ly to the _meaning_
of the word; _hear_--since it is simply the perceiving of a word
through the hearing that we have in view--will relate to the sensuous
impression. It is clear, then, that all children who can hear but can
not yet speak, repeat many words without understanding them, and
understand many words without being able to repeat them, as Kussmaul
has already observed. But I must add that the repeating of what is
not understood begins only after some word (even one that can not be
repeated) has been understood.

Now it is certain that the majority, if not all, of the children
that have good hearing develop the understanding more at first,
since the impressive side is practiced more and sooner than the
expressive-articulatory. Probably those that imitate early and
skillfully are the children that can speak earliest, and whose
cerebrum grows fastest but also soonest ceases to grow; whereas those
that imitate later and more sparingly, generally learn to speak later,
and will generally be the more intelligent. For with the higher sort
of activity goes the greater growth of brain. While the other children
cultivate more the centro-motor portion, the sensory, the
intellectual, is neglected. In animals, likewise, a brief, rapid
development of the brain is wont to go along with inferior
intelligence. The intelligence gets a better development when the
child, instead of repeating all sorts of things without any meaning,
tries to guess the meaning of what he hears. Precisely the epoch at
which this takes place belongs to the most interesting in intellectual
development. Like a pantomimist, the child, by means of his looks and
gestures, and further by cries and by movements of all sorts, gives
abundant evidence of his understanding and his desires, without
himself speaking a single word. As the adult, after having half
learned a foreign language from books, can not speak (imitate) it, and
can not easily understand it when he hears it spoken fluently by one
that is a perfect master of it, but yet makes out _single_ expressions
and understands them, and divines the meaning of the whole, so the
child at this stage can distinctly hear single words, can grasp the
purport of them, and divine correctly a whole sentence from the looks
and gestures of the speaker, although the child himself makes audible
no articulate utterance except his own, for the most part meaningless,
variable babble of sounds and syllables and outcries.