SCIENCE. 



[Vol. X. No. 253 



fluence of chivalry, Christianity, and individuahsm should have an- 

 ticipated the pressure which their occupation or exhaustion must 

 produce by emphasizing the moral, social, and legal rights of 

 woman, and thus confer upon society the power to exercise a 

 check upon the terrible consequences of over-population. Evolu- 

 tion seems to be creating motives and an environment that will 

 modify the effects of the most powerful of human instincts, and 

 just at a time that will prevent the pressure from being too abrupt- 

 ly imposed upon civilization. 



Conscious Motherhood : o?-. The Earliest Unfolding of the Child 

 in the Cradle, Nursery, and Kindergarten. By Emma Mar- 

 WEDEL. Chicago, Interstate Publ. Co. 8". 



The reviewer has a difficult choice to make with regard to the 

 proper mode of viewing such a book as this. He is tempted, in 

 the first place, to regard the book as a scientific contribution, and 

 finds the justification of such a method in the fact that the psycho- 

 logical development of infant mind is well on its way towards as- 

 suming the character of a scientific body of truths. Regarded as 

 such, no favorable notice can be passed upon it. It lacks through- 

 out a systematic and symmetrical exposition : it fails to distinguish 

 the important from the trivial, the scientifically established from the 

 popularly supposed : it uses new words where we have good tech- 

 nical words in their stead, eg., 'sensoric,' 'motoric,' 'peripheric,' 

 for ' sensory,' ' motor,' ' peripheral,' the German 'rinde' instead of 

 ' cortex,' and so on : it includes several rather serious blunders in 

 stating anatomical and physiological points, and shows the mark of 

 an ' atechnical ' hand. In this sense the contribution here made is 

 of no high order of merit, and adds little of value to our knowledge 

 of the subject. 



If, on the other hand, the reviewer asks himself the questions, 

 " What will be the practical effect of the book .' " " How does it 

 stand as a means of propagating sound doctrines not yet univer- 

 sally understood?" he has the pleasanter task of finding many 

 commendable doctrines emphatically expressed. The keynote of 

 the volume, as indicated in its title, is to arouse mothers to a proper 

 appreciation of their privileges and duties. Education begins in the 

 cradle : the child is not one being in its infancy and another when 

 it comes under school influence. There is a continuous psychical 

 development paralleled by a physical development, taking place in- 

 dependently of the technical ' instruction ' and based upon natural 

 laws. These laws are to be explicitly unfolded, and are to form 

 the guiding spirit under which the child is to be viewed and its true 

 education directed ; to reveal the all-important truth of the supreme 

 value of these early years of life when habits far deeper than the 

 artificial learning of later years are laid down, when the most diffi- 

 cult actions of life are learned, when the child is passing with 

 lightning speed through the history of the race, epitomizing the 

 characteristics of remote ancestors as well as of its parents. The 

 duty of this sphere of education falls upon mothers : it is to be res- 

 cued from the hap-hazard spirit in which it is cultivated, to be 

 made a serious occupation and not a dilettanti toy, to be recog- 

 nized as the true mission of ' conscious motherhood.' The advance- 

 ment of woman is to consist in the increase in dignity and impor- 

 tance of the duties which have in all ages fallen to her share. The 

 appeal is a noble one ; and while not always made with a full view 

 of the many-sidedness of the problem involved, is presented in a 

 way likely to attract the audience to which it specially addresses 

 itself. 



The author is the head of a kindergarten in San Francisco, and 

 an enthusiastic follower of Froebel, taking from him some of his 

 peculiar symbolism and mystic imagery. Her other altar is erected 

 to Professor Preyer, as the representative of the modern scientific 

 study of child-mind ; and from these two lines of interest she con- 

 fidently awaits the time when the relation of mother and child will 

 be practically appreciated in all its fulness, grandeur, and impor- 

 tance. The offshoot which the kindergarten has sent off from the 

 technical education will spread down to the home, there to plant 

 the real root of a natural education. Her next greatest interest is 

 in developing the technical side of kindergarten work ; she here 

 falls into the common error of overestimating the importance of 

 doing things in just such and such a way to the neglect of the im- 

 portance of having them done in any of half a dozen ways : her 



devices are plausible, but worthless if made a ritual. What is 

 wanted is a good teacher with a talent for adapting all methods. 



So much for the original portion of the book. The second part 

 is devoted to a ristimi of the work of Preyer on child-mind. The 

 work of selecting the abstracts and putting them into good English 

 is fairiy well done. Here and there the real important point is 

 omitted, and much detail is found in its place; and the physiological 

 portion is rarely accurately set forth. But the object of the transla- 

 tion is to arouse an interest in the observation of children, and in 

 this good cause the book is a desirable aid. 



JDie Welt in ihren Spiegehmgen U7iter deni Wandel des Volker- 

 gedankens. Von A. Bastian. Berlin, Mittler. 8°. 



In the present publication the author sets forth his ideas of the 

 principles on which the science of ethnology must be founded. He 

 considers ethnology the only sound basis of psychology. His ar- 

 guments are these. The inductive method of science as developed 

 in our century is founded on comparison. If psychology is to attain 

 the same scientific character which the natural sciences have 

 reached, the same methods must be applied. If, however, psychol- 

 ogy' is exclusively based on the facts given by our self-conscious- 

 ness, it is impossible to apply this comparative method, as only a 

 single phenomenon — our own psyche — is given. The first thing 

 to be done, therefore, is to establish sound methods of psychology. 

 The connection between physical and psychical phenomena must 

 be studied by the science pf psychophysics. The study of psychi- 

 cal phenomena can only be begun after an exhaustive knowledge 

 of such phenomena has been gained : therefore it is necessary to 

 know all ideas that exist, or have existed, in any people, at any 

 time. These must form the material for psychical researches. He 

 calls this method the ' statistics of ideas.' Bastian has emphasized 

 these theories in all his recent publications, and his point' of view is 

 one of eminent importance.. It cannot be said too frequently that 

 our reasoning is not an absolutely logical one, but that it is influ- 

 enced by the reasoning of our predecessors and by our historical 

 environment : therefore our conclusions and theories, particularly 

 when referring to our own mind, which itself is affected by the 

 same influences to which our reasoning is subject, cannot be but 

 fallacious. In order to give such conclusions a sound basis, it is 

 absolutely necessary to study the human mind in its various histori- 

 cal, and, speaking more generally, ethnic environments. By apply- 

 ing this method, the object to be studied is freed from the influences 

 that govern the mind of the student. 



There are two objects of ethnological studies. The one is to 

 trace an idea in its origin and growth and in its offshoots ; but, 

 after this has been done, the problem remains to be solved, what 

 are the psychical laws that govern the growth of ideas in the mind 

 that holds them .' We may know the whole history of an idea, still 

 we do not know why this idea is taken up by a certain people and 

 developed in a certain way, or why similar ideas are found in 

 regions widely apart. It is this branch of ethnology which Bastian 

 has in view when he again and again emphasizes the absolute 

 necessity of collecting what can be collected. The individuality of 

 uncivilized nations is disappearing so rapidly that we may expect it 

 to die out ere long. For this branch of ethnology particularly, all 

 phenomena of the life of uncivilized nations are of the highest im- 

 portance, and therefore their study must be carried on vigorously. 



Bastian calls the present volume ' Prolegomena to the Statistics 

 of Ideas.' We find in it a vast amount of material referring to the 

 ideas of uncivilized races, and of scientific men of various epochs, 

 on life and death, on the origin of the world, and on its end. It is 

 accompanied by a collection of pictures illustrating these ideas. 



F. B. 



Natiitforschimg und Schule. Von W. Preyer. Stuttgart. 



In this pamphlet Professor Preyer, the noted physiologist, vigor- 

 ously attacks the present educational system of Germany. His 

 main thesis is that the Gymnasium — which, in spite of a few con- 

 cessions, still proclaims as the necessary education for all cultured 

 Germans a long drill in the classics, and still holds the only key to 

 the university and the governmental posts — is an institution en- 

 tirely out of date, ignoring all that enormous addition to human 



