Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/297

 284 CEITICAL NOTICES ! picture. If the child is shielded partly by his ignorance and partly by our protection from many troubles that harass us, he is exposed to others from which we are free. Who shall venture to sum up the misery represented by the terrors of childhood ? I know a case where a child was haunted by the fear of death so that he was unable to sleep at night, and this not because of anybody's painting the terrors of dying to his imagination, but as the result of his own reflections on the subject. Many children of a reflective turn have in view of the suffering that prevails among animals and men become, for the moment at least, pro- nounced pessimists. The fact is that children's ignorance, if it saves them from certain evils, exposes them to others, and that many things that fail to distress the minds of adults, just because they have grown used to them, are apt to excite poignant sorrow in the breast of a sensitive and imaginative child. M. Perez is careful to tell us that he is writing a work on psychology, and not on pedagogics. At the same time the discussion of the mental development of children from the age of three to seven that is to say, during the period of transition from the home to the school necessarily trenches now and again on practical educational problems. Thus, for example, in describing the characteristics of children's memory, the writer deals separately with the scholar's memory (memoirs scolaire). Under this head he gives us some valuable observations on the progress of retentive power in a number of pupils attending a girls' school with which he is acquainted. He tells us at the outset " that the pupils who were most prompt to seize the prominent sides of objects and to indicate that they remarked them were also those who preserved the recollection of them longest". The author explains this by saying that " memory even in early childhood never functions alone, that it is or appears to be essentially connected with the vivacity of the perceptions and the exactitude of the judgments ". This is a noteworthy result, for it is one thing to say that a child remembers best what he has observed in the best way ; another thing, that the best and quickest observers are the most tenacious in their recollection. It is obvious that this point might very easily be settled if teachers would follow up the observations of M. Perez. Another point in the theory of memory, of no less direct bearing on education, is the manner in which the faculty improves with exercise in the period dealt with. The children referred to began to learn short lessons from about six or seven. During the first seven or eight months there was a distinct improvement in facility of acquisition, a lesson requiring at first 25 minutes taking at last only 20 or 15. This applies to the superior children. The first year disclosed clearly enough the differences among them in acquisitive power, both general and special. From the 7th to the 8th year the facility increased, though in a less marked degree, w r hereas the average tenacity remained stationary, a fact that tended still more to separate the