PSYCHOGENESIS IN THE HUMAN INFANT. 633 



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. What- 

 ever 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 intellec- 

 tual 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 gush- 

 ing lively and irregularly, afterward getting slowly relieved of the 

 non-essentials and becoming more orderly and plain, clearer, and flow- 

 ing ; 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, pene- 

 trating 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 or- 

 gans 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 



