SECTION C 

 COMPARATIVE AND GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY 



(Hatt 6, September 24, 10 a. m.) 



CHAIRMAN: PROFESSOR EDMUND CLARK SANFORD, Clark University, Worcester, 



Mass. 

 SPEAKERS: PRINCIPAL C. LLOYD MORGAN, University College, Bristol. 



PROFESSOR MARY WHITON CALKINS, Wellesley College. 

 SECRETARY: DR. R. M. YERKES, Harvard University. 



THE Chairman of the Section of Comparative and Genetic Psych- 

 ology was Professor Edmund Clark Sanford, of Clark University. 

 In opening the Section the Chairman stated that the field of the 

 Section was indeed no narrow one. 



" We have nothing less than the full breadth of existing mental 

 phenomena from man to micro-organisms, and the whole history 

 of them onward from their first beginnings in the universe and 

 in the individual. This immensity is, for the most part, obscure 

 enough, but light has begun to dawn at two adjacent spots: in 

 the study of mind in animals, and of the growth of it in the human 

 child; and these areas have already overlapped a little in the study 

 of animal infants. 



" Progress at the first of these points has been, until yesterday, 

 one might almost say, of all things the slowest. From the begin- 

 ning of time there has extended in an almost unbroken stretch 

 what may in all literalness be called a mythic period, a period 

 when animal psychology consisted for most people in simply im- 

 agining, with a variable discount, how they themselves would 

 think and feel if they were in the animals' place, and, for certain 

 philosophers, in the opinion that animals were pure automata. 

 Though this mythic period has not passed even yet for many who 

 busy themselves with the doings of animals, but remains as a 

 survival, another day has dawned, a day of experiments and co- 

 operating workers, a day of science in earnest. And the progress 

 at the second focus had been by no means rapid till the genius of 

 Preyer made clear how one might study children scientifically, 

 and proved that it could be done, by doing it. Since then it has 

 spread in proportion to its natural fascination and importance. 



"To the interrelations of these focal points of knowledge with 

 other sciences, and to the problems which lie adjacent to them, we 

 are, according to the plans of the General Committee, to give our 



