the eighth week of the term, he failed to put in appearance at his classes and sent me word by one of the students from the same home that he had the mumps. I did not believe anything ailed him so asked the student to tell him to call at my office at the close of school in the afternoon. It happened that business took me away from the office at the close of school, and when I returned the president said that No. 5 had been in to see me; that he seemed badly stiffened up with the mumps. asked if he examined him to see if he really had the mumps. He replied that he did not, but took it for granted as the boy was well wrapped up about the neck and face. I was still of the opinion that he was "playing off" so sent him word to come to the office the next morning before school. He camé, stiff-necked, and a big scarf coiled round and round his neck and face. I unwrapped him, straightened up his head, told him he was cured and could remain for the morning work. He was completely taken by surprise,-was not expecting anything of the kind. I asked him why he had done as he had; what was his object. He said he wanted to be out of school a few days and took that plan. He looked me straight in the eye, his eyes slightly squinting as though there was some peculiar mental process going on, and said, "I lied about it and don't know why." I talked with him, not a long lecture, but a few words to try to find something to work on; but when we were through I knew I had found nothing that would aid me in help ing him to better habits. He never disagreed with anything that was said and was always sure he would not do so again, but the very next opportunity he was as untruthful as ever. Still he was kind-hearted, obliging, and possessed many good qualities. While he agreed to what might be said about untruthfulness, from his very looks I could see that there was no real perception of what it meant.

At Christmas I was tempted to send him home to stay, but finally decided to try him another term or till the close of the year. His class-work was good; but his word could not be depended upon at all, and I had about given up hope of correcting him in this respect. He came back and remained with us until the year closed in June. As I knew him better, watched him, and studied him more closely, I found the boy never hesitated to tell an untruth even when discovery was certain. There was

something really pitiful about him in his untruthfulness, a helplessness that was hard to understand. On this one subject he seemed to have no moral perception. When talking to the boys, he was untruthful without knowing it. While it is true his words sometimes showed considerable planning on his part, at other times they were without forethought.

In the afternoon of Decoration day of that year, I was just leaving the cemetery to go to a friend's, when one of the boys came to me and asked if I had seen No. 5; that he was looking for me, as his uncle had written him that his aunt Carrie was dead and for me to send him home on the first train. I asked the boy if he had seen the letter. He said he had or he would not believe it. When I returned to the college No. 5 met me at some distance from the building, the corners of his mouth drawn down, his eyes full of tears, and told me his aunt Carrie was dead, and handed me the letter. I invited him into the office, then read the letter. It read:

"Dear- your aunt Carrie died in Wash ington last week, will be buried here Thursday. Tell Prof. to send you home on the first train. "Your Uncle Charley."

After reading the letter I looked at No. 5 and told him he had written the letter. It was not his hand-writing but I felt without a ques tion that it was his own work. He rose to his feet, so indignant he could scarcely control him self, and asked me if I thought he would be so little as to write that letter. I told him I thought he wrote it and in the morning would send a telegram to his uncle and prove that I was right. He said, "All right, professor, do it, and you will find I am telling you the truth this time." I told him to call at the office early the next morning and he could go with me to send the telegram. The president said he thought I ought to send the boy home at once. I said, "Never"; if his people would put such a boy into my hands and then write him instead of writing me, he could not go home, no difference who was dead; that I knew it was the boy's own work. The next morning he was on hand. I asked him to bring the horse and buggy from the barn and call for me at the office. In a few minutes he drove up and we started to town. As we were driving along I asked him which one of the men in the post-office gave him the letter, and he told me,

adding, "Professor, you will find I am telling the truth this time." I almost wavered in my opinion and said we would go to the post-office first. I left him in the buggy and went into the office. No letter had been given him the day before. I got into the buggy, and as we started off I said, "Where were you when you wrote that letter?" He replied, "I was in my room." I said, "What made you do it?" He answered, "The devil." I said, "I think he did," and we drove back to school. He seemed greatly relieved and went right to work. I did not punish him, said but few words more than I have given above. I had done all I could to help him, but to no avail, and knew that no words of mine could make an impression on him at that time. As he had told a number of the students that he was going home to his aunt's funeral, they did not cease to inquire about the funeral until the end of the year. When the year closed, he left us to return no more. The next I heard of him he was in the state reform school; at the present time he is serving a term in the state penitentiary.

These facts I gathered concerning his people: His mother was a cultured, Christian lady, and her people were of like character. The father, a man of moral worth, and of high standing in his community, died while No. 5 was a small child. After the father's death the boy fell to the care of his mother and uncle, who gave him his own way in everything. Even before his father's death he was a petted child, whose every whim was humored as he was thought very bright. His father was a man of means and left him well provided for financially.

While I do not think I did him any good, I did hold him in check for one year, and outwitted him in almost every instance. This was all I was capable of doing and sometimes it required no little tact. I admit failure in his case, but from no lack of interest on my part. I have studied him closely and compared his case with many others since then, and have two or three possible solutions to offer: First, that he was born with a weak moral perception, and that over-indulgence and want of cultivation finally almost destroyed what might have been developed into a moral perception of truth and falsehood. Second, that he was born with his perceptive faculties as normal as the average, and that simply the want of training and developing a perception of truth and falsehood in his early years, made him as we

found him when just past the age of fifteen. Third, that from some prenatal influence, heredity, or something else, he was born ab normal. I have given the facts as I observed them, and what seem probable causes of the result, but must leave the reader to draw his own conclusions. J. K. STABLETON. Cambridge, Mass.

The Study of Children by Teachers T has become necessary to restrict the term child study. For want of care in its use,

teachers are led to undertake investigations not suited to their abilities and needs. Time, therefore, which should be employed in the education of children, is spent in working up statistics of little, if any, worth to the teacher. If teachers are to be constantly counselled to engage in this study, they should be given more definite instructions concerning what we wish them to do, and should have indicated more clearly the lines of work profitable to their calling. Growing away from its first simple signification of a first-hand study of child nature, the term has become too broad in its application to convey a definite and clear meaning. To advise a teacher to take up child study is not of necessity a wise thing. As a teacher, he may spend his time at a work much more beneficial to him, to the school, and its pupils than to pursue many lines of reading and research which now pass as child study. The movement is by no means an unmixed good. The modern educational problems of relative values applies here as elsewhere. One's activities in this field, as in others, should be controlled by a well-defined, central purpose..

There are at least four important distinctions to be made in the use of this term. We may read about children or we may study them directly. In one case we get thought of our own from a stimulus coming from the child; in the other, we get at what some one else has observed and thought about children. We have learned elsewhere how different a literary study of nature is from real nature-study. Laboratories to-day are contrasted with libraries. We may also study children en masse and in the abstract, or as individuals and in the concrete. In the former we break up into parts our ideas of the children to get at certain attributes or characteristics; in the latter we take the child in its entirety. To acquaint ourselves with the

individual child is the immediate aim for the one, while to discover some conditions or laws of childhood is the object of the other. Again, studies are carried on with care and strictness of procedure to get at exact knowledge, and in other circumstances, with less painstaking effort, to get more or less important general suggestions. The former might be designated as science, and the latter as impression studies. Lastly children are studied with widely different objects. These can be classed at least into two large fields: Studies for science and studies for education. They may be closely related in their ultimate interests, but are unlike enough in their immediate purposes and methods to be separated. Now, the term child study is used. to denote all this manifold of differentiated activity.

At the recent meeting of the Department of Superintendents we heard child study defined as genetic psychology. I like the tendency to restrict the term, but not the restriction. This new movement must mean more than developmental psychology. If child study is but this, and not a kind of practical everyday pedagogy as well, there is little room for it in the average home and school. If it is a movement for science alone and not also, in some aspect, a thing for the boy and girl studied, the busy parent and teacher will have little use for it as soon as they arrive at an understanding of the matter. If there is not something of value to be done by those who are not highly trained in scientific methods and who have not the superior opportunities for research found at some of our universities, the movement has been misdirected and multitudes are being misled.

Is not the definition limited too greatly in another respect? Is not child study calling upon us to give more attention, and in an improved way, to the physical child? In other words, is not child study as closely akin to genetic physiology as to genetic psychology? It has seemed to me that one of the greatest goods that is to issue inevitably out of all this newly born enthusiasm for the child is a higher feeling of our responsibilities as teachers and parents to the child as an animal, a more extended knowledge of the right conditions of its normal health and growth, and a more prac tical wisdom in caring for it. Should we not have an educational physiology just as truly as we have an educational psychology? and is

not child study moving rapidly toward that goal?

At the meeting referred to we heard no little criticism of certain kinds of child study. Under the circumstances such offenses must needs be. Fortunately, unlike what is generally the case, it did not all come from outsiders. Friends of the work are criticising it. After all, is not this the one thing needful?

Most of this criticism is upon work that lacks adjustment to the necessities of the situation. Teachers are asked to do that which does not

directly assist them in their work. There is a child study for the scientist and also for the teacher. They differ, yet teachers often fail to recognize the difference. The study of children. in normal schools and universities by students of science and education, or, at least, some of it, must of necessity differ in important respects from that direct kind to be carried on in the home and school by parents and teachers who are engaged in the arts of guidance and instruction. A broad enough survey of the movement will show how these two forms have been working themselves out; and it behooves us to make the differentiation which already exists in fact more definite and determined in thought.

On the one hand, there is an attempt to apply, with a scientific object, the research method in the field of childhood; on the other, there are those who are aiming to utilize more and better means than have been in vogue, to get acquainted more thoroughly with one's own children and pupils. There are theoretical problems which require the devotion of experts, while there are certain practical questions also that are of everyday interest to laymen. To a few, child study is mainly a phase of the great interest which the present age has for a more scientific knowledge for humanity. the study of mankind we are compelled by the idea of evolution to work our way back as far as we can into the beginnings of things. This involves the study of children as well as of primitive peoples. To a larger number whose real aims are not so clearly determined upon, child study differs very little in motive and method from that of Rousseau, Froebel, Pestalozzi, and Herbart. With them, children deserved to be known for their own sake. such work one recognizes the essential rights of childhood, not simply a necessity of science. Children have needs peculiar to their own age,

In

experiences, and native individualities. Teachers and parents can supply these needs best through a more perfect knowledge of them. These needs, even in one person, are so variable that those whose business it is to care for children must be on the constant watch to supply them intelligently and sympathetically. The great truth is this, that we can live with and influence pupils properly only by a warm and intimate acquaintance with them. Teachers must therefore be sensible of the possible changes in the conditions and stages of the life and growth of their pupils, and constantly sensitive to all manifestations of the variation in the same. Child study in this sense means an effort through personal contact to get a closer acquaintance with the personality of a child for a guidance and instruction of a more intelligent and sympathetic order. In this In this work the teacher must study his pupils with the directness of a physician in examining his patient. General psychological laws and statistical conclusions relating to children occupy a similar position to the principles of medicine; application in both instances necessitates a face to face study.

If the hopes of this phase of the movement be realized, the care of children, theoretically at least, will not be left in the future to the direction of intuition. Teachers and parents will be given a more specific training for their work. A general intelligence, an uncritical experience, and even intuitive insight that has been supposed hitherto to need no tutoring, will not suffice for the responsible work of rearing children and educating them. The prospects for development along this line are very promising.

The aid which the teacher, as such, is to give science is only an accident. Science can help her now and will in the future contribute vastly more than at present. But the teacher, speaking broadly, cannot, in the nature of the case, do much to further the development of science. Now and then he can, and ought to, aid the scientist, but his work principally must be carried on to promote immediate teaching purposes. And if he is called upon to contribute something to the work of the scientist it should be with the tacit understanding that he might not, certainly not immediately, get any valuable. results to aid him in teaching. Scientific conclusions come slowly, and, as a rule, the more slowly the better. It must be confessed that

from some quarters they have been coming too rapidly. While we must not assume that all child study must be turned immediately to account in the service of teaching, it is fair to require that, in the main, the study of children in the schoolroom should promote the interests of the school. Teachers cannot be expected, reasonably, to do scientific work, neither can we require them even to keep posted on this phase of the work. They have a distinct work peculiarly their own which they should be held to cultivate with might and main. Then, too, the scientist must not be held severely to explain all he wishes and attempts to do; he should be let alone to work out his results peacefully and patiently. The popular clamor for immediate practical results is not good for the science. We must allow him to have and hold a domain of ideas, interests, and ambitions peculiarly his own, and proceed—a work already begun at different centers—to the elab oration of a similar sphere for the teacher. The ideas that have guided us in the forego ing may be summarized as follows:

1. There is a study of children carried on in a strictly scientific way. In this it is assumed that children, no less than plants and animals, deserve to be known scientifically. This work is promoted usually in the interests of the biological or humanitarian sciences, and may be, consequently, of no special and immediate value to practical pedagogy. With it, therefore, a teacher does not need to work or worry. He may, without any sting of conscience, confess some ignorance of it.

2. There is also a study of children conducted in some universities and normal schools, in laboratories, and in practice and experimental schools, that has a direct bearing upon pedagogy. This work is often taken up with very definite and valuable problems in mind, and is usually carried on in a more or less scientific spirit. The results are being published from time to time in journals, pamphlets, books, and lectures; and since they usually possess something of value for, education, a live and progressive teacher should be ambitious to keep as familiar as possible with them. They ought to assist him greatly in the study of his own pupils.

3. There is, lastly, a study of children in the school and home by teachers, and parents for its immediate service in the care and culture of the children concerned. In this there is an

effort to use a better organized common-sense; to employ more generously the ideas which a number of sciences already have in reserve, and to apply newly-discovered facilities for the study of children in the aid of the interpretation and treatment of child-life.

LOUIS H. GALBREATH, Teachers' College, University of Buffalo. Buffalo, N. Y.

Comparative Importance of the Senses in Infancy

N using the expression "comparative importance" I have in mind both importance in the infant's own consciousness and importance to the farther development of his psychic life, educational value, so to speak. They are not necessarily the same thing. No sense is more important to us psychically, for instance, than the muscular sense, through which we are able to make the delicate adjustments of the eye necessary in focusing and accommodation, to estimate weight and mass, perhaps to keep our feeling of our own bodily identity. Yet it is very little in consciousness; we become aware of its existence only by analysis. Hunger, on the other hand, which makes such imperative demand on the infant's attention, and which has been in the past of the race a most neces sary motive, essential to the preservation of existence, has but trifling educational value to the child, and is a faculty of fading importance to the human race, who no longer need its direct stimulus to exertion, since so many other motives exist for prolonging life; even as an immediate incentive to the taking of food, taste is largely supplanting hunger.

After the elementary discovery has been made that an infant's senses are not as ours and that his psychical life is of the most rudimentary sort, it is perhaps natural to regard his interest in sensation and his power to receive knowledge, as beginning with the lowest senses, and thence gradually passing over to the higher ones. We are not really justified in expecting to see this order of progress by anything the best firsthand observers of infants have said, but neither have we any clear expression to the contrary from them. My own observations have led me to feel sure that the comparative importance of the senses in the early months has not been rightly estimated hitherto, and I will try, briefly, here to give in part my reasons, though I cannot give them

fully within the limits of this paper. The subject belongs to the nursery, and relates to an age much earlier than that at which any formal education can begin; but it is to my mind a study that is valuable as material for the pedagogy of the nursery that we shall sometime be able to develop, and also as giving some sug gestion concerning later pedagogy. A smattering of the theory of "recapitulation," for instance, has led theorists to say, "The child is only a little animal for a time; let him be brought up merely as a healthy animal till he has passed that stage," a doctrine that has penetrated many a nursery, and may be heard from many a mother nowadays, uttered with much complacency and conviction that she has the latest pedagogic wisdom. It is a mischiev ous doctrine, in my judgment, and unscientific besides. The human child has diverged from the animal line of development before his birth; his faculties are from the first sketched out roughly on distinctly human lines, with foreshadowings of the highest human powers, which need attention, and proper scope, and even education.

Limiting myself to the question of the senses, I am at once met by a difficulty from the looseness of the expression, "higher" and "lower" senses. We usually mean by the higher senses the two that have highly developed and differ entiated peripheral organs,-sight and hearing. It would seem that these organs should enable them to give so much more definite, complex. and discriminating reports of the outer world than other senses that they would necessarily far surpass all others in their contribution to our knowledge. But as a matter of fact the precision of hearing scarcely equals that of muscular sensation; its importance to our life is chiefly in connection with speech, and the cases of Laura Bridgeman, Helen Keller, and others, show that touch and muscle sense may be made to take the place of sight and hearing quite well, while the reverse is hardly conceivable. Indeed, the eyes owe all their power of giving exact knowledge to co-operation with a very delicate muscular sensibility, as I have mentioned above; without this, sight could be no more than a vague sensibility to light and color. Dr. Le Conte has an ingenious classifi cation of the senses, according to the refinement of the stimulus required, and the remoteness of its source; touch, taste, and smell require direct contact, solid, liquid, and gaseous, but with