Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/122

110 Another person recollects when lie walked for the first time. He knows lie was less than a year and a half old. He represents himself as walking from one lady to another, holding on to a chair, and very much pleased with his exploit.

A third person writes us: "When I was weaned, I for several days asked for ma nini, or sucking-bottle, and they told me that a dog had carried it off. So when I saw a dog I would say, 'The tou-tou has carried off ma nini'. This was when I was fourteen months old" The fact was often mentioned to him.

Among other recollections of early age we find one of a painful disorder of the eyes, one of a surgical operation, and one of setting out in a boat on the Aisne (at a spot to which the person returned frequently during his childhood).

Among the examples of recollections relating to five or six years of age is this: "I see again the class of little ones in the primary school which I had just entered; the master, a gentleman whose eye-glasses impressed me very much, was standing at his desk, ruler in hand, and accosted the person who was with me. During this time I stood up and looked at the wall covered with colored pictures and maps, at the blackboard, and the pupils' benches. I was then about six years old. Your list of questions was the occasion of my calling up this recollection" Another, while writing his answer, recalls a vision of his nurse, who loved him, sitting in the kitchen sewing. The subjects of other "delayed" recollections were a lunatic who was greatly frightened by the war of 1870, a fire, the death of the respondent's father, which caused a change in his life, and entering school.

A very clear difference is noticeable between the persons whose earliest recollection relates to the age of about one year, and those in whom it corresponds to five or six years. The former have many memories of an age of which the latter have none—that is, the date of the first recollection is in relation with the date of others. A person who recalls an event that happened when he was one year old, remembers also a number of events of two or three years of age, and is able to recall the current of his life after the age of five or six years. On the other hand, a person whose first recollection dates from the age of five years, begins to have several from six or seven years of age, and remembers the current of his life from eight, nine, or ten years. It would be interesting to collect facts concerning the infancy of these several persons and see if there is not some marked difference in them.

The opinion most generally current concerning the subject of the earliest recollections of infancy is that of Taine: "The primitive impression was accompanied by an extraordinary degree of