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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ings, in which she would be interested 

 by her curiosity, and would take up 

 from the temptation of her special op- 

 portunities. Yet M. Taine found that 

 it had not been done. He wished to 

 test Max Milller's views in regard to 

 the genesis of language, and wanted a 

 series of observations of infantine men- 

 tal growth for the purpose. But they 

 had not been made, the facts were 

 wanting, and nothing remained but to 

 make the study himself. We say this 

 kind of work belongs to woman, and 

 she is perfectly competent to peform it. 

 Why, then, has it not been undertaken, 

 and why has there not grown up a body 

 of carefully-observed and widely-veri- 

 fied facts regarding psychological de- 

 velopment in infancy such as would be 

 valuable for arriving at inductive truths 

 for guidance in the rational education 

 of childhood? Undoubtedly, psychol- 

 ogy is a backward science, imperfect 

 from the obscurity and complexity of 

 its questions, and its long cultivation by 

 unscientific methods. But the value 

 of observations upon the mental un- 

 folding of infancy is not, by any means, 

 dependent upon the possibility of im- 

 mediately explaining them. Such ob- 

 servations, if accurately made and in- 

 telligently recorded, will have a value 

 of their own independent of the state 

 of psychological science, while they 

 would become a permanent and potent 

 means of its advancement. In most 

 other fields of natural phenomena the 

 facts are far in advance of the theories 

 by which they are organized into sci- 

 ence ; in the field of mental growth, 

 however, observations are scanty and 

 speculation superabundant. 



We are, of course, not to expect 

 that things will come before they are 

 wanted, and, if such observations are 

 not called for, why should they be sup- 

 plied ? But the facts have been long 

 and loudly called for, if not by psy- 

 chologists, then by practical educators, 

 while woman has had exclusive charge 

 of the education that begins in infancy. 



She is an educator as a mother, and 

 the culture of childhood has almost 

 universally fallen into her hands as a 

 teacher. We might surely have ex- 

 pected that, with their great excess of 

 opportunity, some few women of abil- 

 ity would have gone carefully and criti- 

 cally and often over the ground which 

 M. Taine has passed over once with 

 such interesting results. But the work 

 that might have been expected, so far 

 as we are aware, has not been done, 

 nor is there any promise of it. The 

 difficulty is, that there has been noth- 

 ing in woman's education either to in- 

 terest her in the subject or to qualify 

 her for dealing with it. Observations, 

 to be valuable for scientific purposes, 

 involve an accuracy of perception and 

 an intellectual discrimination which are 

 not to be had except by patient and 

 methodical training of the observing 

 powers. This is the one thing that has 

 not been included in female education. 

 Neither languages, nor mathematics, 

 nor history, nor mental philosophy, nor 

 music, nor general literature, affoids any 

 exercise whatever of the observing fac- 

 ulties. A student may become pro- 

 ficient in all these branches, while the 

 intellectual interest in the phenomena 

 of daily experience, and the objects of 

 common life, remains as dormant as it 

 is in the savages. Nay, more, absorp- 

 tion in these modes of mental activ- 

 ity, which involve chiefly the memory 

 and reflective powers, is fatally un- 

 favorable to observation, as it brings 

 the mind under the control of mental 

 habits that exclude it. No woman can 

 make valuable observations on mental 

 progress in infancy that has not had a 

 culture fitted for it, first, by a long prac- 

 tice, such as she gives to music, in in- 

 dependent, observation in some branch 

 of objective science, as botany, for ex- 

 ample ; and, secondly, by a thorough 

 knowledge of the constitution of the 

 child, especially the functions of its 

 nervous mechanism. With their heads 

 filled with history, aesthetics, algebra, 



