In the sixty-ninth week signs of vanity are perceived. The child looks at himself in the glass with pleasure and often. If we put anything on his head and say, "Pretty," his expression changes. He is gratified in a strange and peculiar fashion; his eyebrows are raised, and the eyes are opened wide.
In the twenty-first month the child puts some lace or embroidered stuff about him, lets it hang down from his shoulders, looks round behind at the train, advancing, stopping, eagerly throwing it into fresh folds. Here there is a mixture of apish imitation with vanity.
As the child had, moreover, even in the seventeenth month, been fond of placing himself before the glass and making all sorts of faces, the experiments with the mirror were no longer continued.
They show the transition from the infant's condition previous to the development of the ego, when he can not yet see distinctly, to the condition of the developed ego, who consciously distinguishes himself from his image in the glass and from other persons and their images. Yet for a long time after this step there exists a certain lack of clearness in regard to names. In the twenty-first month the child laughs at his image in the glass and points to it when I ask, "Where is Axel?" and at my image when asked, "Where is papa?" But, being asked with emphasis, the child turns round to me with a look of doubt. I once brought a large mirror near the child's bed in the evening after he had gone to sleep, so that he might perceive himself directly upon waking. He saw his image immediately after waking, seemed very much surprised at it, gazed fixedly at it, and when at last I asked, "Where is Axel?" he pointed not to himself but to the image (six hundred and twentieth day). In the thirty-first month it still afforded him great pleasure to gaze at his image in the glass. The child would laugh at it persistently and heartily.
Animals show great variety of behavior in this respect, as is well known. A pair of Turkish ducks, that I used to see every day for weeks, always kept themselves apart from other ducks. When the female died, the drake, to my surprise, betook himself by preference to a cellar-window that was covered on the inside and gave strong reflections, and he would stand with his head before this for hours every day. He saw his image there, and thought perhaps that it was his lost companion.
A kitten before which I held a small mirror must surely have taken the image for a second living cat, for she went behind the glass and around it when it was conveniently placed.
Many animals, on the contrary, are afraid of their reflected image, and run away from it.
In like manner little children are sometimes frightened by the discovery of their own shadows. My child exhibited signs of fear at his shadow the first time he saw it; but in his fourth year he was pleased with it, and to the question, "Where does the shadow come from?" he answered, to our surprise, "From the sun" (fortieth month).
More important for the development of the child's ego than are the observation of the shadow and of the image in the glass is the learning of speech, for it is not until words are used that the higher concepts are first marked off from one another, and this is the case with the concept of the ego. Yet the wide-spread view, that the "I"-feeling first appears with the beginning of the use of the word "I," is wholly incorrect. Many headstrong children have a strongly marked "I"-feeling without calling themselves by anything but their names, because their relatives in speaking with them do not call themselves "I," but "papa, mamma, uncle, O mamma," etc., so that the opportunity early to hear and to appropriate the words "I" and "mine" is rare. Others hear these words often, to be sure, especially from children somewhat older, and use them, yet do not understand them, but add to them their own names. Thus, a girl of two and a half years, named Ilse, used to say, Ilse mein Tuhl (Ilse, my chair), instead of "mein Stuhl" (Bardeleben). My boy of two and three fourths years repeated the "I" he heard, meaning by it "you." In the twenty-ninth month mir (me) was indeed said by him, but not "ich" (I), (p. 171). Soon, however, he named himself no more, as he had done in the twenty-third and even in the twenty-eighth month (pp. 147-167), by his first name. In the thirty-third month especially came das will ich! das möcht ich! (I wish that, I should like that) (p. 183). The fourfold designation of his own person in the thirty-second month (p. 180)—by his name, by "I," by "he," and by the omission of all pronouns—was only a brief transition-stage, as was also the misunderstanding of the "dein" (your) which for a time (p. 156) meant "gross" (large).
These observations plainly show that the "I"-feeling is not first awakened by the learning of words, for this feeling, according to the facts given above, is present much earlier; but by means of speech the conceptual distinction of the "I," the self, the mine, is first made exact; the development, not the origin, of the "I"-feeling is simply favored.