Fowls are notoriously blind to shapes of fowls, but depend on hearing the cries of their kind or their young.] _Self-consciousness._--So far as we have now gone the child has only a very dim distinction between himself as a person and the other persons who move about him.

The persons are "projective" to him, mere bodies or external objects of a peculiar sort classed together because they show common marks.

Yet in the sense of agency, he has already begun, as we saw, to find in himself a mental nucleus, or centre.

This comes about from his tendency to fall into the imitation of the acts of others.
Now as he proceeds with these imitations of others, he finds himself gradually understanding the others, by coming, through doing the same actions with them, to discover what they are feeling, what their motives are, what the laws of their behaviour.

For example, he sees his father handle a pin, then suddenly make a face as he pricks himself, and throws the pin away.