A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF AN INFANT. 205 



any person or his own image in a mirror, an exclamatory sound, such 

 as we employ when surprised. I remark in my notes that the use of 

 these intonations seemed to have arisen instinctively, and I regret that 

 more observations were not made on this subject. I record, however, 

 in my notes that at a rather later period, when between eighteen and 

 twenty-one months old, he modulated his voice in refusing peremptorily 

 to do anything by a defiant whine, so as to express, "That I won't;" and 

 again his humph of assent expressed, "Yes, to be sure." M. Taine also 

 insists strongly on the highly expressive tones of the sounds made by 

 his infant before she had learned to speak. The interrogatory sound 

 which my child gave to the word mum when asking for food is espe- 

 cially curious; for, if any one will use a single word or a short sentence 

 in this manner, he will find that the musical pitch of his voice rises 

 considerably at the close. I did not then see that this fact bears on 

 the view which I have elsewhere maintained that before man used 

 articulate language, he uttered notes in a true musical scale, as does 

 the anthropoid ape Hylobates. 



Finally, the wants of an infant are at first made intelligible by in- 

 stinctive cries, which after a time are modified in part unconsciously, 

 and in part, as I believe, voluntarily as a means of communication, — 

 by the unconscious expression of the features — by gestures and in a 

 marked manner by different intonations, — lastly by words of general 

 nature invented by himself, then of a more precise nature imitated 

 from those which he hears; and these are acquired at a wonderfully 

 quick rate. An infant understands to a certain extent, and as I be- 

 lieve, at a very early period, the meaning or feeling of those who tend 

 him, by the expression of their features. There can hardly be a doubt 

 about this with respect to smiling; and it seemed to me that the infant 

 whose biography I have here given understood a compassionate ex- 

 pression at a little over five months old. When six months and eleven 

 days old, he certainly showed sympathy with his nurse on her pretend- 

 ing to cry. When pleased after performing some new accomplishment, 

 being then almost a year old, he evidently studied the expression of 

 those around him. It was probably due to differences of expression 

 and not merely of the form of the features that certain faces clearly 

 pleased him much more than others, even at so early an age as a little 

 over six months. Before he was a year old, he understood intonations 

 and gestures, as well as several words and short sentences. He under- 

 stood one word, namely, his nurse's name, exactly five months before he 

 invented his first word, mum; and this is what might have been ex- 

 pected, as we know that the lower animals easily learn to understand 

 spoken words. 



