A James Baldwin source page

Originally published as:

James Mark Baldwin. "Preface to the Third Edition." Pp xiii-xiv in The Mental Development of the Child and the Race 3rd ed., New York: Macmillan & Co. (1906).

Editors' notes

Baldwin's Mental Development is a central text in the development of social psychology in North America and recently has re-emerged as a primary source in artificial intelligence, being part of the set of Baldwin publications documenting what is now known as "the Baldwin effect." Unfortunately, we have not been able to obtain a usable copy of the 1895 edition and have had to rely on a reprint of the third edition. Intervening years introduced some changes and references in the 1890s documents will not always be relevant to this version.

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Mental Development in the Child and the Race

Preface to the Third Edition

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IN passing into this edition this book is celebrating its full decade. It has been reprinted now seven times and translated into French and German, and the demand for it indicates the interest taken in genetic discussions. In view of this new interest, and of the need of it--the need of bringing into psychology the genetic and biological points of view--for which the book originally stood, I have originally written. The revision has been mainly in matters of details of fact, and of exactness of exposition; but the leading theories, which have had their part in stimulating newer discussions, remain about as originally presented.[1] They are now supplemented by the later volumes of the series, Social and Ethical Interpretations (4th edition, 1906), Development and Evolution (1902), and the first part of the treatment of Genetic Logic, the work called Thought and Things (Vol. I., 1906). I have undertaken to prepare a single volume on the 'Principles of Genetic Science,' in which the leading ideas of this series of books will be thrown together in concise and reasoned form. In that volume the net outcome of the whole endeavour will be estimated and set forth in relation to the latest literature of the several sciences to which these earlier books respectively relate.

In this edition the changes already embodied in the French

For this reason the question of arrangement was an excessively difficult one to me. The relations of individual development to race development are so intimate--the two are so identical, in fact--that no topic in the one can be treated with great clearness without assuming results in the other. So any order of treatment in such a work must seem finally to be only the least of possible evils.

(xiv) and German versions are now incorporated. On certain pages, moreover, on which topics are treated of which later thought has developed and modified the views expressed reference is made to the publications embodying these further views. This is especially the case with the 'social' matters carried further in Social and Ethical Interpretations; with the biological matters, especially the theory of evolution by organic selection, worked out in the volume Development and Evolution; with the motor theory of general notions which is essentially developed and also restricted in the sections on ' General Meaning ' in Thought and Things, where the treatment of the cognitive operations is full and explicit. Readers who care to follow out any of these matters are thus supplied with data for judging of the writer's more extended views. In the literary citations added in the course of the work the reader will find indications of personal judgment upon the newer publications. I cannot refrain from making more specific reference here, however, to Principal Lloyd Morgan's Habit and Instinct, Professor Groos' Play of Animals and Play of Man, and Professor Jennings's Behaviour of Lower Organisms. In these books certain of the positions of this work have been notably confirmed, corrected, and advanced.

J. M. B.

Johns Hopkins University,
Baltimore, October, 1906

Notes

The longer additions are to be found in Chap. XV (on Control, and on Attention), Chap. XVI. (on Pain as Sensation, and on 'Excessive' Pain Reactions), and in Appendix C.

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