442 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



flame ; later on, for an empty glass with nothing in it. By another 

 child it was extended to the ending of music, the closing of a 

 drawer, and so on. Here, however, the various applications prob- 

 ably answer to a common feeling, that of " all over," and do not 

 involve a proper process of intellectual assimilation or apprehen- 

 sion of likeness. 



Coming to what we should call names, we find that the child 

 will often extend a recognition sign from one object to a second, 

 and to our thinking widely dissimilar, object through a vague 

 feeling of analogy. Such extension, moving rather along poetic 

 lines than those of our logical classification, is apt to wear a 

 quaint metaphorical aspect. A star, for example, looked at, I sup- 

 pose, as a small bright spot, was called by a child an " eye." Dr. 

 Romanes's child extended the word "star," the first vocable 

 learned after " mamma " and " papa," to bright objects generally 

 candles, gas, flames, etc. Here we have plainly a rudimentary 

 process of classification. Taine speaks of a child of one year who, 

 after first applying the word "fafer" (from " chemin de fer") to 

 railway engines, went on to transfer it to a steaming coffee-pot 

 and everything that hissed or smoked or made a noise. Any 

 point of likeness, provided it is of sufiicient interest to strike the 

 attention, may thus secure the extension of the name. 



As with names of things, so with those of actions. The crack- 

 ling noise of the fire was called by one child " barking," and the 

 barking of a dog was named by another " coughing." We see 

 from this that the particular line of analogical extension followed 

 by a child will depend on the nature of the first impressions or 

 experiences which serve as his starting point. 



A like originality is apt to show itself in the first crude at- 

 tempt to seize and name the relations of things. The child C 



called dipping bread in gravy, "ba" bath. Another child ex- 

 tended the word " door " to " everything that stopped up an open- 

 ing or prevented an exit, including the cork of a bottle and the 

 little table that fastened him in his high chair." The extension 

 of the word " mend " to making and keeping whole or right, 

 which I find to be common among children, is another quaint ex- 

 ample of how the child mind first essays to set forth the relations 

 wholeness and its opposite. 



In this last instance we see an example of childish concretism, 

 as it has been called viz., the tendency to make use of a concrete 

 idea in order to express a more abstract idea. Children frequent- 

 ly express the contrast big, little, by the pretty figurative lan- 

 guage "mamma" and "baby." Thus a small coin was called by 

 an American child a " baby dollar." Romanes's daughter, named 

 Ilda, pointed out the sheep in a picture as " mamma-ba," and the 

 lambs as " Ilda-ba." It is somewhat the same process when the 



