It is likewise a sign of small understanding that the mouth is always opened in smelling of a fragrant flower or perfume (Vol. I, p. 135). Deficiencies of this kind are, indeed, quite logical from the standpoint of childish experience. Because, at an earlier period the pleasant smell (of milk) always came in connection with the pleasant taste, therefore, thinks the child, in every case where there is a pleasant smell there will also be something that tastes good. The common or collective concept taste-smell had not yet (in the seventeenth month) been differentiated into the concepts taste and smell.
In the department of the sense of hearing the differentiation generally makes its appearance earlier; memory, as a rule, later. Yet children whose talent for music is developed early, retain melodies even in their first year of life. A girl to whom some of the Froebel songs were sung, and who was taught appropriate movements of the hands and feet, always performed the proper movement when one of the melodies was merely hummed, or a verse was said (in the thirteenth month), without confounding them at all. This early and firm association of sound-images with motor-images is possible only when interest is attached to it—i. e., when the attention has been directed often, persistently, and with concentration, upon the things to be combined. Thus, this very child (in the nineteenth month), when her favorite song, "Who will go for a Soldier?" ("Wer will unter die Soldaten?") was sung to her, could not only join in the rhyme at the end of the verse, but, no matter where a stop was made, she would go on, in a manner imperfect, indeed, but easily intelligible (Frau Dr. Friedemann).
Here, however, in addition to memory and attention, heredity is to be considered; since such a talent is wholly lacking in certain families, but in others exists in all the brothers and sisters.
In performances of this kind, a superior understanding is not by any means exhibited, but a stronger memory and faculty of association. These associations are not, however, of a logical sort, but are habits acquired through training, and they may even retard the development of the intellect if they become numerous. For they may obstruct the formation, at an early period, of independent ideas, merely on account of the time they claim. Often, too, these artificial associations are almost useless for the development of the intellect. They are too special. On this ground I am compelled to censure the extravagancies, that are wide-spread especially in Germany, of the Froebel methods of occupying young children.
The logic of the child naturally operates at the beginning with much more extensive, and therefore less intensive, notions than those of adults, with notions which the adult no longer forms. But the child does not, on that account, proceed illogically, although he does proceed awkwardly. Some further examples may illustrate.
The adult does not ordinarily try whether a door that he has just bolted is fast; but the one-year-old child tests carefully the edge of the door he has shut, to see whether it is really closed, because he does not understand the effect of lock and bolt. For even in the eighteenth month he goes back and forth with a key, to the writing-desk, with the evident purpose of opening it. But at twelve months, when he tries whether it is fast, he does not think of the key at all, and does not yet possess a single word.
An adult, before watering flowers with a watering-pot, will look to see whether there is water in it. The child of a year and a half, who has seen how watering is done, finds special pleasure in going from flower to flower, even with an empty watering-pot, and making the motions of pouring upon each one separately, as if water would really come out. For him the notion "watering-pot" is identical with the notion "filled watering-pot," because at first he was acquainted with the latter only.
Much of what is attributed to imagination in very young children rests essentially on the formation of such vague concepts, on the inability to combine constant qualities into sharply defined concepts. When, in the twenty-third month, the child holds an empty cup to his mouth and sips and swallows, and does it repeatedly, and with a serene, happy expression, this "play" is founded chiefly on the imperfect notion "filled cup." The child has so often perceived something to drink, drinking-vessel, and the act of drinking, in combination with one another, that the one peremptorily demands the other when either appears singly; hence the pleasure in pouring out from empty pitchers into empty cups, and in drinking out of empty cups (in second to fifth years). When adults do the same in the play of the theatre, this action always has a value as language, it signifies something for other persons; but with the child, who plays in this fashion entirely alone, the pleasure consists in the production of familiar ideas together with agreeable feelings, which are, as it were, crystallized with comparative clearness out of the dull mass of undefined perceptions. These memory-images become real existences, like the hallucinations of the insane, because the sensuous impressions probably impress themselves directly—without reflection—upon the growing brain, and hence the memory-images of them, on account of their vividness, can not always be surely distinguished from the perceptions themselves. Most of the plays that children invent of themselves may be referred to this fact; on the other hand, the play of hide-and-seek (especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth months), and, nearly allied to this, the hunting after scraps of paper, bits of biscuit, buttons, and other favorite objects (in the fifteenth month), constitute an intellectual advance.
By practice in this kind of seeking for well-known, purposely concealed objects, the intelligence of little children can easily be increased to an astonishing degree, so that toward the end of the second year they already understand some simple tricks of the juggler; for example, making a card disappear. But after I had discontinued such exercises for months, the ordinary capacity for being duped was again present.
This ease with which children can be deceived is to be attributed to lack of experience far more than to lack of intelligence. When the child of a year and a half offers leaves to a sheep or a stag, observes the strange animal with somewhat timid astonishment, and a few days after holds out some hastily plucked grass-blades to a chaffinch he sees hopping across the road, supposing that the bird will likewise take them from his hand and eat them—an observation that I made on my child exactly as Sigismund did on his—it is not right to call such an act "stupid"; the act shows ignorance—i. e., inexperience—but it is not illogical. The child would be properly called stupid only in case he did not learn the difference between the animals fed. When, on the other hand, the child of two and a half years, entirely of his own accord, holds a watch first to his left ear, then to his right, listens both times, and then says, "The watch goes, goes too!" then, pointing with his finger to a clock, cries with delight, "The clock goes too," we rightly find in such independent induction a proof of intellect. For the swinging of the pendulum and the ticking had indeed often been perceived, but to connect the notion of a "going clock" with the visible but noiseless swinging, just as with the audible but invisible ticking of the watch, requires a pretty well advanced power of abstraction.