194 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts, and Letters. 
what is the extent and content of a term as the child employs it 
at different stages in its developmental history; but still the evi¬ 
dence all indicates that abstract moral qualities are not appre¬ 
ciated until relatively very late, so that the terms designating 
them are not intelligently handled until the later stages of de¬ 
velopment. This is not to say that adjectives denoting moral 
qualities in adult speech are never used early; indeed such terms 
as “good,” “bad,” “horrid,” “ugly,” “mean,” “nice,” 
“naughty” and the like are applied to persons as early as the 
third year; but they are always used in a very concrete, even 
physical way. The young child has had some unhappy physical 
experience with his playmate, and he calls him “bad,” or 
‘ ‘ ugly, ” or “ mean, ” or “ horrid; ’ ’ but as he develops he will be 
apt to use these terms to denote more and more general attitudes 
of persons; to designate “qualities of heart,” as well as, or per¬ 
haps rather than, mere muscular traits. 
In her eighth year, H., who had been read to a great deal, and 
who had herself at that time read twenty-five books of classic 
fairy-tales and fables and myths, and nature stories, and even a 
few novels which her parents were reading,—with this linguistic 
experience H. occasionally used in her conversation such a term 
as “excellent” or “genuine.” She would say, speaking of a 
character in one of her books, he was an “amiable” or “genial” 
or “excellent” person. Now, when I would test her understand¬ 
ing of one of these terms I would find that she had in mind some 
definite act described in one of her books, and she had remem¬ 
bered this term as applied to the particular character in ques¬ 
tion, and had seized upon it without any adequate idea of its 
significance. When I ask her to apply one of these terms to her 
playmates she shows that she has but a slight and very hazy no¬ 
tion of its precise connotation. Of course, she has only a very 
general and quite incomplete idea of the qualities denoted by 
“virtuous,” say. It will require the experiences of many more 
years before she can use this term with a true sense of its signifi¬ 
cance, as this has been determined by racial usage. In the mak- 
His child, in her third year, used the word “sinecure” without the 
slightest idea of what it meant. See also Hall: The Contents of Chil¬ 
dren’s Minds on Entering School. (Heath & Co., Boston.) 
