254 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the execution of an act corresponding to it : A large ring, wliicli 

 I slowly put on my liead and took away again, was seized by tlie 

 child, and pnt by him in the same way on his own head withoiit 

 fumbling (sixteenth month). But^ when it is a case of combina- 

 tion of a definite action of the muscles of the mouth with expira- 

 tion of the breath, innumerable fruitless eif orts at imitation are 

 made before one of them succeeds, because, in this case, a part 

 only of the working of the complicated muscular action can be 

 perceived, while the rest must be found out by trial. Thus, the 

 child could not, in spite of many attempts, get any tone out of a 

 small hunting-horn. He put it to his mouth, and tried to imitate 

 the tone with his own voice. Suddenly the right manner of 

 blowing was hit upon accidentally, and from that time was never 

 forgotten (eighteenth month). 



After the child had seen how his mother combed her long 

 dark hair before a glass, he took a hand-mirror and a comb and 

 moved the comb around on his head, combing where there was 

 no hair. So, too, he would now and then seize a brush and try 

 to brush his head and his dress, but took special pleasure in 

 brushing also all kinds of furniture. More than once he actually 

 took a shawl, held it by a corner to his shoulder, and drew it 

 behind him like a train, frequently turning around while doing 

 this. He also put a collar round his neck ; he tried to dry him- 

 self with a towel, but without success ; whereas the washing of 

 the hands with soap, without direction, was imitated, though 

 not with much skill, yet tolerably well ; none but very compli- 

 cated imitative actions these, and all of them, in the case of my 

 boy, belong to the third quarter of the second year — an excep- 

 tionally important period in mental genesis — the same is true of 

 seizing, holding things before him, and (what was observed by 

 Lindner in the sixth month) the imitation of reading aloud from 

 a newspaper or pamphlet, the feeding of deer — holding out a 

 single spear of grass to them — scraping the feet uj^on entering 

 the house (as if the shoes were to be cleaned). 



But how little real imitation and understanding of the act 

 itself there vv^as, even in this period of perfect external imita- 

 tions, appears from the circumstance that a map is held, as a 

 newspaper, " to be read aloud," before the face, and upside down. 

 Now, too, the child likes to take a pencil, puts the point in his 

 mouth, and then makes all sorts of marks on a sheet of j^aper, as 

 if he could draw. 



Just as remarkable is the lively interest in everything that 

 goes on in the neighborhood of the child. In packing and un- 

 packing, setting the table, lighting the fire, lifting and moving 

 furniture, he tries to help. His imitative impulse seems here 

 almost like ambition (twenty-third month). 



