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Teacher Training Series
EDITED BY
W. W. CHARTERS
_Professor of Education, Carnegie Institute of Technology_
THE SCIENCE OF
HUMAN NATURE
_A PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS_
BY
WILLIAM HENRY PYLE
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI
SILVER, BURDETT & COMPANY
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
COPYRIGHT, 1917,
BY SILVER, BURDETT & COMPANY.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
This book is written for young students in high schools and normal
schools. No knowledge can be of more use to a young person than a
knowledge of himself; no study can be more valuable to him than a study
of himself. A study of the laws of human behavior,--that is the purpose
of this book.
What is human nature like? Why do we act as we do? How can we make
ourselves different? How can we make others different? How can we make
ourselves more efficient? How can we make our lives more worth while?
This book is a manual intended to help young people to obtain such
knowledge of human nature as will enable them to answer these questions.
I have not attempted to write a complete text on psychology. There are
already many such books, and good ones too. I have selected for
treatment only such topics as young students can study with interest and
profit. I have tried to keep in mind all the time the practical worth of
the matters discussed, and the ability and experience of the intended
readers.
TO THE TEACHER
This book can be only a guide to you. You are to help your students
study human nature. You must, to some extent, be a psychologist yourself
before you can teach psychology. You must yourself be a close and
scientific student of human nature. Develop in the students the spirit
of inquiry and investigation. Teach them to look to their own minds and
their neighbor's actions for verification of the statements of the text.
Let the students solve by observation and experiment the questions and
problems raised in the text and the exercises. The exercises should
prove to be the most valuable part of the book. The first two chapters
are the most difficult but ought to be read before the rest of the book
is studied. If you think best, merely read these two chapters with the
pupils, and after the book is finished come back to them for careful
study.
In the references, I have given parallel readings, for the most part to
Titchener, Pillsbury, and Münsterberg. I have purposely limited the
references, partly because a library will not be available to many who
may use the book, and partly because the young student is likely to be
confused by much reading from different sources before he has worked out
some sort of system and a point of view of his own. Only the most
capable members of a high school class will be able to profit much from
the references given.
TO THE STUDENT
You are beginning the study of human nature. You can not study human
nature from a book, you must study yourself and your neighbors. This
book may help you to know what to look for and to understand what you
find, but it can do little more than this. It is true, this text gives
you many facts learned by psychologists, but you must verify the
statements, or at least see their significance to _you_, or they will
be of no worth to you. However, the facts considered here, properly
understood and assimilated, ought to prove of great value to you. But
perhaps of greater value will be the psychological frame of mind or
attitude which you should acquire. The psychological attitude is that of
seeking to find and understand the _causes of human action, and the
causes, consequences, and significance of the processes of the human
mind_. If your first course in psychology teaches you to look for these
things, gives you some skill in finding them and in using the knowledge
after you have it, your study should be quite worth while.
W. H. PYLE.
EDITOR'S PREFACE
There are at least two possible approaches to the study of psychology by
teacher-training students in high schools and by beginning students in
normal schools.
One of these is through methods of teaching and subject matter. The
other aims to give the simple, concrete facts of psychology as the
science of the mind. The former presupposes a close relationship between
psychology and methods of teaching and assumes that psychology is
studied chiefly as an aid to teaching. The latter is less complicated.
The plan contemplates the teaching of the simple fundamentals at first
and applying them incidentally as the occasion demands. This latter
point of view is in the main the point of view taken in the text.
The author has taught the material of the text to high school students
to the end that he might present the fundamental facts of psychology in
simple form.
W. W. C.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 1