Part 38

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.