464 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



taking serves the purpose of indicating its contents, its arguments and 

 the trend of its conclusions. Such an account is inevitably incom- 

 plete, but suffers a conspicuous incompleteness if it refrains wholly 

 from any expressly critical estimate of the value and probable influence 

 of the more original and distinctive doctrines for which the work stands. 

 In regard to methods and the kind of criticism which they invite and 

 will doubtless receive, enough has been said. The most pertinent in- 

 quiry pertains to the attitude which close students of psychology and 

 of education are likely to assume towards the main positions of the 

 author, and — equally important — the impression which the views thus 

 first formally recorded are likely to make upon the considerable circle 

 of interested and intelligent laymen. In this connection it is not of 

 paramount importance that one should speak exactly for himself, 

 legitimate as that would be; it is equally pertinent to set forth as well 

 as may in him lie, the attitude of those who share with him many of 

 his interests and his general perspective. Approaching the matter with 

 this purpose, one notices a larger representation on the opposition 

 benches than in those set aside for the government supporters. The 

 case of the opposition will be strong and carry a fair measure of con- 

 viction; the argument will be advanced, that while the principles thus 

 advanced carry some measure of support from biology, the use to which 

 said principles are put far transcends the warrant of the evidence, and 

 in certain of the deductions seems indeed in contradiction to it. The 

 biological status of recapitulation leaves no such definite provision, not 

 even in the earliest stages of infancy, for such complex appearance of 

 prehuman traits as Dr. Hall advances. To explain the impulse of 

 children when in the presence of water to jump in and swim, as a 

 reverberation of an aquatic habit, seems both feeble and inconclusive. 

 The case becomes stronger and at the same time changes its aspect, 

 when traits favored by primitive human life are brought into opera- 

 tion to account for the vast medley of impulses and feelings which in 

 great part we have shared and then outgrown. Yet even here the 

 transfer from the one field to the other seems better justified when 

 limited to general groups of traits than when literally translated into 

 the deciphering of the variable and complex as well as evanescent char- 

 acters of changing juvenility. In other words, many who will admit a 

 limited applicability of the general parallelism would hesitate to stand 

 sponsor for the special application and practical deductions that seem 

 the goal of so many of the Clark University studies in this field. Nor 

 is it going too far to add that Dr. Hall's educational insight has a 

 firmer hold upon his pen than his logical adherence to the recapitula- 

 tion theory. His educational precepts impress one as finding their 

 inspiration in a broad and discerning observation, intermittently rein- 

 forced by an elaborated conformity to the principle which at times 

 becomes only imperfectly germane to the plan and the spirit of the 



