The recapitulation theory and human infancy,

Abstract

CHAPTER IDoubtless this change of emphasis is a wholesome one.Education has still to find its most advantageous methods, if indeed it has not yet to delimit its field.It is only right, then, that all the methods which have done excellent work in the sciences should be tested and evaluated for their usefulness in its service.It would be a mistake, however, to regard this departure from biology and anthropology as a final one, and to conclude that education has nothing to learn from these sources.Man's animal heritage is too intimate a part of him, and his historical career too significant of his make-up, ever to justify a neglect of these things on the part of those who propose to mould his present condition and in some measure to direct his future.It may be, too, that some sense of disappointment has figured in this willingness of students of childhood to turn in new directions.Fruitful as it was in suggestion, the older genetic line of approach could not, in the nature of the case, lead to 1The Recapitulation Theory and Human Infancy a scientific basis for a practical educational program.This could come only with the aid of an exact and faithful interpretation of childhood as it exists in modern societies.HEducational schemes based upon historical inferences were therefore necessarily precarious and could easily be found unsound when fairly tested.More especially has the older genetic method of study suffered from the discredit into which some of its guiding principles have fallen.One of these principles was embodied in the theory of recapitulation, the idea that the child in its development rehearses the history of its ancestry, and that in consequence its nature may be inferred from the probable course of human evolution.Taken bodily from embryology, this idea was projected upon the field of mental genesis, where it became a commonplace.More recently disquieting rumors from the source of its origin have been heard to the effect that the principle was formulated without sufficient warrant, and that it cannot be depended upon even as a helpful hypothesis.Its prestige has in consequence been seriously damaged and there is plainly evident great uncertainty as to the degree of truth it may contain.This uncertainty with regard to a principle with important implications for the theory of infancy and psychogenesis, is hardly excusable or necessary.For recourse to the science from which the principle was derived is open, and no obvious reason exists why its real standing there should not be known.If education is to be spared the humiliation which comes inevitably from building on the sand, it must earnestly endeavor solidly to ground its doctrine.Especially is this true when this doctrine is drawn from the pure sciences, for a thorough knowledge of these on the part of outsiders is not easy of attainment and a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.Moreover, the position of education is peculiarly difficult, for as an art , , its practice is not only dependent upon science as such; more than one science is implicated.Education is none the less in duty bound either to acquaint itself with the true value of these borrowed principles or to leave them alone.This paper represents an effort to discover something of the status of recapitulation in biology and to note its implications for the period of infancy.It makes no pretensions to scholarly exhaustiveness.Its justification is the lack of any accessible 6The Recapitulation Theory and Human Infancy stage is a true snail; it has gills which hang free at the sides of the body as is the case in Unio pictorum.It has even a byssus, as in Mytilus, in order to cling to the grass.The tail is nothing else than the foot of the snail.The metamorphosis of an insect is a repetition of the whole class, scolopendra, oniscus, julus, spider, crab.'"?Later, in 1883, Oken wrote, in reference to the same matter, "There is no doubt that we have here a striking resemblance, and one that justifies us in thinking that the development in the ovum is merely a repetition of the story of the creation of the animal groups.'Here, plainly enough, is a statement in crude form of the idea of recapitulation which was to have clear definition with the advent of the doctrine of descent, and which was destined to play so important a role in the history of that doctrine.The other early references to be noted make comparisons of development with the rank of existing animals.Thus, Walther, in 1808, said, "The human foetus passes through its metamorphosis in the cavity of the uterus in such a way that it repeats all classes of animals, but, remaining permanently in none, develops more and more into the innate human form.First the embryo has the form of a worm.It reaches the insect stage just before its metamorphosis.The origin of the liver, the appearance of the different secretions, etc., show clearly an advance from the class of the worm into that of the mollusk.''The embryologist Meckel, in 1808, 1811, and 1821, gave greater definiteness to these comparisons: "He held that the embryo of higher forms, before reaching its complete development, passes through many stages that correspond to those at which the lower animals appeared to be checked through their whole life.In fact the embryos of higher animals, the mammals, and especially man, correspond in the form of their organs, in their number, position, and proportionate size, to those of the animals standing below them.'The skin is at first, and for a considerable period of embryonic life, soft, smooth, hairless, as in the zoophytes, medusae, many worms, mollusks, fishes, and even in the lower amphibians.''§

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