October 2, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



501 



ethnologist also finds in the child a summary of 

 the prehistoric development of the race. To 

 the psychologist the opportunities of escape 

 from the interwoven complexities of the adult 

 consciousness make this a promised land of 

 science. Yet the difficulty even with the refer- 

 ence to the outward phenomenon is very great ; 

 witness the difficulties in identifying the first 

 smile of the child, his first sign of recognition, 

 his first conscious attempt in any direction. 

 And, of course, the difficulty is still greater 

 when we come to interpret these movements 

 into their psychical equivalents. These diffi- 

 culties are so great that the author ' confesses 

 that in spite of some recently published highly 

 hopeful forecasts of what child-psychology is 

 going to do for us, I think we are a long way 

 off from a perfectly scientific account of it ;' 

 a remark to which no one will take exception, 

 if there is much emphasis upon the ' perfectly.' 



There are two qualities necessary for good 

 work. The first is the ' divining power,' sym- 

 pathetic insight, tact or fineness of spiritual in- 

 sight. This is required both for such rapport 

 ^th children as to establish the conditions for 

 natural, unconstrained exhibition of genuine 

 phenomena, and for interpretation. (Mr. Sully's 

 ■own work, I remark in passing, shows a very 

 u.nusual amount of such native divining tact 

 and personal sympathy). There is danger, 

 however, that the very liveliness of this touch 

 "with child-life will take off the edge from close, 

 ■objective, systematic study of the bare, cold 

 facts. Hence the second requirement, good 

 ■psychological training. Fathers, Mr. Sully 

 lihinks, are more apt to come short as regards 

 the first of these qualifications ; mothers as re- 

 gards the second. 



As concerns method in general most is to be 

 •expected from the prolonged observation of in- 

 dividual children such as is represented by the 

 work of Preyer and Miss Shinn. Mr. Sully's 

 remarks here are so much to the point as to 

 justify quotation in full. ' No fact is really 

 quite simple, and the reason why some facts 

 look so simple is that the observer does not in- 

 clude in his view all the connections of the oc- 

 currence which he is inspecting. * * * * It is 

 only when the whole fact is before us, in well- 

 defined contour, that we can begin to deal with 



its meaning.' And of course, this wholeness 

 of the fact presupposes knowledge of the indi- 

 vidual child, his environment, history, temper- 

 ament, etc. When we come to older children 

 this specific individual study may be supple- 

 mented by more general and statistical collec- 

 tions. 



All this seems to me well and judiciously 

 put. Mr. Sully's own work in the pages 

 which follow bears evidence throughout that he 

 realizes practically, as well as theoretically, the 

 limitations, the problems and the needs of 

 which he has been talking. Nevertheless, there 

 are reasons for holding that this book will be 

 to the psychologist, at least, rather ' raw mate- 

 rials to serve ' than a contribution to psychol- 

 ogy as such. 



It is possible to go at the study of the child 

 with the purpose of arranging the observed 

 phenomena under the customary rubrics of 

 psychology, laying emphasis upon extreme ex- 

 hibitions of principles which are discernible 

 only feebly or subtly in the adult, or upon the 

 phenomenon which mark departures from the 

 forms which are familiar in the adult conscious- 

 ness. Here, however, unconsciously, the adult 

 consciousness as already analyzed is taken as the 

 standard. Another method treats the child 

 consciousness as, if I may use the expression, 

 perfectly good consciousness on its own ac- 

 count, just as good consciousness as the adult. 

 The interest is wholly in the light which such 

 consciousness may throw upon psychical prin- 

 ciples in general. The aim is not to classify the 

 phenomena under principles already accepted, 

 but to reconstruct those principles from the 

 study of facts hitherto neglected. Mr. Sully's 

 actual procedure seems to me to adopt the first 

 named course. He rarely uses the new facts 

 to criticize and modify the customary classifica- 

 tions and explanations, but rather takes these 

 latter for granted and crowds the observations 

 under them — with some projecting edges. 



As an example, we may take his theoretical 

 treatment of imagination in childhood. After 

 making a good beginning by remarking that 

 "imagination in an active, constructive form 

 takes part in the very making of what we call 

 sense-experience," he goes on to give cases of 

 the personification of inanimate objects in per- 



