressions—at
least upon combined impressions of hearing and of sight, which are
repeated in like fashion—like movements[Page 116] follow, and indeed follow
invariably with the expression of great satisfaction on the countenance.
Yet this connection between the sensorium and the motorium is not yet
stable, for there follows not seldom upon a command distinctly uttered,
and without doubt correctly understood, the wrong movement—paramimy.
Upon the question, “How tall?” the hands are put together for “Please,”
and the like. Once when I said, “How tall?” the child raised his arms a
moment, then struck himself on the temples, and thereupon put his hands
together, as if “rogue,” and then “please,” had been said to him. All
three movements followed with the utmost swiftness, while the expression
of face was that of a person confused, with wavering look. Evidently the
child had forgotten which movement belonged with the “tall,” and
performed all the three tricks he had learned, confounding them one
with another. This confounding of arm-raising, head-shaking, giving of
the ring, putting the hands together, touching the head, is frequent. It
is also to be noticed that some one of these five tricks is almost
invariably performed by the child when some new command is given to him
that he does not understand, as he perceives that something is required
of him—the first conscious act of obedience, as yet imperfect.

In the fourteenth month there was no great increase in the number of
independent utterances of sound that can be represented by syllables of
the German language. Surprising visual impressions, like the brilliant
Christmas-tree, and the observation of new objects, drew from the
pleasurably excited child, without his having touched anything, almost
the same sounds that he at[Page 117] other times made when in discontented mood,
ŭä, mŭä, only softer; mömö and mama, and also papa are
frequent expressions of pleasure. When the child is taken away, he often
says ta-ta loudly, also, atta in a whisper. There can no longer be a
doubt that in these syllables is now expressed simply the idea of
“going.” The labial brrr, the so-called “coachman’s R,” was
practiced by the child, of his own accord, with special eagerness, and
indeed was soon pronounced so cleverly that educated adults can not
produce it in such purity and especially with so prolonged an utterance.
The only new word is dakku and daggn, which is often uttered
pleasantly with astonishing rapidity, in moments of enjoyment, e. g.,
when the child is eating food that tastes good. But it is also uttered
so often without any assignable occasion, that a definite meaning can
hardly be attributed to it, unless it be that of satisfaction. For it is
never heard when the least thing of a disagreeable sort has happened to
the child. The probability is obvious that we have here a case of
imitation of the “Thanks” (Danke) which he has not seldom heard. But the
modifications taggn, attagn, attatn, pass over into the word,
undoubtedly the original favorite, taï, ataï.

Among all the indistinct and distinct sounds of the babbling monologues,
no inspiratory ones appeared at this time either; but such did make
their appearance now and then, in a passive manner, in swallowing and in
the coughing that followed.

I spent much time in trying to get the child to repeat vowels and
syllables pronounced to him, but always without special success. When I
said plainly[Page 118] to him “pá-pá-pá,” he answered loudly ta-taï, or with
manifest effort and a vigorous straining, t-taï, k-taï, at-taï,
hattaï, and the same when “má-má” was said for him by any one, no
matter whom. He also moved lips and tongue often, as if trying to get
the sound in various ways; as if the will of the child, as he
attentively observed the mouth of the speaker, were present, but not the
ability to reproduce the sound-impression. Evidently he is taking pains
to repeat what he has heard; and he laughs at the unsuccessful effort,
if others laugh over it. The earliest success is with the repetition of
the vowels “a-u-o,” but this is irregular and inaccurate.

In contrast with these halting performances stands the precise,
parrot-like repetition of such syllables as the child had uttered of
his own accord, and which I had immediately after pronounced to him.
Thus attaï, taï, atta, were often easily and correctly repeated,
but, strangely enough, frequently in a whisper. The ä-ĕ, ä-ö,
ä-ĕ, accompanied by oscillatory movements of the hand, when
imitated directly by me was also produced again; in like manner,
regularly, the dakkn, but this course did not succeed in the case of
other primitive syllables or words, even under the most favorable
circumstances: here it is to be borne in mind that the last-named
utterances were precisely the most frequent at this period. When he was
requested with emphasis to say papa, mama, tata, he would bring
out one of the tricks he had been taught in the previous month; among
others, that of moving the head to one side and the other as if in
negation; but this it could not be, for this significance of the gesture
was wholly unknown to[Page 119] him at that time. Rather had the child received
the impression from my voice that he was to do something that he was
bidden, and he did what was easy to him just at the moment,
“mechanically,” without knowing which of the movements that he had
learned was required (cf. p. 116).

In regard to the understanding of words heard, several points of
progress are to be noted; above all a change of place in consequence of
the question, “Where is your clothes-press?” The child, standing erect,
being held by the hand, at these words turns his head and his gaze
toward the clothes-press, draws the person holding him through the large
room by the hand, although he can not walk a step alone, and then opens
the press without assistance. Here, at the beginning of the fourteenth
month, is the idea of a definite stationary object associated with a
sound heard, and so strongly that it is able to produce an independent
act of locomotion, the first one; for, although before this the
clothes-press had often been named and shown, the going to it is still
the child’s own performance.

It is now a matter of common occurrence that other words heard have also
a definite relation to objects seen. The questions, “Where is papa?
mamma? the light?” are invariably answered correctly, after brief
deliberation, by turning the head (at the word “light,” occasionally
since the ninth month) and the gaze in the proper direction, and by
lifting the right arm, often also the left, to point, the fingers of the
outstretched hand being at the same time generally spread out. In the
previous month, only the association of the word mama with the
appearance of the mother was established.[Page 120] The following are now added
to the movements executed upon hearing certain words. The child likes to
beat with his hands upon the table at which he is sitting. I said to
him, “Play the piano,” and made the movement after him. Afterward, when
I merely said the word “piano” to the child (who was at the time quiet),
without moving my hands, he considered for a few seconds, and then
beat again with his hands on the table. Thus the recollection of the
sound was sufficient to bring out the movement. Further, the child had
accustomed himself, of his own accord, to give a regular snort,
contracting the nostrils, pursing up the mouth, and breathing out
through the nose. If now any one spoke to him of the “nose,” this
snorting was sure to be made. The word put the centro-motors into a
state of excitement. The same is true of the command “Give!” since the
child reaches out the object he is holding or is about to take hold of,
in case any one puts out the hand or the lips to him. Some weeks ago
this took place only with the ring and biscuit; now the word “give” has
the same effect with any object capable of being grasped, but it
operates almost like a reflex stimulus, “mechanically,” without its
being even once the case that the act of giving is a purely voluntary
act or even occasioned by sympathy.

In these already learned co-ordinated movements made upon hearing the
words “Please, How tall? rogue! no! piano! ring! give!” all of which are
now executed with shorter intervals of deliberation as if by a
well-trained animal, there is in general absolutely no deeper
understanding present than that to this and the other sound-impression
belong this and the other move[Page 121]ment. By means of daily repetition of
both, the time required for the production of the movement after the
excitement of the auditory nerve becomes less and less, the doubt as to
which movement follows this or that sound withdrawing more and more. At
last the responsive movements followed without any remarkable strain of
attention. They became habitual.

Now and then, however, the movements are still confounded. Upon “no!
no!” follows the touching of the head; upon “please,” the shaking of the
head; upon “rogue,” the putting of the hands together, etc. These errors
become frequent when a new impression diverts the attention. They become
more and more rare through repetition of the right movements made for
the child to see and through guiding the limbs of the child. A further
evidence of the increased ability to learn toward the end of the month
is the fact that the hands are raised in the attitude of begging not
only at the command “Please,” but also at the question, “How does the
good child behave?” Thus, the experience is beginning to become a
conscious one that, in order to obtain anything, the begging attitude is
useful.

The fifteenth month brought no new definite independent utterances of
sound with the exception of wa. Sensations and emotions, however, are
indicated more and more definitely and variously by sounds that are
inarticulate and sometimes unintelligible. Thus, astonishment is
expressed by hā–ā ĕā–ĕ; joy by vigorous crowing in very
high tones and more prolonged than before; further, very strong desire
by repeated häö, hä-ĕ; pain, impatience, by screaming in vowels
which pass over into one another.[Page 122]

The only word that is unquestionably used of the child’s own motion to
indicate a class of perceptions is still atta, ha-atta, which during
the following month also is uttered softly, for the most part, on going
out, and which signifies “away” or “gone” (weg), and still continues to
be used also as it was in the eleventh month, when a light is dimmed (by
a lamp-shade). Beyond this no syllable can be named that marked the dawn
of mental independence, none that testified to the voluntary use of
articulate sounds for the purpose of announcing perceptions. For the
brrr, the frequent dakkn, mamam, mömö, and papap, are without
significance in the monologues. Even the saying of atta, with turning
of the head toward the person going away, has acquired the meaning of
“away” (fort) only through being repeatedly said to the child upon his
being carried out; but no one said the word when the lamp was
extinguished. Here has been in existence for some time not only the
formation of the concept, but also the designation of the concept by
syllables. The similarity in the very different phenomena of going away
and of the dimming of the light, viz., the disappearance of a visual
impression, was not only discovered, but was named by the child entirely
independently in the eleventh month, and has kept its name up to the
present time. He has many impressions; he perceives, he unites qualities
to make concepts. This he has been doing for a long time without words;
but only in this one instance does the child express one of his
concepts in language after a particular instance had been thus named for
him, and then the word he uses is one not belonging to his later
language, but one that belongs to all children the world over.[Page 123]

In regard to the repeating of syllables pronounced to him a marked
advance is noticeable. The child can not, indeed, by any means repeat
na and pa and o or e and be. He answers a, taï,
ta-a-o-ö-a, and practices all sorts of tongue-and lip-exercises. But
the other syllables uttered by him, especially anna, taï, dakkn,
a, he says in response to any one who speaks them distinctly to him,
and he gives them easily and correctly in parrot fashion. If a new word
is said to him, e. g., “kalt” (cold), which he can not repeat, he
becomes vexed, turns away his head, and screams, too, sometimes. I have
been able to introduce into his vocabulary only one new word. In the
sixty-third week he seized a biscuit that had been dipped in hot water,
let it fall, drew down the corners of his mouth, and began to cry. Then
I said “heiss” (hot), whereupon the child, speedily quieted, repeated
haï and haï-s (with a just discernible s). Three days later the
same experiment was made. After this the haïs, haïsses, with
distinct s, was often heard without any occasion. Some days later I
wanted him to say “hand.” The child observed my mouth closely, took
manifest pains, but produced only ha-ïss, then very distinctly hass
with sharp ss, and ha-ith, hadith, with the English th; at
another time distinctly ha-its. Thus, at a time when ts = z can
not be repeated, there exists the possibility of pronouncing z. When I
said to him “warm,” ass was pronounced with an effort and distinctly,
although the syllable wa belonged to the child’s stock of words. This
was evidently a recollection of the previous attempts to repeat “heiss”
and “hand.”

Corresponding to this inability to say words after[Page 124] another’s utterance
of them is an articulation as yet very imperfect. Still, there is
indication of progress in the distinctness of the s, the frequent
English th with the thrusting out of the tip of the tongue between the
incisors, the w, which now first appears often, as well as in the
smacking first heard in the sixty-fifth week (in contented mood). The
tongue is, when the child is awake, more than other muscles that in the
adult are subject to cerebral volition, almost always in motion even
when the child is silent. It is in various ways partly contracted,
extended, bent. The lateral bending of the edges of the tongue downward
and the turning back of the tip of the tongue (from left to right) so
that the lower surface lies upward, are not easily imitated by adults.
The mobility of my child’s tongue is at any rate much greater than that
of my tongue, notwithstanding the fact that, in consequence of varied
practice from an early period in rapid speaking, the most difficult
performances in rapid speaking are still easily executed by mine. The
tongue is unquestionably the child’s favorite plaything. One might
almost speak of a lingual delirium in his case, as in that of the
insane, when he pours forth all sorts of disconnected utterances,
articulate and inarticulate, in confusion; and yet I often saw his
tongue affected with fibrillar contractions as if the mastery of the
hypoglossus were not as yet complete. Quite similar fibrillar movements
seem to be made by the tongue in bulbar paralysis, and in the case of
dogs and guinea-pigs whose hypoglossus has been severed.

To the number of words heard that already produce a definite movement
are added the following new ones.[Page 125] The child is asked, “Where is the
moon? the clock? the eye? the nose?” and he raises an arm, spreads the
fingers, and looks in the proper direction. If I speak of “coughing,” he
coughs; of “blowing,” he blows; of “kicking,” he stretches out his legs;
of “light,” he blows into the air, or, if there is a lamp in sight,
toward that, looking at it meantime—a reminiscence of the blowing out
of matches and candles often seen by him. It requires great pains to get
from him the affirmative nod of the head at the spoken “ja, ja.” Not
till the sixty-fourth week was this achieved by means of frequent
repetition and forcible direction, and the movement was but awkwardly
executed even later—months after. On hearing the “no, no,” the negative
shake of the head now appeared almost invariably, and this was executed
as by adults without the least uncertainty.

The holding out of his hand at hearing “Give the hand,” occurs almost
invariably, but is not to be regarded as a special case of understanding
of the syllable “give,” for the word “hand” alone produces the same
result.

All these accomplishments, attained by regular training, do not afford
the least evidence of an understanding of what is commanded when the
sound-impression is converted into motor impulse. It is rather a matter
of the establishment of the recollection of the customary association of
both during the interval of deliberation. The words and muscular
contractions that belong together are less often confounded, and the
physiological part of the process takes less time, but its duration is
noticeably prolonged when the child is not quite well. He deliberates
for as much as twelve seconds when the[Page 126] question is asked him, “Where is
the rogue?” and then responds with the proper gesture (p. 115).

The sixteenth month brought few new articulate utterances of sound, none
associated with a definite meaning; on the other hand, there was a
marked progress in repeating what was said to the child, and especially
in the understanding of words heard.

Among the sounds of his own making are heard—along with the hä!
hä-ö! ha-ĕ! hĕ–ĕ! that even in the following months often
expresses desire, but often also is quite without meaning—more seldom
hi, gö-gö, gö, f-pa (the f for the first time), a͡u, and
more frequently ta, dokkn, tá-ha, a-bwa-bwa,
bŭā-bŭ–ā, and, as if by accident, once among all sorts of
indefinable syllables, dagon. Further, the child—as was the case in
the previous month—likes to take a newspaper or a book in his hands and
hold the print before his face, babbling ä-ĕ, ä-ĕ, ä-ĕ,
evidently in imitation of the reading aloud which he has often observed.
By giving the command, “Read!” it was easy to get this performance
repeated. Besides this, it is a delight to the child to utter a
syllable—e. g., bwa or ma—over and over, some six times in
succession, without stopping. As in the previous month, there are still
the whispered attö and hattö, at the hiding of the face or of the
light, at the shutting of a fan, or the emptying of a soup-plate,
together with the dakkn, with the combinations of syllables made out
of ta, pa, ma, na, at, ap, am, an, and with mömö. The
papa and mama do not, however, express an exclusive relation to the
parents. Only to the questions, “Where is papa?” “Where is mamma?” he
points toward them, raising his hand with the fingers spread. Pain is
an[Page 127]nounced by loud and prolonged screaming; joy by short, high-pitched,
piercing crowing, in which the vowel i appears.

Of isolated vowels, a only was correctly repeated on command. Of
syllables, besides those of the previous month, mö and ma; and here
the child’s excessive gayety over the success of the experiment is
worthy of remark. He made the discovery that his parrot-like repetition
was a fresh source of pleasure, yet he could not for several weeks
repeat again the doubled syllables, but kept to the simple ones, or
responded with all sorts of dissimilar ones, like attob, or said
nothing. The syllable ma was very often given back as hömá and
hömö; pa was never given back, but, as had been the case
previously, only ta and taï were the responses, made with great
effort and attention, and the visible purpose of repeating correctly. To
the word “danke,” pronounced for him with urgency innumerable times, the
response is dakkn, given regularly and promptly, and this in the
following months also. If all persuasion failed, and the child were then
left to himself without any direction of his attention, then not
infrequently new imitations of sounds would be given correctly—e. g.,
when I said “bo”—but these, again, would no longer succeed when called
for. Indeed, such attempts often broke down utterly at once. Thus the
child once heard a hen making a piteous outcry, without seeing the
creature, and he tried in vain to imitate the sound, but once only, and
not again. On the other hand, he often succeeds in repeating correctly
movements of the tongue made for him to see, as the thrusting out of the
tongue between the lips, by reason of the extraordinary mobility of his[Page 128]
tongue and lips; he even tries to smack in imitation. The more frequent
partial contractions of the tongue, without attempts at speaking, are
especially surprising. On one side, toward the middle of the tongue,
rises a longitudinal swelling; then the edges are brought together, so
that the tongue almost forms a closed tube; again, it is turned
completely back in front. Such flexibility as this hardly belongs to the
tongue of any adult. Besides, the lips are often protruded a good deal,
even when this is not required in framing vocables.

The gain in the understanding of words heard is recognizable in this,
that when the child hears the appropriate word, he takes hold, with
thumb and forefinger, in a most graceful manner, of nose, mouth, beard,
forehead, chin, eye, ear, or touches them with the thumb. But in doing
this he often confounds ear and eye, chin and forehead, even nose and
ear. “O” serves in place of “Ohr” (ear); “Au” in place of “Auge” (eye).
In both cases the child soon discovered that these organs are in pairs,
and he would seize with the right hand the lobe of my left and of my
right ear alternately after I had asked “Ear?” How easily in such cases
a new sound-impression causes confusion is shown by the following fact:
After I had at one time pointed out one ear, and had said, “Other ear,”
I succeeded, by means of repetition, in getting him to point out this
other one also correctly every time. Now, then, the thing was to apply
what had been learned to the eye. When one eye had been pointed out, I
asked, “Where is the other eye?” The child grasped at an ear, with the
sight of which the sound “other” was now associated. Not till long after
(in the twentieth month) did he learn to apply[Page 129] this sound of himself to
different parts of the body. On the other hand, he understands perfectly
the significance of the commands, “Bring, fetch, give——”; he brings,
fetches, gives desired objects, in which case, indeed, the gesture and
look of the speaker are decisive; for, if these are only distinctly
apprehended, it does not make much difference which word is said, or
whether nothing is said.

In the seventeenth month, although no disturbance of the development
took place, there was no perceptible advance in the utterance of
thoughts by sounds, or in the imitation of syllables pronounced by
others, or in articulation, but there was a considerable increase of the
acoustic power of discrimination in words heard and of the memory of
sounds.

Of syllables original with the child, these are new: Bibi,
nä-nä-nä—the first has come from the frequent hearing of “bitte”; the
last is an utterance of joy at meeting and an expression of the desire
to be lifted up. Otherwise, longing, abhorrence, pleasure and pain,
hunger and satiety, are indicated by pitch, accent, timbre, intensity
of the vocal sounds, more decidedly than by syllables. A peculiar
complaining sound signifies that he does not understand; another one,
that he does not wish. In place of atta, at the change of location of
an object perceived, comes often a t-tó and höt-tó, with the lips
much protruded. But, when the child himself wishes to leave the room,
then he takes a hat, and says atta, casting a longing look at his
nurse, or repeatedly taking hold of the door.

Of voluntary attempts to imitate sounds, the most noteworthy were the
efforts to give the noise heard[Page 130] on the winding of a time-piece, and to
repeat tones sung.

The associations of words heard with seen, tangible objects on the one
hand, and, on the other hand, with definite co-ordinated muscular
movements, have become considerably more numerous. Thus the following
are already correctly distinguished, being very rarely confounded: Uhr
(clock), Ohr (ear); Schuh (shoe), Stuhl (chair), Schulter (shoulder),
Fuss (foot); Stirn (forehead), Kinn (chin); Nase (nose), blasen (blow);
Bart (beard), Haar (hair); heiss (hot), Fleisch (meat).

In addition to the above, eye, arm, hand, head, cheek, mouth, table,
light, cupboard, flowers, are rightly pointed out.

The child so often obeys the orders he hears—”run,” “kick,” “lie down,”
“cough,” “blow,” “bring,” “give,” “come,” “kiss”—that when he
occasionally does not obey, the disobedience must be ascribed no longer,
as before, to deficient understanding, but to caprice, or, as may be
discerned beyond a doubt from the expression of his countenance, to a
genuine roguishness. Thus the spoken consonants are at last surely
recognized in their differences of sound.

In the eighteenth month this ability of the ear to discriminate, and
with it the understanding of spoken words, increases. “Finger, glass,
door, sofa, thermometer, stove, carpet, watering-pot, biscuit,” are
rightly pointed out, even when the objects, which were at first touched,
or merely pointed at, along with loud and repeated utterance of those
words, are no longer present, but objects like them are present. Say
“Finger,” and the child takes hold of his own fingers only; “Ofen”[Page 131]
(stove), then he invariably at first looks upward (“oben”). Besides the
earlier commands, the following are correctly obeyed: “Find, pick up,
take it, lay it down.” Hand him a flower, saying, “Smell,” and he often
carries it to his nose without opening his mouth.

The repeating of syllables spoken for him is still rare; “mamma” is
responded to by ta. The voluntary repeating of syllables heard by
chance is likewise rare; in particular, “jaja” is now repeated with
precision.

The atta, which used to be whispered when anything disappeared from
the child’s field of vision, has changed to tto and t-tu and ftu,
with pouting of the lips.

In the monologues appear näi, mimi, päpä, mimiä, pata,
rrrrr, the last uvular and labial for minutes at a time. But these
meaningless utterances are simply signs of well-being in general, and
are gladly repeated from pleasure in the exercise of the tongue and
lips. The tongue still vibrates vigorously with fibrillar contractions
when it is at rest, the mouth being open.

Characteristic for this period is the precision with which the various
moods of feeling are expressed, without articulate sounds, by means of
the voice, now become very high and strong, in screaming and crowing,
then again in wailing, whimpering, weeping, grunting, squealing; so that
the mood is recognized by the voice better than ever before, especially
desire, grief, joy, hunger, willfulness, and fear. But this language can
not be represented by written characters.

The same holds good of the nineteenth month, in which bawling and
babbling are more rare, the spontaneous sound-imitations are more
frequent, the vocal cords are strained harder, the mechanism of
articulation[Page 132] works with considerably more ease; the understanding and
the retention of spoken words have perceptibly increased, but no word of
the child’s own, used always in the same sense, is added.

When the child has thrown an object from the table to the floor, he
often follows it with his gaze and whispers, even when he does not know
he is observed, atta or t-ta, which is here used in the same sense
with tuff or ft or ftu, for “fort” (gone).

When he had taken a newspaper out of the paper-basket and had spread it
on the floor, he laid himself flat upon it, holding his face close to
the print, and said—evidently of his own accord, imitating, as he had
done before, the reading aloud of the newspaper, which had often been
witnessed by him—repeating it for a long time in a monotonous voice,
e-já-e-e-já nanana ána-ná-na atta-ána āje-já sā; then he tore
the paper into many small pieces, and next turned the leaves of books,
uttering pa-pa-ab ta hö-ö-ĕ mömömöm hö-önĕ.

Such monologues are, however, exceptional at this period, the rule being
uniform repetitions of the same syllable, e. g., habb habb habb habb
habbwa habbua.

Screaming when water of 26° C. was poured over him in the bath appeared,
a few days after the first experiment of this sort, even before the
bathing, at sight of the tub, sponge, and water. Previously, fear had
only in very rare cases occasioned screaming, now the idea of the cold
and wet that were to be expected was enough to occasion violent
screaming. After about three weeks of daily bathing with water from 18
to 24° C., however, the screaming decreased again. The experience that a
pleasant feeling of warmth succeeded,[Page 133] may have forced the recollection
of the unpleasant feeling into the background. But the screaming can not
at all be represented by letters; ä and ö do not suffice. The same
is true of the screaming, often prolonged, before falling asleep in the
evening, which occurs not seldom also without any assignable occasion,
the child making known by it his desire to leave the bed. As this desire
is not complied with, the child perceives the uselessness of the
screaming, and at length obeys the command, “Lie down,” without our
employing force or expedients for soothing him.

How far the power of imitation and of articulation is developed, is
shown especially by the fact that now, at last, pa is correctly
pronounced in response; in the beginning ta was still frequently the
utterance, then ba, finally pa almost invariably given correctly.

Further, these results were obtained:

In bits appears with perfect distinctness (as already in the fifteenth
month) the very rare ts = z. The “hart” was once only confounded
with “haar,” and responded to by grasping at the hair. The bits soon
served to add force to the putting together of the hands in the attitude
of begging; it is thus the first attempt at the employment of a German
word to denote a state of his own, and that the state of desire. The
other words[Page 134] said to him, and illustrated by touching and putting the
hands upon objects, could not be given by him in response. When he was
to say “weich” (soft), “kalt” (cold), “nass” (wet), he turned his head
away in repugnance, as formerly. To “nass” he uttered in reply, once
only, na. Smacking, when made for him, was imitated perfectly. The
early morning hours, in which the sensibility of the brain is at its
highest, are the best adapted to such experiments; but these experiments
were not multiplied, in order that the independent development might not
be disturbed.

The progress in the discrimination of words heard, and in the firm
retention of what has been repeatedly heard, is shown particularly in
more prompt obedience, whether in abstaining or in acting.

To the list of objects correctly pointed out upon request are added
“leg, nail, spoon, kettle,” and others. It is noteworthy, too, that now,
if the syllables pa and ma, or papaand mamma, are prefixed to
the names of the known parts of the face and head, the child points
these out correctly; e. g., to the question “Where is Mamma-ear,” the
child responds by taking hold of the ear of his mother, and to
“papa-ear,” of that of his father; so with “nose, eye,” etc. But if
asked for “mamma-beard,” the child is visibly embarrassed, and finally,
when there is a laugh at his hesitation, he laughs too.

The old tricks, “How tall is the child?” and “Where is the little
rogue?” which have not been practiced for months past, have been
retained in memory, for when in the eighty-second week I brought out
both questions with urgency, the child be[Page 135]thought himself for several
seconds, motionless, then suddenly, after the first question, raised
both arms. After the other question he likewise considered for several
seconds, and then pointed to his head as he used to do. His memory for
sound-impressions often repeated and associated with specific movements
is consequently good.

In the twentieth month there was an important advance to be recorded in
his manner of repeating what was said to him. Suddenly, on the five
hundred and eighty-fourth day, the child is repeating correctly and
without difficulty words of two syllables that consist either of two
like syllables—for the sake of brevity I will call these
like-syllabled—or of syllables the second of which is the reverse of
the first—such I call reverse-syllabled. Thus of the first class are
papa, mama, bebe, baba, neinei, jaja, bobo, bubu; of the
second class, otto, enne, anna; these are very frequently given
back quickly and faultlessly at this period, after the repetition of the
single syllables pa, ma, and others had gone on considerably more
surely than before, and the child had more often tried of himself to
imitate what he heard. These imitations already make sometimes the
impression of not being voluntary. Thus the child once—in the
eighty-third week—observed attentively a redstart in the garden for two
full minutes, and then imitated five or six times, not badly, the piping
of the bird, turning round toward me afterward. It was when he saw me
that the child first seemed to be aware that he had made attempts at
imitation at all. For his countenance was like that of one awaking from
sleep, and he could not now be induced to imitate sounds. After five
days[Page 136] the spectacle was repeated. Again the piping of the bird was
reproduced, and in the afternoon the child took a cow, roughly carved
out of wood, of the size of the redstart, made it move back and forth on
the table, upon its feet, and chirped now as he had done at sight of the
bird; imagination was here manifestly much excited. The wooden animal
was to represent the bird, often observed in the garden, and nesting in
the veranda; and the chirping and piping were to represent its voice.

On the other hand, words of unlike syllables, like “Zwieback” (biscuit),
“Butterbrod,” are either not given back at all or only in unrecognizable
fashion, in spite of their being pronounced impressively for him.
“Trocken” (dry) yields sometimes tokkĕ, tokko, otto. Words of
one syllable also offer generally great difficulties of articulation:
thus “warm” and “weich” become wāi, “kalt” and “hart” become
hatt. Although “bi” and “te” are often rightly given each by itself,
the child can not combine the two, and turns away with repugnance when
he is to reproduce “bi-te.” The same thing frequently happens, still,
even with “mamma” and “papa.” But the child, when in lively spirits,
very often pronounces of his own accord the syllables “bi” and “te”
together, preferring, indeed, bidth (with English th) and beet to
“bitte.” In place of “adjö” (adieu) he gives back adē and
adjē. Nor does he succeed in giving back three syllables; e. g.,
the child says papa, but not “papagei”, and refuses altogether to
repeat “gei” and “pagei.” The same is true of “Gut,” “Nacht,” although
he of himself holds out his hand for “Gute Nacht.”

When others laugh at anything whatsoever, the child laughs regularly
with them, a purely imitative movement.[Page 137]

It is surprising that the reproducing of what is said to him succeeds
best directly after the cold bath in the morning, when the child has
been screaming violently and has even been shivering, or when he is
still screaming and is being rubbed dry, and, as if resigned to his
fate, lies almost without comprehension. The will, it would seem, does
not intrude here as a disturbing force, and echolalia manifests itself
in its purity, as in the case of hypnotics. The little creature is
subdued and powerless. But he speedily recovers himself, and then it is
often quite hard to tell whether he will not or can not say the word
that is pronounced to him.

The understanding of single words, especially of single questions and
commands, is considerably more prompt than in the previous month.
Without there being any sort of explanation for it, this extraordinary
understanding is here, manifesting itself particularly when the child is
requested to fetch and carry all sorts of things. He has observed and
touched a great deal, has listened less, except when spoken to. All
training in tricks and performances, an evil in the modern education of
children hard to avoid, was, however, suppressed as far as possible, so
that the only new things were “making a bow” and “kissing the hand.” The
child practices both of these toward the end of the month, without
direction, at coming and going. Many new objects, such as window, bed,
knife, plate, cigar, his own teeth and thumbs, are correctly pointed
out, if only the corresponding word is distinctly pronounced. Yet “Ofen”
and “oben” are still confounded.

To put into written form the syllables invented by[Page 138] the child
independently, and to get at a sure denotation of objects by them, is
exceedingly difficult, particularly when the syllables are merely
whispered as the objects are touched, which frequently occurs. At the
sight of things rolled noisily, especially of things whirling in a
circle, the child would utter rodi, otto, rojo, and like sounds,
in general, very indistinctly. Only one new concept could with
certainty be proved to be associated with a particular sound. With
dā and ndā, frequently uttered on the sudden appearance of a
new object in the field of vision, in a lively manner, loudly and with a
peculiarly demonstrative accent—also with tā and ntā—the
child associates, beyond a doubt, existence, coming, appearing, shooting
forth, emerging, in contrast with the very often softly spoken,
whispered atta, f-tu, tuff, which signifies “away” or “gone.” If I
cover my head and let the child uncover it, he laughs after taking off
the handkerchief, and says loudly da; if I leave the room, he says
atta or hätta, or ft or t-ta, generally softly; the last of
these, or else hata, he says if he would like to be taken out himself.
In the eighty-seventh week we went away on a journey, and on the
railway-train the child, with an expression of terror or of anxious
astonishment, again and again said attah, but without manifesting the
desire for a change of place for himself, even by stretching out his
arms.

Two words only—papa for father, and bät or bit for “bitte,” are,
besides, rightly applied of the child’s own accord. The prolonged
screaming, from wantonness, of nānānānā, nom-nom,
hāhā, lālā, chiefly when running about, has no definite
meaning. The child exercises himself a good deal in loud outcry, as if
he wanted to[Page 139] test the power of his voice. These exercises evidently
give him great pleasure. Still the highest crowing tones are no longer
quite so high and piercing as they were formerly. The vocal cords have
become larger, and can no longer produce such high tones. The screaming
sounds of discontent, which continue to be repeated sometimes till
hoarseness appears, but rarely in the night, have, on the contrary, as
is the case with the shrill sounds of pain, scarcely changed their
character, hä-e, hä-ä-ä-ĕ, ĕ. They are strongest in the
bath, during the pouring on of cold water.

The child, when left to himself, keeps up all the time his loud readings
(“Lesestudien”). He “reads” in a monotonous way maps, letters,
newspapers, drawings, spreading them out in the direction he likes, and
lies down on them with his face close to them, or holding the sheet with
his hands close to his face, and, as before, utters especially
vowel-sounds.

In the twenty-first month imitative attempts of this kind became more
frequent; but singularly enough the babbling—from the eighty-ninth week
on—became different. Before this time vowels were predominant, now more
consonants are produced. When something is said for the child to
reproduce that presents insuperable difficulties of articulation, then
he moves tongue and lips in a marvelous fashion, and often says
ptö-ptö, pt-pt, and verlapp, also dla-dla, without meaning, no
matter what was the form of the word pronounced to him. In such practice
there often appears likewise a wilfulness, showing itself in
inarticulate sounds and the shaking of the head, even when it is merely
the repetition of easy like-syllabled words that is[Page 140] desired. Hence, in
the case of new words, it is more difficult than before, or is even
impossible to determine whether the child will not or whether he can
not reproduce them. Words of unlike syllables are not repeated at all,
not even “bitte.” In place of “danke” are heard dang-gee and
dank-kee; the former favorite dakkn is almost never heard. In most
of the attempts at sound imitation, the tendency to the doubling of
syllables is worthy of notice. I say “bi,” and the answer is bibi;
then I say “te,” and the answer is te-te. If I say “bi-te,” the answer
is likewise bibi; a single time only, in spite of daily trial, the
answer was bi-te, as if by oversight.

This doubling of syllables, involuntary and surely contrary to the will
of the child, stands in remarkable contrast with the indolence he
commonly shows in reproducing anything said, even when the fault is not
to be charged to teasing, stubbornness, or inability. The child then
finds more gratification in other movements than those of the muscles of
speech. The babbling only, abounding in consonants, yields him great
pleasure, particularly when it is laughed at, although it remains wholly
void of meaning as language. Yet bibi, like bäbä, for “bitte,” is
correctly used by the child of his own accord.

A new word, and one that gives notice of a considerable advance, is the
term used by the child when hungry and thirsty, for “milk” or “food.” He
says, viz., with indescribable longing in his voice, mimi, more rarely
than before mämä and mömöm (page 85). The first appellation was
certainly taken from the often-heard “milk” by imitation, and applied to
biscuit[Page 141] and other kinds of food. If the child, when he has eaten
enough, is asked, “Do you want milk?” he says without direction,
neinein; he has thus grasped and turned to use already the
signification of the sound. The same is, perhaps, true also of “ja.” For
previously, when I asked the child as he was eating, “Does it taste
good?” he was silent, and I would say, “Say jaja,” and this would be
correctly repeated. But in the ninety-first week he, of his own accord,
answers the question with jaja—”yes, yes.” This, too, may rest simply
on imitation, without a knowledge of the meaning of the ja, and
without an understanding of the question; yet there is progress in the
recollection of the connection of the sound “schmeckt’s” with jaja,
the intermediate links being passed over.

In other cases, too, the strength of the memory for sounds is plainly
manifested. To all questions of an earlier period, “Where is the
forehead, nose, mouth, chin, beard, hair, cheek, eye, ear, shoulder?”
the child now at once pointed correctly in every instance, although he
might not have answered them for anybody even once for two weeks. Only
the question, “Where is the thumb?” made him hesitate. But when the
thumb had been again shown to him (firmly pressed), he knew it, and from
that time pointed it out invariably without delay. To the question,
“Where is the eye?” he is accustomed to shut both eyes quickly at the
same time and to open them again, and then to point to my eye; to the
question, “Axel’s eye?” he responds by pointing to his own; to the
question, “The other eye?” by pointing to the one not touched.

In the understanding of what is spoken astonishing[Page 142] progress has been
made—e. g., if I say, “Go, take the hat and lay it on the chair!” the
child executes the order without considering more than one or two
seconds. He knows the meaning of a great number of words that no one has
taught him—e. g., “whip, stick, match, pen.” Objects of this sort are
surely distinguished by the child, for, upon receiving orders, he gets,
picks up, brings, lays down, gives these things each by itself.

This understanding of spoken words is the more surprising, as his
repetition of them continues still to be of a very rudimentary
character. With the exception of some interjections, especially
jāĕ as a joyous sound and of crowing sounds, also screaming
sounds, which, however, have become more rare, the child has but few
expressions of his own with a recognizable meaning; ndä, ndä, da
is demonstrative “da” (“there”) at new impressions.

Att, att, att, is unintelligible, perhaps indicative of movement.

Attah means “we are off” (upon setting out) and “I want to go” (“ich
will fort”); tatass, tatass is unintelligible, possibly a
sound-imitation.

When traveling by rail the child tried several times to imitate the
hissing of the steam of the locomotive.

In the twenty-second month again there are several observations to
record, which show the progress in understanding, the strengthening of
the memory, and the greater facility in articulation. The child executes
the orders given him with surprising accuracy, although the words spoken
have not previously been impressed on him separately. Here, indeed, it
is essential to consider the looks and gestures of those who give the
or[Page 143]ders; but the child also does what I request of him without looking
at me. Instances of confusion among the words known to him are also
perceptibly more rare. Once I asked him very distinctly, “Where’s the
moon?” (Mond), and for answer the child pointed to his mouth (Mund). But
the error was not repeated.

The strength of the word-memory appears particularly in this, that all
the objects learned are more quickly pointed out on request than they
were previously, and the facility of articulation is perceived in the
multiplying of consonants in the monologues and in the frequent
spontaneous utterance of pss, ps, ptsch (once), and pth (Engl.).
The child says, without any occasion, pa-ptl-dä, pt, and gives a
loud greeting from a distance with ha͞a-ö, with ada, and ana.

It seemed to me remarkable that the boy began several times without the
least incitement to sing tolerably well. When I expressed my approval
of it, he sprang about, overjoyed. At one time he sang, holding his
finger on his tongue, first rollo, rollo, innumerable times, then
mama, mama, mämä, mama.

The progress in the sound-mechanism is most plainly discerned in the
greater certainty in reproducing what is spoken. Thus, “pst” is
correctly given, and of reverse-syllabled words, very accurately, “anna,
otto, alla, appa, enne”; of unlike-syllabled words, “lina,” but still,
notwithstanding many trials, not yet “bitte.” For the first time
three-syllabled words also, plainly pronounced to him, were correctly
given back, viz., a-mama and a-pa-pa, as the child names his
grandparents. Hitherto the vowels e, i, o, u, could not be
correctly given every time, but “a” could be so given as before.[Page 144] When
the reproduction of any new word that is too hard is requested—e. g.,
“gute Nacht”—the child at this period regularly answers tapĕta,
pĕta, pta, and ptö-ptö, also rateratetat, expressing thereby
not merely his inability, but also, sometimes roguishly, his
disinclination to repeat.