552 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 379. 



having diligently and industriously followed 

 the path shown by the French master, of hav- 

 ing seized his original intuition and carried 

 it into his own psychological field as a vivify- 

 ing ferment of research. An important con- 

 tribution of Professor Baldwin to knowledge 

 is the genetic study of imitation as the typical 

 form of organic and mental accommodation 

 to environment, as the method through which 

 the mental development of the individual is 

 accomplished. But, beyond this distinctly 

 psj'chological work, mainly embodied in his 

 volume on 'Mental Development in the Child 

 and the Race,' Professor Baldwin has never 

 brought to light any fact in the line of social 

 evolution that had not been previously inti- 

 mated or actually mentioned by Tarde. His 

 'Social and Ethical Interpretations' is un- 

 doubtedly an extremely interesting work. But, 

 apart from the 'Dialectic of Personal Growth' 

 which is practically a chapter belonging to 

 the earlier volume, the remainder of the book 

 is substantially a transcription of Tarde in 

 another key. This can be conclusively shown 

 by actual comparison of certain chapters and 

 passages of Professor Baldwin's book with 

 Tarde's 'Les Lois de I'lmitation' and, es- 

 pecially, 'La Logique Sociale.' Even the dis- 

 tinction between the matter or content of so- 

 cial organization and its functional method 

 or process, so much emphasized by Professor 

 Baldwin, is his own only in so far as the 

 scholastic turn of the formula is concerned. 

 Apart from the Aristotelian terminology 

 adopted by Baldwin, the distinction had been 

 clearly made by Tarde long ago. We must 

 say, furthermore, that, while Professor Bald- 

 win limits the social matter to thoughts or in- 

 tellectual states — a conception justly criticized 

 by Professor Giddings as insufficient and in- 

 complete, Tarde showed the contents of social 

 organization to be not only thoiights, but feel- 

 ings — ' croyances ei desirs' — not thought 

 merely nor feeling merely, but a combination 

 of the two, a view which, as Professor Gid- 

 dings remarks, is 'most consistent both with 

 evolutionary hypotheses and with psycholog- 

 ical conclusions' ('Democracy and Empire,' 

 p. 39). This, of course, is not intended to 

 imderrate in any way the value of Professor 



Baldwin's work. The advancement of science 

 is not only promoted by the discovery of new 

 facts, but also by the verification and propa- 

 gation of other men's discoveries. Professor 

 Baldwin belongs to the latter class of scien- 

 tists. His book on 'Social Interpretations,' 

 while bringing forward no new facts, has just 

 the great merit of having helped to propagate 

 the substance of Tarde's doctrines. This work 

 of vulgarization has been so thorough and 

 painstaking as to justify the statement that 

 Professor Baldwin's book is one of the most 

 important contributions of American thought 

 to the advancement of social science. 



Since, however. Professor Baldwin has no 

 claim to any discovery in the field of sociol- 

 ogy, it becomes interesting to see how he can 

 prove that Professor Giddings — a sociologist 

 — has 'poached' upon his preserves. 



The evidence brought forward by Professor 

 Baldwin in support of his charge of dishonesty 

 against Professor Giddings consists: 



1. Of a reference to Professor Small's re- 

 view of Giddings' 'Elements.' This is ruled 

 out because Professor Small himself has dis- 

 tinctly repudiated the interpretation placed 

 upon his word 'poaching,' and moreover be- 

 cause in the passage of his review quoted by 

 Baldwin, Professor Small explicitly acknowl- 

 edges that Baldwin's 'ejective stage' is one 

 thing and Giddings' 'ejective interpretation' 

 is another thing. In the face of Professor 

 Small's statement, the whole question becomes 

 one of due credit rendered for the term and 

 the concept 'eject.' These, as all well-in- 

 formed students of psychology know, origin- 

 ated, not with Professor Baldwin, but with the 

 lamented William Kingdon Clifford, and to 

 Clifford, as shown by Professor Giddings' es- 

 say on 'The Psychology of Society,' credit was 

 given in the most explicit manner. 



2. Of a specific fact mentioned in the fol- 

 lowing passage of his article (p. 69, foot- 

 note) : 



"To cite a case, besides those pointed out 

 by Professor Small * * * Appendix D in my 

 book may be referred to as putting in my way 

 certain things that Professor Giddings puts 

 in his own way in the Science article. Even 

 certain of my terms (as Professor Caldwell 



