182 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts , and Letters. 
nation, and so on, and we disregard the part the interpreter plays 
in reacting upon infant speech. But viewed from the stand¬ 
point of the child’s use of his words in his adjustments, it is evi¬ 
dent that they are never at the outset merely nominal in func¬ 
tion. 1 Mrs. Hall thinks objects are' at first apprehended as 
wholes, without regard to their qualities or their action, but this 
seems extremely doubtful, to say the least. It appears rather 
that the qualities of an object, as food, for instance, will be up¬ 
permost in the child’s consciousence in his reactions upon it; and 
in naming it at any time he will really, so far as his own mental 
content is concerned, be designating these qualities of the thing 
and not the thing in itself, whatever this may be. To illustrate, 
S. at twelve months liked buttered zwieback, and whenever he 
saw any on the table he would call out bock , bock , though he did 
not care for the plain variety. Surely his reaction—or in other 
words—his expression, must have been incited by and had refer¬ 
ence to the peculiar gustatory quality of this special article. In¬ 
deed, the child’s mental states must usually if not always be con¬ 
cerned primarily with the sensory effects of objects, which would 
occasion a predominant adjectival attitude toward them. In the 
course of development one’s experiences of an adjectival charac¬ 
ter with any object will slowly become generalized into what we 
mean by the term object; and then when we refer to it we have 
in mind first this generalized something which we may simply 
designate, and then go on to specify certain particular experi¬ 
ences we have had or should like to have with it. 2 
But the young child’s attitude must always be special and 
qualitative, not general and nominative. And at the outset the 
actional is really but a phase of this general qualitative attitude. 
When II. sees the kitten running after the ball, or her father tak¬ 
ing gymnastic exercise, or any thing else in movement, she indi¬ 
cates plainly that it is the actional characteristic of the thing 
i Compare with this statement Dewey’s view, Psychol, of Infant Lang., 
Psych. Rev., I, pp. 63-66. 
11 do not mean that we can form a notion of a thing apart from any 
of its qualities, states, or actions, but nevertheless with repeated ex¬ 
perience with an object we seem to gain a kind of sense of its existence 
independent of any particular quality, state, or action. Doubtless this 
sense is'for the most part verbal merely. 
