and the
daily observation of a sound child, who was kept away from all training
as far as possible, as well as the frequent observation of other
children, has brought me to the following important result:

That every known form of disturbance of speech in adults finds its
perfect counterpart in the child that is learning to speak.

The child can not _yet_ speak correctly, because his impressive,
central, and expressive organs of speech are not yet completely
developed. The adult patient can _no longer_ speak correctly, because
those parts are no longer complete or capable of performing their
functions. The parallelism is perfect even to individual cases, if
children of various ages are carefully observed in regard to their
acquirement of speech. As to facts of a more general nature, we arrive,
then, at the three following:

1. The normal infant understands spoken language much earlier than he
can himself produce through imitation the sounds, syllables, and words
he hears.

2. The normal child, however, before he begins to speak or to imitate
correctly the sounds of language, forms of his own accord all or nearly
all the sounds that occur in his future speech and very many others
besides, and delights in doing it.

3. The order of succession in which the sounds of speech are produced by
the infant is different with different individuals, and consequently is
not determined by the principle of the least effort. It is dependent
upon several factors--brain, teeth, size of the tongue, acuteness of
hearing, motility, and others. Only in the later, intentional,
sound-formations and attempts at speaking does that principle come under
consideration.

In the acquirement of every complicated muscular movement, dancing,
e. g., the difficult combinations which make a greater strain on the
activity of the will are in like manner acquired last.

Heredity plays no part in this, for every child can learn to master
perfectly any language, provided he hears from birth only the one to be
learned. The plasticity of the inborn organs of speech is thus in the
earliest childhood very great.

To follow farther the influence that the use of speech as a means of
understanding has upon the intellectual development of the child lies
outside the problem dealt with in this book. Let me, in conclusion,
simply give a brief estimate of the questioning-activity that makes its
appearance very early after the first attempts at speech, and also ad