Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/155

Rh same sound had long been used by her, but always to signify dog. In this new meaning the sound has oscillated between va-va and oua-oua. In all probability the sound here written oua-oua is for her twofold, in accordance with the two different meanings she attaches to it. But my ear does not detect this difference. The senses of infants, which are less obtuse than ours, perceive delicate shades which we do not distinguish. It is worthy of mention that she strictly applies this term oua-oua to food and drink; the act of eating or drinking is expressed by am, or ham. Thus, when she hears the dinner-bell, she says am, not oua-oua; but at table, when seated before some article of food, she says oua-oua, and much less frequently am.

On the other hand, the word tem (give, take, look), of which I have already made mention, has during the past two months fallen into desuetude. She never pronounces that word now, nor can I find that she has replaced it by any other. Doubtless the reason of this is, that we did not care to learn it: it answered to none of our ideas, inasmuch as it coupled three very distinct notions.

On summing up the facts already stated we reach the following conclusions; it remains for others to modify them by observing other infants:

At first the infant cries, and employs its vocal organ in the same way as its limbs, spontaneously and after the manner of reflex action. Spontaneously, too, and because it finds pleasure in being active, the infant later exercises its vocal organs in the same way it exercises its limbs, gaining the perfect use of them by repeated essays and by a process of selection. From inarticulate it thus passes to articulate sounds. The variety of intonations which it acquires evinces in the child great delicacy of impression and of expression; hence the faculty of forming general ideas. All we do is to aid it in grasping these ideas by suggesting our words. To these the infant attaches ideas of its own, generalizing after its own fashion rather than ours. Sometimes it invents not only the meaning of a word, but the word itself. Several vocabularies may succeed to one another in its mind, new words obliterating old ones; several different significations may successively be attached to one word; several words invented by itself are natural vocal gestures; in short, it learns a ready-made language as a true musician learns counterpoint, or as a true poet learns prosody: the child is an original genius, which adapts itself to a form built up bit by bit by a succession of original geniuses. If there existed no language it would discover one, or find an equivalent.

This series of observations was interrupted, owing to the misfortunes of the year 1870. The following notes may serve to show the mental state of an infant: in many respects this state is that of primitive peoples in the poetical and mythological period.

A water-jet, which this infant saw daily for three months, always gave her new pleasure. The same is to be said of the flow of a river