April 21, 1893.J 



SCIENCE. 



213 



a broad culture none the less deep because of its breadth, even if 

 he has had time for the analysis of but one specimen, while the 

 other almost inevitably results in confining his labors and his at- 

 tainments within narrow limits. Whenever it can be done, a 

 determination of any sort should be made by two processes as 

 nearly independent of each other as possible. For example, the 

 radius of curvature of a lens might be determined by comparing 

 the size of an object, as a scale, with that of its image formed by 

 reflection from the lens surface; and it might be calculated from 

 spherometer measurements. While there are some points in 

 physics which the progressive method would reach and the 

 method of analysis miss, the latter would the more readily lend 

 itself to such twofold determinations. 



There are operations such as the calibration of a thermometer, 

 determining a rate of vibration, adjusting special forms of appar- 

 atus and determining their constants, etc. , that cannot be classi- 

 fied in any simple manner. An attempt to adhere strictly to any 

 clearly defined method throughout the whole course of physics 

 would be unwise and unprofitable. The recognition of a method 

 and of its legitimate limits, however, cannot fail to be of service 

 to a judicious instructor. The limitations of the laboratories 

 themselves in many cases compel a departure from any method 

 and cause the work to degenerate into an unsystematic perform- 

 ing of experiments. It must be admitted, too, that such is the 

 character of the work in some instances where the equipment is 

 very complete. 



A NEW METHOD OF CHILD STUDY. 



BY J. MARK BALDWIN, TORONTO, CANADA. 



The current discussions of the more elementary mental pro- 

 cesses show that we lack clearness in our conceptions of the 

 earlier stages of mental life. . This is evident enough to call out 

 frequent appeals for " scientific " child study. The word "scien- 

 tific " is all right, as far as it goes; but as soon as we come to 

 ask what constitutes scientific child study, and why it is that we 

 have so little of it, we find no clear answer, and we go on as be- 

 fore accepting the same anecdotes of fond mothers and repeat- 

 ing the inane observations of Egger and Max Miiller. 



Of course there are only two ways of studying a child, as of 

 studying any other object — observation and experiment. But 

 who can observe, and who can experiment? Who can look 

 through a telescope and "observe" a new satalite? Only 

 a skillful astronomer. Who can hear a patient's hesitating 

 speech and " observe " aphasia ? Only a neurologist. Observa- 

 tion means the acutest exercise of the discriminating faculty 

 of the scientific specialist. And yet most of the observations 

 which we have in this field weie made by girls who, before 

 their marriage, knew less about the human body than they did 

 about the moon or a wild flower (having got this latter informa- 

 tion from Steele's "Thirteen Weeks") or by a father who sees 

 his child when the boy is dressed up, for an hour a day, and who 

 has never slept in the same room with him in his life ; by people 

 who never heard the distinction between reflex and voluntary 

 action, or that between nervous adaptation and conscious selec- 

 tion. Only the psychologist can "observe" the child, and be 

 must be so saturated with his information and his theories that 

 the conduct of the child becomes instinct with meaning for 

 mind and body. 



And as for " experiment, " greater still is the need. Many a 

 thing a child is said to do— a little judicious experimenting— a 

 little arrangement of the essential requirements of the act in 

 question — shows it is altogether incapable of doing. But to do 

 this we must have our theories, and have our critical moulds ar- 

 ranged beforehand. That most vicious and Philistine attempt 

 in some quarters to put science in the straight- jacket of barren 

 observation, to shutout the life-blood of all science — speculative 

 advance into the secrets of things — this ultra positivistic cry has 

 come here as everywhere else, and put a ban upon theory. On 

 the contrary give us theories, theories, always theories ! Let 

 every man who has a theory pronounce his theory ! This is just 

 the difference between the mother and the psychologist — she has 

 no theories, he has. She may bring up a family of a dozen and 



not be able to make a single thrustworthy observation : he may 

 be able from one sound of one yearling to confirm theories of 

 the neurologist and educator, which are momentous for the 

 future training and welfare of the child. 



In the matter of experimenting with children, therefore, our 

 theories must guide our work — guide it into channels which are 

 safe for the growth of the child, stimulating to his powers, defin- 

 ite and enlightening in the outcome. All this has been largely 

 lacking, I think, so far, both in scientific psychology and in ap- 

 plied pedagogy. The implication of physiological and mental 

 is so close in infancy, the mere animal can do so much to ape 

 reason, and the rational is so helpless under the leading of in- 

 stince, impulse, and external necessity, that the task is exces- 

 sively difficult — to say nothing of the extreme delicacy and ten- 

 derness of the budding tendrils of the mind. Experiment? 

 Every time we send a child out of the home to the school, we 

 subject him to experiment of the most serious and alarming kind. 

 He goes into the hands of a teacher who is not only not wise 

 unto the child's salvation, but who is on the contrary a machine 

 for administering a single experiment, to an infinite variety of 

 children. It is perfectly certain that two in every three chil- 

 dren are irretrievably damaged in their mental and moral develop- 

 ment in the school ; but I am not at all sure that they would fare 

 any better if they stayed at home ! The children are experi- 

 mented with so much and so unwisely, anyhow, that it is possi- 

 ble that a little experiment, intentioi]ally guided by real insight 

 and psychological information, would do them good. 



With this preamble, I wish to call attention to a possible 

 method of experimenting with young children, which has not 

 been before noted to my knowledge. In endeavoring to bring 

 questions like the degree of memory, recognition, association, 

 etc., present in an infant to a practical test, considerable em- 

 barrassment has always been experienced in construing safely the 

 child's responses. Of course the only way a child's mind can be 

 studied is through its expression — facial, lingual, vocal, muscu- 

 lar; and the first question, i.e.. What did the infant do? must be 

 followed by a second, i.e.. What did his doing that mean? And 

 the second question is, as I have said, the harder question, and 

 theone which requires more knowledge and insight. Itisevident, 

 on the surface, that the farther away we get in the child's life 

 from simple inherited or reflex responses, the more complicated 

 do the responsive processes become, and the greater becomes the 

 diflSculty of analysing them, and arriving at a true picture of 

 the real mental condition which lies back of them. 



To illustrate this confusion, I may cite about theone problem 

 which psychologists have attempted to solve by experiments on 

 children, i.e., the determination of the order of rise of the child's 

 perception of the different spectral colors. Preyer starts the 

 series of experiments by showing a child various colors and re- 

 quiring the child to name them, the results being expressed in 

 percentages of true answers to the whole number. Now this ex- 

 periment involves no less than four difl'erent questions, and the 

 results give absolutely no clue to their analysis. It involves, 1, 

 the child's distinguishing different colors simultaneously dis- , 

 played before it (i.e., the complete development of the child's color 

 sensation apparatus) ; 2, the child's ability to recognize or iden- 

 tify a color after having seen it once ; 3, an association between 

 the child's color-seeing and word-hearing memories, by which 

 the name is brought up; 4, equally ready facility in the pro- 

 nunciation of the various color names which the child recog- 

 nizes: and there is the further embarrassment, that any such 

 process which involves association, is as varied as the lives of 

 children. The single fact that speech is acquired long after 

 objects and some colors are distinguished, shows that Preyer's 

 results are worthless as far as the problem of color perception is 

 concerned. 



That the fourth element pointed out above is a real source of 

 confusion is shown by the fact that children recognize many 

 words which they cannot pronounce readily. Binet, who repre- 

 sents the second phase in the development of this experimental 

 problem, realized this, and varied the conditions by naming a 

 color and then requiring the child to pick out the correspond in go 

 color. This gave resul ts different not only from Preyer's, but also 



