98 The Recapitulation Theory and Human Infancy 



are now especially favorable to its functioning, it need not be 

 surprising if children should exhibit achievements that were 

 characteristic of adult societies in past times. For adults in 

 these societies were, on the present assumption, in a state of 

 arrest. From childhood they had had the capacity for advanc- 

 ing beyond the point of their actual adult attainments, but their 

 advance was prevented by the limitations of their cultural 

 environment. To illustrate, if in a genetic sequence symbolized 

 by the series a, b, c, d, e, f, childhood or youth has the inherent 

 capacity for rising to stage d, and does so in the highly favor- 

 able environment of civilized societies, it is easily conceivable 

 that adults in historical times, laboriously evolving their culture 

 independently, should remain life-long at points b or c. This 

 is no more than the equivalent of the thought that primitive 

 and historical men were relatively childlike, a familiar and wide- 

 spread idea among students of early cultural expressions. From 

 this it would follow that cultural recapitulation need not be 

 expected in any regions where organic differences between 

 children and adults exist. If certain branches , of culture are 

 expressive of characteristically adolescent or mature attitudes 

 it will be idle to search for illustrations of their genetic rehearsal 

 in earlier periods. And since cultural recapitulation has to do 

 with acquisitions and processes of acquiring we must limit our 

 search for such recapitulations to the course of development 

 taken after the basic instinctive structures have begun their 

 functioning, at whatever period of growth this may be. 



It is perhaps not possible as yet to characterize the disting- 

 uishable lines of growth within the complex field of cultural 

 acquisition. They are broadly represented by taste, moral 

 and social character, motor skill, and ideas, but these obviously 

 overlap. An adequate analysis of the general principles of 

 mental development will doubtless deal with much finer cate- 

 gories. It is worthy of notice that those who have done most 

 with the cultural recapitulation hypothesis have worked more 

 particularly in the field of thought and it is not impossible that 

 reasons may be found for regarding the plasticity represented by 

 thought and ideas as being available so early in life as to make 

 possible a genuine comparison of childish and historical pro- 

 cesses. And since ideas are most intimately related with every 

 aspect of cultural acquisition the possibility may be extended in 

 some degree to motor, moral, and aesthetic development. 



