THE NATURE OF THE SOUL 107 



rational pedagogy must have at an early date set 

 itself the task of the theoretical study of the gradual 

 development and formative capacity of the young mind 

 that was committed to it for education and formation. 

 Most pedagogues, however, were idealistic or dualistic 

 philosophers, and so they went to work with all the 

 prejudices of the spiritualistic psychology. It is only 

 in the last few decades that this dogmatic tendency 

 has been largely superseded even in the school by 

 scientific methods ; we now find a greater concern to 

 apply the chief laws of evolution even in the discus- 

 sion of the soul of the child. The raw material of 

 the child's soul is already qualitatively determined by 

 heredity from parents and ancestors ; education has 

 the noble task of bringing it to a perfect maturity by 

 intellectual instruction and moral training — that is, by 

 adaptation. Wilhelm Preyer was the first to lay the 

 foundation of our knowledge of the early psychic 

 development in his interesting work on The Mind of 

 the Child. Much is still to be done in the study of the 

 later stages and metamorphoses of the individual 

 soul, and once more the correct, critical application 

 of the biogenetic law is proving a guiding star to the 

 scientific mind. 



A new and fertile epoch of higher development 

 dawned for psychology and all other biological sciences 

 when Charles Darwin applied the principles of evolu- 

 tion to them forty years ago. The seventh chapter of 

 his epoch making work on The Origin of Species is 

 devoted to instinct. It contains the valuable proof 

 that the instincts of animals are subject, like all other 

 vital processes, to the general laws f historic develop- 

 ment. The special instincts of particular species 

 were formed by adaptation, and the modifications thus 



