THE RECAPITULATION THEORY 

 AND HUMAN INFANCY 



CHAPTER I 



INTRODUCTION 



The strong interest in its biological and anthropological set- 

 ting which attended the beginnings of the systematic study 

 of childhood in this country has somewhat abated. Among 

 other things practical considerations have drawn attention 

 away to urgent matters of institutional management, while 

 newer and more exact methods, borrowed from the nearby 

 sciences, have been enthusiastically resorted to in the hope 

 of a more immediately serviceable knowledge of childhood 

 than any search into its history could reasonably be expected 

 to yield. 



Doubtless this change of emphasis is a wholesome one. Ed- 

 ucation has still to find its most advantageous methods, if 

 indeed it has not yet to delimit its field. It is only right, then, 

 that all the methods which have done excellent work in the 

 sciences should be tested and evaluated for their usefulness 

 in its service. It would be a mistake, however, to regard this 

 departure from biology and anthropology as a final one, and 

 to conclude that education has nothing to learn from these 

 sources. Man's animal heritage is too intimate a part of him, 

 and his historical career too significant of his make-up, ever 

 to justify a neglect of these things on the part of those who 

 propose to mould his present condition and in some measure 

 to direct his future. 



It may be, too, that some sense of disappointment has figured 

 in this willingness of students of childhood to turn in new- 

 directions. Fruitful as it was in suggestion, the older genetic 

 line of approach could not, in the nature of the case, lead to 



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