184 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts ■, and Letters. 
point to the brother running and exclaim, unsl What is the 
mental content back of such an expression? Manifestly her at¬ 
tention is engaged with this object in certain continually chang¬ 
ing attitudes; she can not be concerned with the action as an in¬ 
dependent thing. However, as her experiences with her brothei 
running and other objects running increase she will gradually 
generalize this activity as a thing or quality characteristic of 
these objects. But these same objects present themselves from 
time to time under other and different conditions, each of which 
will in due course be generalized as special characteristics; and 
on the linguistic side, if she would express any particular charac¬ 
teristic of the objects, she finds that she must have some means 
of designating them, without reference to any special attitude 
or quality, and then she must have some means of designating 
the special characteristic in question. If these objects always 
appeared in the same role she would not need to have one term 
for substantive and another for predicate in describing her ex¬ 
perience with them. 
Some one has said that, viewed ab intra, the child’s nearest ap¬ 
proach to the use of a noun pure and simple is found in those 
expressions, which from one point of view may be regarded as 
exclamations or even interjections. To illustrate, S. hears a bark¬ 
ing dog at a distance, and he exclaims, bu! bu! (dog). lie makes 
no effort to get the object, or to get away from it. His eyes, his 
intonations, his bodily attitudes all show surprise and wonder, 
however, but with no tendency to definite action. Now% in this 
expression is he simply naming an object—either the dog, or 
the barking as an independent auditory thing ? The strict nom¬ 
inal attitude, it will be agreed, is a purely intellectual one; but 
in this case the child experiences lively emotion, though for the 
moment it does not issue in adaptive action. Reaction is held 
in check for the time being; but nevertheless the individual is in 
a dynamic attitude toward the object. He is on the qui vive to 
detect what should be done in the premises. If one should at¬ 
tempt to express his attitude in a sentence, it would probably be 
something like—“I wonder what that noise means?” or 4 ‘That’s 
the dog; what’s he going to do?”, or “I can tell that’s the dog 
making that racket; will he be likely to do me any harm ? ’ ’ 
