BARBARA GREENWOOD THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD THE CHILD BY NATHAN OPPENHEIM ATTENDING PHYSICIAN TO THE CHILDREN'S DEPARTMENT OF MT. SINAI HOSPITAL DISPENSARY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 1898 All rifhtt rtstrvid COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Kortoootf J. S. Cuahing & Co. - Berwick & Smith Norwood Mam. Tr.S.A. Library Eo fE Mitt CONTENTS CHAPTER I PACK INTRODUCTORY i CHAPTER II FACTS IN THE COMPARATIVE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD 1 1 CHAPTER III FACTS IN THE COMPARATIVE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD (continued) 37 CHAPTER IV COMPARATIVE IMPORTANCE OF HEREDITY AND ENVIRON- MENT 66 CHAPTER V THE PLACE OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL IN THE DEVELOP- MENT OF THE CHILD 93 CHAPTER VI THE PLACE OF RELIGION IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD 122 vii Vlll CONTENTS CHAPTER VII PACK THE VALUE OF THE CHILD AS A WITNESS IN SUITS AT LAW 148 CHAPTER VIII THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD-CRIMINAL . . .175 CHAPTER IX THE CHILD'S DEVELOPMENT AS A FACTOR IN PRODUCING THE GENIUS OR THE DEFECTIVE 207 CHAPTER X INSTITUTIONAL LIFE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD 241 CHAPTER XI THE PROFESSION OF MATERNITY 266 MENANDER THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY ONE of the noteworthy characteristics of the time ^~^ .1 is the so-called moral revival which has shown itself in almost every part of the civilized world. It has made its imprint upon England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Russia. In our own country it has wrought some striking changes. These changes have been very plainly seen all through the common life of the time, and one of the most interesting features of this revival is the diversity of form which it has assumed. From one end of the social fabric to the other the same note is heard ; whether in regard to the subject of dress, or of charity, whether business methods or housekeeping, the spirit of the hour calls for a strenuous effort, a desire to improve upon the past, a noble dissatisfaction that can be quieted only by an active exhibition of individual endeavor. In i)U !<^--v4' fact, the keynote of the whole movement seems to be an appeal to the individual to assert whatever energy 2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD he has to the end of insuring his best development. 1 The individual is recognized as the ultimate element of the mass, and therefore plans that are meant to improve the mass must begin with each single person. Even in politics, the new-forming touch is felt, and political methods are beginning to take another and newer shape. It is for reasons such as these that M. Charles Secrtan has wisely said : " Political salva- tion in a democracy depends solely on private efforts, on an inward mission." One may rightly go further, saying that the salvation which depends upon private efforts, upon an inward mission, is not confined to political life. In fact, in the whole range of human affairs, this sentiment of devotion to the cause of a personal idea, to the cause of an individual belief, is the strongest force that can actuate men. It has the inspiring force that makes martyrs; it begins a crusade, works miracles, incites to heroism. The great captains of all time are the men who have most keenly felt it. The light which radiates from it is so strong that whoever comes into contact with it becomes thereby illumined. It acts as a sort of spiritual infection, whose range of influence extends over the whole race. In times past, when the spirit of the people was more clearly that of a mass, it acted generally from some individual source, from which it spread by waves to surrounding people. Rightly enough, therefore, ancient history was really INTRODUCTORY 3 one-man history, individual history. National and world events meant impulses which originated in one man, or a small group of persons controlled by one man; and whatever force he had was the real motive energy which agitated his time. Nowadays things do not happen in quite the same way. Naturally, the influence of a strong man is, and always must be, felt. But outside of this there is a great tendency not to follow a leader quite as blindly as in the past. Men require something of a reason ; they want an excuse for unquestioning obedience. They feel the need of answering for their acts to a conscience. In other words, there is a growing ten- dency, although it may at the beginning be small, to think independently, to act independently. And where ^^ this individuality of action is touched by the glow of ^^i a spiritual idea, one begins to feel something of this doctrine of private effort, of an inward mission. And when the tendency to mass-action, to ready-made be- liefs, is still further impeded, the belief in the self- sufficiency of each man, each social unit, must be still more emphatic. However, this trait may be obtained, not by a spon- uWK/C* taneous evolution, not by a blind adherence to the twAViiflt ability of each person to develop in the highest way, but by such intelligent means and methods as will put him as nearly as possible on the highest plane that the ma- jority of his fellow-creatures hold. This ideal equality 4 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD far different from anything which society now pos- sesses will act for the interests of the race in the broadest extent. The dictum that all men are born free and equal is plainly true only in an academic interpretation. It certainly is not true as far as the actual facts of their careers can show. As far as one can see, there is as little actual freedom in the world as one can possibly imagine. Almost every adult, on reaching maturity, has a certain range of limitations, working much more rigorously than statutes enacted by law, which determine in what ways he must advance, stand still, or go backward ; at the same time his freedom of choice, even of desire, is similarly defined. And, after all, one is most apt to think of his freedom as permission to exercise himself within the demarca- tions set up by his environment ; or one might compare it to the freedom which a prisoner, bound hand and foot, has to contract his muscles. In spite of such freedom, he still is bound. And actually, a member of a civilized community is bound physically, mentally, spiritually. He can no more be said to have a real i liberty of choice than a bird in a cage. And so far as the question of what he is entitled to, what he has a right to, goes, there is very little more to be said. It is hard to find any natural right that really belongs to him, excepting, possibly, in some few cases, the right to die. Otherwise, every one of his so-called rights is the result of social and legal enact- INTRODUCTORY 5 ment, things to which he becomes entitled by virtue of his manner of subscribing to the rulings of the society in which he lives. The fact of being born in this society puts upon him the necessity of living in it, and as soon as he arrives upon the stage where the decision of affairs rests largely upon his immediate volition, he directly comes to see that his power of choice is very limited, that his faculty of private effort is generally very small, that only under the greatest difficulties may he have an inward mission. Whatever these forces may be, they occur not necessarily as spontaneous emotions, but rather as the result of fric- tion, association, generally called environment. By a related process of thought, one can easily realize that the whole sum of life belongs in its general clas- sification to environment. The human being, in the first part of his existence, is much more unformed than is generally thought. The determining factors are not as parents usually consider them. A strong belief in heredity has become so general that direct effects of descent are looked for with all the confidence and sureness of settled and incontrovertible facts. The good father is supposed to have a good son, the virtuous mother is supposed to bear an equally virtuous daugh- ter; by a seeming parity of reasoning, people know that homing pigeons will produce homing pigeons, fox terriers will bring forth their kind. Very rarely is the utter lack of similitude between the two sets of 6 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD *wt examples seen and insisted upon. The qualities of } goodness and virtue are purely functional, the result of Ut/w 4.****' iT . ~"^ t{ vvWv'iw* friction, social interaction, environment. The question of underlying physical structure, of the disposition of bony, muscular, and nervous tissue, is one of purely somatic, organic composition. And between the two there is the difference of natural inheritance and arti- ficial acquirements. When this distinction becomes a clearly understood A /<.*, w. J MCk'ui. people will see that a new set of " rights " should ^ The question of predisposition is a quite different V one from that of strict heredity ; for here, instead of absolute reproduction of form or disposition, or both, there is merely such a moulding force at work upon the child's structure that the influence of environment is enough to turn the son in approximately the same direction as the father travelled. For reproduction, all the elements in question must be represented in the parent's germinal cells. There is almost nothing to prove that what does not exist in these cells can possibly be transmitted. For instance, moral training is no more an essential part of these germinal cells than good manners, nor is a cultured taste more cer- tain to be passed on to the next generation than a fine knowledge of the flavor of tea. The most that can be said of predisposition is that certain human beings are 76 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD so constituted as to act as good growing grounds, as good culture media, for a certain sort of impulse. And when outside conditions fall in such a way that influences favorable to the growth of certain states of mind or body exist, the characteristic reaction must result. Thus a child may have a natural inclination toward morality or industry or light-heartedness ; if the proper conditions exist, the quality in question will grow in commensurate degree. The " mute, inglori- ous Miltons " are mute and inglorious because they have the predisposition toward poetic conception and expression, but in other requirements are not suffi- ciently fortunate. In a somewhat similar way people are known to have a predisposition to certain sicknesses, say tuber- culosis. Very few men of scientific training now speak of consumption as an hereditary disease. Rather they say and think that the person in question is of such a constitution that he very easily, under proper con- ditions, becomes a fertile ground upon which the germ of tuberculosis may grow. In this way an increasing number of diseases that at one time were thought to be absolutely hereditary are now counted, rightly enough, as either cases of direct infection of the child by a definite disease-germ from the parent, or merely a liability, a predisposition, in the child to that sickness. The child before birth may in this way be attacked by small-pox, malaria, measles, scarlatina, HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 77 Asiatic cholera, or croupous pneumonia ; he may be born with any one of them ; but that does not say that they are hereditary diseases. All that one may with safety state is, that the germ has reached the unborn infant, and finding a fertile soil, has lived and flourished thereon. This is quite different from the idea that the connection between parent and child necessitates an unvarying transmission of an acquired disease, which, so long as it once exists, must run a definite course. There is always, in addition, the counter-fact that a predisposition of any kind may be more or less successfully combated. A fertile place may, as every one knows, be rendered less fertile, and also may be made sterile. There are many cases where common opinion sup- poses a congenital condition to be the result of hered- ity, of undoubted transmission from parent to child of a condition that formerly was thought to be beyond the range of interference. In these instances, careful thought cannot possibly agree with the supposition. A case in point is the belief, so rigorously held, that epilepsy, in all its various phases, must be a distinct disease that is in some invariable fashion handed on from one generation to another. Some years since a successful attempt to produce epilepsy artificially was made. Obersteiner, by various operations and mutila- tions of the nervous system, produced an epileptic condition in guinea pigs that imitated very exactly the 78 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD symptoms of the natural disorder. A somewhat simi- lar condition consequently showed itself in the direct offspring of these animals. Ordinarily people would say that the disease was thus proved to be hereditary, that the parents suffered from it, and in due time their product showed like symptoms. On less of a basis than this many serious beliefs have rested ; on even a slighter basis many mothers have founded a strong faith in the efficacy of accidental impressions made upon a child before his birth. As a matter of fact, a more logical explanation would lie in the idea that the parents, by reason of their serious mutilations, came to have weakened and irritable nervous systems, and although they could not transmit the operations which they underwent, nevertheless, their young, as far as their brains and nerves are concerned, were feebly endowed. Various sorts of nervous irritability, among which were epileptoid manifestations, inevi- tably resulted. It is still easier to understand the occurrence, which is often a coincidence, of the so- called maternal impressions. Many mothers during pregnancy undergo some shock or nervous strain. The greater this is, the greater is the likelihood of interference with the nutrition of the infant, not as a matter of direct inheritance, but only as a method of lowering the mother's vitality, and through it, the child's. Whatever mark or blemish is noticed after birth is very apt to be referred to some of the count- HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 79 less experiences in daily life to which it bears some real or fancied resemblance. So many of these experi- ences happen in the ordinary life of every person that there is no lack of them to serve as cause for whatever misfortunes that may occur. No notice is taken of the other countless accidents of all sorts, the vast number of disagreeable smells, sights, and sounds that assail every woman, whether pregnant or not. The innate desire to know the reason of things leads people on past the bounds of reason into the field of conjecture. This was finely and character- istically illustrated in a case that came under my notice a short time ago. A child was born with a mark on the back which in a general way represented the shape of a net. The mother then remembered that about four months previous she had accidentally been struck with a tennis ball, and lo ! there was the picture of a tennis net. Examination showed the mark to be merely a naevus of an irregular and broken contour. One must clearly understand that heredity in its J action is comprehensive, far reaching, not easily moved. The individual is not, in his somatic constitution, easily affected, excepting in a theoretical sense, by slight influences of an extrinsic nature. Thinking in a purely ideal way, there is reason to believe that a certain part of the fertilized ovum, called the germ-plasm, is com- posed of two particles of similar matter derived from 80 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD the parents, which parts, in their previous turn, had their origin from the grandparents, and so on. This germ-plasm is thus properly, so long as the race exists, immortal ; it can never die so long as men beget and women conceive ; it is practically unchangeable. It is accompanied by a so-called body-plasm from which the body develops. This is the part that changes with the passing months, that comes to bear the mark of exter- nal influences. The distinction between these two factors is a plain and salient one, that should, by all means, be clearly appreciated. The germ-plasm is as old as man, the body-plasm is just as old as the person to whom it belongs. The one may be called his real ancestral part, that varies merely as the resultant of the two lines of parentage conjoined. The other is his physical self, the sum of the influences of nutrition. This thing called nutrition is the main fact of interest to those who believe in training. It is the only part in man that is susceptible of cultivation. To try to cultivate anything else is much the same as trying to civilize a remote ancestor. Thus at a glance one can see that only in a partial way is development hereditary. Where somatic characteristics end, there heredity be- gins. A fairly important part of each person is born in a certain state without the possibility of change, and an attempt to influence it would be about as fea- sible as trying to bring a three-legged man into exist- ence. HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 8 1 When one resolves the ordinary ideas of development into their last factors, one sees that what is usually meant by heredity is something quite different, is what should be included under the head of effectsjjf nutri- tion. For instance, through some fault in nutrition, the process of ossification in the palate bone of a baby does not proceed far enough, the prenatal condition remains stationary, and a cleft palate is the result. Or, by an analogous factor in the nutrition of nerve cells, the developing child becomes grave or gay, brilliant or stupid. Or a father has fallen a victim of syphilis ; the body-plasm of his child is so affected that it shows the mark of the disease. Here again the result is one of nutrition, and proper attention to the environment can change the condition to something quite different. Here, then, is one of the most important facts in human -. fN life : the effect and the value of environment. This is the fact which does more than anything else to make people as we see them. As a matter of essential con- struction, men are all very much alike, for since they must have had the same evolution, they differ from each other mostly in the results of nutrition, of environ- ment. Germ-plasm is so little susceptible of change, is so rigid in its constitution and disposition, and has been so thoroughly subjected to inter-breeding and cross-breeding, that to mark off one man from another is wellnigh impossible. On the other hand, the medium in which a child is G 82 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD conceived, born, and nourished, is of the most telling value. His body and mind are predestined to certain conditions, not so much because he is descended from this line or that, as because certain obstacles retard him, or certain means of help carry him forward. These obstacles and helps are of no one particular sort ; they are spread over the whole sum of human experience. They begin long before the child is born, they continue actively in force until maturity, they then gradually decrease in a vanishing ratio. Conventional <\ opinion says that a child is well born if his family has won a greater measure of applause than disfavor, if he has a body that is fairly regular in its parts, if his moral nature is of a sufficiently normal type to rebel at flagrant offences against morality and the public interest, as usually understood, and if his intellectual powers are sufficient to permit his making himself understood, and enable him to support himself. Now, for almost all of these factors he is not responsible, nor are they necessarily qualities which his parents possessed, or are capable of transmitting. He comes 4} into the world as a mass of potentialities, for months he is the most neutral of creatures, whose functions are largely reflex and automatic, whose mental vigor is really nil. Little by little he gathers strength, the parts of his body gradually spread out in the irregu- lar ways of rapid growth. Measured by the standard of normal maturity, every piece of him is out of meas- HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 83 ure, is provisional, almost pathological. His whole con- stitution is temporary, and cannot even be regarded as the foundation of what he eventually will be. He is so plastic that his daily surroundings mould him as surely as a warm hand shapes a piece of wax. With added growth he approaches very slowly to the ordinary level ; but all his movements of mind and body are marked by the clumsiness, the wavering uncertainty of an unprepared state. His weakness cries aloud for affection and care. The answer ought to be given in the fullest protection, the absolute shielding from every sort of strain, mental, moral, and physical. He is in no condition to bear burdens, it is hard enough for him to find out that there are such things. His principal work should lie in being formed, in getting a straight back, big lungs, and a clear mind ; in possessing a nervous constitution which, as one of its functions, is capable of elaborating a moral sense that points straight. For such things are guar- anteed by nature to no one. Moreover, the child is so easily influenced, and the number of controlling factors about him is so large, that unless there is a fixed and constant plan of action, which is designed to fashion him in a certain manner, his final condi- tion will be settled by a ragged combination of chance influences. Under such circumstances, it is not at all wonderful that anomalous differences between parents and children commonly exist. 84 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD The problem is finally one of nutrition in the broad- est sense. Whatever makes for the fullest develop- ment of cells is properly included in this term. Food, rest, tissue change, stimulation and over-stimulation are all merely parts. As the previous chapters and the plates facing pages 55 and 56 clearly show, the child is in practically every respect different from the adult, and every part of him is constantly changing. The only conclusion which one may draw from these facts is that his environment ought to be designed to further the proper growth, that his needs are different from those of his matured relatives, that disturbances of mind and body occur in him with the greatest readi- ness, and may produce immovable harm. These disturbances are generally due to the environment ; faulty food, faulty methods of rest, faulty ideas of excitement, are some of the causes involved. And, considering the importance of the matter, it is really wonderful that greater attention has not been paid to it. A man who without a proper training at- tempts the conduct of a suit at law would draw down ridicule upon himself; he who without a suffi- cient course of instruction prescribes for the sick is punished by fine or imprisonment ; even the most ordinary workman needs an acquaintance with the nature of his work, before an employer will put a task in his hands. But for the right care of children no training in the mothers, nurses, or teachers is con- HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 85 sidered essential. One of the natural results is that the standard exacted among such persons, instead of being very high, is very low. With them the main test of whether a child is being properly fed is that he does not die, the test of whether he is properly clad is that he does not freeze, the test of whether he is properly taught is that he sit quietly in school, and pass a sufficient number of examinations. As a matter of fact it would, doubtless, be better in many cases that he should die, or starve, or remain "uninstructed." The period of childhood involves, proportionally, C more work, excitement and strain, than any other y part of life. The little one has to eat all manner * ' \. of strange foods, to learn the meaning of all sorts of V strange things, to conform to all kinds of rules of conduct that are clearly artificial, the use of which he cannot understand. One can easily understand the difficulties of becoming accustomed to such re- quirements, when one knows that each of these items is of prime importance. Various articles of food differ very much from each other, and in their final use serve diverse ends. A child that is growing and learning some new fact of experience every hour, whose delicate nerve cells are not able to bear any great stress, needs an exact and wise attention to his dietary, much more so than, for instance, his father. The latter can, with benefit, live upon a mixed diet, and whether he consumes a somewhat 86 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD smaller or larger percentage of proteids or of carbo- hydrates, is a matter of comparatively little impor- tance. His organism merely seeks to repair waste. But in the child the main object is an added one, the element of unimpaired growth. Every ounce of as- similated nourishment counts, every small bit of waste energy has its telling effect. And in the mat- ter of growth, it is necessary to remember that each element in the body calls for its particular sort of nutriment. Brain cells require proteid matter, bone tissue requires certain mineral salts. A dietary rich in starch (as in many vegetables and cereals) would serve neither one of these tissues. The distinctions between foods may be even more finely drawn. The curd of cow's milk is hard of digestion, much more i so than that of some other mammals. A child with a delicate organism that requires a milk food might starve on cow's milk, even though its quality, per se, be very good. Or even if he lived, he might be poorly nourished, and show the effects in a locally or generally weakened body, or in a dull or abnormal mind. As he grows, his life experiences, in the ordinary family, broaden, far more rapidly than his develop- ment matures. The need for nourishment, for the right apportionment of the various elements of food, increases progressively. And in like measure, the danger of partial tissue-poverty increases. The faculty of emotional excitation is almost always neglected. HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 87 There is no general idea of the necessity of regulating such impulses to the end of conserving energy. Fear, sorrow, joy, shame and love, in improper meas- 1 ure, are broad avenues of waste. When he goes to school his work is enormously increased; school au- thorities seem to think that their duties are best ' Q f interpreted by putting upon children the heaviest instead of the lightest possible burdens. In fact, I j know of no harder experience, no more trying ordeals, than what a child at this time undergoes. His ex- periences in the school environment are finely designed to encourage irritation and waste of nerve and muscle tissue ; the circumstances of instruction are useful for deadening instead of encouraging a normal standard of intellectual development. And it is just at this time that the diet receives the least attention. One would think that under such conditions an incentive for insisting upon the most wisely selected food exists much more than at any other time, but, unfortunately, such is not the case. The evil is general, and is as prevalent among the rich as among the poor, for there is no one class that has a monopoly of miscon- ceptions. In the one, the fault lies in poorly selected sorts of food, in the other in deficient quantity and quality. The ordinary home life of an infant is just as trying as his poorly adapted food. Even in his earliest days relatives and friends show a remarkable ignorance of 88 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD his needs. His natural condition is one of perfect ignorance. His first acquaintance with life is a series of shocks. He is rudely exposed to heat and cold, he is too carelessly handled and tossed about, and under the plea of amusing him, various sorts of disagreeable noises are made, and equally disagreeable sights are forced on his attention. The grimaces which those in charge of him make, with the laudable intention of pleasing, are alone sufficient to frighten him. And immediately he is put under the strain of acquiring too much information. Every circumstance of his life, in the attempt to know and recognize it, requires an effort of the mind. This happens when the brain is only partly formed, is very weak, is fit only to vegetate and gather strength. During the years of its immaturity, because both physically and physiologically its constitu- tion is not capable of much resistance, it becomes tired very easily. The ordinary efforts to become acquainted with life, to understand the seemingly involved mean- ing of everyday events, to accustom the senses to a useful appreciation of so-called realities, and to conform in all external ways to the requirements of civilized life, are unquestionably most trying. These efforts are continuous ; there is no opportunity for intermission and rest ; and therefore, the resulting strain is all the greater. For it is a well-known fact that nerve cells in young animals easily become exhausted, and most rapidly of all where the stimulus is long continued. HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 89 The most ordinary tests show this. Take a very young animal, say a dog, put him through exercises that re- quire as much concentration of attention for a few hours as he can give, and a microscopical examination of his nerve cells will show a tired, exhausted and worn-out condition. The limits of normal fatigue are easily overstepped in any young animal, and under such circumstances, the resulting over-fatigue must be regarded as permanent deterioration. Or, subject a ! ,_ child to any keen impulse of excitement, such as chil- dren are allowed regularly to experience. Immediately such fatigue ensues that his ordinary capabilities act ; with less promptness and efficiency. He distinguishes ' color less easily, his skin is less sensitive, his digestion is less capable and his excretory glands are less active. This does not take into account extreme cases of shock or terror, but merely such ordinary efforts as all chil- dren are apt to undergo. Repeated impressions on the brain tend to create a permanent condition ; the wear and tear which the ordinary child undergoes is greater than people usually estimate. The mental condition resulting is, thus, far different from what the normal adult possesses. It ( works less clearly, less logically and at a much greater expense. All in all, it goes to form in part the child's environment, which thus becomes proportionally health- ful or unhealthful. By such factors the child is affected throughout his whole life, even as far as the difference 90 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD between a small and a greater power of resistance to disease, or the difference between an irritable or an equable nervous system, or even the difference between wrong and right action. Very commonly an impression upon the child is made in the way of deviations from normal standards that make life unnecessarily burden- some. And all these things, as well as countless others, can often be traced to the various forms of nutritional poverty. To the same cause one can likewise trace much of the unhappiness of children's lives, much of their wil- fulness, much of their viciousness. There are some common cases of this sort with which every one is familiar; when a baby is restless and cross, incapable of having a quiet night, the cause is usually to be found in his manner of life, as constituted by food, rest and other similar factors. An excess of starch in his food may upturn a household. Or an older child may be unhappy, poorly nourished, or even vicious. A de- crease of oxygen and an increase of carbonic dioxide in the air which the child breathes makes a decided difference in the elimination of waste materials ; such matter, when stored up, may produce varying degrees of intoxication, of poisoning. And as a result, his ordinary characteristics are for the time changed. With sufficient repetition, the temporary condition may become more permanent. Such changes are all the easier, on account of the profoundly mixed charac- HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 91 ter of hereditary dispositions. A bias in one direction or another may be easily exaggerated into what seems a trait of profound importance. At the same time, really intelligent care could bring about quite a dif- _ ferent result. Ordinary casual judgment would define such a child as more or less vicious, would point to any traits in the direct ancestry as the determining cause, and would congratulate itself on the advantages of scientific knowledge. The gist of the matter is that usually too much blind reliance is placed on the commonly accepted ideas of heredity. People regularly think of the problem as a simple combination of known elements, instead of a complex process of both combination and inter-reaction of a great number of factors. Moreover, the true scope of heredity is not so great as they believe ; and what is unquestionably transmissible occurs in such a form as usually to constitute a predisposition of one kind or another. The constant, countless influences of environ- ment come in to decide upon the child's development. These influences have, as their main opponent, the theoretical intentions and academic ideas of parents and guardians ; but the opposition usually amounts to little. On the other hand, the effect of environment is not to be overestimated ; it acts every hour of the day, leaving impressions which, although rarely handed down to the next generation, are permanent with the individual. Parents control the bodies and minds, the 92 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD hearts and souls of their children not so much by what their ancestors were as by what they themselves do and think. The results are just as sure as earlier writers, reckoning on other standards, estimated ; but the method of producing the results, and the results them- selves, are quite different. The direct responsibility of parents is very great, for there exists the relation of an active cause and an immediate effect. Instead of saying " Like father, like son," one rather should say, "As the father lives, so lives the son." The cases of worthy fathers having unworthy sons are usually those where the parents evoke esteem for certain laudable traits, but at the same time all the necessary conditions for the full development of the children's characters are not thoroughly conserved. A man may be a brill- iant mathematician, or a profound philosopher, without necessarily showing a fitting appreciation of the physi- cal and mental needs of his family. Proficiency in one direction does not necessarily imply an equal proficiency in others, and a bankrupt in business may be a brilliant success in rearing offspring. All in all, the general rule of the certainty of good results following careful and anxious effort holds good in the development of children just as well as in all other matters. The trustworthiness of children depends upon the elements of environment, acting upon certain inherited condi- tions which go to create the qualities of thinking clearly and seeing straight. k *w* x V V CHAPTER V THE PLACE OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL IN THE DEVEL- OPMENT OF THE CHILD No subject concerns the interests or the sympathies of the community more closely than that of the educa- tion of children. The matter is so near to the general welfare that every possible method of interference or of development receives a warm reception. From the well-known year 1717, when Frederick William I. of Prussia promulgated his edict of compulsory education, the public attention has inclined more and more toward the view that right education of children is the basis of natural advancement. From that time, when teaching was the harbor of the unsuccessful, the incompetent and the helpless, up to the present, when its value to the community is extolled and praised, is a far cry. In correspondence to the amount of skilled thought devoted to the matter, the civilization of the world has progressed. Such men as Socrates, Aristotle, Erasmus, Bacon, Comenius, Pestalozzi and Froebel have done more than hold schools or formulate a philosophy ; they have helped the civilization and culture of the world along by giant strides. 93 94 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD In the course of the development in teaching, the objects to be obtained have been fairly permanent ; but the methods have gradually changed. All along the line the first efforts were in the way of teaching the means of communication and computation ; upon these, as a foundation, were based the higher branches. In early times there seemed to be little or no problem in regard to teaching. It was required that the teacher should merely know as much of the subject in hand as he expected the scholar should learn ; whether he was to teach arithmetic to children, youths, or adults seemed of little difference. On the contrary, the main idea was that a certain number of facts was to be drilled into a scholar or a number of scholars. It was thought that any one who knew these facts could, just as well as any other person, impart the knowledge, in much the same way that one woman shows another how to cook, or a blacksmith teaches an apprentice to shape a horseshoe. That there is a further element in teaching than that of simple demonstration is a very modern conception. And it is only of very recent years that even a fairly correct idea of the difficulty of educating young chil- dren has been generally felt. And even now, although some teachers and psychologists are dissatisfied with the older methods of instruction, especially in the prim- ary schools, the large body of citizens and parents are only dimly conscious of the glaring deficiencies that are impeding the development of their children. THE PLACE OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 95 To a certain extent this is due to the fact that most parents at bottom regard a kindergarten or primary school as a good place in which to put their children, in order to be free for a few hours every day of the care of them. The children thereby have a means of using up surplus energy, as well as acquiring some discipline. But after all, the main object in most fami- lies is freedom from care. This has been so keenly felt that a certain successful school in New York pre- scribes methods of play and occupation for the greater part of the day, so that the smallest possible amount of responsibility for the proper use of the little ones' time rests upon the parents. The reason for this was stated to be the substitution of a fairly wise plan of play and work, in place of the lack of judicious super- vision under which the majority of children labor. The one advantage in this state of things is that par- ents, when brought face to face with the problem, are apt to concede their inability or unwillingness to assume the proper direction over their children, and so, when the opportunity presents, are all the more ready to hand them over to more competent care. Naturally it is unfortunate that such a condition exists, especially as there is no inherent necessity for it, ex- cepting the fact that parents and guardians are igno- rant of where their children's interest lies, and, as a rule, have no more definite guide by which to direct their efforts than their natural affection. 96 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD Nevertheless, this spontaneous love, although gen- erally diffused, has been at the basis of some of the greatest advances in pedagogics. This was the force which actuated Pestalozzi and his pupil Froebel. Pes- talozzi in particular lacked careful preparation and care- ful training, and took up teaching only after having failed in attempts to make a career in other pursuits. He felt a wonderful sympathy for child-life ; his love and tenderness were unbounded, and by them he held his little ones under the strongest control. "I was persuaded," he wrote, " that my affection would change the state of my children just as quickly as the spring sun would awake to new life the earth that winter had benumbed." He clearly recognized that children need something more than mere restraint and government, and what he lacked in scientific knowledge he made up in sympathetic art. " I know no other order, method, or art," he wrote, "but that which resulted naturally from my children's conviction of my love for them, nor did I care to know any other." So long as he was alone, this affection was sufficient to guide him aright in his methods of care and development, even though his equipment was meagre. But such a faculty is hard to transfer, and so his assistants as one would expect could not duplicate his success. When, in speaking of his school at Yverdun, he said, "the whole is per- vaded by the great spirit of home union ; a pure fatherly and brotherly spirit rules all," he outlined a THE PLACE OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 97 condition that resulted from a particular agency, which could be reproduced only by a similarly gifted person. Thus it occurred under the guidance of Froebel, who, starting out as an apprentice in forestry, which he deserted for one pursuit after another, finally became a teacher at Frankfort, where his success was marked. So enthusiastic did he become, that he decided to spend two years with Pestalozzi at Yverdun. Later on he established a school at Keilhau, where he began to formulate the ideas that resulted in the kindergarten. The advance which this institution marked was a most noteworthy one. It substituted for an unintelli- gent rote-method, a warm, kindly spirit of help, of allowing the budding faculties to grow with a bear- able amount of freedom ; it helped the child to bloom. In fact, the likeness of a child to a plant these two pioneers in education dwelt upon time and time again. They delighted in advising their audience of the necessity of carefully shielding these delicate shoots, of carefully watering and nourishing them, of sedu- lously freeing them from fatiguing conditions. Con- sidered in the light of a new departure, the work was a wonderful one, marking, as it did, a revolution in accepted ideas. And if it had afterwards developed with one-half of the original force which the first leaders threw into it, there would now be no need to point with disfavor to the methods that pretend to guide our children's mental growth. 98 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD One of the most serious limitations of Froebel and his school was the fact that they had little of a scien- tific foundation upon which to base their generaliza- tions. Their conclusions in method rested upon a foundation of keen observation, of love, of fellowship and sympathy. But they knew very little of the reasons, outside of metaphysical considerations, for their courses of work ; nor were they prepared to elaborate these courses to their fullest utility and sim- plicity. In ' addition, there was a certain amount of lazy thought, of mysticism, in their belief that is almost inevitable in a new movement that evokes en- thusiasm. Thus, when Froebel speaks of a young child's knowledge of number as "an essential need of his inner nature, a certain yearning of his spirit," one can see at a glance that the enthusiasm of conviction blinded his clearness of sight. Again, in speaking of his third " gift " (a two-inch wooden cube), he says that "this gift includes in itself more outward mani- foldness, and, at the same time, makes the inward manifoldness yet more perceptible and manifest." This interpretation in all its symbolical amplitude might possibly suggest itself to a metaphysician who was pondering upon emblematic relations ; but it would be as far from the elementary workings of a child's mind as a conception of the binomial theorem or an appreciation of the beauties of the calculus. Many of his best known disciples go to even greater lengths THE PLACE OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 99 and construct a system of esoteric interpretations that can be equalled only by some mystic cult. Thus W. N. Hailman, in discussing the true inwardness of a wooden cylinder (second gift), says : " On revolving the cylinder on an axis parallel to the circular faces, we find that it incloses a solid, opaque sphere ; teaching us the lesson, not only that each member of the sec- ond gift contains each and all of the others, but that whatever is in the universe is in every individual part of it ; that even the meanest holds the elements of the noblest ; that the highest life is even in what in short-sighted conceit we call death." This may be very fine as abstract thought, but considered in its relation to the rudimentary mental action of a child, it soars far above the earth. Examples of this tendency can be multiplied indefi- nitely, and force one to the belief that the authors of them have set up an ideal or academic figment of child- life, a sort of glorified child-worship. In the same category must one include the deep interpretations which they give to many of the purposeless acts which are perfectly natural to infants and young children. When a baby pounds on a tin pan with a spoon or his fist, they see intelligent attempts at ascertaining characteristic qualities and reactions. When purely by chance he makes some combination of color, they point with wondering exclamations to ancestral habits showing themselves in dawning abilities. When, with 100 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD the profound lack of motor coordination, which must inevitably be present in young creatures, he casually scratches some meaningless lines, they treasure up the scrawl and seek in it for indications of primeval occu- pations and habits. The whole mass of work is over- laid with the marks of misconception, of false ideas, of false development and growth. Even so wise a man, so conservative a thinker, so cautious a scientist as Herbert Spencer, seems to be ignorant of a baby's powers, when he advises that "we should provide for the infant a sufficiency of objects presenting different degrees and kinds of resistance, a sufficiency of objects reflecting different amounts and qualities of light, and a sufficiency of sounds contrasted in their loudness, their pitch, and their timbre." All this would be well enough, if the infant in arms had the proper physio- logical apparatus for carefully discriminating the various degrees of resistance, of light, of sound; or, having this apparatus, if he had the proper development of brain substance to estimate and use the results which the working of the apparatus obtained. But all this is far from fact. The truth of the matter is that the ordinary infant is an exceedingly immature animal ; that he is not only small and weak, but also he is unripe, he is undevel- oped, his muscles and brain structure are imperfect, his power of coordination is very weak, and his sense perceptions are exceedingly limited. As he grows, his THE PLACE OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL IOI various faculties grow unevenly, slowly, by fits and starts. One may put various colors before him, but for a long time he is unable to discriminate between them ; one may make various sounds, but he cannot distin- guish what they are, nor in many cases hear them. One may give him opportunities to develop his sense of touch, weight and temperature, but at the same time one ought to know that one's efforts are as surely wasted as attempts to cultivate a sand heap. This quality of sandy absorption or, stated otherwise, impermeability to influences is seen in much greater degree than most people, for the simple reason that their conceptions of infants are scarcely objective, are pre-formed, are able or willing to recognize. They have their minds made up as to what a young child ought to be, or at least what they think he ought to be. And it is with difficulty that they accustom themselves to other ideas. Even the most recent plans of primary schools and kindergarten work, although they represent great advances upon the conditions of former years, present evidences of this as clearly as one need wish to have them. For instance, it seems perfectly natural to almost all teachers that any normal child should be able to ac- complish practically any simple task or game or play- exercise. The main idea in the minds of most of them is, that the exercise should not on the surface be com- plex ; whether the child reacts wisely and healthfully is w*>* grasp into his mouth, so later he will show a keen in- terest in all manner of narrative, without any distinc- tion of whether it is good or bad. Thus he will listen with absorbed attention to ghost stones, which haunt him for nights; he may like stories embodying un- favorable traits of character, as well as those which illustrate virtues. The main thing which he wants is that the story must show movement, action. He does THE PLACE OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 105 not require sequence, order, likelihood, or a healthy development of the component events. And princi- pally this is so, because he knows nothing of these qualities. One of his weakest spots lies in his rudi- mentary selective faculty. This appears to be almost equally dwarfed in his teachers, who seem disposed blindly to follow a schedule provided for them. At times the stories look as if they were expressly made for the purpose of keeping the little one from a know- ledge of reality, of true relations. Instead of making the ascent from preparatory existence to real life as plain, gradual and safe as possible, they evidently seek to encumber it, to make it steep and inaccessible. Thus, in one of the most recent synopses of kinder- garten work issued this year, a list of story-games is given, showing how the narrative of the exercises should be developed. Impersonation of qualities, occu- pations, various characters, animals, plants, and many animate and inanimate things is the main feature. And they are all without distinction treated on the same level. Thus, a child taught in this way esti- mates a windmill as having the same vitality as the miller, the movements of a weather vane are just as important as the exercises held in the church below, the life of a horse as weighty as that of the husband and father who drives him. In most of these story- games there is commonly a startling look of discrimi- nation, of healthful relations, expressed in a healthy 106 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD way. Teachers regularly forget that a child is no fit person to appreciate the beautiful principle of Vart ^-pour Vart. For what they are to be and think must be spread before them so plainly as to be utterly be- yond the accident of misconception. These games, with all their crudeness, are far from filling the re- quirements. And the saddest thing of all is, that one rarely finds even in the ideas of reputedly capable teachers an inkling of the false notions which children thereby receive, nor the difficulty of unlearning a set of relations acquired when the mental life is so plastic as to be almost fluid. That even reputedly wise kin- dergartners are blind to this danger is seen when in a pamphlet on the subject, one of them says: "It is almost needless to add that in these games lies the life and soul of the kindergarten." Another unestimated difficulty lies in the use of verse, mostly in the way of songs. These rhymes to an adult seem the simplest things imaginable. But they are so only when one is used to the conditions of rhymes. Any simple idea expressed in prose and in verse will make quite unlike impressions. In prose one has little in the order, arrangement or rhythm of the words to distract one's attention or to confuse the meaning. The contrary is true of verse. This is generally disregarded with children, and the natural ; result is that they sing and repeat words without hav- ing the faintest idea of what the meaning is ; and in THE PLACE OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL IO/ so singing, they are therefore going through the very process of rote-learning which the kindergarten is sup- posed especially to frown upon. Nothing is easier than to find many flagrant examples of this abuse ; and I have seen them in every kindergarten with which I am thoroughly familiar. Even in the very simple lines in which are the verses : "Barrels I bind as a cooper should do; And hard do I labor to make them fit true," I found unexpected confusion. I questioned four of the children who had been singing this rhyme, and found the strangest mixture of ideas. They all pro- nounced the first three words as if they were only one, and they had as little conception of what one meant by binding a barrel as they had of Devonian stratification. The inverted order and the slightly unusual use of words put them entirely off the track. This is true not only of very young children, but of children in general. They repeat words like a par- rot, and very rarely stop to inquire the meaning of them. Their environment is not so arranged that they may account, as far as their primitive powers admit, for every idea, phrase and word. Often they will go for months and sometimes for years with noth- ing but the mistiest notions of the right significance of the verses. Not only do the exigencies of rhyme help to obscure the meaning which they otherwise IO8 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD might obtain, but also they tend to make the child uncertain in the daily uses of language. And not only are children of the kindergarten age so influ- enced, but also are those considerably older similarly affected. This was proved very clearly by the evi- dence of Dr. Joyce before the Manual and Technical Instruction Committee in England a short time ago. He believed that the ordinary boy is unable to under- stand even simple verse. As a proof, he told the Committee that he was in the habit of asking chil- dren the meaning of the following verses : " She is a rich and rare land, She is a fresh and fair land, She is a dear and rare land This native land of mine." Few children knew what their native land was, or what it meant, and fewer still the meaning of the adjectives. One boy thought that the phrase "fair land " meant good soil ; he continued to explain that " She is a dear and rare land " meant that land was hard to get, and rents were high. To persist in such exercises leads to the employ- ment of words as sounds, without a concurrent growth or real understanding. The harm that this can do is not limited to the earliest years, but, on the contrary, may extend over a whole lifetime. As Pestalozzi said : "The use of mere words produces men who believe THE PLACE OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 1 09 that they have reached the goal, because their whole life has been spent in talking about it, but who never have run toward it, because no motive impelled them to make the effort." This error is merely an example of the general course of training which the present - kindergarten provides. All through the exercises, one can see the evidences of a conventional idea j of children's development, of the ignorance of any \ /^ other duty than to complete as much of a stated schedule of instruction as the time and the limited capabilities of the children admit. Whatever changes in curriculum one may think necessary are equalled or exceeded by changes in the spirit and acquirements in the instructors who have undertaken to carry it out, and any method can be administered in such different ways that often it is hard to decide where the respon- sibility of its good or bad results rests. At all events, one knows that in the education particularly the early education of children certain facts in development and their elaborations must not be lost sight of. For example, we know that the senses develop before the higher intellectual powers, and it naturally follows that exercise of these senses goes before the more abstract lessons. Now the clear appreciation and use of mathematics the relations of numbers are unquestionably so abstract as plainly to be outside of the scope of the elementary school- child. It is true that children learn to count and use IIO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD figures very early. It seems to be a special delight of nursery governesses and young aunts to teach little ones barely able to walk how to count up to ten, to twenty, even to a hundred, and then they point with pride to the brilliantly developing mind and the fine results of their efforts. It is true that young children can learn numbers by rote just as well as they can learn any other arrangements of sounds ; but in doing so, they derive no benefit from the process, and, on the other hand, receive harm. One must keep in mind that the faculty which governs mathematical computation is located among the higher centres in the cerebrum ; that this part of the brain is among the latest to attain maturity; that therefore in child- hood it is in no condition to be put to a strain. Whenever a scholar at this age is forced into attempts to use this faculty, a process similar to any other sort of exhaustive work results. One can the more easily understand the inevitable outcome from a knowledge of the fact that the nerve-cells of children, being more or less in a state of unstable equilibrium, are easily exhausted, so that a consequent nerve poverty must show itself. Thus such children receive no permanent value from studies in mathematics, simple though they be ; and what is more, if these studies were not begun until greater maturity, say at least ten years of age, not only would a vast amount of nervous wear and tear be saved, but also the children would Ill learn as much in one year as they formerly, under the present adverse conditions and methods, learnt in five. The time thus saved might be profitably employed in strengthening both mind and body. There are many other abuses that one can readily select from the ordinary elementary course, although because the main tendency of rational objections has now been shown, it is scarcely necessary to go over them at any length. Still, one may mention the futility of "exercises to cultivate the power of pro- nouncing new words with the aid of diacritical mark- ings " 1 in the first year of the elementary course. The scholar not only must learn these arbitrary markings, by means of the worst sort of rote-memo- rizing, but also, if he is to use them at all well, he must show a power of observation and association far beyond his years. If the attempt is seriously persisted in, the same process of nerve exhaustion mentioned above must of necessity come about. He may gratify the pride of an examining committee and his teacher, but only at the expense of his own healthful development. For related reasons, the ex- ercises in spelling are bad so bad, in fact, that one should not feel the need of argument in the mat- ter. There is before me the latest "Word Book" that is supposed to be a model for teaching the 1 From "the latest and most advanced word-book for elementary grades." 112 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD young idea how to spell, that claims to offer "a care- fully developed and progressive plan for teaching the forms and values of every-day English words." It is supposed to be used by young children, although its plan, to my mind, seems to indicate something quite different. It transgresses almost all the psychological laws of child-life that it touches, and should be re- garded as an excellent means to inculcate a worthy appreciation of the difficulty of the English language. The compiler has furnished the obstacles of rote- learning, of confusing resemblances, of a meaningless accumulation of sounds, of arbitrary diacritical marks that for their learning require an adult's concentrated attention, of examples in verse and prose far beyond the scholar's years, of the multiplication of abstract rules, of a method, in short, that is cumbersome, burdensome, unhealthy and wasteful. In a spirit of congratulation he informs us that in this wise book for children, little more than babes, " Lists of words often mispronounced are provided, together with many comparative exercises, including synonyms, words of opposite meaning, words of several meanings, words spelled alike and spelled differently. In these, as in all terms defined and in all selections for dictation, the use of diacritical marks is designed to lead natu- rally to the intelligent use of the dictionary." All in all, the present methods teach too much, and allow too little opportunity for development. THE PLACE OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 113 Parents depend too much upon the teacher, and be- lieve that their responsibility ends as soon as they hand the child over to the school. They do not with sufficient clearness see that the school rightly is no more than a means of mental discipline, and that its duty lies in building up a course in mental gym- nastics. Anything else, such as looking out for the physical basis of education, is foreign to it. The prime factor of caring for every unit of energy, of avoiding every item of waste, of nourishing and pro- tecting every budding function, in other words, of conserving nutrition, is absolutely ignored. Not only is there need of such care, but also there is a live duty to provide for it. Without such provision, the efforts of teaching not only are thrown away, but also they aid in harming the very children whom they are supposed to help. If the community has a right to insist upon the education of its children, it is nat- ural to believe in its associated right to insist upon such prophylactic measures on the part of parents, that the children may be in proper condition to be educated. Without this, no matter what the methods of instruction are, no one can be sure that a child is being benefited. It is much on the same plan of decreeing that a man should eat a certain amount, whether or not his stomach is able to assimilate the food. If this precaution is not taken, the law inflicts use- less and wanton cruelty, and instead of helping, harms. 114 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD The need for a similar care is still greater with chil- dren, for not only is their present welfare concerned, but also that of all their future connections. If a teacher saw that a pupil was so astigmatic as to ren- der sight painful and imperfect, he would insist upon the means of investigation and relief before allowing him to continue in the class. The same reasoning applies to every part of the child's body that directly or indirectly affects the process of metabolism ; and it is a prerequisite of attempts in the way of formal education to insist upon an assurance that all the child's physical functions are normal, active and healthy. If a child's nose or throat is in such a condition that full respiration is not possible, then oxidation is impaired, tissue change is unnaturally limited, and consequently mental action and devel- opment are not normal. If a child is deficient in the sugar-forming ferments, or the secretion of hydro- chloric acid, or any of the constituent elements of the bile, his processes of digestion are impaired. As a result, fermentation and putrefaction of intestinal contents may supervene, with symptoms of mild poi- soning. Among these symptoms one frequently sees mental torpidity or obliquity, and even viciousness. The child is backward, and so retards the whole class ; he sees the teaching in a wrong light, and thus his knowledge of the matter, with the consequent development, is twisted ; he feels the weight of un- THE PLACE OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 115 usual burdens, and so becomes discouraged more easily than is necessary for him. The question of nutrition is of prime importance ; in fact there is nothing in education that I know of which is more so. It includes not merely the ques- tion of food, and the right proportion of the different food elements, as well as the perfect assimilation of them, but also all the other items of distribution of body heat, of rest, avoidance of undue fatigue, rec- reation fit in quality and amount, the selection and variety of occupation. Not one of these consider tions may with impunity be neglected, and every one of them, when rightly fulfilled, carries a proportion- ate amount of benefit, which will tend to make a normal, vigorous and capable adult. To put each child right in these respects provides a foundation upon which to rear the superstructure of effective educational work. But without them the teacher works against odds which are great in proportion to existing shortcomings. One must appreciate that at the start the child is heavily handicapped ; that Froe- bel's opinion that "every child brings with him into the world the natural disposition to see correctly what is before him, or in other words, the truth," is very far from the fact. Every child has many reasons for not seeing the truth, and in most cases does not see it. If he is so nourished that every part of him works with a minimum amount of friction, the chances Il6 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD for the diversion of energy are lessened. It stands to plain reason that a child who suffers from an over- acting heart, with the inevitable cerebral and circu- latory disturbances, must be in poor condition to conduct the hard work of an organism that is growing and changing with great rapidity. In the same way, a sufferer from the air starvation which results from hypertrophied tonsils, from adenoid fungations, or one whose rest is broken, who has the obstacles of nervous irritation to overcome, cannot be fit material to go through the processes of healthful tissue change. Donaldson wisely says that "education consists in modifications of the central nervous system." Just as far as these modifications are well regulated and controlled will the child react to the normal stimuli of development. In deciding upon the best means of developing a child, it is often wise to follow Nature's plan, not our own. Well-founded objection has been found with the commonly received idea that a child's mind may be made to order by a schoolmaster. It seems hardly necessary to reject the imputation, although practi- cally that is what we have been doing. On reading the dictum of so well-known a Froebelian as Conrad Diehl, one has proof of this. He says that " color is the first sensation of which an infant is capable. With the first ray of light that enters the retina of the eye, the presence of color forces itself upon the mind. THE PLACE OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 117 When light is present, color is present." Herr Diehl is far off the track. The retina is and must be inca- pable of distinguishing any color at all for some time, just as at first the ear is incapable of exact discrimi- nation of sound, or the skin of an accurate sense of touch. To follow out Diehl's idea tends to produce the mind " made to order by the schoolmaster." Just as we know that the range of sensations of an adult is only a fractional part of what really exists, so we know that the range of a young child is proportionally limited. To found a curriculum on the supposition of full potency in the latter is stupefying to him. It directly antagonizes the growth of one of the main educational needs : the development of judgment. It is only by carefully watching the various faculties and noticing the order of their appearance, coupled with the gradual exercise of them, that the priceless faculty of exact discrimination and comparative valuation is formed. By such means it is possible to bring into life a sense of proportion, of the relative value of things. In this way a clear road may be opened up for the progress of the power to observe. And when the little one notices more and more fully what is about him, what as he must plainly recognize his teach- ers and adult connections are constantly noticing, then perforce his power of expression will likewise grow. And in the same way that it is desirable to stimulate his sense of color, so it is necessary to stimulate his THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD other normal senses. Who shall say that a child should have a carefully developed eye, and that his ear, his taste, his senses of smell and touch, should remain crude ? One may be as important as another, and all, when wisely brought out, may be made the means of a full and rounded growth. Through these faculties the child first comes into contact with the great world about him, and by the normal flourishing of all of them is he best able to take an adequate part in the life of the world. Since these senses are among the first faculties to show an active growth, it follows that first instruction should be devoted to them rather than to more abstract things. In following out this idea one would, for in- stance, have little children use a box of colors long before they made an attempt to draw lines, or to follow drawings made in outline. Such a course would be more pleasing to them, would be more in line with their natural development, and at the same time, would remove the disadvantages arising from too early a strain which drawing puts upon the power of exact coordination. To limit them to small and exact exer- cises, is unquestionably harmful, for the whole mech- anism of their bodies and minds calls for freedom and lack of restraint. For similar reasons the sand table should give way to a large pile of sand or dirt, where they could dig and delve, could play and build with utter freedom. If one compares the actions of THE PLACE OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 119 a class of children working at a sand table with those seen on the sand of the seashore, or in the dirt of a garden, one will have no further need of argument. So far as possible, all unnecessary restraints should be removed. The hard confines of the ordinary room for kindergarten and elementary work should be abol- ished. The requirements of the word kindergarten should be fulfilled. Sessions should be held in a gar- den, rather than within the unlovely walls of a bleak room. The change could be easily made even in the ordinary city school. The roof, when properly en- closed, would make the finest sort of solarium, where natural conditions could be imitated with artistic and hygienic exactness. As things are now, children spend an important part of their lives in cages, the regula- tions controlling them are those fit for captives, and the physical discipline of making them sit in stiff and studied attitudes on poorly shaped benches is an admirable one to develop a race of puppets. There is not enough freedom, not enough spontaneity ; the common function of the elementary teacher is too much that of a keeper or an upper nurse maid, and too many believe that her charges are properly influ- enced only when they fear and dread her. It is not necessary to go much further into details, and one can easily follow out the main idea, and apply it to studies which come later in the school life. One must keep in mind that every subject should, in its 120 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD claim for a place in the curriculum, be judged by its adaptability to the child's growth. For instance, gram- , mar, which is highly abstract, has no place in either elementary or the so-called grammar schools. It should be confined to high schools or the secondary schools, where the mental development of the students ap- proaches the adult form. On the other hand, the modern languages, taught not from books, but only 1 from the conversation of walks, games, and practical "talks," might form a part of the course of very young children, whose speech centre develops very early. The resulting exercise would differ totally from the later work now done in the classic languages, which are taught as grammar is taught, and so should be kept for later years. Again, one might take up some selected work in physical geography, and so manipulate it as to make it extremely interesting and beneficial to very young children. But political geography should under | no circumstances be touched until the pupil is well enough developed to understand the principles upon which the history of national life is founded. It is an easy task to go through the regular course of studies, and select what is good and what bad, and the main factor which inevitably will lead to this choice is the better education of teachers. We must entirely get rid of the idea that any person who can pass the meagre examinations for teachers is competent to teach, and the belief that the youngest children require THE PLACE OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 121 the teachers of least skill and ability is still more viciously harmful. Such children, who are bundles of possibilities as yet unsolidified, are the very ones who need the wisest direction. And if they were wisely directed, their later development would be much surer, better, nobler. In the face of such teaching there would be less cause for complaint, there would be less cause for men like Herbert Spencer to condemn the methods upon which the advancement of the commun- ity rests. Not unjustly does he exclaim : " What with perceptions unnaturally dulled by early thwartings, and a coerced attention to books what with the mental confusion produced by teaching subjects before they can be understood, and in each of them giving general- izations before the facts of which these are the general- izations what with making the pupil a mere passive recipient of others' ideas, and not leading him to be an active enquirer, and what with taxing the mind to excess, there are few minds as efficient as they might be." CHAPTER VI THE PLACE OF RELIGION IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A CHILD THERE is so much in a child's life that rests on belief, and by necessity he must be so accustomed to taking things on faith, that he of all beings seems naturally prepared to accept the religious idea and be governed by it. Moreover, he has the great forces of custom and habit, of imitation, of the weight of authority, working upon him, to the end of inducing a participation in devotional forms and a varyingly blind loyalty to certain received articles of faith. Wisely enough Maudesley has remarked : " To say that the great majority of men reason in the true sense of the word is the greatest nonsense in the world ; they get their beliefs as they do their instincts and their habits, as a part of their inherited constitu- tion, of their education, and the routine of their lives." That this is true in a large measure should not be doubted, for the evidence of it, wherever we turn, is before our eyes. A child who is brought up in a Protestant family 122 THE PLACE OF RELIGION 123 looks upon the doctrine of Papal infallibility as unrea- sonable, while the offspring of Roman Catholic parents sees in it all necessary sanity of truth. Among the Persians, children are soothed or frightened by won- drous tales of jins and devs, which to those of occi- dental training seem no better than stories of fairies and gnomes. Even in the limits of a single, homo- geneous people, one may find equally radical differences according to changes which lapse of time brings; among the ancient Jews before the Babylonian cap- tivity the children grew up to believe that there were angels, but never did they have faith in the existence of devils. Even in Job, Satan was not so much of a malevolent spirit, as a fault-finding, a critical one. But after the captivity the belief in which children participated was a wider one ; bad angels as well as good had their place ; the idea of good and evil, of the free choice between them, of a future life in which good was rewarded and evil punished ; in fact, many of the elements of a purely teleological system, the direct descendant of the religion of Zoroaster, came into Judaism. And the difference between post- Babylonian and modern Judaism is just as striking. There seems to be in the vast majority of people a natural need for some sort of belief; an inborn desire to place dependence upon forces outside of their experience and knowledge. And this when brought into contact with environmental influences 124 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD determines for ages the form of belief. Moreover, with this fact in mind it is very interesting to know that there is a remarkable similarity between most of the principal religions of the world, due partly to the fact of their common and remote descent. This is easily followed out when one notes that the direction of descent in most peoples points to that ancient mother-race, the Aryans. This people at a time when Europe was probably an unpeopled wilderness lived in Central Asia. From this starting-point emigrations took place in various directions, but mainly towards the west and northwest. Doubtless the first band was the Celts, who came to inhabit a large part of Europe. The bands that later on produced respec- tively the Italians, the Greeks and the Teutons fol- lowed in their various ways. One of the offshoots founded the Persian kingdom, becoming the Medes and the Persians of history; another body, having made their way north of the Caspian, developed into the Slavonic nations. Very far back Egypt received its inhabitants. And the remnant of the mother-stock overflowed in powerful bands through the passes of the Himalayas and Hindu Kush into the Punjab, and became, as Bramans and Rajputs, the dominant race in the valley of the Ganges. These branches with a common ancestry and a com- mon unity of past experiences bore in their customs, beliefs and language many distinguishing marks, all THE PLACE OF RELIGION 12$ of which point in one direction. There is a striking similarity in their names of domestic animals and domestic life, words which they used before the time of their migrations. On the other hand, names of wild animals, of warfare, of all the countless circumstances of changed conditions, scenes and occupations vary with the time and place of their growth. In the same way they carried with them folk-tales, superstitions and beliefs that frightened, delighted and comforted them through countless ages, that served as the basis of substantial parts of their religions, that gave rise to their innumerable gods and demons, their nymphs and fauns and satyrs, their giants and trolls, their dwarfs and elves. And even to-day in our advanced civilization one can see the general beliefs covered over with marks that point unwaveringly to the dark and hidden past. It is exceedingly interesting to compare some of the principal religions and note how many points of close agreement they have which are founded upon the most ancient myths, beliefs that unquestionably indicate a common origin and a common method of emotional excitation. For instance, the Hindoo Crishna, the Persian Mithras, the Egyptian Osiris, the Sun-gods Hercules and Dionysius, and others besides, all of whom were called saviours and worshiped as such, had much the same history. They were born on the 25th of December, the day in the winter solstice, when the 126 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD sun begins its apparent annual northward journey. They all had virgin mothers, and the Scandinavian Frigga, the Buddhist Maya-Maya, the Egyptian Iris, the Hindoo Devaki, the Greek Semele, are identical. They had strikingly similar life histories, they per- formed much the same miracles, the number of their disciples was curiously often alike, they were perse- cuted, slain, and rose from the dead to ascend into heaven. A triune god was worshiped all the way from the rugged land of the Scandinavians to the fertile banks of the Egyptian Nile. And curiously enough one can trace such widely diverse systems as the ancient Greek on the one hand and more purely modern customs on the other back to a common stand- ard in Egypt. Herodotus says that such is the source of the names of almost all the gods ; the Oracles and the Eleusinian Mysteries had a like descent. And he adds that the Egyptians were the first to introduce public festivals, processions and solemn supplications, which the Greeks learned from them. Much later, after the time and writings of Tertullian, an equally strong effect was produced by this ancient people of the land of the Nile. Beliefs and conceptions of the Trinity as expounded by Egyptian theology became freely known. Isis was once more worshiped, although under a changed name, and her image, standing on a crescent moon, was almost as common then as now. "The well-known effigy of that Goddess, with the THE PLACE OF RELIGION I2/ infant Horus in her arms, has descended to our days in the beautiful, artistic creations of the Madonna and Child. Such restorations of old conceptions under novel forms were everywhere received with delight. When it was announced to the Ephesians that the Council of that place, headed by Cyril, had decreed that the Virgin should be called 'the Mother of God,' with tears of joy they embraced the knees of their bishop ; it was the old instinct peeping out ; their ancestors would have done the same for Diana." Instances of the prevalence of these ideas can be indefinitely multiplied. Man in a certain phase of his being is unquestionably religious. Moreover, he gener- ally has a strain of credulity in him that readily leads him into the abuses of faith, into the ways of supersti- tion. He has his times of weakness when he naturally turns to what seems a higher power or authority, to whom he may confess his sins whether of omission or commission, to whom he may look for praise of the good and blame of the bad, who will show a broad bosom to the sinner upon which to throw himself in times of doubt and trial. Although some of the world's great men have been religious, nevertheless, one may with safety say that the weaker the man the greater will be the likelihood of his adopting super- stition instead of intelligent faith. That which has always stood before him as the head of authority and power far exceeding his own is what he is bound to 128 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD pray to. Whatever credulity he may have will surely confuse senseless with reasonable authority. Whether his belief is founded upon ancestor worship, sun wor- ship, or superstition makes very little difference. It is really not essential that there be in his creed the greatest possible approach to reason. Indeed, the very condition in which religion is commonly of most use is the one where the reason is least apt to be in full and unimpeded sway. The highly emotional states, where excitement is active, are the most favorable for the growth of religion. A man who is exalted by stimu- lants, by the unrestrained action of certain camp- meetings, a woman who is disappointed in love or whose emotional needs are unfulfilled, are very liable to receive an accession of faith. A man, who is crushed, who is struggling despairingly, who has been abused and harassed until his nervous irritation is pathological, is apt to turn a willing face to the prom- ises of spiritual comfort and rest, of protection and reward for the hardships through which he has strug- gled. In this way belief assumes the dignity of a vital function, a phase of mind that is necessarily associated with an unstable and perturbed state of the emotions, in which whatever is affirmed positively and with con- viction or whatever has had a cumulative force in the person's processes of thought comes to be accepted as proven. Thus Parker believes that " creeds have come down to us with the force of centuries behind THE PLACE OF RELIGION 129 them. They are accepted in their traditional form chiefly because by multitudinous repetitions they have been beaten in upon the mind, and in most cases have been yielded credence without question or reasoning." Whether ethics, right conduct, be associated is really immaterial. In most religious systems it is; but the two factors may work for or against each other or quite independently of each other without either being thereby seriously affected. These facts are of universal application, and the phases of feeling which they represent may be found among any people and at any time. They should be regarded with the utmost respect ; for although they are susceptible of weak uses, nevertheless they serve at times as starting-points of some of the finest mo- tives and emotions of which man is capable. In the same way that abnormal excitement and the conse- quent excesses occur in Southern and Western camp- meetings, so have like conditions taken place among savage tribes, so have happened the Siva worship in India, the fanatical allegiance to the Bacchic orgies and the pythoness at Delphi, the whirling dervishes of the Mohammedans, and the Northern Shamanism. Wherever religion is not governed by a rational idea the natural result is bound to be an excess in the way of fanaticism or superstition. The calmer and more rational side of religion represents quite a different ele- ment that of contemplation, of philosophy, of a calm 130 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD and elevated view of human relations. Such a condi- tion is radically different from the one that produces the violent ebullitions of emotion which result in such excrescences as flagellation, as the various abuses of sexual affection. Credulity has no part in it, a blind adherence to an anthropomorphic ideal is very far from it. It represents in its best form a predominance of the nobler, the more elevated part of human nature which gradually becomes free enough to recognize the existence and the need of an ideal, and recognizing it tries to elicit a mental attitude that naturally swings in unison with it. This may most clearly be seen in prayer, which does not by any means stand for the asking of a favor or a benefit nor the expectation or wish to obtain any sort of gain ; much rather does it signify the attempt to project the mind into a plane which is higher and purer than its ordinary level, to create a subjective influence that may show itself in objective action. When religion produces these re- sults, it becomes one of the finest influences in the world, without regard to its origin or its environment. However true this may be of adults, it does not apply to the child, and attempts to force it upon him lead to clearly unfortunate results. Only after long years of development is he able to attain the adult's religious view-point. His natural state puts him in the condition of a savage, who is incapable of attain- ing a fine religious feeling. The low form of emo- THE PLACE OF RELIGION 131 tions which he feels renders the abuses of religious^ feeling inevitable. His disposition is one of ignorance, of imperfectly constructed relations, of prone credulity. The crass idolatry, from which the world has in part struggled, will be the likeliest belief for his imagina- tion to seize upon, and out of it he will construct the fabric of his religion. To him there is no inherent and reasonable distinction between falsehood and truth. He naturally inclines to superstition because its beliefs titillate his wonder-loving cast of mind. Without the restraints which mental maturity insures he is bound to fall into errors that his untried powers are sure to cause. It is just as easy for him to believe that God will kill bad little boys by a thunderbolt as it is to recognize the orderly working of an electric current. There is no doubt that he would rather believe a tale of miracles than a recital of plain facts. A tale of fairies and dwarfs is just as real to him as the recital of holy events which concern the acts of the good angels and Satan. In fact, in so far as he is normal he will want to hear stories of any sort, but mostly those which have narrative action in them. For him- self he requires constant action, restraint is unnatural and becomes possible not only by practice but also by the growth of certain parts of his nervous system which are somewhat tardy in their development. For this reason, as well as on account of the natural immaturity of his mind, he is not capable of the spiritual elevation 132 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD which is absolutely essential to a serviceable religious feeling. During all his childhood he remains the grow- ing animal that knows very little of what adults call reality. He is utterly removed from the culture of to-day, he is quite unable to appreciate the advances that have been made from past standards, and the errors of undeveloped mankind are what is most natu- ral to him. So far as his religious sense goes he is on the plane of the Terra del Fuegians who blow into the air to keep away evil spirits, or the Australian Bushmen who believe in an invisible man in heaven to whom they pray before going to war, or the South American Payaguas who bury arms and clothing with their dead to be used by them in another life. He cannot see beyond the present ; the standards, the authorities, and the limitations of his existing environ- ment seem the inevitable and the final boundaries of the universe. On the plane of them he reckons the worth and the fallibility of whatever ideas he may have. His mind is grossly receptive, not analytical, and a necessity for pure truth is not one of his needs. He is absolutely impervious to considerations of purely ideal thoughts and actions, but under stress of command and instruction may respond to them in much the same way that he would respond to any other sort of teaching. He cannot be said to have an intelligent appreciation of underlying principles ; all that one may expect him to do is to exhibit a rational THE PLACE OF RELIGION 133 obedience to authoritative customs and demands. His main needs are those which provide for his nutrition ; to this he is most easily amenable ; beyond it his sight is dim. It is for such reasons that his religious insight is limited and the depth of his religious receptivity is notably small. Pagan fear and pagan lack of eleva- tion are part of the bonds that unite him to the con- ditions of a remote past, making his attitude that of the undeveloped heathen. His idea of God is and must be grossly anthropomorphic. He thinks of God as a big man who lives far away, and whose powers are strange and at times oppressive. He thinks of Him as a being who is moved by caprice, by anger, by cajolery, by pleasure, in short, by the various impulses that move fallible human beings. From his guardians he readily assimilates the conception that God is constantly spying upon him in order to find out his misdeeds ; his attitude towards Him is one of fear and often of repulsion. The religious adult looks to his deity for an elevating strength of soul, for the peace and consolation of spiritual com- munion, for an emotional uplifting that at times passes all understanding. But the child looks at Him as an adjunct to the disciplinary armamentarium of the household ; he is naturally apt to regard Him as little removed from a bug-a-boo. He is totally unable, from the unripeness of his mind, to know the meaning of 134 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD reverence, to feel the need of a religious growth, of even the elements of spirituality. It is perfectly true that with his faculty of crude credulity, of easily aroused fear, of inherent tendency to absorb wonder- tales and superstition, he is easily forced into a seeming respect for religious precepts and biblical personages. His faith is lightly aroused, at times, for ridiculously slight causes. But there is no solid basis to it ; it is always poorly conceived, and cannot possibly appeal to his reason, or the parts of him which lead to nobility of mind and heart. Instead of these fine influences one constantly sees grotesque effects of religious training, twisted ideas, twisted relations, twisted motives and plans of conduct that are touchingly ridiculous in the lack of conso- nance with the gravity of the sentiments which they caricature. It is even more touching to notice how parents, unconsciously recognizing the child's inability to absorb truly religious ideas, smile indulgently at his errors and fantastic interpretations, or with an attempt to maintain gravity of expression, seek to reprove him, and promise various and divers sort of vengeance from on high in case of infraction of ordi- nary rules. They rarely do anything to diminish his natural tendency to superstition, to fetich-worship, partly, it seems, because faith of any sort is apt to be thought holy, and attempts to explain matters if only because the child cannot rightly understand THE PLACE OF RELIGION 135 religious matters may evidently create doubt too soon in his mind. In order to see how well this agrees with facts we need only take some characteristic anecdotes of chil- dren's religious feeling. I have tried to select such instances as appeared fair, and most of all, those said by children whose surroundings were ordinarily, or more than ordinarily, reverent. In justice I must say that in no case do I believe that the little ones bore the faintest idea of disrespect or blasphemy. They made the remarks in the best of faith, and when they fell short of piety, it was not due to intention, but rather to their evident lack of spiritual appreciation. They saw no difference between things earthly and heavenly, and honestly spoke out what was in their minds. For instance, take the case of C. J., a boy of ten years, whose general manner of life, on account of his physical delicacy, had been carefully watched. When he was told the story of Jesus walking on the water, he innocently asked whether Jesus' mother scolded him for getting his feet wet. Another child, nearly as old, was in the habit of repeating the grace before meals for the family. One day, after finishing the usual prayer, he said, with conviction that he had said those very same words time after time, that he was beginning to tire of them, that he thought God must be weary of hearing monotonous repetitions of the same idea. Principal Russell quotes a case of two 136 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD boys who were talking about the rain. J. was giving whatever information he had to W., and finally said : "When the clouds are rent or opened, the rain drops out. Rent means torn, just as you would tear your clothes." W., after thinking for a time, exclaimed : "I should think God's mother would get tired mend- ing." I remember a girl, an only child, in very good circumstances and much petted, whom I was treating for typhoid fever. Her mother had been telling her of God's great love ; that even the sparrows, insig- nificant as they are, were included in it. The child retorted quietly : " Don't you think that God spends too much time on sparrows ? If He gave a little more attention to me, possibly I shouldn't have to go for a whole month without a bit of real, solid food." Another case is that of a girl of about eleven, an unusually naive child. Several men were sitting about the room, after dinner, discussing the Single Tax theory. One, in the course of his remarks, said : "There is not a spot on this footstool," etc., etc. The little girl, who was sitting on my knee, whis- pered, " What footstool ? " As quietly, I explained that he referred to the earth as the footstool of God. "O-h-h," muttered the child, in astonishment. "What long legs ! " Her face was perfectly grave ; not for a moment did she think of irreverence. The sug- gested idea was that God must be an exceedingly big man. THE PLACE OF RELIGION 137 Any one who has been much with children can multi- ply such instances indefinitely ; they are part of their daily experience. They show how very far from the possibility of a helpful and elevating conception of truly religious life children are. It is extremely doubt- ful whether they are capable of anything better than a travesty on matters of really spiritual import. And whatever attempts one makes to impose upon them a system that is beyond them and to which they cannot naturally be amenable must necessarily end in distor- tions. Such a result is not only deplorable in itself, but also leads to misconceptions which in later life inevi- tably tend to lower in their estimation the value of religion and the claims which it makes. It stands to reason that when a child comes to realize the crudeness of his early beliefs, that he has been fed upon ideas which while they were represented to hold all holiness and precious truth really contain many germs and cir- cumstances of fabled life, of error, of superstition, it stands to reason, I say, that under such conditions his belief in the whole system must be shaken. He cannot avoid looking at it as a means of temporary control, as a thing which may be temporarily useful in controlling the passing exuberance of childish waywardness ; but, at the same time, it must be hard for him to see in it the vital truth, the active principles upon which it ought to rest. And while this is unquestionably unfortunate, it would doubtless be even more so for 138 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD him to continue these beliefs, which he was able to feel as a child, into the time of manhood. We uncon- sciously feel that the beliefs of these two times are radically different from each other, and this alone would be sufficient to prove that what we teach our children is wrong, that it must be overthrown, that we consider them incapable of participating in what seems a true and rational system of religious faith. If they are to have any such code at all, it must be one which is just as true for their early as their later years. And so long as this is impossible, so long as the unripeness of their minds and their generally undeveloped state forbid the grasping of a full-grown system, then something else which has more of sta- bility and as much of disciplinary features should take the unfilled place. As one would logically expect, children are especially liable to the various excesses which result from the per- turbed condition of their unstable emotional and imagi- native natures. One does not look to them for keen discrimination between what is reasonable and what is unreasonable, nor for an exact separation of illusive sub- jective conditions from more rational objective circum- stances. Concrete cases of the abuses of religious feeling one finds easily enough. They occur in every community and every age, wherever a child is found whose sensitive nature receives so strong an impulse as to be forced out of the line of ordinary conduct. THE PLACE OF RELIGION 139 Such instances as that of " The Welsh Fasting Girl," of children who believe that they are called upon to show some miraculous power of divine intervention, as that of Bernadette Soubirous, who not many years ago founded the wonder-working shrine at Lourdes. The case of this child while not more remarkable in its gene- sis than that of many others, is interesting on account of the widespread results of her peculiar mental con- dition. She was a plain, simple village maid, of a strongly mystical cast of mind, whose circumstances were the usual ones of her class. She had heard much about saints and miracles and was deeply impressed by the stories about them. One day she went about her usual duty of gather- ing wood. On the way she had to cross a stream, and began to take off her stockings. As she stooped down she became conscious of a presence that suddenly made itself manifest before her, and when she regarded it fully she saw a wonderfully beautiful woman whom she knew immediately to be the Virgin. The brilliant love- liness of the figure was beyond her powers of descrip- tion or even full recognition. It was, as she thought, superhuman, God-like. The girl fell upon her knees and worshiped in adoration. At later times she again saw and even spoke to the apparition. Her relatives and friends at first ridiculed her accounts, and even tried to persuade her that she was deceiving herself as well as trying to deceive them, that she saw visions 140 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD and dreamed dreams. But Bernadette knew better ; she was as certain of the Virgin's visit as she was of her own existence, as she was of the divine command laid upon her to build a church. And finally her faith was rewarded by full belief. For the vision came to her at last in the presence of her mother and some neighbors. The child fell upon her knees, with clasped hands and raised eyes, her face lit up with the light of ecstacy. Although the attending witnesses saw nothing but a kneeling girl with a glorified face, they felt sure that the change in her must have been the work of a divine power. After that everything was plain ; belief bred belief ; credulity like a contagion infected almost every one it touched, and the world has become familiar with Bernadette's holy spring and its associated miracles. The spectacle of praying, fasting, ecstatic, exalted children is not rare ; nor is it rare to see them afflicted with various emotional derangements which one can trace to disturbances more or less directly attributable to premature religious excitement. Such efforts are, of course, to be deplored. But it is just as sad to see these irresponsible persons forced into the most solemn covenants, the sacredness of which they are totally un- able to comprehend. Even at twelve, thirteen and fourteen years, the age at which children are commonly confirmed, the imposition of obligations and the accom- panying eliciting of promises that are supposed to rest THE PLACE OF RELIGION 141 upon a foundation of intelligent understanding are not, to say the least, a serious preparation for a useful and beautiful life. For no ordinary boy or girl can at such a time know the meaning of the ceremonies at which he assists, he cannot understand the foundation upon which they stand nor the length and breadth of them. He subscribes to the required formulas in much the same way that he would take part in the commence- ment exercises of his school, or in any function which has the surroundings of pomp and circumstance, backed up by the commendation of friends and relatives. When in later years he attains the age of fuller under- standing and discretion, he cannot possibly feel more reverently and think more highly of a system which extorted promises from him at a time when, swayed by considerations of emulation, example and obedience, he vowed to be and do things the meaning of which he knew not. Such a course, instead of making loyal and zealous communicants and adherents, is more apt to render them lukewarm and antagonistic. In place of open-hearted and reverential believers who feel in every fibre of their being the conviction and truth of their faith, in place of inspired adherents whose lives repre- sent the essential excellence of a prayer, one commonly sees bodies of men and women in whose allegiance to creed social considerations, worldly considerations, and reasons of inertia have an unfortunately large share. There is a place for a related training of children: 142 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD that of morals. That is the proper sphere in which they can normally and healthfully be led as well to their own advantage as that of the community. For them especially is the remark true, that conduct is three-fourths of life. They come upon the world's scene in a condition of almost neutral plasticity. They may have various inherited leanings and predispositions which, if allowed unimpeded growth, would doubtless turn them in definite directions. But the organization of family and social life does not permit unimpeded growth of any characteristics. The whole tendency is a modifying one, a tendency towards a certain common similarity. This tendency varies with the peculiar con- stitution of the child's immediate environment, so that we finally have the problem of a mass of more or less dimly inherited leanings combined with a particular set of surroundings the whole of which goes to make up the person as he grows into adult life. One of the things which bring out the weak spots in the combina- tion is the fact of a certain indefiniteness in our moral life, a lack of directness and steadfastness which chil- dren appreciate very keenly. For they learn conduct in the same way as .they come to know relations in space or the qualities of physical bodies, that is, by the experience of unconscious absorption. Thus they real- ize gradually, and I may say insidiously, that there is a disparity between teaching in morals and conduct in their daily life, that ideals, which are not by any means THE PLACE OF RELIGION 143 acted out by those who pretend to advocate them, are placed before them as final. To say that we should give our coat to him who takes our cloak is all very well if we follow the idea to its logical termination. But it falls far short of having good effect when we seek by every possible means to hunt down and punish the taker. To say that we should try by all odds to do unto others as we would have them do unto us is very fine, so long as we do not, by contrary conduct, give the lie to the teaching. To say that the poor, on ac- count of their poverty, have a better chance of salvation than the rich smacks strongly of virtue. But the anti- climax comes with crushing force when children every day of their lives see the people who preach the doc- trine bending the ready hinges of their knees before men of wealth that power may come with crawling. In short, a large part of ethical teaching is purely didactic, does not embody actual practice in life, and therefore children receive it more as they receive ab- stract propositions than as living facts. An easily apprehended reason why children's moral training should consist largely of applied ethics is the fact that they understand and assimilate concrete results much sooner than the theoretical rules which underlie them. The growth of the brain is such that the parts of the cerebrum which have to do with the elaboration of abstract matter is very slow, is about the last to reach fruition. One may not expect children to have 144 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD \ reasonable conviction, but one may be sure that they | will readily enough follow repeated examples. There- fore one must necessarily believe that all such abstract matter is not only absorbed with the greatest difficulty, but also is most easily distorted. There must be a constant atmosphere of the moral life which the child is supposed to have. From this atmosphere will come much better results than from any amount of teaching to which he may be subjected. The matter comes down to a question of direct responsibility of the child's parents and connections, for they are the patterns which are most closely followed, simply and plainly because they are the models which childish imitative- ness must surely follow. It is only necessary to re- member that the order of development in very young children is first of all the automatic ganglion centres of the viscera, of the heart and of the lungs ; then the spinal cord controlling the movement of the limbs ; then the centres of sensation ; and last of all, the centres of ideation, of thought, of will. These last- named centres do not reach their full development until from twenty-five to thirty-five years of age. Their action before that time is not fully reliable. And pro- cesses which are dependent upon them must be con- sequently incomplete. But the domain of conduct, especially in young persons, is generally not so much the realm of thought as of imitation and example, while I that of religious conviction is, or should be, one of THE PLACE OF RELIGION 145 thought, judgment, not a blind following of what some- body else has said or felt. As children learn conduct by direct imitation, they should have their models constantly before them, and these must be supplied by the persons who help to form their environment. It will not do to act in one way and instruct them to act in another ; to have one standard for oneself and quite another for them. This is what parents and guardians with more or less pre- tence regularly do. Children, with their acute, uncon- scious susceptibility to influence, notice the discrepancy with the greatest ease. And naturally they do not take the prescribed rules in too serious a light. They openly regard them either as purely theoretical and of little importance, or else as ideas which outwardly they must respect, but inwardly may with safety ignore. The standard of domestic virtues, of self-restraint, of amiability, is none too high ; by such means it is kept conveniently low. At the same time, the formation of the general character advances with an equal pace and is similarly retarded. Worldly wisdom, so-called, which too often is merely a synonym for insincerity, deceit, or even dishonesty, is early noticed and too easily assumed. In a few years so much harm is done that only the most strenuous exertions can undo it. But these are not supplied ; on the contrary, the old ideas are with greater force than ever insisted upon as essential to social and business success. 146 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD At an early age the matter is in all likelihood made worse by the teaching of some one of the various creeds. What the child is most impressed by is the part of it ,., which includes an element of mythology, or an element of terror, or an element of narrative interest. His fears as well as his faculty of enjoyment are played upon ; his teachers seek to lead him through the deep mists of superstition into the clear air of a reasonable and ennobling belief. How far they succeed Galton testifies to when he laments that what the world needs is not so much a greater intellectual progress as a better growth of character. Strangely enough, educa- tors feel most anxious to help along the former rather than the latter; and in this anxiety they have, by experience, discovered certain rules and laws of the child mind. One of them is that practical examples and concrete instances in a scheme of instruction come before the theoretical and abstract generalizations called rules upon which they are based. There is hardly a teacher of arithmetic in the land so uninformed as not to have heard of this idea, even if he may not use it, and there are almost as few who disagree with it. Nevertheless, a parity of reasoning in religious instruc- tion is clear. And, in this connection, there is an even greater necessity for the application. Applied ethics represents the concrete example; creed religion may be taken as the philosophical gen- eralization. Such is the order in which they fall ; THE PLACE OF RELIGION 147 and so placed, the value of both of them is un- doubtedly great. When a person has arrived at the age of independent thought, when he is past the time of the arbitrary support which a system of real morals gives, then he is fit for the more philosophical, more intellectual part which purely religious belief in its best sense ought to bring. In the meanwhile, parents and guardians must know that they are directly responsible for the ethical conduct and the moral status of their little ones. Their every act has its bearing, just as every touch of a potter's hand has some little share in the final result of his work. The constant repetition of such acts goes to make up a child's personality. Doubtless such repeated acts count for more in the long run than isolated examples of a virtue that may be great but is not a matter of every- day occurrence. The earth is devastated by a flood, it is strengthened and made fruitful by countless minute raindrops. CHAPTER VII THE VALUE OF THE CHILD AS A WITNESS IN SUITS AT LAW IT is a rather strange fact that courts of justice, whose administration is one of the most important functions of society, should have shown such a variety of opinion in regard to the right value of children's evidence. There are so many cases where such evi- dence is of the most vital importance that the need of settling the question once for all is undoubtedly great. Nevertheless, authorities on Evidence, pos- sibly feeling how shifty the matter is, have given it a wide berth. The subject has very many times come up for discussion, but has never been settled. The drift of opinion of to-day is somewhat farther advanced than in former times ; but the advance has been wavering, tentative, not based on a solid founda- tion of knowledge. As far back as 1779, tne judges in R. vs. Brazier, i Leach, Cr. Cas. 199, held that "an infant, though under the age of seven years, may be sworn in a criminal prosecution, provided such infant appears, on strict examination by the 148 VALUE OF THE CHILD AS A WITNESS 149 Court, to possess a sufficient knowledge of the nature and consequences of an oath, for there is no precise or fixed rule as to the time within which infants are excluded from giving evidence ; but their admissibil- ity depends upon the sense and reason they entertain of the danger and impiety of falsehood, which is to be collected from their answers to questions pro- pounded to them by the Court." Here the crucial idea is that the evidence is more or less reliable, not so much on account of the child's capability to see, think, and narrate clearly and honestly, but merely on the ground of having enough religious or moral training to appreciate the "danger and impiety of falsehood." The point is still more strongly stated in Best's work on Evidence (I. 241). This authority lays down the rule that " when a material witness in a criminal case is an infant of tender years, the practice has been for the Judge to examine him, with the view of ascertaining whether he is aware of the nature and obligation of an oath, and the consequences of perjury. And if it is ascertained before the trial that a material witness is of tender years, and devoid of religious knowledge, the Court will, in its discretion, postpone the trial, and direct that he shall in the meantime receive due instruc- tion on the subject." That this rule was not always followed is clear enough, for the author shortly after- wards cites a case, where Alberson, B., refused to post- I5O THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD pone a trial for the purpose of giving religious instruction to a witness of twelve years of age, since " all the Judges were of opinion that it was an incorrect proceeding ; that it was like preparing or getting up a witness for a particular purpose, and on that ground was very objectionable." Another authority, Green- leaf, makes a similar rule (Evidence, I. 367) : " If the child, being a principal witness, appears not yet suffi- ciently instructed in the nature of an oath, the Court will, in its discretion, put off the trial, that this may be done." This seems fairly definite, except the phrase "sufficiently instructed in the nature of an oath." Here the element of religious training comes up once more, and is so really misty that it is bound to cause disagreement. Greenleaf proves this almost immedi- ately after stating his rule, by citing the case of R. vs. Williams (7 C. and P. 320). Here he states that Patter- son, J., in rejecting as a witness a child of eight years of age, said that he "must be satisfied that the child felt the binding obligation of an oath from the general course of her religious education, and that the effect of the oath upon the conscience should arise from reli- gious feelings of a permanent nature, and not merely from instructions, confined to the nature of an oath, recently communicated for the purpose of the particu- lar trial." As if to show how easily such rules as above quoted may be overturned, the Code of Criminal Procedure of the State of New York, 1897, makes VALUE OF THE CHILD AS A WITNESS 1$! some radical changes ; it speakes of a greater age as necessary, and attempts to eliminate the religious fac- tors. "Whenever in any criminal proceedings a child actually or apparently under the age of twelve years, offered as a witness, does not, in the opinion of the Court or Magistrate, understand the nature of an oath, the evidence of such a child may be received though not given under oath, if, in the opinion of the Court or Magistrate such child is possessed of sufficient intelli- gence to justify the reception of the evidence." All through the course of these changes one can see the predominance of the religious idea, and until very late days, the usual grounds for rejecting the evidence of children were (i) want of religious knowledge, (2) want of religious belief, (3) refusal to comply with religious forms. Evidently jurists recognized the unre- liable nature of the communications, and while not knowing exactly where to lay the blame, nevertheless tried to erect some sort of barrier to limit the evil. This is one reason why so many contradictions in rul- ings, of which there is a wealth, exist. For instance, in the case of R. vs. Holmes, quoted in Taylor's Evi- dence, the presiding magistrate considered a certain child competent to testify, because she told the Judge that she said her prayers, and thought it wrong to lie. On the other hand, Wharton quotes a case of a girl three years older, whose testimony was rejected because she knew nothing of future rewards and punishments. 152 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD The strangest part of the subject for as a rule the law does not lack for safeguards against most of its enact- ments is that no serious attempts have been made to find out why and how far this sort of evidence is not trustworthy ; and if this had been done, there would be no need for citing such well-known cases as that of Dr. Laurent, where a boy of thirteen years accused his father and twelve other men of a murder which they clearly did not commit ; nor such a case as was recently reported in the daily press, where, in a suit for divorce, two little sisters gave diametrically opposite accounts of the domestic relations of their parents, although the only active cause for an utter disagreement in testi- mony was a difference in sympathies. The father's partisan saw the mother's acts in an unfavorable light, while the account of the other child entirely reversed the relations of praise and blame. Still, there is no reason to doubt the little ones' honest wish to tell the truth. The trouble lay not in their intentions, but rather in their particular manner of judging. This last- mentioned case, instead of being remarkable, is really what one ought to expect, because a truthful and faith- ful narration of events or a condition is no easy matter, even for many adults ; for a child it is exceedingly difficult, and in many cases impossible. There are many reasons, looking to the mental and physical condition of the child, why this is so. As was seen in the first chapter, the development of VALUE OF THE CHILD AS A WITNESS 153 the brain is very slow, and even after its gross form develops, a long time must elapse before the finer structure becomes complete. It is by this finer struc- ture that its highest work is done. This applies es- pecially to the intermediate regions in the cortex, called the association centres, where the various func- \J tional areas meet, and where the characteristic mem- ories are stored up. So long as these centres are | unripe, and they certainly are in such condition until puberty at least, the ordinary impressions do not I become sufficiently marked, nor can they be fully recognized and expressed by the child. It is much on the plan of a series or network of communicating canals. If the trenches are completed only in sepa- rate spots, no steady stream of water can flow through them, and no matter how well the work in these various areas has been done, the full results of the undertaking do not come into existence until every connection is finished. One constantly sees proof of this in the child's clumsiness, which is apparent in mind as well as in body. It is only after months of trying that he is able to use knife and fork gracefully and efficiently ; it is only after years of effort that he is able to write readily, to perform many of the most ordinary acts of life. One expects this, and so one does not notice it. One does not stop to think that what he does well is what does not require a careful self-conscious- 154 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD ness or concentration. Moreover, he is helped by his ignorance; he cannot fear that of which he knows naught. Fear does not make him cautious, and therefore correspondingly incompetent. His success- ful efforts are first confined to the purely somatic functions and physical acts; after them, by a long distance, comes intelligent mental effort. Now a word is a more or less complex idea com- posed of more than one sort of image. The simplest word has a host of associations which require for their proper tabulation considerable time and experi- ence. As an example, take the word milk. This will bring to mind the ideas of fluidity, of food, of the bottle from which the child has taken it, of color, of cows, of farm life, of wagons, and horses, and so on to an indefinite extent. Other words are similarly multiple in their concepts and suggest many diverse images. In an immature condition, where the effects of experience and practice are small, it is difficult to keep these various concepts in their proper relations. Like a wagon wheel slipping into a rut the mental impulse deviates from its path. Consequently any certain impressions may be distorted to widely re- moved conclusions. So long as there is not a direct connection between a concept and its rightful expres- sion, no serious reliance should be placed upon the i person's testimony. This is exactly the condition of children. The difficulty of learning each separate VALUE OF THE CHILD AS A WITNESS 155 word is really great, but after this is done, the task of learning simple combinations still remains, and as the child grows older, the necessity for increasing his vocabulary advances at a greater rate. The acquisi- tion of this knowledge comes in a slow and fragmen- tary manner. For a long time it resembles a sort of patchwork, and not until after the lapse of years does it become homogeneous. During all this time not only are the child's concepts imperfectly formed, but also his expressions of them must be still more imperfect. This is so true that unconsciously one acts upon it, and is much astonished if a child ex- presses himself well and clearly, while on the other hand, one is amused and tolerant of grotesque expres- sions. In fact, most of the quaint and witty sayings! of childhood are never intended as such, and the laugh which they provoke is as astonishing to the little one as the remark in question is to the auditor. They should be regarded merely as tentative efforts after ordinary expression, and the humorous part results from the child's misapprehension of normal relations. Proofs of the truth of this we meet every day, and an occurrence in my own experience is a case in point. I was walking one day with a little girl, past an oyster restaurant, on the window of which was displayed the sign, " Families supplied." The meaning to an adult is, of course, perfectly plain ; but with the child it was quite different. Immediately after reading it, she 156 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD clapped her hands, and cried out : " O ! let's go in and get a little baby. I've wanted a baby brother for a long time." Again, another case is one quoted by Principal Russell. It was a case of a boy of ten years who thought that when a person boarded with another, he went to the latter's house, and pounded with his fists on the wall of a room. Another child of nearly eight years of age, wrote his name with the title " mas- ter" before it. On being asked the meaning of the prefix, he said, " That's because I'm master of some- thing, my dog." It must be remembered that these are not extreme cases, but rather such as happen every day. They show how very crudely children express themselves ; how far away from having and expressing an exact idea they are. Now, if so much difficulty opposes them in single words, how much more burden- some must be the obstacles in trying to give a sus- tained and truthful narrative ! The task is greater than one ought to expect of these little people. If this were the only trouble, it would be great enough, but it is only one of many. The most ordi- nary things, as well as the most unusual, lead to misconceptions that may give rise to totally false in- terpretations. The child is thus in danger of extract- ing a meaning from conversations or events that is not at all justified by the circumstances. His report of such things is correspondingly distorted. I remember showing a boy how to look through a microscope, and VALUE OF THE CHILD AS A WITNESS 157 drew his attention to a budding yeast plant that was fixed on the slide. Some fancied resemblance caught his eye, and later on I was astounded at hearing him tell his father that he had seen a little bit of a goat through the instrument. The child was far from wish- ing to deceive ; he was simply misled by an imper- fect understanding of things, which could never have occurred to an adult, even to one who knew nothing about the yeast plant. One of the hardest things for children is to concen- U trate their thoughts and attention. They are easily distracted from any matter in hand, and besides, com- monly observe things very inaccurately. Like the flit- ting of wind-blown leaves, their thoughts and glances swing this way and that, resting for a short time, and very lightly, on many unconnected places. The infer- ences which they naturally draw must therefore be false. Things widely diverse in their constitution, but having some trivial thing in common, will appear to their unobserving eyes as similar ; and, for instance, they would claim decidedly to identify a man simply because some easily marked characteristic, such as baldness, struck them as familiar. Here one can plainly see the characteristic workings of poorly con- nected association centres. For related reasons they - i ^ observe things poorly, and though they look with seem- ingly sufficient intentness, nevertheless, they do not' see enough. Their reasoning consequently is faulty, 158 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD and they ascribe causes to phenomena that strike us in commonplace circumstances as ludicrous. Thus a boy of ten and one-half years, gravely explaining why dogs kept their mouths open, said that it was due to hunger, and that in this way the animal was most ready to snatch up a bit of food; and another child of ten years announced that all small teachers were cross, while tall teachers were good-natured. He had drawn this general conclusion and opinion from his experience with two young women, who formerly had taught him. In the particular connection quoted, these methods of forming conclusions are of little importance ; but when they are translated into serious evidence, which is bound to affect other people's inter- ests, they open the way to great misconception and injustice. Going back once more to the unripe condition which is characteristic of the youthful brain, one finds such things perfectly natural. The various constituent ele- ments of the adult nervous system are present, but in such an undeveloped state that to expect complete responses to demands made upon it, would be just as unreasonable as endeavoring to pay off a large indebt- edness with a small capital. When ganglion cells are only partially formed, when their prolongations exist merely in a rudimentary form, when their histological elements are in part lacking, it is absolutely necessary to conclude that functional activity is likewise affected. VALUE OF THE CHILD AS A WITNESS 159 ^ /"" Thus the idea that children naturally tell the truth > is in itself far from true. To say that " children and fools don't lie " merely means that they have not so many of the ulterior reasons for deceit that actuate adults. As a matter of fact, it is natural for them spontaneously to tell untruths. In addition to their physical limitations, they have deficiencies in experi- ence that are dangerous to seeing and telling things correctly. The difficulties of ordinary sight are over- come very gradually and after years of trial. One can appreciate this easily enough when one thinks of the obstacles in the way of ordinary or upright vision. The human eye is constructed on the principle of a compound lens, and the resulting vision is projected upon the retina inverted. A person looking at a chair really sees it upside-down, and the time which ) is necessary to learn the association of an upright position and an inverted image is undoubtedly great. The process is so elaborate that one, thinking about the matter, is surprised at the uniformly fair results that adults attain. The experience comes slowly, and as the result of countless movements of touching, lift- ing and moving. The partly developed brain does not act logically, and has to learn as if by rote the most ordinary facts in nature. Little by little such facts are assimilated, little by little the child emerges from the mists which envelop his early faculties. Only in the most gradual way does he come to asso- 160 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD ciate the visual impression with the proper relations of the object in space. This difficulty, added to his limited power of accurate observation, is bound to make his reports unreliable. This disability is in- creased by the trouble which he inevitably encounters ^ / in understanding the third dimension. For a long "^time, he practically does not know of its existence, and even when he learns something about it, he uses the knowledge very crudely. The existing lack of perspective shows itself in his attempts at drawing, for, outside of any technical knowledge, he is unable, even at a rather mature age, to see the difference between flat lines and those drawn in projection. Growing knowledge of size and position brings its penalties ; he measures things by his own small stand- ard, not by the adult. Things seem great, even for- midable to him ; his imagination is deeply impressed. The idea of formidable size easily changes into that of the grotesque, especially in a mind that is igno- rant of the true connection between cause and effect. That is one of the reasons why our little ones so readily incline to a belief in ogres, giants and mon- strous forms. In addition, this quality falls very con- genially into place beside that of irresponsibility. The child delights in what to us is unreal, in "make believe." The flights of fancy conjure up other and strange worlds, which are as real to him as the world about him, where things are topsy-turvy. Here events VALUE OF THE CHILD AS A WITNESS l6l come in strange and wonderful ways ; the little one becomes a hero or a victim ; he encounters experi- ences the half of which is beyond all fact. For him there is no hard and fast limit ; there is no end to what is possible. The fears of a mythical dragon oppress him just as much as a real danger; and ordi- nary things inspire the same emotions as the grossest figments of the imagination. A dream, a story, or a vision started by some fugitive train of thought is as apt to induce a steadfast belief, to which he will hold with the fullest force of conviction, as a real series of actual happenings will cause in an adult. I know of tales of severe punishment or ill-treatment, reported in this way by school-children at the hands of teachers, which investigation proved to be utterly without foun- dation. And I remember accounts of pursuits by wolves, bears and griffins, which were reputed to have occurred in the streets of New York, told to me with all the force of righteous conviction. Questioning, without an emphatic statement of disbelief, is apt to confirm these opinions, with the result that a child who is supposed to be all purity, guilelessness and truth, may accomplish the ends of a hardened per- jurer. But so easily is his mind influenced, that ex- pressed doubt or disapprobation will make him utterly repudiate the whole story. A characteristic quality of childhood that is capable of causing much mischief is its vanity. The child M 1 62 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD regularly imagines himself as the doer of great and impossible deeds, as the holder according to his lights of important functions. He knows nothing of the necessity of effort, of striving ; he associates the desire for a thing with the immediate fruition of that desire. His treatment at home during his very young childhood helps to strengthen the ten- dency. His experiences, all the way from being con- stantly called a "big man," to hearing outlandish tales, are regularly of this sort. Very rarely does one see an effort made to develop a sense of proportion. Parents and attendants feel satisfied if by cajolery and by flattery the child makes only a bearable amount of trouble. They know that by such means they can hold his attention and keep him quiet, although they are thereby far from improving his moral condition. A certain amount of vanity is natural to every one ; and at times we find this ordinary amount largely increased in occasional persons, who should be regarded as illustrations of the persistence of youthful types. Thus one hears of women who bind and maltreat themselves, of girls who write love-letters to them- selves, and thereon base a story of a fortunate en- gagement to marry ; in the same way, and with as little basis in fact, children will at times recount with every show of truth tales of happiness or unhappiness, of kindness or abuse. Here again they may have no intention to make others bear the responsibility of VALUE OF THE CHILD AS A WITNESS 163 fancied deeds ; they merely feel the need of satisfy- ing their vanity, of calling attention to themselves, v of being pitied and petted. When brought into a Court of Law, such traits are capable of working un- told harm even of wrecking innocent lives. Everybody is familiar with the imitative faculty in children ; every one knows that they follow closely after examples which they see before them. Practically, we know that this is a fact, and theoretically, it is as it should be. All young creatures must be imitative in order to live, and no one would expect that this fac- ulty would stop short at any exact and designated limits of safety. As a matter of fact, there is an active tendency to ape the ways and manners of those about them, as well as to be more or less impressed by a startling occurrence. In this way I have seen a girl of twelve years counterfeit exactly all the symp- toms which her sister showed in an attack of hip- disease; moreover, I was not certain of the counterfeit nature of her condition until the administration of an anaesthetic, after which no deception was possible. In the small things of life the force of this faculty is con- stantly felt, so much so that it affects the most funda- mental habits. The ideas of the growing child are surely thus regulated, so much indeed, that one can hardly speak of his having an independent mental life at all. He takes his tone from his environment just as surely as he acquires his speech and manner of expression. 1 64 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD To a large extent his mind is a blank, an untilled field, and the impressions made upon it are the means of cultivation. In so far as he is developed at all is he thus influenced. Therefore he is being moulded every day and every hour ; but most of all is he af- fected when some important event happens which makes him incline in whatever way the sympathies and interests of those about him dictate. As a re- sult, quite outside of the question of honest intentions, his view-point is not shaped so much by the actual course of events as by the interpretation which those nearest to him put upon them. That element in making evidence trustworthy, the realization of the nature and obligation of an oath, is one of the most difficult to make sure of in a child's testimony. Lawyers have insisted upon exacting this without knowing positively whether the child were capable of it. Whenever in the conduct of a cause a doubt arose, it was in relation to the one particular case at issue rather than to the whole body of cases. In the same way, some question may have arisen con- cerning the religious training of the one child on the stand rather than of all children in general; and an unfortunate feature of the matter is, that attorneys, in trying to have a child's evidence admitted or re- jected, are apt to base their arguments, not on some principle of impartial truth, but merely on considera- tions of the client's interest. But without doubt VALUE OF THE CHILD AS A WITNESS 165 some idea of the fallibility of this element has been prevalent in the general legal mind, for almost all cases in point have brought out objections from one side or the other against the testimony of such wit- nesses. What is needed is a full and definite know- ledge of the reasons why a child is unable reliably to fulfil all the important duties of a witness. To real- ize the nature and obligation of an oath requires more than an understanding of certain religious forms, or even of religious ideas. Such ideas, as was shown in the last chapter (Chapter VI.), exist as a mood, as a more or less artificial condition. The binding formula of swearing a very youthful witness cannot be any greater than even if it is as great as an ordinary injunction against lying. For one cannot expect him to be held by reasons which are beyond him. His idea of the Deity is decidedly anthropomorphic ; to him God is a big man, with all the weaknesses and passions of mortals. The pure, abstract idea of divinity is far and away from him. He feels the assurance of divine care for the world and interest in him only on the plan that he regards the affection of his father, but with one great distinction ; requiring a tangible method of appeal to his senses, he understands and appreciates in a partial sense his parent's interest and authority, whereas he sees, feels, and knows nothing about a God, excepting what people have told him. The all-impor- tant elements of appeal to his comfort, his physical 1 66 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD well-being, are immeasurably stronger in the case of his parent than his God. His greatest respect for the latter is apt to be founded upon a blind fear, the dread of a promised punishment. Naturally, it is un- necessary to say, obedience founded upon such mo- tives is very easily distorted, so that he most easily responds in the way that he believes will be most pleasing. The sanctity of an oath represents one of the highest developments of civilized life. It involves the sacrifice of personal bias, of personal welfare, of per- sonal relations the very things which go to make up the child's little life. It calls for a foundation of principle, of which children are naturally ignorant, and an elimination of expediency, which is commonly the governing factor with them. Likewise it presupposes a sufficiently wide experience, a sufficiently broad training in conduct, so that a partial knowledge at least of what justice means may result. A person who, from his position, cannot have a proper respect for consequences, is, when so placed that he may by his irresponsible words sway the outcome of impor- tant causes, a positive menace to particular and general interests. This is the position of the child-witness ; for his experience has been so circumscribed, so closely restricted to his own physical needs, pleasures and gratifications, and the bent of his mind calls so clearly for tangible evidences and reasons for things, VALUE OF THE CHILD AS A WITNESS 167 that he is the last one to feel the influence of purely abstract considerations. Another fact which one must keep in mind is, that the child knows nothing and cares nothing about the public tone. The ordinary man knows and appreciates the value of public morality and right dealing, he has a pride in the high standard of the community's acts. He is aware of the part he must play in order to main- tain this standard, and that the resulting praise or blame affects him as well as his fellow-citizens. He knows that there is no such thing as private virtue and public vice, and therefore, he has a distinct reason to hold on to what is good for the state, and to discard what is bad. But a child is absolutely ignorant of all this. So far as he is concerned, the community does not exist, its welfare is nothing, its aims and ends for him are nothing. He looks merely for the approbation of parents and guardians, for they constitute his little world. Any authority outside of them is merely a force with which to frighten or coerce him. The sentiment of patriotism, when it exists in him at all, is merely a reflection from the light which shines from some of his connections. In himself he is plain darkness, to whom the light comes in feeble and un- certain rays. His position of neutral dependence requires an unquestioning willingness to follow in an indicated path, no matter where it may lead. If it tend in the direction of the public elevation, well and 1 68 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD good; but if it stretch out in the opposite direction, he treads it as willingly. He rightfully has no part in any public function, except a decorative part, and the narrow scope of his whole life makes certain a like narrowness of ideals. Outside of these somewhat theoretical reasons, there are certain physical conditions found in childhood, which so easily become pathological that abnormal mental action results. In the first place, the intes- tinal tract does its work of digestion and assimilation when its contents are relatively quite or nearly aseptic ; as soon as there is a slight excess of fermentation or putrefaction, pathological manifestations result. These conditions one should regard as mild but true cases of real poisoning, with characteristic mental as well as physical symptoms. If a child were made sick by some familiar poison, no one would for a moment think of placing reliance upon the disordered thoughts and expressions that resulted from the pathological effects of the intoxication. Children are peculiarly susceptible to these effects, and respond to them very strongly, partly because of their slight power of resistance, and partly because the false mental actions which they induce seem just as reasonable to their inexperienced judgments as the ordinary facts of life. The slighter cases of poisoning caused by intestinal disorders act in the same way, and with as much certainty. Thus a child suffering from these disorders, absorbing poi- VALUE OF THE CHILD AS A WITNESS 169 sonous products of fermentation, will see or hear or feel or dream of things and actions which he may honestly translate into terms of actual experience. He may be as sure of this as of any reality, and still the whole matter may have no greater foundation than the undigested starch in a banana which he ate between meals. The various chemical processes of assimilation, which easily fall into disorder, may act as irritants either in the way of repressing normal impulses, or exaggerating sensory impressions. There is really no limit where this process may end, nor do we know the fixed point where it must begin. At all events, we do know that the chemical reactions in assimilation are exceedingly complex ; that they are easily interfered with ; that the resulting products and by-products are very diverse, and in some instances poisonous. In this way the relation of concepts may be broken, and the consequent mental impressions may even go so far as to assume the dignity of full illusions. Sometimes the ordinary methods of teaching, of learning by rote, are at fault. These act in the way of subjecting the nervous system to a strain which it is poorly prepared to stand. Its normal sphere of activity lies in acquiring new impressions that should vary so regularly as to avoid the danger of monotony. Impressions that are repeated too often -bring about a morbid, nervous condition that has been called " psy- I/O THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD chical trauma." If such a condition exists, it may debase intellectual powers to much below their right- ful standard. Outside of distinct mental disorders, classified as diseases, some of the lower emotional and mental activities may in a similar way be markedly injured. One has evidence of this from such signs as nervous digestive disorders, hysterical attacks, loss of sleep, otherwise inexplicable, disturbances of flush- ing and pallor, loss or impairment of reflexes. One sees these manifestations every day, and the task of connecting them with impaired intellectual activity is not hard. The tender nerve cells have no large amount of reserve energy, and what they possess is easily exhausted. Monotonous strain, instead of giv- ing them the strength which comes from exercise, wears them out and debases their functions. Its action is just as sure and just as harmful as certain sorts of punish- ment, of falls and blows on the head, as morbid changes in the viscera and muscles. The result is that the child's mind and senses do not work clearly and in unison ; his power of observation and right inference is dulled. This power is naturally of the greatest value, and when it does not exist in normally large amount, the results of its exercise are far from re- liable. There are other conditions which militate against the child in his efforts to understand and report what goes on about him. Among these are certain diseases VALUE OF THE CHILD AS A WITNESS I? I of the eye, phenomena which occur in the end dis- tribution of the optic nerve, among which are the light phenomena developed in the retina, the so-called light dust of the internal field of vision, shadowings and polychrome pictures. Moreover, these are conditions for which the adult, in ordinary sight, makes allow- ances, and so escapes deceit. But the child is easily enough led astray by processes in the retinal vessels, such as those involving the movements of the blood corpuscles, and pulsations of the central artery. Of course it is easy to understand the limitations attend- ing opacities of the cornea and vitreous and all con- ditions producing entoptic shadows on the retina. But there are many other pathological conditions, for instance, such as catarrhs and irritations of the middle ear and irritations of the mucous membranes of the face and head, which, although not so direct, are just as potent to divert the course between impressions and their consequent expressions. One must dis- tinctly keep in mind that this course is not necessarily direct, that an immature condition is the one best fitted to allow eccentric action, and that in order to obtain a true correspondence between concept and rightful expression, not only must the natural facul- ties be ordinarily well guarded and nourished, but also a certain fairly large amount of experience and practice is really essential. When this does not exist, one is very apt to find a disturbance of conception produced 1/2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD locally in the cortex of the brain, by which the child is unable to distinguish between the internal processes and their external conditions. If the ability to differ- entiate is impaired, an hallucination is present, de- pendent upon processes in those parts of the brain which preserve memory pictures of the most varied* kinds. One must distinctly keep in mind that such dis- orders, and others like them, are peculiarly apt to happen to children. The youthful organization, by the very fact of its immaturity, its unripe and unset- tled conditions, invites them. Things which would affect an adult only slightly react upon a child in a startlingly acute and active manner. In a man a slight disturbance of the circulatory apparatus in the eye would, in all likelihood, be promptly recognized and discounted. In a child the false subjective impres- sions thus created would be regarded as real facts of objective importance. He could have no possibility or grounds of discrimination, and the opinions which would thus arise would naturally seem to him orderly and right. In the same way, any abnormal condition giving rise to abnormal sense-impressions or interrup- tions of normal connections in thought must make the child feel, see, and think things that are false. It is not hard to show that the consequences may be very seri- ous. The main thing to keep in mind is that no ordi- nary child is a fit means to record and express accurate VALUE OF THE CHILD AS A WITNESS 1/3 and truthful ideas. His main part in life is prepara- tory, constructive. He is being built up into a later creation that we call the adult. To measure him and his efforts by the standard of maturity is, speaking mildly, unwise. To put him in the responsible posi- tion of an adult is like placing a premium on mis- carriages of justice. The special environment which the child needs in his physical life has its analogue in the particular cir- cumstances with which his mental life should be guarded. When the community gives him a greater responsibility than he is rightfully able to assume, it opens the door to disaster. The only safeguard that can effectually preserve the common interests is the withdrawal of such evidence from courts of law as a well-informed man must, a priori, doubt. The easiest solution of the matter would be to find some approximate age at which human beings are fairly close to a permanent standard which is in general reliable. At a glance one can see that nature has followed some such method, and has marked out the period which we call puberty as the boundary line. This demarcation would, of course, be not exact ; but, at all events, it would be a nearer approach to a safe and conservative rule than any which we now have. In reality, there is at present no rule at all. Judges and lawyers vary according to the run of cases, by a sort of common sense, by a rule of thumb procedure. 174 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD Evidence that suits one is quite unsatisfactory to another, and both may be equally ignorant of real, scientific grounds for the acceptance or rejection of the testimony in question. The interest of all con- cerned lies in wiping out sources of permanent error. ^ ^ ^ V CHAPTER VIII THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD-CRIMINAL IT has been truly said that every community has the government which it deserves ; that it has the prevalence of order as far as its deserts go ; and as truly one may say that every community has the juvenile criminals that it deserves, and deserves the juvenile criminals that prey upon it. For, in this respect, as in every other, there is no condition in a state that is caused by purely extraneous reasons. Such as it is, whether good or bad, it makes its own salvation. By its own constitution it is to be praised or blamed. In so far as it is worthy of triumphing over obstacles does it seek to find the reason for them, and with this quest comes the final solution. Thus problem after problem has been attacked, and the resulting triumphs have come after much strug- gling, much controversy, much seeking. The fights against slavery, against the oldtime habits of drink- ing, against the former methods in prison adminis- tration, have been long and bitter. Many a man has sought the truth in them, and has received misfortune, '75 1/6 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD or even death, for his pains. But the world needed improvement, and deserved improvement, and a bet- ter condition came. A somewhat analogous phase of development one may see in relation to the causation and treatment of the child-criminal. There is in the dim public mind an idea that we have not reached final conclusions in the matter; in fact, the subject of criminology, philosophi- cally considered, is a comparatively new one. Some of the best minds have been working upon it, and even general attention has regarded it with the great- est interest. Each man who in the matter has shown ability, strengthened by thought and experience, has his special following of adherents, each of whom strives to bring a stone to help in building up the edifice begun by the master. And the great number of varying ideas shows how far we are from a settlement of the case. Thus, Lombroso, one of the pioneers in criminology, has given a large place to the atavistic theory, that the criminal is a distinct type, that his special character- istics of mind and body come to him by the royal road of heredity. Dr. von Holder believes that ex- ample and poverty and lying are principal courses of crime. Garofalo disagrees, saying that criminal types w *. are well fixed and constant, that " recidivatioh of the criminal is the rule, reformation the exception." What is more, perversity is a natural condition ; in DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD-CRIMINAL 177 his mind education, religious and economic conditions are naught. Dr. Baer lays the blame in great part to the abuse of alcohol, and concludes that without such excesses the world would be immeasurably better. Richter, on the contrary, cries that alco- holics are light offenders ; that serious crime is the result of epilepsy, of nervous irritations working in a fairly well known, but wrongly classified category. Prosper Despine lays greatest stress upon "moral blindness " ; that cure is to come by moral elevation, not by prisons. Beranger supports him by the opin- ion that confirmed criminals are the effect of prisons, and is backed up by Dr. Laurent, who believes in the present system, but even more in its future devel- opment. Marimo and Gambara trace some connec- tion between Wormian bones and vicious traits, but Corre finds nothing anatomically peculiar to criminals. Wines lays least stress upon theory, and cares least for it, claiming that " the principal hope of any mate- rial reduction in the volume of crime lies in its pre- vention rather than its cure." At all events, we know that crime, although its cause is obscure, is a very present reality, and also, that on the whole it is increasing. Moreover, it is not hard to see that the relation between crime in general and juvenile crime is a constant one. They rise and fall together, and similar causes act in both for their development or repression. Factors of gen- 1/8 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD eral life have the same effect upon both, and in addi- tion, example and juxtaposition enable the old to lead the young. Therefore, when we say that practically no progress, by and large, has been made in diminish- ing the volume of crime, it is much the same as if we omit the word crime, and in its place substitute the phrase juvenile crime. Thus, in searching for a final reason in this matter, we may know that the two terms are interchangeable, and argument becomes much simpler. Among other things, one is able to exclude from the aetiology certain factors which have often been blamed as the root of the evil. For instance, many people believe that a deficient education has the greatest tendency to brutalize and debase ; that if intellectual enlightenment were more wisely spread, wrong-doing would of necessity shrink away. So common is this belief that anti-social acts committed by an ignorant man are often partially excused on the score of his ignorance, while equal wrong in an educated man is looked upon as showing far greater depravity, because he must have been sufficiently well instructed to know the nature of his acts. This may seem plausible enough, but it is far from being true. There_is_jip inevitable relation between intellectual training and moral obliquity. The criminal is a criminal exactly the same whether he is stupid or instructed, the only difference being that in the latter case he is the more DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD-CRIMINAL 179 dangerous, on account of greater mental training. Moreover, there is no limit in education beyond which crime is impossible. On the other hand, one con- stantly finds instances of persons who, having received the benefits of good, or even the best, educational train- ing, are nevertheless unable to act in an honest and upright manner. Besides this, one sees every day cases of wrong-doing committed by people whose intel- lectual advantages have been such that they, while pos- sessing the ability to cloak the viciousness of their deeds, are able to act in an essentially criminal way. And it is only by means of their intellectual advan- tages that they continue with impunity so to act. This view, if one looks at the rather meagre statistics on the subject, is fully sustained. Those of Dr. Ogle are in point. In speaking of them he says : " Eighty- five per cent of the population were able to read and write in the years 1881-84, and as this represents an increase of ten per cent since the passing of the Ele- mentary Education Act, it is probably not far from the mark to say that at the present time almost ninety per cent of the English population can read and write. In other words, only ten per cent of the population is wholly ignorant." This high percentage in instruc- tion characterized a period that suffered from a large increase in crime, although the general relation be- tween the two phenomena was not essentially dif- ferent from that of other times. With the growth of 180 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD statistical knowledge the truth of this is seen to have a wider and wider application. Destitution, it is often said, is at the bottom of much of the crime in the world ; that evil-doers are such because want crowds them out of the straight path of rectitude ; that when poverty, with its sodden wings, overshadows a man, the light of truth and righteous- ness is shut out, and he becomes, to all intents and purposes, morally blind. This sounds very well when used, as it commonly is, to fill out begging letters. But as a matter of fact, it has not very much truth in it. Indeed, one finds, on examination, that the evidence is all the other way. Before looking at the testimony, one would naturally think that men who were oppressed by heavy burdens would be the most liable to law- breaking, that by sheer force of desperation they would do anything to provide for the wants of to-day. Also, one would suppose that times of profound destitution would be most deeply marked with crime. The sur- prising thing is that both of these suppositions are false. t One finds criminals, as a rule, to be those per- sons who have almost no responsible burdens, who in j this respect are freest of all to use whatever faculties ' they may possess to the best advantage ; and what is stranger still, one can easily ascertain that times of prosperity show the greatest flourishing of crime. Therefore, Morrison, a reliable writer, says : " It is a melancholy fact that the moment wages begin to rise, DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD-CRIMINAL l8l the statistics of crime almost immediately follow suit, and at no period are there more offences of all kinds against the person than when prosperity is at its height." In another place one reads : " It is found that the stress of economic conditions has very little to do with making these unhappy beings what they are ; on the contrary, it is in periods of prosperity that they sink to the lowest depths." It is easy to collect such opinions, opinions which carry all the weight of authority with them. For the deeper investigators dig, and the nearer they come to the truth, the more clearly do their results agree. Therefore, one is prepared for a still later and very recent utterance which says : "When we begin to compare the distribution of pauper- ism with the distribution of crime, both juvenile and adult, it immediately becomes manifest that as a rule there is least pauperism where there is most crime, and of course least crime where there is most pauper- ism." Many a man who has the interests of society close at heart may say that if ignorance is not the cause, if destitution is not the cause, then we have not far to search, for in drunkenness, which is ever with us, we have a reason whose validity is sure and certain. This seems very plausible, for the vicious and stupefying effects of the abuse of alcohol every one constantly witnesses. We so regularly see fortunes wrecked, careers blighted, men and women dragged down to the 1 82 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD lowest depths by this vice, that it comes to represent everything bad. It is only a step farther to the con- clusions that criminal impulses and acts must follow as the rightful sequel of it. This conclusion, while it flat- ters our sentimental side, is not based upon fact, and while the effects of inebriety are undoubtedly very bad, nevertheless, the causation of crime is not one of them. The real reason must lie somewhere else, as a study of statistical returns shows. We know that men in certain years of their life, between the ages of thirty and forty, are more liable than at any other time to become drunkards. Also, we know that at this time they are not most addicted to crime for which they may be indicted. We know that youths from sixteen to twenty-one years of age are most liable to commit such crimes, but on the other hand, they are not nearly so apt to be drunkards. When we come to juveniles less than sixteen years old, who may not in any way be said to be addicted to intoxication, we find that they produce indictable criminals in the proportion of two and sixty-one hundredths to every one thousand of the population of a similar age. Compare this with the fact that among the older population of from thirty to forty years the proportion of indictable criminals is only two to one thousand. The conclusion is somewhat startling to preconceived ideas, but not more so than another comparison that is easily made. Men between thirty and forty years - Wv ;vj! .*,. *, ,* DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD-CRIMINAL 183 of age, as was said above, are much more liable to indulge in intoxicating excesses than at earlier periods of life ; to put the matter more exactly, they are seven times more liable than at the period of life between sixteen and twenty-one years. On the other hand, in this latter period indictable crime is much more frequent, and, indeed, is more frequent than at any other time of life. Between these latter years there are three and three tenths convictions per annum for indictable crimes for every one thousand of the population. While at the age in which drunkenness is most found, there are only two and two tenths to an equal number. The difference of fifty per cent cannot be explained away so long as we hold to the conception that inebriety, whether in adults or chil- dren, is the cause of crime. When one, in the search for this illusive cause, turns to heredity, the difficulty is just as great. This is in spite of the general belief that strongly marked traits must necessarily be the legacy of descent. The results of scientific investigation have, since 1859, been so startling, and the knowledge of them has been so perseveringly reiterated, that a really surprising amount of information on the subject has become diffused. One must of course expect that the applications of such knowledge should at times be inexact, and that is the very fact which experience illustrates. Because certain forms of insanity seem to leave an inherited 1 84 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD taint, the general conclusion is frequently and very rashly reached that all forms of mental disease leave traces of a similar kind upon descendants. Because flowers produce flowers, because human beings beget human beings, the particular deduction is held that all individual traits may likewise be transmitted. In this way, an opinion in regard to crime is held, there is a general belief that the offspring of a man who has time and time again been convicted of anti-social acts must partake of his nature, must have an equally small amount of resistance to temptation, must be marked with the same convict's stripe, and at every possible opportunity attempts are made to trace such a con- nection. When, as the result of coincidence or of fact, the relationship has been established, the case is held up as a shining example of the popular belief. Our inquiry in this matter would be much simplified, and our faith in the broad working of heredity much more surely founded, if there were not so many evidences of an unjustly broad application of the principle in ques- tion. Our faith receives a crushing blow when we read in an authoritative English report that "in the five years, 1887-91, the children whose parents were habit- ual criminals formed two per cent of the industrial school (i.e., youthful criminals) population." Another blow to this belief is the conclusion which a sifting of records forces upon one, that a criminal calling does not as a rule descend from father to son. On the other DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD-CRIMINAL 185 hand, in the vast majority of cases, the art is learned, not inherited. There seems to be need for a distinct training, which most children can easily absorb. There- fore, one is not at all shocked when a capable investi- gator enunciates the idea that crime "descends by apprenticeship, and not, as a rule, by parenthood." There still remains the strong idea that acquired v characteristics are not transmissible. We know that a parent who has suffered an amputation of a limb does not hand down to his children a like deformity ; we know that in the pursuit of certain industries changes of form occur that are not transmitted, that in the cloth' cutting trade the distal phalanges of the left hand, on account of the pressure of holding the fabric, are twisted out of their normal lines, and finally constitute a permanent deformity. Although this deformity may exist in a man for a whole generation, nevertheless, his children do not bear any marks of it. A man may be exquisitely cultured, his children, under the proper cir- cumstances, may be crude boors. It has not been proved that there is in human germ-plasm the faculty of absorbing the results of experience ; all that can be demonstrated is the handing on of characteristics that are more nearly somatic. A certain shape of skull, a certain complexion, a certain dimension of stature, are clearly matters of inheritance. But characters which are produced by environment are not in the same cate- gory, are without the pale of hereditary influence. I 1 86 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD Whatever effects are produced in this way are the re- sult of a particular set of environments and do not necessarily extend beyond the person in whom they exist. Ordinary life is full of exemplifications of this which, with little trouble, may be clearly recognized. For instance, glance at the children committed to the industrial and reformatory schools in England. A short time ago, their numbers increased so markedly that the growth became the subject of official inquiry. The children were found to have followed not merely in the ordinary inheritable traits of their parents, but still more did they mirror the effects of their surround- ings. They became criminals at their early age, be- cause anti-social acts were the patterns upon which their lives were cast. Thus in the evidence brought out by the Royal Commission on Reformatory and Industrial Schools, a member of the Gateshead School Board deposed that the parents of the children com- mitted to the Gateshead Industrial School consisted of the " refuse of the laborers in the large manufactories, men who have been thrown out of employment, and who have drifted into the very lowest class of the population." On the other hand, to show how little effect heredity has in the production of juvenile crime, take the case of children, descended from approximately the same class of parents as those cited above, who were sup- ported wholly or in part by London charity. Accord- DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD-CRIMINAL 1 8? ing to the returns for the year 1891-92 of the Local Government Board, more than one-half of these chil- dren were taken care of without the parents being similarly provided for. As a condition of this support, the authorities held the power of carefully looking after their wards. They assiduously watched the ways of these children, they shut them off from the tempta- tions and the vicious practices in which otherwise they must have participated, they stood, after a fashion, in the responsible position of parents. Restraint took the place of license, supervision came in where care- lessness went out, responsibility was substituted for neglect. The result was truly remarkable, and the children, in consequence, seemingly lived quite differ- ent lives. So much changed were they that they were " hardly ever arrested as vagrants or thieves " ; they were effectively shielded "from the very class of of- fences which come within the provisions of the Indus- trial School Acts." These facts serve as nails to hold the proof together, and in order to clinch them on the other side, it is necessary only to quote Morrison's gen- eralization that "in the year 1891, forty-four per cent of the juveniles committed to reformatories were living at home, and had both parents alive." It must be quite clear that the home and its environment were the infecting material ; the children served as culture media, and showed symptoms of infection, the principal of which was an anti-social tendency. 1 88 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD Of late years no study in the practical effects of heredity has carried with it a greater amount of popu- lar belief than Dugdale's account of the "Jukes." They were a family of criminals and paupers whose history dates back to the first half of the eighteenth century. They lived together in a section of country which has been called "one of the crime-cradles of the State of New York." They were vicious, lazy, addicted to all manner of excess and crime. The total number of persons in this family and its descendants has been estimated at twelve hundred. Each generation handed on to the next all the crime and vice that the mind of man could possibly conceive. For the most part they herded together in roughly made shanties, where they lived a vile sort of life in common. With this place as a base of supplies, they preyed upon the community at large, distributing their evil influence in a way that is hard fully to realize. Generation after generation showed similar traits of disease, of viciousness, licen- tiousness and crime. An elaborate sociological study has been made of them, with the conclusion that the children were modeled after the parents. This family has pointed the moral in many discourses on heredity ; they have served to fasten the idea in the minds of many people that in human beings the course of in- heritance of characteristics is direct ; that there is an inevitable fate which decides a child's mental and physical constitution, even before birth. DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD-CRIMINAL 189 Such a conclusion is more than rash, and a fairly careful consideration of the facts will show how false it is. In this crowd of unfortunates there was no possibility of intercourse with decent citizens ; the "Jukes " children were shut out from every humanizing influence ; they were pariahs, constantly suspected, con- stantly distrusted, against whom the hand of every man was virtuously raised. Their children were born in the midst of the worst possible surroundings, and inhaled the odor of all manner of vice long before they knew what the boundaries between good and bad are. At a time when slavery was legal in this State, they showed how abysmal was their grade in the social scale by marrying mulattoes. With such surroundings any other fate was impossible. " The tendency of human beings is to obtain their living in the direc- tion of least resistance, according to their views of what that direction is." With every example mark- ing the way to crime, with every obstacle standing in the way to virtue, it would be almost miraculous if they were reputable. As the author himself has said, "want, bad company, neglect, form the environment that predisposes to larceny." When these factors are increased by all known means, one has a predisposi- tion that becomes magnified into a salient trait. Curiously enough, Dugdale has unconsciously given instances of the method by which the viciousness of the "Jukes" might have been prevented, by which 1 90 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD these seemingly hopeless characters might have been reclaimed. He mentions a married pair of this family who removed from the rest to where they were not so well known. Naturally, the outlook changed, they * left the ranks of beasts, and took their stand among human beings. Their offspring developed in much the same way as the other children of the new neigh- borhood, as many children of a fairly respectable parentage. As the author says : " This pair thus measurably protected themselves and their progeny from the environment of eight contaminating persons, all immediate relatives, whose lives were, with few exceptions, quite profligate." He mentions still an- other case that is equally instructive. One of the "Juke" women, a harlot and criminal, died in the poor house, leaving a daughter of the age of one year behind her. This child, according to hard ideas of heredity, should have year by year shown increasing tendencies toward evil ways, and in all likelihood, if she had remained within the taint of her family's influence, she must have done so ; but fortunately, a lady of wealth adopted her, gave her some of the care which she needed, and at the time of the report when she was old enough, according to the family standard, to show vicious tendencies she was seem- ingly quite normal. If this happy change in her fort- unes had not occurred, if she had remained with her mother's family, "which must have been sufficient DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD-CRIMINAL IQI without heredity to stimulate licentious practices," there is very little doubt of what her fate would have been. And then there would have been still another case of the inexorable law by which the attributes of the parents show themselves in the children. In simi- lar ways it would be easy to multiply such instances in other families, where children of vicious birth, when adopted into finer surroundings, blossomed out into useful men and women, and in like manner, one can find enough cases of well-born offspring degenerating far below their natural plane, when their atmosphere was such as to make the falling off logical. If now we are not satisfied with heredity as the essential cause of crime, if ignorance, if destitution, if drunkenness, are not the cause, can we turn with greater faith to the other explanations ? To most of them, certainly not. For these are such as have too little weight, which at most may be called secondary. Various authors have claimed that climate is a con- trolling cause, that variations in latitude have impor- tant significance. But this can hardly be the fact, for all climates and lands have similar crimes and anti- social acts ; they all seem to suffer from the same sick- ness, and all are powerless to heal themselves. It is true that there may be some difference in the symp- toms, such as the greater proportion of crimes against the person in Southern countries, and the greater pro- portion of offences against property in Northern. But IQ2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD the disease is to all intents and purposes the same the world over. Seasons, others say, are responsible. Here again one is dissatisfied, for there is no season which is without its wrong deeds, nor is there even the satisfaction of logical sequence between the exigencies of the weather, and the showing which crime makes. Thus one would expect that in the harshest seasons, when human needs are greatest, when want is most keenly felt, men would become so desperate as to throw aside social restraints, and in order to satisfy their wants, prey upon whoever came into their hands. But as a matter of fact, all this is quite different from the real state of things. Surprising as it may seem, nevertheless it is true, that crime is commonest in the pleasantest seasons of the year, when people have least in nature to contend with, when they are most abroad and mingling together. It has even been said that food is the acting cause, that strong meat foods inflame the passions, heat the blood, and incline men to deeds of violence. This is so far from the truth that it needs merely the mention of a concrete case to set it at rest. The Italians as a people have a largely vegetable diet that is not as " heating," their food is not nearly as "strong" as that of the people of the United States. Nevertheless, the percentage of crime among the Italians is among the highest, while that of the United States is among the low. Another case in point is that of the native inhabitants of India, whose diet is both DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD-CRIMINAL 193 light and meagre. And yet, if it were not for the interference of the carnivorous English, they would even now be addicted to the almost universal practice of infanticide. In ruling out these factors of poverty, ignorance, inebriety, heredity, food and weather, we have done something to clear the view, and have brought a decis- ion within reasonable distance. We may be helped by reading the results of investigations in the subject, no matter where conducted. Thus we know positively that crime occurs in all ranks and at all ages, that the particular form which it assumes depends upon the maturity and circumstances of the individual. A child of seven years is unable on account of his immaturity to commit highway robbery, or most of the offences against the person ; he is so weak in mind and body that the most he can do is to be guilty of vagrancy or larceny. Any boy, for instance, who is well cared for, who is well nourished and lovingly watched, is plainly unable to fall into this category. Such offenders one would not find among the offspring of the well-to-do and more fortunate classes. On the contrary, among those people whose parental care is least, whose ability and willingness to attend to the needs of their children are smallest, one should find the greatest numbers of this sort of delinquents. Such a class one finds in the lowest grade of workers, among the so-called general laborers, for their ranks are in large part made up of 194 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD men who have failed in other branches, men who have almost no training of mind or body worthy of the name, men who are least self-controlled, least provided with the means of supplying the needs of a family. They have the greatest difficulty in maintaining a re- spectable position in society ; their short-sightedness and improvidence prevent them from seeing the conse- quences of their acts, and naturally they easily fall victims to their wants or their passions. This is the reason why low-skilled workers are proportionately from three to four times more numerous in prisons than in the general community. It follows, consequently, that their children are least provided for, that they have the worst examples set before them, that they are most lia- ble to contract vicious practices. Thus it has been officially reported that "of the number of young of- fenders committed to reformatories in the year 1891, there were, as near as it is possible to calculate, thirty- two per cent descended on one or both sides from parents who neglected to control them, or deserted them, or were in prison for crime." Here one sees a direct connection of cause and effect; these children were vicious, not necessarily because their parents were ignorant or poor, but simply because, since worthy ex- amples to imitate were absent, and opportunities to wrong-doing meant gratification, they took the easiest road to satisfy their wants. Even after they have committed wrong, have been DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD-CRIMINAL 195 caught and punished, they are no whit improved. They are released from prison more thoroughly than ever infected with viciousness by companionship with a herd of youthful offenders imps, one might call them ; they return to their homes and former sur- roundings, and the same old story repeats itself. The only change consists in their greater age, their wider experience, their broader possibilities for mischief. It is inevitable that their ways should be as bad as before or worse, so that one is not surprised, when reading the returns for the year 1894, to learn that sixty-four per cent of the offenders who had been committed to reformatories had been convicted of crime two or more times. It must be so, and any other result would be illogical. The whole train of causes leads up to this fact. Other elements in the causation of crime have a similar working. Although drunkenness is in itself no real cause, and although children, vicious or otherwise, are not as a rule given to drink, nevertheless, inebriety helps to make the environment from which young crimi- nals go forth. The offspring of drunken parents are neglected, are demoralized by the example and the con- dition of their parents. They are left without care and support at a time when these things are as necessary as air and food. And naturally enough, they pick up their living in the manner of least resistance. This must surely lead them to the dock ; it accounts for the estimate that from fifteen to twenty per cent of youth- 196 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD ful convicts are descended from parents who are usually termed drunkards. Here again we must keep in mind that alcohol has no wondrous and special working of its own that is worse than any other agency. It is no worse in its results than certain other factors, the abuse of which leads to unsettling the mind and body. In the majority of cases such general abuses are at work. A clear view of the physiological development of the child would a priori convince one of this truth. But the proof is made strong when one reads that " at least eighty in every hundred of parents of young crimi- nals are addicted to vicious, if not criminal, habits." It is not in mind and disposition alone that children, I by growing up in circumstances of neglect and chance, are affected. Their bodies at the same time, and in somewhat similar ways, are retarded. Naturally these two effects must act upon each other, making abnormal growth still more pronounced. Thus children come to have weak bodies, not so much from heredity as from their manner of life, not because they were born so, but because their environment kept them down. One may see how true this is by consulting the published report of the Committee of the British Association of 1883, in regard to the relative statures of boys between the ages of eleven and twenty-two in the population at large, and in that of the industrial and reformatory schools. They found the tallest boys, in proportion to their age, in the public schools ; below them came the boys DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD-CRIMINAL 197 in the so-called middle-class schools ; then those in the elementary schools and in private military schools ; and, last of all, the inmates of the industrial schools. A still more sweeping report was made by another Com- mittee, which stated that the industrial schools showed a greater percentage of unnaturally small children than any other class in the whole English population. These statements are rendered much more vivid by knowing that in the various planes mentioned above there was a difference of six inches in stature between the first and the last. These facts are pregnant with meaning, and the better the evidence on the subject, the more positive are results. Still another Commit- tee, the Anthropometric Committee of the British As- sociation, in the same year made similar researches in regard to variations in weight. Their results both for boys and girls coincided most closely with those cited above. At any age between six and sixteen the chil- dren of the industrial schools are far below the average in weight, while between these children and those of the population at large there was, at the age of four- teen years, a difference of twenty-four and three-fourths - pounds. When one realizes the close relationship be- tween body and mind, a relationship so intimate that no man can say where it begins and ends, one can see the full importance of these figures. Dwarfed bodies, as a rule, mean dwarfed minds and souls, poorly nourished frames do not go hand in hand with a clear 198 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD and normal intellectual and moral growth. What helps one helps the other; what twists and weakens one helps to debase and enfeeble the other. Practical illustrations of this may be seen in Dr. Warner's researches, which state that about one-third of all youthful criminals have a defective mental develop- ment. From my own experience, which has been I fairly large, I believe that this figure underrates, rather than overrates, the fact. It should be clearly understood that the causation, as j well as the management of pauperism, vice and crime, stands upon a foundation of physiology and anatomy, | rather than unstable metaphysics and emotions. Such conditions exist in accordance with definite laws of development ; they act just as steadily and ruthlessly as the laws of gravitation, of the conservation of energy. One of the troubles in considering the mat- ter is that undue stress has been put upon heredity. Claims have been made for it, and phenomena have been referred to it that rightly belong in other cate- gories. This idea has been so used that it serves as a scapegoat, freeing parents, guardians and the commu- nity from a responsibility which rightfully rests upon them. When a child, oppressed by hidden or open disease, by ignorance and neglect, by faulty systems of training, shows naturally unfavorable characteristics, the guilt is promptly laid at the convenient door of hereditary descent. He is supposed to be bad because DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD-CRIMINAL 199 some of his ancestors failed to react in normal ways to the stitmdi of their environment ; the signs of vicious- ness in his life, because his mother or grandmother, laboring possibly under the stress of thoughtlessness, ignorance, or lack of controlling influences, acted in a manner that society does not consider right or feasible, are construed to indicate an irradicable depravity of temperament. The very same impulses, or the charac- teristics from which they spring, may, under different auspices, be quite easily understood, and quite as easily accounted for. The exigencies of modern civilization are quite arti- ficial and carry with them their special changes in the organism. Such changes must be certainly felt in the cerebral tissue, and once felt, the person in his ordinary life, obeying the call of such acquired characteristics, acts in a direct and logical way, without regard to where that way may lead him. A cure for an uneven development lies not in punishment, imprisonment, or ostracism, all of which are bound to make the devel- opment still more uneven, but in methods which will tend to abolish these artificial disabilities, which will promote a normal rounding out of cerebral growth, even though generations of effort are needed to pro- vide a cumulative force that will be sufficient to over- come the effect of centuries of wrong ideas and faulty methods. A withered limb is thought to be lightly re- gained if treatment for a period many times the length 200 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD of the original pathological process is finally successful. And there is no inherent reason why a greater patience and hopefulness should not be used where the nutrition of the nervous system is concerned. That this question of nutrition lies at the very base of the problem there is the best reason to believe ; that arrested development is at the bottom of mental incapacity we know for a certainty. By a parity of reasoning and experience, the opinion that it is of equal importance in the formation of character must likewise be held. Children are not born moral, do not become cultured and educated by a heaven-sent gift of 'intuition. Besides this, there is very little of spontane- ous endowment in the matter. The process is one of gradual up-building, of an unfolding of cerebral cells. It begins with the very beginning of the being, at the moment of conception, and ends no one knows exactly where. Disturbances of nutrition occur in obedience to known as well as unknown causes. Those which result in physical deformities leave their mark so plainly that they have been freely discussed. On the other hand, mental and psychical impressions may be made in an exactly similar way. They pro- duce deformities quite as frequently, although they may not be designated by this name. According to manner of occurrence, time, duration or social posi- tion, they may be called eccentricity, crime, weakness, rashness, or any of the other terms which we give to DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD-CRIMINAL 2OI unusual characteristics. When one realizes that nutri- tion means all the circumstances of life which affect tissue change, one comes to feel that no influence is entirely outside of its limits. Wrong methods of feed- ing, of rest, of amusements, of ordered attention, of occu- pation, are some of the elements which help to make a child one-sided. As he grows older the opportunities for divergence in his development increase in large degree. With increasing activity he is more and more allowed to follow in his own feebly directed desires, there is less and less of principle and a correspondingly greater amount of expediency in his training. These things, as we know, diminish his power of physical resistance in direct ratio to the extent of their preva- L lence. When one reads that "from childhood up to manhood the delinquent population loses a higher 'pro- portion of its numbers than the juvenile population as a whole," one has the statement of facts in gross, but the principle back of it applies to every child in the community. While it is true that the abuses in question are greatest in quantity and quality among the most unfavorable portion of people, nevertheless, they are scattered in varying frequency in practi- cally all circles, and their results are in like manner discriminated. As Dugdale most wisely said, " Environment is the ultimate controlling factor in determining careers." For environment is the steady source of sense-impres- 202 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD sions which, if repeated sufficiently often, produce permanent states of mind. Of course there are many cases of a congenital condition of varying develop- ment in function and nutrition. And where the sur- roundings of the child are not of the wisest, these aberrations become still more exaggerated. It is in such cases that there is most need to find out not only what variations are present, but also to arrange every influence that comes in contact with him to the end of making the balance of faculties even. It is not in the lowest classes alone that such dispropor- tions exist, nor are the limits of viciousness necessarily bound to those of indictable crime. In every grade of life one finds the best evidence of inharmonious growth. The wealthy rake, the intellectual crank, the heartless egoist, the useless idler, are all subjects of the disease of disproportion in cerebral development. The symptoms vary according to the particular com- bination of nerve cells and the environment in which the person has lived. The criminal's course is bio- logically, although not forensically, similar. In most cases there is no inherent reason why he should be markedly vicious. Naturally this statement does not include the cases, which unquestionably occur at times, of a seemingly spontaneous viciousness, a congenital moral blindness, a crime-tendency by intuition. Al- though such cases are rare, nevertheless, their exist- ence may not be denied. In the same way, physicians DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD-CRIMINAL 2O3 occasionally see cases of antenatal deformity, babies born without limbs, or eyes, or any other portion of the body. The occurrence of these pitiful curiosities does not invalidate the fact that the vast majority of losses of limbs and eyes is due to known, observed and preventable causes. It requires no argument to prove that preventable disasters throw upon the re- sponsible guardian a heavy burden of guilt. In similar ways one may show that the person with a deformed and maimed character has not himself alone to blame for the misfortune. It is a regrettable fact that one does not often find families where the best provision is made against pre- ventable disasters in character. What children sees and hear, whether it be good or bad, they will imitate. They learn the lessons of their life not so much from books, sermons or lectures, as from practical demon- stration. A household which is characterized by vicious habits of mind and body brings forth a brood of children that are fit to hold the community as their proper prey. Year by year, as example makes a progressively stronger impress, they become more inclined to harmful lives and ideals. It is for this reason that one finds offences increasing as maturity approaches. Any species of training is more thor- oughly absorbed by a child of seven years than one of five years. By the age of sixteen, he is not only more capable of action, but also his mental processes 204 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD are more thoroughly crystallized. When he reaches 'maturity only a moral revolution can change his ways of thinking and acting. In the ordinary family circle an analogous process is constantly working : ideals_pf speech, of demeanor, of morals, are absorbed just_as surely as dry sand sucks up water. The child repre- sents in his future growth what his imitative faculty has fed upon. If he has lived where deceit is prac- tised, where courtesy is an article of luxury, where metaphorically speaking people go about in their moral slippers, where above all he notices that one code of conduct is practised at home while quite another is publicly advocated, he is quite unable to realize in his later self a high standard of ethical bearing. A parent has more to do than merely provide for his child's physical wants and his educational needs as regulated by state limitations ; indeed, these things are not the most important. In addition he should feel himself bound to set a model and provide an atmos- phere that stands for the best ideal which he is able to conceive. The training consists not so much in formal expositions of duty as in the daily practice, the hourly practice, of them. He is bound to feel that he has in himself the powers and the responsibilities of a maker, a creator. Every faculty and every possibility in him he must regard as glorified, because from them may start streams of moral energy which are bound to in- crease with their duration in time. Such doctrine has DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD-CRIMINAL 2O5 often been looked upon as proper to the pulpit ; and it may be, but simply in the measure that all right con- duct should be similarly treated. Outside of this, how- ever, so long as it is founded upon known principles of psychological growth, it has a real bearing upon the proper training and treatment of children in everyday life, it has a definite biological importance. There is as much need for the expert in pediatrics to include it in a scheme for the bringing up of children as there is to work out the need for a proper method of feeding, a proper care of the eyes, or any subject involving a right ordering of the physical economy. One of the most revered East Indian theologies has an article of its teaching which inculcates the idea of a permeating individual responsibility in every phase of life. It holds that no word, no thought, no act, in short, no circumstance in life, no matter how minute and trivial it may be, but has its definite share in making up the sum of existence. That the character- istic results are not immediately apparent is no reason for losing sight of the antecedent causes, any more than one should be sceptical about the origin of elec- trical manifestations because the generating cause can- not be seen. Human senses are gross, and human reason, in most cases, is not over- fine ; and a depend- ence upon their spontaneous cooperation and approba- tion is too often unreliable. We are apt to grasp at generalizations with which we have become familiar 206 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD and to consider that outside of this there is no truth. Thus, for instance, by constant iteration we have come to believe that various social evils are caused by crowd- ing many inhabitants into a comparatively small space. We forget the very important fact that, in the main, evil results start from this condition only in the pres- ence of industrial and economic instability. It is, on the other hand, unquestionably true that a crowded population living in economic and industrial stability is much better than a sparse one in equally uncertain conditions. The same principle may be applied all through life to the main question of culpability : chil- dren, as a rule, act out in their lives the influences which have been brought to bear upon them. Their natural faculties are modifiable and are modified by their environment to such an extent that, in the main, responsibility for their careers is largely due to the influences in which they have spent the most plastic years of their life. CHAPTER IX THE CHILD'S DEVELOPMENT AS A FACTOR IN PRO- DUCING THE GENIUS OR THE DEFECTIVE THE study of biology brings with it a knowledge of the fact that animal life, in its various orders and species, develops unevenly, that the fruition of this development useful and matured action grows in ways that are peculiar to each kind. Moreover, we know, as has been stated in an earlier part of this work, that the higher the organism the longer does it require to attain a full development of its capabilities. So low a form as amoeba comes into existence and attains full organic and functional maturity at the same time. As one ascends in the scale of life, one finds not only a progressively longer period between birth and maturity, but also a progressively greater interval between organic and functional growth. As Clouston puts it : " The difference between what the brain of a child of eight and the brain of a man of twenty-five can do and can resist is quite indescribable. The organ at these two periods might belong to two dif- 207 208 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD ferent species of animals so far as its essential qualities go." At a glance one can see how important in regu- lating one's ideas of growth this rule is, but the whole story is not yet stated. Even after the main necessi- ties of organic form exist, a long time is required be- fore the active and efficient working power comes into play. The biologist is deeply impressed by the remark- able fact that the nerve cell requires a long time, even after it reaches its full bulk, to grow into the full exer- cise of its ultimate powers. "We may say that after most of the nerve cells of the brain have attained their proper shape and size, it takes them the enormous time of eighteen or nineteen years to attain such functional perfection as they are to arrive at." One must keep in mind that the main business of a nerve cell is to elaborate energy. This process is the result of chemical decomposition of cell contents, a result which constitutes in part the phenomenon of physiological metabolism. In so far as this metabo- lism is normal and healthful, energy is stored up, which expresses itself in ways that are characteristic of the cell activities. The quantity of energy to be disposed of does not necessarily depend upon the quantity of waste or decomposition in the cell. In- deed, one regularly finds a progressively great amount in proportion to the immaturity of the acting cells. In the cortical cells of the infant or the defective per- son of greater age (whose condition approximates to THE GENIUS AND THE DEFECTIVE 209 that of the infant) one finds a comparatively large production of chemical metabolism. Such cells are thus in a condition of natural instability which for very small causes assumes a phase of irritability ; this is commonly out of all proportion to the exciting cause. In such a way pathological action is easy of occurrence and may be really serious in results. It is difficult enough for these cells to work normally, to make and direct sufficient energy to respond to normal impulses in normal ways ; and on account of this difficulty, abnormal and pathological development or arrest of development is and ought to be corre- spondingly easy. This is true not only theoretically but also practi- cally ; and one can see proofs of it in any clinic for nervous diseases. As Sachs says : " During the pe- riod of incomplete development the nervous system responds much more energetically to morbid influences than it does in later years." As the nervous system grows older and attains a greater degree of functional independence, the amount of energy produced is more directly in ratio with the amount of chemical change. Likewise, we know that chemical decomposition can come about only when there is a sufficiently large supply of material to work upon. This material must be constantly renewed through the regular channels of nourishment, of assimilating convertible substances which are able to supply the needs of the cell. There- 210 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD fore one would expect greater energy, other things being equal, from a well fed cell and less energy from a poorly fed one. So far as this view is concerned, it makes little difference whether the cell in question is nourished equally with other cells or whether it absorbs nutrition at the expense of, and to the exclu- sion of, other cells. In the first case, there would be a general ability to elaborate characteristic energy, in the second there would be a disproportionate, a one- sided development. The first would have greater all- round growth, the second would have a smaller growth or an atrophy in one part with a greater growth or hypertrophy in another. Another function of nerve cells is that of discharging the energy stored up. When each cell or group of cells discharges its force in a manner that carries out the special reason for its existence, we have as a result the normal and ordinary working of all the parts of the body. When one group of cells discharges a greater amount of energy than its normal share, a lack of balance results which shows itself, as a rule, throughout the whole organism. Thus we know that the action of the heart is heightened by the so-called accelerator nerves and lowered by the so-called de- pressor nerves or nerve cells. These two sets, by their harmonious interaction, regulate the work of the heart muscle so that it adjusts itself easily to all the varying changes of blood pressure, heat dissipation, and all the THE GENIUS AND THE DEFECTIVE 211 other multiform physiological phenomena that properly belong to it. If in consequence of the over-nutrition of one group, or too great a discharge of energy, the balance of developmental power is not maintained, there must come about a deviation from normal work and nutrition, with characteristic symptoms of the disorder. The same idea holds good in all matters of control, whether reflex, automatic, or voluntary. And in ex- actly the same way that muscular action and muscular tone are controlled, just so the parts of the nervous system, which by their exercise supply thought, work out their purpose. Every part of this system is subject to these same laws, so that there can be no difference in the elaboration of energy no matter what its ultimate mode of expression may be. Thus the cells whose energy goes towards providing the basis for the moral thought of a man, are subject to the same laws as those which provide the basis of the more exclusively intellectual processes. Considerations which encourage or discourage one affect the other in like manner. There is another fact to be kept in mind, and it concerns the fact of systematic inhibition. All through the central nervous system there are cells and groups of cells which have the function of retarding and blunt- ing the more positive energy developed by others, and in certain cells of a high type both negative and positive functions are present. Thus we find that all through the nervous tissue there run series of counter- 212 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD checking influences, whose nice equilibrium means fine adjustment of potentiality. When one factor or an- other is out of proportion, a one-sided action must result. Also we find that the restraining or inhibitory '" function is the last to develop. This is chronologically correct, for a restraining force has no reason for its existence until the energy which it is meant to restrain is really present. In the same logical chronology we find that the vital automatic processes, heart and lungs, have their inhibitory force ready to act approximately well at birth ; the various somatic reflexes blossom out in their turn, while the more clearly intellectual y are the last of all to come to maturity. In childhood disturbances of inhibition are oftenest found, and like- wise, for this reason, one finds in childhood a great tendency to neurotic action, which works in the way of making the abnormal child. Even when the centres of these reflexes have attained their approximate form, their energy is discharged more easily, more irregularly, more capriciously, than in the adult. When the envi- ronment, the general nutrition, of the child is imperfect, the instability of the nervous state is increased, and abnormal action is more likely. Such abnormal action, as was mentioned above, may consist in a general weakness, a partial weakness, or a partial weakness associated with a partial overgrowth. All three con- ditions are unfortunate, for they mean limited possi- bilities in accomplishing the full objects of life. THE GENIUS AND THE DEFECTIVE 2 13 This much one must have clearly in mind when con- sidering the defective and the genius among children. Then one gradually comes to see that there is no sharp line between them, that there is a bourne where the dull black of idiocy and the brilliant white of unusually great mental power meet and blend in the quiet gray of the commonplace. As Seguin says, idiocy is "an infirmity of the nervous system which has for its effect the abstraction of the whole or part of the organs and the faculties of the child from the normal action of the will." This abstraction comes as the result of arrested development, of insufficient nutrition, and should not be looked upon as an inevitable and immovable thing which occurs regularly in the course of descent, like curly hair, or full stature, or like certain specific diseases. The more one sees of de- fective children, the more one is impressed with the striking fact that physical elements play an important part in the production and continuance of psychical and intellectual impotence. Given certain impaired cells, and the equilibrium of cells throughout the body is shaken. Given a tuberculous condition, the most common disability with which unfortunates have to contend, and the chances of good mental growth are greatly lessened. The effects of such a condition are so marked that Shuttleworth, as the result of experience for a quarter of a century with defective children, says: "A phthis- 214 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD ical family history is, indeed, a predominant factor traceable in our cases, the percentage in which this was found being twenty-eight and thirty-one hun- dredths, against twenty-one and twenty-eight hun- dredths in which hereditary mental weakness (insanity or imbecility) was recorded." Again, Dr. Ireland states that "perhaps two-thirds, or even more, of all idiots / are of the scrofulous constitution." Tuberculosis acts in this way not because it has an especial relation to mental weakness, but merely because it undermines and wears out the general physical constitution. The resulting condition is one of lowered nutrition, which affects every cell in the body. On the other hand, where, in the presence of a tuberculous predisposition, adequate means of controlling the diathesis are used, there is every reason to believe that not only will the general condition be kept at a normal standard, but also the tendency to impaired intellectual power will be checked. The two things have the close rela- tion of cause and effect, and cannot well be separated. With increasing experience with these cases, one sees more and more reason for believing in a lack \ of nutrition as the ultimate cause of defective mental growth. In an analysis of English cases, fully thirty per cent were attributed to ill-health in the mother, to injuries, to accidents, to shock during the period of ges- tation, all of which may be regarded as means of lower- ing vitality in the offspring. This is one-half again as THE GENIUS AND THE DEFECTIVE 215 much as were caused by an epileptic and neurotic descent, where there might be ground for a belief in an hereditary predisposition or transmission. I regard this belief as problematical, for there are the best of reasons for holding that neurotic and epileptic con- ditions stand for impoverished nervous conditions, whether they are joined to equally poor somatic states or not. So long as this is the case, the progeny of persons so constituted could not be expected to be strong. Here again there is the rigid relation of cause and effect. Some of the familiar causes are most to be re- spected for their age, rather than their strict con- formity with ascertained truth. For instance, there is a common belief that consanguinity of parents is a potent factor in the causality of idiocy and allied con- ditions. But in the analysis of English cases referred to, less than five per cent seem to be capable of such a classification. And even in this small percentage, the main tendency which one can see is a risk of intensify- ing family weaknesses. Another time-honored cause intemperance in the parents seems to be responsible for only about sixteen per cent of the whole number. And in this case, again, one has to decide whether the intemperance itself was the real cause, or whether the lowered vitality which preceded, accompanied, or fol- lowed the excess, should be blamed. In the latter case, the decision would once more rest with the 2l6 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD fact of impaired nutrition as the primal cause ; and intemperance would take its place with a multitude of other factors as merely a means for inducing cyto- plasmic poverty. Therefore, one is not at all sur- prised in reading an authoritative opinion to this effect : " Not every drunken parent procreates an idiot ; but when inherited nervous instability from this or other causes is intensified in the next generation by injudicious marriage, or by unfavorable environment, instances of mental degeneracy are apt to occur." Even in so low a condition as microcephalus, a state so low as to have simian and even theroid re- semblances, the only cause that one can find is something which lowers the vital nutrition of the child before birth. Whether it is the general health and strength of the mother, or the wise conduct of her everyday life, whether it inheres in some nervous shock or the strain from physical exhaustion, is very hard to say. At all events, we know that the con- dition does not necessarily follow any broad path of heredity ; and on the other hand we are quite as sure that any of the alternatives mentioned above, as well as other causes working in similar ways, must be at the root of the trouble. The question of responsi- bility and the possibility of avoiding this blight is one that naturally springs into the mind. But I pre- fer to leave it undiscussed, at least for the present. The main fact, however, is to recognize that mental THE GENIUS AND THE DEFECTIVE 217 defects are due to poor work in the making and the rearing of cell tissue, that they are of varying degree according to the severity of the causes at work, and that the differences between them are differences in degree rather than of kind. Likewise, it is well known that the injury may not be a general one ; for every observer has noticed that certain parts of the cerebral tissue may be of lower development or vital- ity than others, and that the location of the vicious development comes about according to events of which we may be ignorant. Even in the lowest grade of human beings one finds at times a surprising keenness and activity in certain parts of the brain, while the remaining portions may be remarkably crude. Thus Seguin describes " idiots who discriminated species of woods and stones merely by smell without having recourse to sight " ; at the same time the other senses were very obtuse and unequal. Ascending somewhat higher in the scale, one might instance such cases as that of very low savages, as for example the African Bushmen, whose intellectual devel- opment is exceedingly small, but who, on the other hand, have a special gift in hearing or smell that is truly wonderful. Or, one might take such striking cases as that of Blind Tom, a negro, born of common slaves, whose general mentality was that of an idiot, but whose musical gifts were so extraordinary as to entrance thousands of people who heard him. Or, 2l8 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD again, one might mention the German " Lightning Calculator," Base, who possessed very wonderful mathe- matical faculties joined with a general intellectual de- velopment that was pitiably meagre. Such cases exist in striking numbers. They fortify the opinion that intellectual power is, seemingly, distributed vicariously, that good and bad, high or low, may go together, that intentional or unintentional disadvantages will lower the nutrition, and so the function of any part ; while conversely, intentional or unintentional advantages will heighten both nutrition and function. There is still another fact of great importance, that one should keep in mind. It is the possibility of im- proving a defective mental condition by the various means that will provide strength for the weakened tissue, that will nourish starved cells, that will awaken the parts which sleep in what seems to be a death-like slumber. The means for doing this are gradually be- coming known, and with this greater knowledge better results are obtained. A strong indication of what may be done is given by the improvement which comes with the change from bad to good sanitary surroundings. When so elementary a matter as proper sanitation can change a defective to a higher order of person, a world of light is by implication thrown upon the subject of intellectual growth. That such a change can be accomplished there can be no doubt ; for we have as testimony the work of Geggenblihl and his remarkable THE GENIUS AND THE DEFECTIVE 2IQ success in treating cretins by a change of surroundings. The unfortunate creatures, who in the dull and shad- owed valleys of the Alps were but little better than beasts, became vastly improved, vastly higher in gen- eral capabilities when removed to the bracing air, the generous sunshine and the exhilarating freedom of the Abendberg. In the same way that weakened lungs, feeble muscles, shrunken limbs may be helped, brain tissue may be improved organically and functionally. Moreover, possible improvement is not confined to any special part of the organism. Any tissue, no matter at what stage the developmental impulse has been arrested, may under proper environment be made to take on an added growth and a stronger vitality. When Seguin was Director of the Asylum for idiots at Bicetre, he wrote a report of his experience that was not only interesting, but also deeply instructive. "Idiots," he said, "have been improved, educated, and even cured ; not one in a thousand has been entirely refractory to treatment ; not one in a hundred who has not been made more happy and healthy ; more than thirty per cent have been taught to conform to moral and social law, and rendered capable of order, of good feeling, and of working like the third of a man ; more than forty per cent have become capable of the ordinary transactions of life under friendly control, of understanding moral and social abstractions, of working like two-thirds of a man ; and twenty-five 220 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD to thirty per cent have come nearer and nearer the standard of manhood, till some of them will defy the scrutiny of good judges when compared with ordinary young men and women." All this constitutes a marvellous change from the time when Howard in plain terms pilloried the shock- ing customs that existed in prisons and asylums. Such institutions then were veritable plague-spots of vice, misery, inhuman cruelty. Low mental conditions be- came still lower, the defective was regarded as a wild beast whose proper care, because his condition was con- sidered permanent and incapable of improvement, con- sisted in annihilating and crushing subjection. More than one man in going from one of these cages to another traveled on horseback, that his clothes might lose the stench with which they were impregnated. Physical abuses and degeneration went hand in hand with mental. And the creature who was cursed with a palpable psychical infirmity would have been more fortunate to have lived in the rigorous days of Lacedae- mon when such as he were summarily killed off. Nevertheless, the customs and opinions of a century ago have not been quite stamped out. The general public still feel the inertia of by-gone ideas. They still regard the defective as a being who is comparable to a man born without limbs and without all necessary viscera, whose state is fixed as that of a lightning- blasted tree or a bare and sterile rock. They do not THE GENIUS AND THE DEFECTIVE 221 keep in mind that in speaking of the feeble-minded they must include, as Dr. Firnald does, "all degrees and types of congenital defect, from that of the simply backward boy or girl, but little below the normal stand- ard of intelligence, to the profound idiot, a helpless, speechless, disgusting burden, with every degree of deficiency between these extremes." They do not understand that there can be no clear line of division between these classes, and that since there is no such line there must consequently be the possibility of developing and reclaiming all in some varying degree, so long as there is a possible improvement in any. The natural conclusion, then, is that the various means of improvement, whether ante- or post- natal, are adventitious, are with growing knowledge capable of control. Even the degree of reclamation is not fixed, the limit of yesterday being found to-day quite inadequate to mark off the extremes of possibility. When one reads in the last national census that there were in the United States in 1890, nearly one hundred thousand " idiotic and feeble-minded persons," that "taking the country as a whole, there are two feeble- minded persons to every thousand persons," one is well-nigh overwhelmed by this burden of helpless misery, inefficiency and misfortune that might in some degree be avoided. There can be no doubt that a beginning in solving the problem has been made, although it is nothing more than a beginning. One 222 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD begins to have hope when one reads in the first report of the trustees of the State Asylum at Syra- cuse : " At the base of all our efforts lies the principle that, as a rule, none of the faculties are (is) abso- lutely wanting, but dormant, undeveloped, and imper- fect." And the hope is continued when one reads the two rules promulgated at Bicetre : " To exercise the imperfect organs so as to develop their functions," and "To train the functions so as to develop the im- perfect organs." If, then, no line between degrees of mental defi- ciency may be drawn, if, moreover, the deficiency may, on account either of invigorating environment or natu- ral endowment, be so slight that there is no appre- ciable difference between it and the general average of intelligence, then it follows that the so-called normal state cannot be sharply marked off, and is indeed incapable of sharp definition. All that one means by the phrase, "average" or "normal," is, on the one hand, the possession of a general amount of cellular nutrition by which the person is able to do sufficient work to support himself, as well as to absorb sufficient discipline to make himself a bearable mem- ber of the society in which he lives ; on the other hand, the definition goes so far as to include a well- rounded and able-bodied intellectual impulse that enables the possessor to make a definite and respected place for himself in the world. Between these ex- THE GENIUS AND THE DEFECTIVE 223 tremes there are very many grades, and men ascend or descend from one to another slowly, but neverthe- less with a fair amount of ease. The character of their environment goes very far to lay out the paths which they are to follow. For the large majority of people are endowed in their mental constitutions very much as in their physical ; they have sufficient nutri- tional activity to carry out the demands of the life in which they have grown up, and not much besides. In this way one can understand how it is that but few men can possibly be ahead of their time, how a fact which seems so simple as to be almost trivial would to our ancestors have appeared as a wild flight of the imagination. An ordinary school-boy of to-day ab- sorbs with ease knowledge which would have been exceedingly difficult for an Elizabethan to acquire. Physical phenomena upon which the use of steam and electricity are based, ideas which underlie freedom and universal suffrage, theories of art and religion, which would have been almost impossible for the seventeenth or eighteenth century man, are readily as- similated by the ordinary student of our high schools. Through all the past years there has been a slow but steady growth of nerve and body tissues. In addition cerebral cells have become used to receiv- ing added and new impressions, the associational centres have had a great amount of exercise, the capacity for work, for assimilation, has been largely 224 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD increased. In the face of these facts the fear, which one frequently hears expressed about the sum of human knowledge and experience being so enormous that we are close on to the limit of acquisition, is plainly futile. It is true that the world's circum- stances have greatly enlarged, but the growth has on the whole been so gradual, has had so many prepara- tory stages ranging over a great length of time and, besides, has followed so inevitable a path, that the idea of overstrain is quite out of the question. The one thing which is necessary is an improvement in methods which shall keep pace with the varying cir- cumstances of subjective and objective existence. Such improvements the world is constantly trying to bring about, and when they are accomplished they pass under the name of progress. The type of person who has derived most benefit from this growth is the one of an even general development, who has no particular gift in any direction. Both hered- ity and environment have dealt genially with him, so that every part of him has a proportionally even develop- ment. Such a person is as a rule very rare. What one generally sees is a moderate general development with an atrophy and hypertrophy in some particular direc- tions. On exactly the same plan does one find physi- cal endowments distributed. The ordinary man is not evenly developed in all his parts. In one case there is a disproportionate strength and growth of THE GENIUS AND THE DEFECTIVE 225 the arms, in another the parts of the back are too small, still another has the hypertrophied thigh mus- cles that a naturally fine bicyclist might have. Or, a man may have an unusual corrosive gastric secre- tion and thus be especially able to digest food ; his neighbor may have an exceedingly well developed tactile apparatus, so that his sense of touch is more than ordinarily keen. Such cases one meets every day; they excite no surprise, simply because they are common. We likewise know from experience that with proper training all these peculiarities and an indefinite number of others like them may be arti- ficially reproduced. By such methods one may bring about changes in an ordinary person's body which would stamp him, if they occurred spontaneously, as quite remarkable. In such cases of cultivation, one knows the cause of the uncommon development, one explains the phe- nomena on fairly well understood biological laws, stating that an unusually active metabolism has made unusual nutritional changes necessary, that the tissue involved has, as the result of these changes, thrived and grown beyond what would ordinarily have been its limit, that the particular cells in question have received so much nourishment that their function has broadened proportionally. This principle of devel- opment has the widest influence on the body, which often enough produces results that affect the mind. Q 226 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD Thus a condition which temporarily or permanently so controls the blood supply to a part that the bal- ance of its metabolism is disturbed would necessarily dispose the organ in question to heightened or lowered function, according to the direction of disturbance. As an example, one might quote the group of cases of Whitwell, in which "mental and nervous lethargy and torpor," and "no sign of originating mental power," were leading features. He goes on to dem- onstrate that the condition is due to a "deficient development of the vascular system." He believes that the imperfect growth rests upon too small a heart, aorta, or basal cerebral vessels, so that the cere- bral tissues are more or less starved. Where the condition is a permanent one, the mental state is continously dull. Where it is spasmodic, there would be varying phases of mental dulness and lucidity. He traces a direct connection between the virility of the mental powers and the nourishing circulation which in part helps to make an active nutrition possible. Where an analogous process of hypertrophy takes place in a part or a number of parts, a condition of overgrowth results which may go so far as to disturb every law of conservation of energy. Such a state one calls elephantiasis. The exact causes of it we do not know, but of its general disposition there is sufficient knowledge to allow a man of Ranke's care- THE GENIUS AND THE DEFECTIVE 22/ fulness to attribute it to "perturbations of develop- ment during foetal life." While this statement has the inexactness of generalization, nevertheless it shows in what direction modern thought is tending. It shows us that the scientific world has advanced to the stage where it recognizes that there is much in every human being which, from the time of concep- tion, is susceptible of modification. So long as this is so, the main problem which presents itself lies in the way of using the possibilities of nutrition so as to obtain the best all-around growth. Where, as in the instance quoted above, there is a one-sided development, the full potentialities of the individual are not conserved. It is plain enough that a man, every part of whose body is well developed, is a better result of training than one whose arms are comparatively over-developed, and whose legs are comparatively under-developed. A man whose senses are fairly keen in all directions is of more use to him- self and the community than one who possesses ab- normally keen sight and abnormally dull taste or touch or hearing. The harmonious relations of parts are not broken with impunity. The penalty is an ever-increasing unevenness, which is bound to limit the man's usefulness to the narrowest possible limits, to make him more nearly like a machine. Or the process may end in producing curiosities, "freaks," beings whose simple ability does not atone for many- 228 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD sided uselessness. It is bad enough when this lame- ness is confined to physical gifts, especially those of a low order. The higher one ascends in the scale of efficiency, the more deplorable are the reeults. No matter how undesirable these effects may be in the man, they are infinitely worse in the child, whose growth is in a plastic state of change, who needs all possible nourishment for every part of the economy, who, in the presence of a drifting-off of such nourishment from any part, would suffer not merely from a partial vitality, but rather an oblitera- tion of the functions involved. A condition like this is unfortunate enough when occurring in the purely physical powers, but when it appears in the higher gifts of the intellect, the emotions, and the character, the person should receive much more sympathy, or even commiseration. He might rightfully regard him- self as the victim of hard circumstances, which have placed him in a position somewhat like that of a cripple. It is easy to see the close analogy underlying both physical and mental gifts. The same classification fits equally well to both, the same nutritional laws act as surely in the case of one as in that of the other. The same laws of cell-growth, cell-hypertrophy and cell- atrophy are common. One naturally makes the same distinctions between feeble mental power as a whole, uneven mental power, and strong general development. The first class one calls the feeble-minded or defective, THE GENIUS AND THE DEFECTIVE 229 the second is what one meets in the ordinary man and woman, and the third constitutes the highly gifted. Between these there are many gradations whose nomenclature varies with individual views. One of the commonest phenomena is to find a person who congenitally or artificially has a leaning in one direction, which he develops as far as he can. Such a person is called "talented," or, in cases of marked development, he is named a "genius." At the same time, there is the greatest confusion in the interpreta- tion of this word "genius." Some people take it to mean unusual intellectual brightness in general, some thus designate an unusual relation of associational ideas, some call by this name an hypertrophied function in any branch of intellectual effort. But in the last analysis most people apply the term to a man who has achieved great distinction in any of the arts, mostly those of literature, painting, sculpture and music. As a rule, there is so little of common agreement on the subject that he who is a genius to one person is not such to the next one. The definition of the quality of genius is as multiform as the number of definers in- creases. One person calls it "the power of continuity," another " the faculty of application," another " the pos- sibility of original composition," another " the power of leading one's time in any department of intellectual effort." Some persons wish to extend the appella- tion, speaking of a " moral genius " or a " philanthropic 230 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD genius" or a "political genius." I have even seen the phrase " pugilistic genius." And doubtless this last holds as good a title to soundness of doctrine as many of the others. The main idea seems to be to include in this class any man who shows a marked gift in any direction. Under this rule the idiot, Blind Tom, must likewise be termed a genius ; a " mind-reader " like the late Washington Bishop is surely entitled to be called a genius ; a convict who, by infinite patience and an un- limited supply of time, makes a toy log house out of thousands of minute pieces of wood is also a genius ; a man with a deep knowledge of human weaknesses and necessities, who, by trickery, bribery and corruption, plays one faction against another, until he holds the political course of a municipality in the hollow palm of his hand, is likewise a genius. Anybody and every- body, from the highest to the lowest, who makes an impress upon the minds of men, is just as clearly entitled, according to the diverse and conflicting opin- ions generally held, to this glorious name as the great- est soul that ever shed a freshening ray of light into the hearts and souls of us common mortals. The true genius is the grand, the awe-inspiring, the soul-compelling figure in human ideals. He is sup- posed to stand and should stand on a lofty eminence, bathed in clouds, giving out a gorgeous radiance that clears the tangled paths of petty mankind who thus may run their course to the peaceful resting-place of THE GENIUS AND THE DEFECTIVE 231 a quiet and forgotten grave. The god-like impulse in him should carry his thoughts and acts beyond the reach of frail temptation into the serene land of noble creative accomplishment. His life should be the sum- mation of men's hopes, their longings, their aspirations. The consistent course of such a being's career should be the beacon light to which future generations might fix their eyes, as the helmsman in a wide sea turns his gaze towards the Northern Star. Not a spot should sully the pure lustre of his reputation, not a blemish should disfigure the entirety of his praise. As a consistent whole, his life and works should stand in priceless grandeur, so that no man could raise against them a carping tone. But, alas ! one does not see such careers. On the contrary, one sees lives that are pieced and patched, lives that may have a strong melody running through them, but marred and cheapened by discords and over-tones. For each great gift one finds a corresponding weakness, near each line of brightness one sees a spot of black. The idol's head may be of gold, but his body and feet are apt to be made of baser metals and clay. The more closely one thinks about the matter, the more clearly one sees that what we mean by the genius is an ideal, pure and simple. Short of this one can find no line which will accurately mark off the so-called genius from the talented man, any more than one can differentiate the talented from the ordi- 232 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD nary man. What one does find is a varying develop- ment in this direction or in that, a greater vitality in one line or another ; in other words, a greater produc- tion of energy in some group or groups of cells, which have had the advantage of a proportionately great nourishment. The world would understand the matter much better, would be able better to appreciate the lesson of superlative accomplishment, if it would speak of a great man as a gifted man, rather than a genius. It would understand that great gifts do not come arbitrarily and without reason ; it knows from common experience that the more favorable the training and environment of any part of the body are, the better will its functions be. Further, it would know that naturally great gifts, like smaller ones, may be devel- oped and improved. The way to an indefinitely ex- tended betterment would thus become plainer, and the efforts to secure this betterment would then surely, even if slowly, follow. The lesson of greatness is not complete unless it is studied along with its accompanying weaknesses. A great man is unjustly dealt with when only one part of him is known. And unquestionably, the com- munity is most fairly treated by receiving the most faithful impressions. An estimate of Caesar, which shows nothing but his remarkable administrative capa- city, removes him so far from ordinary methods of judgment that what one sees is not the presentment THE GENIUS AND THE DEFECTIVE 233 of the man, but rather a projection of one phase of him. A much more realistic and helpful view would include the weaknesses that were sufficient to keep him far from the pedestal of the demi-god. The bloody Napoleon, great in the conquest of armies, in the making of countless widows and orphans, in dis- membering states, has his limitations so strongly marked, that if time could wipe out the trail of de- structive ambition which he left behind him, the best part of his deeds would be destroyed. The hyper- trophy of a single faculty was strongly marked in him. Among men of military fame Washington, in the full and rounded development of the whole range of man, was infinitely his superior, infinitely more worthy of admiration. Of the two, the former played the part of ruthless and selfish destroyer ; he is one of the great personages of the world who is least deserving of respect for his characteristic ability. Among other deficiencies, his lack of moral sense a constituent element in the cerebral equation was starved, was shriveled. The American, on the other hand, approached much nearer to the ideal of develop- ment in every part. While not by any means perfect, nevertheless his great gifts showed so large and boun- tiful a range, that the world may point to him with highest pride as an earnest of what manhood may possibly come to be. Take a man of quite different parts for an example 234 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD Wagner. The range of his gifts was wide enough to embrace the domains of music, literature and stage management, which is indeed a wide field. In these arts his hand was that of a master, and all the world is now swinging censers before his shrine. While appreciating his gifts, one ought likewise to recognize how unworthy of admiration he was in many other respects ; one ought clearly to see that he embodied a one-sided growth, a partial nutrition. Doubtless one might, with truth, say that the one-sidedness of this nutrition showed itself in the eccentricities and want of sanity which unquestionably characterized part of his work. The pathological intensity of "Tristan and Isolde," and the esoteric mysticism in "Die Gotter- dammerung," are far from being the product of a normal and admirable cerebral balance. Placed next to the joyous healthfulness of " Die Meistersinger," they must forever represent high intellectual action, plus unusual cortical irritation such as one would not expect to find in the healthy and even results of a desirable nutrition. The more closely one examines the great men of the world, the more is one convinced of the satisfactory nature of the classification here advocated. At the same time, there is not the least desire to subtract one jot or tittle from their fame and its reward. On the contrary, there is the greatest reason, because these gifted men were not the perfectly developed creatures THE GENIUS AND THE DEFECTIVE 235 that unwise partisans construe them to be, to laud their great deeds that were done in spite of collateral imper- fections. The fact remains the same, that the true genius, the man of noble and complete development, has never, so far as is known, existed. Doubtless the one who comes nearest the mark is Goethe. In him there occurred a wonderful combination of the artistic and scientific faculties, the like of which has never existed in any other man. His breadth of range was wonderful, the catholicity of his sympathies, the scope of his imagination, immense. His personality was deeply impressive, his cultural influence was very great. But even he was not evenly rounded. Even he suf- fered from a partial development which showed an im- perfect functional activity in at least one direction. His moral acts were distinctly within the range of adverse criticism, and for them there can be no other just opinion than a lack of proper development. The) world must surely come to recognize that a perfect exercise of every part of psychical action is the most desirable thing within the bounds of human endeavor. I This would constitute the nearest approach to the per- fect man of which we are able to conceive. On this principle, moral development is fully as important as that which includes proficiency in literature, scientific, or artistic departments. No matter how far one may consider ethics to be composed of emotional or intel- lectual elements, the same general rule would govern 236 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD it. So long as one knows that cerebral molecular action is the origin of the energy which elaborates thought and nervous impulse, one must surely conclude that the ideal development, the development which represents the highest point of efficiency for the in- dividual, as well as the community, is the one that will invigorate every nerve cell in all its ramification. Not only is this the goal for which the world must strive, but also it is the standard by which every human being should be measured. The contemplation of the ideal is the one method by which the acts and action of human beings are improved. Nothing less can be enough of an incentive nor hold enough of rigid exact- ness by which the growth of succeeding times may be guided. This rule, when applied to the precocious child, the child-genius, is of overweening importance. Such a child necessarily attracts great attention, receives unmeasured praise even for faulty performance. His unusual faculty is unusual from the standpoint of child- hood, a time which one associates with so incomplete a development that its work one expects to be petty, disconnected, without the concentration and finish that mature strength of tissue alone can confer. By respect- ing the unstable weakness of immaturity, we know that the person thereby receives opportunity to feed the delicate nerve substance, to build up a machine that will count efficient deeds as the normal expression of THE GENIUS AND THE DEFECTIVE 237 its function rather than a drain upon its very substance. The difference between exacting a certain high standard in work from an adult, and attempts to extort the same efforts from a child, is the difference between drawing from a capital sum or the interest which that sum nor- mally yields. In the one case the original faculty is undisturbed, in the other it is decreased or obliterated. However, this is not the only or the worst result ; for the work of precocious children is not as a rule of very much benefit outside of the gratification of curiosity. Beyond this one fact, there is hardly any reason for allowing such children to show their abilities. More- over, there is hardly a single branch of human industry that they have in any way improved. In addition, and as something much more serious, is the unevenness, the one-sided growth of mind and character that must of necessity come about. Where a normal supply of energy is being drafted into the service of a certain comparatively small area of cere- bral tissue, the remaining portions must necessarily receive a smaller amount of nourishment. The per- son's whole habit of mind undergoes a change. His mental processes work within a small circle, and prog- ress beyond that circle may be gained only with the greatest difficulty. He realizes facts and thoughts very much as a child sees various colors through a tinted glass ; the real colors are thereby changed S ( far from their true shade as not to be recognizable. 238 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD In physics one knows that a luminous ray in passing from one body to another undergoes a bending, a reflection. The angle at which one is unable to per- ceive the ray is called the critical angle. This angle of total reflection varies with different substances, being in some exceedingly small. In similar ways one may fitly say that in the mind of the man who in childhood was precocious, there is apt to be an angle of total reflection that is unusually narrow. He has suffered a series of changes which makes a broad development and a consequently broad life out of the question. By the very act of precocious con- sumption of nerve energy, normal metabolism must give way to unusual tissue changes, with abnormal symptoms in mind and character. In these times, one hears much talk about mental / and moral degeneracy. The term is loosely used, and is meant to designate all sorts of people who show unfavorable psychical characteristics, especially in the ways of moral weakness, intellectual superficiality, lack of concentrated effort, a craving for the outlandish, the bizarre, even the shocking, elements in life. In- ordinate conceit is supposed to be one of its symp- toms, especially where there is no good ground for unusual self-praise. Recalcit ration to discipline, re- pugnance to the settled and rigid conditions of life, are commonly encountered. Irreverence for rightful authority and the creation of new gods are supposed THE GENIUS AND THE DEFECTIVE 239 to be commonly seen. In other words, a perturbation of the nervous system exists which does not permit of a natural expression of vitality. The theory is held that the strain and stress of modern life, with its whirl and rush, its astounding upheavals of settled ideas which gigantic improvements have introduced, its irreverence, its impatience, its thirst for luxury, have brought this condition of things into existence. Whether or not this is the cause, whether or not these characteristics flourish in greater abundance now then formerly, at all events, traits like them are merely evidences of poor development, of poorly nour- ished cerebral cells, of distorted streams of energy that are following the ragged lines of least resistance. This is exactly the result that one would expect from cerebral precocity ; it is the outcome of disturbed rela- tions which can be known only by the disturbance in their classic functions. Degeneracy is not a disease, it is merely a symptom, the cause of which is a defi- ance of ordinary laws which dominate the lowest as well as the highest of men. It may be exterminated, but only by a plan of life which looks out for primal conditions rather than remedial measures. As soon as the child's main business in life is seen to consist in proper eating and proper assimilation of food, in proper sleep, in proper recreation and exercise, in proper in- struction, in the right and healthy exercise of his emo- tions, as well as his intellect and body, the symptom 240 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD must disappear. The child should no more be allowed to assume great burdens involving mental strain and excitement than he should be permitted to play with dynamite. The difference in the ultimate outcome is partly one of time. But one main fact holds good : great deeds require corresponding exertion. Where the economy, by its maturity and nice development, has acquired full power, such exertion is merely nor- mal and healthful exercise. When it is immature, unstable, unripe, such efforts exhaust its vitality, dis- tort its regular outlines, undermine its creative possi- bilities. The problem is not a hard one ; it requires nothing more than plain and clear and sane thought. CHAPTER X INSTITUTIONAL LIFE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD THE care of children in institutions what one might call the substitute care of children comes next in importance to the care of them at home. In fact, it is only by comparing it to home training that one can judge of the worth of the discipline which an institution gives. Moreover, the ideal that should con- stantly be kept in mind is that of furnishing methods which will most surely bring about the results that home life of a high order is able to do. This has almost always seemed impossible ; the general respect for parental influence and authority has been so great that no adequate substitute for it has been considered possible. " Any home is better than a Home " has been the cry ; and even in cases of marked deficiency of favorable environment, the opinion is stoutly advo- cated that the interests of the State and the individ- uals concerned are best preserved by keeping, no matter what the circumstances, the family circle intact. Formerly this was held in so extreme a degree that R 241 242 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD failure on the part of parents to provide properly for their children's physical and moral growth was not considered sufficient reason for breaking family ties. Flagrant instances of neglect, of cruelty, of viciousness, were regarded with complacency. The child was the father's chattel, existing under absolute rights of pos- session. And in recent times when the movement to establish children's aid societies began to assume a definite form, much difficulty was experienced in over- coming the feeling that the rights of parents were paramount. Therefore, where investigation revealed full evidence of immorality or almost fatal abuse, the cry still went up that " any home is better than a Home!" Now, however, things have changed somewhat. People recognize that the family is of the highest use to the State when children are so reared that their mental and physical faculties receive sufficient oppor- tunity to expand in a fairly decent fashion. They have come to see that parental authority is not necessarily wisely administered, but on the contrary may give unlimited opportunity for wrong-doing, that parental example may, instead of leading children in the ways of peace and health, drag them down to the lowest depths of misery and viciousness. Under such circum- stances the " home " becomes a plague-spot. Even un- der milder circumstances, but where rugged virtues do not flourish, the home may be so far from providing a INSTITUTIONAL LIFE 243 normal nutrition for body and mind that its value is doubtful. The need for a substitute then becomes im- perative, and the whole question resolves itself into an inquiry about the best methods of accomplishing the desired ends. In looking over the matter, the observer notices a curious fact: that the oldest and most civilized com- munities are not necessarily the ones that have made most progress. Rather, they are the most conserva- tive, where the belief in old-time rights is most firmly held, or where the feeling for non-interference is strongest. In such communities one is most apt to find great institutions for the care of orphaned and abused children, which are architecturally fine, richly endowed, which are sedulously visited by the chari- tably inclined. Nevertheless, in spite of these advan- tages, their wards commonly do not turn out well ; as a rule, they do not grow into men and women of the highest type. In fact, this is what people expect, and all manner of consideration for shortcomings in a per- son is made who has had the misfortune to grow up as an asylum child. The cry again is heard : " Any home is better than a Home ! " In dealing with institutions of this kind, one comes across certain phenomena which occur regularly in almost all cases. One finds large masses of children marked off from the rest of the community, commonly wearing a special uniform which emphasizes their 244 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD segregation, controlled in the large majority of in- stances by a man or woman whose main excellence is a faculty of administrative discipline, which brings about an appearance of outward neatness and a show of meek submission on the part of the charges of the institution to the visiting board ; one finds a hard and fast routine which being designed for the management of all is generally fitted for no one individual ; one finds that often useless and trivial occupations are taught, which tend to increase the institutional revenues and make a brave show of employing a large number of "hands"; one finds that the children are brought up in huge buildings where the ordinary duties of life are arranged on a wholesale plan, where the actual condi- tions of everyday existence are unknown, where the true value of individual independence, of money, of personal self-respect, of personal affection, are barely suggested. And where the State pays a per capita share of the expenses, one finds a disposition to get as many children into one institution as is possible ; for in reckoning the support of large numbers, the individual cost is in inverse ratio to the number sup- ported. As a result of all this, the ends to be expected in an advantageous development are not by any means kept in sight. One must keep in mind that the care of these chil- dren involves a different method of treatment than that of the ordinary child in the ordinary home. Many of INSTITUTIONAL LIFE 245 them having come from an impoverished stock have a predisposition to weakness in mind and body, still more have lived their short lives in surroundings character- ized by want or ignorance or stupidity or viciousness. Many of them bear the hall-mark of their most unfortu- nate environment. They are correspondingly ready to fall into developmental distortions and are correspond- ingly hard to be kept within the lines of a straight growth. Far more than the ordinary child should they be watched and nurtured, not only for their own sakes, but also for that of the community of which they form an important part. When one comes to think that in the State of New York, one out of every two hundred and fifty-one of the population is sup- ported from the public funds, the necessity immedi- ately becomes apparent of properly caring for these wards of the State, to the end of converting them from incumbrances into useful, valuable citizens. The mere fact that they have no natural guardians makes the necessity of caring for them lie all the more heavily on the community which is ultimately affected by their successful or unsuccessful development. Keeping these things in mind, one can say very little for the methods now used in this State. Although we know that children follow their enveloping influences very closely, and that therefore their daily companions are important factors in determining what they are to be, nevertheless, the system in question puts dozens of 246 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD children of the same age together, on much the same plan as similar kinds of merchandise are assorted. Naturally, there are no higher examples to be followed, and children do not progress so rapidly as under better auspices they would. Even in infancy one can plainly notice this fact. These little creatures look, act, and really are far otherwise than the ordinary baby in good surroundings. Their want of mental as well as physi- cal activity is so plainly apparent as to be visible even to non-professional observers. From such a source comes the remark that "institution babies are tolerably lethargic." They are lethargic because their vitality has been sapped away, and one might with equal truth say that institution babies are tolerably withered. Even more striking is a fact that can be vouched for by any physician who has had much experience in hos- pital wards for babies. Such patients languish in insti- tutions although their food and care are fairly good. In fact, the same food and care, if provided with the surroundings of a home, will often bring the little one to blooming health and vigor. The reason is not hard to find out. The gist of the matter is, that the care of a baby is not meant to be arranged on a wholesale plan. He needs personal attention, and without it his body withers. An even greater effect has a too strongly marked routine upon his mind. The routine means machine-like repetition, day after day and week after week, of the same or similar acts. It is the INSTITUTIONAL LIFE 247 opposite of the change, the varying activity and the spontaneity of individual training. An adult whose growth is finished, whose organism is at rest, might possibly exist without much injury in a condition of stagnation. His needs lie mainly in the way of repair of used-up tissue. But with the growing infant or child, the demands are far greater. They look for the elaboration of entirely new material upon which func- tional development rests. And where such healthful exercise is deficient, the expected development cannot appear. Naturally, then, one finds that children massed in large institutions are backward, are prone to stu- pidity, are lacking in a healthy mental curiosity. Their spontaneity is crushed by rules and regulations that are not framed with a clear view to their best interests. In order to subserve those interests, the person in charge of the institution should be of remarkable strength of mind and character. By slow degrees people are beginning to appreciate the necessity of employing as teachers such persons as have proved themselves thoroughly capable. The opinion is slowly but very slowly gaining ground, that the real teacher is not some young woman in need of pin money, or a girl who wishes to keep herself busy in the time between graduation and marriage. The part of the public that pretends to think is steadily coming to feel that those who have control of numbers of children for an important part of each working day, 248 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD should be carefully selected for this great responsibility by both training and natural fitness. The more chari- tably minded may hold that parents by the very fact of parenthood come to possess a special faculty for the training and care of their offspring. But with the teacher, who cannot pretend to have any reason for such a faculty, quite a different idea must be in force. With her, the matter is and should be merely that of a business, a vocation, at the most, a well-loved vocation. Therefore, she should have every possible advantage which may enable her to prosecute her duties in the best possible manner. If this is true of the ordinary teacher, a similar train of thought will more impera- tively apply to the superintendent of an institution for children. But it is with the greatest rarity that one finds the position conferred on any such principle of choice. The ordinary incumbent is a man who has had political training and political influence, or a superior sort of workman who has shown some manner of prac- tical ability, or a relative of a person in authority in the management. Among some of the superintendents of whom I know, there are retired or unsuccessful busi- ness men, a retired insurance agent, a carpenter, a for- mer watchman, an assistant matron in a hospital, two former teachers and two clergymen. While it is pos- sible that all of these persons may be active and zeal- ous to do what is right, as far as they can see the right, nevertheless, I seriously doubt that they have INSTITUTIONAL LIFE 249 a respectable share of the special training and know- ledge which are absolutely necessary to the realization of the possibilities of their positions. As far as one can judge, their common feeling is one of full satisfaction when their institutions have no vio- lent outbreaks of epidemic diseases, when the children have a clean exterior, when they show the effects of wholesome drilling so that all of them can make the same sort of obeisance, can march meekly and in regu- lar order, can answer certain lists of questions without too much confusion. Most of these superintendents, I believe, feel that the children are very fortunate in having so much care, so many advantages, and that the fact of their being dependent upon charity should make them supremely thankful for any fate that is better than starvation. As a matter of fact, such a system is as unprofitable as one could possibly imagine. Society has the keenest interests in the outcome of these many lives, which have the prospect of inefficiency and pau- perism before them. For each has the same range of possibilities as more fortunate children, each one has the same liability to being crushed. In the hands of a very wise guardian they might have unlimited poten- tialities for good, and with a better system these wards of the State might come to be parts of its strongest bulwarks. The natural conclusion is, that the welfare of so many lives requires the highest skill for its care. The superintendent of an institution for children should 2 SO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD represent the highest type of guardian that the com- munity can afford, a person who is able by training, experience and ability to have broad views, wise policies and a sympathetic discernment of character that will prevent his looking at his charges as so many little animals that are to be kept in subjection. Of course, one might say that no human wisdom is great enough to govern the development of every individual child in a large institution. That may be true ; but it is not more true than that a superior man can accomplish more than an inferior. It is hard to mark off the limits of what the properly selected person can do. But besides this one factor, there are other considerations to be taken into account. A child who is brought up in huge dormitories and dining-rooms, in marble-paved, steam-heated halls, who sees the world through the bars of a fence, who is inspected with the same curiosity as the animals in the Zoo, who goes to bed with no more caressing sound than the clang of a retiring bell, who receives no more affection than the share that a stranger can distribute among dozens or hundreds, who lives and moves as part of a great machine, has little chance of developing in a way that will call into life all the range of activities of which his organization is susceptible. Therefore, it has been said, truly enough, that such children are lethargic, show " a want of pluck, dependence on others, inability to shift for themselves, characteristics which develop INSTITUTIONAL LIFE 251 into the grown pauper." When such children are old enough to be put out in the world, their chances of survival must be pitiably small ; they must be thoroughly unprepared to fight the battles that await every man and woman ; they may be considered an- alogous to immigrants from another world. To expect from them the same grasp of affairs, the same self- restraint, the same tenacity of purpose, and the same moderation in conduct that we look for in ordinary, more fortunate citizens, is not quite logical. Thus they are forced into a class by themselves ; although the world will not allow them to transgress its rules, never- theless, it does not furnish a special code that is better adapted to their peculiar condition. As things now are, there is no personal responsibility for the children in large institutions. Those in control are sedulously guarding the institution rather than the individual children for whom the institution exists. Most of these institutions are controlled by private persons who have absolute authority in their manage- ment. This might be good enough, if such persons were generally in possession of the most desirable qualifications for the positions. But, as a rule, they are men who have been selected on account of money donations or similar reasons. The consequent result is that these kind and charitable persons feel most in- terest in the business affairs of the institution ; they believe that these affairs are the main objects of care ; 252 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD partly, perhaps, because such are the things which they best understand. In the meanwhile, there is no one to ' look after the individual child, who is no more thought of than is a single lamb in a large flock. As yet, there is hardly enough interest felt in this important part of the population to call forth a general and constant inquiry into methods of management. Occasionally, some one utters a protest, such as Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell did in the report of the New York Board of Charities for 1890. There she said: "New York City supports an average population of about 14,000 boys and girls, at an expense of $1,500,000 annually, in institutions controlled by private individuals. . . . There is no official of New York City who knows or has a right to know whether these children are trained in idleness or industry, in virtue or vice." Even if one rejects so harsh a possibility as being trained in vice, one has still a multitude of conditions that may be almost as bad. Among them one is bound to find deceit, a want of open frankness, a lack of principle, a disposition to cringe and fawn, that are destructive to a healthy mental tone. Most of all are these acquired characteristics not distinctive of the state of mind which produces fine men and women. From the start, such children are condemned to the likelihood of weak and petty characters, which the experiences of mature life are not likely to strengthen. As far as the question of industrial training in large INSTITUTIONAL LIFE 253 institutions goes, very little that is pleasant can be said. In most cases, the occupations are those involv- ing but little skill, they are generally of a low grade, and do little to train either mind or body. The chil- dren are kept at a method of employment that rarely varies, that blunts and stupefies nascent energy by violations of almost all the rules of healthful develop- ment. Steady work in such ways as picking hair, making paper bags and the many similarly trivial things which one here finds, may, especially when well paid for by the charitably inclined, add consid- erable amounts to the revenues of the institution. But this is gained at the expense of brain and nerve energy in the child. But even where the nature of the work is more profitable, one may still be sure that the children cannot gain thereby. For the essential characteristic of the child body and mind is the in- ability to concentrate attention or efforts excepting in a small degree and for a short time. Thus, no steady employment, even where it does not make a slave of the child, can do anything but harm. To obtain a proper diversity of employment is practically impos- sible in a great asylum, even where the ruling powers would be willing to follow any plan that could improve the results of their work. One should keep in mind that children, whose permanent welfare is a matter of importance, should never be expected to do work for the sake of an immediate money return. For such 254 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD work requires too much concentration of effort and attention to be undertaken with safety. Even under the luxurious surroundings of a modern asylum, such work has a number of features in common with " child-slavery." Too much stress cannot be laid upon the isolating circumstances of institutional life. Nothing is easier or more certain in results than to crush and cow a child by marking him off with unfortunate circum- stances from the common life of young children. Even in so mild a case as some slight physical de- formity, where the child's attention is thrown in upon himself, he straightway begins to feel himself apart from the rest of the world, he shrinks together like a withered flower. He loses confidence in himself, feels that he is in an unfavorable and subordinate posi- tion ; he comes to believe that the world is a harsh and bitter place for him and such as he. In the case of an "institution child," such effects are many times magnified. His home, his dress, the demeanor and discipline of everyday life, all impress him with the belief that fate has dealt differently and more harshly with him than with other people whom he sees. He realizes that his position is one of subjection, and of necessity he must crouch down to the level of a con- quered soul. In such an environment, it would re- quire a remarkable child to give a good account of himself, especially from the standpoint of final devel- INSTITUTIONAL LIFE 2$ 5 opment. Even the one detail of a common uniform is sufficient in itself to shut out the light from a child's mind and soul, and turn him into a creature who really needs one's pity. But when his little ex- istence is filled with such details, when his environ- ment keeps constantly in his mind the facts of his unfortunate and contemptible position, he becomes a victim of a system which chokes and starves while it pretends to nourish. It is, in truth, a sort of slavery, but slavery that is so tricked out and bediz- ened as to pass for a joyous philanthropy. One of the results of the whole unfortunate problem is that the community, while thinking to rescue its children an integral part of itself from a miserable and unprofitable life, is really doing a great deal in the way of making such a life inevitable. However, a better method than this time-honored one is easy to find. Knowing as much as we do about the necessities of a child's development, being certain that child-life flourishes best in a natural home, we must find the solution of caring for the State's wards by providing surroundings that will closely imi- tate those of the home. Unquestionably, this is pos- sible, and, to a certain extent, it has been done in various places. The noteworthy success which Herr Wichern's Rauhe Haus at Hamburg achieved, dupli- cated to a certain extent at the Metteay institution at Tour, showed clearly enough the path that prog- 256 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD ress is to take. Here a real attempt was made to form a home. Instead of great and cumbersome in- stitutions, the plan of forming small colonies was begun, which reminds one strongly of the schools which Pestalozzi and Froebel formed. The plan was devised for the "substitution of individual care for mechanical manipulation of masses and the develop- ment of energy, nature, wit, and common sense that follow from the separation into small groups with whom the teacher or nurse comes into personal con- tact." So good an example was bound to be tried elsewhere. To be sure, in many cases the efforts were tentative, but, nevertheless, they showed prog- ress, and obtained better results than under the older system. But if one had no other or more modern models than those of Pestalozzi's and Froebel's schools, most of all before a general acquaintance with their wise methods and fine results brought too many scholars, one would be close upon the right manner of caring for orphaned and abused children. The motto that was ever before the minds of these two lovable and loving men was : " Come, let us live with our children." They really shared their lives with their charges, studied with them, worked with them in all manner of ordinary ways, played with them, ate and slept with them. Between teacher and scholar, or one might better say guardian and ward, there existed the common bonds of mutual love, mutual INSTITUTIONAL LIFE 257 welfare, mutual interests. These children, instead of having a parent's oversight for a small part of the day and the cold comfort of a stranger's attention for the greater part, associated constantly with a foster- father who was much wiser, more thoughtful, than most decent parents are. There were a constant play and exercise of mind and body. And not until the system by its own growth grew unwieldy, and thus lost its proper characteristics, did it cease to serve as one of the best methods of rearing children with which we are acquainted. Coming back to present times and instances, let us cite the cases of Victoria and New South Wales. These colonies, in an attempt to improve their ways, sought to abolish institutions by a system of board- ing out their orphan children. This method, while too provisional and not sufficiently homogeneous, had some advantages in doing away with the crowd- ing of children together in large numbers. Out- side of everything else, they gained at least a recog- nition of the important fact that children may not with safety be herded together in large numbers. The value of this idea began to be felt even beyond these colonies, even in conservative Europe, and gradually concessions were made to it. These con- cessions came slowly, as one would expect ; for old communities with difficulty change their ways. But even more thoroughly did it make an impress in the 258 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD United States. Massachusetts, in particular, tried to better itself, and was the first to institute a State system of preventive work by boarding out its orphans and deserted children. Some good results were almost immediately apparent. In the important detail of in- fant mortality, a startling change occurred. In the first year of the new system, the percentage of deaths fell from ninety-seven per cent to fifty per cent. In the following year, it declined to thirty per cent, and after that varied from ten to twenty per cent. Still another effect was promptly felt. Where the old-time system was in vogue, with its large institu- tions which indiscriminately received undeserving as well as deserving cases, children were too easily en- trusted to its care. Proximity to the children and ease in communicating with them, as well as the seeming ease of reclaiming them whenever the par- ents pleased, made commitments to the asylum very frequent, much more frequent than was necessary. But where the large institutions were abolished and the children were scattered over a large territory, the feeling of parental care sprang up again, with the natural result that offspring were not so lightly aban- doned. Thus in New York State, under our anti- quated system, the community supports one in every two hundred and fifty-one of the population ; but in Massachusetts, with a wiser method, the ratio was reduced to one in nine hundred and ninety-five. And INSTITUTIONAL LIFE 259 in Michigan, under a still more rigorous rule, only one in ten thousand required support. To clinch the argu- ment on the other side, one might cite the case of New Hampshire, which recently decided to support dependent children in private institutions at the public expense, with the same freedom from restrictions as one sees in New York and California. As one would expect, the regular results of increased dependence began to assert themselves. In addition, it is in place to quote the success of the Lyman School and the State Industrial School at Lancaster, both carried on under the methods in use in Massachusetts, where the success has been noteworthy. They have proved how possible it is to reduce the evils from which society has so long suffered, to convert worthless material into approximately valuable material, to make a large proportion of the deserted, the abused, the practically brutalized population into decent citizens. Such a change is a truly remarkable one, and has a bearing upon the future welfare and improvement of society that cannot be too highly appreciated. Keeping these instances in mind, and combining them with the more theoretical truths of a child's development which we know, the way in which the wards of the State should be brought up is fairly clear. All thought of massing them in large insti- tutions, whether conducted under private or public management, should be absolutely put aside. The 260 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD more one appreciates how feeble in stable conditions and how strong in potential changes an infant is, the more clearly one sees that he should have more than food and clothing. The additional element may be supplied by individual care and the willingness to undergo self-sacrifice which comes from personal attachment. Such care and attachment the normal woman, fairly well brought up, is capable and willing to give. One of the main needs is to entrust the chil- dren to as good a representative of normal womanhood as it is possible to find. That it is easily possible to realize the opportunity to enlist a high class of women in this work is clearly proved by the readiness with which such women agree to adopt young children, to take upon themselves the whole responsibility of their physical and mental care. Mrs. Richardson, of the Massachusetts State Board of Lunacy and Charity, gives evidence on this point, when she says that "in recent years the opportunities for obtaining homes by legal adoption into good families have been so great that it is rarely that a child reaches the age of three years without being permanently and satisfactorily provided for." One might confidently say that these opportunities would be still more plentiful if women were convinced as they doubtless will be of the safety of adopting an infant of unknown parentage. When the community come to realize that a child's environment is as a rule more important than his INSTITUTIONAL LIFE 26 1 heredity, there will be still less necessity for great infant asylums. In fact, the only institution of this kind that is permissible is a receiving station, a sort of clearing house, which shall be used as headquarters where the routine business of placing children and overseeing them is carried on. Such children as are not adopted should be put in homes of not more than ten little ones. These homes could be grouped in colonies so that the proper authori- ties could easily oversee them. Supplies could be pur- chased in large quantities and delivered on requisition according to need. Each home could be immediately controlled by a cottage " mother," who should have a natural and full authority. The children should be kept in this manner until they were able by apprenticeship or individual work to support themselves. The close asso- ciation of years would form the strongest bonds between the foster-mother and her charges, and the small num- ber of children entrusted to each woman would make possible the growth of affection, individual interest, and the feeling of responsibility. Each child, as he grew up, would go through the ordinary useful experience of the ordinary home, the only experience which is able to fit him for the duties of worker, spouse and parent. Here would be a feeling of solidarity, a sense of active and passive ownership, a happy conviction of having a place in the world. The education of the children could be conducted in village schools in the same way 262 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD that public education is generally administered. And the children would finally come to take their places in the world with connections and memories that would be as binding, as well known, and as respectable as those of people with a natural and honorable parentage. The main object of these cottage homes would be to counterfeit, as closely as possible, the real home as we know it, in its healthy phases. The same methods of control, of occupation, of clothing, of food, of recreation, could be employed in one as well as in the other. The conditions of actual, practical life would be equally illustrated in both. The number of children in each home would be so restricted that each child would receive a fairly proper amount of attention. As a result, his character and individuality would have an opportunity to assert themselves. At the same time, the very important factor of the finer feelings would not be neglected. For the number of children living together would be small enough to encourage the closest interdependencies between them and the cot- tage mother. One could look forward to the future of these children with the same confidence with which one regards the outlook of well-cared-for children in ordinary life. Another fact of importance is that such work would appeal to many women of decided abilities who are either idle or engaged in less valuable work. For the same reasons that the professional nursing of the sick INSTITUTIONAL LIFE 263 is now so eagerly taken up by a high class of women, this calling would be popular. But in addition, there are many additional reasons, based upon the opportu- nity for exercising affection, for forming much more permanent ties, for having a very definite influence in the world, why an even higher grade of women would gladly assume this calling as a life work. Most of all, if the applicants for positions as foster-mothers received an equally valuable training as trained nurses enjoy, the results of their work might gratify very high expectations. That children brought up under substitute care can have a successful training has been proved by the course pursued at Girard College. Although this institution has the disadvantage of great size, as well as the fact that its charges are not accepted in in- fancy, thus depriving them of the good effects of careful and systematic oversight in their earliest years, nevertheless, the general methods of govern- ment are so superior to what one usually finds in in- stitutions for orphans, that the results are, after all, not surprising. Children may not be accepted in infancy, but, on the other hand, their residence in the institution may continue until they are of eigh- teen years of age. Their guardians and instructors are of a high class, and on account of their perma- nent and responsible positions, as well as their men- tal superiority, come to have a real interest in the 264 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD boys, that shows itself in the existence of affectionate relationship between pupil and teacher. The inmates, instead of feeling that they are outcasts and pariahs, have a true pride in their surroundings, and act it out in their later lives. For such reasons as these, President Fetteroff is able to say : " Judging from what I see of our graduates, I am inclined to think that they do better in life than the same number of boys picked from the public schools." And this occurs, in spite of the non-natural and artificial en- vironment produced by guardians who take up the work as a profession. It does not need an unusually clear sight to see that if the State's children were from the beginning brought up under still more favor- able auspices, if they enjoyed the blessing of indi- vidual care, affection and training, if their associations and examples were of the same nature as one finds in good families, if their practical experiences were such as to fit them for the demands of actual life, one would not have to think of institutions for chil- dren as the breeding nests of pauperism, vice, and crime. In the community, as it now exists, there is every element which is necessary to the realization of this plan ; but instead of being wisely used, it is wasted. Too much money is now spent ; too much effort on the part of philanthropic persons of all sorts is scattered over a ragged system ; too many lives are spoiled. In the face of all this, so long as the INSTITUTIONAL LIFE 265 general public is willing to learn and apply some plain biological truths, there is a prospect of an im- mense betterment. Much of the so-called defective population can be turned into really valuable citizens, who not only would render unnecessary the vast ex- penses now necessary for charities and corrections, but would also be fertile producers and upholders of what is conservative and fine in the community. The sooner we come to forget the idea that the de- pendent children of the State are a burden, and come to recognize that they are so much raw mate- rial waiting to be developed, the sooner shall we gain the reward of a wise self-interest, of common sense, of broad ideals. CHAPTER XI THE PROFESSION OF MATERNITY THE remarkable progress of the higher education of women is a matter of everyday comment. Notwith- standing the opposition which every comparatively new movement naturally meets, the belief in it has grown in every direction ; so that it is common to find families where the young women have had the same training as their brothers, where, moreover, they have shown so good an intellectual receptivity that the higher education of women, as is claimed by its adherents, has thoroughly justified itself. Besides this, so many women have entered professional callings of all kinds, that the old-time claim of difference in intellectual function between them and men has seemingly been forced out of existence. In addition, one meets not only women doctors, women lawyers, architects and preachers, but also those who have entered the non- professional employments. And now it seems that there is no occupation belonging exclusively to men. While this tendency on the face of it is sufficiently remarkable, nevertheless, the change in methods and opinions which underlie it are still more noteworthy. The reproach of uselessness, frivolity and petty or- 266 THE PROFESSION OF MATERNITY 26/ namentation has been laid against the education of women even more than against that of their brothers and fathers. For years back the charge was made that the main object of their training was decorative. And there is no doubt that the charge was true. Not only were the methods of instruction exceedingly faulty, but also the subjects of instruction were plainly de- signed for the effect it might have upon the estimation in which the girls were held. The main consideration sought was to make them seem educated, refined, endued with the characteristics of the most favorably placed class in the community. Such a class was supposed to be the rich, the leisure class, people who were beyond the need of useful and productive work, who therefore had the opportunity of placing most stress upon the refinements, the luxuries and the unnecessary things in life. The fact that these per- sons were able to buy the services of those who did the common, everyday work of the world placed the latter in a seemingly inferior position. Each person, feeling himself somewhat higher in the scale than those in the class below him, and aiming to equal the circumstances and opportunities of the rank above him, strove to obtain the characteristic marks of supe- riority. These marks were usually evidences of luxury, luxury-fetiches, things which argued the possession of more than what was really essential to life or even comfort. 268 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD This is one of the main reasons why so many unnecessary elements have been included in a girl's education. For this reason they have been taught a smattering of French, German and Italian; have been taught a trifle about art and music ; have been instructed in the petty details of deportment and elocution, of the humanities. Their demonstrations and use of abilities in these directions have rarely had any real, practical value in the conduct of their lives ; but, on the contrary, have added sources of complexity, dissatisfaction and inefficiency. Their attempts at piano-playing, at drawing and painting, at an intelli- gent demonstration of literary and scientific knowledge, were far from being elevating to themselves or others. Outside of being luxury-fetiches, they had no good reason for existence. Most of all has the training of girls been not appropriate to the highest work of which they were capable, of which, moreover, society stood in greatest need. Therefore, with the spread of information and the broadening of ideas, the ne- cessity of giving them a better and more useful training became more and more apparent. When, on account of changing industrial conditions, the com- petition in life became severer, when a disposition to laxer ideas concerning the sanctity of rank and caste showed itself, when women began to feel the need economically and morally of occupying positions of greater productive value, the tendency to branch THE PROFESSION OF MATERNITY 269 out in any and every line of activity grew with a remarkable vigor. One might with safety say, that they have not observed the bounds of moderation ; that in searching for new opportunities, they have at times overstepped the limits set by their functional and social position. As a result, the fields of work formerly held exclusively by men have been more and more energetically invaded by women ; industrially the barriers which separated the sexes have been assiduously assailed, until there is now no real line at which one may say that a man's work ends and a woman's begins. Naturally, there has been a lack of moderation in all this ; the hand has swung too far around the dial, until its direction is as eccentric as it ever was. The principal consideration is, that in the strain and stress of active life, no regard is held for what industries may be most profitable to the individual woman and the community. The great idea seems to be that she must do something, must earn money, must as- sume a certain share of active responsibility by going out into the world and grappling with its harsh con- ditions. To the former ideas of luxury-fetichism she has added the idols of theoretic equality, until the resulting worship is, indeed, a remarkable mixture. Such equality has ever been a strange thing. It mixes real with fancied conditions ; true with ficti- tious needs in human nature; true psychological laws 27O THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD with preconceived notions of necessity. It is apt to long for a state of things that could not be profitable to any one. It is blind, and seeks to go its way regardless of limitations and obstacles that wisdom prompts one to take into account. This idea of equal- ity, in its jealous avarice, tries to obtain a privilege or a right not because it is in itself desirable, but, rather, because one class of people and not another pos- sesses it. The question of the value of such a privilege seems not to be worthy of consideration. Thus, in the matter of the so-called higher education, the demand for a woman's learning Greek, for exam- ple, is usually made not because the study of that lan- guage is thought to bring with it any considerable value, but merely because young men study it. There is no greater respect now than formerly for the an- cient languages ; in all likelihood there is even less. Doubtless there is good enough ground for this, because the smattering which the ordinary college graduate possesses is not worthy of great apprecia- tion. The main reason for this demand is, after all, a reason of defiance, of insistence upon outward forms, of proving that there is and ought to be no distinc- tion between one person and another, between men and women. But in spite of disadvantages such as have been alluded to, there has been one step of immense im- portance, one stride in the right direction. With the THE PROFESSION OF MATERNITY 2/1 competition by women in industrial markets, the neces- sity of careful and exact preparation for the work in hand has to a certain extent received recognition. The world has always recognized this in regard to men, who unconsciously and as a matter of course follow the idea in their training for active life. From the highest to the lowest, they expect to obtain a logical preparation for a certain work before entering upon its duties ; and so radical is this necessity supposed to be that the man who disregards it would in many cases suffer both legal and social penalties. The en- gineer who tried to run a locomotive without a proper training and knowledge, the physician who undertook the treatment of disease, the dressmaker who risked the value of the customer's materials, the architect who dared to build structures that might endanger other people's lives and money, these, or any other workers, who assume responsibilities for which they are not fitted, have been and are severely punished for their lack of preparation and the recklessness of their undertakings. Moreover, in proportion to the importance of the interests at stake have the punish- ments both legal and social been set. It accords with conceptions of justice that responsibilities should not be undertaken without good reason for believing that there is a sufficient basis of capability present upon which to base the prospect of approximately fair success. 272 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD Here is one of the greatest faults in our methods of preparing women for active life ; and in this respect their preparation still differs radically from that of their brothers. A young man's training is a combination of utility and decoration, with the elements of utility in predominance. The sentiment for the greater claims of utility has been so strongly insisted upon that there has been danger of losing sight of the value of the cultural element. In the education of young women the opposite is still held, even where the "higher" education has asserted itself. Here, the principal object seems to be an elaboration of the old-time aim, an ambition to give the young woman an intellectual experience that is distinctive, unusual, characteristic of luxury rather than utility. A young man's training is designed to further his ability to accomplish definite work in the world ; his sister's is still arranged on the plan of making her appear better cared for, more advantageously placed, better apparelled in mental gar- ments than her neighbors. There is little or no view of a finer preparation for a life work, of augmenting her real utility in the world. Therefore, it is quite natural that when, on account of necessity or choice, she attempts to broaden her horizon, the only way that seems open to her is in some industrial, pursuit by which she comes into competition with her brother, and divides with him the possible money-rewards of the business world. THE PROFESSION OF MATERNITY 2/3 In spite of the fact that women have taken upon themselves so many new activities, in spite of the fact that they are often capable of earning a respectable wage, one is met by the strange fact that their efforts have not, on the whole, brought greater ease and physi- cal comfort to the working part of the community. Competition is severer than before, the struggle to exist is fiercer than ever before. Not only is it said that the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer, but also it is claimed that a greater amount of exertion than in former times is necessary to keep up the stand- ard of the great middle class, the real foundation of the social fabric. The question consequently arises, whether the new activities of women pay ; whether the world is really the better for their change of condition. Many practically minded people answer this in the negative, claiming that for every woman who obtains a position which a man formerly held, the family that is dependent upon the man's exertions is left, tempo- rarily at least, without the means of livelihood. More- over, they add, the influx of women into an industry is the signal for decrease in wages. They go on to explain that this fall in wages results from the facts that women have fewer burdens, that they use less judg- ment in their work than men, and that, since they remain in their positions only until they have a satis- factory opportunity to marry, they are less permanent. While marriage means greater steadiness and reliability 2/4 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD in the man, in the woman it means resignation from the position to which she has become trained. For such and other allied reasons, it is held, she is from the beginning less valuable potentially to her employers than the male competitor. But a further consideration arises which overshadows the action and the fate of the woman who partly or wholly earns her own living. The large majority of women of all sorts marry. They do this because it seems to them and the world their highest place and function, where they will be of most worth to them- selves and the community. The mere fact that in this way a woman comes to have a controlling voice in a household, that in her hands lies the making or unmaking of her children's careers, that being the centre of a household she becomes the centre of a widely radiating influence, all this is a matter of supreme importance. It is unnecessary to demonstrate that her position as wife and mother is the highest which she could possibly attain. Not only has the world done that most thoroughly, but also nature has definitely provided against any refutation of it. Thereupon the question follows, whether the course of modern effort and modern training has raised the general standard of her efficiency as a wife and mother. The whole matter resolves itself into an inquiry con- cerning the requirements in ability to which a woman who wishes to embody a high type of wife and mother THE PROFESSION OF MATERNITY 275 must answer. Even more may the subject be sim- plified ; for, since the maternal duties include and overweigh the uxorial, the natural conclusion must be that the woman who best knows how to rear her children is the one who occupies the highest place in the world ; the inquiry may then be confined to the ideas and methods of best attaining this end. One would suppose, in this age of universal improvements, of changing customs, that matters of so much impor- tance would be the first in the mind of every woman, especially every mother. The methods of past times, with their burdensome decorations, are nowadays treated with so little reverence and have been so much developed into the methods of to-day that with- out thought the conclusion would hold that the chil- dren of this time should have a wiser regimen than their ancestors at a like age ; and likewise that the women of to-day ought to show a better discipline, a wider scope of view, a wiser application of right prin- ciples in the performance of their higher duties than ever before. Therefore, one is surprised to find that the ex- pected improvement in this most important function does not exist. In other respects women have un- doubtedly made progress. They have been energetic enough in assimilating ideas in intellectual and artistic culture, in politics, in the matter of their "rights," in business. But this very energy, instead of indue- 2/6 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD ing a cognate energy in the line of maternal duties, seemingly has turned their attention from them. By a strange lack of logic, they have not applied to this subject their acquired conceptions of the necessity of training and discipline, so that a young woman unhesitatingly assumes the greatest responsibilities with no further preparation than her grandmother pos- sessed. What is even sadder is that there is no perception of the necessity of such preparation. Thus a girl is graduated from school, having a smattering of literature, languages, music, grammar, mathematics, which have not been taught in their physiological order nor in a manner to give the best amount of normal mental exercise, and straightway considers her- self competent to have the complete charge, the full- est authority, the main decision in all matters of health and development, physical training and spirit- ual culture of the children who may in the natural order of things become her offspring. When on ac- count of weakness, indolence, social duties, or what she considers the dignity of her position, she feels that some or all of the care of the child should be taken off her hands, she hires some strange girl or woman, usually of the social and intellectual grade of the peasant, to act as a sort of foster-mother. If this foster-mother, by whatever means she may know, is able to keep the child quiet, if she does not too palpably abuse him, if she tells him any and all sorts THE PROFESSION OF MATERNITY 2/7 of tales, no matter what her language, her supersti- tions, or her unformed ideas may be, she is consid- ered a fit and able nurse, who is doing everything that the parents can reasonably ask of her. If this seems a harsh characterization, scrutiny will show that it is not overdrawn. Indeed, the mother herself, in many ways, presents no great improvement upon it. Whatever training she may have had has not been of the kind to realize or cope with the problems which are bound to confront her. These problems are matters of physiology, psychology, hygiene, biology. And because they are called by long names does not lessen their importance. And not only is a knowledge of these subjects necessary, but also it is desirable that one should cultivate the state of mind which makes a useful consideration of them easy and natural. The method of thought which one must use in dealing with them requires no unusual power of mind ; but it does call for a fair amount of regulated thought, of discipline, of willingness to abide by a definite and logical relation of cause and effect. These are elements which, unfort- unately, the ordinary young woman, in attempting to fulfil her maternal duties, is not prepared to use. In the first place, she should have some idea of the groundwork of biology. She should be acquainted with the natural history of animal forms ; she should know something of the wonderful development of cell life ; she should be able to understand the rudimentary laws, 2/8 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD at least, of the correlation of organic forces. Such things are absolutely essential to a knowledge of the multitudinous influences which go to make up the sum of the child's nutrition, to the building up or the tear- ing down of the minute cells which in their complexity make up the completed mind and body. Here is a study which is more than interesting it is even fascinating, which abounds in romantic interest, which carries with it a careful and patient exercise of the reasoning faculty that is of prime importance. There is the same need of this knowledge as there is of the foundations upon which the superstructure of any pro- fession is raised. As well might an architect be igno- rant of the minute and gross characteristics of the stone which he uses, or a manufacturer of the raw materials of which his products are made. Not other- wise is one able to know the full meaning of physical life, how it begins, continues and decays. Surely not otherwise can a mother know how to care for the won- derful development of the infant whose whole life depends upon her knowledge and foresight. If she were able to note the marvellous growth and changes in the tender cotyledons of a plant, the sensitive de- meanor of the blood-corpuscles in a frog's circulation, the occurrence of chlorophyl granules and the changes which their presence brings, she certainly would be in a better position to appreciate the workings of her baby's body, more able intelligently to encourage favor- THE PROFESSION OF MATERNITY 2/9 able and discourage unfavorable influences. Her sense of the importance, the sacredness of trust which her relationship puts upon her would be vastly increased. And as a result, her duties would be ever so much better performed. At the same time, a thorough knowledge of physi- ology is fully as essential. If the same amount of time that is now devoted to the stupefying study of gram- mar, of the battles of some ancient war-lord whose main claim to distinction was a faculty for oppressing and killing off the peasantry on his lands, of the intri- cate casuistries of so-called mental and moral philoso- phy, were given to an understanding of the functions for the human body, its methods of reaction and the phenomena of its metabolism, the benefits of the change would be too great to be easily computed. This change would mean a knowledge of what most, rather than of what least, concerns one. Comparing great things with small, it would be analogous to the relative importance of knowing, on the one hand, all the necessary details of one's household, upon which the comfort, health and happiness of the inmates rest, and, on the other, of being acquainted with the petty political vicissitudes of a remote South American city. In making such a choice there is no doubt on which side any sensible person should stand. And likewise, in an impartially considered scheme of education for a girl, there is as little uncertainty concerning the value 280 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD of the study of physiology. When the girl becomes a mother, she would not be apt, in the most important matters of life, to depend upon the ignorance of a nurse-maid, the garrulous superstition of uninformed neighbors, or the ofttimes partial and one-sided instruc- tion of her attending physician, who, on account of her very ignorance, is unable to give more than incomplete instruction. With a proper education she would know the meaning of the words food and sleep ; she would know something of their overwhelming importance upon the future being and career of her child, who in his turn is to be one of the world's citizens, with full capacity for good and evil. Knowing what were nor- mal functions, she would be able to recognize and guard against deviations from them. No day would pass in which she would not find opportunity to exer- cise self-restraint, keen observation and sensible know- ledge in furthering the normal and healthful evolution of her child. In proportion to her approximation to a really high standard, this evolution ought to stand for her as the greatest thing in the world. If the laws governing the body are of so much im- portance, those controlling the mental action are fully as worthy of consideration. To know how the mind works, the order of its unfolding, the relative impor- tance of the various elements which go to make a nice equilibrium, these things are of no little value. In the presence of a knowledge of psychology, there would THE PROFESSION OF MATERNITY 28 1 not be so much confusion as to what children should learn, hear and see. The probable effect of the various experiences in life would not be so problematical, and a greater freedom in relation would exist between child and parent. At the same time, an intelligent supervi- sion of the processes of growth, the gradual unfolding of the little one's mind, would be exceedingly stimulating to the mother. It would weightily impress her with the nascent possibilities of her child, with the responsi- bilities which she has taken upon her, with the solemn import of life. How vastly superior would this be to a frittering away of time in acquiring intellectual decora- tions and trimmings ; in learning valueless pieces of music, especially, as in most cases, when there is no likelihood or possibility of real artistic excellence; of obtaining a cursory and unhomogeneous acquaintance with literature. Such a better knowledge would pro- mote the mother's authority, and strengthen the child's feeling of respect. Not only would she be better able to deal with the varying phases of the budding mind, but also she would be able to foresee what those phases would be apt to be, their rightful interpretation, their relative importance and their imperative needs in treatment. In the face of this information, she would rightly regard herself as having some claim on the respect which ought to be attached to the proud name of mother, on the prerogatives and privileges which belong to the noblest vocation in life. 282 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD In addition to this, she must recognize that her duties, while partly philosophical, also have their prac- tical side. The little body that is absolutely in her power and care must be fed and nurtured, must receive the physical materials upon which it works in order to elaborate bone and muscle and nerve tissue. These materials should be so prepared as to give the maxi- mum amount of return in strength for the minimum amount of energy expended in converting them for the uses of the organism. Thus the question of food be- comes one of basal importance. The mother should thoroughly know the constitution of the usual articles of diet, their chemical value, what elements of strength each is capable of giving and the differential distinc- tions between them. She should know not only their ordinary methods of preparation, but also the reasons for these methods, their respective values, and their proper effect upon the general economy. Such a knowledge of applied chemistry is certainly not over- difficult of acquirement, is easily obtained in the time usually devoted to the ordinary school work, especially in the more advanced grades, and at the same time has all the advantages of intellectual exercise which girls now receive. It undoubtedly has as many of these ad- vantages as political economy as now taught can give, as proficiency in the Delsartean system, or as practice in sketching and painting can give. It would confer more of intrinsic value instead of extrinsic at- THE PROFESSION OF MATERNITY 283 traction. A girl thus taught might have less coquetry, less of the art of simpering delicacy, less of the falla- cious faculty of casual fascination. But on the other hand, she would be able to order her child's nourish- ment to the end of conserving all the actual and potential energy of which he is capable, she would be able to provide an intelligent method of restoring wasted tissue, she would know how to supply the easi- est means of adding new materials from which new elements may grow. Under such a regime there would be fewer complaints of reflex nervous disorders depend- ing upon an irritated gastro-intestinal system and mal- assimilation of food. And with these reflex conditions removed, a fertile cause of serious mental and nervous irregularities would simultaneously vanish. Besides this, the whole growth of the body and the interdependence of its various parts would be more even, more nicely balanced. It is true that the mental maturity might not come so rapidly, but this, instead of being a disadvantage, would act as an advantage ; for one should remember that a too rapid maturity is apt to be pathological or, at least, productive of one- sidedness. Parents rarely realize how much the ques- tion of diet has to do with the normal, healthy tone of their children's minds, how closely it concerns their peacefulness, their cheerfulness, their temperateness, their susceptibility to legitimate influence. Many a time a close observer will notice an intimate connec- 284 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD tion between vicious traits and a vicious diet. And a woman who clearly understands the methods and rationale of preparing and combining foods is apt to do more real good than any physician by reconstruc- tive measures can hope to accomplish. If to such an understanding she adds an equal acquaintance with the common and known truths of hygiene, her worth to herself, her family and the community will be tre- mendously increased. By such information she would protect the family health, she would make the general environment more conducive to a clear functional activity. In some schools at the present time a sub- ject called "hygiene" is taught; but its treatment is so slight and unpractical that its value is almost naught. Under a better system the student would really be benefited. She would be able intelligently to discriminate between proper and improper methods of clothing, between proper and improper systems of ventilation, between healthful and harmful physical surroundings. Such a woman could never be guilty of so elementary a matter as allowing a child to run about in cold weather wearing short socks, leaving a portion of the leg exposed to the risk of congestive influences ; she would know what were the demands of sufficient drainage and plumbing ; she would have some idea of the value of a scientific cleanliness. By her knowledge of such matters as the conduction of heat, of the requirements of a healthful and sufficient THE PROFESSION OF MATERNITY 285 water supply, she would promote the comfort and well- being of those who were dependent upon her guarding care. Such studies might advantageously form part of a training which would infinitely promote the health, prosperity and right development of the community. They would convert a great body of more or less use- less women into most valuable workers. That some change in occupation and training is necessary there can be no doubt. And the well-known restlessness, dissatisfaction and discontent of modern women is one proof of it. An increasing number of them complain continually of seeing no object in life, of having noth- ing to work for, of having no goal by which to guide their ways. Unquestionably a reason for this is the fact that the old ideas are passing away. There is a common consciousness that old-time methods may be made better, that women are as susceptible of im- provement in their ways as men are. They have felt and are feeling more acutely than ever the controlling spirit of the time which is revolutionary, iconoclastic, sceptical of rule-of-thumb methods by which our ances- tors were guided. One can easily imagine why it is that the large body of women are striving for normal activity, are trying to secure by any manner of means a release from an environment which makes them in- feriors of their fathers, husbands and brothers. The reason is in large part based on the feeling that their 286 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD sphere of work is somewhat trivial, that their range of influence is not important enough for their dignity. Under a better custom things would change. Rather would they then look upon themselves as different, not inferior. They would recognize that the differ- ence between men and women is a matter of mental and physical constitution. And a difference in con- stitution means a difference in function. When this becomes clearly known, when women feel within them- selves the responsibilities of definite and useful ac- tivity and with this recognize the normal and right field for their abilities, there will be less of an outcry against the "unnatural competition" between brother and sister, husband and wife. The more clearly each one recognizes his limitations and proper field of en- deavor, the sooner will a more tolerable condition of affairs come about. And as soon as their recognition is definite and clear cut, there will grow up in women as in men, a triumphant demand for the best prepara- tion that will fit them for their proper activity. The world has always recognized that a woman's natural and highest sphere is that of mother, and the woman who best embodied the mother-ideal has always been the subject of the sincerest worship. In the changes incident to modern life the fact that the means for attaining this ideal may be altered has been lost sight of. As a result of historical experi- ence, women have been in the habit of looking upon THE PROFESSION OF MATERNITY 287 maternity too much in the light of an incident, as an accident of life which may come as sickness or revo- lution in affairs may come, and for which no adequate preparation (outside of a financial preparation) can or need be made. But nowadays we know better than that ; we know that when a woman has the opportu- nity of putting herself in an environment which has always and must always represent the highest point in her ambitions, when as a result of this she assumes responsibilities which transcend in importance those of almost any profession or calling, when we know that these responsibilities may be wisely or unwisely administered, and that there is a large range of sub- jects which can rightly form the basis of preparation for administering them, then one may say that in such work lies the finest vocation that a mounting ambition could desire. One must say that in the profession of maternity lies the hope of the time, the cure for the restlessness, the discontent and the chagrin that tor- ment the feminine world. One may rightly call it a cure, because it not only provides a method of absorp- tion of restless energy, giving an outlet for the exer- cise of every faculty of which a woman is capable, but also because it has for its object the highest aim toward which men have ever cast their eyes : the betterment of the individual and the race. However, the absorption of restlessness is really a secondary matter. The main consideration is, that any 288 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD woman has a right to look forward to making a career in the world for herself, and that this right is founded upon much the same grounds which support the antici- pations for a life work of her brother. So long as one recognizes this, one must likewise recognize the neces- sity of ascertaining in what directions the girl's possi- bilities tend, what her sphere of greatest usefulness really is, and what the best means of culture therein are. So long as she is considered capable of filling the noble position of a mother, so long as there is a hope of her assuming its duties and obligations, the question about the choice of a vocation for her has simultane- ously been answered. Lamentations concerning the "unsexing of women by stress of industrial life," con- cerning the ruinous competition between men and women, would have no reason for existence. It must be evident that the ideal industrial condition is ob- tained, not so much by putting each person in a cutting competition with his neighbor, but by so regulating opportunities that every one has the work for which he is best designed. So far as women are concerned, there is little or no attempt at the present to do this. Whatever training they obtain is usually of the most general kind. This in itself is sad enough ; but what is still worse is that no idea of the seriousness of the deficiency is generally appreciated. If a similar con- ception in regard to any one of the recognized trades or professions were held, one would be justified in believ- THE PROFESSION OF MATERNITY 289 ing that the occupation could not possibly be of much importance. Therefore, it is quite remarkable that, in the matter of the most vital trust which can be reposed upon a human being, thoughtful and conscientious persons should not long ago have recognized the neces- sities of the case, and after recognizing them insisted upon a proper provision for answering them. The facts that women are from the beginning designed especially for the profession of maternity, that by following it they best fulfil all their physical and mental functions, and that the paramount value of this work is plain and clear, make the claims of this vocation upon our respectful consideration exceedingly strong. So long as this is true, the conclusion must follow that the main part of the preparatory training of girls, even though the present customs and ideals be thereby wholly altered, should be formed upon what the requirements of the main work in her life dictate. When the premi- ses are once admitted, it is nothing less than wanton neglect and stultification to deny in any part the inevi- table conclusion. The change in the educational life of woman here indicated is so radical from what is now in vogue, that one may be apt to think it chimerical, that women will always insist on having a large decorative element in their training. To set the doubt at rest one need merely call to mind the changed standards of customs and living which have occurred in the last few years. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD The very life of women in numberless details has changed so much that our grandmothers would never have been able to imagine the conditions of their de- scendants. Even in far other matters, even where the controlling force is as rigorous and inevitable as com- mercial demands, the spirit of the time insists so strik- ingly on progress and so sharply stimulates endeavor, that what was impossible yesterday becomes to-day not only possible, but commonplace. Not so many years ago Herbert Spencer, in writing about the limitations of human work and knowledge, said : " Numerous at- tempts have been made to construct electro-magnetic engines, in the hope of superseding steam ; but had those who supplied the money understood the general law of the correlation and equivalence of forces, they might have had better balances at their bankers." When this sentence was written the futility of the scheme in question seemed so apparent that even a man like Spencer, a man of great knowledge, wisdom and scientific imagination, could see nothing more in the idea of superseding steam by electricity than a wild project that sober minds could never entertain. Nevertheless, such motors are in use to-day, are suc- cessfully run, and bid fair in time to abolish the use of steam. Ever so rrnich more easily could the view-points in the education of women be altered. Not only are women amenable to the change, but also they would THE PROFESSION OF MATERNITY 291 welcome it as deliverance from the reputed intellect- ual bondage in which so many of them believe that they are held. In addition, the quality of the time demands the change. What women are asking for is not so much an increase in ease and luxury, an increase in the decorative and fantastic elements in life ; on the contrary, more than ever before, I believe, do they long for a high grade of usefulness, for the possibility of making a career for themselves. Such an ambition, capable of all nobility, striving and self-sacrifice, can never be gratified under the conditions of our present education. The elements of satisfying such emotions do not in large enough degree exist. But under con- ditions which would bring about an immeasurable uplifting in the standards of physical, mental and spir- itual existence, there could be no limit to the useful work which would lie at their hands. Under such auspices, marriage would become easier, its disabilities lighter, its reasons stronger than ever. Much of the present " unnatural competition " would have no reason for existence and so would cease to exist. The com- munity would have more time in which to live, for the time, effort and value that are consumed by faulty methods of management would act as clear gain. Not the least among the advancing steps of the age will be the recognition of the duties, the emoluments and the comparative value of maternity, and when the preparation for it assumes the dignity of a professional THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD training and the fulfilment of its obligations and pos- sibilities, the best ideal of a fine career, the world must see that it has taken a great stride along the path of its natural evolution. INDEX Abdominal aorta, relation in size to common iliac arteries, 42. Alberson, 149. Alveoli of lungs, 42, 43. Amoeba, 207. Amylopsin, 47. Annulus tympanicus, 26. Aorta, relation in size to pulmonary artery, 41. Apes, platyrhine, 30. Aristotle, 93. Aryans, 124. Atlas, 32. Bacchic orgies, 129. Bacon, 93. Baer, 177. Basi-occipital bone, 22. Basi-sphenoidal bone, 22. Beranger, 177. Best on Evidence, 149. Bile, 39. Binswanger, 54. Bishop, W., 230. Bladder, 49. Blind Tom, 217, 230. Blood, in infants, 17, 18. specific gravity of, 17. Body-plasm, 80. Bone elements, comparative table of, 16. Bones, 16. development of long, 19. Wormian, 177. Brain, 52, 53. cells of, 55. convolutions of, 53. Bramans, origin of, 124. Bronchi, 42, 43. Bushmen, African, 217. Australian, 132. Caecum, 47, 48. Caesar, 232. Cajal, 59. California system of child-caring, 259. Camp-meetings, excitement of, 129. Cartilage, 17. Cartilages, costal, 33. Caterpillar, u, 12. Celts, origin of, 124. Cerebellum, 53, 61. vermis of, 61. Chest, proportions of, 34. Chromatin, 59. Chronic constipation, 49. Clavicle, right, 35. Clavicles, 33. Clouston, 207. Coccyx, 51. Code of criminal procedure, New York state, 150. Colon, ascending, 47. ascending, mesentery of, 48. ascending, peritonaeum of, 48. transverse, 47, Comenius, 93. Conus arteriosus, 35. Corpora quadrigemina, 56. Corre, 177. Cranium, comparative dimensions of, 23- Credulity, natural, 127. Crime, climate as cause of, 191. 293 294 INDEX Crime, destitution as cause of, 180. diet as cause of, 192. drunkenness as cause of, 181. environment as cause of, 193. heredity as cause of, 183. ignorance as cause of, 178. weather as cause of, 192. Crishna, 125. Cro-Magnon race, 71. Cyril, 127, Darwin, 73. Dase, 218. Degeneracy, 238. Dendron, 58. Despine, Prosper, 177. Devaki, 126. Diana, 127. Diaphragm, 42. Diehl, Conrad, 116, 117. Dionysius, 125. Dordogne, 71. Dugdale, 188, 189, 201. Duodenum, 48. Dura Mater, 21. Ear, 25. Ear drum, 26. Epiglottis, 32. Epilepsy, 77. Erasmus, 93. Eustachian tube, 26, 27. relation to hard palate, 26. Face, comparative dimensions of, 21, 22. growth of, 23. Fatigue, effects of, in the young, 89. Fehling, 13. Femoral artery, 45. Fermentation, intestinal, 168. Fetteroff, 264. Fibrinogen, 18. Firnald, 221. Fissure of Rolando, 54. Fissure of Sylvius, 54. Flechsig, 56. Fontanelles, 20. Foramen caecum, 21. Foramen magnum, 23. Foramen ovale, 36. Frederick William I., 93. Frigga, 26. Froebel, 93, 96, 97, 98, 115, 256. Frontal bone, orbital plate of, 21. Frontal sinus, 21. Gall bladder, 38. Galton, 67, 146. Gambara, 177. Garofalo, 176. ' Geggenbiihl, 218. Genius, the, 230, 231. Germ-plasm, 79. Girard College, 263. Glands, Brunner's, 48. lachrymal, 25. Lieberkiihn's, 48. prostate, 49. ptyalin-forming, 31. solitary and agminated, 48. God, child's conception of, 133, 165. Goethe, 235. Goltz, experiments of, 52. Greeks, origin of, 124. Greenleaf, on Evidence, 150. Gundobin, 18. Hailman, W. N., 99. Hare-lip, 28. Heart, "milk spot" of, 36. proportions of, 35. relation in size to arterial system, 41. relation in size to liver, 40. Hercules, 135. Herodotus, 126. Hodge, 53. Holder, von, 176. Horus, 127. Howard, 220. INDEX 295 Infarctions, uric acid, 44. Inferior turbinated bone, 27. Ireland, Dr., 214. Isis, 126. Italians, origin of, 124. Jaw, upper, 22. upper, ramus of, 24. Jews, ancient, 123. descent of, 71, 72. Joyce, Dr., 108. Jukes, 188. Keilhau, 97. Kidneys, development of, 44. Knee joint, development of, 19. Larynx, 32. Laurent, 152, 177. Lavelaye, de, 64. Liver, development of, 37. Lombroso, 61. Longet, experiments of, 52. Lourdes, 139. Lowell, Mrs. J. S., 252. Lymphatic system, 48. Macula lutea, 25. Malpighi, pyramids of, 44. Marimo, 177. Marrow, 17. Massachusetts system of child-caring, 258- Mastoid bone, 19, 20. Mastoid process, 20. Maudesley, 122. Maya-Maya, 126. Meatus of ear, 26. Medes and Persians, origin of, 124. Mediastinum, 32. Medulla oblongata, 56. Membrana tympani, 26. Metteay, 255. Michigan system of child-caring, 259. Mithras, 125. Moral Revival, i. Morals, training in, 142. Morrison, 180, 181, 187. Mouth, cavity of, 24. Muscles, 17. Napoleon, 233. Nasal cavity, 24. Naso-pharynx, 24. Nerve branches, development of, 57. Nerve cells, functions of, 208, 210, 211. Neuron, 58. New Hampshire system of child- caring, 259. New South Wales, 257. New York system of child-caring, 258. Nose, growth of, 27, 28. Obersteiner, 77. Occipital bone, union with spheroid bone, 20. Ogle, 179. Orbit, 21. Orbit, relation to nose, 24. Osiris, 125. Ossicles, auditory, 25. Palate, bard, 24. Palate, soft, 30. Parker, 128. Patterson, 150. Payaguas, 132. Perinaeum, 50. fasciae of, 50. Pestalozzi, 93, 96, 97, 256. Petro-squamous suture, 20. Pons varolii, 56. Predisposition, 75, 76. Prenated diseases, 76. Prenatal impressions, 78. Preyer, 61. Protozoa, 68. Psychical trauma, 170. Ptyalin, 31. Purkinje, cells of, 53. 296 INDEX Ranks, 226. Recessus opticus, 25. Rectum, 48, 49. peritonasum, 49. prolapse of, 49. Renin, 47. Ribs, 33, 34. Richardson, Mrs., 260. Richter, 177. Robinson, L., 60. Russell, 135, 156. Sachs, 209. Secretan, M. Charles, 2. Seguin, 213, 217, 219. Semele, 126. Sernoff, 54. Serum, specific gravity of, 17. Shamanism, 129. Shuttleworth, 213. Sigmoid flexure, 47, 48. Siva worship, 129. Skull, comparative dimensions of, 23. Slavonic nations, origin of, 124. Socrates, 93. Soubirous, Beraadette, 139. Spencer, Herbert, 100, 290. Sphenoidal sinus, 21. Sphenoid bone, union with occipital bone, 20. Sphincter, cesophageal, 46. Spine, 50, 51. Spleen, 39. Steapsin, 47. Sternum, 32, 33. Stomach, development of, 46. Taylor, on Evidence, 151. Teeth - bicuspids, 29. canines, 29. incisors, 29. molars, 29. molar, fourth, 30. Teeth alveolar processes of, 28. coronoid processes of, 29. development of, 28, 29. milk, 29. Temporal bone, parietal portion of, 24 ; squamous portion of, 23. Terra del Fuegians, 132. Tertullian, 126. Teutons, 70. Thymus gland, 31. Thyroid gland, 32. Tongue, development of, 30 ; follicles of, 31. Tonsil, pharyngeal, 31. Trachea, 33. Tragus of ear, 26. Trypsin, 47. Tuberculosis, debilitating effects of, 213, 214 ; transmission of, 76. Tympanum (middle ear), 21. Urethra, 49. Uterus, 49. Uvula, 31. Victoria, 257. Vierordt's table of comparative per- centages, 15. Vision in new-born child, 25. Vomer, 23. Wagner, 234. Warner, 198. Washington, 233. Water, proportion of, in foetus, 13. Wharton, 151. Whitwell, 226. Whirling dervishes, 129. Wichern, 255. Yrerdun, 96, 97. Zygomata (cheek bones), 23. THE STUDY OF CHILDREN AND THEIR SCHOOL TRAINING. By FRANCIS WARNER, M.D. izmo. Cloth. Price $1.00, net. A practical book. The conclusions are based on FACTS, not theories, gained by Dr. Warner from the examinations of 100,000 school children. Parents and teachers are shown what observations to make and how to make them. Sug- gestions for overcoming many puzzling difficulties are given. No more valua- ble book for those interested in the study of children has been published. " This is a volume singularly clear and exact in its expression and definite in its generalization, the first really scientific monograph on child study that we have in any language. 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" The book is indispensable to the teacher's library, and is full of information for those who are engaged in directing education, philanthropy, social settle- ment work, as well as any student of mental development." Child Study Monthly. "The Study of Children and their School Training is one of the most valua- ble contributions yet made to the literature of scientific education. It contains information of interest to all who are intelligently awake to the progress of edu- cational movement and other forms of social work connected with mental science." Philadelphia Evening- Telegraph. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. z MENTAL DEVELOPMENT THE CHILD AND THE RACE. JAMES MARK BALDWIN, M.A., Ph.D., With Seventeen Figures and Ten Tables. 8vo. pp. xvi, 496. Cloth. Price, $2.60. FROM THE PRESS. " It is of the greatest value and importance." The Outlook, "A most valuable contribution to biological psychology." The Critic. " Thorough, candid, and suggestive : in thorough touch with the researches of the day." The Week (Toronto, Canada). " Professor Baldwin has treated in this book a subject that is new and full of absorbing interest. . . . Many will find Professor Baldwin's book stimulating." The American Journal of Psychology. " An exceedingly valuable book, and will be read with great interest by teachers, cultured parents, and psychologists." Popular Science News. "This summary sketch can give no idea of the variety of topics which Professor Baldwin handles, or of the originality with which his central thesis is worked out. No psychologist can afford to neglect the book." The Dial. " The first real successful effort at a presentation of the psychological process from the genetic point of view the central idea of the growing, developing being." The Child-Study Monthly. " A book . . . treating of a subject fraught with significant revelations for every branch of educational science is Professor J. 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