Second Year
The observations from the date of the resumption of the diary, at the age of sixteen months, begin to have more of human interest about them. It is not till this year has advanced that the child makes headway in handling the knotty intricacies of an elaborate language like ours, and it is through the medium of this mastered speech that he is best able to disclose himself to the observer. The observations on C.’s progress during the second year relate largely to language and intelligence as expressing itself in language. We may, accordingly, begin this section by giving a brief sketch of the child’s linguistic progress.294
During the first six months nothing was observable in the way of vocal sounds but the ordinary baby-singing utterances of the ‘la-la’ category. In this tentative vocalisation vowel sounds, of course, preponderated. There was quite a gamut of quaint vowel sounds, ranging from the broad a to the cockney ow, that is, a-oo. These sounds were purely emotional signs. Thus a prolonged ā sound indicated surprise with a dash of displeasure when the child suddenly encountered an obstacle to his movements, as on catching his dress or striking his head gently. Again, a kind of ō or oo sound, formed by sucking in the breath, appeared to indicate that the small person was pleased with some new object of contemplation, as a freshly discovered picture.
A sudden enlargement of the range of articulatory excursion was noticeable on the completion of the twenty-seventh week, when C. astonished his parents by breaking out into a series of ‘da-da’s’ and ‘ba-ba’s’ or ‘pa-pa’s’. These reduplications were quite in keeping with his earlier sounds, e.g., a-oo, a-oo. He soon followed up this brilliant success by other experiments, as in the production of the sounds ou-a and ditta, also ung and ang.295
Coming now to the commencement of the true linguistic period, that is to say, when C. had attained the age of sixteen months, we find him by no means precocious in the matter of speech. He reproduced very few of the many names the meaning of which he perfectly understood. As to other verbal signs he seems to have acted on the principle of biological economy, saving himself the articulatory effort. Thus although he used sounds for expressing assent, viz., “ey,” with falling inflection, he contented himself in the case of negation with the old declining or refusing gesture, viz., shaking the head. The movement of nodding seems to have been first used as an affirmative sign at the age of seventeen months when he was asked whether his food was hot.296
C. illustrated the common childish impulse to mimic natural sounds. Thus when sixteen months old he spontaneously imitated in a rough fashion the puffing sound produced by his father when indulging in the solace of tobacco; and he uttered a similar explosive sound when hearing the wind. Yet this child does not seem to have been a particularly good illustration of the onomatopoetic impulse.
While the imitative impulse thus aids in the growth of an independent baby vocabulary, it contributes, as we have seen, to the adoption of the language of the community. At first, however, the little learner will not repeat a sound merely in response to another’s lead. Many a mother is doubtless able to recall the chagrin which she experienced when on trying to trot out her baby’s linguistic powers by giving the lead, e.g., “Say ta-ta to the lady!” the little autocrat obdurately refused to comply with the parental injunction. It is only when what the child himself considers to be the appropriate circumstances recur, and, what is more, when the corresponding feeling is excited in his breast, that he utters the sound. Thus C.’s father observes that though the child will not say “ta-ta” when told to do so, he will say it readily enough when he sees him, hat in hand, moving towards the door. In like manner the father remarks: “He will say, ‘Ta’ (‘thank you’), on receiving something, yet not do so in mere response to me when I say it”. Herein, it would seem, the vocal imitation of children is less mechanical and more intelligent than that of animals, as the parrot.
It was not until he was well on in his second year that C. condescended to let his young speech-organ be played on by another’s will. By this time, it may be conjectured, associations between sounds and vocal actions had become firm enough to allow of such imitation without a consciousness of exertion or strain. Having no special reason to refuse he very sensibly fell in with others’ suggestions. It is not at all improbable, too, that at this stage of development the little vocalist found a pleasure in trying his instrument and producing new effects.
Of course these first tentatives in verbal imitation were far from perfect. At first there was hardly more than a reproduction of the rhythm and the rise and fall of voice, as in rendering ‘All gone,’ the sign of disappearance, by a, a, with rise and fall of voice. Like other little people, C. displayed a lordly disposition to save himself trouble and to expect infinite pains from others in the way of comprehension. He was in the habit of reducing difficult words to fragments, the comprehension of which by the most loyal of attendants was a matter of considerable difficulty. In thus chopping off splinters of words he showed the greatest caprice. In many cases he selected the initial sounds, e.g., “bŏ” for ball, “nō” for nose, “pē” for please. In other cases he preferred the ending, e.g., “ĕk” for cake, “bĕ” for Elizabeth. It looked as if certain sounds and combinations, e.g., l, s, fl, sh, etc., lay altogether beyond his gamut. And others seemed to be specially difficult, and so were avoided as much as possible.297
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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