792 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a great stickler for accuracy in the repetition of all familiar word- 

 forms. The zeal of a child in correcting others' language, and 

 the comical errors he will now and again fall into in exercising 

 his pedagogic function, are well known to parents. Sometimes he 

 shows himself the most absurd of pedants. " Shall I read to you 

 out of this book, baby ?" asked a mother of her boy, about two 

 years and a half old. "No," replied the infant, "not out oi dot 

 book, but somepy inside of it." The same little stickler for verbal 

 accuracy, when his nurse asked him, " Are you going to build 

 your bricks, baby ? " replied solemnly, " We don't build bricks, 

 we make them and then build luith them." In the notes on the 



boy C we find an example of how jealously the child-mind 



insists on the ipsissima verba in the recounting of his familiar 

 stories. 



I have in this essay confined myself to some of the more com- 

 mon and elementary features of the child's linguistic experience. 

 Others present themselves when the reading stage is reached, and 

 the new, strange, stupid-looking word-symbol on the printed page 

 has to do duty for the living sound, which for the child, as we 

 have seen, seems to belong to the object and to share in its life. 

 But this subject, tempting as it is, must be left. And the same 

 must be said of these special difficulties and problems which arise 

 for the child-mind when two or more languages are spoken. This 

 is a branch of child-linguistics which, so far as I know, has never 

 been explored. 



THE PERSONAL EQUATION IN HUMAN TRUTH. 



By EEUBEN post HALLECK. 



WHETHER there is any such entity as absolute truth we 

 leave for the metaphysician to determine. Out of a vast 

 number of factors which may affect truth in general, we here se- 

 lect a few which are to-day deflecting and limiting human truth. 

 There are factors inherent in the self at its present stage of devel- 

 opment, or, more broadly speaking, certain psychical laws which 

 man's present nature will not allow him to change or to evade. 

 So long as the present intense struggle for existence continues, so 

 long must the existence of the self be a constant menace to the 

 full truth, and a partial truth is often worse than a lie. 



Our own actions do not raise in us the same feelings as similar 

 actions on the part of others. Egoistic emotion is more or less 

 present with all. Egoistic emotion invariably warps the truth. 

 We do a thing, and it seems all right ; another does the same 

 thing, and it seems all wrong. A man of high moral ideal found 

 fault with his neighbor for working on Sunday about a suburban 



