Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/554

538 perceives, too, that they are fascinating. These beings act, and the child at length finds his own body imitating the acts of these beings, and takes delight in the knowledge of the agreement. But all this is largely the result of instinct. So far there is no clear thought either of Self or of other Selves. How could there be? The child so far knows, not minds as such, but only what we now call objects. Even these he knows, not as they are later to be known, i.e., as explicitly external objects. He perceives their interesting characters and their behavior. Amongst these interesting objects is, of course, his own body, which pleases and pains him so often. And now, as a fact, there are also those fascinating other objects, whom we call persons. Well, the child's own body is perceived to imitate these fascinating guides. The child learns to play, to show things, to point at things, and later, to speak of things, and to use things as tools, and as he does so (here is the essential matter), the child gets an endless flux of new and unexpectedly intelligible ideas about his world,—ideas that are themselves the inseparable accompaniment and meaning of these very imitated activities. All these ideas, I say, the child, by mere association and 'agglutination,' must relate to the perceived beings, whose intelligible activities he has been imitating, when he gets the ideas. This game is papa's game. I play it as child, and so get new ideas that I at once associate with my father's face, voice, and whole body. That tool is the gardener's shears, and when I get hold of the shears, I cut, too, and so learn that clipping with the shears involves what I now take to be essentially the gardener's idea. The being whose activity, when I learn to imitate it, embodies for me such and such ideas, is observed by me to have these ideas. The association is irresistible. The resulting agglutinative combination is thoroughly normal. Where else do the new ideas belong except to the perceived being who obviously suggests them? But a person, for the child, comes to mean just such a body of ideas associated with the functions of one particular perceived organism. And it is thus, I affirm, through such imitation, that a child learns what a person is.