This article begins with a short summary of the recent work done by physiologists on the centre of speech in the cortex. It then traces briefly the mental development of the child in its first years, laying special stress on the importance of the emotions. Affect is 'the bond of union of impressions' and 'the basis of memory'. Without affect knowledge would be useless as there would be no registration of the desirability or undesirability of any thing or situation. There follows a slight sketch of a Bengali boy up to the close of his second year. It ends with a vocabulary taken when he was twenty and a half months and twenty-three and three-quarter months respectively.