604 SPEAKING, READING, WRITING : AS MENTAL 



means of language, it does so by means of the remembered 

 sounds of words these are its linguistic symbols of 

 thought, which must, however, be mixed up inextricably 

 in its mind with other sense-impressions, and more 

 especially with those of sight. For it may fairly be said 

 that the great majority of children can remember the 

 names given to many external objects when they are four 

 or five months old ; their memory in this respect con- 

 tinually increasing through succeeding months, even whilst 

 they still make no very distinct effort at articulating words 

 for themselves." 



The next step is the development or acquirement by 

 the individual child of the power of articulating for him- 

 self the sounds which have hitherto been increasingly 

 employed as mental symbols. The potentiality of attain- 

 ing to such a power the child receives, in the main, as an 

 inheritance from so many antecedent generations of men, 

 that its actual manifestation the acquisition, that is, of 

 the power of Speaking can only be regarded as a motor 

 achievement of an order similar to some of those which 

 may be included among the Instinctive Acts of lower 

 animals : the similarity being not so much with the 

 Instinctive Acts that animals are born with the capacity 

 of performing, but rather with those which manifest 

 themselves a little later in life, and which (from their 

 more gradual acquirement) might be thought not to be 

 Instinctive Acts at all (p. 561). 



A process of * learning ' to Speak intervenes in part 

 in the former case, but it is whilst the inherited struc- 

 tures are undergoing development in the child's Nervous 

 System. 



"A certain order of development is always observed in 

 the various parts of the human body, and this holds good 

 also with regard to the several parts of the nervous 



