Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/651

Rh The study of the growth of the faculty of speech is also of the highest importance in its bearing upon our knowledge of the condition of the child's mind, and of his intellectual operations. I have been in the habit of setting down daily on paper every expression, every sound that could be represented in writing, uttered by a child during the first two years, and am about to publish, on the basis of the facts thus gathered, a special work on the history of the growth of the power of speech. I can give here only a few notes of general interest.

It is extremely hard to exclude the influence of imitation from the child; and, when it is not excluded, to separate what is acquired by it from what is inherited. No one will believe that a child was ever born able to speak, or that he could learn to speak without exercising the power of imitation. Yet it would be wrong to conclude that the faculty of speech is acquired, or is absolutely not inherited. Whatever properties of organisms are constantly repeated periodically are called hereditary; whatever endures through many generations is called inherited. Speech thus endures. It can not be said to be born with the child any more than the teeth and beard are born with him, but the foundation of it, the predisposition to it, is born with the child, the same as are the foundations of those organs. And when a person is prevented from speaking by some defect of his organs of speech, he proves that the faculty still exists within him by the readiness with which he will take up a substitute for speech—writing, or the sign language. The psychologist can hardly experience a greater intellectual enjoyment than that which is given by observing the development of speech from the first reflexive cry through the thousand and one days of the beginning of human life; at first unintelligible, gradually flowing slowly and interruptedly from unrevealed sources, then gushing lively and irregularly, afterward getting slowly relieved of the non-essentials and becoming more orderly and plain, clearer, and flowing; finally, proceeding in a clear stream of connected language, which testifies to the rule of reason over the natural inclination, the victory of the will, and the formation of thought.

At first only the vowel-sounds are uttered. Even in the first five weeks the tones are so diversified that the condition of the child can be learned from them alone. The periodically broken cry, with knit eyes, denoting hunger; the continuous whine for cold; the high, penetrating tone expressing pain; the laugh over a bright button; the crow of pleasure; the peculiar expression, with motion of the arms, of the wish for a change of position—are easily distinguished utterances, partly reflexive, partly expressive. The prattlings of the infant during the first six months can not be represented on paper, and appear to be significant only of the general muscular movements in which the organs of speech participate, combined with the flowing in and out of the air. I heard the first consonant, m, in the seventh week; in the seventh month only m, b, d, n, r; rarely g and h, very rarely k, could