136 THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE. 



problem ; since their avocation compelled them to 

 assist and supervise the formation of the psychic 

 activity in the child, they were bound to take a 

 theoretical interest, also, in the psychogenetic facts 

 that came under their notice. However, these teachers, 

 for the most part, both in recent and in earlier times, 

 were dominated by the current dualistic psychology — 

 in so far as they reflected at all ; and they were totally 

 ignorant of the important facts of comparative psy- 

 chology, and unacquainted with the structure and 

 function of the brain. Moreover, their observations 

 only extended to children in their school-days, or in 

 the years immediately preceding. The remarkable 

 phenomena which the individual psychogeny of the 

 child offers in its earliest years, and which are the joy 

 and admiration of all thoughtful parents, were scarcely 

 ever made the subject of serious scientific research. 

 Wilhelm Preyer was the pioneer of this study in his 

 interesting work on The Mind of the Child (1881). 

 To obtain a perfectly clear knowledge of the matter, 

 however, we must go further back still ; we must 

 commence at the first appearance of the soul in the 

 impregnated ovum. 



The origin of the human individual — body and soul 

 — was still wrapped in complete mystery at the 

 beginning of the nineteenth century. Caspar Friedrich 

 Wolff had, it is true, discovered the true character of 

 embryonic development in 1759, in his theoria 

 generationis, and proved with the confidence of a 

 critical observer that there is a true epigenesis — i.e., a 

 series of very remarkable formative processes — in the 

 evolution of the foetus from the simple ovum. But 

 the physiologists of the time, with the famous Albert 

 Haller at their head, flatly refused to entertain these 



