racial development. So long as this was accepted as explaining the
development of inborn tendencies and their order of appearance,
transitoriness and delayedness must necessarily be postulated. This
theory is being seriously questioned by psychologists of note, and even
its strongest advocate, President Hall, finds many questions concerning
it which cannot be answered.

The chief reasons for its acceptance were first, on logical grounds as
an outgrowth of the doctrine of evolution, and second, because of an
analogy with the growth of the physical body which was pushed to an
extreme. On the physiological side, although there is some likeness
between the human embryo and that of the lower animals, still the stages
passed through by the two are not the same, being alike only in rough
outline, and only in the case of a few of the bodily organs is the
series of changes similar. In the case of the physical structure which
should be recapitulated most closely, if behavior is to follow the same
law,--namely, in that of the brain and nervous system,--there is least
evidence of recapitulation. The brain of man does not follow in its
development at all the same course taken in the development of brains in
the lower animals. And, moreover, it is perfectly possible to explain
any similarity or parallelism which does exist between the development
of man's embryo and that of lower animals by postulating a general order
of development followed by nature as the easiest or most economical,
traces of which must then be found in all animal life. When it comes to
the actual test of the theory, that of finding actual cases of
recapitulation in behavior, it fails. No one has been able to point out
just when a child passes through any stage of racial development, and
any attempt to do so has resulted in confusion. There is no clear-cut
marking off into stages, but, instead, overlapping and coexistence of
tendencies characterize the development of the child. The infant of a