Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/153

Rh  human, namely, the power of noting analogies. This is the fountain-head of general ideas and of language. We point out to her on the walls of a room the figures of birds painted red and blue, a couple of inches in length, saying once only, "Look at the kokos." She was at once conscious of the resemblance, and for half a day she took the liveliest pleasure in being carried up and down along the walls of the room, enthusiastically crying out, at the sight of each bird, koko! No dog, no parrot would ever act thus, and, in my opinion, we have in this fact the essence of language. Other analogies she perceives with equal readiness. The first dog she ever saw was a little black one belonging to the house, who barks frequently; from him she framed the word oua-oua. Very soon, with but slight assistance from those around her, she applied this word to dogs of all sizes and of every breed that she saw in the street; later she applied it to porcelain figures of dogs—a still more noteworthy fact. Nay, on seeing, day before yesterday, a month-old kid, she called it oua-oua, thus naming it after the dog, which is the nearest form, rather than after the horse, which is too big, or the cat, which has a different gait. Herein we perceive a trait characteristic of man: two very dissimilar successive perceptions leave a common residue, a distinct impression, solicitation, impulsion, which results in the invention or adoption of some mode of expression, either by gesture, cry, articulation, or name.

I come now to the word tem, one of the most noteworthy and one of the first pronounced by her. All the other words are probably attributives, to use the language of Max Müller, and a person has no difficulty in discovering their meaning; this is probably a demonstrative, and, as we had no term with which to translate it, we took several weeks to discover its meaning.

At first, and for more than two weeks, the child pronounced this word tem as she did the word papa, without giving to it any precise meaning; she thus practised dental articulation followed by a labial, and the thing afforded her some amusement. By degrees the word became associated in her mind with a definite intention, and at present it means for her give, take, see, look. She pronounces it very perfectly, several times in succession, and with earnestness, her aim being now to get some new object which she sees, again to have some one take her up, or to attract attention to herself. All these meanings are comprised in the word tem. It may be that it is a form of the word tiens, which had often been addressed to her in a somewhat similar sense. But I am rather inclined to suppose that this word was coined by herself to express her principal desires, viz., to be taken in