The Crisis in Psychology

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p. 7] justly claims that the purpose of any comparison and the task of comparative

science is not only to distinguish similar traits, but even more to search for the

differences within the similarity. Comparative psychology, consequently, must not

merely understand man as an animal, but much more as a non-animal.

The straightforward application of the principle led to a ubiquitous search for

similarity. A correct method and reliably established facts led to monstrously

strained interpretations and distorted facts when applied uncritically. Children’s

games have indeed traditionally preserved many echoes of the remote past (the

play with bows, round dances). For Hall this is the repetition and expression in

innocent form of the animal and pre-historic stages of development. Groos consid-

ers this to show a remarkable lack of critical judgment. The fear of cats and dogs

would be a remnant of the time when these animals were still wild. Water would

attract children because we developed from aquatic animals. The automatic move-

ments of the infant’s arms would be a remnant of the movements of our ancestors

who swam in the water, etc.

The mistake resides, consequentiy, in the interpretation of the child’s whole

behavior as a recapitulation and in the absence of any principle to verify the analogy

and to select the facts which must and must not be interpreted. It is precisely the

play of animals which cannot be explained in this way. “Can Hall’s theory explain

the play of the young tiger with its victim?”—asks Groos [1904/1921, p. 73]. It is

clear that this play cannot be understood as a recapitulation of past phylogenetic

development. It foreshadows the future activity of the tiger and not a repetition of

his past development. It must be explained and understood in relation to the tiger’s

future, in the light of which it gets its meaning, and not in the light of the past of

his species. The past of the species comes out in a totally different sense: through

the individual’s future which it predetermines, but not directly and not in the sense

of a repetition.

What are the facts? This quasi-biological theory appears to be untenable pre-

cisely in biological terms, precisely in comparison with the nearest homogeneous

analogue in the series of homogeneous phenomena in other stages of evolution. When

we compare the play of a child with the play of a tiger, i.e., a higher mammal, and

consider not only the similarity, but the difference as well, we will lay bare their

common biological essence which resides exactly in theft difference (the tiger plays

the chase of tigers; the child that he is a grown-up; both practice necessary functions

for theft life to come—Groos’ theory). But despite all the seeming similarity in the

comparison of heterogeneous phenomena (play with water—aquatic life of the am-

phibian—man) the theory is biologically meaningless.

Thorndike [1906] adds to this devastating argument a remark about the dif-

ferent order of the same biological principles in onto- and phylogencsis. Thus, con-

sciousness appears very early in ontogenesis and very late in phylogenesis. The

sexual drive, on the other hand, appears very early in phylogenesis and very late

in ontogenesis. Stern [1927, pp. 266-267], using similar considerations, criticizes the

same theory in its application to play.

Blonsky (1921) makes another kind of mistake. He defends—and very con-

vincingly—this law for embryonic development from the viewpoint of biomechanics

and shows that it would be miraculous if it did not exist. The author points out

the hypothetical nature of the considerations (“not very conclusive”) leading to this

contention (“it may be like this”), i.e., he gives arguments for the methodological

possibility of a working hypothesis, but then, instead of proceeding to the investi-

gation and verification of the hypothesis, follows in Hall’s footsteps and begins to

explain the child’s behavior on the basis of very intelligible analogies: he does not

view the climbing of trees by children as a recapitulation of the life of apes, but