Human Infancy and the Recapitulation Theory 93 



traits characteristic of the human species in general which have 

 been differently affected by the contingencies of historical 

 development. The civilized societies work differently with the 

 same human nature and by contrast the fundamental inborn 

 traits seem ancestral when they are only less trained. Other 

 cases rest upon analogies due to a confusion of inborn and ac- 

 quired elements in mental organization. Assertions of a phylo- 

 genetic rehearsal in the order of appearance of traits have been 

 made without empirical warrant. In the interests and activi- 

 ties which more especially characterize development as such, 

 the preparatory nature of immaturity is obvious, and this is 

 well illustrated in the group of cases which have had greatest 

 emphasis in connection with mental recapitulation. In the 

 matter of intelligence certain general considerations, as well as a 

 considerable amount of inductive study, give a fair presumption 

 of some degree of ontogenetic-phylogenetic correspondence in 

 this region. 



4. Cultural Recapitulation. 



Cultural recapitulation, or the theory of culture epochs, has 

 had a curious status in educational literature. While its sep- 

 arate origin has been acknowledged, and its integrity as a sub- 

 ject of discourse has been maintained by an independent title, 

 as a matter of practise the discussion of biological recapitula- 

 tion has encroached upon its territory with impunity and ap- 

 parently without full knowledge of what it was doing. For it 

 is clear that any application of biological recapitulation to men- 

 tal development as a whole deals directly with the question of 

 how its cultural acquisitions are assumed, whether in the order 

 followed by the race in the historical development of its cultural 

 products, or in some other way. And it is a commonplace 

 of the literature of recapitulation based upon the biological 

 analogy that the transition from barbarism to civilization con- 

 cludes the phylogenetic sequence. 



Now the doctrine of biological recapitulation had reference 

 to ancestral species. By the statement that ontogeny re- 

 hearses phylogeny was meant that ontogeny repeats the suc- 

 cession of steps in the biological evolution of ancestors. This 

 was due to the force of heredity operating in descent despite 

 the modifications which marked the successive stages. But 

 the transition from primitive to civilized man, according to pre- 



