Joseph Jastrow

“ Quite apart from the more physical investigations, where statistical methods yield more concrete and definite results, he has utilized direct experimentation where that has been possible, has cited the larger records of history, of literature, and of the more technical portions of psychology and biology. It must forever remain true that advance in this field of comparative psychology must make use of arguments by analogy, of parallelisms, assisted by direct reinforcement of evidence from the investigations of animal life, from the study of the abnormal, from the lessons of history. ”

“ The study of impulse and motives, not merely of such as lie in a direct line or cultural advance, but equally those that suggest the abnormal, that which when magnified becomes disease, and most of all that which harks back and suggests the psychic mode of action of our primitive ancestors, merit chief consideration; such, apart from the specific applications to the physical and mental hygiene of adolescence, are the conclusions and argument that have guided the author in years of labor, compilation and record. ”

“ Yet those who weigh evidence in a fair spirit of criticism will find that on the whole the weakness of certain types of evidence, for which unfortunately we have no better substitute, is quite as clearly recognized by the author as by themselves. ”

“ It gives to that longer and more fundamental life of human endeavor a living participation in the make-up of present psychic traits, and prevents an overestimation of the importance of those newer and less inwardly absorbed tendencies which we too exclusively regard as coming within the ken of psychology, and too exclusively train in systems of education. More concretely, this principle emphasizes the importance, for the comprehension and the training of minds, of the life of the feelings and of the will. Men have felt and men have acted for ages before they guided their actions by thought ”

“ Though the application of evolutionary principles to mental endowment has kept pace with its advance within the more strictly biological field; and though the factors which psychological processes have themselves contributed to the trend of evolution have been of late prominently recognized, yet the sum-total of these recognitions has gone rather toward adding some chapters and an appendix or two to the volume of philosophy, than towards the rewriting of the whole. Yet the latter type of reconstruction of philosophy and psychology is by no means unrepresented. ”

“ Our own day is decidedly that of the exaggeration of the rational processes, of complete subordination of feelings and will to thought. This type of cerebration is as evident in the studies that we teach, in the education that we favor, as in the philosophies that we read. ”

“ The sequence of culture changes and the soil of motives in which these find root remain the permanently vital sources by which to illustrate and to comprehend the nature of human endowment, striving and achievement. For only half a century have we had access to an adequate point of view that brings into the vista of the progress of the ages the nature and the scope of evolutionary forces. ”

“ The normal growth of the body, the special development of different portions thereof concerned with adolescence, the variations from such normal development and their aberrations in disease and crime, the great rôle that periodicity plays in human growth—these constitute the physical basis which conditions through and through the nature of mental growth, as well as determines the spirit of educational progressions. ”

“ The dignity and rights of motor education receive an unusually strong and comprehensive recognition. And here as elsewhere, we are reminded in general and in detail that the order of control over muscles and the apparatus of the will is indicated by its natural growth in the child and in the race. ”

“ 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 ”

“ We have imposed upon the adolescent endowment the interests of mature individuals, have invited them to share our adult consciousness, not even taking care 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. ”

“ An analagous emphasis must be placed upon action as opposed to thought. The study of motor impulses becomes as fundamental in psychology, and motor training as fundamental in education, as any analysis of how we think, or any teachable wisdom in the guidance of thought. The motor response is as vital to the psychological mode of manifestation as the ability to defend policy by argument or to analyze results into processes. In all these several aspects the position of woman has remained closer and truer to nature than that of man. ”

“ The value of the discovery of the natural order in this as in other series of evolutions is that the natural order is the right order; that our efforts should go to encourage for the several periods the conditions and stimuli that nature provides, to avoid at least the most serious of the antagonisms to that sequence of growth, which the needs of civilization (or our imperfect means of preparing for them) seem to demand. ”

“ Those who read between the lines will acquire a conviction of greater sympathy with the author than with his book. They may come to feel, what those who are acquainted with the author's career know, that his influence in shaping psychological and educational interests is sounder and more effective and distinctly more suggestive than his recorded position. ”

“ Allowing for a wide divergence of opinion in this respect, there remains a very considerable body of evidence which is tangible and well classified, and in the aggregate has a significance in that it suggests the trend of emphasis of the growth and distribution of mental traits. It is difficult, indeed, to understand by what other means an equally adequate conception of the contents, the impulses and the modes of feeling of young minds could have been ascertained, or the larger conclusions involved therein more saliently suggested. ”

“ 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 explanation in philosophical terms of thought and reality has usurped, in his opinion, the larger, more fruitful as well as more hopeful interest in the functional manifestations of the deeper, more universal and significant aspects of mind. ”

“ It is easy enough to discredit the results obtained by a somewhat miscellaneous set of answers to questions, many of them rather difficult to answer with conscience and pertinence. But here, as everywhere in statistical investigation, all depends upon the temper and discretion that are used in the interpretation of the results. ”

“ Equally must it be said that the extreme, and to many minds needlessly urgent, frankness in the treatment of topics usually (even if we admit at times unwisely) debarred from public consideration, will give offense in quarters where a less drastic treatment would have saved the situation without sacrificing the pedagogical effect. ”

“ The crowning application of these several precepts and practices is to those special phases of growth which find their joint issue in adolescence. Here more than anywhere else must the natural sequence of evolution determine the variety of occupation that shall prepare for the adult life ”

“ 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. ”

“ No one of these practise-guiding principles is more convincingly dealt with than that which leads to the appeal for the proper representation in the educational scheme, of the training of the hand and the will. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It has already been indicated that psychologists and laymen alike will find their sense of obligation to those volumes lessened by certain peculiarities of presentation that seem to result from a too ardent desire for judiciously modified and at the same time richly comprehensive statements. This detraction from the possible influence of the work is more serious for the layman ”

“ To many the style will be distinctly unattractive, as it suggests a somewhat Teutonic attempt to carry more luggage than the journey warrants. Some will find it a loss to their special purposes to have the special presentation of facts so closely interwoven with the enunciation of principles. ”