Before the child is in a condition to recognize as belonging to him the parts of his body that he can feel and see, he must have had a great number of experiences, which are for the most part associated withpainful feelings. How little is gained for the development of the notion of the "I" by means of the first movements of the hands, which the infant early carries to the mouth, and which must give him, when he sucks them, a different feeling from that given by sucking the finger of another person, or other suitable objects, appears from the fact that, e. g., my child for months tugged at his fingers as if he wanted to pull them off, and struck his own head with his hand by way of experiment. At the close of the first year he had a fancy for striking hard substances against his teeth, and made a regular play of gnashing the teeth. When on the four hundred and ninth day he stood up straight in bed, holding on to the railing of it with his hands,he bit himself on his bare arm, and that the upper arm, so that he immediately cried out with pain. The marks of the incisors were to be seen long afterward. The child did not a second time bite himself in the arm, but only bit his fingers, and inadvertently his tongue.
The same child, who likes to hold a biscuit to the mouth of any member of the family to whom he is favorably disposed, offered the biscuit in the same way, entirely of his own accord, to his own foot—sitting onthe floor, holding the biscuit in a waiting attitude to his toes—and this strange freak was repeated many times in the twenty-third month. The child amused himself with it.
Thus, at a time when the attention to what is around is already very far developed, one's own person may not be distinguished from the environment. Vierordt thinks that a discrimination between the general feelings [i. e., those caused by bodily states] and the sensations that pertain to the external world exists in the third month. From my observations I can not agree with him; for, although the division may begin thus early, yet it does not become complete until much later. In the ninth month the feet are still eagerly felt of by the little hands, though not so eagerly as before, and the toes are carried to the mouth like a new plaything. Nay, even in the nineteenth month it is not yet clear how much belongs to one's own body. The child had lost a shoe. I said, "Give the shoe." He stooped, seized it, and gave it to me. Then, when I said to the child, as he was standing upright on the floor, "Give the foot," in the expectation that he would hold it out, stretch it toward me, he grasped at it with both hands, and labored hard to get it and hand it to me.
How little he understands, even after the first year of his life has passed, the difference between the parts of his own body and foreign objects is shown also in some strange experiments that the child conducted quite independently. He sits by me at the table and strikes very often and rapidly with his hands successive blows upon the table, at first gently, then hard; then, with the right hand alone, hard; next, suddenly strikes himself with the same hand on the mouth; then he holds his hand to his mouth for a while, strikes the table again with the right hand, and then on a sudden strikes his own head (above the ear). The whole performance gave exactly the impression of his having for the first time noticed that it is one thing to strike oneself, one's own hard head, and another thing to strike a foreign hard object (forty-first week). Even in the thirteenth month the child often raps his head with his hand to try the effect, and seems surprised at the hardness of the head. In the sixteenth month he used not unfrequently to set the left thumb against the left side of the head, and at the same time the right thumb against the right side of the head, above the ears, with the fingers spread, and to push at the same time, putting on a strange, wondering expression of face, with wide-open eyes. This movement is not imitated and not inherited, but invented. The child is doubtless making experiments by means of it upon the holding of the head, head-shaking, resistance of his own body, perhaps also upon the management of the head, as at every thump of the thumbs against the temporal bones a dull sound was heard. The objectivity of the fingers was found out not much before this time by involuntary, painful biting of them, for as late as the fifteenth month the child bit his finger so that he cried out with pain. Pain is the most efficient teacher in the learning of the difference between subjective and objective.
Another important factor is theperception of a change produced by ones own activityin all sorts of familiar objects that can be taken hold of in the neighborhood; and the most remarkable day, from a psychogenetic point of view, in any case an extremely significant day in the life of the infant, is the one in which he first experiences theconnection of a movement executed by himself with a sense-impression following upon it. The noise that comes from the tearing and crumpling of paper is as yet unknown to the child. He discovers (in the fifth month) the fact that he himself in tearing paper into smaller and smaller pieces has again and again the new sound-sensation, and he repeats the experiment day by day and with a strain of exertion until this connection has lost the charm of novelty. At present there is not, indeed, as yet any clear insight into the nexus of cause; but the child has now had the experience that he can himself be the cause of a combined perception of sight and sound regularly, to the extent that when he tears paper there appears, on the one hand, the lessening in size; on the other hand, the noise. The patience with which this occupation—from the forty-fifth to the fifty-fifth week especially—is continued with pleasure is explained by the gratification at being a cause, at the perception that so striking a transformation as that of the newspaper into fragments has been effected by means of his own activity. Other occupations of this sort, which are taken up again and again with a persistency incomprehensible to an adult, are the shaking of a bunch of keys, the opening and closing of a box or purse (thirteenth month); the pulling out and emptying, and then the filling and pushing in, of a table-drawer; the heaping up and the strewing about of garden-mold or gravel; the turning of the leaves of a book (thirteenth to nineteenth month); digging and scraping in the sand; the carrying of footstools hither and thither;the placing of shells, stones, or buttons in rows (twenty-first month); pouring water into and out of bottles, cups, watering-pots (thirty-first to thirty-third months); and, in the case of my boy, the throwing of stones into the water. A little girl in the eleventh month found her chief pleasure in "rummaging" with trifles in drawers and little boxes. Her sister "played" with all sorts of things, taking an interest in dolls and pictures in the tenth month (Frau von Strümpell). Here, too, the eagerness and seriousness with which such apparently aimless movements are performed is remarkable. The satisfaction they afford must be very great, and it probably has its basis in the feeling of his own power generated by the movements originated by the child himself (changes of place, of position, of form) and in the proud feeling of being a cause.
This is not mere playing, although it is so called; it isexperimenting. The child that at first merely played like a cat, being amused with color, form, and movement, has become acausative being. Herewith the development of the"I"-feelingenters upon a new phase; but it is not yet perfected. Vanity and ambition come in for the further development of it. Above all, it isattentionto theparts of his own bodyand thearticles of his dress, the nearest of all objects to the child's eye, that helps along the separation in thought of the child's body from all other objects.
I therefore made special observation of the directing of his look toward his own body and toward the mirror. In regard to the first I took note, among other facts, of the following:
17th week.—In the seizing movements, as yet imperfect, the gaze is fixed partly on the object, partly onhis own hand, especially if the hand has once seized successfully.
18th week.—The very attentive regarding of the fingers in seizing is surprising, and is to be observed daily.
23d week.—When the infant, who often throws his hands about at random in the air, accidentally gets hold of one hand with the other, he regards attentively both his hands, which are often by chance folded.
24th week.—In the same way the child fixes his gaze for several minutes alternately upon a glove held by himself in his hands and upon his own fingers that hold it.
32d week.—The child, lying on his back,looksvery frequentlyathislegsstretched up vertically, especially at hisfeet, as if they were something foreign to him.
35th week.—In every situation in which he can do so, the child tries to grasp a foot with both hands and carry it to his mouth, often with success. This monkey-like movement seems to afford him special pleasure.
36th week.—His own hands and feet are no more so frequently observed by him without special occasion. Other new objects attract his gaze and are seized.
39th week.—The same as before. In the bath, however, the child sometimes looks at and feels ofhis own skinin various places, evidently taking pleasure in doing so. Sometimes he directs his gaze to his legs, which are bent and extended in a very lively manner in the most manifold variety of positions.
55th week.—The child looks for a long time attentively at a person eating, and follows with his gaze everymovement; grasps at the person's face, and then, afterstriking himself on the head, fixes his gaze on his own hands. He is fond of playing with the fingers of the persons in the family, and delights in the bendings and extensions, evidently comparing them with those of his own fingers.
62d week.—Playing with his own fingers (at which he looks with a protracted gaze) as if he would pull them off. Again, one hand is pressed down by the other flat upon the table until it hurts, as if the hand were a wholly foreign plaything, and it is still looked at wonderingly sometimes.
From this time forth the gazing at the parts of his own body was perceptibly lessened. The childknewthem as to their form, and gradually learned to distinguish them from foreign objects as parts belonging to him; but in this he by no means arrives at the point of considering, "The hand is mine, the thing seized is not," or "The leg belongs to me," and the like; but because all the visible parts of the child's body, on account of very frequently repeated observation, no longer excite the optic center so strongly and therefore appear no longer interesting—because the experiences of touch combined with visual perceptions always recur in the same manner—the child has gradually become accustomed to them andoverlooksthem when making use of his hands and feet. He no longer represents them to himself separately, as he did before, whereas every new object felt, seen, or heard, is very interesting to him and is separately represented in idea. Thus arises the definite separation of object and subject in the child's intellect. In the beginning the child is new to himself, namely, to the representational apparatus that gets its development only after birth; later, after he has become acquainted with himself, after he, namely, his body, has lost the charm of novelty for him, i. e., for the representational apparatus in his brain, a dim feeling of the "I" exists, and by means of further abstraction the concept of the "I" is formed.
The progress of the intellect in the act oflooking into the mirrorconfirms this conclusion drawn from the above observations.
For the behavior of the child toward his image in the glass shows unmistakably the gradual growth of the consciousness of self out of a condition in which objective and subjective changes are not yet distinguished from each other.
Among the subjective changes is, without doubt, the smiling at the image in the tenth week, which was probably occasioned merely by the brightness (Sigismund). Another boy in the twenty-seventh week looked at himself in the glass with a smile (Sigismund).
Darwin recorded of one of his sons, that in the fifth month he repeatedly smiled at his father's image and his own in a mirror and took them for real objects; but he was surprised that his father's voice sounded from behind him (the child). "Like all infants, he much enjoyed thus looking at himself, and in less than two months perfectly understood that it was an image, for if I made quite silently any odd grimace, he would suddenly turn round to look at me. He was, however, puzzled at the age of seven months, when, being out of doors, he saw me on the inside of a large plate-glass window, and seemed in doubt whether or not it was animage. Another of my infants, a little girl, was not nearly so acute, and seemed quite perplexed at the image of a person in a mirror approaching her from behind. The higher apes which I tried with a small looking-glass behaved differently. They placed their hands behind the glass, and in doing so showed their sense; but, far from taking pleasure in looking at themselves, they got angry and would look no more." The first-mentioned child, at the age of not quite nine months, associated his own name with his image in the looking-glass, and when called by name would turn toward the glass even when at some distance from it. He gave to "Ah!" which he used at first when recognizing any person or his own image in a mirror, an exclamatory sound such as adults employ when surprised. Thus Darwin reports.
My boy gave me occasion for the following observations:
In the eleventh week he does not see himself in the glass. If I knock on the glass, he turns his head in the direction of the sound. His image does not, however, make the slightest impression upon him.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth weeks he looks at his image with utter indifference. His gaze is directed to the eyes in the image without any expression of pleasure or displeasure.
In the sixteenth week the reflected image is still either ignored or looked at without interest.
Near the beginning of the seventeenth week (on the one hundred and thirteenth day) the child for the first time regards his image in the glass with unmistakable attention, and indeed with the same expression withwhich he is accustomed to fix his gaze on a strange face seen for the first time. The impression appears to awaken neither displeasure nor pleasure; the perception seems now for the first time to be distinct. Three days later the child for the first time undoubtedly laughed at his image.
When, in the twenty-fourth week, I held the child again before the glass, he saw my image, became very attentive, and suddenly turned round toward me, manifestly convincing himself that I stood near him.
In the twenty-fifth week he for the first time stretched out his hand toward his own image. He therefore regarded it as capable of being seized.
In the twenty-sixth week the child is delighted at seeing me in the glass. He turns round toward me, and evidentlycomparesthe original with the image.
In the thirty-fifth week the child gayly and with interest grasps at his image in the glass, and is surprised when his hand comes against the smooth surface.
In the forty-first to the forty-fourth week, the same. The reflected image is regularly greeted with a laugh, and is then grasped at.
All these observations were made before a very large stationary mirror.
In the fifty-seventh week, however, I held a small hand-mirror close to the face of the child. He looked at his image and then passed his hand behind the glass and moved the hand hither and thither as if searching. Then he took the mirror himself and looked at it and felt of it on both sides. When after several minutes I held the mirror before him again, precisely the sameperformance was repeated. It accords with what was observed by Darwin in the case of anthropoid apes mentioned above (p. 197).
In the fifty-eighth week I showed to the child his photograph, cabinet-size, in a frame under glass. He first turned the picture round as he had turned the hand-mirror. Although the photographic image was much smaller than the reflected one, it seemed to be equally esteemed. On the same day (four hundred and second) I held the hand-mirror before the boy again, pointing out to him his image in it; but he at once turned away obstinately (again like the intelligent animal).
Here the incomprehensible—in the literal sense—was disturbing. But very soon came the insight which is wanting to the quadrumana, for in the sixtieth week the child saw his mother in the mirror, and to the question, "Where is mamma?" he pointed to the image in the mirror and then turned round, laughing, to his mother. Now, as he had before this time behaved roguishly, there is no doubt that at this time, after fourteen months, original and image were distinguished with certainty as such, especially as his own photograph no longer excited wonder.
Nevertheless, the child, in the sixty-first week, is still trying to feel of his own image in the glass, and he licks the glass in which he sees it, and, in the sixty-sixth week, also strikes against it with his hand.
In the following week for the first time I saw the child make grimaces before the glass. He laughed as he did it. I stood behind him and called him by name. He turned around directly, although he saw me plainlyin the glass. He evidently knew that the voice did not come from the image.
In the sixty-ninth week signs of vanity are perceived. The child looks at himself in the glass with pleasure and often. If we put anything on his head and say, "Pretty," his expression changes. He is gratified in a strange and peculiar fashion; his eyebrows are raised, and the eyes are opened wide.
In the twenty-first month the child puts some lace or embroidered stuff about him, lets it hang down from his shoulders, looks round behind at the train, advancing, stopping, eagerly throwing it into fresh folds. Here there is a mixture of apish imitation with vanity.
As the child had, moreover, even in the seventeenth month, been fond of placing himself before the glass and making all sorts of faces, the experiments with the mirror were no longer continued.
They show the transition from the infant's condition previous to the development of theego, when he can not yet see distinctly, to the condition of the developedego, who consciously distinguishes himself from his image in the glass and from other persons and their images. Yet for a long time after this step there exists a certain lack of clearness in regard to names. In the twenty-first month the child laughs at his image in the glass and points to it when I ask, "Where is Axel?" and at my image when asked, "Where is papa?" But, being asked with emphasis, the child turns round to me with a look of doubt. I once brought a large mirror near the child's bed in the evening after he had gone to sleep, so that he might perceive himself directly upon waking. He saw his image immediatelyafter waking, seemed very much surprised at it, gazed fixedly at it, and when at last I asked, "Where is Axel?" he pointed not to himself but to the image (six hundred and twentieth day). In the thirty-first month it still afforded him great pleasure to gaze at his image in the glass. The child would laugh at it persistently and heartily.
Animals show great variety of behavior in this respect, as is well known. A pair of Turkish ducks, that I used to see every day for weeks, always kept themselves apart from other ducks. When the female died, the drake, to my surprise, betook himself by preference to a cellar-window that was covered on the inside and gave strong reflections, and he would stand with his head before this for hours every day. He saw his image there, and thought perhaps that it was his lost companion.
A kitten before which I held a small mirror must surely have taken the image for a second living cat, for she went behind the glass and around it when it was conveniently placed.
Many animals, on the contrary, are afraid of their reflected image, and run away from it.
In like manner little children are sometimes frightened by the discovery of their own shadows. My child exhibited signs of fear at his shadow the first time he saw it; but in his fourth year he was pleased with it, and to the question, "Where does the shadow come from?" he answered, to our surprise, "From the sun" (fortieth month).
More important for the development of the child'segothan are the observation of the shadow and of theimage in the glass is the learning of speech, for it is not until words are used that the higher concepts are first marked off from one another, and this is the case with the concept of theego. Yet the wide-spread view, that the "I"-feelingfirst appears with the beginning of the use of the word "I," is wholly incorrect. Many headstrong children have a strongly marked "I"-feeling without calling themselves by anything but their names, because their relatives in speaking with them do not call themselves "I," but "papa, mamma, uncle, O mamma," etc., so that the opportunity early to hear and to appropriate the words "I" and "mine" is rare. Others hear these words often, to be sure, especially from children somewhat older, and use them, yet do not understand them, but add to them their own names. Thus, a girl of two and a half years, named Ilse, used to say,Ilse mein Tuhl(Ilse, my chair), instead of "mein Stuhl" (Bardeleben). My boy of two and three fourths years repeated the "I" he heard, meaning by it "you." In the twenty-ninth monthmir(me) was indeed said by him, but not "ich" (I), (p. 171). Soon, however, he named himself no more, as he had done in the twenty-third and even in the twenty-eighth month (pp. 147-167), by his first name. In the thirty-third month especially camedas will ich! das möcht ich!(I wish that, I should like that) (p. 183). The fourfold designation of his own person in the thirty-second month (p. 180)—by his name, by "I," by "he," and by the omission of all pronouns—was only a brief transition-stage, as was also the misunderstanding of the "dein" (your) which for a time (p. 156) meant "gross" (large).
These observations plainly show that the "I"-feeling is not first awakened by the learning of words, for this feeling, according to the facts given above, is present much earlier; but by means of speech theconceptualdistinction of the "I," the self, the mine, is first made exact; the development, not the origin, of the "I"-feeling is simply favored.
How obscure the "I"-concept is even after learning the use of the personal pronouns is shown by the utterance of the four-year-old daughter of Lindner, named Olga,die hat mich nass gemacht(she has made me wet), when she meant that she herself had done it; anddu sollst mir doch folgen, Olga(but you must follow me, Olga), the latter expression, indeed, being merely said after some one else. In her is noteworthy, too, the confounding of the possessives "his" and "her," e. g.,dem Papa ihr Buch auf der Mama seinen Platz gelegt(her book, papa's, laid in his place, mamma's) (Lindner); and yet in these forms of speech there is an advance in the differentiation of the concepts.
All children are known to be late in beginning to speak about themselves, of what they wish to become, or of that which they can do better than others can, and the like. Theegohas become an experience of consciousness long before this.
All these progressive steps, which in the individual can be traced only with great pains, form, as it were, converging lines that culminate in the fully developed feeling of the personality as exclusive, as distinct from the outer world.
Thus much the purely physiological view can admit without hesitation; but a further unification or indivisibility or unbroken permanence of the child'sego, it cannot reconcile with the facts, perfectly well established by me, that are presented in this chapter.
For what is the significance of the fact, that "to the child his feet, hands, teeth, seem a plaything foreign to himself"? and that "the child bit his own arm as he was accustomed to bite objects with which he was not acquainted"? "Seem" to what part of the child? What is that which bites in the child as in the very young chick that seizes its own toe with its bill and bites it as if it were the toe of its neighbor or a grain of millet? Evidently the "subject" in the head is a different one from that in the trunk. Theegoof the brain is other than theegoof the spinal marrow (the "spinal-marrow-soul" of Pflüger). The one speaks, sees, hears, tastes, smells, and feels; the other merely feels, and at the beginning, so long as brain and spinal marrow have only a loose organic connection and no functional connection at all with each other, the twoegosare absolutely isolated from each other. Newly-born children with no brain, who lived for hours and days, as I myself saw in a case of rare interest, could suck, cry, move the limbs, and feel (for they stopped crying and took to sucking when something they could suck was put into their mouths when they were hungry). On the other hand, if a human being could be born with a brain but without a spinal marrow and could live, it would not be able to move its limbs. When a normal babe, therefore, plays with its feet or bites itself in the arm as it would bite a biscuit, we have in this a proof that the brain with its perceptive apparatus is independent of the spinal marrow. And the fact that acephalic new-born human beings and animal embryos deprived of brain,as Soltmann and I found, move their limbs just as sound ones do, cry just as they do, suck and respond to reflexes, proves that the functions of the spinal marrow (inclusive of the optic thalami, the corpora quadrigemina and the cervical marrow) are independent of the cerebral hemispheres (together with the corpus striatum, according to Soltmann).
Now, however, the brainless living child that sucks, cries, moves arms and legs, and distinguishes pleasure from displeasure, has indisputably an individuality, anego. We must, then, of necessity admit twoegosin the child that has both cerebrum and spinal marrow, and that represents to himself his arm as good to taste of, as something to like. But, if two, why not several? At the beginning, when the centers of sight, hearing, smell, and taste, in the brain are still imperfectly developed, each of these perceives for itself, the perceptions in the different departments of sense having as yet no connection at all with one another. The case is like that of the spinal marrow, which at first does not communicate, or only very imperfectly communicates, to the brain that which it feels, e. g., the effect of the prick of a needle, for the newly born do not generally react upon that. Only by means of very frequent coincidences of unlike sense-impressions, in tasting-and-touching, seeing-and-feeling, seeing-and-hearing, seeing-and-smelling, tasting-and-smelling, hearing-and-touching, are the intercentral connecting fibers developed, and then first can the various representational centers, these "I"-makers, as it were, contribute, as in the case of the ordinary formation of concepts, to the formation of the corporate "I," which is quite abstract.
This abstract "I"-concept, that belongs only to the adult, thinking human being, comes into existence in exactly the same way that other concepts do, viz., by means of the individual ideas from which it results, as e. g., the forest exists only when the trees exist. The subordinate "I's," that preside over the separate sense-departments, are in the little child not yet blended together, because in him the organic connections are still lacking; which, being translated into the language of psychology, means that he lacks the necessary power of abstraction. The co-excitations of the sensory centers, that are as yet impressed with too few memory-images, can not yet take place on occasion of a single excitation, the cerebral connecting fibers being as yet too scanty.
These co-excitations of parts of the brain functionally different, on occasion of excitation of a part of the brain that has previously often been excited together with those, form the physiological foundation of the psychical phenomenon of the formation of concepts in general, and so of the formation of the "I"-concept. For the special ideas of all departments of sense have in all beings possessed of all the senses—or of four senses, or of three—the common quality of coming into existence only under conditions of time, space, and causality. This common property presupposes similar processes in every separate sense-center of the highest rank. Excitations of one of these centers easily effect similar co-excitations of centers that have often been excited together with them through objective impressions, and it is this similar co-excitement extending itself over the cerebral centers of all the nerves of sense that evokes the composite idea of the "I."
According to this view, therefore, the "I" can not exist as a unit, as undivided, as uninterrupted; it exists only when the separate departments of sense are active with theiregos, out of which the "I" is abstracted; e. g., it disappears in dreamless sleep. In the waking condition it has continued existence only where the centro-sensory excitations are most strongly in force; i. e., where the attention is on the strain.
Still less, however, is the "I" an aggregate. For this presupposes the exchangeability of the component parts. The seeingego, however, can just as little have its place made good by a substitute as can the hearing one, the tasting one, etc. The sum-total of the separate leaves, blossoms, stalks, roots, of the plant does not, by a great deal, constitute the plant. The parts must be joined together in a special manner. So, likewise, it is not enough to add together the characteristics common to the separate sense-representations in order to obtain from these the regulating and controlling "I." Rather there results from the increasing number and manifoldness of the sense-impressions a continually increasing growth of the gray substance of the child's cerebrum, a rapid increase of the intercentral connecting fibers, and through this a readier co-excitement—association, so called—which unites feeling with willing and thinking in the child.
This union is the "I," the sentient and emotive, the desiring and willing, the perceiving and thinking "I."
Of all the facts that have been established by me through the observation of the child in the first years of his life, theformation of concepts without languageis most opposed to the traditional doctrines, and it is just this on which I lay the greatest stress.
It has been demonstrated that the human being, at the very beginning of his life, not only distinguishes pleasure and discomfort, but may also have single, distinct sensations. He behaves on the first day differently, when the appropriate sense-impressions exist, from what he does when they are lacking. The first effect of these feelings, these few sensations, is the association of their traces, left behind in the central nervous system, with inborn movements. Those traces or central impressions develop gradually the personalmemory. These movements are the point of departure for the primitive activity of the intellect, which separates the sensations both in time and in space. When the number of the memory-images, of distinct sensations, on the one hand, on the other, of the movements that have been associated with them—e. g., "sweet" and "sucking"—has become larger, then a firmer association of sensation-and-movement-memories, i. e., of excitations of sensory and motor ganglionic cells takes place, so that excitement of the one brings with it co-excitement of the other. Sucking awakens the recollection of the sweet taste; the sweet taste of itself causes sucking. Thissuccession is already a separationin timeof two sensations (the sweet and the motor sensation in sucking). The separation in space requires the recollection of two sensations, each with one movement; the distinction between sucking at the left breast and sucking at the right is made after one trial. With this, the first act of the intellect is performed, the first perception made, i. e., a sensation first localized in time and space. The motor sensation of sucking has come, like the sweet taste,aftera similar one, and it has come between two unlike relations in space that were distinguished. By means of multiplied perceptions (e. g., luminous fields not well defined, but yet defined) and multiplied movements with sensations of touch, the perception, after considerable time, acquires an object; i. e., the intellect, which already allowed nothing bright to appear without boundary-lines, and thus allowed nothing bright to appear except in space (whereas at the beginning brightness, as was the case even later with sound, had no limitation, no demarcation), begins to assign a cause for that which is perceived. Hereby perception is raised torepresentation. The often-felt, localized, sweet, warm, white wetness, which is associated with sucking, now forms an idea, and one of the earliest ideas. When, now, this idea has often arisen, the separate perceptions that have been necessary to its formation are united more and more firmly. Then, when one of these latter appears for itself, the memory-images of the others will also appear, through co-excitement of the ganglionic cells concerned; but this means simply that theconceptis now in existence. For the concept has its origin in the union of attributes. Attributes are perceived, andthe memory-images of them, that is, accordingly, memory-images of separate perceptions, are so firmly associated that, where only one appears in the midst of entirely new impressions, the concept yet emerges, because all the other images appear along with it. Language is not required for this. Up to this point, those born deaf behave exactly like infants that have all the senses, and like some animals that form concepts.
These few first ideas, namely, the individual ideas, or sense-intuitions that are generated by the first perceptions, and the simple general ideas (of a lower order), or concepts, arising out of these—the concepts of the child as yet without language, of microcephali also, of deaf-mutes, and of the higher animals—have now this peculiarity, that they have all been formed exactly in this way by the parents and the grandparents and the representatives of the successive generations (such notions as those of "food," "breast"). These concepts are not innate; because no idea can be innate, for the reason that several peripheral impressions are necessary for the formation of even a single perception. They are, however, inherited. Just as the teeth and the beard are not usually innate in man, but come and grow like those of the parents and are already implanted, piece for piece, in the new-born child, and are thus hereditary, so the first ideas of the infant, his first concepts, which arise unconsciously, without volition and without the possibility of inhibition, in every individual in the same way, must be called hereditary. Different as are the teeth from the germs of teeth in the newly-born, so different are the man's concepts, clear, sharply defined by words, from the child's ill-defined, obscureconcepts, which arise quite independently of all language (of word, look, or gesture).
In this wise the old doctrine of "innate ideas" becomes clear. Ideas or thoughts are themselves either representations or combinations of representations. They thus presuppose perceptions, and can not accordingly be innate, but may some of them be inherited, those, viz., which at first, by virtue of the likeness between the brain of the child and that of the parent, and of the similarity between the external circumstances of the beginnings of life in child and parent, always arise in the same manner.
The principal thing is the innate aptitude to perceive things and to form ideas, i. e., the innate intellect. By aptitude (Anlage), however, can be understood nothing else at present than a manner of reacting, a sort of capability or excitability, impressed upon the central organs of the nervous system after repeated association of nervous excitations (through a great many generations in the same way).
The brain comes into the world provided with a great number of impressions upon it. Some of these are quite obscure, some few are distinct. Each ancestor has added his own to those previously existing. Among these impressions, finally, the useless ones must soon be obliterated by those that are useful. On the other hand, deep impressions will, like wounds, leave behind scars, which abide longer; and very frequently used paths of connection between different portions of the brain and spinal marrow and the organs of sense are easier to travel even at birth (instinctive and reflexive processes).
Now, of all the higher functions of the brain, the ordering one, which compares the simple, pure sensations, the original experiences, and first sets them in an order of succession, viz., arranges them in time, then puts them side by side and one above another, and, not till later, one behind another, viz., arranges them in space—this function is one of the oldest. This ordering of the sense-impressions isan activity of the intellect that has nothing to do with speech, and thecapacityfor it is, as Immanuel Kant discovered, present in man "as he now is" (Kant)beforethe activity of the senses begins; but without this activity it can not assert itself.
Now, I maintain, and in doing so I take my stand upon the facts published in this book, that just as little as the intellect of the child not yet able to speak has need of words or looks or gestures, or any symbol whatever, in order to arrange in time and space the sense-impressions, so little does that intellect require those means in order to form concepts and to perform logical operations; and in this fundamental fact I see the material for bridging over the only great gulf that separates the child from the brute animal.
That even physiologists deny that there is any passage from one to the other is shown by Vierordt in his "Physiology of Infancy" (1877).
The fundamental fact that a genuinely logical activity of the brain goes on without language of any sort, in the adult man who has the faculty of speech, was discovered by Helmholtz. The logical functions called by him "unconscious inferences" begin, as I think I have shown by many observations in the newly-born, immediately with the activity of the senses. Perception in the third dimension of space is a particularly clear example of this sort of logical activity without words, because it is developed slowly.
In place of the expression "unconscious," which, because it has caused much mischief, still prevents the term "unconscious inferences" from being naturalized in the physiology of the senses and the theory of perception, it would be advisable, since "instinctive" and "intuitive" are still more easily misunderstood, to say "wordless." Wordless ideas, wordless concepts, wordless judgments, wordless inferences, may be inherited. To these belong such as our progenitors often experienced at the beginning of life, such as not only come into existence without the participation of any medium of language whatever, but also are never even willed (intended, deliberate, voluntary), and can not under any circumstances be set aside or altered, whether to be corrected or falsified. An inherited defect can not be put aside, and neither can the inherited intellect. When the outer angle at the right of the eye is pressed upon, a light appears in the closed eye at the left, not at the right; not at the place touched. This optical illusion, which was known even in Newton's day, this wordless inductive inference, is hereditary and incorrigible; and, on the other hand, the hereditary wordlessconceptof food can neither be prevented from arising nor be set aside nor be formed otherwise than it was formed by our ancestors.
Innate, to make it once more prominent, is the faculty (the capacity, the aptitude, the potential function) of forming concepts, and some of the first concepts arehereditary. New (not hereditary) concepts arise only after new perceptions, i. e., after experiences that associate themselves with the primitive ones by means of new connecting paths in the brain, and they begin in fact before the learning of speech.
A chick just out of the shell possesses the capacity to lay eggs—the organs necessary—in fact the future eggs are inborn in the creature; but only after some time does it lay eggs, and these are in every respect similar to the first eggs of its mother. Indeed, the chicks that come from these eggs resemble those of the mother herself; thus the eggs have hereditary properties. New eggs originate only by crossing, by external influences of all sorts, influences, therefore, of experience.
So, too, the new-born child possesses the capacity of forming concepts. The organs necessary for that are inborn in him, but not till after some time does he form concepts, and these are in all nations and at all times quite similar to the first concepts formed by the child's mother. Indeed, the inferences that attach themselves to the first concepts will resemble those which were developed in the mother or will be identical with them; these concepts have, then, hereditary properties. New concepts originate only through experience. They originate in great numbers in every child that learns to speak.
If the fact that children utterly ignorant of speech, even those born deaf, already perform logical operations with perfect correctness, proves the intellect to be independent of language, yet searching observation of the child that is learning to speak shows that only by means of verbal language can the intellect give precision to its primitive indistinct concepts and thereby develop itselffurther, connecting ideas appropriately with the circumstances in which the child lives.
It is a settled fact, however, that many ideas must already be formed in order to make possible the acquirement of speech. The existence of ideas is a necessary condition of learning to speak.
The greatest intellectual advance in this field consists in this, that the specific method of the human race is discovered by the speechless child—the method of expressing ideas aloud and articulately, i. e., by means of expirations of breath along with various positions of the larynx and the mouth and various movements of the tongue. No childinventsthis method, it istransmitted; but each individual childdiscoversthat by means of sounds thus originating one can make known his ideas and thereby induce feelings of pleasure and do away with discomfort. Therefore he applies himself to this process of himself, without instruction, provided only that he grows up among speaking people; and even where hearing, which serves as a means of intercourse with them, is wanting from birth, a life rich in ideas and an intelligence of a high order may be developed, provided that written signs of sound supply the place of sounds heard. These signs, however, can be learned only by means of instruction. The way in which writing is learned is the same as the way in which the alalic child learns to speak. Both rest upon imitation.
I have shown that the first firm association of an idea with a syllable or with a word-like combination of syllables, takes place exclusively through imitation; but a union of this sort being once established, the childthen freely invents new combinations, although to a much more limited extent than is commonly assumed. No one brings with him into the world a genius of such quality that it would be capable of inventing articulate speech. It is difficult enough to comprehend that imitation suffices for the child to learn a language.
What organic conditions are required for the imitation of sounds and for learning to speak I have endeavored to ascertain by means of a systematic collection, resting on the best pathological investigations, of all the disturbances of speech thus far observed in adults; and the daily observation of a sound child, who was kept away from all training as far as possible, as well as the frequent observation of other children, has brought me to the following important result:
That every known form of disturbance of speech in adults finds its perfect counterpart in the child that is learning to speak.
The child can notyetspeak correctly, because his impressive, central, and expressive organs of speech are not yet completely developed. The adult patient canno longerspeak correctly, because those parts are no longer complete or capable of performing their functions. The parallelism is perfect even to individual cases, if children of various ages are carefully observed in regard to their acquirement of speech. As to facts of a more general nature, we arrive, then, at the three following:
1. The normal infant understands spoken language much earlier than he can himself produce through imitation the sounds, syllables, and words he hears.
2. The normal child, however, before he begins to speak or to imitate correctly the sounds of language, forms of his own accord all or nearly all the sounds that occur in his future speech and very many others besides, and delights in doing it.
3. The order of succession in which the sounds of speech are produced by the infant is different with different individuals, and consequently is not determined by the principle of the least effort. It is dependent upon several factors—brain, teeth, size of the tongue, acuteness of hearing, motility, and others. Only in the later, intentional, sound-formations and attempts at speaking does that principle come under consideration.
In the acquirement of every complicated muscular movement, dancing, e. g., the difficult combinations which make a greater strain on the activity of the will are in like manner acquired last.
Heredity plays no part in this, for every child can learn to master perfectly any language, provided he hears from birth only the one to be learned. The plasticity of the inborn organs of speech is thus in the earliest childhood very great.
To follow farther the influence that the use of speech as a means of understanding has upon the intellectual development of the child lies outside the problem dealt with in this book. Let me, in conclusion, simply give a brief estimate of the questioning-activity that makes its appearance very early after the first attempts at speech, and also add a few remarks on the development of the"I"-feeling.
The child's questioning as a means of his culture isalmost universally underrated. The interest in causality that unfolds itself more and more vigorously with the learning of speech, the asking why, which is often almost unendurable to parents and educators, is fully justified, and ought not, as unfortunately is too often the case, to be unheeded, purposely left unanswered, purposely answered falsely. I have from the beginning given to my boy, to the best of my knowledge invariably, an answer to his questions intelligible to him and not contrary to truth, and have noticed that in consequence at a later period, in the fifth and the sixth and especially in the seventh year, the questions prove to be more and more intelligent, because the previous answers are retained. If, on the contrary, we do not answer at all, or if we answer with jests and false tales, it is not to be wondered at that a child even of superior endowments puts foolish and absurd questions and thinks illogically—a thing that rarely occurs where questions are rightly answered and fitting instruction is given, to say nothing of rearing the child to superstition. The only legend in which I allow my boy to have firm faith is that of the stork that brings new babes, and what goes along with that.
With regard to the development of the "I"—feeling the following holds good:
This feeling does not awake on the day when the child uses for the first time the word "I" instead of his own name—the date of such use varies according as those about it name themselves and the child by the proper name and not by the pronoun for a longer or a shorter period; but the "I" is separated from the "not-I" after a long series of experiences, chiefly of a painfulsort, as these observations have made clear, through thebecoming accustomed to the parts of one's own body. These, which at first are foreign objects, affect the child's organs of sense always in the same manner, and thereby become uninteresting after they have lost the charm of novelty. Now, his own body is that to which the attractive objective impressions (i. e., the world) are referred, and with the production by him of new impressions, with the changes wrought by him (in the experimenting which is called "playing"), with the experience of being-a-cause, is developed more and more in the child the feeling of self. With this he raises himself higher and higher above the dependent condition of the animal, so that at last the difference, not recognizable at all before birth and hardly recognizable at the beginning after birth, between animal and human being attains a magnitude dangerous for the latter, attains it, above all, by means of language.
But if it is necessary for the child to appropriate to himself as completely as possible this highest privilege of the human race and through this to overcome the animal nature of his first period; if his development requires the stripping off of the remains of the animal and the unfolding of the responsible "I"—then it will conduce to the highest satisfaction of the thinking man, at the summit of his experience of life, to go back in thought to his earliest childhood, for that period teaches him plainly that he himself has his origin in nature, is intimately related to all other living creatures. However far he gets in his development, he is ever groping vainly in the dark for a door into another world; but the very fact of his reflecting upon the possibility of such adoor shows how high the developed human being towers above all his fellow-beings.
The key to the understanding of the great enigma, how these extremes are connected, is furnished in the history of the development of the mind of the child.
Among the earlier as among the later statements concerning the acquirement of speech, there are several that have been put forth by writers on the subject without a sufficient basis of observed facts. Not only Buffon, but also Taine and his successors, have, from a few individual cases, deduced general propositions which are not of general application.
Good observations were first supplied in Germany by Berthold Sigismund in his pamphlet, "Kind und Welt" ("The Child and the World") (1856); but his observations were scanty.
He noted, as the first articulate sounds made by a child from Thüringen (Rudolstadt),ma,ba,bu,appa,ange,anne,brrr,arrr: these were made about the middle of the first three months.
Sigismund is of the opinion that this first lisping, or babbling, consists in the production of syllables with only two sounds, of which the consonant is most often the first; that the first consonants distinctly pronounced are labials; that the lips, brought into activity by sucking, are the first organs of articulation; but this conjecture lacks general confirmation.
In the second three months (in the case of one child in the twenty-third week, with other healthy children considerably earlier) were heard, for the first time, the loud and highcrowing-sounds, uttered by the child spontaneously, jubilantly, with lively movements of the limbs that showed the waxing power of the muscles: the child seemed to take pleasure in making the sounds. The utterance of syllables, on the other hand, is at this period often discontinued for weeks at a time.
In the third quarter of the first year, the lisping or stammering was more frequent. New sounds were added:bä,fbu,fu; and the following were among those that were repeated without cessation,bäbäbä,dädädä; alsoadad,eded.
In the next three months the child manifested his satisfaction in any object by the independent soundei,ei. The first imitations of sounds, proved to be such, were made after the age of eleven months. But it is more significant, for our comprehension of the process of learning to speak, that long before the boy tried to imitate words or gestures, viz., at the age of nine months, he distinguished accurately the words "father, mother, light, window, moon, lane"; for he looked, or pointed, at the object designated, as soon as one of these words was spoken.
And when, finally, imitation began, musical tones, e. g., F, C, were imitated sooner than the spoken sounds, although the former were an octave higher. And theei,eiwas repeated in pretty nearly the same tone or accent in which it had been pronounced for the child. Sneezing was not imitated till after fourteen months. The first word imitated by the child of his own accord (after fourteen months) was the cry "Neuback" (fresh-bake), as it resounded from the street; it was given back by the child, unsolicited, asei-a. As late as the sixteenth month he replied to the wordpapa, just as he did to the wordIda, only withatta; yet he had in the mean time learned to understand "lantern, piano, stove, bird, nine-pin, pot"—in all, more than twenty words—and to indicate by a look the objects named; he had also learned to make the new imperfect soundspujéh,pujéh,tupe tupe téh,ämmäm,atta,ho.
In the seventeenth month came in place of these sounds the babbled syllablesmäm,mam,mad-am,a-dam,das; in the case of other children, syllables different from these. Children often say several syllables in quick succession, "then suddenly stop as if they were thinking of something new—actually strain, as if they must exert themselves to bring their organs to utterance, until at last a new sound issues, and then this is repeated like the clack of a mill." Along with this appears the frequent doubling of syllables, as inpapa,mama.
The boy, at twenty months, told his father the following, with pretty long pauses and animated gestures:atten—beene—titten—bach—eine—puff—anna, i. e., "Wir waren im Garten, haben Beeren und Kirschen gegessen, und in den Bach Steine geworfen; dann kam Anna" (we were in the garden, ate berries and cherries, and threw stones into the brook; then Anna came).
The observations of Sigismund are remarkable for their objectivity, their clearness of exposition, and their accuracy, and they agree with mine, as may easily be seen, in many respects perfectly. Unfortunately, this excellent observer (long since deceased) did not finish his work. The first part only has appeared. Moreover, the statements as to the date of the first imitations (see pp. 83, 108, 109, 118, 121) are not wholly in accord with one another.
I. E. Löbisch, likewise a physician, in his "Entwickelungsgeschichte der Seele des Kindes" ("History of the Development of the Mind of the Child," Vienna, 1851, p. 68), says: "Naturally the first sound formed in the mouth, which is more or less open, while the other organs of speech are inactive, is the sound resemblinga, which approximates sometimes more, sometimes less, nearly to theeand theo.[D]
"Of the consonants the first are those formed by closing and opening the lips:m,b,p; these are at first indistinct and not decidedly differentiated till later; then themnaturally goes not only before theabut also after it;bandpfor a long time merely commence a syllable, and rarely close one until other consonants also have been formed. A child soon sayspa, but certainly does not sayabuntil he can already pronounce other consonants also (p. 79).
"The order in which the sounds are produced by the child is the following: Of the vowels, firsta,e,o,u, of course not well distinguished fromaat the beginning; the last vowel isi. Of the consonants,mis the first, and it passes by way of thewintobandp. But here we may express our astonishment that so many writers on the subject of the order of succession of the consonants in the development of speech have assigned so late a date to the formation of thew; Schwarz puts it even aftert, and beforerands. Then comed,t; thenlandn;nis easily combined withdwhen it precedesd; nextfand the gutturalsh,ch,g,k, thegandkoften confounded withdandt.Sandrare regarded as nearly simultaneous in their appearance; the gutturals as coming later, the latest of them beingch. Still, there is a difference in thisrespect in different children. For many produce a sound resemblingramong the first consonant sounds; so tooä,ö,ü; the diphthongs proper do not come till the last."
These statements of Löbisch, going, as they do, far beyond pure observation, can not all be regarded as having general validity. For most German children, at least, even those first adduced can scarcely claim to be well founded.
H. Taine (in the supplement to his book on "Intelligence," which appeared in a German translation in 1880) noted, as expressions used by a French child in the fifteenth month,papa,maman,tété(nurse, evidently a word taken from the wordtêter, "to nurse or suck at the breast"),oua-oua(dog, in all probability a word said for the child to repeat),koko(cock, no doubt fromcoq-coq, which had been said for the child),dada(horse, carriage, indicating other objects also, no doubt; a demonstrative word, as it is with many German children).Temwas uttered without meaning for two weeks; then it signified "give, take, look, pay attention." I suspect that we have here a mutilation of the strongly accentuatedtiens, which had probably been often heard. As early as the fourteenth month,hamsignified "I want to eat" (hamm, thenam, might have had its origin in the echo offaim, as-tu faim?(are you hungry?)). At the age of three and a half months this child formed only vowels, according to the account; at twelve months she twittered and uttered firstm-m, thenkraaau,papa, with varying intonation, but spoke no word with a recognizable meaning. In the tenth month there was an understanding of some questions. For the child, when asked "Where is grandpapa?" smiled at the portrait of the grandfather, but not at the one of the grandmother, which was not so good a likeness. In the eleventhmonth, at the question "Where is mamma?" the child would turn toward her mother, and in like manner toward the father at the question, "papa"?
A second child observed by Taine made utterances that had intellectual significance in the seventh week, for the first time. Up to the age of five monthsah,gue,gre(French) were heard; in the seventh month, alsoata,ada.
In his reflections, attached to these and a few other observations of his own, Taine rightly emphasizes the great power of generalization and the peculiarity the very young child had of associating with words it had heard other notions than those common with us; but he ascribes too much to the child's inventive genius. The child guesses more than it discovers, and the very cases adduced (hamm,tem), on which he lays great weight, may be traced, as I remarked above parenthetically, to something heard by the child; this fact he seems to have himself quite overlooked. It is true, that in the acquirement of speechoneword may have several different meanings in succession, as is especially the case with the wordbébé(corresponding to the English wordbaby), almost universal with French children; it is not true that a child without imitation of sounds invents a word with a fixed meaning, and that, with no help or suggestion from members of the family, it employs its imperfectly uttered syllables (Lallsylben) consistently for designating its ideas.
Among the notes of Wyma concerning an English child ("The Mental Development of the Infant of To-day," in the "Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology," vii, Part I, pp. 62-69, London, April, 1881), the following, relating to the acquisition of speech, are to be mentioned:
At five months the child began to use a kind of language, consisting of six words, to indicate a desire or intention.Ningsignified desire for milk, and was employed for that up to the age of two years. (The word may possibly have been derived from the wordmilk,[E]frequently heard.) At nine months the child made use of the wordspretty thingsfor animals; at ten months it formed many small sentences.
The child practiced itself in speaking, even without direct imitation of words just spoken, for at the age of two years it began to say over a number of nursery rhymes that nobody in the house knew, and that could not have been learned from other children, because the child had no intercourse with such. At a later period the child declared that the rhymes had been learned from a former nurse, whom it had not seen for nearly three months. Thus the articulation was perfecting itself for weeks before it was understood. The exercises of the child sounded like careless reading aloud.
The book of Prof. Ludwig Strümpell, of Leipsic, "Psychologische Pädagogik" (Leipsic, 1880, 368 pages), contains an appendix, "Notizen über die geistige Entwickelung eines weiblichen Kindes während der ersten zwei Lebensjahre" ("Notes on the Mental Development of a Female Child during the First Two Years of Life"); in this are many observations that relate to the learning of speech. These are from the years 1846 and 1847.
In the tenth week,ah! ah!was an utterance of joy; in the thirteenth, the child sings, all alone; in the nineteenth comes the guttural utterance,grrr, but no consonant is assigned to this period. In the first half-year areheard distinctly, in the order given,ei,aga,eigei,ja,ede,dede,eds,edss,emme,meme,nene,nein. In the eighth month, there is unmistakable understanding of what is said; e. g., "Where is the tick-tack?" In the ninth,am,amme,ap,pap, are said; she sings vowels that are sung for her. In the eleventh month, imitation of sounds is frequent,kiss,kiss; at sight of the tea-kettle,ssi,ssi; she knows all the people in the house; calls the birds by the strange nametibu. Echolalia. In the fourteenth month, needles are calledtick(stich= prick or stitch). To the question, "Where is Emmy?" the child points, correctly, to herself; says distinctly,Kopf(head),Buch(book),roth(red),Tante(aunt),gut(good),Mann(man),Baum(tree); calls the eye (Auge)ok, Pruscinskyprrti, the doguf, uf. In the seventeenth month, simple sentences are spoken; she speaks to herself. In the nineteenth month, she calls herself by her name, and countstwei,drei,ümpf,exe,ibene,atte,neune(zwei, drei, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun—2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9); in the twenty-second month, she talks a good deal to herself, and makes very rapid progress in the correct use of words and the formation of sentences.
From the diary kept by Frau von Strümpell concerning this daughter and a sister of this one, and kindly placed at my disposal in the original, I take the following notes: In the eighth month,mamma, in the tenth,papa, without meaning. In the eleventh month, the child's understanding of what is said to her is surprising, and so is her imitation. To "Guten Tag" (good-day) she responds,tata; to "Adieu,"adaa. A book, which the child likes to turn the leaves of, she callsade(for a b c). The first certain association of a sound learned with a concept seems to be that of theee, which has often been said to her, with wet, or with what is forbidden.Amme amom, "Amme komm" (nurse come) (both imitative), is most frequently repeated,papaseldom. Therguttural, or rattled, is imperfectly imitated. In the thirteenth month, the little girl says,tippa tappa, when she wants to be carried, and respondste teto "steh! steh" (stop)! She now calls the booka-be-te(for a b c). Pigeons she callskurru; men, in the picture-book,mann mann. When some one asked, "Where is the brush?" the child made the motion of brushing. To the questions, "Where is your ear, your tooth, nose, hand, your fingers, mamma's ear, papa's nose?" etc., she points correctly to the object. On her mother's coming into the room,mamam; her father's,papap. When the nurse is gone,amme om, amme am. The mother asked some one, "Do you hear?" and the child looked at her and took hold of her own ears. To the question, "How do we eat?" she makes the motion of eating. She saysneinwhen she means to refuse. "Dank" (thank) is pronounceddakkn. "Bitte" (I beg, or please) is correctly pronounced. She understands the meaning of spoon, dress, mirror, mouth, plate, drink, and many other words, and likes to hear stories, especially when they contain the words already known to her. In the fifteenth month "Mathilde" is given by her astildaandtida. At sight of a faded bouquet she saidblom(for Blume, flower). She says everything that is said to her, though imperfectly; produces the most varied articulate sounds; saysta, papa, tawhen she hands anything to a person; calls the foot (Fuss)pss, lisping and thrusting out the tongue. She often saysomamaandopapa. In the seventeenth month, Ring is calledning, Wagen (carriage),uagen, Sophie,dsofi, Olga,ollakrank (ill),kank, Pflaume (plum),pluma, satt (satisfied, as to hunger),datt, Hände-waschen (washing the hands),ander-uaschen, Schuh and Tuch (shoeand cloth),tu, Strumpf (stocking),tumpf, Hut (hat),ut, Suppe (soup),duppe.Mama kum bild dat bank, is for "Mama komm, ich habe das Bilderbuch, erzähle mir dazu etwas, dort setz' Dich zu mir" (M., come, I have the picture-book; tell me something in it; sit there by me). In the eighteenth month, "Where is Omama?" is answered withim garten; "How are Omama and Opapa?" withsund(for gesund, well); "What is Omama doing?" withnäht(she is sewing). The black Apollo is calledpollo wurz(schwarz, black).
The sister of this child, in the tenth month, applied the wordmamato her mother,pap papandpapapto her father, but was less sure in this;tjē-tēwere favorite syllables. When asked, "Where is Tick-tack?" she looks at the clock on the wall. A piercing scream is an utterance of joy. In the fifteenth month,Apapais her word for grandfather, and is roguishly used for grandmother. She saysabenfor "haben" (have),tattafor "Tante" (aunt),apa(foruppa) means "I want to go up." Her imitation of what is said is very imperfect, but her understanding of it is surprising. In the nineteenth month she makes much use of her hands in gesture instead of speaking.Kukeris her word for "Zucker" (sugar),bildebufor "Bilderbuch" (picture-book). But she habitually calls a bookomamaoropapa(from the letters of her grandparents). Clara is pronouncedclala, Christine,titine. In the twentieth month, her mother, after telling her a story, asked, "Who, pray, is this, I?" and the child replied, "Mamma""And who is that, you?" "Bertha, Bertha" (the child's name) was the answer. At this period she said,Bertha will; alsoparen(for fahren, drive),pallen(fallen, fall),bot, (Brot, bread),atig(artig, good, well-behaved),mal(noch einmal, once more),muna(Mund, mouth),aujen(Augen, eyes),ol(Ohr, ear),tirn(Stirn, forehead),wanne(Wange, cheek, and Wanne, bath-tub),aua(August),dute(gute)mama,päsche(Equipage),wasar tinken(Wasser trinken, drink water)dabel(Gabel, fork),lüssel(Schlüssel, key),is nits(ist nichts, is nothing),mula(Milch, milk),ass(heiss, hot).