Literary Notices. xxxv 



Professor Baldwin's book, as it stands, might be properly called 

 " Essays toward a Genetic Psychology." A System of Psychology it 

 is not, chiefly because of the way the subject grew upon its author's 

 hands as related in his preface. Those will be disappointed who are 

 led by the title to expect something complete in the way of directions 

 for child study or results of such study; what they may find, if capa- 

 ble of appropriating the materials, is a means of self-preparation for 

 elaborating an original system based on evolutionary principles. The 

 horizon broadens as one proceeds and though the psychologist may 

 find comparatively little that is new and may groan somewhat at the 

 " rachet-motion " by which he is compelled to progress, he can hardly 

 fail to be impressed with the fact that a genetic or evolutionary psy- 

 chology is coming which does not find it necessary to rule out the 

 psychical in its adhesion to the biological. To our mind the great 

 value of the book lies in the emphatic teachmg that the conscious ele- 

 ments, pleasure and pain, are primitive and by no means identical — 

 that there is, in other words, a central initiative so that the organism 

 is never a passive object reacting under external stimuli. 



We fully sympathize with the author's remark, "That most 

 vicious and Philistine attempt in some quarters to put science in the 

 straight-jacket of barren observation, to draw the life-blood of all sci- 

 ence — speculative advance into the secrets of things — this ultra-posi- 

 tivistic cry has come here as everywhere else, and put a ban upon 

 theory. On the contrary, give us theories, theories, always theories. 



. . In the matter of experimenting with children, therefore, 

 our theories must guide our work." Again, against the cautious de- 

 precation of child experimentation, Professor Baldwin aptly replies : 

 "Experiment? Every time we send a child out of the home to 

 the school we subject him to experimentation of the most serious and 

 alarming kind. He goes into the hands of a teacher who is not only 

 not wise unto the child's salvation, but who is, on the contrary, a ma- 

 chine for administering a single experiment to an infinite variety of 

 children. It is perfectly certain that two in every three children are 

 irretrievably damaged or hindered in their mental and moral develop- 

 ment in the school." 



So far as appears, however, the author's chief contribution to the 

 experimental department so ably championed consists in the further 

 elaboration of a so-called "dynamogenic method," that is, a meth- 

 od whose results shall be in terms of the most fundamental motor re- 

 actions of the infant. The hand movements are, of course, the most 

 satisfactory. ' * The facts that the most motile organs have acutest 



