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!”