Chapter XII: George Sand’s Childhood, 489 (16)

Psychologists are now agreed that our knowledge of the properties of material objects is largely obtained by what they call _active_ touch, that is, by moving the hands over objects and exploring the space around them. This is borne out by the observations made on C. at this period of his existence. While viewing things about him he actively manipulated them. The organs of sight and touch worked indeed in the closest connexion. Thus our little visitor was no mere passive spectator of his new habitat; he actively took possession of his surroundings: like the Roman general, he at once saw and conquered. From the eighth to the tenth week his manual performances greatly improved in quality. He was rapidly learning to carry the organ of touch to the point of which his eye told him. An account of his progress in reaching objects may however be postponed till we come to speak of the development of his active powers.

The growing habit of looking at, reaching out to, and manually investigating objects, soon leads to the accumulation of a store of materials for the construction of those complex mental products which we call perceptions. And often-repeated perceptions, when they become more clearly distinguished, supply the basis of definite acts of recognition. The first object that is clearly recognised through a special act of attention is, of course, the face of the mother. In the case of C., the father’s face was apparently recognised about the eighth week—at least, the youngster first greeted his parent with a smile about this time—an event, I need hardly say, which is recorded in very large and easily legible handwriting. The occurrence gives rise to a number of odd reflexions in the parental mind. The observer’s belief in the necessary co-operation of sight and touch in the early knowledge of material objects leads him to remark that C.’s manual experience of his face, and more particularly of the bearded chin, has been extensive—an experience which, he adds, has left its recollection in his own mind, too, in the shape of a certain soreness. He then goes on to consider the meaning of the smile. “I cannot,” he writes, “be of any interest to him as a psychological student of his ways. No, it must be in the light of a bearded plaything that he regards my face.” Further observation bears out this argument by going to show that the recognition was not individual but specific: that it was simply a recognition of one of a class of bearded people; for when a perfect stranger also endowed with the entertaining appendage presented himself, C. wounded his father’s heart by smiling at him in exactly the same way. Here the diary goes off into some abstruse speculations about the first mental images being what Mr. Galton calls generic images—speculations into which we need not follow the writer. As we shall see, the father takes up the subject of childish generalisation more fully later on. The power of recognising objects appeared to undergo rapid development towards the end of the fourth month. The father remarks that the child would about this time recognise him in a somewhat dark room at a distance of three or four yards.[287]

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Footnote 287:

The clear recognition of individual objects is said to show itself in
average cases from about the sixth month (Tracy, _op. cit._, pp.
15-16).

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The germ of true imagination, of the formation of what Höffding calls a free or detached image of something not seen at the moment, appeared about the same time. The moment when the baby’s mind first passes on from the sight of his bottle to a foregrasping or imagination of the blisses of prehension and deglutition—a moment which appears to have been reached by C. in his tenth week—marks an epoch in his existence. He not only perceives what is actually present to his senses, he pictures or represents what is absent. This is the moment at which, to quote from the parent’s somewhat high-flown observations on this event, “mind rises above the limitations of the actual, and begins to shape for itself an ideal world of possibilities”.

This rise of the ideal to take the place of the real appeared in other ways too. Thus when just eighteen weeks old the child had been lying on his nurse’s lap and gazing on some pictures on the wall of which he was getting fond. The nurse happening to turn round suddenly put an end to his happiness. Still the child was not to be done, but immediately began twisting his head back in order to bring the pictures once more into his field of view. Here we have an illustration of a mental image appearing immediately after a perception, a rude form of what psychologists are now getting to call a primary memory-image.

The expression of the _gourmet’s_ delight at the sight of the bottle (tenth week) involves a simple process of association. Between the ages of five and six months the child’s progress in building up associations was very marked. Thus he would turn from a reflexion of the fire on the glass of a picture to the fire itself, and a little later would look towards a particular picture, Cherry Ripe, when the name was uttered. Further, not only had he now learnt to connect the sight of the bottle with the joys of a repast, but on seeing the basin in which his food is prepared he would glance towards the cupboard where the bottle is kept.

The diary contains but few observations on the growth of the power of understanding things and reasoning about them during the first year. One of the most interesting of these relates to the understanding of reflexions, shadows, etc. We know that these things played a considerable part in the development of the first racial ideas of the supernatural, and we might expect to see them producing an impression on the child’s mind. C. when he first began to notice reflexions of the fire and other objects in a mirror showed considerable marks of surprise. What quaint fancies he may have had respecting this odd doubling of things we cannot of course say. What is certain is that he distinctly connected the reflexion with the original, as is shown by the fact already mentioned, his turning from the first to the second. By the end of the sixth month the marks of surprise had visibly lessened, so that the child was apparently getting used to the miracle, even though he could not as yet be said to understand it. It is worth notice that though the experiment of showing him his own reflexion was repeated again and again he remained apparently quite indifferent to the image. Perhaps, suggests the father, he did not as yet know himself as visible object sufficiently to recognise nature’s portrait of him in the glass.

The above may perhaps serve as a sample of the observations made on the intellectual development of this privileged child during the first year of his earthly existence. I will now pass on to quote a remark or two on his emotional development. I may add that the record of this phase of the boy’s early mental life is certainly the most curious part of the document, containing many odd speculations on the course of primitive human history.

The earliest manifestations of the life of feeling are the elemental forms of pain and pleasure, crying and incipient laughing in the form of the smile.[288] In C.’s case, as in others, crying of the genuine miserable kind preceded smiling by a considerable interval. The child, remarks our observer, seems to need to learn to smile, whereas his crying apparatus is in good working order from the first.

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Footnote 288:

With the smile there ought perhaps to be taken the infantile crow.

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The growth of the smile is a curious chapter in child-psychology, and has been carefully worked out by Preyer. The observations on C. under this head are incomplete. The father thought he detected an attempt at a smile on the third day, when the child was lying replete with food, in answer to certain chuckling sounds with which he sought to amuse him. The movements constituting this quasi-smile are said to have been the following: a drawing in of the under lip; a drawing inwards and backwards of the corners of the mouth: increase of oblique line from the corner of the mouth upwards; and a furrowing or ridging of the eyelids. It is probable, however, that this was not a true smile, _i.e._, an expression of pleasure. He remarks, moreover, that in the case of the child’s sister the first approach to a smile was not observed before the tenth day, this, too, by-the-bye, in that state of blissful complaisance which follows a good meal. It may be added that in the case of the brother, too, the smile seems to have grown noticeably bright and significant about the same time (eighth to tenth week). At this stage the boy expressed his pleasure at seeing his father’s face not only by a “bright” smile, but by certain cooing sounds. At the same date a playful touch on the child’s cheek was sufficient to provoke a smile.[289]

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Footnote 289:

Darwin puts the first true smile on the forty-fifth day. The first
_quasi_-smiles are probably quite mechanical and destitute of meaning.

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Very early in the infant’s course the germs of some of our most characteristic human feelings begin to appear. One of the earliest is anger, which though common to man and many of the higher animals, takes on a peculiar form in his case. Angry revolt against the order of things showed itself early in C.’s case as in that of his sister, the occasion being in each instance a momentary difficulty in seizing the means of appeasing appetite. It is of course difficult to say at what moment the mere vexation of disappointment passes into true wrath, but in this boy’s case the father is compelled to admit that the ugly emotion displayed itself distinctly by the third week.

To detect the first clear signs of a _humane_ feeling, of kindliness and sympathy, is still more difficult. Reference has already been made to the signs of pleasure, the smile and the cooing sounds, which C. manifested at the sight of his father’s face. About the same time, _viz._, the ninth and tenth weeks, he began to show himself particularly responsive to soothing sounds. The impulse to imitate soft low sounds was of great service in checking his misery. When utterly broken by grief he would often pull himself together if appealed to by the right soothing sound and join in a short plaintive duet. Such responses like the early imitative smile may, it is true, be nothing but a mechanical imitation, destitute of any emotive significance. It is probable, however, that the first crude form of fellow-feeling, of the impulse to accept and to give sympathy in joy and grief, takes its rise in such simple imitative movements. The first advance to signs of a truer fellow-feeling was made when the child was six and a half months old. His father pretended to cry. Thereupon C. bent his head down so that his chin touched his breast and began to paw his father’s face, very much after the manner of a dog in a fit of tenderness. Oddly enough, adds the chronicler, there was no trace of sadness in the child’s face. The experiment was repeated and always with a like result. A smile on the termination of the crying completed the curious little play. Who would venture to interpret that falling of the head and that caressing movement of the hand? The father saw here something of a divine tenderness; and I am not disposed to question his interpretation.

Emotion soon begins to manifest itself, too, in connexion with the child’s peerings into his new world. As the little brain grows stronger and the organs of sense come under better management, the child spends more time in examining things, and this examination is accompanied by a profound wonder. C. would completely lose himself in marvelling at some new mystery, as the face of a clock, to which he appeared to talk as to something alive, or the play of the sunlight on the wall of his room; and the closeness of his attention was indicated by the occurrence of a huge sigh when the strain was over.

The directions of this early childish attention are, as in the example of the clock and the sunlight, towards what has some attraction of brightness, or other stimulating quality. The fascination of bright colour for C. has already been referred to. Sounds, too, very soon began to capture his attention and hold it spellbound. Thus it is recorded that in the tenth week the sound produced by striking a wine-glass excited an agreeable wonder. The sound of the piano, by-the-bye, made him cry the first time he heard it, presumably because it was strange and disconcertingly voluminous. But he soon got to like it, and his mother remarked that when his father played the child seemed to grow heavier in her lap, as if all his muscles were relaxed in a delicious self-abandonment.[290]

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Footnote 290:

See above, p. 195 and p. 308.

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Certain things became favourite objects of this quasi-æsthetic contemplation. When six weeks old the child got into the way of taking special note of one or two rather showy coloured pictures on the wall. In these it seemed to be partly the brightness of colouring in the picture or the frame, partly the reflexions of objects in the glass covering, which attracted him. Other things which appeared to give him repeated and endless enjoyment of a quiet sort were the play of sunlight and of shadow on the walls of his room, the reflexion of the shooting fire-flame sent back by the window-pane or the glass covering of a picture, the swaying of trees, and the like. He soon got to know the locality of some of his favourite works of art, and to look out expectantly, when taken into the right room, for his daily show.

Yet the new does not always awaken this pleasurable admiration. The child’s organism soon begins to adapt itself to what is customary, and sudden departures from the usual order of things come as a shock, jar the nerves, and produce the first crude form of fear. C.’s sensitiveness to the disturbing effect of new and loud sounds has been referred to in speaking of the first impression of the piano. A strong wind making uproar in the trees quite upset him when he was about five months old, though he soon got over his dislike and would laugh at the wind even when it blew cold. In like manner he appeared to be much put out by the voices of strangers, especially when these were loud. A similar effect of shock showed itself when something in the familiar scene was suddenly transmuted. For example, when just twelve weeks old, he was quite upset by his mother donning a red jacket in place of the usual flower-spotted dress. He was just proceeding to take his breakfast when he noticed the change, at the discovery of which all thoughts of feasting deserted him, his lips quivered, and he only became reassured of his whereabouts after taking a good look at his mother’s face.

This clinging to the familiar and alarm at a sudden intrusion of the new into his little world showed themselves in a curious way in his attitude towards strangers. When ten weeks old he would still greet new faces with a gracious smile. But this amiable disposition soon underwent a change. When he began to discriminate people one from another and to single out particular faces, those of the mother, father, sister, etc., as familiar, he took up what looked like a less hospitable attitude towards strangers. By the fifteenth week he no longer greeted their advent with his welcoming smile. A month later the diary chronicles a new development of timidity. He now turned away from a stranger with all the signs of shrinking.[291]

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Footnote 291:

Compare what was said above, p. 201.

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That this repugnance to the new depends on a kind of shock-like effect on the nervous system seems to be borne out by the fact that the same object would produce now joyous admiration, now something indistinguishable from fear, according to the boy’s varying condition of health and spirits.

Changes of sentiment analogous to those which marked his behaviour towards strangers occurred in his treatment of inanimate objects. For instance, a not very alarming-looking doll belonging to his sister, after having been a pleasant object of regard, suddenly acquired for him, when he was nearly five months old, a repulsive aspect. Instead of talking to it and making a sort of amiable deity of it as heretofore, he now shrieked when it was brought near. There seems to have been nothing in his individual experience which could account for this sudden accession of fear.

These observations led C.’s father to some characteristic speculations as to the inheritance of certain feelings. Thus he hints that the eerie sort of interest taken by his child in the reflexions of things in the glass may be a survival of the primitive feeling of awe for the ghosts of things which certain anthropologists tell us was first developed in connexion with the phenomena of reflected images and shadows. He goes on to ask whether the fear called forth by the doll and the face of strangers at a certain stage of the child’s development is not clearly due to an instinct now fixed in the race by the countless experiences of peril in its early, pre-social, and Ishmaelitic condition. But here, too, perhaps, his speculations appear, in the light of what has been said above, a little wild.

Among other feelings displayed by the child was that of amusement at what is grotesque and comical. When between four and five months old he was accustomed to watch the antics of his sister, an elfish being given to flying about the room, screaming, and other disorderly proceedings, with all the signs of a sense of the comicality of the spectacle. So far as the father could judge, this sister served as a kind of jester to the baby monarch. He would take just that distant, good-natured interest in her foolings that Shakespeare’s sovereigns took in the eccentric unpredictable ways of their jesters. The sense of the droll became still more distinctly marked at six months. About this date the child delighted in pulling his sister’s hair, and her shrieks would send him into a fit of laughter. Among other provocatives of laughter at this time were sudden movements of one’s head, a rapid succession of sharp staccato sounds from one’s vocal organ (when these were not disconcerting by their violence), and of course sudden reappearances of one’s head after hiding in the game of bo-peep.[292]

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Footnote 292:

Darwin tells us that his boy uttered a rude kind of laugh when only
one hundred and ten days old, after a pinafore had been thrown over
his head and suddenly withdrawn. C.’s sense of humour was hardly as
precocious as this.

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It is hardly necessary to follow the diary into its record of the first stirrings of what psychologists used to call the Will (with capital _W_ of course). If a baby in the first months can be said to have a will in any sense it must be that unconscious metaphysical “will to live” about which we have recently heard so much. On the other hand it is certainly true that the child manifests in the first weeks certain active impulses, the working out of which leads in about four months to the acquisition of the power of carrying out movements for a purpose. Reference has already been made to this progress in motor activity when speaking of the senses. It may suffice to add one or two further observations.

The father remarks that about the end of the ninth week there was a vigorous use of the muscles of the arms and hands in aimless movement. This superabundance of muscular activity is important, as giving children the chance of finding out the results of their movements. C. was just ten and a half weeks old when he first showed himself capable lying on his back of turning his head to the side, and even of half turning his body also, in order to have a good view of his father moving away to a distant part of the room.

About the same date, too, purposive movements began to be clearly differentiated from expressive movements; such, for example, as the quick energetic movement of the limbs when excited by pleasure. For instance, on the seventy-second day the father was surprised and delighted to see the boy add to the usual signs of joy at his approach the movement of leaning forward and holding out the arms as if to try to get near. Was this, he asks, the sudden emergence of an unlearnt instinct, or was it an imitation in baby fashion of his elders’ behaviour when they took possession of him?

The gradual growth of a voluntary movement into a perfect artistic action nicely adjusted to some desired end was strikingly illustrated in the boy’s mastery of the grasping movement, the movement of stretching out the hand to seize an object seen. On the seventy-sixth day, the father writes, he had carefully watched to see whether the child could voluntarily direct his hand to an object. He had tried him by holding before him attractive objects, as a bit of coloured rag or his hand, which he would regard very attentively. For the last week or ten days he had been very observant of objects, including his own hands.

Among the objects that attracted him was his mamma’s dress, which had a dark ground with a small white flower pattern. On this memorable day his hand accidentally came in contact with one of the folds of her dress lying over the breast. Immediately, it seemed to strike him for the first time that he could _reach_ an object, and for a dozen times or more he repeated the movement of stretching out his hand, clutching the fold and giving it a good pull, very much to his own satisfaction.

A hasty reasoner might easily suppose that the child had now learnt to reach out to an object when only seen. But the sequel showed that this was not the case. Four weeks later the diary observes that the child as yet made no attempt to grasp an object offered to him (although there were manifest attempts to uncover the mother’s breast). The clutching at the dress was thus a blind movement due to the stimulus of pleasurable elation. Yet it was doubtless a step in the process of learning to grasp.

The next advance registered occurred when the boy was a little over four months old. He would now bring his two hands together just above the level of his eyes and then gaze on them attentively, striking out one arm straight in front of him, and upwards almost vertically, as if he were trying some new gymnastic exercises, while he accompanied each movement with his eye, and showed the deepest interest in what he was doing. By such exercises, we may suppose, he was exploring space with hand and eye conjointly and noting the correspondences between looking in a given direction and bringing his hand into the line of sight.

The next noticeable advance occurred at the end of the nineteenth week. The boy’s father held a biscuit (the value of which was already known) just below his face and well within his reach. There was a very earnest look and then a series of rapid jerky movements of the hands. These were uncertain at first, but on repetition of the experiment soon grew more precise. At first the biscuit was dropped (the child had not yet learnt to handle things). But after repeated trials he managed to hold on to the treasure and bear it triumphantly to his mouth. The discovery of the new delight of thus feeding himself led to more violent efforts to seize the biscuit when presented again. Indeed, the youngster’s impatience led him to reach forward with the upper part of his body so as to seize the biscuit with his mouth. It may be added here as throwing light on the carrying of the biscuit to the mouth that the child had before this acquired considerable facility in raising his hand to his mouth and to the region of his head generally. Thus he had been noticed to scratch his head with a comical look of sage reflexion when he was fifteen weeks old.

The consummation of the act of seizing an object involving a perception of distance was observed when he was just six months old. The father writes: “I held an object in front of him two or three inches beyond his reach. The astute little fellow made no movement. I then gradually brought it closer, and when it came within his reach he held out his hand and grasped it. I repeated the experiment with slight variations, and satisfied myself that he could now distinguish with some degree of precision the near and the far, the attainable and the unattainable, that his eyes could now inform him by what Bishop Berkeley called visual language of the exact limit, the ‘Ultima Thule’ of his tangible world.” It is natural, no doubt, that the father should go off into another high flight here. But being a psychologist he might have moderated his parental elation by reflecting that his wonderful boy had after all taken six months to learn what a chick seems to know as soon as it leaves the shell. It is doubtful, indeed, whether Master C.’s hand could as yet aim with the precision of the beak of the newly hatched chick. If he had only chanced on a later decade he might have known that five months is the time given by a recent authority (Raehlmann) as the period commonly taken in learning the grasping movements, and so had his pride in his boy’s achievement wholesomely tempered.[293]

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Footnote 293:

Preyer’s boy perfected the action in the fifth month. For differences
in precocity here, see F. Tracy, _The Psychology of Childhood_, pp.
12, 13.

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These early movements are acquired under the stimulus of certain impulses which constitute the instinctive basis of volition. Thus it is obvious that the movement of carrying to the mouth as also that of reaching and grasping was inspired by the nutritive or feeding instinct, that deep-seated impulse which is common to man and the whole animal kingdom, and is the secret spring of so much of his proud achievement. The impulse to seize and appropriate may perhaps be regarded as an instinct which has become detached from its parental stock, the nutritive impulse. Our observer remarks, with a touch of cynicism, that the predominance of the grasping propensities of the race was illustrated by the fact that his boy only manifested the impulse to relinquish his hold on an object some time after he had displayed in its perfection the impulse to seize or grasp an object. Thus it was some months later that he was first observed deliberately to cast aside, as if tired of it, a thing with which he had been playing.

One of the deepest and most far-reaching instincts is to get rid of pain and to prolong pleasure. In C.’s case the working of the first was illustrated in a large number of movements, such as twisting the body round, scratching the head, and so forth. An illustration of the impulse to renew an agreeable effect occurred in the early part of the eighth month. The child was sitting on his mother’s lap close to the table playing with a spoon. He accidentally dropped it and was impressed with the effect of sound. He immediately repeated the action, now, no doubt, with the purpose of gaining the agreeable shock for his ear. After this when the spoon was put into his hand he deliberately dropped it. Not only so, like a true artist, he went on improving on the first effect, raising the spoon higher and higher so as to get more sound, and at length using force in dashing or banging it down.

Children, as everybody knows, are wont to render their elders that highest form of flattery, imitation. Our chronicle is unfortunately rather meagre in observations on the first imitative movements. There is no evidence that the writer went to work in Preyer’s careful way to test this capability. He thinks he saw distinct traces of imitation (of the pointing movement) at the end of the fifteenth week, though he admits that a deliberate attempt to copy a movement was only placed beyond doubt some time later.

There is, I regret to say, a terrible gap in the chronicle between the ninth and the sixteenth month. This is particularly unfortunate because this is just the period when the child is making a beginning at some of the most difficult of accomplishments, _e.g._, mastering the speech of his ancestors. To make up for this loss, the record becomes fuller and decidedly more interesting as we enter upon the second year. To this next stage of the history we may now pass.

_Second Year._

The observations from the date of the resumption of the diary, at the age of sixteen months, begin to have more of human interest about them. It is not till this year has advanced that the child makes headway in handling the knotty intricacies of an elaborate language like ours, and it is through the medium of this mastered speech that he is best able to disclose himself to the observer. The observations on C.’s progress during the second year relate largely to language and intelligence as expressing itself in language. We may, accordingly, begin this section by giving a brief sketch of the child’s linguistic progress.[294]

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Footnote 294:

This should be read in connexion with Study V.

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During the first six months nothing was observable in the way of vocal sounds but the ordinary baby-singing utterances of the ‘la-la’ category. In this tentative vocalisation vowel sounds, of course, preponderated. There was quite a gamut of quaint vowel sounds, ranging from the broad _a_ to the cockney _ow_, that is, _a-oo_. These sounds were purely emotional signs. Thus a prolonged _ā_ sound indicated surprise with a dash of displeasure when the child suddenly encountered an obstacle to his movements, as on catching his dress or striking his head gently. Again, a kind of _ō_ or _oo_ sound, formed by sucking in the breath, appeared to indicate that the small person was pleased with some new object of contemplation, as a freshly discovered picture.

A sudden enlargement of the range of articulatory excursion was noticeable on the completion of the twenty-seventh week, when C. astonished his parents by breaking out into a series of ‘da-da’s’ and ‘ba-ba’s’ or ‘pa-pa’s’. These reduplications were quite in keeping with his earlier sounds, _e.g._, _a-oo_, _a-oo_. He soon followed up this brilliant success by other experiments, as in the production of the sounds _ou-a_ and _ditta_, also _ung_ and _ang_.[295]

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Footnote 295:

This rather bald account of early vocal sounds should be contrasted
with those of Preyer and others referred to in Study V.

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Coming now to the commencement of the true linguistic period, that is to say, when C. had attained the age of sixteen months, we find him by no means precocious in the matter of speech. He reproduced very few of the many names the meaning of which he perfectly understood. As to other verbal signs he seems to have acted on the principle of biological economy, saving himself the articulatory effort. Thus although he used sounds for expressing assent, _viz._, “ey,” with falling inflection, he contented himself in the case of negation with the old declining or refusing gesture, _viz._, shaking the head. The movement of nodding seems to have been first used as an affirmative sign at the age of seventeen months when he was asked whether his food was hot.[296]

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Footnote 296:

Perez speaks of both the affirmative and negative movement of the head
appearing about the fifteenth month (_First Three Years of Childhood_,
Engl. transl., p. 21). Darwin finds that the sign of affirmation
(nodding) is less uniform among the different races of men than that
of negation. According to Preyer, while the gesture of negation
appears under the form of a turning away or declining movement as an
instinct in the first days of life, the accepting gesture of nodding
(which afterwards becomes the sign of affirmation) is acquired and
appears much later (see his full account of the growth of these
movements, _Die Seele des Kindes_, p. 242).

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C. illustrated the common childish impulse to mimic natural sounds. Thus when sixteen months old he spontaneously imitated in a rough fashion the puffing sound produced by his father when indulging in the solace of tobacco; and he uttered a similar explosive sound when hearing the wind. Yet this child does not seem to have been a particularly good illustration of the onomatopoetic impulse.

While the imitative impulse thus aids in the growth of an independent baby vocabulary, it contributes, as we have seen, to the adoption of the language of the community. At first, however, the little learner will not repeat a sound merely in response to another’s lead. Many a mother is doubtless able to recall the chagrin which she experienced when on trying to trot out her baby’s linguistic powers by giving the lead, _e.g._, “Say ta-ta to the lady!” the little autocrat obdurately refused to comply with the parental injunction. It is only when what the child himself considers to be the appropriate circumstances recur, and, what is more, when the corresponding feeling is excited in his breast, that he utters the sound. Thus C.’s father observes that though the child will not say “ta-ta” when told to do so, he will say it readily enough when he sees him, hat in hand, moving towards the door. In like manner the father remarks: “He will say, ‘Ta’ (‘thank you’), on receiving something, yet not do so in mere response to me when I say it”. Herein, it would seem, the vocal imitation of children is less mechanical and more intelligent than that of animals, as the parrot.

It was not until he was well on in his second year that C. condescended to let his young speech-organ be played on by another’s will. By this time, it may be conjectured, associations between sounds and vocal actions had become firm enough to allow of such imitation without a consciousness of exertion or strain. Having no special reason to refuse he very sensibly fell in with others’ suggestions. It is not at all improbable, too, that at this stage of development the little vocalist found a pleasure in trying his instrument and producing new effects.

Of course these first tentatives in verbal imitation were far from perfect. At first there was hardly more than a reproduction of the rhythm and the rise and fall of voice, as in rendering ‘All gone,’ the sign of disappearance, by _a_, _a_, with rise and fall of voice. Like other little people, C. displayed a lordly disposition to save himself trouble and to expect infinite pains from others in the way of comprehension. He was in the habit of reducing difficult words to fragments, the comprehension of which by the most loyal of attendants was a matter of considerable difficulty. In thus chopping off splinters of words he showed the greatest caprice. In many cases he selected the initial sounds, _e.g._, “bŏ” for ball, “nō” for nose, “pē” for please. In other cases he preferred the ending, _e.g._, “ĕk” for cake, “bĕ” for Elizabeth. It looked as if certain sounds and combinations, _e.g._, _l_, _s_, _fl_, _sh_, etc., lay altogether beyond his gamut. And others seemed to be specially difficult, and so were avoided as much as possible.[297]

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Footnote 297:

_Cf._ above, p. 148 ff.

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While C.’s parents could not help resenting at times an economising of speech-power which imposed so heavy a burden on themselves, they were often amused at the way in which the astute little fellow managed after softening down all the asperities of a name to retain a certain rough semblance of the original. Thus, for instance, sugar became “ooga,” biscuit “bĭk,” bread and butter “bup,” fish “gish” (with soft _g_), and bacon-fat, that is bread dipped in the same, “ak”. In some cases it might have puzzled his father to say whether the sound was a reproduction or an independent creation. This remark applies with particular force to the name he gave himself. His real name as commonly used was, I may say, Clifford. Instead of this he employed as the name for himself “Ingi” or “Ningi” (with hard _g_). He stuck to his own invention in spite of many efforts to lead him to adopt the name chosen for him by his parents. And perhaps the sovereignty of the baby was never more clearly illustrated than in the fact that in time he constrained his parents and his sister to adopt his self-chosen prænomen. Possibly his real name was to his ear a hopelessly difficult mass of sound, and “Ningi” seemed to him a fair equivalent within the limits of practicable linguistics for so uncouth a combination.[298] These changes are interesting as illustrating how the child attends to the general form of the word-sound rather than to its constituent elements.[299] The same thing is seen in the modified form of “Ningi,” which he adopted at the beginning of the third year, _viz._, “Kikkie,” where, too, the special impressiveness of the initial sound is illustrated.

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Footnote 298:

The supposition that ‘Ningi’ was easy seems reasonable. First of all
it is in part a reduplication like his later name ‘Kikkie’. Again, we
know that children often add the final _y_ or _ie_ sound, as in saying
‘dinnie’ for dinner, ‘beddie’ for bread. Once more, from the early
appearances of ‘ng’ sound in ‘ang,’ ‘ung,’ etc., we may infer it to be
easy. Indeed, one observer (Dr. Champneys) tells us that an infant’s
cry is exactly represented by the sound ‘ngä’ as pronounced in Germany
(_Mind_, vi., p. 105).

Footnote 299:

See above, p. 157 f.

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It is now time to pass to the most important phase of baby-speech from a scientific point of view, namely, the first use of sounds as general signs, or as registering the results of a generalising process, as when the child begins to speak of man or boy.

It must be confessed that our diary does not give us much that is startling in the way of original generalisation. So far as we can judge, C. was a steady-going baby, not given to wanton caprices. Yet though not a genius he had his moments of invention. One of the earliest illustrations of a free working of the generalising impulse was the extension of the sound “ŏt” (hot). At first he employed this sign in the conventional manner to indicate that his milk or other viand was disagreeably warm. When, however, he was seventeen and a half months old he struck out an original extension of meaning. He happened to have placed before him cold milk. On tasting this he at once exclaimed, “Ot!” It looks as though the sound now meant something unpleasant to taste, though, as we shall see presently, the boy had another sound (“kaka”) for expressing this idea.[300] But “ot” was being extended in another way by a process of association. This was illustrated a month later, when the boy pointed to an engraving of Guido’s _Aurora_, and exclaimed, “Ot!” His dull parents could not at first comprehend this bold metaphoric use of language, until they bethought them that the clouds on which the aeronauts are sailing are a good deal like a volume of ascending steam.

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Footnote 300:

It has been found that the sensations of hot and cold are readily
confused even by adults.

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The sounds “kĕ,” “kă,” and “kăkă” were employed by C. from about the same age (seventeen and a half months) to express what is actually known or simply suspected to be disagreeable to taste or smell, such as a pipe held near him, a glass of beer, a vinegar bottle, and so forth. He had smelt the beer, and learnt its disagreeable odour, and in pronouncing the untried vinegar “kăkă” he was really carrying out a form of reasoning of a simple kind. This sound came to represent a much higher effort of abstraction some weeks later, when it was applied to things so unlike in themselves as milk spilt on the cloth, crumbs on the floor, soiled hands, etc. The idea here seized was plainly that of something soiled or dirty. But this half-æsthetic, half-ethical idea was reached largely by the help of others, more particularly perhaps his sister, who, as elder sisters are wont to do, supplemented the parental discipline by a vigorous inculcation of the well-recognised proprieties.

Another extension of the range of application of names used by others occurred about the same time (end of twentieth month). He employed the sound ‘ga’ (glass) so as to include a plated drinking cup, which of course others always called ‘cup’. This was curious as showing at this stage the superior interest of use (that of drinking utensil) to that of form and colour.

The generalisations just touched on have to do with those qualities and relations of things which strongly impress the baby mind, because they bear on the satisfaction of his wants and his feelings of pleasure and pain. In order to watch the calm movements of the intellect, when no longer urged by appetite and sense, we must turn to the child’s first detection of similarities in the objective attributes of things, as their shape, size, colour, and so forth. Here the first generalisations respecting the forms of bodies are a matter of peculiar interest to the scientific observer. The young thinker, with whom we are now specially concerned, achieved his first success in geometric abstraction, or the consideration of pure form, when just seventeen months old. He had learnt the name of his india-rubber ball. Having securely grasped this, he went on calling oranges “bŏ”. This left the father in some doubt whether the child was attending exclusively to form, as a geometrician should, for he was wont to make a toy of an orange, as when rolling it on the floor. This uncertainty was, however, soon removed. One day C. was sitting at table beside his sire, while the latter was pouring out a glass of beer. Instantly the ready namer of things pointed to the bubbles on the surface, and exclaimed, “Bŏ!” This was repeated on many subsequent occasions. As the child made no attempt to handle the bubbles, it was evident that he did not view them as possible playthings. As he got lost in contemplation, muttering, “Bŏ! bŏ!” his father tells us that he had the satisfaction of feeling sure that the young mind was already learning to turn away from the coarseness of matter, and fix itself on the refined attribute of form.

Although this was the most striking instance of pure or abstract consideration of form, attention to the shape of things was proved by many of the simple ideas reached at this stage. It is obvious, indeed, that a ready recognition of any member of a species of animals, as dog, in spite of considerable variations in size and colour, implies a power of singling out for special attention what we call relations of form. And this conclusion is borne out by the fact that by the end of the eighteenth month C. was quite an adept in recognising uncoloured drawings of animal and other familiar forms.

Colour is of course in itself of much more interest to a child than form, since it gives a keen sensuous enjoyment. Our diary furnishes a curious illustration of a propensity to classify things according to their colour. In his nineteenth month C. was observed to designate by the sound “appoo” (apple) a patch of reddish colour on the mantelpiece, which bore in its form no discoverable resemblance to an apple. At the same time, the effect of growing experience and of a deeper scrutiny of things in bringing out the superior significance of form is seen in the fact that this same word “appoo” came subsequently to be habitually applied to things of unlike colours, namely, apples, oranges, lemons, etc. It may be added that the history of this word “appoo” illustrates a process analogous to what Archbishop Trench (if I remember rightly) has called the degradation of words. When C. first used this name it designated objects simply as visible and tangible ones; he knew nothing of their taste. After he was permitted to try their flavours, the less worthy sensations now added naturally contributed a prominent ingredient to the meaning of the word. Thus, he began to use “appoo” for all edible fruits, including such shapeless masses as stewed apples.

It is not to be expected that children in their first attempts at scrutinising objects should be able to take in completely a complex form, as that of an animal, with all its parts and their relations one to another. C. gave ample proof of the fact that the first generalisations respecting form are apt to be rough and ready, grounded simply on a perception of one or two salient points. Thus, his first use of “bow-wow” showed that the name meant for him simply a four-legged creature. About the fifteenth month this word was thrown about in the most reckless way. Later on, when the canine form began to be disengaged in his mind from those of other quadrupeds, the pointed nose of the animal seems to have become a prominent feature in the meaning of the word. Thus, in his eighteenth month, C. took to applying the name ‘bow-wow’ to objects, such as fragments of bread or biscuit, as well as drawings, having something of a triangular form with a sharp angle at the apex. It is probable that if our little thinker had been able at this stage to define his terms, he would have said that a “bow-wow” was a four-legged thing with a pointed nose.

Here, however, it is only fair to C. to mention that his mind had at this time become prepossessed with the image of “bow-wow”. Not long before the date referred to he had been frightened by a small dog, which had crept unobserved into the room behind a lady visitor, lain quiet for some time under the table, and then, forgetting good manners, suddenly darted out and barked. There were many facts which supported the belief that the child’s mind was at this period haunted by images of dogs which approximated in their vividness to hallucinations; and this persistence of the canine image in the child’s brain naturally disposed him to see the “bow-bow” form in the most unpromising objects.

The use of the word “gee-gee,” which towards the end of the second year competed with “bow-wow” for the first place in C.’s vocabulary, illustrates the same fact. A horse was first of all distinguished from other quadrupeds by the length of his neck. Thus, when twenty months old, C. in a slovenly way, no doubt, applied the name “gee-gee” to the drawing of an ostrich, and also to a bronze figure representing a stork-like bird. This is particularly curious, as showing how a comparatively unimportant detail of form, as length of neck, overshadowed in his mind at this time what we should consider the much more important feature, the possession of four legs. The following are selected from among many other illustrations of the imperfect observation of complex forms. When twenty-one and a half months old he took to calling all triangular objects, including drawings, “ship”. The feature of the ship—as seen in real life and in his picture-books—which had fixed itself in his mind was the triangular sail.[301] A similar propensity to select one characteristic feature was illustrated in another quaint observation of the diary. When twenty-three months old C.’s mother showed him a number of drawings of patterns of dresses, some surmounted by faces, some not. He pointed to one of the latter and said: “No nose!” From this, writes the father, lapsing again into his frivolous vein, it would seem that at this early age he had acquired a dim presentiment of the supreme dignity of the nasal organ among the features of the human countenance.

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Footnote 301:

I think this supposition more probable than that the child saw the
whole form—hull, masts and sails—as a triangle.

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Progress in the accurate use of words was curiously illustrated in C.’s way of looking at and talking about his fellow-creatures. Oddly enough he began apparently by confusing his two parents, extending the name “ma” to his father till such time as he learnt “papa”. Then he proceeded after the manner of other children to embrace within the term “papa” all male adults, whether known to him or not. Thus he applied the name to photographs of distinguished savants, artists, and poets, which he found in his father’s album. When just eighteen months old he was observed to introduce the word ‘man’. For instance, he took to calling an etching of a recent British philosopher, and a terra-cotta cast of an ancient Roman one, “man,” as well as “papa”. Oddly enough, however, members of the other sex were still called exclusively by the name “mamma,” though the words “woman” and “lady” were certainly used at least as frequently as “man” in his hearing. This earlier discrimination of individual men than of individual women leads the father into some jocose observations about the more strongly marked individuality of men than of women, observations which would do very well in the mouth of a misogynist of the old school, but are altogether out of date in this advanced age.

By the twentieth month the extension of the name “papa” to other men was discontinued. His father tried him at this date with a photographic album. “Man” was now instantly applied to all male adults, except old ones with a grey beard. To these he invariably applied the name of an old gentleman, a friend of his. A woman was still called “mamma,” though the term “lady” (“’ady”) was clearly beginning to displace it; and no distinction was drawn between women of different ages. Finally, children were distinguished as boys or girls, apparently according as they were or were not dressed in petticoats.

The reservation of the names “papa” and “mamma” for his parents naturally gave pleasure to these worthy persons. It was something, they said, to feel sure at length that they were individualised in the consciousness of their much-cared-for offspring. This restricted use of the terms may be supposed to have involved a dim apprehension of a special relation of things to the child. “Papa” now carried with it the idea of the man who stands in a particular connexion with C. or “Ningi”; or, to express it otherwise, “man” began to signify those papas who have nothing specially to do with this important personage. This antecedent conjecture is borne out by the fact that the act of distinguishing between his father and other men followed rapidly, certainly within two or three weeks, the first use of his own name “Ningi”. In other words, as soon as his attention began to direct itself to himself, as the centre of his little world-circle, he naturally went on to distinguish between those persons and things that had some special connexion with this centre and those that had not.

The consciousness of self was noticed to grow much more distinct in the second half of this year. As might be expected the first idea of ‘self’ was largely a mental picture of the body. Thus the father tells us that when eighteen months old the child would instantly point to himself when he heard his name. If his father touched his face asking who that was, he replied, ‘Ningi’. Here the corporeal reference is manifest. When just over nineteen months, however, he showed that the idea was becoming fuller and richer with the germ of what we mean by the word personality. Thus when asked to give up something he liked, as the remnant of a biscuit, he would say emphatically, ‘No, no! Ningi!’ Similarly, when he saw his sister wipe her hands, he would say ‘Ningi!’ and proceed to imitate the action. By the end of the twenty-first month the child began to substitute ‘me’ for ‘Ningi’.

As we saw above, the child and the poet have this in common, that they view things directly as they are, free from the superficial and arbitrary associations, the conventional trappings, by the additions of which we prosaic people are wont to separate them into compartments with absolutely impenetrable walls. Hence the freshness, the charming originality of their utterances.