More important for the development of the child's _ego_ than are the observation of the shadow and of the image in the glass is the learning of speech, for it is not until words are used that the higher concepts are first marked off from one another, and this is the case with the concept of the _ego_. Yet the wide-spread view, that the "I"-_feeling_ first appears with the beginning of the use of the word "I," is wholly incorrect. Many headstrong children have a strongly marked "I"-feeling without calling themselves by anything but their names, because their relatives in speaking with them do not call themselves "I," but "papa, mamma, uncle, O mamma," etc., so that the opportunity early to hear and to appropriate the words "I" and "mine" is rare. Others hear these words often, to be sure, especially from children somewhat older, and use them, yet do not understand them, but add to them their own names. Thus, a girl of two and a half years, named Ilse, used to say, _Ilse mein Tuhl_ (Ilse, my chair), instead of "mein Stuhl" (Bardeleben). My boy of two and three fourths years repeated the "I" he heard, meaning by it "you." In the twenty-ninth month _mir_ (me) was indeed said by him, but not "ich" (I), (p. 171). Soon, however, he named himself no more, as he had done in the twenty-third and even in the twenty-eighth month (pp. 147-167), by his first name. In the thirty-third month especially came _das will ich! das moecht ich!_ (I wish that, I should like that) (p. 183). The fourfold designation of his own person in the thirty-second month (p. 180)--by his name, by "I," by "he," and by the omission of all pronouns--was only a brief transition-stage, as was also the misunderstanding of the "dein" (your) which for a time (p. 156) meant "gross" (large). These observations plainly show that the "I"-feeling is not first awakened by the learning of words, for this feeling, according to the facts given above, is present much earlier; but by means of speech the _conceptual_ distinction of the "I," the self, the mine, is first made exact; the development, not the origin, of the "I"-feeling is simply favored. How obscure the "I"-concept is even after learning the use of the personal pronouns is shown by the utterance of the four-year-old daughter of Lindner, named Olga, _die hat mich nass gemacht_ (she has made me wet), when she meant that she herself had done it; and _du sollst mir doch folgen, Olga_ (but you must follow me, Olga), the latter expression, indeed, being merely said after some one else. In her is noteworthy, too, the confounding of the possessives "his" and "her," e. g., _dem Papa ihr Buch auf der Mama seinen Platz gelegt_ (her book, papa's, laid in his place, mamma's) (Lindner); and yet in these forms of speech there is an advance in the differentiation of the concepts.