Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/613

Rh demanded his bottle, with loud cries, the first thing in the morning, even if it had been given him but the moment before. Thus children associate their sensations; and almost all kinds of associations, fortuitous or logical, may be observed among them.

—We may study in little children the analysis which ends in the idea of the individual, and that which ends in the ideas of form and quantity. At the age of one month several children would follow with their eyes an object in motion near their faces. Children learn only little by little to distinguish different colors. External impressions take hold of them by degrees. "Distinctly to perceive sensations, and to preserve the distinct recollection of them, apart from the vague complexity of concomitant impressions, which have only slightly affected the senses, is a work of repair that may be considered as a sort of rudimentary abstraction." Notions of form ought to arise in consequence of the necessity there is that the child should see things separately in order to see them well, and from especially lively impressions made by certain objects. According to Perez, abstraction is not a result of language. Purely abstract ideas do not exist, and relatively abstract ideas have their origin independently of language.

—Comparison, properly speaking, is not possible to the new-born child for several weeks. A little girl of three months, before whom were put an empty sucking-bottle and one full of milk, seized both, and carried the empty one to her lips. A cake and a morsel of bread were placed before a child of ten months. He seized the cake. It was taken away from him, and he began to cry and kick. Presently a morsel of bread was given him, which he took, but did not see his mistake till he had bitten it, when he threw it away. The same child could easily distinguish its own playthings from those of its comrades, and, while glad to get hold of theirs, would not permit them to amuse themselves with his. After fifteen months, and especially between twenty months and two years, children compare a great deal. When about two years and a half they use such phrases as baby tree (little tree), papa tree (great tree). One child three years old knows the names of more than twenty trees, and can give their more apparent specific characters.

—Representative imagination is exercised at the beginning of life. Several facts already given prove this. The vague and profound terror manifested by children is a product of imagination, and so are dreams. The passage from reproductive imagination to creative imagination is effected by a change in the order in which the ideas are represented, a change which frequently occurs during sleep. Creative imagination is shown in a waking state by many acts. The child appreciates fun, and sometimes tries to amuse those who surround it. At four months lacking three days, young Tiedemann tried, for amusement, to make all sorts of movements, and to take different postures. The same faculty manifests itself under the form of destructive