Mental development in the child and the race, methods and processes

Front matter

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Preface

In writing this book I have had rather conflicting aims. It was begun as a series of articles reporting observations on infants, published in part in the journal Science, 1890-1892. In the prosecution of this purpose, however, I found it necessary constantly to enlarge my scope for the entertainment of a widened genetic view. This came to clearer consciousness in the treatment of the child's imitations, especially when I came to the relation of imitation to volition, as treated in my paper before the London Congress of Experimental Psychology in 1892. The farther study of this subject brought what was to me such a revelation of the genetic function of imitation that I then determined — under the inspiration, also, of the small group of writers lately treating the subject — to work out a theory of mental development in the child, incorporating this new insight.

This occupied my thought, and was made the topic of my graduate Seminar in psychology at Princeton, in 1893-94, the result being the conviction that no consistent view of mental development in the individual could possibly be reached without a doctrine of the race development of consciousness, — i.e., the great problem of the evolution of mind.

I then fell to reading again the literature of biological evolution, with view to a possible synthesis of the current biological theory of organic adaptation with the doctrine of the infant's development, as my previous work had led me to formulate it. This is the problem of Spencer and Romanes. My book is then viii Preface.

mainly a treatise on this problem; but the method of approach to it which I have described, accounts for the preliminaries and incidents of treatment which make my book so different in its topics and arrangement from theirs, and from any work constructed from the start with a ' System of Genetic Psychology ' in view.

For this reason the question of arrangement was an excessively difficult one to me. The relations of individual development to race development are so intimate — the two are so identical, in fact — that no topic in the one can be treated with great clearness without assuming results in the other. So any order of treatment in such a work must seem finally to be only the least of possible evils.

My final arrangement of chapters presents, however, when a patient reader is in front of the page, a fair degree of reason, I think. The earliest chapters (I. to VI.) are devoted to the statement of the genetic problem, with reports of the facts of infant life and the methods of investigating them, and the mere teasing out of the strings of law on which the facts are beaded — the principles of Suggestion, Habit, Accommodation, etc. These chapters have their own end as well, giving researches of some value, possibly, for psychology and education. They serve their purpose also in the progress of the book, as giving a statement of the central problem of motor adaptation. Chapter V. gives a detailed analysis of one voluntary function, Handwriting. Then follows the theory of adaptation, stated in general terms in Chapters VII. and VIII.; and afterwards comes a genetic view in detail (Chaps. IX. to XVI.) of the progress of mental development in its great stages, Memory, Association, Attention, Thought, Self-consciousness, Volition. So the whole is a whole, the theory resting upon an induction of facts (put before it) and supported by the deduction of facts (put after).

Preface. ix

The book really represents, therefore, five years of very close work; and the distribution of the topics over this period accounts for the fact that the chapters, in many instances, include in more or less modified form articles which I have contributed to the reviews. It will now be clear that all were written in the course of development of one intellectual impulse, and so have their only adequate presentation and justification in this volume. I am indebted to the editors and publishers of certain journals for this present use of some of the material, e.g.. Mind, The Philosophical Review, The Psychological Review, The American Journal of Psychology, The Popular Science Monthly, The Century Magazine, Science, The Educational Review.

There are certain other great provinces, besides, which I find capable of fruitful exploration with the same theoretical principles. Of course, genetic psychology ought to lay the only solid foundation for education, both in its method and its results. And it is equally true, though it has never been adequately realized, that it is in genetic theory that social or collective psychology must find both its root and its ripe fruitage. We have no social psychology, because we have had no doctrine of the socius. We have had theories of the ego and the alter ; but that they did not reveal the socius is just their condemnation. So the theorist of society and institutions has floundered in seas of metaphysics and biology, and no psychologist has brought him a life-preserver, nor even heard his cry for help. These aspects of the subject I hope to take up in the same modest way in another work, already well under way, to bear the same general title as this volume, but to be known by the sub-title Interpretations : Educational, Social, and Ethical, in contrast with the Methods and Processes, by which this book is described more particularly on the title-page. It will endeavour to find a basis in the natural history of man as x Preface.

a social being for the theory and practice of the activities in which his life of education, social co-operation, and duty involves him.

Many of the particular points of view of this proposed work are indicated by foot-notes in this volume, on pages where the principles discussed strike deeper into the social life. Such intimations are especially brought out in Chapters X. to XVI.

The classes of men whom I hope therefore to interest are first, of course, psychologists, — in my theories, — and then teachers and writers on education — in the outcome. I have not had the latter class in mind as much in this book as I do in the later one, for obvious reasons; but yet I hope the treatment will be found untechnical enough to profit teachers who are not professed psychologists. To this end all the original observations and experiments on children which are scattered through the book are gathered in a list in Appendix I.

Then there are the biologists — one almost despairs of them ! Are there any yet born to follow the two I have named in finding mind as interesting as life ? We must believe that the future is big with them, — and the near future, too. But if any biologist is willing to listen, he may care to recognize in the chorus of those who are singing the praise of the ruler of our time, the naturalist, and playing to him on instruments — the tibia of the archaic horse, the antennae of the hymenoptera, the many stops of the hydra's legs — the plaintive note of one who but tries to interpret the wail of the human babe ! But I am not prepared to dispute the point with any of my readers who find such an expectation quite too optimistic.

There is one point in the range of the great topic of development itself to which I wish to refer, in order to avoid misunderstanding. I believe in the widest possible expansion of the

Preface. xi

idea of natural history as applied to consciousness. But I also believe that the natural history question is not the same as the question of the essence or nature or explanation of mind. Philosophy has its problem just the same, however consciousness arose, and no amount of evolution theory can settle the problem set by philosophy. I hope to take up this question of origin vs. nature in the later volume of ' Interpretations.' In the meantime it may serve to inform any who may take my book seriously enough to care what my metaphysical views are, to say that, as far as I am willing to label them beforehand, they fall in the very indefinite category known to some under the phrase ' Ethical or Spiritual Idealism.' This declaration may be the more appropriate since it is not the type of thought which is represented by the two men to whom my allusions above show something of my sense of profound and lasting indebtedness in the development of the main topic of this book, — Herbert Spencer and the late lamented George John Romanes.

I wish in conclusion to express my personal indebtedness to my friends, James McKeen Cattell, William James, and Henry Fairfield Osborn, — especially to the first named, — for reading each more or less of my manuscripts, and making suggestions utilized in the text. My thanks are also due to my friend and assistant, Mr. H. C. Warren, for assistance with the proof-sheets.

Princeton, N. J., March, 1895. J' M * B *

Preface To The Second Edition

The demand for a new edition of my book gives me the opportunity to make certain minor corrections throughout. The only important alteration is to be found in the tables (I. and II.) on p. 52, in which certain columns had been substituted from other tables which lie unpublished among my papers.

J. M. B.

Princeton, October, 1895.

CHAPTER I. Pages

§ 1. Infant Psychology : Ontogenesis, the Genetic Point of View 1-15

§2. Race Psychology : Phylogenesis 12-15

§3. Analogies of Development : Epochs of Development . . 15-20 § 4. Variations in Ontogeny : Organic and Mental Recapitulation 20-35

§ 1. Descriptive: Reflexes; the Child's Drawings; Rise of

Tracery Imitation 81-91 xiv Contents.

§ 2. Interpretation of Tracery Imitation : The Origin and An- Pages alysis of Handwriting 91-103

Chapter VI

§ 1. Definition and Criticism ....... 104-109

§ 3. Sensori-motor : General, Personality, Deliberative Suggestion 1 15-130

§ 4. Ideo-motor : Simple Imitative Suggestion, Resume of

Suggestions of Infancy 130-135

§5. Subconscious Adult Suggestion: Tune-suggestion, Influence of Dreams, Auto-suggestion, Sense-exaltation . 135-143 § 6. Inhibitory Suggestion : Pain, Control, and Contrary Suggestion ; Bashfulness 143-158

§7. Hypnotic Suggestion : the Facts, the Theory . . . 158-165

§8. The Law of Dynamogenesis : Habit and Accommodation 165-169

Chapter VII

§ 2. The Current Theory of Adaptation: Darwin, Spencer,

§ 3. Development and Heredity : Neo-Darwinism and Neo-

Lamarkism 204-208

CHAPTER VIII. The Origin of Motor Attitudes and Expressions . . . 221-262

§1. General View 221-223

§ 2. The Theory of ' Emotional Expression ' : Applications of

Principles of Habit, Accommodation, Dynamogenesis 223-237

§ 3. Hedonic Expression and its Law 2 37 _2 39

§ 4. Habitual Motor Attitudes : Principles of Antithesis, Associated Habits, Analogous Stimuli .... 239^262

Contents.

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Chapter XIII

§1. Analysis of Volition : Deliberation, Desire, Effort . . 367-373 § 2. The Typical Case of Rise of Volition in the Child : Persistent Imitation 373—385

§ 3. Phylogenetic 385-388

§ 5. Ontogenetic : Variations in the Rise of Volition . . 426-430 xvi Contents.

CHAPTER XIV. Pages

The Mechanism of Revival : Internal Speech and Song . 431-450

§ 1. Internal Speech: How do we think of Words? . . 432-438

§ 2. Internal Song: How do we think of Tunes? . . . 438-442

§ 3. Pitch Recognition: How do we know Notes? . . 442-450

Chapter XV

§ 1. Voluntary Attention 451-458

§2. Reflex. and -Primary' Attention . . . . . 458-459 § 3. The Development of Attention: Sensori-motor Association 459-472

§ 4. Voluntary Acquisition and Control 472-475

CHAPTER XVI. Summary: Final Statement of Habit and Accommodation . 476-488

§ 1. Summary of Theory of Development .... 476-480

§ 2. Interaction of Habit and Accommodation . . . 480-481

§ 3« Organic Centralization : Pain, Attention .... 481-488

APPENDIX A. Glossary of New Observations on Children 489-490

APPENDIX B. Colonel Mallery on Sign Languages . . 490-492

MENTAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE CHILD AND THE RACE.

CHAPTER I. Infant and Race Psychology

The study of psychology has had so remarkable a development in recent years, and the standpoint from which it is now approached is so unlike the point of view of older writers on mental philosophy, that the several departments which it now comprises stand in need of separate introductions ; and not only are such introductions necessary for purposes of exposition, but their apologetic function, though reduced to a minimum, is still real. The expression 'nursery psychologist' no doubt means what its author intended it to mean, to some others than himself ; and it is desirable that it should be understood by the educated public as a badge of honourable service rather than as a phrase of disparagement and discredit.

§ i. Infant Psychology: Ontogenesis.

No doubt we owe to the rise of the evolution idea something at least of the benefit brought about by what we may call the psychological renaissance of the last twenty-five or thirty years. The breadth of the current conception of psychology is certainly in harmony with the conceptions long ago current in other departments of scientific research ; but there is a phase of this broadening of psychological inquiry strikingly brought out only when interpreted in the light of evolution doctrine. This is what we may call the genetic phase, the growth phase. The older idea of the soul was of a fixed substance, with fixed attributes. Knowledge of the soul was immediate in consciousness, and adequate ; at least, as adequate as such knowledge could be made. The mind was best understood where best or most fully manifested ; its higher ' faculties,' even when not in operation, were still there, but asleep.

Under such a conception, the man was father to the child. What the adult consciousness discovers in itself is true, and wherein the child lacks it falls short of the true stature of soul life. We must, therefore, if we take account of the child-mind at all, interpret it up to the revelations of the man-mind. If the adult consciousness shows the presence of principles not observable in the child consciousness, we must suppose, nevertheless, that they are really present in the child consciousness beyond the reach of our observation. The old argument was this, — and it is not too old to be found in the metaphysics of to-day, — consciousness reveals certain great ideas as simple and original : consequently they must be so. If you do not find them in the child-mind, then you must read them into it.

The genetic idea reverses all this. Instead of a fixed substance, we have the conception of a growing, developing activity. Functional psychology succeeds faculty psychology. Instead of beginning with the most elaborate

Infant Psychology: Ontogenesis, 3

exhibition of this growth and development, we shall find most instruction in the simplest activity that is at the same time the same activity. Development is a process of involution as well as of evolution, and the elements come to be hidden under the forms of complexity which they build up. Are there principles in the adult consciousness which do not appear in the child consciousness, then the adult consciousness must, if possible, be interpreted by principles present in the child consciousness ; and when this is not possible, the conditions under which later principles take their rise and get their development must still be adequately explored.

Now that this genetic conception has arrived, it is astonishing that it did not arrive sooner, and it is astonishing that the ' new ' psychology has hitherto made so little use of it. The difference between description and explanation is as old as science itself. What chemist long remains satisfied with a description of the substances found in nature? He is no investigator at all. His science was not born until he became an analyst. The student of philology is not content with a description, a grammar, of spoken languages : he desiderates their reduction to common vocal elements, and aims to discover the laws of their genetic development. But the mental scientist has called such description science, even when he has had examples of nature's own furnishing around him which would have confirmed or denied the results of mental analysis.

The advantages which we look to infant psychology to furnish, meet just this need of analysis ; and the reason that the needed analysis is found here, is that the mind, like all other natural things, grows. This general statement may be put into concrete form under several points, which divide this branch of general psychology from others now recognized.

i. In the first place, the phenomena of the infant consciousness are simple, as opposed to reflective; that is, they are the child's presentations or memories simply, not his own observations of them. In the adult consciousness the disturbing influences of inner observation is a matter of notorious moment. It is impossible for me to know exactly what I feel, for the apprehending of it through the attention alters its character. My volition also is a complex thing of alternatives, one of which is my personal pride and self-conscious egotism. But the child's emotion is as spontaneous as a spring. The effects of it in the mental life come out in action, pure and uninfluenced by calculation and duplicity and adult reserve. There is around every one of us a web of convention and prejudice of our own making. Not only do we reflect the social formalities of our environment, and thus lose the distinguishing spontaneities of childhood, but each one of us builds up his own little world of seclusion and formality with himself. We are subject not only to ' idols of the forum,' but also to * idols of the den.'

The child, on the contrary, has not learned his own importance, his pedigree, his beauty, his social place, his religion, his paternal disgrace ; and he has not observed himself through all these and countless other lenses of time, place, and circumstance. He has not yet turned himself into an idol nor the world into a temple ; and we can study him apart from the complex accretions which are the later deposits of his self-consciousness.

Perhaps one of the best illustrations we can find of the value of this consideration in the study of the child-mind

Infant Psychology: Ontogenesis. 5

is seen in the reversion to the child-type occasioned by hypnotism. One of the signal services of hypnotism, I think, is the demonstration of the intrinsic motor force of an idea. Any idea tends at once to realize itself in action. All conventionalities, proprieties, alternatives, hesitations, are swept away, and the developed mind reveals its skeleton structure, so to speak, its composition from reactive elements. But hypnotism need not have been waited for to show this. The patient observation of the movements of a child during his first year would have put it among the safest generalizations of the science of mind. In the absence of alternative considerations, reflections, the child acts, and act it must, on the first suggestion which has the faintest meaning in terms of its sensations of movement.

2. The study of children is generally the only means of testing the truth of our mental analyses. If we decide that a certain complex product is due to a union of simpler mental elements, then we may appeal to the proper period of child-life to see the union taking place. The range of growth is so enormous from the infant to the adult, and the beginnings of the child's mental life are so low in the scale, in the matter of instinctive and mental endowment, that there is hardly a question of analysis now under debate which may not be tested by this method.

On the other hand, that such confirmation shuts out most conclusively the advocates of irreducibility in many cases, seems to admit of no question. A good example of such analysis is seen in the distinction between simple consciousness and self -consciousness. Over and over again have systems been built upon the subject-object theory of consciousness ; namely, that personality, subjectivity, consciousness in any form necessarily implicated an antithesis, in consciousness, between ego and non-ego. But an example of what is thus denied may be seen upon the floor of any nursery where there is a child less than six months of age.

At this point it is that child psychology is more valuable than the study of the consciousness of animals. The latter never become men, while children do. The animals represent in some few respects a branch of the tree of growth in advance of man, while being in many other respects very far behind him. In studying animals we are always haunted by the fear that the analogy may not hold ; that some element essential to the development of the human mind may not discover itself at all. Even in such a question as the localization of the motor functions of the brain, where the analogy is one of comparative anatomy and only secondarily of psychology, the monkey presents analogies with man which dogs do not. But in the study of children we may be always sure that a normal child has in him the promise of a normal man.

The contrast between this branch of psychology and mental pathology also shows points of advantage on the side of the former. In the study of mental disease all the mental functions are or may be involved. We are never sure that functional connections and sympathies have not been developed in the growth of the personality as a whole, which are liable to derangement with other processes very remote from them. For example, instinct is modified by the growth of volition ; so that in cases of diseased volition, we do not find that the instincts corresponding to those of the creatures which do not attain volition are left intact. For this reason the application of the logical 'method of difference/ which consists in

Infant Psychology : Ontogenesis. 7

observing the change brought about in a phenomenon from the removal of part of its antecedent conditions, cannot be always relied upon. It is further true that, in the child, the whole nature is growing together, so that the absence of one function does not mean the violent uninhibited exercise of others, as is the case with diseased adult patients.

One of the same difficulties confronts the student of animal pathology. The indefinite source of error called 'shock' is always present. The organs left intact by the disease or by the operator, ' sympathize ' in the sufferings of the organism as a whole ; and sometimes loss of function is reported, when time afterwards repairs the damage.

In dealing with the child, however, the same advantage of simplicity is secured without the corresponding disadvantage of possible interference of functions. In other words, the simplicity of the child is normal simplicity, while the simplicity of disease or surgery is abnormal simplicity ; and the danger of what physicians call 'complication ' is in the former case entirely ruled out.

3. Again, in the study of the child-mind, we have the added advantage of a corresponding simplicity on the organic side ; that is, we are able to take account of the physiological processes at a time when they are relatively simple. I say 'relatively simple,' for in reality they are enormously complex at birth, and the embryologist pushes his researches much farther back in the life-history of the organism. But yet they are simple relatively to their condition after the formation of habits, motor complexes, brain connections and associations ; in short, after the nervous system has been educated to its whole duty in its living environment. For example : a psychology which holds that we have a 'speech faculty,' an original mental endowment which is incapable of further reduction, may appeal to the latest physiological research and find organic confirmation, at least as far as a determination of its cerebral apparatus is concerned ; but such support for the position is wanting when we return to the brain of the infant. Not only do we fail to find the series of centres into which the organic basis of speech has been divided, but even those of them which we do find have not taken up the function, either alone or together, which they perform when speech is actually realized. In other words, the primary object of each of the various centres involved is not speech, but some other and simpler function ; and speech arises by development from a union of these separate functions.

We accordingly find a development of consciousness keeping pace with the development of the physical organism. The extent of possible analogies between the growth of body and that of mind may thus be estimated from below ; and any outstanding facts of the inner life which cannot be correlated with facts of the physical organism get greater prominence and safer estimation.

4. In observing young children, a more direct application of the experimental method is possible. 1 By ' experiment' here, I mean both experiment on the senses and also experiment directly on consciousness by suggestion, social influence, etc. In experimenting on adults, great difficulties arise through the fact that reactions — such as performing a voluntary movement when a signal is heard,

1 On the nature and application of experiment in psychology, see my Handbook of Psychology, I., 2d ed., pp. 25-31.

Infant Psychology : Ontogenesis. 9

etc., — are broken at the centre by deliberation, habitual desire, choice, etc., and closed again by a conscious voluntary act. The subject hears a sound, identifies it, and presses a button — if he choose and agree to do so. What goes on in this interval between the advent of the incoming nerve process and the discharge of the outgoing nerve process ? Something, at any rate, which represents a brain process of great complexity. Now, anything that fixes this sensori-motor connection or simplifies the central process, in so far gives greater certainty to the results. For this reason, experiments on reflex reactions are valuable and decisive where similar experiments on voluntary reactions are uncertain and of doubtful value. Now the fact that the child consciousness is relatively simple, and so offers a field for more fruitful experiment, is illustrated in what is said in the following pages about suggestion in infant life ; it is also seen in the mechanical reactions of an infant to strong stimuli, such as bright colors, etc. 1 Of course, this is the point where originality must be exercised in the devising and executing of experiments. After the subject is a little better developed, new experimentation will be as difficult here as in the other sciences ; but at present the simplest phenomena of child life and activity are open to the investigator.

With this inadequate review of the advantages of infant psychology, it is well also to point out the dangers of the abuse of such a branch of inquiry. Such dangers are real. The very simplicity which seems to characterize the life of the child is often extremely misleading, and misleading because the simplicity in question is not always typical,

1 See below, Chaps. III. to VI.

io Infant and Race Psychology.

but may be to a degree individual. Mr. Spencer had a large range of facts in view when he said that organic development involved progress not only in complexity, but also in definiteness ; and the distinction between simplicity which indicates mere absence of complexity, and that which indicates definiteness of function as well, applies with great force to mental growth. Two nervous reactions may appear equally simple ; but one may be an adaptive reaction learned with great pains and really very complex in its elements, while the other may be inadaptive and really simple. So a state of infant consciousness may seem to involve no complexity or integration, and yet turn out to represent, by very apparent reason of its simplicity and definiteness, a mass of individual or race experience. It is a corollary from this that children differ under the law of heredity very remarkably, even in the simplest manifestations of their conscious lives. It is never safe, except under the qualifications mentioned below, to say, 'This child did, consequently all children must.' The most we can usually say in observing single infants is, 'This child did, consequently another child may.' Yet the uncertainties of the case may be summed up and avoided if certain principles of mental development are kept in view.

i. In the first place, we can fix no absolute time in the history of the mind at which a certain mental function takes its rise. The observations, now quite extensively recorded, and sometimes quoted as showing that the first year, or the second year, etc., brings such and such developments, tend, on the contrary, to show that such divisions do not hold in any strict sense. Like any organic growth, the nervous system may develop faster under more favour-

Infant Psychology : Ontogenesis, n

able conditions, or more slowly under less favourable ; and the growth of mental faculty is largely dependent upon such organic growth. Only in broad outline and by the widest generalization can such epochs be marked off at all.

2. The possibility of the occurrence of a mental phenomenon must be distinguished from its necessity. The occurrence of a single clearly observed event is decisive only against the theory according to which its occurrence under the given conditions may not occur; that is, the cause of the event is proved not to lie among agencies or conditions which are absent. For example : the very early adaptive movements of the infant in receiving its food cannot be due to volition ; but the case is still open as to the question what is the sufficient reason of their presence, i.e. y how much nervous development is present, how much experience is necessary, etc. It is well to emphasize the fact that one case may be decisive in overthrowing a theory, but the conditions are seldom simple enough to make one case decisive in establishing a theory.