INTRODUCTION Having read with much care the proof sheets of this book, I am prepared to say three things about it, and it gives me pleasure to say them here. THE BOOK IS WELL NAMED. "THE UNFOLDING LIFE." Turn which way we will, we see life unfolding all about us, and yet how faintly are its mysteries understood! And is it not the one thing above all others, which teachers, mothers, fathers and all of us, need to understand? It is well... more...

Chapter I THE ELEMENTS OF MEMORY Four Special Memory Processes You have learned of the sense-perceptive and judicial processes by which your mind acquires its knowledge of the outside world. You come now to a study of the phenomenon of memory, the instrument by which your mind retains and makes use of its knowledge, the agency that has power to resurrect the buried past or power to enfold us in a Paradise of dreams more perfect than reality.... more...

THE REPRODUCTION OF LIVING BEINGS History of the Germ:—Cell-division—Parthenogenesis—Conjugation—Mneme—Embryological Development— Difference of the Sexes—Castration—Hermaphrodism— Heredity—Blastophthoria. A general law of organic life decrees that every living individual is gradually transformed in the course of a cycle which is called individual life, and which terminates with... more...

SENSES. Sight.—Light.—Five minutes after birth, slight sensibility to light (2). Second day, sensitiveness to light of candle (3). Sixth and seventh days, pleasure in moderately bright daylight (3, 4). Ninth and tenth days, sensitiveness greater at waking than soon afterward (3). Sleeping babes close the eyes more tightly when light falls on the eyes (4). Eleventh day, pleasure in light of candle and in bright object (3).... more...

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION The present volume appeals to the editor of this series as one of the most significant books, viewed from the standpoint of the future of our educational theory and practice, that has been issued in years. Not only does the volume set forth, in language so simple that the layman can easily understand, the large importance for public education of a careful measurement of the intelligence of children, but it also... more...

The Senses in the Lower Animals The sense of touch—The senses of taste and smell—Actinophryans having taste—The sense of sight—Modification of sight organs by surroundings—Sight in Actinophryans—Blind fish sensitive to light—Blind spiders—Blind man—Primitive eyes in Cymothoe—In the jelly-fish, sea-urchin, Alciope, Myrianida—The sight organs of the snail—Power of vision in... more...

CHAPTER I THE ADJECTIVE "BEAUTIFUL" THIS little book, like the great branch of mental science to which it is an introduction, makes no attempt to "form the taste" of the public and still less to direct the doings of the artist. It deals not with ought but with is, leaving to Criticism the inference from the latter to the former. It does not pretend to tell how things can be made beautiful or even how we can recognise that things are beautiful.... more...

MUIRHEAD LIBRARY OF PHILOSOPHY An admirable statement of the aims of the Library of Philosophy was provided by the first editor, the late Professor J. H. Muirhead, in his description of the original programme printed in Erdmann's History of Philosophy under the date 1890. This was slightly modified in subsequent volumes to take the form of the following statement: "The Muirhead Library of Philosophy was designed as a contribution to the History... more...

CHAPTER I THE PROBLEM DEFINED What is sex? Asexual and mixed reproduction; Origin of sexual reproduction; Advantage of sex in chance of survival; Germ and body cells; Limitations of biology in social problems; Sex always present in higher animals; Sex in mammals; The sex problem in the human species; Application of laboratory method. Sex, like all complicated phenomena, defies being crowded into a simple definition. In an animal or... more...

CHAPTER I. THE MOTHER AND HER CHILD. The Child's Right to Choose Its Ancestry—How This is Effected—The Mother the Child's Supreme Parent—Motherhood and the Woman Movement—The Immense Importance of Motherhood—Infant Mortality and Its Causes—The Chief Cause in the Mother—The Need of Rest During Pregnancy—Frequency of Premature Birth—The Function of the State—Recent Advance in... more...