Thus from the earliest period of life the proper name of each individual, stamped upon the mind while it is in the act of accomplishing its first opera tions, becomes incorporated with its substance, and becomes for the individual and his fellows the social characteristic by means of which he passes through life. This characteristic he leaves to his successors as a hereditary patrimony, and they in their turn transmit it to their descendants with the proper attri butes of genealogy.
These first acquisitions once made, the child, while conscious that he can outwardly express his emotions and desires, that he has a proper name which expresses his personality, only achieves the various degrees of his further perfectionment by a series of endeavours. At first he stammers out his first desires by means of incorrect expressions, a rudimentary attempt made up of common words. He understands the appeals that are made to him, and knows when they are addressed to his personality. In an objective excitation from without he perceives that his name is pronounced, and that he is addressed. But at the same time a very remarkable fact may be observed, which shows in a simple manner the phases through which the notion of personality passes before arriving at its period of complete solidification in the mind. In following these' phases step by step we per ceive that the child in his means of extrinsic expression, only by degrees gives up the primordial characteristics of objectivity which mark the first periods of his de velopment.
Thus young children, about their second and third years, in the regular course of their development speak as they feel. They are accustomed to see themselves as a body which has an external form, and occupies a determined position in space. Their name itself is riot as yet completely assimilated by, and incarnated in them, as the concrete expression of their entire being. They still preserve a certain degree of objectivity ; in the primitive form of their language they speak of themselves in the third person, as though the matter concerned some one who was a stranger to them, mani festing their emotions or desires according to this simple formula : " Paul wishes for so and so, Paul has a pain in such or such a place."
Little by little, in the natural progress of develop ment which is going forward, the child, living in an attentive medium, and automatically hurried along in the current of conversation, makes one step more in the way of his intellectual perfectionment.
He already knows that his personality has a proper qualification. He knows how to recognize this when it is mentioned, and turns his head and eyes when his name is pronounced ; and his language, moreover, as has just been said, in a rudimentary fashion makes use of the impersonal formula. It is only little by little, and as it were by the incessant action of a continual trituration, that he can be taught that his whok per sonality, constituting a unity, may take another abstract form besides that of a proper name, and that its equivalent formula is represented by the words I, me. By a new effort of abstraction the child, who receives into his voracious mind everything that is thrust into it, unconsciously receives that conventional nutriment fur nished him ready prepared, and as this is suitable, saves trouble, and is generally employed, he appro priates it, makes use of it, and by degrees employs it in current conversation. He ends by substituting the words I and me for his proper name, in the construction of the phrases he puts together according to the rules of grammar.
Having passed through this phase of mental develop ment, which is only completed in an insensible manner, by means of a daily apprenticeship which is in force at every moment, his personality accepts the regular methods of expressing itself outwardly in a methodical and regular manner, which shall be comprehended by those who surround him. It is externally clothed in a specific denomination, which characterizes it as a social individuality, by the proper name of the family from which it springs. It is confirmed, grows to be part and parcel of social intercourse, becomes incarnate —in a word, a precise formula which is accepted by all : the I and me thus becoming the extrinsic gramma tical manifestation of all his desires and emotions.