that suggestive outlines adapted to all ages, in both the school and the home, should be prepared, so that all parents, as well as all teachers, may contribute to the undertaking." "It is apparent that future progress in education is to be along the line of a finer adaptation of educational processes, based upon a better understanding of individual needs." "The committee earnestly invite all to take such an active interest in the work of child study as will make it an important department of the Education Society."

What an impetus for good such an organization would be if established in every community.

* **

I SHOULD like to call the attention of parents to an interesting little book for supplementary reading for children between seven and ten. The book is entitled "Four True Stories of Life and Adventure," written by Jessie R. Smith, and published by William Beverley Harrison, 3 and 5 West 18th St., New York city. It contains the stories of Columbus, of Captain John Smith, of Captain Miles Standish, and of Benjamin Franklin. This book, the outgrowth of child study, is written in the language of children and for the direct purpose of interesting and benefiting them. My little boy of six, after reading with interest the first chapter of the "Story of Columbus," sprang up and down, as he usually does when oversupplied with joy, and said: "Good! Good! I like that book!"

#

A quotation from the preface of the book by Superintendent Frederic Burk will show how the book was prepared. "This book is designed to meet this end (of furnishing a useful supplementary reader). It is practically written by children. Miss Smith's purpose has been that of a faithful chronicler of children's language, mode of expression, and the lines of their plot interest. The method of the book's production has been as follows: She first related to her pupils, who were from seven to nine years of age, the story of the hero in the best form her instincts could dictate. Some days later, after the story, its form of presentation, and language have somewhat "settled" in the children's minds, she has called for reproductions, both oral and in written form, allowing the pupils also to illustrate their written work in any way they pleased. She has then made these reproductions the material for most careful study as to essential elements of plot, salient points of interest, and especially the words and forms of expression used by the children."

Child Study and Ethology

II.

N the first paper we discussed the need of ethology in child study and in education; we tried to show the trend of thought toward ethology; we briefly reviewed some pedagogical topics in order to indicate the direction practical child study would take if it is to study character so that such study may aid in educating the children. In the present article we have space for only a hasty and rather superficial statement of (1) some points in the psychology of character (ethology) that we implicitly used in the first article; (2) some of the methods of child study in vogue, with criticism of typical studies; (3) hints as to the kind of child study that promises most for the teacher. I. The psychology of character.

Let us imagine that the development of character proceeds from the apex of our isosceles triangle in the direction of the two legs and the perpendicular bisector of the apical angle. The left line we shall call the "psychical" side; the right the "social" side; the middle line the "personal" line. Let us furthermore imagine that in each instinctive stage of development-whether in right, left, or middle-there is a tendency to differentiate in right, left, and center directions; that the differentiation on the left and on the right tend to approach and integrate with the center. Then we may say that human character in its empirical manifestation begins with the organism, which is implicitly personal; develops on one side in psychical, philosophical, logical, scientific, metaphysical directions; develops on the other side into social, religious, institutional, political, "ecclesiological" directions, and that its development in the middle (personal) line is biological, æsthetical, ethical. The biological differentiates into the psychical and social, and is perpendicularly prolonged into the æsthetical. The psychical and social, along with the biological, become integrated in the aesthetical (imaginative, intuitive, naively ideal). The aesthetical differentiates into the

(naively) philosophical and religious and is prolonged into the ethical. The philosophical goes on the left into the logical and toward the center into the ethical, where it meets the central aspect of the religious, which has differentiated toward the right in the institutional direction. Finally, the logical differentiates into the scientific (left), and the metaphysical, which ap proaches the central line and is connected with the ethical by an oblique line, while the institutional develops into the ecclesiological (in the widest sense) on the right, and the political, which, like the metaphysical, is connected with the ethical by an oblique line. Of course, this is a hypothetical scheme, but is drawn from the study of character in life and history, as well as from a "passion" to apply the law of development-differentiation and integration-to human character. These differentiations are only connate tendencies or instincts; some stages may be slurred or aborted; one side may develop faster than another, so that there is partial inequilibration in the "moving equilibrium."

Each one of these tendencies has a "central" and "peripheral" aspect; that is, roughly speaking, a thought side and a feeling side (including under feeling objective sensations, muscle and joint feelings, organic or internal feelings). The thought aspect may be viewed as the core of a sphere, and the peripheral as three concentric layers the innermost (organic sensation, etc.) we call the layer or zone of the "affect"; the middle one we call the zone of "impulse"; the outermost, the zone of "sensation." So the central So the central aspect is thought (explicit or implicit) or, as we shall call it, "relation," while the peripheral is sensation, impulse, and affect.

Now to apply this briefly to the pedagogical topics discussed in the first article.

All the factors of education conspire to develop character so that it will be balanced, differentiated, integrated, progressive, cumulative. The social forces of home, school, society, church, state, furnish the environmental conditions of development on the institutional side (social, religious, etc.), and furnish the necessary social material for taste (æsthetical) and conscience (ethical); of course, conscience is the real, inte

grated self, and includes what is eternal in taste (sense of honor, self-respect, ideality, etc.). The school curriculum is supposed to "run" the child from the "sensation feelings" of the psychical instincts to the scientific and metaphysical, with the æsthetical, philosophical, and logical as ends in themselves, and yet as means to the instincts beyond them on the psychical side, as stages leading to the personal line, and as "balancers" of the antithetical social side. The school course represents the psychical (intellectual) environment. The middle line stands for the "heredity" aspect. Moreover, the whole course of study, since it is on the psychical side, is specially concerned with central or intellectual processes, while the social side is more naively peripheral. Of course, both sides are peripheral and both central, but we are speaking only of predominant characteristics. Since the course of study is divided in accordance with the phenomenal or peripheral aspects of the child's thought, it is natural to find that the "formal" studies (language and mathematics) stand preeminently for the exercise or impulse aspect, while the "formative" studies represent the object or sensation side of the periphery. The affective side, which in large measure combines formal and formative, is represented by music, drawing, manual training, etc. When we review the formal work by means of the formative, and vice versa, we are increasing the central power by associating peripheral aspects. Hence, the discussion of the course of study is largely based on ethological psychology. Let it be noted that the sensational, impulsive, and affective aspects belong to all studies, high and low; in some studies all the time, and in all studies sometimes, one aspect or another will predominate, and the educator chooses accordingly. Notice, too, how the drill or exercise element varies and develops from psychical repetition to logical, scientific, and metaphysical "disciplines." The content-material varies in the same way from psychical novelty to the highest realms of knowledge. For the sake of simplicity, we have left the emotions and pleasure-pain out of account. The emotions are selfmovements (organismic movements) of expansion, contraction, and tension, while pleasure, pain and excitement are conscious results of organic summation, inhibition, and diffusion. As a matter of fact, instinct, emotion, and feeling proper (pleasure, etc.) are not separated in actual experience, except in a partial way.

Emotion-instinct gives us something like pas sion, when emotion predominates, and something akin to sentiment, when the instinctive element predominates. Hence the course of study must not only formally "train for habit," and formatively "nurture for instinct," but must also "develop for aptitude," which manifests itself largely in an affective way, and deeper still in emotions and feelings characteristic of individuality. Especially do we find the most characteristic emotions, feelings, sentiments, passions, associated with the middle line of instinct-development, with the biological, æsthetical, and ethical instincts. Hence the school studies and the institutional influences act upon the emotional life mainly through their connec tion with the personal taste and conscience, which presupposes health, other things being equal.

Turning for a few moments to the methodological side, we see method incarnated in the law of development that is seen in the instinctstages. Progress in development of character is from the concrete ("perceptual") to the abstract, and from the generic (the potential holding the specific in solution) to the specific. Thus the biological instincts are more generic and more concrete to the child than its ethical instincts. In particular instincts, the generic and concrete (peripheral) precede the specific and abstract. Just as the course of study gradu ally differentiates (becomes specific) and integrates (becomes abstract) so our methodological steps ordinarily follow the same course, as indicated in the first article. Reflection interferes with naive thinking, both in school studies and in method, for the thoughtful child and the reflective teacher often reverse the genetic succession in order to "brace the soul." A careful study of character-development will give us a methodology that is neither merely metaphysical nor merely empirical. Formal psychology, whether rational, "empirical," or physiological, can hardly help us here, except indirectly. Biological psychology could do more for us if it

existed and if it could exist usefully except as a department of ethology.

What we have already said about discipline can be illustrated by the scheme of development.

The social instincts are more concrete and more

generic than the aesthetical, hence we can make use of blind gregariousness, co-operation, etc., before we can appeal to the æsthetical instincts where self-consciousness differentiates the man

from the animal. Social discipline (predominantly) precedes æsthetical discipline, and æsthetical precedes ethical. But the social must be of such a nature as to lead into the æstheti cal, which must lead directly to the ethical. Of course other phases come in, but I have instanced these three stages because they are well marked. Until we investigate a few of these problems, interest, sympathy, and tact-that "pedagogical trinity" which every teacher should embody-must lead us rather than statistics about what children think of discipline, etc. Every teacher ought to know what elements enter into the development of a conscience. If we practically educated conscience on its six aspects of the aesthetical, philosophical, religious, metaphysical, political, and ethical, men like Professor Howison would have less reason to accuse the schools of giving a merely intellectualistic education.*

II.

Some current methods of child study.

Most of the child study of to-day is very uncritical. Much of it is suggestive, perhaps all of it is earnest and well-intentioned. As Protober, 1897), we cannot understand the child fessor Stratton says (Educational Review, Ocmind until we have a clear grasp of the science and remark that child study, in order to be real of the adult mind. We might well go further and remark that child study, in order to be real of concrete generic character as seen in actual and useful, must be based upon the psychology

persons.

to make about current methods of child study,

In the few critical statements we have

let it be understood that we believe all of them to have elements of value, and that we profoundly respect the persons doing such work.

(1.) The Worcester Method.-President Stanley Hall (the father of "child study") suggested, about 1884, that the proper way for naive observers to begin the study of children would be to collect the children's sayings and doings as they came along; to intuitively grow into a knowledge of the child nature; to become a "paidological" naturalist in an amateur way. Principal Russell, of the Worcester Normal, has

used this plan with great success. The results have been of personal value to the teacher, and

thereby to the children. Wherever work of this kind has been persisted in good habits of observation and a deepening of appreciation of the childlike and childish "things of the spirit" have always followed, so far as the writer knows.

For fuller" ethological outlines" see Tompkins' School Menograph, No. 3, Oakland School Report, 1896-7

Principal Russell is rightly very enthusiastic about the humanizing influences of such work (Pedagogical Seminary, vol. II, No. 3). The writer has had the same experience in South Carolina and California (see Tompkins' School Monograph, Nos. 1 and 2, Oakland School Report for 1895-6). This plan, however, has been persistently tried in very few places. Observers refuse to remain "naive." Many indulge in pseudo-scientific "research," much to the disgust of scientific men, and to the hurt of the cause. It seems to me that this observational work must be the primitive protoplasm and the connective tissue of all child study work. Unfortunately, this plan has two serious defects: First, it leads philosophically- and scientificallyminded persons to something resembling dementia, unless there is a Principal Russell on hand to inspire and rationalize the observations; second, it is very hard to connect the observations with practical life in home and school, unless one knows the children through and through, and has one's thought affected by one's observations unconsciously and tactfully, rather than reflectively and scientifically. The human mind must think, must generalize, so that these "naive observers" tend to become dogmatic empiricists or shallow sentimentalists. This tendency may not be observed when a thinker of good taste is at hand to help. Even then, one is bewildered at the undigested mass of crude data, and often psychologically shocked by the attempts to classify the observations. Observers wish to "get somewhere" and "do something," and they need some doctrine of character as a guiding hypothesis, provided such hypothesis be true to our intuitive and scientific insights, and is not a mere set of classificatory pigeon-holes. Character is one and ought to be viewed and studied as one. Disjecta membra are interesting only when lighted up by individuality and insight. A crop of abstract "children's x, y, and z results from the almost pathetic desire to put order into chaos.

Studies of individual children are vastly useful, but for myself I have derived far more satisfaction from reading Miss Shinn's pencil notes in their original time order than from struggling to get a character-view out of the printed "Notes." I can neither imagine nor conceive Preyer's child. Then, too, the observations about an individual, however admirably accurate they may be, need to be tested and verified by the notes of other observers of the same child, as well as

by the data of other cases similarly circumstanced. While a comparison of Preyer's son and Miss Shinn's niece gives us some interesting suggestions, it hardly gives us a clue to the personality of either child or of any child. When the writer saw the subject of Miss Shinn's excellent observations he was almost startled at the difference between the concept he had derived from the notes and the child as he saw her. If a child is not to seem a cabinet full of psychological data, we must have some connected scheme of development by which to know it as a character. Perhaps such a study would shatter the scheme. If so, then so much the better. But observation, even with some aid from experi ment and comparison, etc., cannot get along without some concrete-generic hypothesis evolved by the philosophico-scientific imagination. This is true all the more because the study of character is the most complex of all studies.

(3.) The Statistical Method.-Nowadays careful people are not inclined to "prove things" by sta tistics, unless the phenomena are very objective and mechanical. In the so-called science of "sociology," the statistical method has in many ways proven illusory. Recent mathematical thought has given us fresh reasons for doubting the "inductive" conclusions usually drawn from statistics. Very special training in the use of statistics is a necessity, if the method is to do aught more than "make figures lie." Nevertheless, statistical studies about "children's" this, that and t'other multiply around us. These "investigators" prove (?) that children do so and so at such and such times. Ignorant of the sciences that make the study of character possible, ignorant of that philosophical culture so necessary in studying human things, they make child study an instrument for heightening their amiable but pseudo-scientific vanity. Unfortunately, men who ought to know better seem unaware of the complexity of the phenomena they are dealing with and unable or unwilling to compare, criticise, and verify their results by other methods. Their results are suggestive, but quite as likely to suggest error as truth to uncritical minds. Let me briefly illustrate this danger in such "suggestive" studies by calling attention to Binet's study on a child's "interests." In the first place, his study of one child was so sug gestive that Professor Barnes' subsequent statistical study of many children could only verify Binet's main conclusions. But the interpretation of these results! The study seemed to show

that little children were primarily interested in "use" and "doing;" that as the adult age was approached, the category of "use" decreased and definition in terms of the "larger" term (and, therefore, (?) interest in it) increased; that children were little interested in the objective sensational aspects of things. Any critical student will find by careful tests (1) that grown people are as much "interested" in "use" and "doing" as children, provided they catch the first spontaneous feeling-definition that occurs to them when they are entirely "off guard" (this was tested in a number of adults who could introspect); (2) that primary grade children use "larger term❞ as much as adults, if we are only just enough to count "something," "what," etc., as "larger terms" (they evidently are in the logic of feeling); (3) that failure to give definitions in terms of sensation proves nothing except that sensation is not precept or concept or "category." The teacher that would try to use such a study as a pedagogical guide would lose intuitive common sense and gain nothing but the sense of importance or of fancied progressiveness. Better no child study than fancied discoveries that make children a strange genus that has been totally misunderstood in all past ages. Children are developing characters, not disconnected traits. We have no right to make them the victims in our frantic attempts to take the kingdom of truth by storm. The statistical method is truthfully suggestive only to trained students who have sufficient scientific and philosophical preparation, who test results by reference to results of other methods, and who are able to intuitively and rationally study children as integral personalities.

(3.) The Inductive Method.-So we may fairly characterize the work being done at Clark University under the inspiration and leadership of President Stanley Hall. It seems to me that this method suffers most from two faults: First, it is striving to get order out of chaos without a plan of creation or a working hypothesis; second, it is almost absurdly hostile to philosophy and metaphysics. Herbert Spencer and Kant seem alike "back number" to the Clarkites. Plato is to be "felt about" rather than studied. Hegel and Herbart are "merely metaphysical." The methods at Clark remind one of prospectors hunting for "pockets." There is much merit in all this. Teachers and parents are helped some times to be observers; young investigators get

the feeling of reality in dealing with facts; bibliographical enthusiasm is stirred up; ability to state conclusions modestly and tentatively is strongly encouraged; a catholic sympathy for diverse standpoints, various methods, shreds and bits of truth-these and many other worthy scientific traits are engendered. But one longs for unity and scientific significance. The brain grows weary of curious information. The plethora of facts seems to smile disdainfully at the biological suggestions and naive insights which are faithfully striving to bring order into chaos. Dr. Hall himself is a seer, a prophet, an inspirer. The true strength and fineness of his nature show little on paper or in organization. Perhaps he will yet prove himself a Darwin, but the present writer, who owes him so much, prefers him as a Socrates. The work done at Clark will all count, but more as material than as truth. Ethology must use it, but no ethology bids fair to come out of it, unless it loses much of its disconnectedness and empiricism, and gains a central point of view and a concrete-generic method. Any scientific philosophical mind will see the force of some of these remarks by carefully reading Mr. Ellis' Philosophy of Education in the current number of the Pedagogical Seminary in the light of Dr. Hall's editorial reference to it. While I cannot believe that pedagogy, child study, or ethology can look for much organic help from the work at Clark; while I cannot advise teachers to found their work upon its results, I can and do say that Clark University and its prophetic president are doing noble pioneer work and are a wholesome antidote to much of the unbalanced apriorism and academic metaphysics to be found in some quarters. Dr. Hall's advice to naive observers. to try the Worcester method until they are prepared to do more is, to my mind, the wisest advice they have received, and proves Dr. Hall to be a wise and sympathetic friend to the children. and their helpers.

(4.) The Psychogenetic Method. This is represented in different ways by Professors Preyer, Sully, and Baldwin. This work seems to me the most promising of all, when the view points and methods of all three of these representative men of science are taken together. Preyer's work stands for the physiological point of view, Sully's for the psychological-intuitive, Baldwin's for the psychological-biological. Preyer's work is best for physicians and physiologists, Bald