this association. In the earlier
months these are simple and easier to be seen, and I have given
several examples (Vol. I, pp. 250, 260, 329, 333). Later such
movements, through the perfecting of the language of gesture and the
growth of this very power of association, become more and more
complicated: e. g., in his sixteenth month my boy saw a closed box,
out of which he had the day before received a cake; he at once made
with his hands a begging movement, yet he could not speak a word. In
the twenty-first month I took out of the pocket of a coat which was
hanging with many others in the wardrobe a biscuit and gave it to the
child. When he had eaten it, he went directly to the wardrobe and
looked in the right coat for a second biscuit. At this period also the
child can not have been thinking in the unspoken words, "Get
biscuit--wardrobe, coat, pocket, look," for he did not yet know the
words.

Even in the sixth month an act of remarkable _adaptiveness_ was once
observed, which can not be called either accidental or entirely
voluntary, and if it was fully purposed it would indicate a
well-advanced development of understanding in regard to food without
knowledge of words. When the child, viz., after considerable
experience in nursing at the breast, discovered that the flow of milk
was less abundant, he used to place his hand hard on the breast as if
he wanted to force out the milk by pressure. Of course there was here
no insight into the causal connection, but it is a question whether
the firm laying on of the little hand was not repeated for the reason
that the experience had been once made accidentally, that after doing
this the nursing was less difficult.

On the other hand, an unequivocal complicated act of deliberation
occurred in the seventeenth month. The child could not reach his
playthings in the cupboard, because it was too high for him; he ran
about, brought a traveling-bag, got upon it, and took what he wanted.
In this case he could not possibly think in words, since he did not
yet know words.

My child tries further (in the nineteenth and twentieth months) in a
twofold fashion to make known his eager wish to leave the room, not
being as yet able to speak. He takes any cloth he fancies and brings
it to me. I put it about him, he wraps himself in it, and, climbing
beseechingly on my knee, makes longing, pitiful sounds, which do not
cease until after I have opened a door through which he goes into
another