In the twenty-fifth week he for the first time stretched out his hand toward his own image. He therefore regarded it as capable of being seized.
In the twenty-sixth week the child is delighted at seeing me in the glass. He turns round toward me, and evidently compares the original with the image.
In the thirty-fifth week the child gayly and with interest grasps at his image in the glass, and is surprised when his hand comes against the smooth surface.
In the forty-first to the forty-fourth week, the same. The reflected image is regularly greeted with a laugh, and is then grasped at.
All these observations were made before a very large stationary mirror.
In the fifty-seventh week, however, I held a small hand-mirror close to the face of the child. He looked at his image and then passed his hand behind the glass and moved the hand hither and thither as if searching. Then he took the mirror himself and looked at it and felt of it on both sides. When after several minutes I held the mirror before him again, precisely the same performance was repeated. It accords with what was observed by Darwin in the case of anthropoid apes mentioned above (p. 197).
In the fifty-eighth week I showed to the child his photograph, cabinet-size, in a frame under glass. He first turned the picture round as he had turned the hand-mirror. Although the photographic image was much smaller than the reflected one, it seemed to be equally esteemed. On the same day (four hundred and second) I held the hand-mirror before the boy again, pointing out to him his image in it; but he at once turned away obstinately (again like the intelligent animal).
Here the incomprehensible—in the literal sense—was disturbing. But very soon came the insight which is wanting to the quadrumana, for in the sixtieth week the child saw his mother in the mirror, and to the question, "Where is mamma?" he pointed to the image in the mirror and then turned round, laughing, to his mother. Now, as he had before this time behaved roguishly, there is no doubt that at this time, after fourteen months, original and image were distinguished with certainty as such, especially as his own photograph no longer excited wonder.
Nevertheless, the child, in the sixty-first week, is still trying to feel of his own image in the glass, and he licks the glass in which he sees it, and, in the sixty-sixth week, also strikes against it with his hand.
In the following week for the first time I saw the child make grimaces before the glass. He laughed as he did it. I stood behind him and called him by name. He turned around directly, although he saw me plainly in the glass. He evidently knew that the voice did not come from the image.