Without multiplying examples known to every one, which give peremptory proof of the existence of abstraction (partial dissociation), and of generalisation, prior to speech, let us rather consider the heterogeneous nature of these generic images, the result of their mode of formation. They are in fact constructed arbitrarily,—as it were by accident, depending partly on the apprehension of gross resemblances, partly, and chiefly, on subjective causes, emotional dispositions, practical interests. More rarely they are based upon essential qualities. John Stuart Mill affirms that the majority of animals divide everything into two categories: that which is, and that which is not edible. Whatever we may think of this assertion, we should probably feel much astonishment if we could penetrate and comprehend certain animal generalisations. In the case of children we can do more than assume. Preyer’s son employed the interjection _ass_ (which he had forged or imitated) first for his wooden horse, mounted on wheels, and covered with hair; next for everything that could be displaced or that moved (carts, animals, his sister, etc.), and that had hair. Taine’s little girl (twelve months), who had frequently been shown a copy of an infant Jesus, from Luini, and had been told at the same time, “That is the baby,” would in another room, on hearing anyone ask her, “Where is the baby?” turn to any of the pictures or engravings, no matter what they were. _Baby_ signified to her some general thing: something which she found in common in all these pictures, engravings of landscapes, and figures, i. e., if I do not mistake, some variegated object in a shining frame. Darwin communicated the following observation on one of his grandsons to Romanes: “The child, who was just beginning to speak, called a duck ‘quack,’ and, by special association, it also called water ‘quack.’ By an appreciation of the resemblance of qualities, it next extended the term ‘quack’ to denote all birds and insects on the one hand, and all fluid substances on the other. Lastly, by a still more delicate appreciation of resemblance, the child eventually called all coins ‘quack,’ because on the back of a French sou it had once seen the representation of an eagle.”[25] In this case, to which we shall return later, there was a singular mixture of intellectual operations: creation of a word by onomatopœia (resemblance) and finally an unbridled extension of analogy. Such observations might be multiplied. They would only confirm this remark: the generic image varies in one case and another, because the condensation of resemblances of which it is constituted depends often upon a momentary impression, upon most unexpected conditions.