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INTRODUCTION

11

purtenances that it were really better to lop off in order to get at the real, the essential content. … The state itself is a unit, and must be treated so; its complexity can be defined only on the side of its use in the entire activity."^[1]

The correctness of the point of view indicated by the quotations from King, no one who lays his "faculty" psychology on the shelf and gives himself to the observation of a child's ways will be likely to question. If one

↑ How important it is to take account of all the conditions surrounding an action, how liable one is to go astray in interpreting a bit of child conduct may be illustrated by a paragraph from my note-book, as follows: One day when R. was a little past his tenth month I was holding him in my lap as I sat at my study-table. Suddenly, the child reached over, pulled open the table-drawer, and began to pull out papers, pencils, boxes of pens, stamp boxes and other miscellany scattered about in the drawer. At first thought, one might have said—in fact a by-stander did say—"the child pulled the drawer open to get the articles in the drawer." But when the complete setting is given, one gets a much simpler explanation, and, no doubt, the true one. In the first place, the knob had a bright brass ornament which attracted the child's attention, and which he reached for and seized. When he seized the knob, naturally he pulled and the drawer came open. In pulling the drawer nearer him, he lost sight of the knob with its bright ornament. Moreover, the array of new things in the open drawer caught his eye, and he began at once to pick them up, pull them from the drawer, and scatter them on the table and about the room on the floor. Thus instead of attributing memory, judgment, purposiveness to the child in order to explain his pulling the drawer open, one needs only the instinct to reach for and seize objects which are within reach; and that impulse at that time was strong. For another illustration of the principle that correct interpretation requires that one know the complete setting, see Chapter VI on Color, especially page 148 following; also Baldwin, Mental Development, Vol. I, p. 39ff.

[1] How important it is to take account of all the conditions surrounding an action, how liable one is to go astray in interpreting a bit of child conduct may be illustrated by a paragraph from my note-book, as follows: One day when R. was a little past his tenth month I was holding him in my lap as I sat at my study-table. Suddenly, the child reached over, pulled open the table-drawer, and began to pull out papers, pencils, boxes of pens, stamp boxes and other miscellany scattered about in the drawer. At first thought, one might have said—in fact a by-stander did say—"the child pulled the drawer open to get the articles in the drawer." But when the complete setting is given, one gets a much simpler explanation, and, no doubt, the true one. In the first place, the knob had a bright brass ornament which attracted the child's attention, and which he reached for and seized. When he seized the knob, naturally he pulled and the drawer came open. In pulling the drawer nearer him, he lost sight of the knob with its bright ornament. Moreover, the array of new things in the open drawer caught his eye, and he began at once to pick them up, pull them from the drawer, and scatter them on the table and about the room on the floor. Thus instead of attributing memory, judgment, purposiveness to the child in order to explain his pulling the drawer open, one needs only the instinct to reach for and seize objects which are within reach; and that impulse at that time was strong. For another illustration of the principle that correct interpretation requires that one know the complete setting, see Chapter VI on Color, especially page 148 following; also Baldwin, Mental Development, Vol. I, p. 39ff.

[1]