He who has conscientiously observed the mental development of infants must come to the conclusion that _the formation of ideas is not bound up with the learning of words, but is a necessary prerequisite for the understanding of the words to be learned first, and therefore for learning to speak_. Long before the child understands even a single word, before he uses a single syllable consistently with a definite meaning, he already has a number of ideas which are expressed by looks and gestures and cries. To these belong especially ideas gained through touch and sight. Associations of objects touched and seen with impressions of taste are probably the first generators of concepts. The child, still speechless and toothless, takes a lively interest in bottles; sees, e. g., a bottle that is filled with a white opaque liquid (Goulard water), and he stretches out his arms with desire toward it, screaming a long time, in the belief that it is a milk-bottle (observed by me in the case of my child in the thirty-first week). The bottle when empty or when filled with water is not so long attractive to him, so that the idea of food (or of something to drink, something to suck, something sweet) must arise from the sight of a bottle with certain contents without the understanding or even utterance of any words. The formation of concepts without words is actually demonstrated by this; for the speechless child not only perceived the points of identity of the various bottles of wine, water, oil, the nursing-bottle and others, the sight of which excited him, but he united in one notion the contents of the different sorts of bottles when what was in them was white--i. e., he had separated the concept of food from that of the bottle. Ideas are thus independent of words. Certain as this proposition is, it is not, however, supported by the reasons given for it by Kussmaul, viz., that one and the same object is variously expressed in various languages, and that a new animal or a new machine is known before it is named; for no one desires to maintain that certain ideas are _necessarily_ connected with certain words, without the knowledge of which they could not arise--it is maintained only that ideas do not exist without words. Now, any object has some appellation in each language, were it only the appellation "object," and a new animal, a new machine, is already called "animal," "machine," before it receives its special name. Hence from this quarter the proof can not be derived. On the other hand, the speechless infant certainly furnishes the proof, which is confirmed by some observations on microcephalous persons several years old or of adult age. The lack of the power of abstraction apparent in these persons and in idiots is not so great that they have not developed the notion "food" or "taking of food."