Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/466

462 to adapt the methods of assimilation to the apperceptive appetite of the young. And the extreme instance of such misapplication is in the efforts of those who attempt to assimilate the education of women to that of men, and who take as their model the type of masculine education against which these strictures most especially apply. Not that the author is arguing against the higher education of women or even specifically against all forms of coeducation, but that he makes a plea both for young men and for young women, for that form of education, and for such favorable conditions of growth, as correspond in both cases most nearly to their individual and very different needs. Thus psychology—properly interpreted as the study of the evolution of mental functions—at once appraises the value of mental traits, and in recovering the trade-routes of the past, points to the most profitable highways of the future. Psychology of this type and temper remains the supreme guide of education. The discussion as to what benefit this or that teacher, or teachers as a whole, may derive from the study of psychology is not prominently considered; yet the affirmative attitude towards the problem is implied. But particularly are we asked to discountenance as of slight profit, or even as pernicious, that type of psychologizing that remains unrelated to the vital functions of life, 'If truth is edification, the highest criterion of pure science is its educative value.'

With this estimate of the nature and purpose of psychological inquiry, Dr. Hall attacks with an almost bewildering variety of equipment the entrenched position of adolescence. This is central, the key to the situation, because the maturing of mind and body which then takes place represents the key-stone of the arch which up to then has been building. It indicates that the stages of mental growth anticipating adolescence form a separate and formative type of psychological study; that a knowledge of the changes which then take place is as vital a matter of human concern as can well be imagined; and that the shaping of interest, which then first buds, remains the supreme question of educational practice. Thus both for education and for psychology, adolescence has a directive importance. The weakness, alike of education and of psychology is, in Dr. Hall's opinion, largely due to the comparative neglect of those interests that the study of adolescence discovers and illuminates. Education and psychology are in danger of becoming scholastic because they are fashioned too much in the study and by the book, and reflect too little knowledge of the world and of the byways as well as of the highways of life. It is, after all, but a small part of psychology that can profitably concern itself with how the mental processes of the adult consciousness can best be presented and explained. A far more vital and comprehensive problem is the comprehension of how men and women, and particularly boys and girls, feel and act as well as think. The study of impulse and motives, not merely of such as lie in a direct line or cultural advance, but equally