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SCIENC 



LEntered at the Posi-Office of New York, N.Y., as Second-Class Matter.J 



A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF ALL THE ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



Eighth Yeae. 

 Vol. XVI. No. 413. 



NEW YORK, December 26, 1890. 



Single Copies, Ten Cents. 

 |3.50 Per Year, in Advance. 



INFANT PSYCHOLOGY. 



The study of psychology has had so remarkable a devel- 

 opment in recent years, and the standpoint from which it 

 is now approached is so unliije the point of view of older 

 writers on mental philosophy, that the several departments 

 which it now comprises stand in need of separate introduc- 

 lions; and not only are such introductions necessary for 

 ])urposes of exposition, but their apologetic function, though 

 reduced to a minimum, is still real. The expression " nurse- 

 ry psycliologist " no doubt means what its author intended 

 it to mean to some others than himself; and it is desirable 

 that it should be understood by the educated public as a 

 badge of honorable service rather than as a phrase of dispar- 

 agement and discredit. 



No doubt we owe to the rise of the evolution idea some- 

 thing at least of the benefit brought about by what we may 

 call the psychological renaissance of the last twenty-five or 

 thirty years. The breadth of the current conception of 

 psychology is certainly in harmony with the conceptions 

 long ago current in other departments of scientific research; 

 but there is a phase of this broadening of psychological in- 

 quiry strikingly brought out only when interpreted in the 

 light of evolution doctrine. This is what we may call the 

 genetic phase, the growth phase. The older idea of the soul 

 was of a fixed substance, with fixed attributes. Knowledge 

 of the soul was immediate in consciousness, and adequate; 

 at least, as adequate as such knowledge could be made. The 

 mind was best understood where best or most fully mani- 

 fested. 



Under such a conception, the man was father of the child. 

 What the adult consciousness discovers in itself is true, and 

 wherein the child lacks it falls short of the true stature of 

 soul life. We must therefore, if we take account of the 

 child-mind at all, interpret it up to the revelations of the 

 man-mind. If the adult consciousness shows the presence 

 of principles not observable in the child consciousness, we 

 must suppose, nevertheless, that they are really present in 

 the child consciousness beyond the reach of our observation. 

 The old argument was this, — and it is not too old to be found 

 in the metaphysics of to-day, — consciousness reveals certain 

 great ideas as simple and original: consequently they must 

 be so. If you do not find them in the child-mind, then you 

 must wait for the child-mind to grow. 



The genetic idea reverses all this. Instead of a fixed sub- 

 stance, we have the conception of a growing, developing 

 activity. Instead of beginning with the most elaborate ex^- 

 hibition of this growth and development, we shall find most 

 instruction in the simplest activity that is at the same time 



the same activity. Development is a process of involution 

 as well as of evolution, and the elements are hidden under 

 the forms of complexity which they build up. Are there 

 principles in the adult consciousness which do not appear in 

 the child consciousness 8 Then the adult consciousness must, 

 if possible, be interpreted down to the child consciousness. 



Now that this genetic conception has arrived, it is aston- 

 ishing that it did not arrive sooner. The difference between 

 description and explanation is as old as science itself. What 

 chemist long remained satisfied with a description of the 

 substances found in nature ? He was no investigator at all, 

 and his science was not born until he became an analyst. 

 The student of philology is not content with a description, 

 a grammar, of spoken languages: he desiderates their reduc- 

 tion to common vocal elements. But the mental-scientist 

 has called such description science, even when he has had 

 examples of nature's own furnishing around him which 

 would have confirmed or denied the results of mental analy- 

 sis. 



The advantages which we look to infant psychology to 

 furnish are covered by this need of analysis; and the reason 

 that the needed analysis is found here, is that the mind, like 

 all other natural things, grows. This general statement may 

 be put into concrete form under several points, which divide 

 this branch of general psychology from others now recog- 

 nized.^ 



]. In the first place, the phenomena of the infant con- 

 sciousness are simple as opposed to reflective; that is, they 

 are the child's presentations or memories simply, not his own 

 observations of them. In the adult consciousness the dis- 

 turbing influences of inner observation is a matter of notori- 

 ous moment. It is impossible for me to know exactly what 

 I feel, for the apprehending of it through the attention alters 

 its character. My volition also is a complex thing of 

 alternatives, one of which is my personal pride and self-con- 

 scious egotism. But the child's emotion is as spontaneous as 

 a spring The effects of it in the mental life come out in 

 action, pure and uninfluenced by calculation and duplicity 

 and adult reserve. There is around every one of us a web 

 of convention and prejudice of our own making. Not only 

 do we reflect the social formalities of our environment, and 

 thus lose the distinguishing spontaneities of childhood, be- 

 coming in so far all coins of the same mint, but each one of 

 us builds up his own little world of seclusion and formality 

 with himself. We are subject not only to idols of the forum, 

 but to idols also of the den. 



The child, on the contrary, has not learned his own im- 



' Kace, animal, abuormal psycliology, etc. 



