NOTES ON CHILD EXPERIENCES. 



By C. L. Herrick. 



I. — Anthropomorphization of Numerals. 



A phenomenon not unlike that of pseudochromaesthesia has 

 recently come under our notice which may warrant a brief de- 

 scription. For lack of a better term we have used the self- 

 explanatory, if portentious one that forms our heading, believ- 

 ing that the process described is but one of many indications 

 of a tendency existing at a certain age in most children to pred- 

 icate of inanimate things, and even the most unlikely phenom- 

 ena, human characteristics and feelings. It would lead too far 

 to enquire whether this undoubted tendency in the course of 

 ontogeny is the condensed epitome of a similar state in the 

 phylogeny of the human race, though analogy points strongly 

 in that direction. The writer, though reared in almost absolute 

 seclusion in a family as free as possible from any trace of super- 

 stition, can recall a period in early childhood when this ten- 

 dency to anthropomorphization was very powerful and embraced 

 nearly the whole range of his experience. Not only was he 

 accustomed to lie literally on the bosom of the earth listening 

 to fancied responses to his unexpressed emotions, but the vari- 

 ous places frequented acquired each its peculiar feeling-value. 

 The first bare sports in Spring had an intense emotional prop- 

 erty and were themselves conscious of their approaching libera- 

 tion. Stones with peculiar shape and color, and especially such as 

 had holes in them, became charms and fetishes to which appeal 

 was had in moments of perplexity or grief I certainly had 

 never heard of either charm or fetish and the notion seemed a 

 spontaneous product of the mind. One would talk freely to 

 these charms and would feel the utmost confidence in the sym- 

 pathy, if not the active assistance, of the genii invoked. 



