DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD'S INTELLECT INDEPENDENTLY OF LANGUAGE.
A wide-spread prejudice declares, "Without language, no understanding"!
Subtile distinctions between understanding and reason have limited the
statement to the latter term. But even in the restricted form, "Without
verbal language, no reason," it is at least unproved.
_Is there any thinking without words?_ The question takes this shape.
Now, for the thinker, who has long since forgotten the time when he
himself learned to speak, it is difficult, or even impossible, to give a
decided answer. For the thinking person can not admit that he has been
thinking without words; not even when he has caught himself arriving at
a logical result without a continuity in his unexpressed thought. A
break occurred in the train. There was, however, a train of thought.
Breaks alone yield no thought; they arise only after words have been
associated with thoughts, and so they can by no means serve as evidence
of a thinking without words, although the ecstasy of the artist, the
profundity of the meta-physician, may attain the last degree of
unconsciousness, and a dash may interrupt the thought-text.
But the child not yet acquainted with verbal language, who has not been
prematurely artificialized by training and by suppression of his own
attempts to express his states of mind, who learns _of himself_ to
_think_, just as he learns of himself to see and hear--such a child
shows plainly to the attentive observer that long before knowledge of
the word as a means of understanding among men, and long before the
first successful attempt to express himself in articulate words--nay,
long before learning the pronunciation of even a single word, he
combines ideas in a logical manner--i. e., he _thinks_. Thinking is,
it is true, "internal speech," but there is a speech without words.
Facts in proof of this have already been given in connection with
other points (Vol. I, pp. 88, 327, 328); others are given further on.
It will not be superfluous, however, to put together several
observations relating to the development of the childish intellect
without regard to the acquirement of speech; and to present them
separately, as a sort of introduction to the investigation of the
process of learning to speak.
Memory; a causative combination of the earliest recollections, or
memory-images; purposive, deliberate movements for the lessening of
individual strain--all these come to the child in greater or less
measure independently of verbal language. The, as it were, embryonic
logic of the child does not need words. A brief explanation of the
operation of these three factors will show this. Memory takes the
first place in point of time.
Without memory no intellect is possible. The only material at the
disposal of the intellect is received from the senses. It has been
provided solely out of sensations. Now a sensation in itself alone, as
a simple fundamental experience affecting primarily the one who has
the sensation, can not be the object of any intellectual operation
whatever. In order to make such activity possible there must be
several sensations: two of different kinds, of unequal strength; or
two of different kinds, of the same strength; or two of the same kind
unequally strong; in any case, two unlike sensations (cf. my treatise
"Elemente der reinen Empfindungslehre," Jena, 1876), if the lowest
activity of the intellect, _comparison_, is to operate. But because
the sensations that are to be compared can not all exist together,
recollection of the earlier ones is necessary (for the comparison);
that is, individual or personal memory.
This name I give to the memory formed by means of individual impressions
(occurrences, experiences) in contrast with the _phyletic_ memory, or
instinct, the memory of the race, which results from the inheritance of
the traces of individual experiences of ancestors; of this I do not here
speak.
All sensations leave traces behind in the brain; weak ones leave such as
are easy to be obliterated by others; strong ones, traces more enduring.
At the beginning of life it seems to be the department of taste (sweet)
and of smell (smell of milk) in which memory is first operative (Vol. I,
p. 124). Then comes the sense of touch (in nursing). Next in order the
sense of sight chiefly asserts itself as an early promoter of memory.
Hearing does not come till later.
If the infant, in the period from three to six months of age, is brought
into a room he has not before seen, his expression changes; he is
astonished. The new sensations of light, the different apportionment of
light and dark, arouse his attention; and when he comes back to his
former surroundings he is not astonished. These have lost the _stimulus
of novelty_--i. e., a certain _reminiscence_ of them has remained with
the child, they have _impressed_ themselves upon him.
Long before the thirtieth week, healthy children distinguish human faces
definitely from one another; first, the faces of the mother and the
nurse, then the face of the father, seen less often; and all three of
these from every strange face. Probably faces are the first thing
frequently perceived clearly by the eye. It has been found surprising
that infants so much earlier recognize human faces and forms, and follow
them with the gaze, than they do other objects. But human forms and
faces, being large, moving objects, awaken interest more than other
objects do; and on account of the manner of their movements, and because
they are the source from which the voice issues, are essentially
different from other objects in the field of vision. "In these movements
they are also characterized as a coherent whole, and the face, as a
whitish-reddish patch with the two sparkling eyes, is always a part of
this image that will be easy to recognize, even for one who has seen it
but a few times" (Helmholtz).
Hence the memory for faces is established earlier than that for other
visual impressions, and with this the ability to recognize members of
the family. A little girl, who does not speak at all, looks at pictures
with considerable interest in the seventh month, "and points meantime
with her little forefinger to the heads of the human figures" (Frau von
Struempell).
My child in the second month could already localize the face and voice
of his mother, but the so-called knowing ("Erkennen") is a recognition
(Wiedererkennen) which presupposes a very firm _association of the
memory-images_. This fundamental function attached to the memory can
have but a slow development, because it demands an accumulation of
memory-images and precision in them.
In the second three months it is so far developed, at least, that
strange faces are at once known as strange, and are distinguished from
those of parents and nurse; for they excite astonishment or fear
(crying) while the faces of the latter do not. But the latter, if
absent, are not yet, at this period, missed by most children. Hence it
is worthy of note that a girl in her twelfth month recognized her
nurse after six days' absence, immediately, "with sobs of joy," as the
mother reports (Frau von Struempell); another recognized her father,
after a separation of four days, even in the tenth month (Lindner).
In the seventh month my child did _not_ recognize his nurse, to whom
he had for months been accustomed, after an absence of four weeks.
Another child, however, at four months noticed at evening the absence
of his nurse, who had been gone only a day, and cried lustily upon the
discovery, looking all about the room, and crying again every time
after searching in vain (Wyma, 1881). At ten months the same child
used to be troubled by the absence of his parents, though he bore
himself with indifference toward them when he saw them again. At this
period a single nine-pin out of the whole set could not be taken away
without his noticing it, and at the age of a year and a half this
child knew at once whether one of his ten animals was missing or not.
In the nineteenth and twenty-first months my boy recognized his father
immediately from a distance, after a separation of several days, and
once after two weeks' absence; and in his twenty-third month his joy
at seeing again his playthings after an absence of eleven and a half
weeks (with his parents) was very lively, great as was the child's
forgetfulness in other respects at this period. A favorite toy could
often be taken from him without its being noticed or once asked for.
But when the child--in his eighteenth month--after having been
accustomed to bring to his mother two towels which he would afterward
carry back to their place, on one occasion had only one towel given
back to him, he came with inquiring look and tone to get the second.
This observation, which is confirmed by some similar ones, proves that
at a year and a half the memory for visual and motor ideas that belong
together was already well developed without the knowledge of the
corresponding words. But artificial associations of this sort need
continual renewing, otherwise they are soon forgotten; the remembrance
of them is speedily lost even in the years of childhood.
It is noteworthy, in connection with this, that what has been lately
acquired, e. g., verses learned by heart, can be recited more fluently
during sleep than in the waking condition. At the age of three years
and five months a girl recited a stanza of five lines on the occasion
of a birthday festival, not without some stumbling, but one night soon
after the birthday she repeated the whole of the rhymes aloud in her
sleep without stumbling at all (Frau von Struempell).
It is customary, generally, to assume that the memory of adults does
not extend further back than to the fourth year of life. Satisfactory
observations on this point are not known to exist. But it is certainly
of the first consequence, in regard to the development of the faculty
of memory, whether the later experiences of the child have any
characteristic in common with the earlier experiences. For many of
these experiences no such agreement exists; nothing later on reminds
us of the once existing inability to balance the head, or of the
former inability to turn around, to sit, to stand, to walk, of the
inborn difficulty of hearing, inability to accommodate the eye, and to
distinguish our own body from foreign objects; hence, no man, and no
child, remembers these states. But this is not true of what is
acquired later. My child when less than three years old remembered
very well--and would almost make merry over himself at it--the time
when he could not yet talk, but articulated incorrectly and went
imperfectly through the first, often-repeated performances taught by
his nurse, "How tall is the child?" and "Where is the rogue?" If I
asked him, after he had said "Fruehstuecken" correctly, how he used to
say it, he would consider, and would require merely a suggestion of
accessory circumstances, in order to give the correct answer _Fritick_
and so with many words difficult to pronounce. The child of three and
even of four years can remember separate experiences of his second
year, and a person that will take the pains to remind him frequently
of them will be able easily to carry the recollections of the second
and third years far on into the more advanced years of childhood. It
is merely because no one makes such a useless experiment that older
children lose the memory-images of their second year. These fade out
because they are not combined with new ones.
At what time, however, the first natural association of a particular
idea with a new one that appears weeks or months later, takes place
without being called up by something in the mean time, is very hard to
determine. On this point we must first gather good observations out of
the second and third half-years, like the following:
"In the presence of a boy a year and a half old it was related that
another boy whom he knew, and who was then in the country far away,
had fallen and hurt his knee. No one noticed the child, who was
playing as the story was told. After some weeks the one who had fallen
came into the room, and the little one in a lively manner ran up to
the new-comer and cried, 'Fall, hurt leg!'" (Stiebel, 1865).
Another example is given by G. Lindner (1882): "The mother of a
two-year-old child had made for it out of a postal-card a sled
(Schlitten), which was destroyed after a few hours, and found its way
into the waste-basket. Just four weeks later another postal-card comes,
and it is taken from the carrier by the child and handed to the mother
with the words,'_Mamma, Litten!_' This was in summer, when there was
nothing to remind the child of the sled. Soon after the same wish was
expressed on the receipt of a letter also."
I have known like cases of attention, of recollection, and of
intelligence in the third year where they were not suspected. The
child, unnoticed, hears all sorts of things said, seizes on this or
that expression, and weeks after brings into connection, fitly or
unfitly, the memory-images, drawing immediately from an insufficient
number of particular cases a would-be general conclusion.
Equally certain with this fact is the other, less known or less
noticed, that, _even before the first attempts at speaking, such a
generalizing and therefore concept-forming combination of
memory-images regularly takes place_.
All children in common have inborn in them the ability to combine all
sorts of sense-impressions connected with food, when these appear
again individually, with one another, or with memory-images of such
impressions, so that adaptive movements suited to the obtaining of
fresh food arise as the result of this association. In the earlier
months these are simple and easier to be seen, and I have given
several examples (Vol. I, pp. 250, 260, 329, 333). Later such
movements, through the perfecting of the language of gesture and the
growth of this very power of association, become more and more
complicated: e. g., in his sixteenth month my boy saw a closed box,
out of which he had the day before received a cake; he at once made
with his hands a begging movement, yet he could not speak a word. In
the twenty-first month I took out of the pocket of a coat which was
hanging with many others in the wardrobe a biscuit and gave it to the
child. When he had eaten it, he went directly to the wardrobe and
looked in the right coat for a second biscuit. At this period also the
child can not have been thinking in the unspoken words, "Get
biscuit--wardrobe, coat, pocket, look," for he did not yet know the
words.
Even in the sixth month an act of remarkable _adaptiveness_ was once
observed, which can not be called either accidental or entirely
voluntary, and if it was fully purposed it would indicate a
well-advanced development of understanding in regard to food without
knowledge of words. When the child, viz., after considerable
experience in nursing at the breast, discovered that the flow of milk
was less abundant, he used to place his hand hard on the breast as if
he wanted to force out the milk by pressure. Of course there was here
no insight into the causal connection, but it is a question whether
the firm laying on of the little hand was not repeated for the reason
that the experience had been once made accidentally, that after doing
this the nursing was less difficult.
On the other hand, an unequivocal complicated act of deliberation
occurred in the seventeenth month. The child could not reach his
playthings in the cupboard, because it was too high for him; he ran
about, brought a traveling-bag, got upon it, and took what he wanted.
In this case he could not possibly think in words, since he did not
yet know words.
My child tries further (in the nineteenth and twentieth months) in a
twofold fashion to make known his eager wish to leave the room, not
being as yet able to speak. He takes any cloth he fancies and brings
it to me. I put it about him, he wraps himself in it, and, climbing
beseechingly on my knee, makes longing, pitiful sounds, which do not
cease until after I have opened a door through which he goes into
another room. Then he immediately throws away the cloth and runs about
exulting.
The other performance is this: When the child feels the need of
relieving his bowels, he is accustomed to make peculiar grunting
sounds, by means of a strain of the abdomen, shutting the mouth and
breathing loud, by jerks, through the nose. He is then taken away.
Now, if he is not suited with the place where he happens to be, at any
time, he begins to make just such sounds. If he is taken away, no such
need appears at all, but he is in high glee. Here is the expectation,
"I shall be taken away if I make that sound."
Whether we are to admit, in addition, an intentional _deception_ in this
case, or whether only a logical process takes place, I can not decide.
In the whole earlier and later behavior of the child there is no ground
for the first assumption, and the fact that he employs this artifice
while in his carriage, immediately after he has been waited on, is
directly against it.
To how small an extent, some time previous to this, perceptions were
made use of _to simplify his own exertions_, i. e., were combined and
had motor effect, appears from an observation in the sixteenth month.
Earlier than this, when I used to say, "Give the ring," I always laid an
ivory ring, that was tied to a thread, before the child, on the table. I
now said the same thing--after an interval of a week--while the same
ring was hanging near the chair by a red thread a foot long, so that the
child, as he sat on the chair, could just reach it, but only with much
pains. He made a grasp now, upon getting the sound-impression "ring,"
not at the thread, which would have made the seizure of the ring,
hanging freely, very easy for him, but directly at the ring hanging far
below him, and gave it to me. And when the command was repeated, it did
not occur to him to touch the thread.
It is likewise a sign of small understanding that the mouth is always
opened in smelling of a fragrant flower or perfume (Vol. I, p. 135).
Deficiencies of this kind are, indeed, quite logical from the standpoint
of childish experience. Because, at an earlier period the pleasant smell
(of milk) always came in connection with the pleasant taste, therefore,
thinks the child, in every case where there is a pleasant smell there
will also be something that tastes good. The common or collective
concept _taste-smell_ had not yet (in the seventeenth month) been
differentiated into the concepts taste and smell.
In the department of the sense of hearing the differentiation generally
makes its appearance earlier; memory, as a rule, later. Yet children
whose talent for music is developed early, retain _melodies_ even in
their first year of life. A girl to whom some of the Froebel songs were
sung, and who was taught appropriate movements of the hands and feet,
always performed the proper movement when one of the melodies was merely
hummed, or a verse was said (in the thirteenth month), without
confounding them at all. This early and firm association of sound-images
with motor-images is possible only when interest is attached to it--i. e.,
when the attention has been directed often, persistently, and with
concentration, upon the things to be combined. Thus, this very child (in
the nineteenth month), when her favorite song, "Who will go for a
Soldier?" ("Wer will unter die Soldaten?") was sung to her, could not
only join in the rhyme at the end of the verse, but, no matter where a
stop was made, she would go on, in a manner imperfect, indeed, but
easily intelligible (Frau Dr. Friedemann).
Here, however, in addition to memory and attention, heredity is to be
considered; since such a talent is wholly lacking in certain families,
but in others exists in all the brothers and sisters.
In performances of this kind, a superior understanding is not by any
means exhibited, but a stronger memory and faculty of association. These
associations are not, however, of a logical sort, but are habits
acquired through training, and they may even retard the development of
the intellect if they become numerous. For they may obstruct the
formation, at an early period, of independent ideas, merely on account
of the time they claim. Often, too, these artificial associations are
almost useless for the development of the intellect. They are too
special. On this ground I am compelled to censure the extravagancies,
that are wide-spread especially in Germany, of the Froebel methods of
occupying young children.
The _logic of the child_ naturally operates at the beginning with much
more extensive, and therefore less intensive, notions than those of
adults, with notions which the adult no longer forms. But the child does
not, on that account, proceed illogically, although he does proceed
awkwardly. Some further examples may illustrate.
The adult does not ordinarily try whether a door that he has just bolted
is fast; but the one-year-old child tests carefully the edge of the
door he has shut, to see whether it is really closed, because he does
not understand the effect of lock and bolt. For even in the eighteenth
month he goes back and forth with a key, to the writing-desk, with the
evident purpose of opening it. But at twelve months, when he tries
whether it is fast, he does not think of the key at all, and does not
yet possess a single word.
An adult, before watering flowers with a watering-pot, will look to see
whether there is water in it. The child of a year and a half, who has
seen how watering is done, finds special pleasure in going from flower
to flower, even with an empty watering-pot, and making the motions of
pouring upon each one separately, as if water would really come out. For
him the notion "watering-pot" is identical with the notion "filled
watering-pot," because at first he was acquainted with the latter only.
Much of what is attributed to imagination in very young children rests
essentially on the formation of such vague concepts, on the inability to
combine constant qualities into sharply defined concepts. When, in the
twenty-third month, the child holds an empty cup to his mouth and sips
and swallows, and does it repeatedly, and with a serene, happy
expression, this "play" is founded chiefly on the imperfect notion
"filled cup." The child has so often perceived something to drink,
drinking-vessel, and the act of drinking, in combination with one
another, that the one peremptorily demands the other when either appears
singly; hence the pleasure in pouring out from empty pitchers into empty
cups, and in drinking out of empty cups (in second to fifth years).
When adults do the same in the play of the theatre, this action always
has a value as language, it signifies something for other persons; but
with the child, who plays in this fashion entirely alone, the pleasure
consists in the production of familiar ideas together with agreeable
feelings, which are, as it were, crystallized with comparative clearness
out of the dull mass of undefined perceptions. These memory-images
become real existences, like the hallucinations of the insane, because
the sensuous impressions probably impress themselves directly--without
reflection--upon the growing brain, and hence the memory-images of them,
on account of their vividness, can not always be surely distinguished
from the perceptions themselves. Most of the plays that children invent
of themselves may be referred to this fact; on the other hand, the play
of hide-and-seek (especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth months),
and, nearly allied to this, the hunting after scraps of paper, bits of
biscuit, buttons, and other favorite objects (in the fifteenth month),
constitute an intellectual advance.
By practice in this kind of seeking for well-known, purposely concealed
objects, the intelligence of little children can easily be increased to
an astonishing degree, so that toward the end of the second year they
already understand some simple tricks of the juggler; for example,
making a card disappear. But after I had discontinued such exercises for
months, the ordinary capacity for being duped was again present.
This ease with which children can be deceived is to be attributed to
lack of experience far more than to lack of intelligence. When the child
of a year and a half offers leaves to a sheep or a stag, observes the
strange animal with somewhat timid astonishment, and a few days after
holds out some hastily plucked grass-blades to a chaffinch he sees
hopping across the road, supposing that the bird will likewise take them
from his hand and eat them--an observation that I made on my child
exactly as Sigismund did on his--it is not right to call such an act
"stupid"; the act shows ignorance--i. e., inexperience--but it is not
illogical. The child would be properly called stupid only in case he did
not _learn_ the difference between the animals fed. When, on the other
hand, the child of two and a half years, entirely of his own accord,
holds a watch first to his left ear, then to his right, listens both
times, and then says, "The watch goes, goes too!" then, pointing with
his finger to a clock, cries with delight, "The clock goes too," we
rightly find in such independent induction a proof of intellect. For the
swinging of the pendulum and the ticking had indeed often been
perceived, but to connect the notion of a "going clock" with the visible
but noiseless swinging, just as with the audible but invisible ticking
of the watch, requires a pretty well advanced power of abstraction.
That the ability to _abstract_ may show itself, though imperfectly, even
in the first year, is, according to my observations, certain. Infants
are struck by a quality of an object--e. g., the white appearance of
milk. The "taking away" or "abstracting" then consists in the isolating
of this quality out of innumerable other sight-impressions and the
blending of the impressions into a concept. The _naming_ of this, which
begins months later, by a rudimental word, like _mum_, is an outward
sign of this abstraction, which did not at all lead to the formation of
the concept, but followed it, as will be shown in detail further on (in
the two following chapters).
It would be interesting to collect observations concerning this
reasoning power in the very earliest period, because at that time
language does not interfere to help or to hinder. But it is just such
observations that we especially lack. When a child in the twelfth month,
on hearing a watch for the first time, cries out, "Tick-tick," looking
meantime at the clock on the wall, he has not, in doing this, "formed,"
as G. Lindner supposes, "his first concept, although a vague and empty
one as yet," but he had the concept before, and has now merely given a
name to it for the first time.
The first observation made in regard to his child by Darwin, which
seemed to him to prove "a sort of practical reflection," occurred on the
one hundred and forty-fourth day. The child grasped his father's finger
and drew it to his mouth, but his own hand prevented him from sucking
the finger. The child then, strangely enough, instead of entirely
withdrawing his hand, slipped it along the finger so that he could get
the end of the finger into his mouth. This proceeding was several times
repeated, and was evidently not accidental but intentional. At the age
of five months, associations of ideas arose independently of all
instruction. Thus, e. g., the child, being dressed in hat and cloak, was
very angry if he was not at once taken out of doors.
How strong the _reasoning power without_ words may be at a later period,
the following additional observations show:
From the time when my child, like Sigismund's (both in the fifteenth
month), had burned his finger in the flame of the candle, he could not
be induced to put his finger near the flame again, but he would
sometimes put it in fun toward the flame without touching it, and he
even (eighteen months old) carried a stick of wood of his own accord to
the stove-door and pushed it in through the open slide, with a proud
look at his parents. There is surely something more than an imitation
here.
Further, my child at first never used to let his mouth and chin be wiped
without crying; from the fifteenth month on he kept perfectly quiet
during the disagreeable operation. He must have noticed that this was
finished sooner when he was quiet.
The same thing can be observed in every little child, provided he is not
too much talked to, punished, yielded to, or spoiled. In the nineteenth
month it happened with my child that he resisted the command to lie down
in the evening. I let him cry, and raise himself on his bed, but did not
take him up, did not speak to him, did not use any force, but remained
motionless and watchful near by. At last he became tired, lay down, and
fell asleep directly. Here he acquired an understanding of the
uselessness of crying in order to avoid obedience to commands.
The _knowledge_ of right (what is allowed and commanded) and of wrong
(what is forbidden) had been long since acquired. In the seventeenth
month, e. g., a sense of cleanliness was strongly developed, and later
(in the thirty-third month) the child could not, without lively protest,
behold his nurse acting contrary to the directions that had been given
to himself--e. g., putting the knife into her mouth or dipping bread
into the milk. Emotions of this kind are less a proof of the existence
of a sense of duty than of the _understanding_ that violations of
well-known precepts have unpleasant consequences--i. e., that certain
actions bring in their train pleasant feelings, while other acts bring
unpleasant feelings. How long before the knowledge of words these
emotions began to exist I have, unfortunately, not succeeded in
determining.
But in many of the above cases--and they might without difficulty be
multiplied by diligent observation--there is not the least indication of
any influence of spoken words. Whether no attempt at speaking has
preceded, or whether a small collection of words may have been made, the
cases of child-intelligence adduced in this chapter, observed by myself,
prove that without knowledge of verbal language, and independently of
it, the logical activity of the child attains a high degree of
development, and no reason exists for explaining the intelligent actions
of children who do not yet speak at all--i. e., do not yet clothe their
ideas in words, but do already combine them with one another--as being
different specifically from the intelligent (not instinctive) actions of
sagacious orangs and chimpanzees. The difference consists far more in
this, that the latter can not form so many, so clear, and so abstract
conceptions, or so many and complicated combinations of ideas, as can
the gifted human child in the society of human beings--_even before he
has learned to speak_. When he has learned to speak, then the gap widens
to such an extent that what before was in some respects almost the
equal of humanity seems now a repulsive caricature of it.
In order, then, to understand the real difference between brute and man,
it is necessary to ascertain how a child and a brute animal may have
ideas without words, and may combine them for an end: whether it is
done, e. g., with memory-images, as in dreaming. And it is necessary
also to investigate the _essential character of the process of learning
to speak_.
Concerning the first problem, which is of uncommon psychogenetic
interest and practical importance, a solution seems to be promised in
the investigation of the formation of concepts in the case of those born
deaf, the so-called deaf and dumb children. On this point I offer first
the words of a man of practical experience.
The excellent superintendent of the Educational Institute for the Deaf
and Dumb in Weimar, C. Oehlwein (1867), well says:
"The deaf-mute in his first years of life looks at, turns over, feels of
objects that attract him, on all sides, and approaches those that are at
a distance. By this he receives, like the young child who has all his
senses, sensations and sensuous ideas;[C] and from the objects
themselves he apprehends a number of qualities, which he compares with
one another or with the qualities of other objects, but always refers to
the object which at the time attracts him. Herein he has a more correct
or less correct sense-intuition of this object, according as he has
observed, compared, and comprehended more or less attentively. As this
object has affected him through sight and feeling, so he represents it
to other persons also by characteristic signs for sight and indirectly
for feeling also. He shapes or draws a copy of the object seen and felt
with life and movement. For this he avails himself of the means that
Nature has placed directly within human power--the control over the
movement of the facial muscles, over the use of the hands, and, if
necessary, of the feet also. These signs, _not obtained from any one's
suggestion_, self-formed, which the deaf-mute employs directly in his
representation, are, as it were, the given outline of the image which he
has found, and they stand therefore in the closest relation to the inner
constitution of the individual that makes the representation.
"But we find not only that the individual senses of the deaf-mute, his
own observation and apprehension, are formative factors in the
occurrences of sensation and perception, as is of course the case, but
that the qualities of the objects observed by him, and associated,
according to his individual tendencies, are also raised by him, through
comparison, separation, grouping--through his own act, therefore--to
general ideas, concepts, although as yet imperfect ones, and they are
named and recognized again by peculiar signs intelligible to himself.
"But in this very raising of an idea to a general idea, to a concept--a
process connected with the forming of a sign--is manifested the
influence of the lack of hearing and of speech upon the psychical
development of the deaf-mute. It appears at first to be an advantage
that the sign by which the deaf-mute represents an idea is derived from
the impression, the image, the idea, which the user of the sign himself
has or has had; he expresses by the sign nothing foreign to him, but
only what has become his own. But this advantage disappears when
compared with the hindrance caused by this very circumstance in the
raising of the individual idea to a general idea, for the fact that the
latter is designated by the image, or the elements of the image in which
the former consists, is no small obstacle to it in attaining complete
generality. The same bond that unites the concept with the conceiver
binds it likewise to one of the individual ideas conceived--e. g., when,
by pointing to his own flesh, his own skin, he designates the concept
flesh, skin (in general also the flesh or the skin of animals); whereas,
by means of the word, which the child who has all his senses is obliged
to learn, a constraint is indeed exercised as something foreign, but a
constraint that simply enforces upon his idea the claim of generality.
"One example more. The deaf-mute designates the concept, or general
idea, 'red' by lightly touching his lips. With this sign he indicates
the red of the sky, of paintings, of dress-stuffs, of flowers, etc.
Thus, in however manifold connection with other concepts his concept
'red' may be repeated, it is to him as a concept always _one_ and the
same only. It is _common_ to _all_ the connections in which it
repeatedly occurs."
But before the thinking deaf-mute arrived at the concept "red," he
formed for himself the ideas "lip, dress, sky, flower," etc.
For a knowledge of intellectual development in the child possessed of
all the senses, and of the great extent to which he is independent of
verbal language in the formation of concepts, it is indispensable to
make a collection of such concepts as uneducated deaf-mutes not
acquainted either with the finger-alphabet or with articulation express
by means of their own gestures in a manner intelligible to others. Their
language, however, comprises "not only the various expressive changes of
countenance (play of feature), but also the varied movements of the
hands (gesticulations), the positions, attitudes, bearing, and movements
of the other parts of the entire body, through which the deaf-mute
naturally, i. e., _untouched by educational influences_, expresses his
ideas and conceptions." But I refrain from making such a catalogue here,
as we are concerned with the fact that _many concepts are, without any
learning of words whatever, plainly expressed and logically combined
with one another_, and their correctness is proved by the conduct of any
and every untaught child born deaf. Besides, such a catalogue, in order
to possess the psychogenetic value desired by me, needs a critical
examination extremely difficult to carry through as to whether the
"educational influences" supposed to be excluded are actually wholly
excluded in all cases as they really are in some cases, e. g., in regard
to food.
Degerando (1827) has enumerated a long list of concepts, which
deaf-mutes before they are instructed represent by pantomimic
gesture. Many of these forms of expression in French deaf-mutes are
identical with those of German. It is most earnestly to be wished
that this international language of feature and gesture used by
children entirely uninstructed, born deaf, may be made accessible to
psycho-physiological and linguistic study by means of pictorial
representations--photographic best of all. This should be founded on
the experiences of German, French, English, Russian, Italian, and
other teachers of deaf-mutes.
For there is hardly a better proof that thinking is not dependent on the
language of words than the conduct of deaf-mutes, who express, indeed,
many more concepts of unlike content in the same manner than any verbal
language does--just as children with all their senses do before they
possess a satisfactory stock of words--but who, by gesticulation and
pantomime before receiving any instruction, demonstrate that concepts
are formed without words.
With reference to the manner in which uneducated deaf-mutes speak, the
following examples are characteristic performances in gesture-language:
One deaf-mute asks another, "Stay, go you?" (look of inquiry). Answer:
"Go, I" (i. e., "Do you stay or go?" "I go"). "Hunter hare shoots."
"Arm, man, be strong," means, "The man's arm is strong."
"N., spectacles, see," means, "N. sees with the spectacles."
"Run I finished, go to sleep," means, "When I had finished running, I
went to sleep." "Money, you?" means, "Have you money?"
One of the most interesting sights I know of, in a psychological and
physiological point of view, is a conversation in gesture and pantomime
between two or three children born totally deaf, who do not know that
they are observed. I am indebted to Director Oehlwein, of Weimar, for
the opportunity of such observations, as also for the above questions
and answers. Especially those children (of about seven years) not yet
instructed in articulation employ an astonishing number of looks and
gestures, following one upon another with great rapidity, in order to
effect an understanding with one another. They understand one another
very easily, but, because their gestures, and particularly their
excessively subtilized play of feature, do not appear in ordinary life,
these children are just as hard to understand for the uninitiated as are
men who speak a wholly foreign language without any gestures. Even the
eye of the deaf-mute has a different expression from that of the person
who talks. The look seems more "interested," and manifestly far fewer
unnecessary movements of the eyes and contractions of the facial muscles
are made by the deaf-mute than by the child of the same age who has his
hearing.
Further, deaf-mutes, even those of small ability, imitate all sorts of
movements that are plainly visible much better, in general, than do
persons with all their senses. I made, in presence of the children,
several not very easy crossings of the fingers, put my hands in
different positions, and the like--movements that they could not ever
have seen--and I was surprised that some of the children at once made
them deftly, whereas ordinary children, first consider a long time, and
then imitate clumsily. It is doubtless this exaltation of the imitative
functions in deaf-mute children which makes it appear as if they
themselves invented their gestures (see above, p. 23). Certainly they do
not get their first signs through "any one's suggestion," they form them
for themselves, but, so far as I see, only through imitation and the
hereditary expressive movements. The signs are in great part themselves
unabridged imitations. The agreement, or "convention," which many
teachers of deaf-mutes assume, and which would introduce an entirely
causeless, not to say mysterious, principle, consists in this, that all
deaf-mutes in the beginning imitate the same thing in the same way.
Thus, through this perfectly natural accord of all, it comes to pass
that they understand one another. When they have gained ideas, then they
combine the separate signs in manifold ways, as one who speaks combines
words, in order to express new ideas; they become thereby more and more
difficult to be understood, and often are only with difficulty
understood even among themselves; and they are able only in very limited
degree to form concepts of a higher order. "Nothing, being dead,
space"--these are concepts of a very high order for them.
For this reason it is easy to comprehend that a deaf-mute child,
although he has learned but few words through instruction in
articulation, weaves these continually into his pantomimic
conversation in place of his former elaborate gestures. I observed
that individual children, born totally deaf, preferred, even in
conversation with one another, and when ignorant of the fact that I
was observing them, the articulate words just learned, although these
were scarcely intelligible, to their own signs.
Thus mighty is the charm of the spoken word, even when the child does
not himself hear it, but merely feels it with his tongue.
But the schooling the deaf-mute must go through in order to become
acquainted with the sensations of sight, touch, and movement that go
with the sound, is unspeakably toilsome.
W. Gude says in his treatise, remarkable alike for acuteness and
clearness, "Principles and Outlines of the Exposition of a Scheme of
Instruction for an Institution for Deaf-Mutes" ("Grundsaetze und
Grundzuege zur Aufstellung eines Lehrplans fuer eine Taubstummen-Anstalt,"
1881): "The utterances of tones and of articulate sounds called forth by
involuntary stimulus during the first years, in deaf-mutes, are such
unimportant motor phenomena that they are not immediately followed by a
motor sensation. But when the deaf-mute child is more awake mentally, he
perceives that his relatives make movements of the mouth in their
intercourse, and repeated attempts of those about him to make themselves
intelligible by pronouncing certain words to him are not entirely
without effect upon the deaf-mute that is intellectually active. When
such deaf-mutes now direct their attention to the matter, they succeed
in regard to only a part of the sounds--those that are conspicuous to
the eye in their utterance--in getting a tolerable imitation. Individual
deaf-mutes go so far, in fact, as to understand various words correctly
without repeating them; others succeed gradually in repeating such words
as 'papa, mamma,' so that one can understand what is meant. Those who
are deaf-mutes from birth do not, however, of themselves, succeed in
imitating accurately other vocal sounds in general."
A deaf-mute, who had not been instructed, explained to Romanes, at a
later period when he had learned the sign-language, that he had before
thought in "images," which means nothing else than that he, in place of
the words heard (in our case) and the digital signs seen (in his case),
had made use of memory-images gained from visual impressions, for
distinguishing his concepts. Laura Bridgman, too, a person in general
the subject of very incorrect inferences, who was not blind and deaf
from birth, could form a small number of concepts that were above the
lowest grade. These originated from the materials furnished by the sense
of touch, the muscular sense and general sensibility, before she had
learned a sort of finger-language. But she had learned to speak somewhat
before she became dumb and blind. Children with sight, born deaf, seem
not to be able to perform the simplest arithmetical operations, e. g.,
214-96 and 908 X 70 (according to Asch, 1865), until after several years
of continuous instruction in articulate speaking. They do succeed,
however, and that without sound-images of words, and perhaps, too,
without sight-images of words; in mental arithmetic without knowledge of
written figures, by help of the touch-images of words which the tongue
furnishes.
In any case uneducated persons born deaf can count by means of the
fingers without the knowledge of figures; and, when they go beyond 10,
the notched stick comes to their aid (Sicard and Degerando).
The language of gesture and feature in very young children, born dumb
and not treated differently from other children, shows also, in most
abundant measure, that concepts are formed without words. The child born
deaf uses the primitive language of gesture to the same extent as does
the child that has his hearing; the former makes himself intelligible by
actions and sounds as the latter does, so that his deficiency is not
suspected. This natural language is also _understood_ by the child born
deaf, so far as it is recognizable by his eye. In the look and the
features of his mother he reads her mood. But he very early becomes
quiet and develops for himself, "out of unconscious gesticulation, the
gesture language, which at first is not conventional, nay, is not in the
strict sense quite a sign-language, but a mimetic-plastic representation
of the influences experienced from the external world," since the
deaf-mute imitates movements perceived, and the attitude of persons and
the position of objects. Upon this pantomime alone rests the possibility
of coming to an understanding, within a certain range, with deaf-mutes
that have had no instruction at all. It can not, therefore, in its
elementary form be conventional, as Hill, to whom I owe these data,
rightly maintains. He writes concerning the child born deaf: "His voice
seems just like that of other children. He screams, weeps, according as
he feels uncomfortable; he starts when frightened by any noise. Even
friendly address, toying, fun, serious threats, are understood by him as
early as by any child." But he does not hear his own voice; it is not
sound that frightens him, but the concussion; it is not the pleasant
word that delights him, but the pleasant countenance of his mother. "It
even happens, not seldom, that through encouragement to use the voice,
these children acquire a series of articulate sounds, and a number of
combinations of sounds, which they employ as the expression of their
wishes." They not only _point out_ the object desired, not only
_imitate_ movements that are to procure what they want, but they also
outline the forms of objects wished for. They are able to conduct
themselves so intelligently in this, that the deaf-mute condition is not
discovered till the second year, or even later, and then chiefly by
their use of the eye, because in case of distant objects only those seen
excite their attention.
From this behavior of infants born deaf it manifestly follows that even
without the possibility of natural imitation of sounds, and without the
knowledge of a single word, qualities may be blended with qualities into
concepts. Thus, _primitive thinking is not bound up with verbal
language_. It demands, however, a certain development of the cerebrum,
probably a certain very considerable number of ganglionic cells in the
cerebral cortex, that stand in firm organic connection with one another.
The difference between an uninstructed young deaf-mute and a cretin is
immense. The former can learn a great deal through instruction in
speaking, the latter can not. This very ability to learn, in the child
born deaf, is greater than in the normal child, in respect to pantomime
and gesture. If a child with his hearing had to grow up among
deaf-mutes, he would undoubtedly learn their language, and would in
addition enjoy his own voice without being able to make use of it; but
he would probably be discovered, further on, without testing his
hearing, by the fact that he was not quite so complete a master of this
gesture-language as the deaf-mutes, on account of the diversion of his
attention by sound.
The total result of the foregoing observations concerning the capacity
of accomplishment on the part of uneducated deaf-mutes in regard to the
natural language of gesture and feature, demonstrates more plainly than
any other fact whatever that, without words and without signs for words,
thought-activity exists--that thinking takes place when both words and
signs for words are wanting. Wherefore, then, should the logical
combination of ideas in the human being born perfect begin only with the
speaking of words or the learning to speak? Because the adult supposes
that he no longer thinks without words, he easily draws the erroneous
conclusion that no one, that not even he himself, could think before the
knowledge of verbal language. In truth, however, it was _not language
that generated the intellect; it is the intellect that formerly invented
language: and even now the new-born human being brings with him into the
world far more intellect than talent for language_.
FOOTNOTES:
[C] Empfindungsvorstellungen.