I
BABY BIOGRAPHIES IN GENERAL
“It is a well recognized fact in the history of science that the very subjects which concern our dearest interests, which lie nearest our hearts, are exactly those which are the last to submit to scientific methods, to be reduced to scientific law. Thus it has come to pass that while babies are born and grow up in every household, and while the gradual unfolding of their faculties has been watched with the keenest interest and intensest joy by intelligent and even scientific fathers and mothers from time immemorial, yet very little has yet been done in the scientific study of this most important of all possible subjects—the ontogenetic evolution of the faculties of the human mind.
“Only in the last few years has scientific attention been drawn to the subject at all. Its transcendent importance has already enlisted many observers, but on account of the great complexity of the phenomena, and still more the intrinsic difficulty of their interpretation, scientific progress has scarcely yet commenced.
“What is wanted most of all in this, as in every science, is a body of carefully observed facts. But to be an accomplished investigator in this field requires a rare combination of qualities. There must be a wide intelligence combined with patience in observing and honesty in recording. There must be also an earnest scientific spirit, a loving sympathy with the subject of investigation, yet under watchful restraint, lest it cloud the judgment; keenness of intuitive perception, yet soberness of judgment in interpretation.”
I have appropriated these words of Dr. Joseph Le Conte because the general reader is not likely to see them where they were originally printed, in a little university study, and it is a pity to let the general reader miss so good an introduction to the subject. Not all learned men rate baby biography as highly as Dr. Le Conte does; but probably all biologists do, and those psychologists who are most strongly impressed with the evolutionary interpretation of life.
It is easy to see why one’s views of evolution affect the matter. In botany, for instance, we do not think that we can understand the mature plant by studying it alone, without knowledge of its germinating period. If we omitted all study of radicle and plumule and cotyledon, we should not only lose an interesting chapter from the science, but even the part we kept, the classification and morphology and physiology of the grown plant itself, would be seriously misunderstood in some ways. So in other sciences: it is necessary to understand how things came to be what they are, to study the process of becoming, so to speak, before the completed result can be understood. This is what we mean by “the genetic method” of studying a subject.
Now, in proportion as one believes that the faculties of the human mind unfold by evolutionary law, like a plant from the germ, he will feel the need of studying these also genetically. As we find them in our grown selves, they are often perplexing. What seems a single complete, inborn faculty may really be made up of simpler ones, so fused together by long practice that they cannot be discerned. We know that this is the case with seeing. For instance, we give a glance at a ball, and see its form with a single act of mind. Yet that act became possible only after long drill in putting simpler perceptions together. Many a test of form, turning objects over and over, passing the hands round and round them, learning the absence of corners, the equality of diameters, did we go through in babyhood, many an inspection by eye, many an exercise of memory, connecting the peculiar arrangement of light and shade with the form as felt, before we could “see” a ball. Had this been understood in Froebel’s time, it would have made a material difference in his suggestions as to sense training in earliest infancy. So other powers that seem simple and inborn may perhaps be detected in the act of forming themselves out of simpler ones, if we watch babies closely enough, and it may lead us to revise some of our theories about education.
There are enthusiasts, indeed, who would have us believe that child study is going to revolutionize all our educational methods, but those who are surest of these wonderful results, and readiest to tell mothers and teachers what is the truly scientific thing to do with their children, are not the ones who have done the most serious first hand study of children. From indications so far, it is likely that the outcome of such study will oftener be to confirm some good old-fashioned ways of training (showing that they rested unconsciously on a sound psychological basis) than to discover new ways. No substitute has yet been found by scientific pedagogy for motherly good sense and devotion.
Yet the direct study of child minds does bring out some new suggestions of educational value, does give a verdict sometimes between old conflicting theories, and always makes us understand more clearly what we are doing with children. And on the purely scientific side there is one aspect of especial interest in genetic studies. That is, the possible light we may get on the past of the human race.