men in the right direction for its cure. But neither he, nor even the great and sympathetic Froebel, with all his insight and philosophic grasp of principles, was able to apply aright the method of nature. The fulfillment of such a task had to await the development of the sciences of physiology and psychology. Dr. Hall's work has the advantage of being squarely based upon these sciences which have of late years progressed with rapid strides.
The ideal condition of society consists in every man's doing what nature designed him to do. The educator, therefore, must appeal to the natural interests of his pupils, must satisfy their real needs, must develop their true capacities. To be able to do this, he must first study to understand those interests and needs and capacities. The chief business of the educational psychologist is, then, to determine the nascent stages of growth of the various powers and faculties of body and soul, the period, namely, when each has its rise or its most rapid growth. These nascent stages once determined, it will be the educator's plain duty to seize upon each betimes and develop it to the full as the only natural foundation and preparation for the next life-stage. Such is the genetic method of education; and it is opposed to the logical method, which bases itself upon the orderly development of the subject-matter of instruction without regard to the nature of the learner. Instruction that does not appeal to budding faculty is wasted, and neglect of any nascent stage weakens the force of even the best efforts in succeeding stages. Thus child-study, or paidology, using the word to cover the whole period of man's immaturity, is of the first importance to the educator. This fact is happily becoming recognized more and more in our day. A new enthusiasm for childhood is sweeping over the civilized world, and bids fair to bring about a new reformation dealing with the most fundamental part of our nature. It is giving us a new point of view from which to consider the greatest of all problems, the problem of the training of the young and the immature. This movement is an outcome of the wider biological interests stimulated by Darwin's notable works on Evolution.
Already before birth the infant has had a history and a most remarkable one. In a marvellous succession of changes of form he has recapitulated the early history of man from the dawn of life; and from being a simple one-celled animal he has become at last a higher mammal. But the child at birth is not yet structurally a human; he is even behind the
