xxxiv Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



work would be greatly enhanced to the French constituency, as well 

 as to others, and we shall hope to see this change made in the subse- 

 quent issues of this annual. 



c. J. H. 



Mental Deyelopment of the Child.^ 



No one can seriously doubt that the golden age of children is 

 approaching, for a thousand tokens bear unmistakable witness that the 

 king is coming to his own and that the father of the man is soon to 

 to take that proverbial preeminence he has long held only in the- 

 ory. Begin where you will it is the same ; formerly the prospective 

 mother was enveloped during that mystic period by an impenetrable 

 mist of muslin which was symbolic of an esoteric cult with its pecu- 

 liar language and worshipers. Now all this changed and the mother 

 elect is found deep in Darwin, Preyer, Egger, Max Miiller and 

 Frobel. Now, instead of "flounces," it will be "sensorimotor asso- 

 ciation" that is wafted to your ears as you are bundled over the 

 threshold. 



When the helpless "subject" appears, the mother is distracted 

 between her duties as correspondent of the new society for scientific 

 child study and the claims of twenty different antiseptic nursing 

 bottles. 



Unhappy the child whose first random incoherencies have no ad- 

 equate record in some one of the many "life records !" Even if the 

 latter are not made as obligatory as a certificate of vaccination by the 

 "Boards" of the future, certainly lack of such a credential will be 

 taken as conclusive evidence that the child was not "well born." 



In all seriousness and in spite of its frequent crudeness, the at- 

 temps at a systematic study of the early psychical manifestions of the 

 child are among the most encouraging indications, not only in psy- 

 chology but also and especially in pedagogy. It is true, as the author 

 of the book immediately before us says, that "only the physiologist 

 can observe the child, and he must be so saturated with the informa- 

 tion and his theories that the conduct of the child becomes instinct 

 with meaning for his theories of mind and body." We may hope, 

 however, that the combination "mother and physiologist" may not 

 prove altogether chimerical and, even where this ideal is not reached, 

 we may still believe, also with the author, "that all faithful recording 

 is of importance." 



* Mental Development in the Child and the Race. Methods and Processes. 

 By James Mark Baldwin, Macmillan and Co. 1895. 



