----- Footnote 6: Since this was written the authoress of _Little Lord Fauntleroy_ has shown us how clear and far-reaching a memory she has of her childish experiences. ----- Yet valuable as is this gift of sympathetic insight, it will not, of course, conduce to that methodical, exact kind of observation which is required by science. Hence the need of the second qualification: psychological training. By this is meant that special knowledge which comes from studying the principles of the science, its peculiar problems, and the methods appropriate to these, together with the special skill which is attained by a methodical, practical application of this knowledge in the actual observation and interpretation of manifestations of mind. Thus a woman who wishes to observe to good effect the mind of a child of three must have a sufficient acquaintance with the general course of the mental life to know what to expect, and in what way the phenomena observed have to be interpreted. Really fine and fruitful observation is the outcome of a large knowledge, and anybody who is to carry out in a scientific fashion the observation of the humblest phase of a child’s mental life must already know this life as a whole, so far as psychology can as yet describe its characteristics, and determine the conditions of its activity. And here the question naturally arises: “Who is to carry out this new line of scientific observation?” To begin with the first stage of it, who is to carry out the exact methodical record of the movements of the infant? It is evident that qualification or capacity is not all that is necessary here; capacity must be favoured with opportunity before the work can be actually begun. It has been pointed out that the pioneers who struck out this new line of experimental research were medical men. The meaning of this fact is pretty apparent. The doctor has not only a turn for scientific observation: he is a privileged person in the nursery. The natural guardians of infancy, the mother and the nurse, exempt him from their general ban on the male. He excepted, no man, not even the child’s own father, is allowed to meddle too much with that divine mystery, that meeting point of all the graces and all the beatitudes, the infant.