It is by no means impossible (though not susceptible of scientific proof) that Baby may have a life of his own; and, if we may assume Hercules weeping and saying, "Atta! Atta!"--because shrewd observers of babyhood declare it to be characteristic of babies to say, "Atta! Atta!" when something desirable, in this case two dead snakes, is removed from their range of vision,--may we not assume also a universal language of babies, and a place, such as it may be, from which they have emigrated? Here, indeed, one follows M. Maeterlinck, except that, in his judgment, unborn babies speak French. Such a theory is no help to the novelist, for in that case baby Mary Olivier's impressions of Mr. Olivier must be rendered in baby--a language equally unknown to Miss Sinclair and to her readers. Babies have been heard to say, for example, "Nja njan dada atta mama papaï attaï na-na-na hatta meen[)e]-meen[)e]-meen[)e] m[)o]mm m[)o]mma ao-u"--and who but another baby knows whether this may not be speech? The assumption that this is an effort to speak the language of the baby's elders is academic, as, for that matter, is the assumption that they are his elders. There may even be no baby at all; for, as Schopenhauer has almost brusquely put it, "The uneasiness that keeps the never-resting clock of metaphysics in motion, is the consciousness that the non-existence of this world is just as possible as its existence." But this, I confess, is far too deep for me.
Baby, baby in your cot, Are you there?--or are you not? If you're not, then what of me! Baby, _what_ and _where_ are we?
For all practical purposes, however, Baby is sufficiently real--substantial enough, indeed, as "The Baby's Physical Culture Guide" shows in Exercise 24, to be lifted by his little feet and stood on his little head; but, mercifully adds the "Guide," "do not hold Baby on his head very long." For all practical purposes we must, and do, assume our own existence. "Here we are," as I have imagined Dr. Johnson saying to his innocent new-born comrade, "and we'll have to make the best of it." Nobody has thought of a better way, or any other way at all, for us to get here; and the familiar Biblical phrase, 'born again,' may perhaps be more literal than we are wont to imagine, and apply to this world as well as the next. Baby himself may just have been born again. That innocent-seeming and rather silly-sounding monologue, which we flatter ourselves is an earnest attempt to imitate our own speech,--"Nja njan dada atta mama papaï attaï na-na-na hatta meen[)e]-meen[)e]-meene[)e] m[)o]mm m[)o]mma ao-u,"--may it not be the soliloquy of a gentle philosopher, or, again, the confession of an out-and-out rascal, talking to himself of his misdeeds, chuckling and cooing over them, indeed, before he forgets them in this new state of being? May not Papa, waggishly shaking his forefinger and saying, "You little rascal, you," be speaking with a truthfulness which, if known, would make him sick?