Theories of Development 233 



fickle-minded, easily moved by feelings, and appar- 

 ently guided more by instinct than by reason; (2) chil- 

 dren are often untruthful as savages are; (3) they may 

 steal as savages do ; (4) they do not know how to value 

 property or how to take care of it; (5) they are apt to 

 be vulgar, disobedient, and pugnacious as savages are; 

 (6) they pass through a dreamy period of mental 

 evolution corresponding to that of the Arab tending 

 his herds and brooding vaguely over the causes of 

 things; (7) they have a period of awakening when 

 they show strong resemblances to those emotional 

 religious states of primitive people; (8) they seem to 

 have, (a) their age of faith, (6) their age of scepticism, 

 (c) their metaphysical stage, when even the ultimate 

 problems of existence do not escape their retiring and 

 introspective minds; (9) and, finally, they have their 

 age of reason and exact observation of phenomena. 

 It has often been remarked, also, that just as nations 

 and races have their period of maximum intellectual 

 life, followed by senile degeneration and decay, so, 

 too, does the individual pass into his second childhood. 

 This recapitulation theory has been adopted by 

 the new pedagogy as one of its most fundamental 

 postulates. It certainly explains many things about 

 the developing individual which could be compre- 

 hended in no other way. It is not necessary to sup- 

 pose that the recapitulation is absolutely complete. It 

 is not so in embryological development, and need not 

 be so in these culture periods of the individual's history. 



VI. Intellectual Development. 



Stages in the Development of Thought. Man's eco- 

 nomic development is very closely associated with his 

 intellectual development; and the economic stages ' 

 enumerated in Part I, Section II, are a fair index of 

 corresponding intellectual stages. For man's activi- 

 ties are determined by natural conditions on the one 



