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]
-----
Footnote 297:
_Cf._ above, p. 148 ff.
-----
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.
-----
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.
-----
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.
-----
Footnote 300:
It has been found that the sensations of hot and cold are readily
confused even by adults.
-----
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.
-----
Footnote 301:
I think this supposition more probable than that the child saw the
whole form—hull, masts and sails—as a triangle.
-----
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.
For example, C., when eighteen months old, was watching his sister as
she dipped her crust into her tea. He was evidently surprised by the
rare sight, and after looking a moment or two, exclaimed, “Ba!” (bath),
laughing with delight, and trying, as was his wont when deeply
interested in a spectacle, to push his mother’s face round so that she
too might admire it. The boy delighted in such a figurative use of
words, now employing them as genuine similes, as when he said of a dog
panting after a run, “Dat bow-wow like puff-puff,” and of the first real
ship which he saw sailing with a rocking movement, “Dat ship go
marjory-daw” (_i.e._, like marjory-daw in the nursery rhyme). Like many
a poet he had his recurring or standing metaphors. Thus, as we have
seen, “ship” was the figurative expression for all objects having a
pyramidal form. A pretty example of his love of metaphor was his habit
of calling the needle in a small compass of his father’s “bir” (bird).
It needs a baby mind to detect here the faint resemblance to the slight
fragile form and the fluttering movement of a bird poised on its wings.
C. illustrates the anthropocentric impulse to look at natural objects as
though they specially aimed at furthering or hindering our well-being.
Thus he would show all the signs of kingly displeasure when his serenity
of mind was disturbed by noises. When he was taken to the sea-side
(about twenty-four months old) he greatly disappointed his parent,
expectant of childish wonder in his eyes, by merely muttering, “Water
make noise”.[302] Again, he happened one day in the last week of this
year to be in the garden with his father while it was thundering. On
hearing the sound he said with an evident tone of annoyance, “Tonna mâ
Ningi noi,” _i.e._, thunder makes noise for C., and he instantly added
“Notty tonna!” (naughty thunder). Here, remarks the father, he was
evidently falling into that habit of mind against which philosophers
have often warned us, making man the measure of the universe.
-----
Footnote 302:
He had been at the sea-side a year before this, but there was no
evidence of his having remembered it.
-----
The last quarter of this year was marked in C.’s case by a great
enlargement of linguistic power. A marked advance was noticeable in the
mastering of the mechanical difficulties of articulation. Thus he would
surprise his father by suddenly bringing out new and difficult
combinations of sound, as ‘flower,’ ‘water’ and ‘fetch’. Up to about the
twenty-first month C.’s vocabulary had consisted almost entirely of what
we should call substantives, such as, ‘papa,’ ‘man,’ which were used to
express the arrival on the scene and the recognition of familiar
objects. A few adjectives, as “ŏt” (hot), “co” (cold), “ni-ni” (nice),
and “goo” (good), were frequently used, and were apparently beginning to
have a proper attributive function assigned them. But these referred
rather to the effect of things on the child’s feeling than to their
inherent qualities. His father failed before this date to convey to him
the meaning of “black” as applied to a dog. It is noteworthy that the
child made considerable advance in the use of “me” and “my” before he
was capable of qualifying objects by appending adjectives to them. The
first use of an adjective for indicating some objective quality in a
thing occurred at the end of the twenty-first month, when he exclaimed
on seeing a rook fly over his head, “Big bir!”
At about the same date other classes of words came to be recognised and
used as such, giving to the child’s language something of texture. Thus
relations of place began to be set forth, as in using simple words like
‘up,’ ‘down,’ ‘on’. In some cases the designation of these relations was
effected by original artifices which often puzzled the father. For
instance the sound ‘da’ (or ‘dow’) was used from about the seventeenth
month for the departure of a person, the falling of a toy on the ground,
the completion of a meal. It seemed to be a general sign for ‘over’ or
‘gone’.[303] It is doubtful whether this implied a clear consciousness
of a relation of place. Sometimes the attempt to express such a relation
in the absence of the needed words would lead to a picturesque kind of
circumlocution. Thus when about twenty-one months old C. saw his father
walking in the garden when he and his sister were seated at the luncheon
table. He shouted out, ‘Papa ’at off!’ thus expressing the desirability
of his father’s entering and taking part in the family meal.
-----
Footnote 303:
Compare above, p. 162.
-----
Similar make-shifts would be resorted to in designating other and more
subtle relations. Sometimes, indeed, the child would expect his hearers
to supply the sign of relation, as when after having smelt the pepper
box he put it away with an emphatic ‘Papa!’ which seemed to the somewhat
biassed observer an admirably concise way of expressing the judgment
that the pepper might suit his father, but it certainly did not suit
him. A month later (_æt._ twenty-two months) he condescended to be more
explicit. Having been told by his father that the cheese was bad for
Ningi, he indulged a growing taste for antithesis by adding, ‘Good,
papa!’
His ideas of time-relations were at this date of the haziest. He seems
to have got a dim inkling of the meaning of ‘by-and-by’. His father had
managed to stop his crying for a thing by promising it ‘by-and-by’.
After this when crying he would suddenly pull up, and with a heroic
effort to catch his breath would exclaim, ‘By-’n’-by!’ “What (asks the
father) was the equivalent of this new symbol in the child’s
consciousness? Was he already beginning to seize the big boundless
future set over against the fleeting point of the present moment and
holding in its ample bosom consolatory promises for myriads of these
unhappy presents?” and so forth; but here he seems to grow even less
severely scientific than usual. It may be added that about the same time
(twenty-one months) the child began to use the word ‘now’. Thus after
drinking his milk he would point to a little remainder at the bottom of
his cup and say, ‘Milk dare now,’ that is presumably ‘there is still
milk there’.
His ideas of number at this time were equally rudimentary. Oddly enough
it was just as he was attaining to plurality of years that he began to
distinguish with the old Greeks the one from the many. One was correctly
called ‘one’. Any number larger than one, on the other hand, was
sometimes styled ‘two,’[304] sometimes ‘three,’ and sometimes ‘two,
three, four’. He had been taught to say ‘one, two, three, four,’ by his
mother, but the first lesson in counting had clearly failed to convey
more than the difference between unity and multitude. The series of
verbal sounds, ‘two, three, four,’ probably helped him to realise the
idea of number, and in any case it was a forcible way of expressing it.
-----
Footnote 304:
I find that another little boy when two years old used ‘two’ in this
way for more than one.
-----
As suggested above, primitive substantive-forms probably do duty as
verbs in the language of the child as in that of primitive man. True
verbs as differentiated signs of action came into use at the date we are
speaking of, and these began to give to the boy’s embryonic speech
something of the structure, the sentence.
As one might naturally conjecture from the disproportionate amount of
attention manifestly bestowed on this child, he had all the
masterfulness of his kind, and the first form of the verb to be used was
the imperative. Thus by the end of the twentieth month he had quite a
little vocabulary for giving effect to his sovereign volitions, such as,
‘On!’ (get on), ‘Ook!’ (look). It was in the use of commands that he
showed some of his finest inventiveness. Thus when just seventeen months
old he wanted his mother to get up. He began by lifting his hands and
saying, ‘Ta, ta!’ (sign of going out). Finding this to be ineffective,
he tried, with a comical simulation of muscular strength, to pull or
push her up, at the same time exclaiming, “Up!” The lifting of the hands
looked like a bit of picturesque gesture-language. In his twenty-first
month he acquired a new and telling word of command, _viz._, ‘Way’
(_i.e._, out of my way), as well as the invaluable sign of prohibition,
‘Dō’ (_i.e._, don’t), both of which, it need hardly be said, he began to
bandy about pretty freely, especially in his dealings with his sister.
A landmark in C.’s intellectual development is set by the father at the
age of nineteen and a half months. Before this date he had only made
rather a lame attempt at sentence-building by setting his primitive
names in juxtaposition, _e.g._, ‘Tit, mamma, poo,’ which being
interpreted means, ‘Sister and mamma, have pudding’. But now he took a
very decided step in advance, and by a proper use of a verb as such
constructed what a logician calls a proposition with its subject and
predicate. He happened to observe his sister venting some trouble in the
usual girlish fashion, and exclaimed, ‘Tit ki’ (sister is crying),
following up the assertion by going towards her and trying to stop her.
Another example of a sentence rather more complex in structure which
occurred a fortnight later had also to do with his sister. He saw her
lying on her back on the grass, and exclaimed with all the signs of
joyous wonder, ‘Tit dow ga!’ (_i.e._, sister is down on the grass).
Evidently the unpredictable behaviour of this member of his family
deeply impressed the young observer. It is noticeable that these first
exceptional efforts in assertion were prompted by feeling.[305]
-----
Footnote 305:
Compare above, p. 171 f.
-----
These first tentatives in verbal assertion, we are told, sounded very
odd owing to the slowness of the delivery and the stress impartially
laid on each word. C. had as yet no inkling of the subtleties of
rhetoric, and was too much taken up with the weighty business of
expressing thought somehow to trouble about such niceties as relative
emphasis, and variation of pitch and pace.
As a rule, remarks the father, it was surprising how suddenly, as it
seemed, the boy hit on the right succession of verbal sounds. Only very
rarely would he stumble, as when after having seen a fly taken out of
his milk, and on being subsequently asked whether he would not be glad
to see his sister on her return from a visit, he said, ‘(Y)es, tell
Ningi ’bout fy’ (Yes, Ningi will tell her about the fly).[306]
-----
Footnote 306:
See above, p. 173.
-----
The impulse to express himself, to communicate his experiences and
observations to others, seemed to be all-possessing just now, and odd
enough it was to note the make-shifts to which he was now and again
driven. One day, when just twenty and a half months old, he sat in a
chair with a heavyish book which he found it hard to hold up. He turned
to his mother and said solemnly, “Boo go dow” (the book is going down or
falling). Then, as if remarking a look of unintelligence in his
audience, he threw it down and exclaimed, “Dat!” by which vigorous
proceeding he gave a vivid illustration of his meaning.
It was noticeable that he would at this time play at sentence-making in
a varied imitation of others’ assertions, thereby hitting out some
quaint fancy which appeared to amuse him. Thus when told that there is a
man on the horse he would say, ‘Ningi on horse,’ ‘Tit on horse,’ and so
forth. Such playful practice in utterance probably furthers the growth
of readiness and precision in the use of sentences.
The point in the intellectual growth of a child at which he acquires
such a mastery of language as to carry on a sustained conversation is a
proud and happy one for the fond parent. In the case of C. this date,
twenty-three months and ten days, is, of course, marked with red
letters. He made a great noise running about and shouting in his
bedroom. His mother came in and rebuked him in the usual form (‘Naughty!
naughty!’). He thereupon replied, “Tit mak noi” (Sister makes the
noise). Mother (seriously): “Sister is at school”. C., with a still
bolder look: “Mamma make noi”. Mother (with convulsive effort to
suppress laughing, still more emphatically): “No, mamma was in the other
room”. C. (looking archly at his doll, known as May): “May make noi”.
This sally was followed by a good peal of boyish laughter.
The father evidently feels that this incident is highly suggestive of a
lack of moral sense. So he thinks it well to add to the observation that
the child had all the normal moral sensibility. But of this more
presently.
We may now pass to the comparatively few observations (other than those
already dealt with under verbal utterance) which refer to the child’s
feelings. As already remarked, he was, like most other children, peevish
and cross in the first year, and I regret to say that the diary refers
more than once to violent outbursts of infantile rage in the second year
also. Here is one sample entry (_æt._ nineteen months): Feelings of
greediness, covetousness and spite begin to manifest themselves with
alarming distinctness. When asked to give up a bit of pudding he says,
“No,” in a coy, shy sort of manner, turning away. When further pressed
he grows angry. On the other hand, he clamours for his sister’s dolls,
and bears refusal with very ill grace. When, given up as hopelessly
naughty, he is handed over to the nurse, and carried out of the room by
this long-suffering person, he ferociously slaps her on the face. This
slap appears not to be a pure invention, his sister having been driven
more than once to visit him with this chastisement. He will also go up
and slap his sister when she cries. He probably puts the nurse who
carries him out and the sister who cries in the same category of naughty
people. Sometimes he seems quite overpowered by vexation of spirit, and
will lie down on the floor on his face and have a good, long, satisfying
cry.
The child’s timidity has already been touched on. At the age of sixteen
months, we are told, the sight of the drawing of a lion accompanied by
roaring noises imitated by the father would greatly terrify him, driving
him to his mother, in whose bosom he would hide his face, drawing down
his under lip in an ominous way. Two months later the diary tells us
that the child has had a fright. One day a lady called with a dog, which
secreted itself under the table, and later on suddenly rushed out and
made for Master C. The shock was such that since that time whenever he
hears a strange noise he runs to his mother, exclaiming, ‘Bow-wow!’ in a
terrified manner.
Before the close of the year, however, he began to show a manlier
temper. The sight of a dog still made him run towards his mother and
cling to her, but as soon as the animal moved off he would look up into
her face laughingly and repeat the consolatory saying which she herself
had taught him: “Ni (nice) bow-wow! bow-wow like Ningi”. In this humble
fashion did he make beginning at the big task of manning himself to face
the terrors of things.
As pointed out above, he extended his dislike to sudden and loud noises
to inanimate objects. Thus in the last week of the year he was evidently
put out, if not actually frightened, by hearing distant thunder; and
about the same date, as we have seen, he showed a similar dislike to the
sea when first taken near it. He would not approach it for some days,
and he cried when he saw his father swimming in it.
It is sad in going through the pages of the diary to note that there is
scarcely any observation during this second year on the development of
kindly feelings. One would have supposed that with all the affection and
care lavished on him C. might have manifested a little tenderness in
response. The only incident put down under the head of social feeling in
this year is the following (_æt._ twenty months): “When he eats porridge
in the morning at the family breakfast he takes a look round and says:
‘Mamma, Tit, papa, Ningi,’ appearing to be pleased at finding himself
sharing in a common enjoyment. This (continues the narrator) is a step
onward from the anti-social attitude which he took up not long since
when some of his mother’s egg was given to his sister and he shouted
prohibitively: ‘No! no!’”
The worthy parent appears to be making the most of very small mercies
here. Yet in justice to this child it must be said that he seems to have
shown even at this tender age the rudiment of a conscience. The father
is satisfied, indeed, that he displayed an instinctive respect for
command or law. “Thus,” he says, “when sixteen months old the child hung
down his head or hid it in his mother’s breast when for the first time I
scolded him.” He goes on to say that after having been forbidden to do a
thing, as to touch the coal scuttle or to take up his food with his
fingers, he will stop just as he is going to do it, and take on a
curious look of timidity or shamefacedness.
He seemed, too, before the end of the second year, to be getting to
understand something of the meaning of that recurrent nursery-word
‘naughty,’ and the less frequent ‘good’. When seventeen months old his
father tried him, on what looked like the approach of an outburst of
temper, with a ‘Cliffy, be good!’ uttered in a firm peremptory manner.
The child’s noise was at once arrested, and on the father’s asking: ‘Is
Cliffy good?’ he answered, ‘Ea,’ his sign for ‘yes’. A little later he
showed that he strongly disliked being called naughty,—vigorously
remonstrating when so described with an emphatic, ‘No, no! good!’ He
seems to have followed the usual childish order in beginning to apply
“naughty” to others, his sister more particularly, much sooner than
“good”. It was not till the middle of the twenty-first month that he
recognised moral desert in this long-suffering sister. After a little
upset of temper on her part, when the crying was over, he remarked in a
quiet approving tone, ‘Goo!’ and on being asked by his mother who was
good he answered, ‘Tit’.
As our example of his dawning powers of conversation may suggest, C.
early developed the childish sense of fun. Most if not all children love
pretence or make-believe. Here is an example of this childish tendency.
When about eighteen months old during a short visit to his father’s room
C. happened to be walking in the direction of the door. His father at
once said, ‘Ta ta,’ just as if the child were really going away. C.
instantly entered into the joke, repeating the ‘ta ta,’ moving towards
the door, then returning, and so renewing the pretty little fraud.
Sometimes, as parents know, this impish love of make-believe comes very
inconveniently into conflict with discipline and authority. One day,
about the same date, he got hold of a photograph portrait of an uncle of
his. His mother bade him give it up to her. He walked towards her
looking serious enough, nearly put it into her hand, and then suddenly
drew his hands back laughing.
In other examples of laughter given in this chapter we see something
very like contempt. When two years and eight months old he was observed
to laugh out loudly on surveying his small india-rubber horse, the head
of which had somehow got twisted back and caught between the hind legs
and the tail. He then waxed tender and said pityingly, “Poor gee-gee!”
“Here,” writes the father in his most ponderous manner, “we see an
excellent example of the capricious and variable attitude of the
childish mind towards its toys, an attitude closely paralleled by that
of the savage towards his fetich.”
The two or three notes on the development of the active powers have to
do with the application of intelligence to manual and other
performances. Here is one. At the age of seventeen months he was sitting
at table with the family when he found himself in want of some bread and
butter. He tried his customary petition, ‘Bup,’ but to no purpose. He
then stretched out his hand towards the bread knife, repeating the
request. A day or two after this the father put his inventive powers to
a severer proof. He placed the knife out of his reach. When the desire
for more recurred he grew very impatient, looking towards his father and
saying ‘Bup’ with much vehemence of manner. At length, getting more
excited, he bethought him of a new expedient and pointed authoritatively
to his empty plate.
Some of these practical tentatives were rather amusing. One day, just a
month after the date of the last incident, he had two keys, one in each
hand. With one of these he proceeded to try the keyhole of the door,
oddly enough, however, holding it by the wrong end and inserting the
handle. Now came the difficulty of turning it. Two hands at the very
least were needed, but unhappily the other hand was engaged with the
second key, which was not to be relinquished for an instant. So the
little fellow, with the inventive resource of a monkey (the father
naturally says of an ‘engineer’), proceeded to use his teeth as pincers,
clutching the obstinate key between these and trying to turn it with the
head. At this date he had acquired considerable skill in the
manipulation of door handles and keys. A certain cupboard was a
peculiarly fascinating mystery, appealing at once to the desires of the
flesh and to a disinterested curiosity, and he was soon master of the
‘open sesame’ to its spacious and obscure recesses.
By far the most respectable exhibition of will about this time was in
the way of self-restraint. I have already remarked how he would try to
pull himself together when prostrated by fear of the dog. A similarly
quaint attempt at self-mastery would occur during his outbreaks of
temper. The father says he had got into the way, when the child was
inclined to be impatient and teasing, of putting up his finger, lowering
his brow, and saying with emphasis: ‘Cliffy, be good!’ After this when
inclined to be naughty he would suddenly and quite spontaneously pull
himself up, hold up his finger and lower his brow as if reprimanding
himself. “The observation is curious,” writes the father, in his graver
manner, “as suggesting that self-restraint may begin by an imitation of
the action of extraneous authority.”[307]
-----
Footnote 307:
Compare the similar instances given above, p. 287.
-----
_Third Year._
One cannot help regretting on entering upon the third chapter of C.’s
biography that the father gives us no account of his physical
development. This is a desideratum not only from a scientific but from a
literary point of view. Biographers rightly describe the look of their
hero, and, if possible, they aid the imagination of their reader by a
portrait. The reader of this child’s history has nothing, not even a
bare reference to height, by which he can form an image of the concrete
personality whose sayings and doings are here recorded; and these
sayings and doings begin now to grow really interesting.
There is very little in the notes of this year respecting the growth of
observation. When the child was two years five months old the father
appears to have made a rather lame attempt to determine the order in
which he learnt the colours. He says that he placed the several colours
before him and taught him the names, and found as a result that the
order of acquisition was the following: red, blue, yellow, and green. It
is added that blue was distinguished some time before green. His
observations, taken along with those of Preyer and others, are
interesting as seeming to suggest that the order in which the colours
are learnt differs considerably in the case of individual children.[308]
In the eighth month of this year we find a note to the effect that the
boy discriminates and recognises colour well. This is illustrated by the
fact that he at once calls grey with a slightly greenish tinge ‘green’.
The connexion between the possession of suitable vocables and explicit
discrimination is seen in the fact that whereas he applies the name blue
not only to the several varieties of that colour but also to violet, he
uses “red” as the name for certain reds only, excepting pink, which is
called “pink,” and deep purple red, which is called “brown”.
-----
Footnote 308:
See above, p. 19 f.
-----
The third year is epoch-making in the history of memory. It is now that
impressions begin to work themselves into the young consciousness so
deeply and firmly that they become a part of the permanent
stock-in-trade of the mind. The earliest recollections of most of us do
not reach back beyond this date, if indeed so far. In C.’s case the
father was able to observe this fixing and consolidating of impressions.
For instance, when two years and two months old he had been staying for
a month or so at a farmhouse in a little sea-side village, D——, where
there was a sheep dog yclept Bob. Some three and a half months later he
happened, during one of his walks in his London suburb, to see a sheep
dog, whereupon he remarked, ‘Dat old Bob, I dink’. A week or two after
this, on seeing the picture of a wind-mill, he remarked, "Dat like down
at D——". Later on, six months after this visit, on being asked what
honey was, he remarked that he had had some at D——. Nine months after
this visit his father was talking to him about the game of cricket. He
then said, "_Oh_, yes (his favourite expression just now when he
understands), I ’member, Jingo ran after ball down at D——". As a matter
of fact his father and friends used to play tennis at D——, and Jingo,
the sheep dog, did pretend to ‘field’ the balls, often in a highly
inconvenient fashion.
It is evident from these quotations that the experiences at D——, just at
the beginning of the third year, had woven themselves into the tissue of
his permanent memory. The father remarks in a footnote that C. retains a
certain recollection of D—— at present, that is to say, in his
fourteenth year.
These lively recallings show a growth of imaginative power, and this was
seen in other ways too. Thus it is remarked by the father in the fourth
month of the year that he was getting much comfort from anticipation. If
there are apples or other things on the table which he likes but must
not have, he will philosophically remark, “Ningi have apples by-and-by
when he big boy”. He says this with much emphasis, rising at the end to
a shouting tone, and half breaking out into jubilant laughter.
The childish power of vivid imaginative realisation was abundantly
illustrated in his play. Here is a sample (end of fourth month). His
sister went to the end of the room and said (with a reference to their
recent visit to the sea-side): ‘I’m going far away on the beach’. He
then began to whisper something, and went under the table and said
distinctly: ‘Ningi go away from Tit, far away on beach’. He repeated
this with tremulous voice, and at length burst out crying. He wept also
when his sister pretended to do the same, so that these little tragic
representations had to be stopped as dangerously exciting.
It has often been said that ‘fibbing’ in young children is the outcome
of a vivid imagination. C. illustrated this. As the example given under
the second year shows, his daring in inventing untruth and passing it
off as truth was pure play, and frankly shown to be so by the
accompaniment of a hearty laugh. This tendency to invent continued to
assert itself. Thus when (in the eighth month) he is asked a question,
as, “Who told you so?” and has no suitable answer ready he will say,
‘Dolly,’ showing his sense of the fun of the thing by a merry laugh. The
father remarks that it is a little difficult to bring heavy moral
artillery to bear on this playful fibbing which is evidently intended
much more to astonish than to deceive.[309]
-----
Footnote 309:
Compare above, p. 254.
-----
We may now see what progress C. was making in thinking power during this
year. It is during the third year that children may be expected to get a
much better hold on the slippery forms of language, and at the same time
to show in connexion with a freer and more extensive use of language a
finer and deeper insight into the manifold relations of things.
In C.’s case, to judge by the journal, the progress of speech advanced
at a normal pace, neither hurrying nor yet greatly loitering.
Articulation, the father remarks early in the year, has got much more
precise, only a few sounds seeming to occasion difficulty, as for
example the initial _s_, which he transforms into an aspirate, saying,
for example, ‘huga’ for sugar.
A noticeable linguistic advance is registered in the fourth month of the
year, _viz._, a kind of sudden and energetic raid on the names of
objects and persons. “He is always asking the names of things now
(writes our chronicler). Thus, after calling a common object, as a
brush, by its name he will ask me, ‘What is the _name_ of this?’ Perhaps
he thinks that everything has its own exclusive or ‘proper’ name as he
has. He is beginning to note, too, that some things have more than one
proper name, that his mother, for example, though called ‘ma’ by
himself, is addressed by her Christian name by me, and so forth. When
asked, ‘What is Ningi’s name?’ he now answers, ‘Kifford’.”
What is far more significant, he now (_æt._ two years three months)
began to use ‘you’ in addressing his father or mother, also ‘me’ and
‘I’. But these changes are so momentous and epoch-making in the history
of the young intelligence that they will have to be specially considered
later on.
Like other children he showed a fine contempt for the grammatical
distinctions of pronominal forms. Thus ‘me’ was used for ‘mine,’ ‘her’
for ‘she,’ ‘she’s’ for ‘hers,’ ‘him’ for ‘he’ and for ‘his,’ ‘us’ for
‘our,’ and so forth.[310] It is pretty clear that none of these
solecisms was due to an imitation of others’ incorrect speech, and they
appear to show the action of the principle of biological economy, a few
word-sounds being made to do duty for a number of relations (_e.g._, in
the use of ‘me’ for ‘my’), and familiar word-sounds being modified
according to analogy of other modifications where older people use a
quite new form (‘she’s’ for ‘hers’). A similar disposition to simplify
and rationalise the tongue of his ancestors showed itself in the use of
verbs. Thus, if his mother said, ‘Cliffy, you are not good,’ he would
reply in a perfectly rational manner, “Yes, I are”. “It was odd,” writes
the father, “to hear him bring out in solemn judge-like tones such
terrible solecisms as ‘Him haven’t,’ yet there was a certain logical
method in his lawlessness.” Another simplification on which he hit in
common with other children was the use of ‘did’ as a sign of past tense,
thus saving himself all the trouble of understanding the irregular
behaviour of our verbs.[311]
-----
Footnote 310:
Later on towards the end of the year he oddly enough seemed disposed
to reverse his early practice, using for example ‘she’ for ‘her,’ and
even going to the length of correcting his sister for saying ‘Somebody
gave her,’ by remarking with all the dogmatism of the most pedantic of
grammarians, “No, E., you must say ‘Gave she’”.
Footnote 311:
Compare above, p. 176 f. C.’s father probably makes too much of the
principle of economy here. Thus, like other children, the boy was wont
to use double negatives, _e.g._, “Dare isn’t no water in dat cup,”
where there is clearly a redundance.
-----
One or two quaint applications of words are noted. Thus towards the end
of the third month of this year he took to using ‘cover’ in a somewhat
puzzling fashion. Thus he once pointed to the back of his hand and
remarked, ‘No milk on this cover’. The father suspects that the term
connoted for his consciousness an outside part or the outer surface of
an object.
A very noticeable improvement took place in the forming of sentences.
All sorts of questions (writes the chronicler) are now put correctly and
neatly, as, ‘Where are you going to?’ ‘Where did that come from?’ He is
now striking out most ambitiously in new and difficult directions, not
fighting shy even of such school-horrors as conditional clauses (as they
used to be called, at least). Very funny it must have been to watch
these efforts, and the ingenuities of construction to which the little
learner found himself driven. For example, he happened one morning (end
of fourth month) when in his father’s bedroom to hear a knocking in the
adjoining room. He walked about the room remarking to himself, ‘I can’t
make out somebody,’ which seemed his own original fashion of avoiding
the awkwardness of our elaborate form, “I can’t make out who the person
is (that is knocking)”. A still quainter illustration of the skill with
which he found his way out of linguistic difficulties is the following.
His sister once said to him (first week of fifth month), ‘You had better
not do that,’ whereupon he replied, “I think me better will”. Here is a
sample of his mode of dealing with conditionals (end of sixteenth
month), “If him (a tree) would be small, I would climb up”.
His highly individualised language, remarks the father, was rendered
more picturesque by the recurrence of certain odd expressions which he
picked up and applied in his own royal fashion. One of these was, “Well,
it might be different,” which he often used when corrected for a fault,
and on other occasions as a sort of formula of protestation against what
he thought to be an exaggerated statement.
We may now notice some new manifestations of thinking power. All
thought, we are told, proceeds by the finding out of similarities and
dissimilarities. C. continued to note the resemblances of things. Thus
one day (end of second month) he noticed the dog Jingo breathing quickly
after a smart run and observed, ‘Like puff-puff’. But what was much more
noticeable this year was the boy’s impulse to draw distinctions and
contrasts. It may certainly be said in his case that likeness was
distinctly apprehended before difference, that in the development of his
rhetoric the antithesis followed the simile. One of the first contrasts
to impress the tender consciousness of children is that of size. This
comes out among other ways in their habit of setting their own puny
persons in antithesis to big grown-up folk, a habit sufficiently
attested by the recurring expressions, “When I am big,” “When I am a
man”. C., like other children, took to denoting a contrast of size by a
figurative extension of the relation, mamma—baby. Thus it was noted (end
of seventh month) that he would call a big tree “mamma tree,” and a
shrub “baby tree”. One day he pointed to the clock on the mantel-piece
and talked of the ‘big mamma clock’. He had, it seems, just before been
playing with his father’s watch, which he also called clock.[312]
-----
Footnote 312:
Compare above, p. 163 f.
-----
This love of contrasting appeared in a striking manner in connexion with
the use of propositions. If, for example (third month), his father says,
“That’s a little watch,” he at once brings out the point of the
statement by adding, ‘That not a big watch’. The same perception of
contrast would sometimes help him to take the edge off a disagreeable
prohibition when unguardedly worded. Thus when told one day not to make
much noise, he considered and rejoined, “Make _little_ noise”.
A more subtle perception of contrast betrayed itself towards the end of
the ninth month. His father had been speaking to him of the little calf
which made a big noise. He mentally turned over this astonishing bit of
contrariness in the order of things, and then observed with a sage
gravity, “Big calf not make little noise,” which so far as the limited
faculties of the observer could say appeared to mean that the contrast
between size and sound did not hold all round, that the big sound
emerging from the little thing was an exception to the order of nature.
In connexion with this habit of opposing qualities and statements
reference may be made to the curious manner in which the boy expressed
negation. It was evidently a difficulty for him to get hold of the
negative particle, and to deny straight away, so to speak. At first
(beginning of the year) he seemed to indicate negation or rejection
merely by tone of voice. Thus he would say about something which he
evidently did not like, ‘Ningi like that,’ with a peculiar querulous
tone which was apparently equivalent to the appendage ‘N.B. ironical’.
About a fortnight later he expressed negation by first making the
correlative affirmation and adding ‘No,’ thus: "Ningi like go in
water—no!" A week later, it is noted, ‘no’ was prefixed to the
statement, as when he shouted, ‘No, no, naughty Jingo,’ in contradiction
of somebody who had called the dog naughty. Towards the end of the third
month ‘not’ came to be used as an alternative for ‘no’ which little by
little it displaced.
The father remarks that C.’s sister had had a similar trick of opposing
statements, _e.g._, “Dat E.’s cup, not mamma’s cup”. He then proceeds to
observe in his somewhat heavy didactic manner that these facts are of
curious psychological and logical interest, showing us that negation
follows affirmation, and can at first only be carried out by a direct
mental confronting of an affirmation, and so forth.[313]
-----
Footnote 313:
On the use of antithesis in children’s language and on the early forms
of negation, see above, p. 174 f.
-----
As already shown by the reference to the use of ‘somebody’ C.’s thought
was growing slightly more abstract. Yet how slow this advance was is
illustrated in his way of dealing with time-relations, some of the most
difficult, as it would seem, for the young mind to grapple with. At the
end of the second month the ideas of time, we are told, were growing
more exact, so far at least that he was able to distinguish a present
time from both a past and a future. He called the present variously
‘now,’ ‘a day’ (to-day) or ‘dis morning’.[314] The present seemed, so
far as the father could judge, to be conceived of as a good slice of
time. ‘To-morrow’ and ‘by-and-by’ now served to express the idea of
futurity, the former referring to a nearer and more definitely conceived
tract of time than the latter. That the child had no clear apprehension
of our time-divisions is seen not only in his loose employment of ‘dis
morning,’ but in his habitual confusion of the names of meals, as in
calling dinner ‘tea,’ tea ‘dinner’ or ‘breakfast,’ and so forth.
-----
Footnote 314:
A note in the diary says that C.’s sister had also used ‘this morning’
in a similar way for any present. Can this curious habit arise, he
asks, from the circumstance that children hear ‘this morning’ more
frequently than ‘this afternoon’ and ‘this evening,’ or that they are
more wakeful and observant in the early part of the day?
-----
Another abstruse idea for the child’s mind is that of absence. It would
seem as if this were thought of at first as a disappearance. As all
mothers know, when a child is asked where somebody is he answers, ‘All
gone’. C., on his return from D—— (end of second month), when asked
where the people and the highly interesting Jingo were, would say, ‘All
gone,’ and sometimes add picturesquely, ‘in the puff-puff’.[315]
-----
Footnote 315:
(Note of the father.) C., on leaving D——, had travelled by the train.
He may, therefore, have intended merely to say “removed from sight
through the agency of the locomotive”. From other examples, however,
it would look as if the boy meant to explain all disappearance as a
removal from his own local sphere.
-----
The acquisition of clearer ideas about self and others has been touched
on in connexion with the growth of the boy’s language. The first use of
‘I’ and the contemporaneous first use of ‘you’ (end of third month) seem
to point to a new awakening of the intelligence to the mystery of self,
and of its unique position in relation to other things. There is to the
father evidently something pathetic in the gradual abandonment of the
self-chosen name, ‘Ningi,’ of the early days, and the adoption of the
common-place ‘I’ of other people. But we need not attend to his
sentimental musings on this point. The exchange, we are told, was
effected gradually, as if to make it easier to his hearers. At first
(beginning of year) we have ‘me’ brought on the scene, which, be it
observed, did duty both for ‘me’ and for ‘my’.[316] Later on followed
‘I,’ as an occasional substitute for ‘me,’ as if he were beginning to
see a difference between the two, though unable to say wherein precisely
it lay. Within less than a month, we are told, the child was beginning
to use “Kikkie” as his name in place of “Ningi,” which “Kikkie” was
afterwards improved into “Kifford”. “It was evident (writes the
narrator) that in venturing on the slippery ground of ‘I’ and ‘you’ he
experienced a sudden accession of manly spirit, as a result of which he
began to despise the ‘Ningi’ of yore.” But dear old ‘Ningi’ did not go
out all at once, and we read so late as the end of the third month of
his amusing his mother when standing on the window-sill of the nursery
by remarking thoughtfully, “How am I, Ningi, come down?” Here, it would
seem evident, the addition of ‘Ningi’ was intended to help the faculties
of his mother in case this still puzzling “I” should prove too much for
them. By the end of the fourth month we read that ‘I’ was growing less
shy, not merely coming on the scene in familiar and safe verbal
companionship, as in expressions like ‘I can,’ but boldly pushing its
way alone or in new combinations.[317] By the sixth month (_æt._ two and
a half) the name Ningi may be said to have disappeared from his
vocabulary. His rejection of it was formally announced at the age of two
years seven and a half months. On being asked at this date whether he
was Ningi he answered, “No, my name Kiffie”. He then added, “Ningi name
of another little boy,” very much as in a remarkable case of double
personality described by M. Pierre Janet, the transformed personality
looking back on the original observed, “That good woman is not myself”.
He looked roguish in saying this, as if there were something funny in
the idea of altered personality. The determination to be conventional
was shown at the same date in the fact that when, for example, the
mother or father, following the old habit, would bid him go and ask the
nurse to wash “Cliffie’s hands,” he would, in delivering the message,
substitute “my hands”. By the end of the year ‘I’ came to be habitually
used for self, as in answering a question, _e.g._, “Who did this or
that?” Tyrannous custom had now completely prevailed over infantile
preferences.
-----
Footnote 316:
The chronicler observes here that C.’s sister had also used the same
expression for ‘I’ and ‘mine,’ _viz._, “my”. It looks as if the me and
its belongings were not at first differentiated. Even of the later and
maturer ideas of self a well-known American psychologist writes:
“Between what a man calls _me_ and what he simply calls _mine_ the
line is difficult to draw”. Compare above, p. 181.
Footnote 317:
The same holds true of ‘me,’ which was first used only in particular
connexions, as ‘Give me’.
-----
During the third year C. seemed determined to prove to his parents and
sister that he had attained the age of reason. He began to ply these
well-disposed persons with all manner of questionings. Sometimes,
indeed, as when in the case already referred to he would ask for the
names of things just after calling them by their names, the
long-suffering mother was half inclined to regret the acquisition of
speech, so much did it present itself at this stage in the light of an
instrument of torture. But the child’s questionings were rarely
attributable to a spirit of persecution or to sheer “cussedness”. He
began in the usual manner of children to ask: ‘Who made this and that?’
(early in the fourth month). That there is a simple process of reasoning
behind this question is seen in his sometimes suggesting an answer thus:
“Who made papa poorly? Blackberries;” where there was obviously a
reference to an unpleasant personal experience. His mind about this time
seemed greatly exercised in the matter of sickness and health. One day
(middle of sixth month) walking out with his mother he met a man,
whereupon ensued this dialogue: C. ‘Is that a poorly gentleman?’ M.
‘No.’ C. ‘Is that a well gentleman?’ M. ‘Yes.’ C. ‘Then who made him
well?’ From which (writes the father) it would look as if, just as Plato
could only conceive of pleasure as a transition from pain, Master C.
could only conceive of health as a process of convalescence.[318]
-----
Footnote 318:
This reminds one of the childish use of ‘broken’ and ‘mended,’
illustrated above, p. 98.
-----
Another way of prying into the origin of things seems worth mentioning.
Having found out that certain pretty things in the house had been
“bought,” he proceeded with the characteristic recklessness of the
childish mind to assume that all nice things come to us this way. One
day (middle of third month) he asked his father, “Who bought lady?” lady
being an alabaster figure of Sappho. The father then asked him, and he
answered: “Mamma”. Asked further where, he replied: “In town”. This
looked like romancing, but it is hard to draw the line between childish
romancing and serious thought. He may have really inferred that the
alabaster lady had come to the house that way. A still funnier example
of the application of his purchasing idea occurred at the date, three
months and one week. Stroking his mother’s face he said: “Nice dear
mother, who bought you?” What, asks the father, did he understand by
"bought"? Perhaps only some mysterious way of obtaining possession of
nice pretty things.
The other form of reason-hunting question, ‘What for?’ or ‘Why?’ came to
be used about the same time as “Who made?” etc. In putting these
questions he would sometimes suggest answers of a deliciously childish
sort (as the writer has it). Thus one day (beginning of fourth month) he
saw his father putting small numbered labels on a set of drawers, and
after his customary “What dat for?” added half inquiringly, “To deep
drawers nice and warm?” C. would pester his parents by asking not only
why things were as they were, but why they were not different from what
they were. Thus (end of third month) on seeing in a nursery book a
picture of Reynard the fox waving his hat he asked in his slow emphatic
way: ‘Why not dat fox put on his hat?’ In a similar way he would ask his
mother why she did not go to school, and so forth.[319]
-----
Footnote 319:
Compare above, p. 86 ff.
-----
With this questioning there went a certain amount of confident assertion
respecting the reasons of things. At first C. proceeded modestly,
reproducing reasons given by an adequate authority. Thus when told
during his stay at D—— that he would not go into the sea to-day, he
would supplement the announcement by adding the reason as given before
by his mother, _e.g._, “’Cause it’s too cold,” or, “’Cause big waves
to-day”. Very soon, however, he took a step forward and discovered
reasons for himself. One day (end of fifth month) his father was seating
him at table, and was about to add a second cushion to the chair when he
remarked in his gravest of manners, “I can’t put my leg in, you know
(_i.e._, under the table), if me be higher”. Here is another of these
specimens of reasoning, dating two weeks later, and based like the first
on direct observation. His father was walking out with him on the famous
Heath of their suburb. The former, probably more than half lost in one
of his trains of philosophic speculation, observed absent-mindedly, “Why
are these babas (sheep) running away?” C. promptly took up the question
and answered with vigour, “’Cause the bow-wow dare with man”. As a
matter of fact a man was approaching with a small dog, which the father
in his reverie had failed to see.
Of course, the reasoning was not always so consonant with our standard
as in these two examples. C. appears to have had his own ideas about the
way in which things come about. For example, he seems to have argued,
like certain scholastic logicians, that the effect must resemble the
cause. At least, after finding out that his milk came from the cow, he
referred the coldness of his milk one morning (towards end of fourth
month) to the coldness of the cow,—which property of that serviceable
quadruped was, of course, a pure invention of his own. Just three months
later he came out one morning with the momentous announcement, "Milk
comes from the white cow down at D——"; and on being asked by his
ever-attentive father what sort of milk the brown cow gave, instantly
replied, ‘Brown milk’; where, again, it must be admitted, he came
suspiciously near romancing.
He seems, further, to have shown slight respect for the logical maxim
that the same effect may be brought about in more than one way. For C.
nature was delightfully simple, and everything happened in one way, and
in one way only. So that, for example, when during a walk (end of sixth
month) his glove happened to slip off, he proceeded in a most hasty and
unfair manner to set down the catastrophe to the malignity of the wind,
exclaiming, “Naughty wind to blow off glove”.
A like want of maturity of judgment in dealing with the subtle
connexions of nature’s processes showed itself in other ways. Thus he
argued as if the same agency would always bring about like results,
whatever the material dealt with. An amusing illustration of this
occurred in the latter half of the tenth month. He was observed towards
the end of a meal pouring water on sundry bits of bread on his plate,
and on being asked why he was doing this, said: ‘To melt them, of
course’.
One of his thoroughly original ideas was that other things besides
living ones grow bigger with time. One day (middle of sixth month) he
began to use a short stick as a walking-stick. His mother objected that
it was not big enough, on which he observed: “Me use it for
walking-stick when stick be bigger”. In like manner just a month later
he remarked, _apropos_ of a watch-key which was too small for the
father’s watch, that it would be able to wind up the watch ‘when it grow
bigger’. So far as the father could observe it was only little things
which he thought would increase in size. It thus looked, adds the
father, like a kind of extension of the supreme law of his own small
person to the whole realm of wee and despised objects.[320]
-----
Footnote 320:
Compare above, p. 97 f.
-----
C. followed other children and the race which he so well represented in
supposing that sensation is not confined to the animal world. Thus
towards the end of the eleventh month when warned in the garden not to
touch a bee as it might sting, he at once observed: “It might sting the
flower”. “It is odd,” interpolates the father here, “that C.’s sister,
when, towards the end of her fourth year, she was bidden not to touch a
wasp on the window-pane, had gone further than C. by suggesting that it
might sting the glass. Everything seems to live and to feel in the
child’s first fancy-created world.”[321]
-----
Footnote 321:
Compare above, p. 96 ff.
-----
Towards the end of the year, it appears, C. developed considerable
smartness in logical fencings with his mother and others, warding off
unpleasant prohibitions by a specious display of argument. For example,
when told that something he wanted would make him poorly, he rejoined:
‘I _am_ poorly,’ evidently thinking that he had convicted his estimable
parent of what logicians call irrelevant conclusion.
One cannot say that these first incursions into the domain of logic do
Master C. particular credit. Perhaps we may see later on that he came to
use his rational faculty with more skill and precision, and to turn it
to nobler uses than the invention of subterfuges whereby he might get
his wilful way.
The notes on the development of the feelings continue to be rather
scanty. I will reproduce one or two of the more note-worthy.
The visit to D—— was attended with a great change in his feeling for
animals. He no longer feared them. Jingo, spite of his warlike name, was
an amiable creature, and seems to have reconciled him to the canine
species. Cats, too, now came in for special affection. He would watch
the animals in D——, horses, cows, and especially ducks, with quiet
delight for many minutes, imitating their sounds. Strange to say, now
that fear had gone he showed himself disposed to take liberties with
animals. Thus he would slap Jingo and even his favourite cat in moments
of displeasure, just as he and his sister before him used to slap their
dolls.
A new emotion showed itself towards the end of the fourth month, _viz._,
shyness. If his parents unguardedly spoke about him at table he would
hang down his head and put his hands over his face. So far as the father
could observe this expression of shyness was unlearned. His sister, it
appears, had not been remarkable for the feeling. The father observes
that the fact of this new feeling synchronising with the acquisition of
the use of ‘I,’ ‘my,’ etc., seems to show that it was connected with the
growth of self-consciousness.
His sense of fun continued to develop, though it still had a decidedly
rude and primitive character. When just four months on in the year his
father amused him by battering in an old hat of his own. He broke into
loud laughter at this performance. We know, writes the observer, how the
sight of a hat in trouble convulses the grown mind. Can it be that C.
was already forming associations of dignity with this completion and
crown of human apparel?
Tender emotion, as became a boy, perhaps, was in abeyance. He rarely
indulged in manifestations of love, or if he did, it must have been
towards his mother secretly in a confidence that was never violated.
Here is one of the few instances recorded (beginning of eighth month).
He happened to see his own picture in his mother’s eye and said in a
highly sentimental tone: “Dear pitty little picture, I do love ’oo,” and
then proceeded to kiss his mother’s eyelid. It was little things, as
kittens, flowers, and so forth, which seemed to move him to this
occasional melting mood.
The sympathetic feelings though still weak may be said to be slowly
developing. Thus in the first month of the year it is remarked that he
now thinks of his sister when absent, so that if he has the
highly-prized enjoyment of a biscuit he will suggest that ‘Tit have bisc
too’.
This year witnessed the formation of more definite æsthetic likings in
the matter of colours and forms. His dislike for a black cat and black
things generally, may perhaps be called in a way a preference of taste.
In his animal picture-books, of which he was now growing very fond, he
showed a marked dislike for a monkey with an open mouth, also for the
rhinoceros, and strong likings, on the other hand, for birds in general,
also for horses and zebras.
He began to learn nursery rhymes, and showed a good ear for rhyme. Thus
in saying:—
Goosey goosey gander,
Where shall I wander?
he was observed (end of tenth month) to correct the rhyme by first
pronouncing the _a_ in “wander” less broadly than is our wont, just as
in “gander,” and then substituting the conventional pronunciation.
The moral side of the child’s nature appears during this year to have
undergone noticeable changes. The most striking fact which comes out in
the picture of the boy as painted in the present chapter is the sudden
emergence of self-will. He began now to show himself a veritable rebel
against parental authority. Thus we read (about the end of the sixth
week) that when corrected for slapping Jingo, or other fault, he would
remain silent and half laugh in a cold contemptuous way, which must have
been shocking to his worthy parents. A month later we hear of an
alarming increase of self-will. He would now strike each of these august
persons, and follow up the sacrilege with a profane laugh. As might be
expected from his general use of subterfuge about this time, he showed a
lamentable want of moral sensibility in trying to shirk responsibility.
Thus (middle of seventh month) he was noticed by his mother putting a
spill of paper over the fire-guard into the fire so as to light it. His
mother at once said: “Ningi mustn’t do that”. Whereupon he impudently
retorted: “Ningi not doing that, paper doing it”.[322]
-----
Footnote 322:
Compare above, p. 273 f.
-----
All this is dreadful enough, yet it is probable that many children go
through a longer or shorter stage of rebellion, who afterwards turn out
to be well-behaved, respectable persons. And, as his father is not slow
to point out, C., even in these rebellious outbursts, showed the
rudiments of moral feeling in the shape of a deep sensitiveness to
injury and more definitely to unjust treatment. Thus we are told (middle
of seventh month) that when his sister eats the leavings of his pudding
or other dainty he shows a well-marked moral indignation. He gets very
excited at such moments, his eyes dilating, his voice rising in pitch,
and his arms executing a good deal of violent gesticulation. When
scolded by his mother for doing a thing which he has only appeared to
do, he will turn and exclaim, with all the signs of righteous wrath,
“Mamma naughty say dat!” One day (end of seventh month) when, after
being very naughty, his mother had to carry him upstairs, he broke out
into a more than usually violent fit of crying. His mother asked him
what he meant by making such a noise when being carried upstairs;
whereupon he replied, “’Cause you carry me up like a pig” (as
represented in one of his picture-books).
There is nothing particularly meritorious in all this, yet it is
significant as showing how, in this third year, the consciousness of
self was developing not only on its intellectual but on its moral side,
as a sense of personal dignity and rightful claim, which, after all, is
a very essential element in a normal and robust moral sentiment.
_Fourth Year._
The reports of progress during the fourth year are still scantier than
their predecessors: perhaps the observer was getting tired of his
half-playful work. Nevertheless, there are some interesting observations
in this chapter also.
C.’s observation seems to have been decidedly good, to judge by an
incident that occurred at the end of the third week of the year. He had
been to the Zoological Gardens. His father asked him about the seals,
and more particularly as to whether they had legs. He answered at once,
“No, papa, they had foot-wings”. The chronicler is evidently proud of
this feat, and thinks it would have satisfied Professor Huxley himself.
But allowance must here as elsewhere be made for parental pride.
The child’s colour-sense, we are told about the same time, was
developing quite satisfactorily. He could now (end of fifth week)
discriminate and name intermediate shades of colour. Thus he called a
colour between yellow and green quite correctly ‘yellowish green,’ and
this way of naming colours was, so far as the father could ascertain,
quite spontaneous. Later (three and a half months), on being questioned
as to violet, which he first said was blue, he replied correcting his
first answer, “and purple”. Later on (beginning of last quarter), he
could distinguish a ‘purplish blue’ from a “purplish pink”.
Along with a finer observation we find a more active and inventive
imagination. It was during this year that he began to create fictitious
persons and animals, and to surround himself with a world, unseen by
others, but terribly real to himself.
About the middle of the third month he made his first essay in
story-fabrication. Considering that he had a lively and imaginative
elder sister, who was constantly regaling him with fairy and other
stories, this argues no particular precocity. His first style in fiction
was crude enough. He would pile up epithets in a way that makes the most
florid of journalistic diction seem tame by comparison. Thus he would
begin the description of a dog by laying on a miscellaneous pile of
colour-adjectives, blue, red, green, black, white, and so forth. With a
similar disregard for verisimilitude and concentration of aim on strong
effect, he would pile up the agony in a story, relating, for example,
how the dog that had killed a rabbit (“bunny”) had his head beaten off,
was then drowned, and so on, through a whole Iliad of canine calamity.
Here is another example of his literary sensationalism (middle of ninth
month). While he and his father were taking a walk in the country, where
the family was staying, they found the feathers and bones of a bird in a
tiny cleft in the tree. The father thereupon began to weave for him a
little story about the unfortunate bird, how it had taken shelter there
one cold winter’s day weary and hungry, and had grown too weak to get
away. This did not satisfy the strong palate of our young poet, who
proceeded to improve on the tragedy. “P’haps a snake there, p’haps dicky
bird flew there one cold winter day and snake ate it up, and then spit
it out again,” and so forth. “P’haps (he ended up) he (the bird) thought
there was nothing but wind (air) there.”
He had, of course, his super-sensible world, made up of mysterious
beings of fairy-like nature, who, like the spirits of primitive
folk-lore, were turned to account in various ways. The following
incident (seven months one week) may illustrate the _modus operandi_ of
the child’s myth-making impulse. He was eagerly looking forward to going
to a circus. His father told him that if it rained he would not be able
to go, for nobody could drive away the rain. Whereupon he instantly
remarked: “The Rainer can”. His father asked him who this wonderful
person was, and he replied: "A man who lives in the forest—_my_
forest—and has to drive rain away". The expression “drive away” used by
the father had been enough to give this curious turn to his fancy.
His fairy-world was concocted from a medley of materials drawn from his
observations of animals, his experiences at the circus, including the
ladies in beautifully tinted short dresses, whom, with childish awe, he
named ‘fairies,’ and the book-lore that his sister was imparting to him
from _Stories of Uncle Remus_, and other favourites. In the ninth month
he got into the way of talking of his fairy-world, of the invisible
fairies, horses, rabbits, and so forth, to which he gave a local
habitation in the wall of his bedroom. When in a difficulty he thinks
his fairies can help him out. Nothing is too wonderful for their powers:
they can even solace his pitiful heart by making a dead dog alive again.
For the rest, like other imaginative children, he peoples the places he
knows, especially dark and mysterious ones, with imaginary beings. Thus
one day, on walking in a wood with his mother, he was overheard by her
talking to himself dreamily in this wise: “Here there used to be wolves,
but long, long time ago”.
It is noticeable that at this same period of his myth-making activity he
began to speak of his dreams. He evidently takes these dream-pictures
for sensible realities, and when relating a dream insists that he has
actually seen the circus-horses and fairies which appear to him when
asleep. Possibly, writes the father, this dreaming, as in the case of
the primitive race, had much to do in developing his intense belief in a
supernatural world. It may be added that during this same period he was
in the habit of seeing the forms of his animals, as lions, “gee-gees,”
in such irregular and apparently unsuggestive groupings of line as those
made by the cracks in the ceiling of his nursery.[323]
-----
Footnote 323:
Compare above, p. 28 ff.
-----
There is little to note in the way of verbal invention. Here is one
amusing specimen (third week of third month). His father asked him
whether his toy-horse was tired, whereupon he answered: ‘No, I make him
untired’. This leads off the writer to an abstruse logical discussion of
“negative terms,” and how it comes about that we do not all of us talk
in C.’s fashion and say ‘untired,’ ‘unfatigued’. Another quaint
invention was the use of ‘think’ as a noun. It was funny, writes the
father, to hear him rejecting his sister’s statements by the
contemptuous formula: “That’s only your thinks”.
His understanding was slowly ripening in spite of his free indulgence in
the intoxicating pleasures of the imagination. He could understand much
that was said to him by the aid of a liberal application of metaphor.
Thus one day (end of the year) his father when walking with him late in
the evening in a park where sheep were grazing told him that animals did
not want bed-clothes, but could lie on the grass wet with dew and
afterwards be dried with the sun. He said: “Yes, the sun is their towel
to make them dry”.
The subtleties of time were still too much for him. In the fourth month
of the year when his sister was narrating an incident of the evening
before and used the term ‘yesterday,’ he corrected her saying: “No, E.,
last night”. Yet he was now beginning to penetrate into the mysteries of
the subject. His father happened one day (end of seventh month) to speak
of to-morrow. C. then asked: “When is to-morrow? To-morrow morning?” He
then noticed that his hearers were remarking on his question, and
proceeded to expound his own view of these wonderful things. “There are
two kinds of to-morrow, to-morrow morning and this morning;” and then
added with the sagest of looks: “To-morrow morning is to-morrow _now_”.
At this the father tells us both he and the mother were sorely puzzled,
and if one may be allowed to read between the lines, it is not
improbable that the latter must have indulged in some such exclamation
as this: “There! this comes of your stimulating the child’s brains too
much”. However this be, it is certain that the observer’s mind was
greatly exercised about this dark and oracular deliverance of the child.
What could he have meant? At length he bethought him that the child was
unable as yet to think of pure abstract time. To-morrow had to be filled
in with some concrete experience, wherefore his wishing to define it as
“to-morrow _morning_” with the interesting experiences of the early
hours of the day. And if “to-morrow” means for his mind to-morrow’s
experience, he is quite logical in saying that it becomes to-day’s
_experience_. Whether the father has here caught the subtle thread of
childish thought may be doubted.[324] Who among the wisest of men could
be sure of seizing the precise point which the child makes such
praiseworthy effort to render intelligible to us?
-----
Footnote 324:
Compare what was said above, p. 119.
-----
It would appear as if C. were still rather muddled about numbers. One
day (end of third month) he was looking at some big coloured beads on a
necklace, and touching the biggest he said to his mother: “These are
six,” then some smaller ones: “these five,” then some still smaller
ones: “these four,” and so on. He was apparently failing as yet to
distinguish number from that other mode of quantity which we call
magnitude.
The use of the word “self” at this time showed that it had reference
mainly to the body, and apparently to the central trunk. Thus one
evening towards the end of the eleventh month, after being put to bed,
he was heard by his mother crying out peevishly. Asked by her what was
the matter he answered, “I can’t get my hands out of the way of myself”;
which, being interpreted by his mother, was his way of saying that he
could not wriggle about and get into cool places (the evening was a warm
one) as he would like to do.
As might be inferred from his essays in fictitious narrative, he was
getting quite an expert in the matter of assertion. It was odd
sometimes, observes the journal, to hear the guarded manner in which he
would proffer a statement. Thus, on one occasion (beginning of twelfth
month), he reported to his father, who had been from home for some days,
that he had been behaving quite satisfactorily during his absence, and
then added cautiously, “I did not see mamma punish me, anyhow”.
During this year he followed up his questioning relentlessly, often
demanding the reasons of things, as children are wont to do, in a sorely
perplexing fashion. His interrogatory embraced all manner of objects,
both of sense-perception and of thought. Thus he once asked his mother
(seventh month) how it was that he could put his hand through water and
not through the soap. A matter that came to puzzle him especially just
now was growth. Thus, when told by his father (tenth month) that a
little tree would grow big by-and-by, he asked, "How is it that
everything grows—flowers, trees, horses, and people?" or, as he worded
it a few days later, “How can trees and sheep grow without anybody
making them?” He seems now (notes the father) to have given up his
belief in the growth of lifeless things. The inequalities of size among
fully grown things were also a puzzle to him. Thus, when just four years
old, he was much concerned to know why ponies did not grow big like
other horses.[325]
-----
Footnote 325:
Compare what was said above, pp. 88, 104.
-----
The father must doubtless at this time have had his hands full in
satisfying the intellectual cravings of the child. But, happily, the
small inquirer would sometimes come forward to help out the explanation.
One day (end of the year) his father, when walking out with him, pointed
to a big dray-horse and said: “That is a strong horse”. On which the
child observed: “Ah! that horse can gallop fast”. He was then told that
heavy horses did not go fast. He looked puzzled for a moment and then
asked: “Do you mean can’t lift themselves up?” “Had he,” asks the
father, “noticed that when weighted with thick clothes or other
_impedimenta_ he was less springy, and so found his way, as is the
manner of children, from his own experience to explaining the apparent
contradiction of the strong and slow horse?”
Other questionings were less amenable to purposes of instruction. He
would often get particularly thoughtful immediately after going to bed,
and put posers to his mother. For example, one evening (tenth month) he
asked in his slow, earnest way, “Where was I a hundred years ago?” and
then more precisely, “Where was I before I was born?” These are, as
everybody knows, stock questions of childhood, and, perhaps, are hardly
worth recording. It is otherwise with a curious poser which he set his
father about the middle of the last month: “When are all the days going
to end, papa?” It is a pity that the diary does not record the answer
given to the question. In lieu of this we have the customary pedantic
style of speculation about the “concept” of infinity with references to
Sir W. Hamilton and I don’t know what other profound metaphysicians. The
answer, if any was attempted, does not appear to have been very
satisfactory to Master C., for we read further on that more than three
months after this date he put the same question about all the days
ending to his mother.
With this questioning about the causes of things there went much
assigning of reasons. By the end of the fourth month, it is remarked, he
was getting more accurate in his thinking, substituting limited
generalisations such as, “Some people do this,” for the first hasty and
sweeping ones. He appears, further, to have grown much more ready in
finding reasons, bringing out “’cause” (because) on all manner of
occasions, much to his own satisfaction and hardly less to that of his
observant father. He continued, it is added, to display the greatest
ingenuity in finding reasons for his own often capricious-looking
behaviour, and especially in discovering excuses whereby a veil of
propriety might be thrown over actions which he knew full well would, if
left naked, have a naughty look.
The tendency to give life to things observable in the last year was less
marked, but broke out now and again, as when sitting one day (beginning
of tenth month) on his chair on a loose cushion and wriggling about as
his manner was, he felt the cushion slipping from under him and
exclaimed: “Hullo! I do b’lieve this cushion is alive. It moves itself.”
About a month after this the father set about testing the state of his
mind by asking him whether trees did not feel pain when they were cut.
This “leading question” was not to entrap Master C., who answered with
something of contempt in his tone: “No, they only made of wood”. He was
not so sure about dead rabbits, however, saying first “yes” and then
“no”.
The intricate relations of things continued to trouble his mind. His
father chanced one day (end of eleventh month) to remark at table that
C. did not take his milk so nicely as he used to do. C. pondered this
awhile and then said: “It’s funny that little babies behave better than
big boys. They don’t know so much as boys.” From which the father
appears to have inferred that children, like certain Greek philosophers,
are wont to identify virtue with cognition.
There are not many brilliant strokes of childish rationality to record
during this year. It is worth noting, perhaps, that when just seven
months and one week of the year had passed, he showed that he had found
his own way to an axiomatic truth familiar to students of geometry. He
had been to the circus the day before, where a gorgeous pantomimic
spectacle had greatly delighted him. He talked to his father of the
beautiful things, and among others, of “the fairies going up in the
air”. His father asked him how they were able to fly. Whereupon with
that good-natured readiness to enlighten the darkness of grown-up people
which makes the child the most charming of instructors, he proceeded to
explain in this wise: “They had wings, you know. Angels have wings like
birds, and fairies are like angels, and so you see fairies are like
birds.”
The first development of reason in the child is apt to be trying to
parents and others, on account not only of the thick hail-like pelting
of questions to which it gives rise, but still more, perhaps, of the
circumstance that the young reasoner will so readily turn his new
instrument to a confusing criticism of his elders. The daring
interference of childish dialectic with moral discipline in C.’s case
has already been touched on. Sometimes he would follow up a series of
questions so as to put his logical antagonist into a corner, very much
after the manner of the astute Socrates. Here is an example of this
highly inconvenient mode of dialectical attack (middle of seventh
month). He was at this time like other children, much troubled about the
killing of animals for food. Again and again he would ask with something
of fierce impatience in his voice: “_Why_ do people kill them?” On one
occasion he had plied his mother with these questionings. He then
contended that people who eat meat must like animals to be killed.
Finally, to clench the matter, he turned on his mother and asked: “Do
_you_ like them to be killed?” Here is another example of his persistent
dialectical attack (end of eleventh month). A small caterpillar
happening to drop on the shoulder of the father, the mother expressed
the common dislike for these creatures. C. was just now championing the
whole dumb creation against hard-hearted man, and he at once saw his
opportunity. ‘Why,’ he demanded in his peremptory catechising tone,
‘don’t you like caterpillars?’ To which the mother, amused perhaps with
his grave argumentative manner, thought to escape the attack by
answering playfully: “Because they make the butterflies”. But there was
no room for jocosity in C.’s mind when it was a matter of liking or
disliking a living creature. So he followed up his questioning with the
true Socratic irony, asking: “Why don’t you like butterflies?” On this
both the parents appear to have laughed; but he was not to be upset, and
ignoring the patent subterfuge of the butterfly returned to the
caterpillar. “Caterpillars,” he observed thoughtfully, “don’t make a
noise.” He had doubtless generalised that the pet aversions of his
parents, more especially his father, were dogs, cocks and other
noise-producing animals. Whether he returned to the subject of the
caterpillar is not stated. Perhaps his mother’s dislike for the wee soft
noiseless thing was to be added to the stock of unexplained childish
mysteries.
Passing to manifestations of feeling, we have a curious note on a new
emotional expression. It seems that when a suckling the child had got
into the way of accompanying the bliss of an ambrosial meal by soft
caressing movements of the fore-finger along the mother’s eyebrows. When
three years and ten months old he was sitting on his father’s lap in one
of his softer moods when he touched this parent’s eyebrows in the same
dainty caressing manner. The observer suspects that we have here an
example of a movement becoming an emotional sign by association and
analogy. At first associated with the _ne plus ultra_ of infantile
happiness it came to indicate the oncoming of any analogous state of
feeling, and especially of the luxurious mood of tenderness.
Two or three curious examples of fear are recorded in this chapter. In
the second week of the fourth month he went with his mother to the
photographer’s to have his likeness taken. When he reached the house he
strongly objected, clung to his mother and showed all the signs of a
true fear. On entering the room he told the photographer in his quiet
authoritative manner that he was not going to have his likeness taken.
The process, an instantaneous one, was accomplished, however, without
his knowing it. Next morning when asked by his sister how he liked
having his likeness taken, he answered snappishly: “Haven’t had my
likeness taken. Don’t you see I can talk?” The father suspects that the
child feared he would be transformed by the black art of the camera into
a speechless photograph. It is curious that savages appear to show a
similar dread of the photographic camera. Thus, in a recent number of
the _Graphic_ (November, 1893) there was a drawing of Europeans and
natives having their likeness taken in a camp in South Africa. One
native, terror-struck, is hiding behind a tree so as not to be taken.
The text explains that the drawing represents a real incident, and that
the fear of the native came from his belief that there is an evil spirit
in the camera, and adds that, on finding out that after all he was in
the group, the poor fellow instantly disappeared from the camp. Is there
not for all of us something uncanny in that black box turned towards us
bent on snatching from us the film or image of our very self?
The other instances of C.’s fear point to a like superstitious frame of
mind at this time. Thus in the last month he happened one day to see
some white linen swaying in the breeze on a hill not far off. He took it
for a light and was afraid, saying it was a wolf. This was, we are told,
his first experience of ghosts. At the same date he showed fear when
passing through a wood with his father about nine o’clock on a summer
evening. Though his father was carrying him he said he could not help
being afraid of the dark. He fancied there must be wolves in the dark.
He afterwards informed his father that his sister had told him so. The
wolf appears at this time (by a quaint confusion of zoology) to have
been the descendant of his old _bête noire_, the “bow-wow”. “Have we,”
writes the father, “a sort of parallel here to the superstition of the
were-wolf so familiar in folk-lore?”
A new development of angry outburst is recorded. In the third month, to
the horror of his parents and the disgust of his sister, he positively
took to biting others, an action, it is needless to say, which he could
not have picked up from his highly respectable human environment. Was
this, asks the father, with praiseworthy detachment of mind, an
instinct, a survival of primitive brute-like habit, and happily destined
in the case of a child born into a civilised society, like other
instincts, as pilfering, to be rudimentary and transient?
As implied in the account of his much questioning, the feeling which was
most strongly marked and dominant during this year was wonder. His
father would surprise him sometimes standing on the sofa and looking at
an engraving of Guido’s “Aurora” hanging on the wall above. The woman’s
figure in front, perfectly buoyant on the air, the horses and chariot
firmly planted on the cloud, all this fascinated his attention and
filled him with delightful astonishment.
With wonder there often went in these days sore perplexity of spirit.
The order of things was not only intricate and difficult to take apart,
it seemed positively wrong. That animals should be beaten, slaughtered,
eaten by his own kith and kin, this, as already hinted, filled him with
dismay. In odd contrast to this, he would protest with equal warmth
against any ordinance which affected his own comfort. Thus, having on
one occasion (middle of seventh month) taken a lively interest in the
manufacture of jellies, custards, and other dainties, and having learned
the next day that they had been disposed of by a company of guests, he
asked his mother querulously why she had “wisitors,” and then added in a
comical tone of self-compassion, “Didn’t the ‘wisitors’ know you had a
little boy?” “It is odd to note,” writes the father, “how a humane
concern for the lower creation coexisted with utter indifference to the
duties of hospitality. Perhaps, however,” he adds, succumbing to
paternal weakness, and saying the best he can for his boy, “there was no
real contradiction here. The compassionateness of childhood goes forth
to weak, defenceless things, and to C.’s mind the ‘wisitors’ may very
likely have appeared as over-fed, greedy monsters who robbed poor
children of their small perquisites.”
The wondering impulse of the child assumed now and again a
quasi-religious form in speculations about death and heaven. Early in
the year he had lost his grandpapa by sudden death, and the event set
his thoughts in this direction. In the ninth month his mother read him
Wordsworth’s well-known story, “Lucy Gray”. He was much saddened by the
account of Lucy’s death. On hearing the line “In heaven we all shall
meet,” he began questioning his mother about heaven. She gave him the
popular description of heaven, but apparently in a way that left him
uncertain as to whether she believed what she said. Whereupon he
exclaimed: ‘We _shall_ meet,’ and then after a moment’s pause, as though
not quite certain, added, ‘shan’t we?’ Five weeks later, when driving in
the country with his mother on a lovely May day, he was in his happiest
mood, looking at the flowers in the fields and hedgerows, and suddenly
exclaimed: “I shall never die!” The question of immortality (observes
the father) had thus early begun to wring the child’s soul.
There are, I regret to say, in this chapter, hardly any remarks about
the development of the child’s will and moral character. The father
appears to have been disproportionately interested in the boy’s
intellectual advancement. The reader is left to hope that Master C. was
growing a more orderly and law-abiding child than the incident of the
biting would suggest. The one remark which can be brought under this
head refers to the growth of practical intelligence in applying rules to
action. C. had been told it was well to keep nice things to the end, and
he proceeded to work out the consequences of the rule in an amusing
fashion. Thus we read (end of eleventh month) that he would take all the
currants out of his cake and stick them round the corner of his plate so
as to eat them last. A still more amusing instance of the same thing
occurred about the same date. On putting him to bed one evening his
mother noticed that he carefully sought out the middle of the bed,
saying to himself, “I’ll keep these last”. Questioned by her as to what
he meant by ‘these,’ he explained, “These nice cool places at the edge
of the bed”. “Children,” remarks the chronicler, “do not drop their
originality even when they make a show of following our lead. Obedience
would be far more tedious than it is but for the occasional
opportunities of a play of inventive fancy in the application of a rule
to new and out-of-the-way cases.”
_Fifth Year._
With the fifth year we enter upon a new phase of the diary. The father
appears now to have finally abandoned the transparent pretence of a
methodical record of progress, and he limits himself to a fuller account
of a few selected incidents. Very noticeable is the introduction of
something like prolonged dialogue between the child and one of his
parents.
The boy continued to take a lively interest in objects and to note them
with care. Here is an illustration of his attention to natural
phenomena. He was walking out (end of fifth month) with his father on
their favourite Heath towards sunset, when he asked: “What are these
pretty things I see after looking at the sun? When I move my eyes they
begin to move about.” The father said he might call them fairy suns. He
then wanted to know whether they were real. He said: “When they seem to
be on the path they disappear when I go up to them”. Later on he began
to romance about the spectral discs that he saw after looking at a red
sun, calling them fire balloons and saying that there was a fairy in
each one of them.[326]
-----
Footnote 326:
Compare above, p. 102 f.
-----
A quaint example of his attention to the form of objects, as well as of
his odd childish mode of thought, comes out in a talk with his mother
(end of seventh month). She had been reading to him from _Alice in
Wonderland_, where the caterpillar tells Alice that one side of a
mushroom would make her grow taller, and one side shorter, which set
Alice wondering what the side of a mushroom could be. C. could not
sympathise with Alice’s perplexity, and said to his mother: “Why, a
mushroom is all ends and sides. Wherever you stand it’s an end or a
side.” The father thinks he sees here a dim apprehension of the idea
that a circle is formed by an infinite number of straight lines, but he
is possibly reading too much into the boy’s thought.
His observation of colour continued. One day (end of seventh month) he
was overheard by his father saying to himself (without any suggestion
from another) that a particular colour “came next” to another. His
father thereupon questioned him and elicited that orange came next to
red. Asked ‘What else?’ he answered yellow. Dark brown came next to
black, a lighter brown to red, purple next to blue, pink to red, and so
forth. Asked what green came next to, he answered: “I don’t know”; from
which it would appear that he had pretty clearly observed the affinities
of colours.
He showed himself observant of people’s ways too. Here is a funny
example of his attention to his sister’s habits of speech. One evening
(end of sixth month) when his sister was out at a party he had a cracker
which he wished to give her “as a surprise”. So he told his mother to
put it under the table, and added: “When E. comes in, and after she
says, ‘Well! how’ve you been getting on?’ then you must say: ‘Look under
the table’”.
His memory, as the foregoing incident may show, was growing tenacious
and exact. This exactitude showed itself in almost a pedantic fashion
with respect to words. Here is a funny example (end of sixth month). He
had a new story-book, _The Princess Nobody_, illustrated by R. Doyle.
His mother had read it to him about four or five times during the three
weeks he had possessed it. One Sunday evening his father read it to him
as a treat. In one place the story runs: “One day when the king had been
counting out his money all day,” which the father carelessly read as
“counting out all his money”. The child at once pulled up and corrected
his sire, saying, “No, papa, ’tis ‘counting out all the day his money’”.
He had remembered the ideas and the words though not the precise order.
The jealous regard of the child for the text of his sacred books in the
face of would-be mutilators is one of those traits which, while
perfectly childish, have a quaint old-fashioned look.
The dreamy worship of fairies passed into a new and even more blissful
phase this year. Before the close of the third month C. was actually
brought into contact with one of these dainty white-clad beings. The
memorable occasion was a girl’s costume ball, to which he was taken as a
spectator. Among the younger girls present was one dressed as a fairy,
in short white gauze, golden crown, and the rest. C. was at first dazed
by the magnificence of the assembly and shrank back shyly to his
mother’s side; but after this white sylph had been pointed out to him as
a fairy, and when she came up to him and spoke to him, he was
transported with delight. Hitherto the fairy had never been nearer to
him than on a circus stage: now he had one close to him and actually
talked with her! He firmly believed in the supernatural character of
this small person, and on his return home proceeded to tell cook with
radiant face how he had seen a live fairy and spoken to her. He added
that his sister had never spoken to one. This last might easily look
like a touch of malicious ‘crowing’: yet the father appears to think
that the boy meant only to deepen the mystery of the revelation by
pointing out that it was without precedent.
The weaving of fairy legend now went on vigorously. Sometimes when out
on a walk and observing a scene he would suddenly drop into his
dream-mood and spin a pretty romance. This happened one Sunday in winter
(beginning of seventh month), as he stood and watched the skaters on a
pond. He said his fairies could skate, and he talked more particularly
of his favourite Pinkbill, whom, he said, he now saw skating, though
nobody else was privileged to see her, and who loved to skate at night
on tiny pools which were quite big for her. “Delightful days (writes the
father, who is rather apt to gush in these later chapters), when one
holds a wondrous world of beauty in one’s own breast, safe from all
prying eyes, to be whispered of perhaps to one’s dearest, but never to
be shown.”
The full enjoyment of this supernal world was during sleep. C. often
spoke of his lovely dreams. One morning (middle of fourth month) when
still in bed, he engaged his mother in the following talk: C. “Do you
have beautiful dreams, mamma?” Mother. “No, dear, I don’t dream much.”
C. “Oh, if you want to dream you must hide your head in the pillow and
shut your eyes tight.” Mother. “Is dreaming as good as hearing stories?”
C. “Oh, yes, I should think so. One gets to know about all sorts of
things one didn’t know anything about before.” Dreams (writes the
father) came to him like his fire-balloons by shutting his eyes tight,
and perhaps his story-books were the real suns of which his dreams were
the ‘after-images’.
As the use of the grown-up and high-bred vocable "one"—the first
instance observed, by-the-bye,—suggests, C. was making rapid strides in
the use of language. By the middle of the year, we are told, he could
articulate all sounds including the initial _y_ and _th_ when he tried
to do so. He gave to the _a_ sound an unusual degree of broadness, a
fact which lent to his speech a comical air of learned superiority. This
was of course especially the case when, as still happened, he would slip
into such solecisms as ‘I were’ and ‘Weren’t I?’ He would still use some
quaint original expressions. It may interest the philologist to know
that he quite spontaneously got into the way of using ‘spend’ for
‘cost,’ as in asking one day (beginning of third month), on seeing a
frill in a shop window: ‘How much does this frill spend?’ and also of
making ‘learn’ do duty for ‘teach,’ as when (end of tenth month) he
asked his mother, pointing to a globe: “When are you going to learn me
that ball?”
He continued quite seriously and with no thought of producing an effect
to frame new words more or less after the analogy of those in use. Thus
one day (middle of third month) he surprised his parents by bringing out
the verb ‘fireworking’ in reference to the coming festivities of the
fifth of November. Sometimes, too, he would amuse them by trotting out
some ‘grown-up’ phrase which he generally used with clear insight,
though now and again he would miss the precise shade of meaning. Thus it
happened (about middle of fifth month) that he had been taking tea at
the house of some girl friends, and on his return his mother questioned
him about his doings, and in particular what his host had said to him.
C. pondered for a moment and then said: “Oh! nothing surprising”.
This progress in the use of language indicated a higher power of mental
abstraction. This was seen among other ways in the attainment of much
clearer ideas about number. In the second month of the year he was able,
we are told, to define the relations of the simpler numbers, saying that
four was one less than five, and so on. That he had his own way of
counting is evident from the following story, which dates from the
middle of the same month. When walking with his mother on the Heath he
found four crab apples. He observed to her: “How nice it would be,
mamma, if I could find two more!” His mother replied: “Yes. How many
would you have then, C.?” To this C. responded in his grave
business-like tone: “Wait a minute,” then got down on his knees, put the
four apples in a row, and then proceeded to the mysterious ceremony of
counting. He began by saying ‘one, two’ to himself, then on reaching the
“three” he pointed to the first of the row, using the apples to help him
in adding the four last digits. He appears, says the father, to have
imagined or ‘visualised’ the first two units, and then used the visible
objects for the rest of the operation—not a bad way, one would say, of
turning the apples to this simple arithmetical use.
That he visualised distinctly when counting is illustrated by another
incident dating three weeks later. His mother, as was her wont, was
seeing him into bed. Before climbing on to the bed he put on the
coverlid a number of small toy treasures. When tucked up he opened up
the following dialogue. C. “Put my toys in the drawer, mamma.” M. “I
have done it, dear.” C. “How many were there?” M. ‘Three.’ C. “Oh no,
there were four.” M. “Are you sure, dear? What were they?” C., after
sitting up and pointing successively to imaginary objects on the
coverlid: "One, two, three, four,—two dollies, a tin soldier, and a
shell".
His interest in physical phenomena continued to manifest itself in
questionings. He would spring his problems in physics on his patient
parents at the most unexpected moments. For instance, when sitting at
table one day (end of first month) he observed quite suddenly, and in no
discoverable connexion with what had been happening before: “There’s one
thing I _can’t_ imagine. How is it, papa, that when we put our hand into
the water we don’t make a hole in it?” It would be curious to know how
the father dealt with this hydrostatic problem.
The other inquiries recorded about this time have, oddly enough, to do
with water. It looks as if water were dividing with number just now the
activity of his brain. Thus he asked one day when staying at the
sea-side (middle of second month): “How does all the water come into the
world?” His mind was also greatly exercised about the hydrostatic puzzle
of things sinking and swimming (floating).
There are hardly any examples of a reasoning process this year. One of
these, however, is perhaps characteristic enough to deserve
reproduction. One day (middle of fourth month) when his mind was running
on the great problems of counting, his sister happened to speak about a
large number of chestnuts (over 200). This excited C.’s imagination, and
he exclaimed: “Why, even Goliath couldn’t count them”. The idea that
mere bulk should measure intellectual capacity was delicious, and C.’s
remark was no doubt received with a peal of laughter to which the
bewildered little inquirer into the mysteries of things must by this
time have been getting hardened. And yet, writes the apologetic father,
C.’s reasoning was not so utterly silly as it looks, for in his daily
measurement of his own faculties with those of others what had impressed
him most deeply was that knowledge is the prerogative of big folk.
With respect to C.’s emotional development during this year, I am
pleased to be able to record a diminution in the outbursts of angry
passion. There seems to have been no more biting, and altogether he was
growing less homicidal and more human. It is only to be expected that
the father should set down these paroxysms of rage to temporary physical
conditions.
Among feelings which were still strong and frequently manifested was
fear. He had no fear of the dark, and did not in the least mind being
left alone when put to bed. But he was weakly timid in relation to other
things, _e.g._, the tepid morning bath, from which he shrank as from a
horror. His bravery was as yet an infinitesimal quantity, as we may see
from the following anecdote. His mother was one day (end of fourth
month) talking to him about the self-denying bravery of captains of
ships when shipwrecked. She asked him whether he would not like to be
brave too, adding for his encouragement that many timid little boys like
him had grown up to be brave men. Upon this I regret to say that C.
asked sceptically, “Do they?” and then added, with a little impatient
wriggle of his body, “I am going to be a painter, and painters don’t
need to be brave”. The mother pursued the subject saying: “But if when
you are big we all go to sea and get shipwrecked, wouldn’t you wish
mamma and E. to get into the boat before you?” C. managed to parry even
this home-drive, answering: “Oh, yes, but I should get in the very
minute after you”.
A noticeable change occurred during this period in what the Germans call
“self-feeling”. A consciousness of growing power gave a certain feeling
of dignity and even of superiority which often betrayed itself in his
words and actions. Although, so far as I can gather, a pretty boy, and a
good deal admired for his golden hair, he does not seem to have set much
store by his good looks. One day (towards end of sixth month) a grown-up
cousin remarked at table that he had had his hair cut: whereupon ensued
this talk. Mother (to cousin). “It looks better now that it is cut.” C.
“Oh, no, it was prettier before.” Cousin. “Oh, you think you’ve got
pretty hair.” C. (unhesitatingly). “Oh, yes.” Cousin. “Who told you your
hair was pretty?” C. “Mamma.” “All this,” writes the father, “was said
very quietly, and without the least appearance of vanity. He might have
been talking about the hair of another person, or of a head in one of
his pictures. His interest here seemed to be much more in correcting his
mother and bringing her into consistency with former statements than in
laying claim to prettiness.”
On the other hand, the child does certainly appear to have plumed
himself a good deal on his intellectual possessions. It is to be noted
that about this time he grew unpleasantly assertive and controversial.
He would even sometimes stick to his own view of things when
contradicted by his parents. He prided himself more particularly on
being “sensible,” as he called it. His eagerness to be thought so may be
illustrated by the following incident. He and his mother had been
reading a story in which a little girl speaks of her mother as the best
mother in the world. Whereupon in a weak moment his mother asked him,
“Do you think your mother the best in the world, dear?” To this C.
replied, “Well, I think you are good, but not _the best in the world_.
That would not be sensible, would it, mamma?” We are not told how this
Cordelia-like moderation was received.
To many people, mothers especially, there might well seem to be a touch
of the prig in this exact weighing of words when it was a question only
of the exaggeration of love. I regret to say that about this same time a
tendency to priggishness did certainly show itself in a critical air of
superiority towards girls of his own age. When about four years eight
months he was sent to stay for a few days at the house of a lady friend
where there was a girl about his own age, who seems to have been a
lively mischievous young person, delighting in ‘drawing’ her grave boy
comrade. On his return home he entertained his mother by expressing his
feeling respecting his new companion. He said: “I don’t like E.’s looks.
She looks naughty. Her cheeks look naughty” (and he puffed out his own
cheeks by way of illustration). He added: “She looks naughty about
here,” pointing to his forehead just above the eyes. He then proceeded
to describe the measures he had taken for correcting her naughtiness.
“One day,” he said, “when she was naughty, I told her about dynamite
men, and she was naughty after that. And then I told her about the
dynamite men being put in prison, and she was naughty even then.” On
this his mother interposed: “Why ever did you talk about dynamite men,
dear?” C. “Because I thought it would make her better. Perhaps if I
could have told her what sort of a place a prison was that would have
made her better. But I didn’t know.” Then after a pause: “What do they
put people in prison for, mamma?”