But every child learns at first not only the language of those in whose immediate daily companionship he grows up, but also at first the peculiarities of these persons. He imitates the accent, intonation, dialect, as well as the word, so that a Thuringian child may be surely distinguished from a Mecklenburg child even in the second and third year, and, at the same time, we may recognize the peculiarities of the speech of its mother or nurse, with whom it has most intercourse. This phenomenon, the persistence of dialects and of peculiarities of speech in single families, gives the impression, on a superficial observation, of being something inherited; whereas, in fact, nothing is inherited beyond the voice through inheritance of the organic peculiarities of the mechanism of phonation. For everything else completely disappears when a child learns to speak from his birth in a foreign community. Hereditary we may, indeed, call the characteristic of humanity, speech; hereditary, also, is articulation in man, and the faculty of acquiring any articulate language is innate. But beyond this the tribal influence does not reach. If the possibility of learning to speak words phonetically is wanting because ear or tongue refuses, then another language comes in as a substitute--that of looks, gestures, writing, tactile images--then not Broca's center, but another one is generated. So that the question whether a speech-center already exists in the alalic child must be answered in the negative; the center is formed only when the child hears speech, and, if he does not hear speech, no center is developed. In this case the ganglionic cells of the posterior third of the third frontal convolution are otherwise employed, or they suffer atrophy. In learning to speak, on the contrary, there is a continuous development, first of the sound-center, then of the syllable-center, then of the word-center and the dictorium. The brain grows through its own activity. CHAPTER XVIII. FIRST SOUNDS AND BEGINNINGS OF SPEECH IN THE CASE OF A CHILD OBSERVED DAILY DURING HIS FIRST THREE YEARS. The observations bearing upon the acquirement of speech recorded by me in the case of my boy from the day of his birth, the 23d of November, 1877, are here presented, so far as they appear worthy of being communicated, in chronological order. They are intended to serve as authenticated documents.