An example: The child finds it very difficult to turn crosswise or
lengthwise one of the nine-pins which he wants to put into its box, and
when I say, "Round the other way!" he turns it around in such a way that
it comes to lie as it did at the beginning, wrongly. He also pushes the
broad side of the cover against the small end of the box. The child
evidently understands the expression "Round the other way"; but as the
expression is ambiguous (the head of the nine-pin may go to the left,
to the right, up, down, back, forward), we can understand that the pin
should be turned now one way and again another way, and even brought
back to its original position. Then appears the child's own deliberation
without words--without any speaking at all, low or loud--until after
frequently repeated packing and unpacking hardly any hesitation is
shown. Many utterances show how easily at this period objects that have
only a slight resemblance to one another or only a few qualities in
common are included in one concept. When a roasted apple is peeled, the
child sees the peel and says (thinking of his boiled milk, which he saw
several hours previous, but which is not now present), _Milch auch Haut_
(milk skin too). Similar is the expression _Kirche laeutet_ (church
rings) when the tower-clock strikes.

The child forms concepts which comprehend a few qualities in unity, and
indeed without designating the concept always by a particular word,
whereas the developed understanding more and more forms concepts with
many qualities and designates them by words. Hence the concepts of the
child have less content and more extent than those of adults. For this
reason they are less distinct also, and are often ephemeral, since they
break up into narrower, more distinct concepts; but they always testify
to activity of thought.

A greater intellectual advance, however, is manifested at this time in
the first intentional use of language in order to bring on a game of
hide-and-seek. A key falls to the floor. The child picks it up quickly,
holds it behind him, and to my question, "Where is the key?" answers
_nicht mehr da_ (no longer there). As I found in the following months
no falsehood, in the proper sense of the word, to record, but rather
that the least error, the most trivial exaggeration, was corrected at
once by the child himself, with peculiarly _naive_ seriousness, in a
little story, with pauses between the separate words, so, too, in the
present