556 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VIII. No. 199. 



else ; and The Development of the Child* by 

 Dr. Oppeuheim will be gladly welcomed not 

 alone for its own worth, but also as prac- 

 tically initiating a movement which should 

 rapidly increase in breadth and momentum. 

 Dr. Oppenheim is evidently a physician who 

 has given attention not only to matters physical, 

 but in an important manner to things spiritual. 

 His practice being largely in a children's hos- 

 pital, he has had unusual opportunities for 

 making observations upon the topics which he 

 discusses in his book. His chapter upon Facts 

 in the Comparative Development of the Child 

 is exceedingly valuable, since it strongly em- 

 phasizes a thought which is slowly getting es- 

 tablished in people's minds — that the child is in 

 many essential particulars different from the 

 adult, and that growth consists, in a measure at 

 any rate, in a series of transformations or meta- 

 morphoses which if completed finally culminate 

 in a fully formed man or woman. While the 

 author has comparatively little to say respect- 

 ing changes which are known to occur in brain 

 growth, yet it is reasonable to infer that this 

 organ, like the others of the body, is subject to 

 metamorphic processes in its progress toward 

 maturity. This chapter illustrates a sort of in- 

 vestigation which it is hoped will receive the at- 

 tention of scientists more fully in the future — 

 the sequence in the ontogeny of the brain. It 

 is encouraging to observe that physiologists 

 like Wesley Mills are realizing the importance 

 of such researches and are already making 

 some valuable contributions thereto. 



The chapter upon the Comparative Impor- 

 tance of Heredity and Environment is especially 

 valuable alike for science and for education. 

 The key-note of the chapter seems to be that the 

 particular line of mental development occurring 

 in the individual is determined more largely by 

 the factor of environment than by anything 

 else. The child, doubtless, brings into life a pre- 

 disposition in certain directions due to heredity, 

 but unless the elements in the environment 

 favor the nutrition of special embryonic powers 

 these will soon atrophy. Heredity of mental at- 

 tributes is not so absolute and universal a thing 

 as we have been thinking, says the author ; and 



*Oppentieim: The Development of the Child. New 

 York, D. Appleton & Co. 



the reader, even though he has formed an 

 opinion beforehand, will, when he completes 

 the chapter, be inclined to agree to the proposi- 

 tion, in a measure at least. Abundant facts are 

 adduced to show that adequate nutrition is the 

 great determining principle in the development 

 alike of body and brain. The importance of this 

 for education can scarcely be overestimated. 

 Aside from its value for mental hygiene it shows 

 that that element in personality which receives 

 the best nourishment from the environment will 

 be apt to become predominant — an important 

 principle in determining educational values. 



But when the reader reaches the discussion 

 of The Place of the Primary School in the 

 Development of the Child he should be pre- 

 pared for a very pessimistic view of the present 

 situation in the world. It is really oppressive 

 to find that practically everything that is is 

 wrong. The primary school as it exists has 

 nothing to commend it ; it violates nearly all, 

 if not all, the principles of normal growth in 

 childhood, because it curtails freedom, spon- 

 taneity, and enforces concentration and co- 

 ordination of bodily and mental powers before 

 nature is ready for such things. One certainly 

 cannot but endorse most heartily the conten- 

 tion of the author for greater freedom to be 

 granted the child in all his school work. But 

 it is hard to believe that everything we have 

 been doing is bad. It is evident that Dr. Op- 

 penheim has not in this chapter written with 

 the same scientific care and caution that he has 

 elsewhere. If he is right, as he will be inter- 

 preted by those who read him, the only re- 

 course is in a return to nature wherein the 

 order, the system, the method of education 

 which has grown up in the development of the 

 race will be obliterated, and we shall be back 

 again to an orderless and systemless condition, 

 a kind of neo-Rousseauism. But has not order 

 and method in education been evolved as an 

 essential element of progress in the race ? And 

 while undoubtedly formalism has been over- 

 emphasized, yet is there not as great danger in 

 lapsing back too far in the other direction ? 



The same criticism may be made of Dr. 

 Oppenheim's writing here that has been made 

 elsewhere in this article — the hyperbole seems 

 to be too much in evidence. An extract will 



