The Mind of the Child Part 25

Of all the facts that have been established by me through the observation of the child in the first years of his life, the _formation of concepts without language_ is most opposed to the traditional doctrines, and it is just this on which I lay the greatest stress.

It has been demonstrated that the human being, at the very beginning of his life, not only distinguishes pleasure and discomfort, but may also have single, distinct sensations. He behaves on the first day differently, when the appropriate sense-impressions exist, from what he does when they are lacking. The first effect of these feelings, these few sensations, is the a.s.sociation of their traces, left behind in the central nervous system, with inborn movements. Those traces or central impressions develop gradually the personal _memory_. These movements are the point of departure for the primitive activity of the intellect, which separates the sensations both in time and in s.p.a.ce. When the number of the memory-images, of distinct sensations, on the one hand, on the other, of the movements that have been a.s.sociated with them--e. g., "sweet" and "sucking"--has become larger, then a firmer a.s.sociation of sensation-and-movement-memories, i. e., of excitations of sensory and motor ganglionic cells takes place, so that excitement of the one brings with it co-excitement of the other. Sucking awakens the recollection of the sweet taste; the sweet taste of itself causes sucking. This succession is already a separation _in time_ of two sensations (the sweet and the motor sensation in sucking). The separation in s.p.a.ce requires the recollection of two sensations, each with one movement; the distinction between sucking at the left breast and sucking at the right is made after one trial. With this, the first act of the intellect is performed, the first perception made, i. e., a sensation first localized in time and s.p.a.ce. The motor sensation of sucking has come, like the sweet taste, _after_ a similar one, and it has come between two unlike relations in s.p.a.ce that were distinguished. By means of multiplied perceptions (e. g., luminous fields not well defined, but yet defined) and multiplied movements with sensations of touch, the perception, after considerable time, acquires an object; i. e., the intellect, which already allowed nothing bright to appear without boundary-lines, and thus allowed nothing bright to appear except in s.p.a.ce (whereas at the beginning brightness, as was the case even later with sound, had no limitation, no demarcation), begins to a.s.sign a cause for that which is perceived. Hereby perception is raised to _representation_. The often-felt, localized, sweet, warm, white wetness, which is a.s.sociated with sucking, now forms an idea, and one of the earliest ideas. When, now, this idea has often arisen, the separate perceptions that have been necessary to its formation are united more and more firmly. Then, when one of these latter appears for itself, the memory-images of the others will also appear, through co-excitement of the ganglionic cells concerned; but this means simply that the _concept_ is now in existence.

For the concept has its origin in the union of attributes. Attributes are perceived, and the memory-images of them, that is, accordingly, memory-images of separate perceptions, are so firmly a.s.sociated that, where only one appears in the midst of entirely new impressions, the concept yet emerges, because all the other images appear along with it.

Language is not required for this. Up to this point, those born deaf behave exactly like infants that have all the senses, and like some animals that form concepts.

These few first ideas, namely, the individual ideas, or sense-intuitions that are generated by the first perceptions, and the simple general ideas (of a lower order), or concepts, arising out of these--the concepts of the child as yet without language, of microcephali also, of deaf-mutes, and of the higher animals--have now this peculiarity, that they have all been formed exactly in this way by the parents and the grandparents and the representatives of the successive generations (such notions as those of "food," "breast"). These concepts are not innate; because no idea can be innate, for the reason that several peripheral impressions are necessary for the formation of even a single perception.

They are, however, inherited. Just as the teeth and the beard are not usually innate in man, but come and grow like those of the parents and are already implanted, piece for piece, in the new-born child, and are thus hereditary, so the first ideas of the infant, his first concepts, which arise unconsciously, without volition and without the possibility of inhibition, in every individual in the same way, must be called hereditary. Different as are the teeth from the germs of teeth in the newly-born, so different are the man's concepts, clear, sharply defined by words, from the child's ill-defined, obscure concepts, which arise quite independently of all language (of word, look, or gesture).

In this wise the old doctrine of "innate ideas" becomes clear. Ideas or thoughts are themselves either representations or combinations of representations. They thus presuppose perceptions, and can not accordingly be innate, but may some of them be inherited, those, viz., which at first, by virtue of the likeness between the brain of the child and that of the parent, and of the similarity between the external circ.u.mstances of the beginnings of life in child and parent, always arise in the same manner.

The princ.i.p.al thing is the innate apt.i.tude to perceive things and to form ideas, i. e., the innate intellect. By apt.i.tude (Anlage), however, can be understood nothing else at present than a manner of reacting, a sort of capability or excitability, impressed upon the central organs of the nervous system after repeated a.s.sociation of nervous excitations (through a great many generations in the same way).

The brain comes into the world provided with a great number of impressions upon it. Some of these are quite obscure, some few are distinct. Each ancestor has added his own to those previously existing.

Among these impressions, finally, the useless ones must soon be obliterated by those that are useful. On the other hand, deep impressions will, like wounds, leave behind scars, which abide longer; and very frequently used paths of connection between different portions of the brain and spinal marrow and the organs of sense are easier to travel even at birth (instinctive and reflexive processes).

Now, of all the higher functions of the brain, the ordering one, which compares the simple, pure sensations, the original experiences, and first sets them in an order of succession, viz., arranges them in time, then puts them side by side and one above another, and, not till later, one behind another, viz., arranges them in s.p.a.ce--this function is one of the oldest. This ordering of the sense-impressions is _an activity of the intellect that has nothing to do with speech_, and the _capacity_ for it is, as Immanuel Kant discovered, present in man "as he now is"

(Kant) _before_ the activity of the senses begins; but without this activity it can not a.s.sert itself.

Now, I maintain, and in doing so I take my stand upon the facts published in this book, that just as little as the intellect of the child not yet able to speak has need of words or looks or gestures, or any symbol whatever, in order to arrange in time and s.p.a.ce the sense-impressions, so little does that intellect require those means in order to form concepts and to perform logical operations; and in this fundamental fact I see the material for bridging over the only great gulf that separates the child from the brute animal.

That even physiologists deny that there is any pa.s.sage from one to the other is shown by Vierordt in his "Physiology of Infancy" (1877).

The fundamental fact that a genuinely logical activity of the brain goes on without language of any sort, in the adult man who has the faculty of speech, was discovered by Helmholtz. The logical functions called by him "unconscious inferences" begin, as I think I have shown by many observations in the newly-born, immediately with the activity of the senses. Perception in the third dimension of s.p.a.ce is a particularly clear example of this sort of logical activity without words, because it is developed slowly.

In place of the expression "unconscious," which, because it has caused much mischief, still prevents the term "unconscious inferences" from being naturalized in the physiology of the senses and the theory of perception, it would be advisable, since "instinctive" and "intuitive"

are still more easily misunderstood, to say "wordless." Wordless ideas, wordless concepts, wordless judgments, wordless inferences, may be inherited. To these belong such as our progenitors often experienced at the beginning of life, such as not only come into existence without the partic.i.p.ation of any medium of language whatever, but also are never even willed (intended, deliberate, voluntary), and can not under any circ.u.mstances be set aside or altered, whether to be corrected or falsified. An inherited defect can not be put aside, and neither can the inherited intellect. When the outer angle at the right of the eye is pressed upon, a light appears in the closed eye at the left, not at the right; not at the place touched. This optical illusion, which was known even in Newton's day, this wordless inductive inference, is hereditary and incorrigible; and, on the other hand, the hereditary wordless _concept_ of food can neither be prevented from arising nor be set aside nor be formed otherwise than it was formed by our ancestors.

Innate, to make it once more prominent, is the faculty (the capacity, the apt.i.tude, the potential function) of forming concepts, and some of the first concepts are hereditary. New (not hereditary) concepts arise only after new perceptions, i. e., after experiences that a.s.sociate themselves with the primitive ones by means of new connecting paths in the brain, and they begin in fact before the learning of speech.

A chick just out of the sh.e.l.l possesses the capacity to lay eggs--the organs necessary--in fact the future eggs are inborn in the creature; but only after some time does it lay eggs, and these are in every respect similar to the first eggs of its mother. Indeed, the chicks that come from these eggs resemble those of the mother herself; thus the eggs have hereditary properties. New eggs originate only by crossing, by external influences of all sorts, influences, therefore, of experience.

So, too, the new-born child possesses the capacity of forming concepts.

The organs necessary for that are inborn in him, but not till after some time does he form concepts, and these are in all nations and at all times quite similar to the first concepts formed by the child's mother.

Indeed, the inferences that attach themselves to the first concepts will resemble those which were developed in the mother or will be identical with them; these concepts have, then, hereditary properties. New concepts originate only through experience. They originate in great numbers in every child that learns to speak.

If the fact that children utterly ignorant of speech, even those born deaf, already perform logical operations with perfect correctness, proves the intellect to be independent of language, yet searching observation of the child that is learning to speak shows that only by means of verbal language can the intellect give precision to its primitive indistinct concepts and thereby develop itself further, connecting ideas appropriately with the circ.u.mstances in which the child lives.

It is a settled fact, however, that many ideas must already be formed in order to make possible the acquirement of speech. The existence of ideas is a necessary condition of learning to speak.

The greatest intellectual advance in this field consists in this, that the specific method of the human race is discovered by the speechless child--the method of expressing ideas aloud and articulately, i. e., by means of expirations of breath along with various positions of the larynx and the mouth and various movements of the tongue. No child _invents_ this method, it is _transmitted_; but each individual child _discovers_ that by means of sounds thus originating one can make known his ideas and thereby induce feelings of pleasure and do away with discomfort. Therefore he applies himself to this process of himself, without instruction, provided only that he grows up among speaking people; and even where hearing, which serves as a means of intercourse with them, is wanting from birth, a life rich in ideas and an intelligence of a high order may be developed, provided that written signs of sound supply the place of sounds heard. These signs, however, can be learned only by means of instruction. The way in which writing is learned is the same as the way in which the alalic child learns to speak. Both rest upon imitation.

I have shown that the first firm a.s.sociation of an idea with a syllable or with a word-like combination of syllables, takes place exclusively through imitation; but a union of this sort being once established, the child then freely invents new combinations, although to a much more limited extent than is commonly a.s.sumed. No one brings with him into the world a genius of such quality that it would be capable of inventing articulate speech. It is difficult enough to comprehend that imitation suffices for the child to learn a language.

What organic conditions are required for the imitation of sounds and for learning to speak I have endeavored to ascertain by means of a systematic collection, resting on the best pathological investigations, of all the disturbances of speech thus far observed in adults; and the daily observation of a sound child, who was kept away from all training as far as possible, as well as the frequent observation of other children, has brought me to the following important result:

That every known form of disturbance of speech in adults finds its perfect counterpart in the child that is learning to speak.

The child can not _yet_ speak correctly, because his impressive, central, and expressive organs of speech are not yet completely developed. The adult patient can _no longer_ speak correctly, because those parts are no longer complete or capable of performing their functions. The parallelism is perfect even to individual cases, if children of various ages are carefully observed in regard to their acquirement of speech. As to facts of a more general nature, we arrive, then, at the three following:

1. The normal infant understands spoken language much earlier than he can himself produce through imitation the sounds, syllables, and words he hears.

2. The normal child, however, before he begins to speak or to imitate correctly the sounds of language, forms of his own accord all or nearly all the sounds that occur in his future speech and very many others besides, and delights in doing it.

3. The order of succession in which the sounds of speech are produced by the infant is different with different individuals, and consequently is not determined by the principle of the least effort. It is dependent upon several factors--brain, teeth, size of the tongue, acuteness of hearing, motility, and others. Only in the later, intentional, sound-formations and attempts at speaking does that principle come under consideration.

In the acquirement of every complicated muscular movement, dancing, e. g., the difficult combinations which make a greater strain on the activity of the will are in like manner acquired last.

Heredity plays no part in this, for every child can learn to master perfectly any language, provided he hears from birth only the one to be learned. The plasticity of the inborn organs of speech is thus in the earliest childhood very great.

To follow farther the influence that the use of speech as a means of understanding has upon the intellectual development of the child lies outside the problem dealt with in this book. Let me, in conclusion, simply give a brief estimate of the questioning-activity that makes its appearance very early after the first attempts at speech, and also add a few remarks on the development of the _"I"-feeling_.

The child's questioning as a means of his culture is almost universally underrated. The interest in causality that unfolds itself more and more vigorously with the learning of speech, the asking why, which is often almost unendurable to parents and educators, is fully justified, and ought not, as unfortunately is too often the case, to be unheeded, purposely left unanswered, purposely answered falsely. I have from the beginning given to my boy, to the best of my knowledge invariably, an answer to his questions intelligible to him and not contrary to truth, and have noticed that in consequence at a later period, in the fifth and the sixth and especially in the seventh year, the questions prove to be more and more intelligent, because the previous answers are retained.

If, on the contrary, we do not answer at all, or if we answer with jests and false tales, it is not to be wondered at that a child even of superior endowments puts foolish and absurd questions and thinks illogically--a thing that rarely occurs where questions are rightly answered and fitting instruction is given, to say nothing of rearing the child to superst.i.tion. The only legend in which I allow my boy to have firm faith is that of the stork that brings new babes, and what goes along with that.

With regard to the development of the "I"--feeling the following holds good:

This feeling does not awake on the day when the child uses for the first time the word "I" instead of his own name--the date of such use varies according as those about it name themselves and the child by the proper name and not by the p.r.o.noun for a longer or a shorter period; but the "I" is separated from the "not-I" after a long series of experiences, chiefly of a painful sort, as these observations have made clear, through the _becoming accustomed to the parts of one's own body_. These, which at first are foreign objects, affect the child's organs of sense always in the same manner, and thereby become uninteresting after they have lost the charm of novelty. Now, his own body is that to which the attractive objective impressions (i. e., the world) are referred, and with the production by him of new impressions, with the changes wrought by him (in the experimenting which is called "playing"), with the experience of being-a-cause, is developed more and more in the child the feeling of self. With this he raises himself higher and higher above the dependent condition of the animal, so that at last the difference, not recognizable at all before birth and hardly recognizable at the beginning after birth, between animal and human being attains a magnitude dangerous for the latter, attains it, above all, by means of language.

But if it is necessary for the child to appropriate to himself as completely as possible this highest privilege of the human race and through this to overcome the animal nature of his first period; if his development requires the stripping off of the remains of the animal and the unfolding of the responsible "I"--then it will conduce to the highest satisfaction of the thinking man, at the summit of his experience of life, to go back in thought to his earliest childhood, for that period teaches him plainly that he himself has his origin in nature, is intimately related to all other living creatures. However far he gets in his development, he is ever groping vainly in the dark for a door into another world; but the very fact of his reflecting upon the possibility of such a door shows how high the developed human being towers above all his fellow-beings.

The key to the understanding of the great enigma, how these extremes are connected, is furnished in the history of the development of the mind of the child.

APPENDIXES.

A.

COMPARATIVE OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING THE ACQUIREMENT OF SPEECH BY GERMAN AND FOREIGN CHILDREN.

Among the earlier as among the later statements concerning the acquirement of speech, there are several that have been put forth by writers on the subject without a sufficient basis of observed facts. Not only Buffon, but also Taine and his successors, have, from a few individual cases, deduced general propositions which are not of general application.

Good observations were first supplied in Germany by Berthold Sigismund in his pamphlet, "Kind und Welt" ("The Child and the World") (1856); but his observations were scanty.

He noted, as the first articulate sounds made by a child from Thuringen (Rudolstadt), _ma_, _ba_, _bu_, _appa_, _ange_, _anne_, _brrr_, _arrr_: these were made about the middle of the first three months.

Sigismund is of the opinion that this first lisping, or babbling, consists in the production of syllables with only two sounds, of which the consonant is most often the first; that the first consonants distinctly p.r.o.nounced are l.a.b.i.als; that the lips, brought into activity by sucking, are the first organs of articulation; but this conjecture lacks general confirmation.

In the second three months (in the case of one child in the twenty-third week, with other healthy children considerably earlier) were heard, for the first time, the loud and high _crowing_-sounds, uttered by the child spontaneously, jubilantly, with lively movements of the limbs that showed the waxing power of the muscles: the child seemed to take pleasure in making the sounds. The utterance of syllables, on the other hand, is at this period often discontinued for weeks at a time.

In the third quarter of the first year, the lisping or stammering was more frequent. New sounds were added: _ba_, _fbu_, _fu_; and the following were among those that were repeated without cessation, _bababa_, _dadada_; also _adad_, _eded_.

In the next three months the child manifested his satisfaction in any object by the independent sound _ei_, _ei_. The first imitations of sounds, proved to be such, were made after the age of eleven months. But it is more significant, for our comprehension of the process of learning to speak, that long before the boy tried to imitate words or gestures, viz., at the age of nine months, he distinguished accurately the words "father, mother, light, window, moon, lane"; for he looked, or pointed, at the object designated, as soon as one of these words was spoken.

And when, finally, imitation began, musical tones, e. g., F, C, were imitated sooner than the spoken sounds, although the former were an octave higher. And the _ei_, _ei_ was repeated in pretty nearly the same tone or accent in which it had been p.r.o.nounced for the child. Sneezing was not imitated till after fourteen months. The first word imitated by the child of his own accord (after fourteen months) was the cry "Neuback" (fresh-bake), as it resounded from the street; it was given back by the child, unsolicited, as _ei-a_. As late as the sixteenth month he replied to the word _papa_, just as he did to the word _Ida_, only with _atta_; yet he had in the mean time learned to understand "lantern, piano, stove, bird, nine-pin, pot"--in all, more than twenty words--and to indicate by a look the objects named; he had also learned to make the new imperfect sounds _pujeh_, _pujeh_, _tupe tupe teh_, _ammam_, _atta_, _ho_.