(1846- ) The new pedagogy which is gaining an increasing predominance is yet a movement rather than a system. Although it is now entering its productive and constructive stage, the light which it has hitherto thrown upon educational work has been largely in the way of prophecy, insight, and suggestions rather than a well-ordered philosophy, with rules and methods. From Comenius down every great renovation in our educational ideas and methods has been either caused or effected by an ever fuller grasp of the nature of childhood and youth, to serve which is the task of education. With Comenius and other pedagogical writers who followed him, however, the study was individual, and knowledge remained at best intuition. Limited observations were too often made the basis of sweeping and one-sided generalizations. The systematizations attempted were mainly in the direction of deductive doctrination, but not of inductive synthesis of facts. These facts cannot be gathered and established from any individual experiences, however true and penetrating they may be, but only from the universal experience and experiments of the race, past and present. For the inductive synthesis of all the facts concerning the nature of childhood and youth, which can possibly be gathered and established from all sources, we are indebted to the so-called child-study movement. It calls to its aid animal psychology, anthropology, and medical science as well as all the branches of human psychology and physiology. It not only avails itself of the anthology of folklore, myths, nursery stories, and even superstitions, but also of the experience and observation of individuals, great and small. The uniqueness of the movement consists not only “in the new direction and focalization of many scientific departments and methods upon one object, some of which have never before had even this bond of union,” but also in the intimate contact, understanding, and mutual helpfulness into which it has brought experts and laymen, academic investigators, and practical workers. As the originator and the foremost leader of this movement stands Dr. Hall. In him America has first produced a pedagogic writer whose originality is peculiarly her own, and whose influence has extended far beyond the borders of the land. The new pedagogic movement which Dr. Hall represents has a philosophic basis in “genetic psychology,” which sees the essence of _psyche_ in its process of becoming. It has been subject to the course of evolution as organic matters have been. The human soul is merely a sort of “a species or a stage of evolution” in the soul kingdom; it is “one of the many types in the world,” and “at best it may be a transition from a lower to a higher race to be evolved later” (1: vol. ii, p. 62). So our soul life extends far back to the beginning of organic life, and inherits in its pedigree the stored results of prehuman and human experience.