At the outset of the child-study movement, genetic psychology enthusiastically believed that the human individual rather closely recapitulates the developmental stages of lower species, and that childhood is a genuine savagery. This was an unsentimental theory; at least it made of children creatures of instincts to which nobility could not be attributed. If science ever had an opportunity to lay the foundations of a pessimistic view of man, it was now; for its eyes were straining to see animality and irrationality wherever they could be found. Higher, more social and rational drives, it was held, appear spontaneously at adolescence, and they are consolidated in maturity. We now know that this was an exaggeration of the spontaneous values of adolescence. Suppose this exaggeration had been discovered at the time; the conditions then would have been ripe for explaining human motivation at its best as merely a set of complicated and sophisticated forms of drives that are both low and blind. Thus, modern child-study has leaned over backward in its endeavor not to be complimentary in its interpretations of the young of the species. If an anthropoid ape should acquire ability to read English, he would not discover any race-prejudice against apes in the American publications that represented this point of view! But the point of view did not maintain itself. It rested upon three supports each of which proved to be weak. _First_, the embryological facts that formed the substructure turned out to be too few and too scattered to establish recapitulation even in pre-natal life. _Second_, the view of instinct that was employed was speculative, almost animistic. _Third_, observation of children was skewed by the theory under which it proceeded--the theory that children recapitulate savagery and barbarism. Disproportionate attention was given to conduct that is disagreeable to elders; socially neglected or mistrained youngsters were incautiously taken to be “the child”; everything obstreperous was a shining nugget. The movement actually reached the point of awakening apprehension as to the normality or sincerity of untroublesome children. The decadence of this mode of approach, and the rise of more objective methods, have brought us insight that is of the utmost importance to anyone who desires to understand the motivation of adults. First of all, psychical continuity rather than discontinuity between childhood and maturity has been proved to exist; in the second place, the remarkable plasticity or modifiability of childhood, taken in connection with this continuity, has given us clues hitherto lacking concerning the real origin of many adult traits.