Did I not, then, as I grew out of infancy, come next to
boyhood, or rather did it not come to me and succeed my infancy?
My infancy did not go away (for where would it go?). It was
simply no longer present; and I was no longer an infant who could
not speak, but now a chattering boy. I remember this, and I have
since observed how I learned to speak. My elders did not teach me
words by rote, as they taught me my letters afterward. But I
myself, when I was unable to communicate all I wished to say to
whomever I wished by means of whimperings and grunts and various
gestures of my limbs (which I used to reinforce my demands), I
myself repeated the sounds already stored in my memory by the mind
which thou, O my God, hadst given me. When they called some thing
by name and pointed it out while they spoke, I saw it and realized
that the thing they wished to indicate was called by the name they
then uttered. And what they meant was made plain by the gestures
of their bodies, by a kind of natural language, common to all
nations, which expresses itself through changes of countenance,
glances of the eye, gestures and intonations which indicate a
disposition and attitude -- either to seek or to possess, to
reject or to avoid.
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