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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The Origin of Volition ; The Mechanism of 

 Revival Internal Speech and Song ; Origin 

 of Attention ; Summary : Final Statement of 

 Habit and Accommodation. These titles, as 

 well as those given above of the sections of 

 an earlier chapter, are very attractive, and 

 we assure our readers that the text well 

 sustains the interest excited by the head- 

 ings, while the liveliness and earnestness of 

 the style will be found pleasant accompani- 

 ments of the author's command of his subject. 

 Of the scope and importance of this study 

 Prof. Baldwin well says: "The study of 

 children is generally the only means of test- 

 ing our mental analysis. If we decide that 

 a certain complex product is due to a union 

 of simpler mental elements, then we may 

 appeal to the proper period of child life to 

 see the union taking place. The range of 

 growth is so enormous from the infant to 

 the adult, and the beginnings of the child's 

 mental life are so low in the scale in the mat- 

 ter of instinctive and mental endowmeut, 

 that there is hardly a question of analysis 

 now under debate which may not be tested 

 by this method." To the questions, what 

 constitutes child study, and why we have so 

 little of it, he replies that only the scientific 

 specialist by the acutest exercise of his dis- 

 criminative faculty can observe children or 

 experiment upon them with profit. " Back 

 of the question, What did the infant do V is 

 the more difficult question, What did his 

 doing that mean? And how can people 

 who know nothing of the distinction between 

 reflex and voluntary action, or between nerv- 

 ous adaptation and conscious selection, ana- 

 lyze the child's actions and arrive at a true 

 picture of the mental condition that lies 

 back of them ? Even Preyer's experiments 

 to determine the order of rise of the child's 

 perceptions of different qualities of color, 

 depending as they did upon word memories, 

 are vitiated by the single fact that speech is 

 acquired long after objects and some colors 

 are distinguished." And if Preyer can thus 

 misinterpret appearances, Prof. Baldwin may 

 well say, " No child's deeds should be given 

 universal value without a critical examina- 

 tion, before which even the most competent 

 psychologist might well quail." 



But notwithstanding these warnings, there 

 is a brief popular section written in a some- 

 \\ hat homiletic strain in the chapter on con- 



scious imitation, entitled How to Observe 

 Children's Imitations. He begins with the 

 statement that " nothing less than the child's 

 personality is at stake in the method and 

 matter of its imitation." The observer is 

 told at length that he must take account of 

 the personal influences which have affected 

 the child ; its relations to brothers and sis- 

 ters and to other children, its chums and 

 friendships in the school and home, and 

 especially its games. The section closes with 

 these words : " Finally, I may be allowed a 

 word to interested parents. You can be of 

 no use whatever to psychologists to say 

 nothing of the actual damage you may be to 

 the children unless you know your babies 

 through and through. Especially the fathers ! 

 They are willing to study everything else. 

 They know every corner of the house fa- 

 miliarly except the nursery. A man labors 

 for his children ten hours a day, gets his 

 life insured for their support after his 

 death, and yet he lets their mental growth, 

 the formation of their characters, the evo- 

 lution of their personality, go on by absorp- 

 tion if no worse from common, vulgar, 

 imported, and changing, often immoral, 

 attendants ! Plato said the state should 

 train the children, and added that the 

 wisest man should rule the state. . . . We 

 hear a certain group of studies called the 

 humanities, and it is right. But the best 

 school in the humanities for every man is his 

 own house." We have been much impressed 

 by another strain of remark in the same 

 section upon an only child. We have had for 

 some time under our sympathetic observation 

 a little boy whose brothers and sisters are 

 grown, and the truth of the following state- 

 ment is forcibly brought home to us : " An 

 only child has only adult ' copy.' He can 

 not interpret his father's actions, or his 

 mother's oftentimes. He imitates very 

 blindly. He lacks the more childish ex- 

 ample of a brother or sister near himself in 

 age. And this difference is of very great 

 importance to his development. He lacks 

 the stimulus, for example, of games in which 

 personification is a direct tutor to selfhood. 

 And while he becomes precocious in some 

 lines of instruction, he fails in imagination, 

 in brilliancy of fancy. The dramatic in his 

 sense of social situations is largely hidden. 

 It is a very great mistake to isolate children." 



