Page:Philosophical Review Volume 7.djvu/682

668 been eagerly sought by psychologists. It has a positive value, apart from its historical importance as a connecting link between Herbart and Lipps's Grundtatsachen.

The present issue is, to all intents and purposes, a reprint of that of 1842. The MS. notes made by the author in the margin of his own copy have been incorporated in the text. They are, however, few and unimportant; a hasty comparison shows additions only on pp. 7, 158, and 165. Doubtless there are others; but they are not large. It is regrettable that the new setting of the type has changed the appearance of the pages, even where the contents remain precisely the same.

E. B. T.

Dr. Oppenheim's book is a plea for a keener appreciation of the physical and mental limitations of childhood. The author finds his text in the unstable structure and peculiar functions of the child. "So long as one recognizes," he says, "that the child is absolutely different from the adult, not only in size, but also in every element which goes to make up the final state of maturity, one is more apt to get a true method of development, which must gradually bear the results of a higher evolution.… The world has a wrong idea of its children. It looks upon them as adults, but slightly different, in the details of small size, deficient strength, little experience, from grown men and women." This false notion leads to a vicious system of care and education. In two chapters on the comparative development of the child, the author arrays a host of facts on somatic peculiarities. "As a matter of fact," he concludes, "it would be hard to find many salient facts beyond the most fundamental laws, in which the infant and adult exactly resemble each other." And more than this he asserts "that an infant's development is not a rigidly immovable process, that it progresses slowly and irregularly, and that during its course the child is in so unstable a condition that no strain should be put upon his faculties." From the survey of these facts, the author concludes that the child' s nutrition is of the most vital importance. By nutrition he means "all the circumstances of life which affect tissue change." Heredity has been too much emphasized. Better call it 'predisposition' in human descent. Moreover, antenatal and postnatal influences, we are told, are often mistaken for hereditary traits. As the body, so the mind. Healthful mental development is not possible where the appropriate physical substratum has not been laid. In chapters on "The Place of the Primary School," "The Place of Religion," "Value of the Child as a Witness," "Development of the Child-Criminal," "The Genius and the Defective," "Institutional Life" and "The Profession of Maternity," Dr. Oppenheim gives a critique of present methods of public and private care and instruction of the young,