788 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 
The province of Psychology is to interpret and, as far as 
possible, to explain the results of direct observation on the 
mind of the child; and anyone who would succeed in this 
branch of science must be gifted not only with a power of 
shrewd and accurate observation, but with a certain wide 
sympathy of mind, which will enable him for the time being 
to merge his individuality into that of the child. His power 
of imagination and of accurate memory must be of no mean 
order. Only people thus gifted can hope ever to obtain a 
clear insight into the laws which form the basis of the 
mental development of the normal child, and by means 
of which alone we can expect to reduce to a system 
what has up to now been confused and illogical. Then we 
shall be able to teach, not merely instruct; to develop har- 
moniously every faculty of the child, not merely cram his 
head with a mass of facts, ‘‘ heaped up huge, and undigested 
like the chaos Ovid sings.” Slowly but surely the resuits of 
such investigations are being collected, and will form a valu- 
able legacy for the teachers of the future. In two books 
recently published, we have the records of a patient and 
minute observation of the early days of a child’s life; 
and, although we cannot generalise from two instances, 
it is impossible to doubt that in the development of all 
children there is a close correspondence in the order of 
events. [I am indebted for the illustrations with which 
T have endeavoured to relieve the tedium of this paper to 
an interesting and valuable treatise on The Child by W. B. 
Drummond.] Comparing the early behaviour of the two 
children referred to above, we find that both babies first 
noticed their reflection in the mirror in the 17th week, and 
both laughed at it in the same week; both looked at an 
image, and then turned to find the real object in the 28th 
week ; while both licked the image in the 61st week. One 
made grimaces at his own image in the 67th week, the other 
in the 62nd week. There are other striking similarities in 
the early mental condition of the child, to which Dr. Stanley 
Hall refers in a valuable treatise read in 1897 before the 
Illinois Society for Child-Study. “We have,” he says, “ 223 
cases, which show that children during their first year of 
life have an instinctive fear of fur. It is not because they 
see it, but because they touch it. . . . Another common 
cause of fear is big eyes. Making big eyes at children 
frightens them. Why should children be afraid of big eyes, 
of an owl, for instance? Another terror to a young child is 
a great display of teeth. If the teeth are false, and show 
a slight motion, the fear is more manifest. How can we 
