Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/468

464 serves the purpose of indicating its contents, its arguments and the trend of its conclusions. Such an account is inevitably incomplete, but suffers a conspicuous incompleteness if it refrains wholly from any expressly critical estimate of the value and probable influence of the more original and distinctive doctrines for which the work stands. In regard to methods and the kind of criticism which they invite and will doubtless receive, enough has been said. The most pertinent inquiry pertains to the attitude which close students of psychology and of education are likely to assume towards the main positions of the author, and—equally important—the impression which the views thus first formally recorded are likely to make upon the considerable circle of interested and intelligent laymen. In this connection it is not of paramount importance that one should speak exactly for himself, legitimate as that would be; it is equally pertinent to set forth as well as may in him lie, the attitude of those who share with him many of his interests and his general perspective. Approaching the matter with this purpose, one notices a larger representation on the opposition benches than in those set aside for the government supporters. The case of the opposition will be strong and carry a fair measure of conviction; the argument will be advanced, that while the principles thus advanced carry some measure of support from biology, the use to which said principles are put far transcends the warrant of the evidence, and in certain of the deductions seems indeed in contradiction to it. The biological status of recapitulation leaves no such definite provision, not even in the earliest stages of infancy, for such complex appearance of prehuman traits as Dr. Hall advances. To explain the impulse of children when in the presence of water to jump in and swim, as a reverberation of an aquatic habit, seems both feeble and inconclusive. The case becomes stronger and at the same time changes its aspect, when traits favored by primitive human life are brought into operation to account for the vast medley of impulses and feelings which in great part we have shared and then outgrown. Yet even here the transfer from the one field to the other seems better justified when limited to general groups of traits than when literally translated into the deciphering of the variable and complex as well as evanescent characters of changing juvenility. In other words, many who will admit a limited applicability of the general parallelism would hesitate to stand sponsor for the special application and practical deductions that seem the goal of so many of the Clark University studies in this field. Nor is it going too far to add that Dr. Hall's educational insight has a firmer hold upon his pen than his logical adherence to the recapitulation theory. His educational precepts impress one as finding their inspiration in a broad and discerning observation, intermittently reinforced by an elaborated conformity to the principle which at times becomes only imperfectly germane to the plan and the spirit of the