Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-08-13

the ear, that he had HE[ u 80
administered during his Nh III
1fty-one years OF teach -
ing. Evil was bound up SAmd
in the heart of child and
the rod the cure.
At the opposite extreme stood men like Rousseau,
Wordsworth Alcott in his famous Boston School
They held that children were freshly arrived from
God full of wondrous intuitions, purer and better
than adults, and worthy of the utmost reverence
Handsome idiots, like Casper Hauser, studied
by wise men, and their fooshness interpreted as
wisdom As usual the truth hes between all such
extremes although all evoutionists think
the latter than the former view.
1t is barely quarter OF century since the first
systematic attempts to study children were begun
by Preyer Darwin Tiedemann and Others Now
SO rapidly has the movement grown that have
a photography of more than two thousand valuable
books and memoirs, some dozen journals and scores
of academic chairs in universities and normal schools,
devoted to pHdeutics child study The child
has become key to interpret the deepest questions
concerning the origin of mans body and soul in
every civilized land of the West and within the
last year or two societies have been established,
among whose members are found some of the most
brilliant in letters and science in Italy,
Poland, Bohemia, while in Russia, Japan, India and
Argentine the work is being pushed with enthu-
siasm. The French .Socft@ de LIngaistiqne which
forbade by its law the study of the origin of Ian
guage, has opened its proceedings to contribu-
lions to this theme from baby linguistics.
Important if not epoch-making, contributions
have been made in this field to the subjects of dis
ease, religion the development of society, of in
dustry and knowledge of the child nature is rapidly
becoming the basis of educational thought and bids
fair to give the business of teaching pro-
fessional and scientific character than it has
done in the past. There were critics galore and
naturally, because much of the early work was
crude placer mining. Now methods of great
delicacy and accuracy have developed, and the
child is being revealed to the world as about the
most interesting thing in it, and is the open
to great many of the mysteries of human nature
and curiously enough, many of the most outspoken
quandam critics recountng the triumphs
of the movement in literature, representing it in
colleges and universities
Studying children does not taking babies
into the classroom for demonstration analysis
of any kind 1t does not leftover or impair parental
love. No babies in ured by anything that any
parent or competent prying specialist wants to sub
ject them to. No mother could possibly object
but could only welcome the services of these
perts Curiously enough, undreamed-of result
of making children interesting has often been
noted: namely, parents are more anxious to have
them, and some Roadway, at least has already been
made against suicide which rigorous Presi-
dent deporeS.
Let me try then as briefly as | can to give those
who have not followed what has been done
general idea of it all. At birth the infant enters
into world of which, had he been ntelli-
gent he could have had more knowledge than
have of the state of the soul after death. 1t is
cold world with lower temperature, a world of
hard things instead of one of fluid pressure
equal in all directions =
The first act of every human debutant unlike x
that of many animals has been to cry. On -
this curious and learned articles have been ~
written One German philosopher says that