Part 35

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

Footnote 291:

Compare what was said above, p. 201.

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

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

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

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

Footnote 292:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Footnote 293:

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

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

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

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

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

_Second Year._

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

Footnote 294:

This should be read in connexion with Study V.

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]

Footnote 295:

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

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]

Footnote 296:

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

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]

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.