The Child in Human Progress (ePub)

Introduction and Preface

It was in the course of some researches into the origin of the Child Protection movement in this country that I discovered how little attention had been paid to the historical aspect of this important question. This book represents really a process of elimination, behind which were many fascinating byways, alluring blind alleys, and seeming countless beckoning theories. Toward the last, for a person with human instinct writing on a humane subject, it was hard not to tilt. In the main, however, the author believes that he has hewed to the line.


A vast amount of study relating to primary populaces and nations in gradual development was required to learn the history of the child. Without the history of the child there cannot be a scientific knowledge of the thousands of years of child life. Nobody has given it until the author of this book afforded us the wealth of his vast studies. This book furnishes what no other work presents to us. I know of none which acquaints us with the position of the child in his social, political, and humanitarian existence in all nations and in all eras. Adults and adult life have long been served by the endeavours of historians, philosophers, and psychologists. We do not believe in completeness of our knowledge unless all that have been perfected. Medical men do not believe in possessing a scientific grasp of any of their subjects without an embryological basis. Statesmen, aye, even politicians, of the better class, insist upon an ample knowledge of the history of their countries, their institutions, and their laws. That is how the last years of our medical and professional life in this country have developed amongst us physicians the taste for history and such books as Fielding Garrison has been able to prepare for us within the last year.