Another example is given by G. Lindner (1882): "The mother of a two-year-old child had made for it out of a postal-card a sled (Schlitten), which was destroyed after a few hours, and found its way into the waste-basket. Just four weeks later another postal-card comes, and it is taken from the carrier by the child and handed to the mother with the words,'Mamma, Litten!' This was in summer, when there was nothing to remind the child of the sled. Soon after the same wish was expressed on the receipt of a letter also."
I have known like cases of attention, of recollection, and of intelligence in the third year where they were not suspected. The child, unnoticed, hears all sorts of things said, seizes on this or that expression, and weeks after brings into connection, fitly or unfitly, the memory-images, drawing immediately from an insufficient number of particular cases a would-be general conclusion.
Equally certain with this fact is the other, less known or less noticed, that, even before the first attempts at speaking, such a generalizing and therefore concept-forming combination of memory-images regularly takes place.
All children in common have inborn in them the ability to combine all sorts of sense-impressions connected with food, when these appear again individually, with one another, or with memory-images of such impressions, so that adaptive movements suited to the obtaining of fresh food arise as the result of this association. In the earlier months these are simple and easier to be seen, and I have given several examples (Vol. I, pp. 250, 260, 329, 333). Later such movements, through the perfecting of the language of gesture and the growth of this very power of association, become more and more complicated: e. g., in his sixteenth month my boy saw a closed box, out of which he had the day before received a cake; he at once made with his hands a begging movement, yet he could not speak a word. In the twenty-first month I took out of the pocket of a coat which was hanging with many others in the wardrobe a biscuit and gave it to the child. When he had eaten it, he went directly to the wardrobe and looked in the right coat for a second biscuit. At this period also the child can not have been thinking in the unspoken words, "Get biscuit—wardrobe, coat, pocket, look," for he did not yet know the words.
Even in the sixth month an act of remarkable adaptiveness was once observed, which can not be called either accidental or entirely voluntary, and if it was fully purposed it would indicate a well-advanced development of understanding in regard to food without knowledge of words. When the child, viz., after considerable experience in nursing at the breast, discovered that the flow of milk was less abundant, he used to place his hand hard on the breast as if he wanted to force out the milk by pressure. Of course there was here no insight into the causal connection, but it is a question whether the firm laying on of the little hand was not repeated for the reason that the experience had been once made accidentally, that after doing this the nursing was less difficult.
On the other hand, an unequivocal complicated act of deliberation occurred in the seventeenth month. The child could not reach his playthings in the cupboard, because it was too high for him; he ran about, brought a traveling-bag, got upon it, and took what he wanted. In this case he could not possibly think in words, since he did not yet know words.
My child tries further (in the nineteenth and twentieth months) in a twofold fashion to make known his eager wish to leave the room, not being as yet able to speak. He takes any cloth he fancies and brings it to me. I put it about him, he wraps himself in it, and, climbing beseechingly on my knee, makes longing, pitiful sounds, which do not cease until after I have opened a door through which he goes into another room. Then he immediately throws away the cloth and runs about exulting.
The other performance is this: When the child feels the need of relieving his bowels, he is accustomed to make peculiar grunting sounds, by means of a strain of the abdomen, shutting the mouth and breathing loud, by jerks, through the nose. He is then taken away. Now, if he is not suited with the place where he happens to be, at any time, he begins to make just such sounds. If he is taken away, no such need appears at all, but he is in high glee. Here is the expectation, "I shall be taken away if I make that sound."
Whether we are to admit, in addition, an intentional deception in this case, or whether only a logical process takes place, I can not decide. In the whole earlier and later behavior of the child there is no ground for the first assumption, and the fact that he employs this artifice while in his carriage, immediately after he has been waited on, is directly against it.
To how small an extent, some time previous to this, perceptions were made use of to simplify his own exertions, i. e., were combined and had motor effect, appears from an observation in the sixteenth month. Earlier than this, when I used to say, "Give the ring," I always laid an ivory ring, that was tied to a thread, before the child, on the table. I now said the same thing—after an interval of a week—while the same ring was hanging near the chair by a red thread a foot long, so that the child, as he sat on the chair, could just reach it, but only with much pains. He made a grasp now, upon getting the sound-impression "ring," not at the thread, which would have made the seizure of the ring, hanging freely, very easy for him, but directly at the ring hanging far below him, and gave it to me. And when the command was repeated, it did not occur to him to touch the thread.