When the individual is able to make verbal reports of his experience. the method is some what changed. Ile may he asked. e.g. to discrim inate or name colors, to judge a spatial or tem poral interval, or to undergo a test of memory or fatigue or attention. His introspection.: are by no means comparable with the laboratory in trospeetions of the trained psychologist. The child lacks the neeessary patience. concentration. interest. and knowledge. Still, if the conditions are carefully arranged, and the investigator knows his sources of error, trustworthy results may he secured. Besides the observatiOn, which the psychologist is able to make for himself, there are the not(..: of parents, especially through the first and second periods, and of the teacher dur ing the third and fourth. We have the classical studies of Preyer and Darwin. and of great teach ers like Pestalozzi and Troche], and also hun dreds of more or less reliable and systematic observations by parents, teaehers, and physicians, autobiographical sketches of childhood, records of early memories. statistical inquiries Icy the questionary method—resnIts oldained by sending out lists of questions to a large number of ob ser•ers—a••ounts of unusual minds. as of the blind, of deaf-mutes, and of such individuals as Laura Bridgman. '1,sycliolifgieal vivisections.' as they have been called.
There is, further, over and above the analysis of complexes in which all children agree. an individual psychology of childhood to be worked out. Even within the same environment, children develop noteworthy differences. One. we say, has 'musical endowment,' another 11;1.; 'a tem per,' another an aptitude for drawing. an
other is imaginative, anotheriswillfuhete. Every one of these mental peculiarities is a highly com plex affair, we describe it in a word or phrase; and it is important to know in just what 'endowment' and how much is due to nurture and training. Whether the poet or the criminal or the painter 'is born, not made.' we shall know only when psychology has made a more thorough study of mental varia tions and their conditions among children. Here, again. the methods of individual and of type psychology. which hays developed within lbe eral field, furnish a starting-point for the in vestigation of children.
It is clear that so much material. gathered from so many sources, needs careful working over by psychology' from a single. definite point of En method 11111•4 bo scrut in ized criti cally, and employed only where it is serviceable. The questiona•y. e.g. is essentially a gross and statistical method. which will succeed where a great body of objective fact: is requiwil; as re e.g. the child's means of t•xpre••ing anger or fear. or his notions of his own rights. Ent, like loose autobiography and the casual observa lions of untrained persons, it will never replace the more subtle methods of psychology. Butuoca.‘env. Preyer, The Mind of the Child: I. The P;entas and the Will (New York. 1SSS) ; II. The It( eelopment of the luteMet New York, Perez, first Three Years of Childhood (Syracuse, ltilltt) ; Oppenheitn, The /hi-c/o/mien/ of the Child (New York, l89S) ; Chamberlain, The Child • _I ,s'tudy in the Erolution of Man I London. 19001: Shinn. otrs on the Derr. lop nt of the child (New York, 1893).