object. It differs from the organ of knowledge only by its contents, and not in the kind of mental elements concerned. This enables us to discuss its evolution without considering it a simple function unique in kind, and thus asserting with Spencer that it is evolved out of that which contains none of it. The theories of morality are discussed with reference to a reconciliation of those which are most directly opposed to each other. The relation of religion and morality is stated so as to distinguish between the ground and the sanctions of the latter, religion being one of the sanctions of morality, but not its ground. The chapter on rights and duties endeavors to obtain an ethical basis for rights, so that duty will not be a mere correlate of that which does not imply an obligation in the subject other than the rights of neighbors.
In writing this book I have had rather conflicting aims. It was begun as a series of articles reporting observations on infants, published in part in the journal Science, 1890-1892. In the prosecution of this purpose, however, I found it necessary constantly to enlarge my scope for the entertainment of a widened genetic view. This came to clearer consciousness in the treatment of the child's imitations, especially when I came to the relation of imitation to volition, as treated in my paper before the London Congress of Experimental Psychology in 1892. The farther study of this subject brought what was to me such a revelation of the genetic function of imitation that I then determined—under the inspiration, also, of the small group of writers lately treating the subject—to work out a theory of mental development in the child, incorporating this new insight.
This occupied my thought, and was made the topic of my graduate Seminar in psychology at Princeton, in 1893-94, the result being the conviction that no consistent view of mental development in the individual could possibly be reached without a doctrine of the race development of consciousness. …
My final arrangement of chapters presents, when a patient reader is in front of the page, a fair degree of reason, I think. The earliest chapters (I to VI) are devoted to the statement of the genetic problem, with reports of the facts of infant life and the methods of investigating them, and the mere teasing out of the strings of law on which the facts are beaded—the principles of Suggestion, Habit, Accommodation, etc. These chapters have their own end as well, giving researches of some value, possibly, for psychology and education. They serve their purpose also in the progress of the book, as giving a statement of the central problem of motor adaptation. Chapter V gives a detailed analysis of one voluntary function, Handwriting. Then follows the theory of adaptation, stated in general terms in Chapters
