James Mark Baldwin (1861-1934) Mental Development in the Child and the Race (1897)
Chapter 1: Infant and Race Psychology
4. Variations in Ontogeny
...The law upon the basis of which natural selection gets application in the preservation of adult organisms -- the law of supply, by which a great variety of forms is secured to select from -- this law applies none the less to immature organisms. Not only do the fittest adults survive, but also the fittest embryos develop. And it is only a further application of the same truth -- an application recently put in evidence by Weismann (Romanes Lecture, Oxford, 1894), under the term 'Intra-Selection' --that single organs of one and the same creature are subject to such selection. It is easy then to see that the actual course of development of an organism along the line of stages marked out by the earlier race development might be disturbed at any point by the operation of natural selection. For under new conditions an embryo which departs in some way from the series demanded by recapitulation may by that very fact be fitted to survive, and so be seized upon by natural selection. Sedgwick maintains also that variations found in adult forms are also reflected in the embryo. He says in the paper referred to in the last note: "Variations do not merely affect the non-early period of life where they are of immediate functional importance to the animal, but, on the contrary, they are inherent in the germ and affect more or less profoundly the whole of development."
...But such a science as comparative mental morphology -- and even worse, that of mental embryology -- is at present a chimera. How can we say anything about recapitulation when we know so little about mental ontogeny and less, perhaps, about comparative mental physiology? In popular phrase, that is: how can we compare the development of the infant with that of the animal series, when we know neither how the child develops nor what is actually taking place in his consciousness, in any great detail, at any stage to which he may have developed ?
Chapter 2: A New Method of Child Study
1. Critical
...Observation means the acutest exercise of the discriminating faculty of the scientific specialist. And yet many of the observations which we have in this field were made by the average mother, who knows less about the human body than she does about the moon or a wild flower, or by the average father, who sees his child for an hour a day, when the boy is dressed up, and who has never slept in the same room with him in his life; by people who have never heard the distinction between reflex and voluntary action, or that between nervous adaptation and conscious selection. Only the psychologist can 'observe' the child, and he must be so saturated with his information and his observations that the conduct of the child becomes instinct with meaning for the theories of mind and body.
...This is just the difference between the average mother and the good psychologist -- she has no theories, he has; he has no interests, she has. She may bring up a family of a dozen and not be able to make a single trustworthy observation; he may be able, from one sound of one yearling, to confirm theories of the neurologist and educator, which are momentous for the future training and welfare of the child.
...Experiment ? Every time we send a child out of the home to the school, we subject him to experiment of the most serious and alarming kind. He goes to a teacher who may perchance be not only not wise unto the child's salvation, but on the contrary a machine for administering a single experiment to an infinite variety of children. It is highly probable that two in every three children are more or less damaged or hindered in their mental and moral development in the school; but I am not at all sure that they would fare any better if they stayed at home ! The children are experimented with so much and so unwisely, in any case, that it is possible that a little intentional experiment, guided by real insight and psychological information, would do them good.
4. Variations in Ontogeny
...The law upon the basis of which natural selection gets application in the preservation of adult organisms -- the law of supply, by which a great variety of forms is secured to select from -- this law applies none the less to immature organisms. Not only do the fittest adults survive, but also the fittest embryos develop. And it is only a further application of the same truth -- an application recently put in evidence by Weismann (Romanes Lecture, Oxford, 1894), under the term 'Intra-Selection' --that single organs of one and the same creature are subject to such selection. It is easy then to see that the actual course of development of an organism along the line of stages marked out by the earlier race development might be disturbed at any point by the operation of natural selection. For under new conditions an embryo which departs in some way from the series demanded by recapitulation may by that very fact be fitted to survive, and so be seized upon by natural selection. Sedgwick maintains also that variations found in adult forms are also reflected in the embryo. He says in the paper referred to in the last note: "Variations do not merely affect the non-early period of life where they are of immediate functional importance to the animal, but, on the contrary, they are inherent in the germ and affect more or less profoundly the whole of development."
...But such a science as comparative mental morphology -- and even worse, that of mental embryology -- is at present a chimera. How can we say anything about recapitulation when we know so little about mental ontogeny and less, perhaps, about comparative mental physiology? In popular phrase, that is: how can we compare the development of the infant with that of the animal series, when we know neither how the child develops nor what is actually taking place in his consciousness, in any great detail, at any stage to which he may have developed ?
Chapter 2: A New Method of Child Study
1. Critical
...Observation means the acutest exercise of the discriminating faculty of the scientific specialist. And yet many of the observations which we have in this field were made by the average mother, who knows less about the human body than she does about the moon or a wild flower, or by the average father, who sees his child for an hour a day, when the boy is dressed up, and who has never slept in the same room with him in his life; by people who have never heard the distinction between reflex and voluntary action, or that between nervous adaptation and conscious selection. Only the psychologist can 'observe' the child, and he must be so saturated with his information and his observations that the conduct of the child becomes instinct with meaning for the theories of mind and body.
...This is just the difference between the average mother and the good psychologist -- she has no theories, he has; he has no interests, she has. She may bring up a family of a dozen and not be able to make a single trustworthy observation; he may be able, from one sound of one yearling, to confirm theories of the neurologist and educator, which are momentous for the future training and welfare of the child.
...Experiment ? Every time we send a child out of the home to the school, we subject him to experiment of the most serious and alarming kind. He goes to a teacher who may perchance be not only not wise unto the child's salvation, but on the contrary a machine for administering a single experiment to an infinite variety of children. It is highly probable that two in every three children are more or less damaged or hindered in their mental and moral development in the school; but I am not at all sure that they would fare any better if they stayed at home ! The children are experimented with so much and so unwisely, in any case, that it is possible that a little intentional experiment, guided by real insight and psychological information, would do them good.