secured, the main danger to the
proper study of the child's mind comes from the over-enthusiasm and
uninstructed assurance of some of its friends. Especially is this the
case in America, where "child study" has become a fad to be pursued by
parents and teachers who know little about the principles of
scientific method, and where influential educators have enlisted
so-called "observers" in taking indiscriminate notes on the doings of
children with no definite problem in view, and with no criticism of
their procedure. It is in place, therefore, to say clearly, at the
outset, that this chapter does not mean to stimulate parents or
unpsychological readers to report observations; and further to say
also that in the mind of the writer the publications made lately of
large numbers of replies to "syllabi" are for the most part worthless,
because they heap together observations obtained by persons of every
degree of competence and incompetence.

On the other hand, the requisites here, as in every other sphere of
exact observation, are clear enough. The student of the child's mind
should have a thorough knowledge of the principles of general
psychology, in order to know what is characteristic of the child when
he sees it, and what is exceptional; and he should also have enough
originality in his ideas and interpretations to catch the valuable in
the child's doings, distinguishing it from the commonplace, and to
plan situations and even experiments which will give him some control
upon those actions of the child which seem to be worth it. The need
of these qualities is seen in the history of the problems of the
child's growth which have been taken up even by the most competent
psychologists. The results show a gradual attainment of control over
the problem in hand, each observer criticising the method and results
of his predecessor until certain rules of observation and experiment
have been evolved which allow of the repetition and repeated
observation of the events of the child's life.

As illustrating the sort of problems in which there has been this
careful and critical work, I may instance these: the child's reflex
movements, the beginnings and growth of sensation, such as colour, the
rise of discrimination and preference, the origin of right and
left-handedness, the rise, mechanism, and meaning of imitation, the
acquisition of speech and handwriting, the growth of the child's sense
of personality and of his social consciou