CHILD PSYCHOLOGY, st-kol'O-ji. The Study of the mind of the child forms one depart ment of general psychology. The existence of such a department implies that the mental processes of the child are, to a certain degree, unique, or at least that they demand a special method of in vestigation. it is difficult to say in a word what the method of child psychology is. The subject has been approached from so many directions, and with so many divergent motives, that it is not easy to make one's way through the vast amount of unclassified material which has been accumulating for a score of years. There is no doubt that a strong incentive to the study of the child's mind has lieen furnished by the great interest manifested for some decades in evolu tion. After Darwin, this interest centred in biol ogy: later, it included the investigation of mental phenomena as well: and. as a result, psychology has appeared. The minds of the animal, of the child. and of the adult now represent different stages in a single process, different levels of mental elaboration, corresponding more or less perfectly with stages of physical development. But the place of the ehild-mind in this series has only a general sig nificance. It is the middle link in the chain. When we come to look more closely at the mat ter, we realize that childhood is itself a transi tion period, and that it includes a large number of developmental stages. This fact has led to the division of childhood into a number of periods or epochs. beginning at or before birth and continuing through youth. The division has sometimes rested upon a psychological basis, sometimes upon a physiological, an anatomical, r an anthropological basis. \Ve may, e.g., mark off periods by changes in mental capa•ity—devel opul•nt of the senses, speech, emotional activity, power of attention. etc.—or by the functional aetivitie: of various bodily organs: or by stages of physical growth: or by the successive ap pearance of racial characteristics. This last mode of division rests upon an alleged similarity between racial development and individual de velopment. It implies a speeifie, evolutionary
interpretation of the facts, and has led to the 'recapitulation theory.' This theory posits a parallelism, physical and mental. between the cp.olls through which the race has passed—from primitive to civilized man, on the one hand, and the growth of the individual on the other. one phase of recapitulation has loon adopted by the Ilcrbartians in their theory of 'culture epochs.' They contend that the individual passes through the same stages of culture that the race has traversed. The theory seems to hold only when it is taken broadly. The 'young savage' in the child is strikingly apparent at times: and his passion- for hunting. fishing, roving, and intoler ance of restraint are strong reminders of lower grades of culture. But there are many unlike factors in the environment of the child and the savage. The race wrought its own culture; the child has its culture thrust upon it. It lives in a social and moral forcing-house. from which a primitive race is exempt, except in so far as it comes in contact with more civilized peoples. These differences, together with the physical immaturity of the child, can but cut across and modify 'recapitulation.' And yet this may be clearly traced in certain general tendencies of the child : e.g. in the use of gesture lan guage. in ',cord-inventions and onomatomeia, in rhythmic movements, in the character of his drawings, and in his :esthetic preferences. We should, however, find similar resemblances be tween the child of civilization and the child of primitive culture. The two seem to differ chiefly in the shorter period of infancy and adolescence which is allotted to the primitive child. So that we arc led to a fact which is perhaps more im portant than the alleged reeapitulation—th fact that childhood ditTers comparatively little be tween one level of culture and another, whereas the mental status of the adult varies materially.