The topics with the reports of results which I am going on to give may be taken, however, as typical, and as showing the direction of complete knowledge rather than as having in any one case approached it.
Before we take up particular questions, however, a word may be allowed upon the general bearings of the study of the child's mind.

I do this the more willingly, since it is still true, in spite of the hopeful outlook for positive results, that it is mainly the willingness of psychology to recognise the problems and work at them that makes the topic important at present.

To investigate the child by scientific methods is really to bring into psychology a procedure which has revolutionized the natural sciences; and it is destined to revolutionize the moral sciences by making them also in a great measure natural sciences.

The new and important question about the mind which is thus recognised is this: _How did it grow ?_ What light upon its activity and nature can we get from a positive knowledge of its early stages and processes of growth?
This at once introduces other questions: How is the growth of the child related to that of the animals ?--how, through heredity and social influences, to the growth of the race and of the family and society in which he is brought up?
All this can be comprehended only in the light of the doctrine of evolution, which has rejuvenated the sciences of life; and we are now beginning to see a rejuvenation of the sciences of mind from the same point of view.

This is what is meant when we hear it said that psychology is becoming "genetic." The advantages to be derived from the study of young children from this point of view may be briefly indicated.
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