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  PSYCHOLOGY
  AND PARENTHOOD

  BY

  H. ADDINGTON BRUCE

  Author of “The Riddle of Personality,” “Scientific
  Mental Healing,” etc.

  [Illustration]

  NEW YORK
  DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
  1919

  COPYRIGHT, 1915
  BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY

  TO
  MY SISTER
  ROBERTA BRUCE PEMBERTON




PREFACE


The chief aim of this informal “handbook for parents” is to review and
unify, in non-technical language, the findings of modern psychology
which bear especially on the laws of mental and moral growth. The
time has come when it is not only desirable but necessary to attempt
something of this sort; for in the course of their labours the
educational, medical, and social psychologists have accumulated a
mass of data revealing unsuspected defects, and hinting at marvellous
possibilities, in the upbringing of the young.

On the one hand, they have shown that not enough heed has been paid to
the hampering influences of an unfavourable environment and physical
maladjustment; and, on the other hand, they have made it clear that, by
instituting certain reforms, it is entirely feasible to develop mental
and moral vigour in the mass of mankind to an astonishing degree. My
own belief, indeed, for reasons set forth in subsequent pages, is that
the discoveries of the modern psychologists justify the assertion that,
through proper training in childhood, it is possible to create a race
of men and women far superior morally to the generalty of the world’s
inhabitants to-day, and manifesting intellectual powers of a far higher
order than the generalty now display.

Whether this belief will ever be vindicated—whether, for the matter
of that, the discoveries of recent psychological research will
prove of any real value—depends, of course, on the extent to which
practical application is made by those having charge of the young, and
particularly by parents. For the fact most surely established by the
scientific investigators is that it is in the first years of life, and
in the influences of the home, that the forces are set in motion which
count for most in the making or marring of the individual’s character
and career. Parental responsibility is consequently much greater than
most parents suppose; but so is parental opportunity. This book
accordingly is addressed primarily to parents in the hope that it may
be of some assistance to them in avoiding the pitfalls, and developing
the possibilities, of that most important of all human activities—the
training of the next generation.

Portions of the book have already appeared in various periodicals—_The
Century Magazine_, _The Outlook_, _McClure’s Magazine_, etc.—and to the
editors of these publications I owe a word of grateful acknowledgment.
I am also under obligations to numerous medical and psychological
friends for valuable information. But most of all, as always, I am
indebted to my wife, whose critical reading of the manuscript has
resulted in many helpful suggestions.

  H. ADDINGTON BRUCE.

  Cambridge, Massachusetts,
  _February_, 1915.




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                        PAGE

  PREFACE                                         vii

     I THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ENVIRONMENT            3

    II SUGGESTION IN EDUCATION                     39

   III THE SECRET OF GENIUS                        71

    IV INTENSIVE CHILD CULTURE                    113

     V THE PROBLEM OF LAZINESS                    161

    VI A CHAPTER ON LAUGHTER                      193

   VII HYSTERIA IN CHILDHOOD                      221

  VIII THE MENACE OF FEAR                         249

    IX A FEW CLOSING WORDS                        283




I

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ENVIRONMENT


Many years ago, according to a story which remains vividly in my memory
by reason of its grim suggestiveness, two small boys were one day
sauntering along a country road. The sight of an orchard, resplendent
in its autumn glory of red and green and gold, tempted them with
irresistible appeal, as it has tempted thousands of other boys before
and since. Over the rail-fence they scrambled, up a well-laden tree
they climbed, and soon were merrily at work filling their pockets.

But now from a near-by cottage came the man who owned the orchard,
and his coming was the signal for a hasty descent. One of the boys
made good his escape; the other, less quick-footed, was dragged, a
loudly-protesting captive, to the home of the local magistrate.

“More apple-stealing!” this stern functionary exclaimed. “Something
must be done to stop it. Let us make an example of this bad boy.” To
prison forthwith he consigned the luckless youth.

His companion, thankful for his happier fate, returned to his home, his
school, and his books. From school he went to college, and afterward
took up the study of law, beginning his professional career with a
reputation for great intellectual ability and strength of character. In
course of time he was made a judge.

As judge he was called on to preside at the trial of a man accused of
murder. The evidence of guilt was conclusive, conviction speedy. It
became his duty to don the black cap and pronounce sentence of death.
But before he did this, he was struck with something familiar in the
prisoner’s sodden, passion-marked features, made inquiry concerning his
early history, and, to his mingled horror and amazement, learned that
the wretched man was none other than the happy, buoyant lad who had
first felt the heavy hand of the law on account of the orchard-robbing
episode in which the judge, now about to doom him to the scaffold, had
gone scot-free.

Than this strange chapter in human experience I can at the moment
recall nothing that more strikingly suggests and illustrates the
dominant theory in modern scientific thought regarding the offender
against society. The implication that the contrasting careers of the
two boys were largely determined by circumstances over which they had
no control, and that it was the brutalising jail experience of the one
and the more fortunate upbringing of the other that chiefly accounted
for their diverse fates, unquestionably represents the views held by
the great majority of present-day students of delinquency and crime. To
be sure, there are not a few who would raise the question, “Might not
the boy who was caught in the orchard have ‘gone wrong’ in any event,
because of inborn defects?” These are the enthusiasts conspicuous
to-day as leaders of the so-called eugenics movement looking to the
improvement of mankind on stock-breeding principles—by sterilisation
of the “unfit,” stricter marriage laws, etc. Nor can it be denied that
they have on their side a formidable array of facts which would seem to
demonstrate the unescapable fatality of a bad heredity. On the other
hand it is equally certain that there is a steadily growing body of
evidence giving ever greater support to the opposite view—to the view,
namely, that after all the influence of heredity is of quite secondary
importance to that of environment in the marring or making of a human
life.

Even the facts emphasised by the eugenists themselves sometimes
tend, on close examination, to bear out the belief that it is in the
surroundings and training of a child rather than in his heredity that
the sources of his ultimate goodness or badness are mainly to be found.
The history of the notorious Juke family, featured by almost every
modern advocate of the “fatal heredity” theory, is a case in point.

The first Jukes of whom anything is known were five sisters of obscure
parentage who lived in Ulster County, New York, in the second half
of the eighteenth century. At least four of the five took early to a
life of vice, and eventually all married and had children. Many years
afterward a visitor to an Ulster County jail noticed that among its
inmates, awaiting trial on various charges, were six members of one
family, including two boys accused of assault with intent to kill.
Inquiry showed that the six were directly descended from the oldest
Juke girl, and that more than half of their male blood-relatives in the
county were likewise in some degree criminal.

Impressed by these facts the jail visitor, Mr. R. L. Dugdale,
determined to make a genealogical research into the life histories
of as many of the descendants of the five Juke sisters as could be
traced. Altogether it was found possible to obtain pretty complete
data concerning seven hundred and nine of these, with the following
astonishing results:

Of the entire seven hundred and nine, not twenty had been skilled
workers, and ten of these had learned their trade in prison; only
twenty-two had been persons of property, and of this number eight
had lost the little they acquired; sixty-four had been in the county
alms-house; one hundred and forty-two had received outdoor relief; one
hundred and twenty-eight had been prostitutes, and eighteen keepers of
houses of ill-fame; finally, seventy-six were reported as criminals,
with one hundred and fifteen more or less serious crimes to their
discredit. All this in seven generations of a single family.

Surely one might well be tempted to find here “the most striking proof
of the heredity of crime,” as Cesare Lombroso did not hesitate to
pronounce this sad history of the Jukes. But there is something to be
added.

Following the publication of Mr. Dugdale’s book, “The Jukes,”
giving the family record, there came under the care of a charitable
organisation an eighth-generation descendant of the oldest Juke sister,
a foundling baby boy, cast upon the tender mercies of the world with
all the burden of “innate depravity” transmitted from his vicious
ancestors. Instead of taking it for granted that he would inevitably
come to an evil end, the charity-workers decided to give him the
benefit of a refined environment and good family care. Accordingly a
home was found for him with a kind-hearted widow, whose own sons had
grown to a worthy manhood, and from her for ten years he received the
loving and intelligent training which is the birthright of every child.

At the end of that time he had developed into a fine, manly boy, with,
however, a somewhat superabundant fund of animal spirits and a tendency
to unruliness. It was evident that, owing to her advanced age, his
foster-mother could not give him the stricter discipline he now seemed
to need, and arrangements were made for his adoption by a farmer and
his wife living in a Western State. By them he was again treated with
the utmost affection, coupled with more firmness than he had hitherto
known. Little by little his unruliness disappeared; he became eager to
excel both at school and in the work of the farm, and soon became known
as one of the best boys of the neighbourhood. The older he grew the
more evidence he gave of possessing a strong moral foundation on which
to build his future career. When last heard from by the charitable
organisation to which he owed so much, he had struck out for himself,
an alert, vigorous, forceful young man, of sterling character, and full
of the self-confidence which wins success.

Moreover, Mr. Dugdale himself, in the course of his exhaustive