[54]. A child quoted by P. Lombroso thought of a year as a round thing having the different festivals on it, and bringing these round in due order by its rotation (op. cit., p. 49).
[55]. See Mind, vol. xi., p. 149.
[56]. According to Professor Earl Barnes, the Californian children seem to occupy themselves but little with the devil and hell. See his interesting paper, “Theological Life of a Californian Child,” Pedagogical Seminary, ii., 3, p. 442 seq.
[57]. To judge from a story for the truth of which I will not vouch children will turn the devil to the same useful account. A little girl was observed to write a letter and to bury it in the ground. The contents ran something like this: "Dear Devil, please come and take aunt—soon, I cannot stand her much longer". The burying is significant of the devil’s dwelling-place.
[58]. Overland Monthly, Jan., 1894, p. 12.
[59]. Cf. the story of writing a letter to the devil given above.
V.
THE LITTLE LINGUIST.
Prelinguistic Babblings.
No part of the life of a child appeals to us more powerfully perhaps than the first use of our language. The small person’s first efforts in linguistics win us by a certain graciousness, by the friendly impulse they disclose to get mentally near us, to enter into the full fruition of human intercourse. The difficulties, too, which we manage to lay upon the young learner of our tongue, and the way in which he grapples with these, lend a peculiar interest, half pathetic, half humorous, to this field of infantile activity. To the scientific observer of infancy, moreover, the noting of the stages in the acquisition of speech is of the first importance. Language is sound moulded into definite forms and so made vehicular of ideas; and we may best watch the unfoldings of childish thought by attending to the way in which the word-sculptor takes the plastic sound-material and works it into its picturesque variety of shapes.
A special biological and anthropological interest attaches to the child’s first essays in the use of words. Language is that which most obviously marks off human from animal intelligence. One of the most interesting problems in the science of man’s origin and early development is how he first acquired the power of using language-signs. If we proceed on the biological principle that the development of the individual represents in its main stages that of the race, we may expect to find through the study of children’s use of language hints as to how our race came by the invaluable endowment. How far it is reasonable to expect from a study of nursery linguistics a complete explanation of the process by which man became speechful, homo articulans, will appear later on. But an examination of these linguistics ought surely to be of some suggestive value here.