CHAPTER I

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.

—Bold text has been rendered as =bold text=.

—Subscripts have been rendered as in this chemical formula: H_{2}O

A BEGINNER’S PSYCHOLOGY

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A BEGINNER’S PSYCHOLOGY

BY

EDWARD BRADFORD TITCHENER

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1915

_All rights reserved_

COPYRIGHT, 1915,

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1915.

Norwood Press

J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

To

THE MEMORY OF

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY

PREFACE

It is an acknowledged fact that we perceive errors in the work of

others more readily than in our own.—LEONARDO DA VINCI

IN this Beginner’s Psychology I have tried to write, as nearly as

might be, the kind of book that I should have found useful when I was

beginning my own study of psychology. That was nearly thirty years ago;

and I read Bain, and the Mills, and Spencer, and Rabier, and as much of

Wundt as a struggling acquaintance with German would allow. Curiously

enough, it was a paragraph in James Mill, most unpsychological of

psychologists, that set me on the introspective track,—though many

years had to pass before I properly understood what had put him off

it. A book like this would have saved me a great deal of labour and

vexation of spirit. Nowadays, of course, there are many introductions

to psychology, and the beginner has a whole library of text-books to

choose from. Still, they are of varying merit; and, what is perhaps

more important, their temperamental appeal is diverse.

I do not find it easy to relate this new book to the older

Primer,—which will not be further revised. There is change all

through; every paragraph has been rewritten. The greatest change is,

however, a shift of attitude; I now lay less stress than I did upon

knowledge and more upon point of view. The beginner in any science is

oppressed and sometimes disheartened by the amount he has to learn;

so many men have written, and so many are writing; the books say such

different things, and the magazine articles are so upsetting! Enviable

is the senior who can reply, when some scientific question is on the

carpet,—There are three main views, A’s and B’s and C’s, and you will

find them here and there and otherwhere! But as time goes by this

erstwhile beginner comes to see that knowledge is, after all, a matter

of time itself. If he keeps on working, knowledge is added unto him;

and not only knowledge, but also what is just as valuable as knowledge,

the power of expert assimilation; so that presently, when some special

point is in debate, he is not ashamed of the plea of ignorance. He has

learned that one man cannot compass the full range of a science, and he

is assured that so-many hours of expert attention will make him master

of the new matter. He comes in this way not, surely, to underestimate

knowledge, but to be less anxious about it; and as that preoccupation

goes, the point of view seems to be more and more important. Why is it

that beginners in science are so often disjointed in their thinking, so

often superficial, unable to correlate what they know, logically all

at sea? There is no doubt that they are, whether they study physics or

chemistry, biology or psychology. I think the main reason is that they

have never got the scientific point of view; they are taught Physics

or Biology, but not Science. Hence I have, in this book, written an

inordinately long introduction, and have kept continually harping on

the difference between fact and meaning. I try to make the reader

see clearly what I take Science to be. It does not matter whether

he agrees with me; that is a detail; I shall be fully satisfied if

he learns to be clear and definite in his objections, realizes his

own point of view, and sticks to it in working out later his own

psychological system. Muddlement is the enemy; and there is a good deal

of muddled thinking even in modern books.

Not that I offer this little essay as a model of clear thought!

The ideas of current psychology and the words in which they find

expression are still, in very large measure, an affair of tradition and

compromise; and even if a writer has fought through to clarity,—past

experience forbids me to hope that: but even if one had,—a book meant

for beginners may not be too consistently radical; some touch must be

maintained with the past, and some too with the multifarious trends

of the present. There is something turbid in the very atmosphere of

an elementary psychology (is the air much clearer elsewhere?), and

it is difficult to see things in perspective. So the critic who will

soon be saying that the ideal text-book of psychology has yet to be

written will be heartily in the right, even if he is not particularly

helpful. The present work has its due share of the mistakes and minor

contradictions that are inevitable to a first writing; at many points

it falls short of my intention,—_l’œuvre qu’on porte en soi paraît

toujours plus belle que celle qu’on a faite_; and I daresay that the

intention itself is not within measureable distance of the ideal. It

is, nevertheless, the best I can do at the time; and it is also, I

repeat, the kind of book that I should have liked to have when I began

psychologising.

Psychological text-books usually contain a chapter on the physiology

of the central nervous system. The reader will find no such chapter

here; for I hold, and have always held, that the student should get

his elementary knowledge of neurology, not at second hand from the

psychologist, but at first hand from the physiologist. I have added

to every chapter a list of Questions, looking partly to increase of

knowledge, but especially to a test of the reader’s understanding of

what he has just read. I have also added a list of References for

further reading. It depends upon the maturity and general mental habit

of the student whether these references—made as they are, in many

cases, to authors who do not agree either with one another or with the

text of the book—should be followed up at once, or only after the text

itself has been digested. The decision must be left to the instructor.

My own opinion is that beginners are best given one thing at a time,

and that the knowledge-questions and the references should therefore,

in the ordinary run of teaching, be postponed until some ‘feeling’

for psychology, some steadiness of psychological attitude, has become

apparent.

I have avoided the term ‘consciousness.’ Experimental psychology made

a serious effort to give it a scientific meaning; but the attempt has

failed; the word is too slippery, and so is better discarded. The

term ‘introspection’ is, I have no doubt, travelling the same road;

and I could easily have avoided it, too; but the time is, perhaps,

not quite ripe. I have said nothing of the ‘thought-element’, which

seems to me to be a psychological pretender, supported only by the

logicising tendencies of the day; and if I am wrong no great harm has

been done, since a description of this alleged elementary process, by

positive characters, is not yet forthcoming. My references are confined

to works available in the English language; I think it unlikely that

the students for whom this book is intended will have attained to any

considerable knowledge of French or German. Lastly,—I believe that

this is my last major omission,—I have referred only incidentally to

the ‘application’ of psychology; for science is not technology, though

history goes to show that any the least fact of science may, some day

or other, find its sphere of practical usefulness.

Two of my illustrations are borrowed: the swallow-figure on p. 138 from

Professor Ebbinghaus, and the cut on p. 282 from Dr. A. A. Grünbaum.

I am sorry to confess that a few of the quotations which head the

chapters are mosaics, pieced together from different paragraphs of the

original. Even great writers are, at times, more diffuse than one could

wish; or perhaps it would be fairer to say that they did not write with

a view to chapter-headings. I hope, in any case, that no injustice has

been done.

* * * * *

It is a very pleasant duty to acknowledge the assistance that I have

received from my Cornell colleagues, Prof. H. P. Weld and Drs. W. S.

Foster and E. G. Boring, and from Dr. L. D. Boring of Wells College. I

am indebted to all for many points of valid criticism, and I wish to

express to all my sincere thanks for much self-sacrificing labour.

I have retained the late Professor Huxley’s name in the forefront

of this new primer, partly as an act of homage to the master in

Science,—the brilliant investigator, the fearless critic, the lucid

expositor; and partly, also, as a personal tribute to the man it was my

earlier privilege to know.

CORNELL HEIGHTS, ITHACA, N.Y.

July, 1915.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PSYCHOLOGY: WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT DOES

SECTION PAGE

1. Common Sense and Science 1

2. The Subject-matter of Psychology 5

3. Mind and Body 10

4. The Problem of Psychology 14

5. The Method of Psychology 18

6. Process and Meaning 26

7. The Scope of Psychology 30

8. A Personal Word to the Reader 34

Questions and Exercises 37

References for Further Reading 40

CHAPTER II

SENSATION

9. Sensations from the Skin 43

10. Kinæsthetic Sensations 45

11. Taste and Smell 48

12. Sensations from the Ear 51

13. Sensations from the Eye 56

14. Organic Sensations 64

15. Sensation and Attribute 65

16. The Intensity of Sensation 67

Questions and Exercises 70

References 72

CHAPTER III

SIMPLE IMAGE AND FEELING

17. Simple Images 73

18. Simple Feelings and Sense-feelings 79

Questions and Exercises 87

References 88

CHAPTER IV

ATTENTION

19. The Problem of Attention 90

20. The Development of Attention 93

21. The Nature of Attention 99

22. The Experimental Study of Attention 103

23. The Nervous Correlate of Attention 106

Questions and Exercises 110

References 111

CHAPTER V

PERCEPTION AND IDEA

24. The Problem in General 112

25. The Analysis of Perception and Idea 114

26. Meaning in Perception and Idea 117

27. The Types of Perception 121

28. The Perception of Distance 125

29. The Problem in Detail 131

30. The Types of Idea 138

Questions and Exercises 142

References 143

CHAPTER VI

ASSOCIATION

31. The Association of Ideas 145

32. Associative Tendencies: Material of Study 149

33. The Establishment of Associative Tendencies 152

34. The Interference and Decay of Associative Tendencies 156

35. The Connections of Mental Processes 159

36. The Law of Mental Connection 162

37. Practice, Habit, Fatigue 169

Questions and Exercises 174

References 176

CHAPTER VII

MEMORY AND IMAGINATION

38. Recognition 177

39. Direct Apprehension 181

40. The Memory-idea 184

41. Illusions of Recognition and Memory 187

42. The Pattern of Memory 189

43. Mnemonics 192

44. The Idea of Imagination 194

45. The Pattern of Imagination 197

Questions and Exercises 201

References 202

CHAPTER VIII

INSTINCT AND EMOTION

46. The Nature of Instinct 203

47. The Two Sides of Instinct 207

48. Determining Tendencies 212

49. The Nature of Emotion 215

50. The James-Lange Theory of Emotion 218

51. The Expression of Emotion 222

52. Mood, Passion, Temperament 225

Questions and Exercises 228

References 229

CHAPTER IX

ACTION

53. The Psychology of Action 230

54. The Typical Action 233

55. The Reaction Experiment 236

56. Sensory and Motor Reaction 239

57. The Degeneration of Action: From Impulsive to Reflex 242

58. The Development of Action: From Impulsive to Selective

and Volitional 246

59. The Compound Reaction 252

60. Will, Wish, and Desire 255

Questions and Exercises 259

References 260

CHAPTER X

THOUGHT

61. The Nature of Thought 261

62. Imaginal Processes in Thought: The Abstract Idea 263

63. Thought and Language 267

64. Mental Attitudes 271

65. The Pattern of Thought 275

66. Abstraction and Generalisation 280

67. Comparison and Discrimination 283

Questions and Exercises 287

References 288

CHAPTER XI

SENTIMENT

68. The Nature of Sentiment 290

69. The Variety of Feeling-attitude 293

70. The Forms of Sentiment 297

71. The Situations and their Appeal 300

72. Mood, Passion, Temperament 304

Questions and Exercises 305

References 306

CHAPTER XII

SELF AND CONSCIOUSNESS

73. The Concept of Self 307

74. The Persistence of the Self 312

75. The Self in Experience 315

76. The Snares of Language 321

77. Consciousness and the Subconscious 323

78. Conclusion 328

Questions and Exercises 332

References 334

APPENDIX

DREAMING AND HYPNOSIS

79. Sleep and Dream 335

80. Hypnosis 341

References 349

INDEX OF NAMES 351

INDEX OF SUBJECTS 353

A BEGINNER’S PSYCHOLOGY

A BEGINNER’S PSYCHOLOGY

CHAPTER I

PSYCHOLOGY: WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT DOES

It is well for a man, when he seeks a clear and unbiassed opinion upon

some certain matter, to forget many things, and to begin to look at it

as if he knew nothing at all before.—LI HUNG CHANG

§ 1. =Common Sense and Science.=—We live in a world of values. We

have material standards of comfort, and moral standards of conduct;

and we eat and drink, and dress, and house our families, and educate

our children, and carry on our business in life, with these standards

more or less definitely before us. We approve good manners; we avoid

extravagance and display; we aim at efficiency; we try to be honest;

we should like to be cultivated. Everywhere and always our ordinary

living implies this reference to values, to better and worse, desirable

and undesirable, vulgar and refined. And that is the same thing as

saying that our ordinary living is not scientific. It is not either

unscientific, in the regular meaning of that word; it has nothing to do

with science; it is non-scientific or extra-scientific. For =science

deals, not with values, but with facts=. There is no good or bad, sick

or well, useful or useless, in science. When the results of science

are taken over into everyday life, they are transformed into values;

the telegraph becomes a business necessity, the telephone a household

convenience, the motor-car a means of recreation; the physician works

to cure, the educator to fit for citizenship, the social reformer to

correct abuses. Science itself, however, works simply to ascertain the

truth, to discover the fact. Mr. H. G. Wells complains in a recent

novel that no sick soul could find help or relief in a modern text-book

of psychology. Of course not! Psychology is the science of mind, not

the source of mental comfort or improvement. A sick soul would not go,

for that matter, to a text-book of theology; it would go to some proved

and trusted friend, or to some wise and tender book written by one who

had himself suffered. So a sick body would betake itself, not to the

physiological laboratory, but to a physician’s consulting room or to a

hospital.

We live, again, in a world whose centre is ourself. This does not

necessarily mean that we are all selfish; a life may be very unselfish.

But whether we are selfish or unselfish, we live in a universe which

revolves about the Me. Our self spreads and expands, to embrace our

clothes and house and books, our family and relations, our professional

competence and connection, our political and religious beliefs; we find

ourselves in all these things, and they become a part of us. A famine

in India is a real event and takes its place in the world only if we

are made uncomfortable when we read of it, or are stirred to send in

a contribution, or suspect mismanagement somewhere and think we could

have done better. And this, once more, is the same thing as saying

that our ordinary living is not scientific. For =science, which deals

with facts, is on that account impersonal and disinterested=. Men of

science honour Darwin, because they are human beings and live, like

everyone else, in a world of values; but these same men of science are

ready at any moment to test and criticise Darwin’s work with the utmost

rigour; while any parts of the work that are solidly established pass

without name into the structure of the science to which they belong.

A text-book of chemistry is about as impersonal as anything can be,

despite the fact that every observation it describes and every law it

lays down was once somebody’s personal observation or discovery, and

so formed part of some self-centred universe. That personal interest

is irrelevant to science. It is as irrelevant to psychology as to

chemistry. The psychologist has a great deal to do with his own mind;

but that is because his own mind is the most easily accessible part of

his subject-matter; it is not in the least because the mind happens to

be his own. He does not care as psychologist—though he may care very

much as human being—whether his mind is superior and talented and

broad and cultivated or is the reverse of all these things; for in the

first place these adjectives are all adjectives of value, and he is in

search of facts; and secondly they are words of personal or individual

appraisement, and he is not concerned to praise or blame himself. Nor

is he concerned to trace the motives or judge the character of other

men. There is a common belief that the psychologist is an uncanny

person to meet, because he is always studying human nature and is able

to read thoughts. This belief belongs to the non-scientific world;

those who hold it fear that the psychologist will detect in them some

pettiness or meanness of human nature, or will lay his finger on some

unfounded enthusiasm or some unreasoned detraction that they wish to

conceal. As well might they think that the physicist whom they ask to

dinner will be occupied with the surface-tension of his soup or the

insulating properties of his mashed potato.

If we trace the history of human thought, we find that _the scientific

attitude, as we have here described it, has emerged very slowly

from that mixed medley of superstition and knowledge and belief and

practical interest for which we have no better name than_ =common

sense=. How common sense has been constituted, and how science has

gradually worked its way to an independent position,—these are

interesting questions; but it is plain that we cannot enter upon them

in a primer of one special science. Some references for further reading

will be given at the end of the chapter. Meanwhile, the important

thing is to understand clearly the aims and limitations of science.

Science aims at truth; it deals with facts, with the nature of things

given, not with values or meanings or uses; and it deals with these

materials impersonally and disinterestedly. The student of science

who fails to grasp the scientific point of view will fail also to get

the perspective of a scientific text-book; he will not see the wood

for the trees; and he will be disappointed with what science has to

offer him; he will want to know the use of all this knowledge, while

science has no regard for use. =The laws of psychology may be put to

very many uses=, in business, in education, in legal procedure, in

medicine, in the ministrations of religion; but such uses are, from

the psychologist’s point of view, by-products of his science; just as

the nautical almanac is a by-product of astronomy, or the safety-match

a by-product of chemistry, or the stamping-out of malaria a by-product

of biology. These practical results may be immensely important for

everyday life; but science, in its impersonal and disinterested search

for facts, makes no difference between one fact and another.

§ 2. =The Subject-matter of Psychology.=—Psychology is the science of

mind. What, then, is mind? Everybody knows that, you will say, just

as everybody knows what is matter. Everybody knows, yes, in terms

of common sense; but we have seen that common sense is not science.

Besides, common sense is not articulate; it cannot readily express

itself; and it is a little afraid of plain statements. Close this book,

now, and write down what _you_ take mind to be; give yourself plenty of

time; when you have finished, go over what you have written, and ask

yourself if you really know what all the words and phrases mean, if you

can define them or stand an examination on them; the exercise will be

worth while.

Open the book again! The exercise was worth while; but it was not quite

fair. For the fact is that these great comprehensive words that we all

use and all understand cannot be rigorously defined; they are too old;

they have lived through too many changes; they have gathered about them

too many conflicting associations. They pass muster in our everyday

discourse only because we take them for granted and do not scrutinise

them too closely. The expert alone can say what common sense means by

mind; and even the expert must speak in general terms, qualifying and

with reservations.

It seems, however, that the prime factor in =the common-sense notion

of mind= is the idea of activity. We ascribe to mind the same sort of

voluntary and purposeful activity that we ascribe to our fellow-men;

and we distinguish this activity from the blind necessity of cause and

effect. We find ourselves, and those about us, deliberating, intending,

resolving, planning, recalling, doubting; and we say that these and

similar activities are activities of mind. We also find ourselves,

and those about us, breathing, secreting, moving; but here we draw

distinctions. Breathing, we say, is a physical affair, though we may

hold the breath by an act of will. Secretion results from some physical

or chemical cause; only if we cry for sorrow or sweat for fear is mind

influencing body. Walking and blinking may be physical only; but if we

turn our steps by intention into a certain path, or blink on purpose to

clear our sight, the physical movements become subject to the action of

mind.

So long as we stick to examples, all this seems straightforward;

only it is not easy to decide whether mind is activity, or whether

these various activities are activities of mind. On the whole, common

sense leans to the latter view: the activities are manifestations

of mind. Mind itself is then something immaterial, lying behind the

manifestations. What sort of thing? Apparently, another human being,

=an inner man that dwells within the outer man=, an insubstantial

mannikin living inside the head. Does that sound absurd? But it did not

seem absurd just now to read that we ascribe to mind the same sort of

voluntary and purposeful activity that we ascribe to our fellow-men;

and how could we do that unless mind were something like a human being?

This inner man appears, in fact, to be the mind of common sense; the

inner man thinks, reflects, remembers, desires; he is influenced by

the outer man, becoming gloomy and morose when his host cannot digest;

and he influences the outer man, who sheds tears when his inmate is

grieved. A curious view, when we write it out and think of it in cold

logic; but a view that we should understand if we traced the growth

of common sense from its first beginnings; and a view of highly

respectable antiquity. Very ancient superstitions are connected with

the man who is seen in the eye; the Egyptian _ka_ or spirit-double is

a smaller copy of the outer man; Greek vase-paintings show the human

soul as a tiny human being; primitive thought has from time immemorial

explained, and the modern savage still explains, the life and motion of

man, or his repose in sleep and death, by the presence or absence of

the little creature normally at work within him.

Yet however natural a view like this may be, science can make nothing

of it. For one thing, it merely pushes the problem a step further back.

The inner man acts on the outer man and is acted on by him; but who or

what gives the inner man, in his turn, the power to influence and to

be influenced? We must suppose an endless nest of mannikins. That and

other such arguments apart, however, the view is non-scientific because

it offers an interpretation and not a description of mind. _The mind

with which psychology deals must be a mind that is describable in terms

of observed fact_; otherwise it cannot form the subject-matter of a

science. So we must start afresh, and ask what mind is, when mind is

looked at =from the scientific point of view=.

You will better understand the answer to this question when you have

worked through the book. The answer will then have been given in the

concrete and particular; now it can be given only in the abstract and

general. Remember that it is given, nevertheless, in terms of work done

and results obtained; it is not an answer that the psychologist makes

up beforehand, but one that he himself has been led to in the course of

his attempt to work scientifically upon mind. In brief it is this.

We find that the field of science has been surveyed from two different

standpoints. Men of science have set out, on the one hand, to describe

the world as it would be with man left out. The result is what we call

physical science. The world of physics is colourless, toneless, neither

cold nor warm; its spaces are always of the same extent, its times are

always of the same duration, its mass is invariable; it would be just

what it is now if mankind were swept from the face of the earth. For

what is light in the text-books of physics?—a train of electromagnetic

waves; and sound is a vibratory motion of air or water; and heat is a

dance of molecules; and all these things are independent of man. But

men of science have tried, on the other hand, to describe =the world

as it is in man’s experience=, as it appears with man left in; and

the result of this endeavour is psychology. The world of psychology

contains looks and tones and feels; it is the world of dark and light,

of noise and silence, of rough and smooth; its space is sometimes large

and sometimes small, as everyone knows who in adult life has gone back

to his childhood’s home; its time is sometimes short and sometimes

long; it has no invariables. It contains also the thoughts, emotions,

memories, imaginations, volitions that you naturally ascribe to mind;

it contains, that is, so much of these things as belongs to the sphere

of observable fact. It is obviously very different from the world of

physics, though both worlds alike have been opened up to us by science,

by the impersonal and disinterested search for facts.

So we have a world of matter and a world of mind. The physicist,

however, describes and measures the various phases of energy, without

assuming any material substance in the background, any matter of which

this energy is the manifestation. Matter, if the word is to be used at

all, is simply the inclusive name for all the forms of energy. And the

psychologist, in the same way, describes and measures—so far as he

is able to measure—the phenomena of his world, without assuming any

active or perduring mind in the background; for him, mind is simply

the =inclusive name of all these phenomena=. That is the first rough

answer to our question. Much more must be said, if the answer is to be

precise; but even as it is we have travelled a long way from the little

man living inside the head!

§ 3. =Mind and Body.=—The first thing to get clear about is the nature

of the _man left in_ the world, the man whose presence is necessary

for psychology and unnecessary for physics. Since we are talking

science, this man will be man as science views him, and not the man

of common sense; he will be, that is, the organism known to biology

as _homo sapiens_, and not the self-centred person whom we meet in

the everyday world of values. But the human organism owes its organic

character, the organisation of its parts into a single whole, to its

_nervous system_. All over the body and all through the body are

dotted sense-organs, which take up physical and chemical impressions

from their surroundings; these impressions are transmitted along

nerve-fibres to the brain; in the brain they are grouped, arranged,

supplemented, arrested, modified in all sorts of ways; and finally,

it may be after radical transformation in the brain, they issue along

other nerve-fibres to the muscles and glands. The nervous system thus

receives, elaborates, and emits. Moreover, there is strong evidence

to show that =the world which psychology explores= depends for its

existence upon the functioning of the nervous system; or, if we prefer

a stricter formula, that this world =is correlated with the functioning

of the nervous system=. The _man left in_ thus reduces to a nervous

system; and that is the truth of the statement, often met with in

popular scientific writing, that the brain is the organ of mind. There

is no organ of mind; that phrase is an echo of the old-world search

after the place of residence of the mannikin-mind, which was assigned

variously to heart, liver, eye, brain, blood, or was supposed somehow

to perfuse the whole body. The scientific fact is that, whenever we

come upon mental phenomena, then we also find a functional nervous

system; we know nothing of the former apart from the latter; the two

orders are thus correlated.

The fact of this correlation has been established by two principal

lines of evidence. In the first place, we find all through the animal

kingdom that _size of brain and complexity of nervous system are

matched by range and complexity of mental phenomena_. The brain of man

is, by absolute measurement, an organ of great size; it is heavier

than that of any other animal with the exception of a few of the very

largest (such as the elephant); and in these cases the superior weight

is due, not to superior development of the elaborating part of the

brain, but to the bulk of the receiving and emitting portions, which

are of a size to correspond with the bulk of the body. The brain of

man is also relatively, as compared with the weight of the whole body,

heavier than the brain of any other animal with the exception of a few

of the most highly developed small mammals (such as certain monkeys);

and in these cases again the superiority depends on the bulk of the

receiving and emitting portions of the brain, which reflect the keen

sensitivity and muscular agility of the animal. We know, on the other

side, that the mental life of man is richer than that of any other

creature. Secondly, we find that _disturbance of certain parts of the

brain indicates a certain form of mental disturbance_; and, conversely,

that particular forms of mental disturbance indicate disturbance of

particular parts of the brain. One may become blind from injury to

the brain as well as from such defect of the eye as prevents optical

impressions from reaching the brain.

These are the two lines of evidence. How, though, you may now ask, do

we know anything about the distribution of mental phenomena in the

animal kingdom? =How do we know that the lower animals live in mental

worlds?= and still more how can we say anything as to the nature of the

phenomena that make up those worlds?

Consider first _the case of your fellow-men_. You do not doubt that

they have experiences like your own; you take them for granted, accept

them instinctively as your kin, and are able—the better as you know

them better—to put yourself in their place. If, however, you had to

argue the matter with a sceptic, you would point to the facts of our

common life. Man’s family life, social life, civic life, national life,

is based on the assumption that human experience is alike for everyone,

and would be impossible if the assumption were falsified by the facts.

All these forms of life, for instance, presuppose language and laws;

and language and laws necessarily imply a community of experience.

You would point, also, to likeness of physical organisation, likeness

of sense-organs and nervous system; and you would point, lastly, to

conduct or behaviour. When you feel in a certain way, you act in a

certain way; your behaviour expresses your feeling; and when, under the

same circumstances, a creature of like organisation regularly acts in

the same way, you have a right to infer that this creature has a like

feeling.

Now consider _the higher animals_. They possess a physical

organisation closely resembling that of man. They also behave in ways

that appear to express feeling. If you were familiar only with their

structure, with their sense-organs and nervous system, you would

be ready to endow them with mind; if you knew them only by their

behaviour, you would reach the same conclusion; since you may know

both, and may therefore correlate physical structure with conduct, you

are able to form a fairly accurate idea of their mental world. But

_as you go down the scale of life, difficulties arise_. The nervous

system changes its type, and presently disappears; and behaviour

becomes equivocal, so that students of behaviour dispute whether it

is still expressive or is purely mechanical. The controversy is even

carried over from the animals to the plants; there are psychologists

who seriously attribute a mental life to plants. Be that as it may,

the important point for us is that, as the nervous system simplifies,

so does all available evidence indicate that the world of mind

simplifies with it; and if mind extends further down the line of life

than the nervous system, we have merely to change the wording of our

general statement; we must expand it, and say that, throughout the

realm of life, size and complexity of the nervous system, or of that

vital mechanism which precedes the nervous system and anticipates its

functions, are matched by range and complexity of mental phenomena.

The _nature of these phenomena_ cannot be set forth with any assurance.

It is difficult enough to psychologise the life of the Australian

Arunta, who is our fellow-man, or of the dog who has been our companion

for half-a-dozen years. What shall we say of the spider, or the amœba,

or of sundew and eelgrass? All that we can do is to follow back the

history of the sense-organs, from complex to simple, comparing as we

go; and to observe how the organism behaves under given circumstances,

comparing this behaviour with that of other organisms higher and lower

in the scale, and bringing our comparison back again and again to its

final term in our own experience. We lose a great deal when we lose

the nervous system; but life, after all, is a continuous development;

and the disappearance of this special structure, though it may mean

that our statements become vaguer and less definite, need not make

our general quest hopeless. Honesty of purpose, and a passion for

knowledge, and sound scientific training will carry a man further, even

in this dark continent, than the casual enquirer would deem possible.

§ 4. =The Problem of Psychology.=—The subject-matter of psychology, as

we saw on p. 9, is the whole world as it shows itself to a scientific

scrutiny with man left in. Or, to put the same thing in another way,

psychology gives a scientific description of the whole range of human

experience correlated with the function of the human nervous system.

We have just learned, however, that there is a psychology of the lower

animals, possibly even of plants; and we must therefore say that we

were speaking in § 2 of the subject-matter of human psychology. This

is the psychology that will occupy us in the present book. Let us now

see what our actual task is. =What have we to do, in order to get a

scientific description of mind?=

We must do what everybody does who begins to describe; we must take

things piecemeal. When you are away at the seaside, and are describing

your room in a letter home, you tell of exposure and windows and

carpets and furniture and pictures; you break up the room into parts,

and list them one by one; but you do not list at haphazard; you bring

your items into such connection as will make it easy for your readers

to reconstruct the room. The man of science does the same sort of

thing; he analyses, and all the while he is analysing he has his eyes

open for relations, for putting his elements together again as they

belong. The chemist analyses water into oxygen and hydrogen, and acetic

acid into carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen; and you see at once that this

=analysis= is the first step toward a scientific description; for it

reduces the compounds to their elementary components, and it shows that

the two compounds have certain elements in common. But the chemist,

almost in the same breath, is putting together again. The ordinary

formulas for water and acetic acid, H_{2}O and C_{2}H_{4}O_{2},

indicate that; for they show the number of atoms of the various

elements that are held in the compound. Chemistry also has graphic

formulas, of a kind that look complicated to the outsider but that

are really more instructive than the others,—formulas which show in

what manner, under what laws, the atoms are bound together. Any good

encyclopædia will give you samples.

The psychologist, now, stands before a like problem. The mental world,

no less than the material, comes to us in the gross; mental phenomena

are complex, often highly complex; we must reduce them to their

elements, we must keep analysing till we can analyse no further, if

we are to describe them in a scientific way. And here too =synthesis=

goes hand in hand with analysis. Psychology, to be sure, does not

write graphic formulas; but psychology has to show how its elements go

together, to discover the laws of their connection; we shall find that

tones and colours go together in very different ways. All the while

that we are tearing a bit of our world apart, and finding its elements,

we are trying to put those elements back again in their places and to

reconstruct the original experience.

Synthesis, unfortunately, is often very difficult; and you must notice

that a _failure to reconstruct does not necessarily mean that the

preceding analysis was wrong_. A chemist may analyse a given substance

into a certain number of elements, each one represented by a certain

number of atoms; yet if he puts these elements together again, in the

right proportions, he may—perhaps because he is now working at a

different temperature—come out with another substance of different

properties. His analysis was not therefore wrong; but his attempt at

synthesis is a failure because he has not taken account of all the

relevant circumstances. It may happen similarly in psychology that we

do not know all the relevant circumstances; or it may happen that we

know them but cannot control them; in such cases we cannot reconstruct.

The only thing to do is then to make analysis its own test; we analyse

again and again; and if the result is always the same, we are satisfied

to let it stand. Children who do not know how to prove an example in

arithmetic follow the same plan; if they get the same answer several

times over, and if their schoolmate gets that answer too, they are

satisfied; and when the work has been honestly done, the agreement is

pretty good evidence that they are right.

Notice one other point: that if you sit down to describe, there

is simply no escape from analysis. _To begin a description is to

be analysing._ Well-meaning people sometimes shake their heads at

scientific psychology; all this dissecting work, they say, misses the

real issue; it kills mind; it destroys the living, breathing reality

of experience, and offers in its place a catalogue of dead facts. The

mannikin again! Of course, if mind is a little man inside you, you must

kill him to dissect him,—though he nevertheless crops up again, alive

and well, after the autopsy. The mannikin, as we have seen, cannot

face cold logic. No, the task of science is to describe; if you are to

describe you must analyse; and the results are every bit as real as the

unanalysed experience. Dead facts? But a fact is the most live thing

possible; it will survive any number of theories, and will still give

birth to more.

Lastly, since mental phenomena are =correlated with the function of

the nervous system=, the psychologist’s task is not complete until he

has acquainted himself with the physiology of that system, and has

worked out the correlation as accurately as is possible. Here, again,

is something that you will better understand when you have read further

in the book. For the present we will notice two points. First, the

psychologist can gain access to a large part of his world only by way

of the organs of sense; and it is therefore important that he know

the structure and functions of these organs and their relation to the

brain. Secondly, a train of mental phenomena may be guided and directed

by events, occurring within the nervous system, which themselves have

no counterpart in the world of mind; for, while all mental phenomena

are correlated with processes in the nervous system, not all processes

in the nervous system have mental phenomena to correspond with them.

Unless, then, the psychologist knows the nature of these guiding

events, he will be like the chemist who failed to take account of

temperature; he will lack knowledge of relevant circumstances. Special

books upon the nervous system have been written, giving in outline what

the student of psychology needs to know; some of them are referred

to at the end of the chapter; but it is an advantage to have taken a

practical course in the physiology of the nervous system, and to be

able to think in terms of neural processes. If you have had no such

opportunity you can still learn a good deal from diagrams and verbal

accounts; and you may find comfort in the assurance that there have

been eminent psychologists who knew very little about the brain.

In fine, then, the problem of human psychology is threefold: to analyse

mental phenomena into their elements, to discover the laws of mental

connection, and to work out in detail and under all its phases the

correlation of mind with nervous system.

§ 5. =The Method of Psychology.=—Having learned what we have to do,

let us ask what method we are to follow in doing it. So far as the

nervous system is concerned, it is evident that the psychologist must

take his cue from the physiologist; indeed, this part of his problem

makes him, for the time being, a physiologist, only that his real

interest remains centred in mind. But how is it when he is attacking

the other parts of the problem? Is there a special psychological

method, a peculiar way of working, that he must adopt in his study of

mental phenomena? The answer is No: his =method is that of science in

general=.

This method may be summed up in a single word as =observation=. All

scientific description, all description that reflects a disinterested

and impersonal search for fact, is got by way of observation. And

observation implies three things: a certain attitude towards phenomena,

a vivid experience of the particular phenomenon which is the object of

observation, and an adequate report of this experience in words. The

relation of these three things will be clear if we write a formula for

observation, thus:

psychological (vivid experience → full report).

The adjective outside the bracket shows that we take up a psychological

attitude to the world; in other words, that the world which we are

exploring is (to use our catch-phrase again) the world with _man left

in_. The adjective applies to the whole contents of the bracket; the

experience which we are to have is mental experience, and our account

of it is to be couched in psychological language. We are, then, ready

for the experience; it comes, and we give it our best attention;

we then express it in words; and we try to express it fully and

adequately, in the words that it itself points to and requires. When

the account has been written down, and so made available for other

students, we have completed a psychological observation. When a number

of such observations have been taken, we have the materials for a

scientific description.

_Observation is by no means easy_; “there is not one person in a

hundred,” said Huxley, “who can describe the commonest occurrence with

even an approach to accuracy.” The reasons are partly of a technical

nature; the use of scientific method is a bit of skilled labour, and

skilled labour presupposes training; at first we are likely to be

careless and clumsy; we do not see the need of scrupulous care, just

because we do not know exactly what it is that we are doing. The great

reason lies, however, in that difference between science and common

sense to which we have already adverted; common sense interprets,

and science describes. Malobservation is due, in the great majority

of cases, to the ingrained tendency of the onlooker to interpret, to

explain, what he observes. How many educated men and women to-day

believe that the full moon dissipates the clouds? and how many more

believe that changes of the moon coincide in some way with changes of

the weather?

These remarks apply very definitely to psychology. _The psychological

observer needs technical training, first and foremost, because

mental phenomena never stand still to be observed_; mind is always

in course, always going on; he must learn either to take rapid notes

as the experience is passing, while he still remains alert to the

new phases as they come, or he must register the experience phase

by phase in memory, and reproduce it in words after it has passed.

Nothing could well be more misleading, as a name for mental phenomena,

than the familiar phrase ‘states of consciousness’; for a state is

something relatively stable and permanent. Mental experiences are

moving, proceeding, ongoing experiences; we might make up one of

Lewis Carroll’s portmanteau-words, and say that their essence is a

processence. We shall henceforth speak of them as =mental processes=;

only remember that they are not processes of something or in something,

like the processes of decomposition and fermentation; they are

experiences whose very nature is a proceeding, a course in time.

Secondly, _the psychological observer is badly handicapped by common

sense_, which has long drawn a distinction between the method of

psychology and the method of physics. Psychology is supposed to look

within, to turn its eyes inward; physics is supposed to look out upon

the objective world, and to keep its eyes in their normal position. The

method of psychology is then an introspection or self-contemplation, a

looking-in; and the method of the physical sciences is an inspection, a

looking-at. The self which is thus introspected is, of course, judged

and valued and approved and blamed; we know the ear-marks of common

sense. So we find that the hero of yesterday’s novel “was not given

to introspection. His external interests in life were too engrossing

for him to think deeply or continuously about himself. Such a habit

of mind he used vehemently to deprecate as morbid, egotistical. But

now”—now the fateful girl is on the scene; the hero begins to think

about himself; and flatters himself, poor man, that he is turning

psychologist.

Unfortunately, neither a keen appreciation of his own virtue nor a

rooted distrust of his own powers makes a man into a psychologist.

Science turns its back upon the world of values. If, then, we are to

keep the word _introspection_ for the method of psychology, we must

write the equations:

introspection = psychological (vivid experience → full report)

inspection = physical (vivid experience → full report)

where the adjectives outside the brackets mean simply what we have

already stated them to mean. When once the initial attitude has been

taken, and the world to be explored has thus been determined, the

methods are the same. The beginner in psychology will however find,

again and again, that his common-sense self stands in the way of

disinterested observation; and as the word introspection contains a

reference to this self, he may prefer to drop it altogether.

So much for observation in general! When we come to particulars, we

find that science, wherever possible, has recourse to =experiment=.

This does not mean that science renounces observation. For an

experiment, if we push our definition back to fundamentals, is simply

_an observation that may be repeated, that may be isolated, and that

may be varied_. See the advantages! Repetition gives us plenty of time

for observation; we need not mind overlooking something now, since we

shall have the opportunity of picking it up later; and we can go on,

observing and observing, until our description of the phenomenon is as

complete as it can be made. Isolation makes our task easier; disturbing

influences are ruled out; our attention is not distracted; we can give

ourselves wholly to the matter in hand. Variation—the substituting of

one factor for another in successive observations, or the emphasising

in one observation of a factor that was obscure in another—helps us to

clear up doubtful points; to distinguish what is universal from what

is only accidental in the phenomenon we are observing; and to bring

this phenomenon into relation with kindred phenomena. _Repetition saves

hurry and worry; isolation prevents distraction; variation keeps us

from jumping at conclusions._ These are the advantages of experiment;

and all experiments, in physics, in chemistry, in biology, everywhere,

fall under this definition.

Psychology needs the experimental method for both the reasons noted

above: because the observed phenomena are elusive and slippery

processes, and because the observer is warped and biassed by common

sense. We may therefore show by an example _how psychological

experiment is possible_. Suppose that we wish to find out how a printed

word is perceived,—whether we read it letter by letter, or take in its

form as a whole, or take in certain letters clearly and the general

form vaguely. We first prepare our material. We print upon cards, or

photograph upon lantern slides, a large number of words. We employ

different printing types; different groups of letters; different

lengths of words; single words and groups of words; words properly

spelled, and words altered by mutilation or omission of particular

letters at different parts of the word. Every one of these classes of

stimuli, as the words may be technically called, is represented by a

number of cards or slides. The stimuli are mixed in haphazard order,

and are thrown upon the screen by a reflectoscope or projection lantern

in an otherwise dark room; a pneumatic shutter before the lantern

makes it possible to show them for a brief time, say, a fifth of a

second. All this apparatus is put in the charge of an experimenter.

When the material is ready, and the whole arrangement works properly,

an observer is called in. He works for a limited time, at the same

hour every day, and only after a certain time has been allowed for his

eyes to accustom themselves to the dark. The stimuli are presented at

regular intervals. The observer reports what he perceives at every

exposure of a stimulus, and the experimenter writes down what he says.

It is plain, now, that these observations may be repeated. For one

thing, there is a group of like cards in every class; and for another

thing, the observer himself (since he works every day at the same

time and under the same circumstances) is a fairly constant quantity.

Besides, the observations may also be made by other observers, in

other laboratories, under precisely the same circumstances; they may

be repeated in just the same sense that a physical observation may be

repeated. Secondly, the observations are isolated; they are made in

a dark and quiet room, free from outside disturbance. No doubt, the

observer’s thoughts may wander in the intervals between observations.

For this reason, the experimenter gives a preconcerted signal, or calls

out _Now_, a second or two before a word is shown; this signal warns

the observer to pull himself together and to free himself from any

such distractions. Thirdly, the observations are varied; for we employ

all sorts of words, both normally printed and variously changed; and

the stimuli may be presented for various lengths of time. Here, then,

is a true psychological experiment; and if many observers, after many

observations, give the same account of their perceptive experience,

that account may stand as established psychological fact.

Not all mental phenomena can be subjected to experiment so neatly

as this particular perception; and the psychologist must still fall

back, more often than he likes, upon casual observation or imperfect

experiments. The reason is that _psychology has only recently become an

experimental science_. Common-sense psychology is very old: we have a

complete treatise in Greek from the hand of Aristotle, and a text-book

in Pali compiled by some Buddhist sage, both dating from the fourth

century B.C. But while it is in the sixteenth century of our era that

the physicist abandons scholastic speculation and begins to study

nature by experiment, it is not till the last quarter of the nineteenth

that the psychologist follows suit. In or about the year 1875 the late

Professor James, then instructor in anatomy and physiology at Harvard,

had a single room devoted to psychological apparatus and experiments;

and in 1879 Professor Wundt opened at the University of Leipsic, in a

very modest way, the laboratory which has since become the most famous

in the world. It is true that experiments in psychology had been made

by individuals long before laboratories were thought of; but the same

thing is true of physics and chemistry; and we may remember, when we

come to the weak places of psychological exposition, that laboratory

research and instruction are not yet fifty years old.

§ 6. =Process and Meaning.=—Science, we said on p. 4, does not deal

with values or meanings or uses, but only with facts; and we have just

seen how words, which in everyday life are practically all meaning, may

be made the objects of psychological experiment. Still, in their case,

after all, we were simply ignoring meaning; so far as the observer was

able to read words at all from the stimuli flashed on the screen, he

read words which had a meaning, and a meaning that the experimenter

might have discovered if he had been interested in it. We have not

offered any evidence that =mental processes are not intrinsically

meaningful=, that meaning is not an essential aspect of their nature;

we have just assumed that they may be treated, scientifically, as bare

facts. Let us now see whether meaning is essential to them or not.

There are several heads of evidence.

First, _meaning may be stripped from the mental process_ to which it

normally belongs. Repeat aloud some word—the first that occurs to you;

_house_, for instance—over and over again; presently the sound of

the word becomes meaningless and blank; you are puzzled and a morsel

frightened as you hear it. The same loss of meaning is observed in

pathological cases; there are patients who can hear and see words as

plainly as you can, but who are unable to understand what they hear and

see; the bare perception is there, but it is bereft of its meaning.

Secondly, a _meaningless experience may take on a meaning_. A friend

shows you a card, upon which is scrawled a tangle of lines; you cannot

make head or tail of it. He tells you to look at the back; you see

the date there written; you think at once of a great earthquake; you

realise that the scrawl is a seismographic record. Meaning has thus

been attached or added to a bare perception. Similarly, in learning

a new script or a new language, you attach meaning to what was at

first meaningless. The first experiments in the teaching of the blind

deaf-mute Laura Bridgman “were made by pasting upon several common

articles, such as keys, spoon, knives, and the like, little paper

labels on which the name of the article had been printed in raised

letters.” These meaningless feels, as they were at the outset, came

presently to mean the objects with which the teacher had connected them.

Thirdly, _an experience and its meaning may be disjoined in time_. We

often ask, in conversation, to have a remark repeated; we have heard

without understanding; but before the speaker has time to repeat, we

ourselves begin to reply; the meaning has come, but comes after an

appreciable interval. So we may have to wait a little while before

we can recall the meaning of some foreign word that nevertheless,

as we say, we know perfectly well. This disjunction is also found in

pathological cases. A patient “with slight stupor could not answer

questions except very slowly. She was constantly saying: ‘I see

everything, but I don’t know anything.’ It took her five minutes to

tell the time when she was shown a clock.”

Here the experience comes first, and the meaning follows after.

This order may, however, be reversed. You want to know the German

of the proverb ‘Out of the frying pan into the fire’; you have the

meaning, but you cannot think of the words; and presently the words

leap to mind, _aus dem Regen in die Traufe_, out of the rain into the

roof-drip. Or you know what you want to say, but you cannot get this

meaning into words. An author who is very definitely aware of the

meaning he wishes to convey to his reader may nevertheless have to

write a paragraph ten or twenty times over before the sight and sound

of his own words give back that meaning to himself. Or again, you may

anticipate, in listening to a lecture, the meaning of what the lecturer

is going to say, and yet you may be surprised at the words which he

actually uses.

Fourthly, _one and the same experience may have several meanings_.

Any dictionary is a proof of that! A lecturer may demonstrate the

fact to a class by drawing on the blackboard, line by line, the

figure of some such thing as, for instance, a desk-telephone. As the

drawing proceeds, the lines may mean a pump, or a student lamp, or an

electric portable, or a railway semaphore, or a jack, or various other

things. In this case, to be sure, a single meaning is given when the

drawing is complete; but there are plenty of experiences—a bit of bad

handwriting, a distant object, an obscure patch in a painting—that

leave us permanently unable to decide among several meanings. How often

do we worry over a chance remark: it seemed to mean this, but could it

have meant that, or is it possible that it really meant the other?

Fifthly, _one and the same meaning may attach to several experiences_.

You walk into a room, and there see a table; you go into the same room

in the dark and hurt yourself, and you complain that you ran against

the table; you hear a noise overhead, and wish that the maid would

not drag that table about. Here the meaning of a particular table is

carried by three modes of perceptive experience. In certain forms of

mental disorder one obsessing meaning colours all the experiences of

the daily life. The patient “scents poison and treachery on all sides.

He has slowly convinced himself by numerous tests in little things

that he is no longer liked. The workmen are refractory and disobedient

with him more than with anyone else. His chiefs and his fellows play

malicious tricks upon him. His food tastes differently, and does not

agree with him. When he goes to another town, it is plain that his

enemies have anticipated him by writing letters to his injury.” Every

experience that this man has means persecution.

Sixthly, _meaning and mental process are not covariants_. Richness

and fullness of experience do not necessarily correspond with wealth

of meaning; you may, in fact, be bewildered, and fail to find a

meaning just because there is so much material to take in; your first

hearing of a Wagner opera gave you, probably, more sound than sense.

Conversely, poverty of experience does not necessarily mean loss or

reduction of meaning; if that were the case, we could not pack so much

meaning into such little things as words.

All this evidence would be greatly strengthened if we went beyond the

limits of individual experience, and compared man with man, profession

with profession, race with race, age with age. What is meaningless to

me might be full of meaning to you; the same landscape yields different

meanings to the geologist and the farmer; a protruded tongue means

insult here, but politeness in Thibet; the art of the telegrapher

would have spelled black magic a few centuries ago. Enough has perhaps

been said to give plausibility, at any rate, to the statement that

=mental processes do not intrinsically mean=, that meaning is not a

constituent part of their nature; and that may suffice for the present;

we shall come back again to meaning later. Value and use need hardly be

discussed; they are, far more clearly than meaning, additional to (and

detachable from) experience. If, however, the reader thinks that the

point should be worked out in their case also, he may put them through

the same sort of examination as that to which we have just subjected

meaning; evidence will at once be forthcoming.

§ 7. =The Scope of Psychology.=—Science, like the Elephant’s Child in

the story, is full of an insatiable curiosity. Just as the physicist

reaches out, analysing and measuring, to the farthest limits of the

stellar universe, so does the psychologist seek to explore every nook

and corner of the world of mind; nay more, he will follow after a mere

suspicion of mind; we have seen him trying to psychologise the plants.

The result is a vast number of books and monographs and articles on

psychology, written by men and women of very different interests,

knowledge and training; for science does not advance on an ordered

front, but still depends largely on individual initiative. A high

authority on the Middle Ages has said that one mortal life would hardly

suffice for the reading of a moderate part of mediæval Latin; and

the psychologist must recognise, whether with pride or with despair,

that one life-time is hardly enough for the mastery of even a single

limited field of psychology. The student has to get clear on general

principles, and then to resign himself to work intensively upon some

special aspect of the subject-matter,—keeping as closely as he may in

touch with his fellow-workers, and aiming to see his own labours in a

just perspective, but realising that psychology as a whole is beyond

his individual compass.

Does that sound exaggerated? Let us then attempt a rough

classification! We begin with the =psychology of the normal mind=.

Under this heading we have to distinguish (1) _human_ psychology. Human

psychology may be _general_, the psychology of the adult civilised

man, which forms the principal topic of the text-books of psychology;

_special_, the psychology of the human mind at some other stage of

individual development: infancy, childhood, adolescence, senility;

_differential_, the study of the differences between individual minds;

or _genetic_, the study of the development of mind from childhood to

manhood, and its gradual decay in old age. (2) _Animal_ psychology may

be subdivided, in the same way, into general, special, differential

and genetic psychology. (3) _Plant_ psychology is still in its first

beginnings; but many students are taking the subject seriously. (4)

_Comparative_ psychology is the comparative study, either of various

types of animal mind, or of the minds of plants, animals and man. It,

again, may be general, special or genetic.

All these psychologies deal with the _individual_ mind. There is also

a _collective_ psychology; and, though its divisions are not yet

sharply marked off from one another, we may distinguish (5) _social_

psychology, which includes the study of what is called the social

consciousness, and also the scientific study of the products of the

collective mind: language, law and custom, myth and religion; (6)

_ethnic_ psychology, the differential psychology of nations or races;

and (7) _class_ psychology, the differential psychology of classes or

professions.

Turn now to the =psychology of the abnormal mind=. Here we find,

under the heading of _individual_ psychology, (8) the psychology of

_deficient and exceptional minds_; of blind deaf-mutism, of genius,

of the subnormal and the supernormal child; (9) the psychology

of _temporary mental derangement_; of dream, of hypnosis, of

intoxications, of occasional hallucination and illusion; and (10) the

psychology of _permanent mental disorder_, of the chronic derangements

of insanity. We may also study (11) the psychology of _temporary

derangement_ of the _collective_ mind, that is, of the manias or mental

epidemics that sometimes sweep society: the mediæval dance-manias,

unmotived panics, outbursts of superstition, of religious persecution.

If we proceed further, from psychology proper to =psychotechnics=, or

to what is ordinarily termed applied psychology, we have the great

departments of (12) _educational_ psychology, (13) _medical_ psychology

or psychotherapeutics, (14) _juristic_ psychology, or the psychology of

evidence and testimony, and (15) _economic_ psychology, which includes

such things as vocational psychology and the psychology of advertising.

You need not ascribe any special importance to this classification;

still less need you memorise it. The various topics might very likely

be better arranged, and the list is by no means complete. Realise,

however, that every term in the list has its text-books and treatises,

its manuals and monographs, and very likely its magazine or magazines;

realise again that, although the emphasis varies in the different

countries, the list might be filled out not alone in English, but in

all the chief European tongues; and remember, lastly, that some of the

headings have a very long history, and a correspondingly long series of

printed works over and above those that represent current knowledge.

You then get a glimmering of =the range and scope of psychology=. It

is true, of course, that much of what has been printed is out of date,

or inaccurate, or superficial, or prejudiced, and for these or like

reasons may safely be scrapped. Yet it all has to be sifted.

_The mere bulk of psychological material would be less formidable if

every writer adopted the same principles and wrote from the same point

of view; but that is hardly to be expected._ Psychology has always been

exposed to the infection of common sense; it has only recently turned

to scientific methods; and when the time came for it to take its place

among the sciences, there was naturally difference of opinion regarding

the standpoint it should assume, the procedure it should follow, the

model it should seek to copy. Where such differences of opinion obtain,

the best way to begin your study is to =master one system thoroughly=;

your ideas are thus made consistent and your knowledge receives an

orderly arrangement; then, as you read further, you can use this

system as a touch-stone whereby to test new ideas and to arrange new

knowledge; and if the new ideas seem preferable to the old, or if the

old framework breaks down under the new knowledge, you can alter your

own system accordingly. If you begin, on the contrary, by studying a

number of works abreast, you are liable to become confused. And it

is better to be wrong than to be muddled; for truth, as Bacon said,

emerges more quickly from error than from confusion.

§ 8. =A Personal Word to the Reader.=—These introductory sections are

not easy. The only way to make them easy would be, as an Irishman might

say, to leave the difficult things out; but then you would come to the

later chapters, where we study mental phenomena in the concrete, with

all sorts of prepossessions and misunderstandings; psychology would be

one long difficulty instead of being, as it henceforth ought to be, a

bit of straight sailing.

So you must face the initial difficulty and overcome it. Indeed, =you

must do more than merely understand=. The author’s undergraduates

who break down in a preliminary examination always explain that they

followed the lectures perfectly, and thought they understood the

text-book, but that they were somehow unable to put things properly in

their own words. The author’s small daughter who comes home with an

elaborate example in compound interest explains, in the same manner,

that she thoroughly understood the rule when She explained it, but that

she can’t now see just how to go to work for herself. It may be that

these excuses are not wholly reliable; they bear, at any rate, upon the

present point. You must not only understand what you read as you read

it; you must exercise your thought upon what you have read; you must

be able to explain the paragraphs, in your own words, to others; you

must find instances and illustrations for yourself; you must make the

substance of the paragraphs a part of your habitual mental furniture;

you must note how the old ways of thinking crop up to mislead you, and

must correct and criticise the natural man. In a word, just as you

practise your way into a language by reading, translating, writing,

speaking; or just as you practise your way into algebra by doing

exercise after exercise until the rule seems to be part of you and

applies itself of its own accord; so must you =keep practising your

psychology= until it becomes instinctive. You will gain some help by

answering the appended questions; but after the book has done all that

it can for you, the real induction into psychology remains to do for

yourself.

Some of the questions are concerned with forms of expression; and you

should take these very seriously, since _language will be one of your

greatest stumbling-blocks_. Language is older than science, and has

developed under pressure of practical needs. Hence the phrases that

come most naturally to your lips may embody a view of the world, or an

attitude toward experience, that is totally foreign to the scientific

context. If a visitor from Mars heard us all talking about the sunset,

what would he think of our knowledge of the heavenly bodies? Yet we

cannot escape from language; and if Newton could express his ideas in

Latin, we ought to be able to express ours in English. It is a good

plan, at the start, to have your technical definitions always at hand,

and to try the effect of substituting these definitions for the words

that you have been using; if the resulting clumsiness makes sense, you

may let your first expressions pass; but if not, you should try again.

You will notice, as you read on in the book, that back references

become numerous. Be advised to look these references up! They send

you, in every case, to a particular page, so that their finding is

easy, and you can refresh your memory without any great loss of time;

though, for that matter, it will do no harm to glance over the section

in which they occur. If you, on your part, want to refer to some past

discussion, consult the index; it has been made fairly full, and is

meant to be used.

Questions and Exercises

Many of the books to which you will be referred, now and later, have

appeared in numerous editions, library and popular, English and

American. The references are made so complete that you will easily find

the corresponding passages in editions other than those used by the

author.

(1) Discuss the following definitions of science. If you have access to

the books, read the passages in which the definitions occur; if not, do

the best you can with your present knowledge. Try to see a reason even

for the definitions that you cannot accept.

(_a_) Science is perfected common sense (Huxley). The definition

accords with the view of Spencer that science and ordinary knowledge

are allied in nature, and that the one is but a perfected and extended

form of the other. What is there in the common interests of these

two men, or in the period in which they lived, to account for such a

definition?

(_b_) Reduced to its lowest terms, science is the observation of

phenomena and the colligation of the results of observation into groups

(Hill).

(_c_) When may any subject be said to enter the scientific stage?

I suppose when the facts of it begin to resolve themselves into

groups; when phenomena are no longer isolated experiences, but appear

in connection and order; when, after certain antecedents, certain

consequents are uniformly seen to follow; when facts enough have been

collected to furnish a basis for conjectural explanation, and when

conjectures have so far ceased to be utterly vague, that it is possible

in some degree to foresee the future by the help of them (Froude).

(_d_) Mechanics is the science of motion; and its problem is to

describe the motions that occur in nature _completely_ and _in the

simplest way_ (Kirchhoff). Can this definition of mechanics be

generalised, so that it applies to science at large?

T. H. Huxley, Science Primers: Introductory, 1880, 18 f.; H. Spencer,

The Genesis of Science, in Essays, ii., 1891, 8; A. Hill, Introduction

to Science, 1900, 3; J. A. Froude, The Science of History, in Short

Studies on Great Subjects, First Series, i., 1901, 13 f.; G. R.

Kirchhoff, Vorlesungen über mathematische Physik: Mechanik, 1883, 1.

(2) Helmholtz tells us that whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks

after immediately practical utility, may generally rest assured that he

will seek in vain; and Clifford asserts that the most useful parts of

science have been investigated for the sake of truth, and not for their

usefulness. Yet Pearson holds that one of the claims of science to our

support is the increased comfort that it adds to practical life. How do

you reconcile these statements?

H. von Helmholtz, On the Relation of Natural Science to General

Science, in Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects, i., 1904, 25;

W. K. Clifford, On Some of the Conditions of Mental Development,

in Lectures and Essays, i., 1879, 104; K. Pearson, The Grammar of

Science, ch. i., 1900, 29 f., 37.

(3) Discuss the following definitions of psychology:

(_a_) The science which describes and explains the phenomena of

consciousness, as such (Ladd).

(_b_) The science of behaviour (Pillsbury).

(_c_) The science of individual experience (Ward).

(_d_) The positive science of mental process (Stout).

G. T. Ladd, Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory, 1894, 1; W. B.

Pillsbury, The Essentials of Psychology, 1911, 5; J. Ward, Psychology,

in Encyclopædia Britannica, xxii., 1911, 548; G. F. Stout, Analytic

Psychology, i., 1896, 1.

(4) Can you bring the following series of statements into relation,

and show that they illustrate natural (even necessary) stages in the

history of human thought? (Note the phrasing in every case!)

(_a_) The savage thinker seems to have taken for granted, as a matter

of course, the ordinary operations of his own mind. It hardly occurred

to him to think about the machinery of thinking (Tylor).

(_b_) The modern mind is, what the ancient mind was not, brooding and

self-conscious; and its meditative self-consciousness has discovered

depths in the human soul which the Greeks and Romans did not dream of,

and would not have understood (Mill).

(_c_) When to save his own soul became man’s first business, he must

needs know that soul, must study, must examine it. Prescribed as a

duty, introspection became at once a main characteristic of religious

life (Burr).

(_d_) There is nothing more interesting to the ordinary individual than

the workings of his own mind. This interest alone would justify the

existence of the science [of psychology] (Pillsbury).

(_e_) If we could say in English ‘it thinks’, as we say ‘it rains’ or

‘it blows’, we should be stating the fact most simply and with the

minimum of assumption (James).

E. B. Tylor, Animism, in Primitive Culture, i., 1891, 497; W. Knight,

Rectorial Addresses delivered at the University of St. Andrews,

1863-1893; J. S. Mill, 1894, 38; A. R. Burr, Religious Confession and

Confessants, 1914, 86; W. B. Pillsbury, _op. cit._, 5; W. James, The

Principles of Psychology, i., 1890, 224 f.

(5) What is the earliest notion of your own mind that you can recall?

(6) Four newspapers describe the same gown as gold brocade, white silk,

light mauve, and sea-green with cream or ivory sheen on it. How could

this difference of report have arisen?

(7) Newton is said to have discovered the law of gravitation by

observing the fall of an apple from a bough. Was this a simple

observation, or could it be said to have anything of the experiment

about it?

(8) What are the characteristics of a good observer? of a good

experimenter?

(9) The older psychologies speak, in technical terms, not of mental

processes but of powers, faculties, capacities of the mind. What view

of mind do these expressions imply?

(10) Rousseau remarked that definitions would be all very well if we

did not use words to make them; _les définitions pourraient être bonnes

si l’on n’employait pas des mots pour les faire_ (Œuvres complètes de

J. J. Rousseau: Émile, tome i., 1823, livre ii., 160). Illustrate this

remark by reference to psychology.

(11) Try to describe your experience on some occasion which leads you

to say: (_a_) I have made up my mind; (_b_) I have half a mind to do

so-and-so; (_c_) That puts me in mind of so-and-so. Try to get down to

the bare facts; it will be difficult; but try again and again, and do

not be satisfied to report meanings.

(12) Describe your fountain-pen from the points of view of common

sense, of physics, and of psychology. Do not attempt too much detail,

but get the differences in point of view clearly on paper.

References for Further Reading

§ 1. Some general references have already been given; add W. Whewell,

History of the Inductive Sciences, 3d ed., 1857. The book is out of

date, but still useful. For science in the Middle Ages, see H. O.

Taylor, The Mediæval Mind, 2d ed., 1914 (references in index). For

the genesis of science, consult Tylor, as cited above; J. G. Frazer,

Balder the Beautiful, 1913, 304 ff.; all the volumes of The Golden

Bough are instructive. For an object-lesson in scientific thinking

take H. Spencer, The Study of Sociology, 9th ed., 1880 (also no. 5 of

International Scientific Series).

§ 2. Tylor, as above; J. G. Frazer, Taboo and the Perils of the Soul,

1911, 26 ff.; E. B. Titchener, Psychology: Science or Technology? in

Popular Science Monthly, lxxxiv., 1914, 39 ff.; J. Ward, Psychology, in

Encyclopædia Britannica, xxii., 1911, 547 f.

§ 3. W. McDougall, Physiological Psychology, 1905; W. Wundt, Principles

of Physiological Psychology, i., 1904, 1 ff., 27 ff., 280 ff.; R. M.

Yerkes, Animal Psychology and Criteria of the Psychic, in Journal of

Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, ii., 1905, 141 ff.; M.

F. Washburn, The Animal Mind, 1908; A. W. Yerkes, Mind in Plants, in

The Atlantic Monthly, Novr. 1914, 634 ff.; J. B. Watson, Behaviour, An

Introduction to Comparative Psychology, 1914.

§ 4. O. Kuelpe, Introduction to Philosophy, 1897, 55 ff.; Wundt, as

above; G. T. Ladd and R. S. Woodworth, Elements of Physiological

Psychology, 1911; E. W. Fiske, An Elementary Study of the Brain, 1913;

K. Dunlap, An Outline of Psychobiology, 1914.

§ 5. W. S. Jevons, The Principles of Science, 1900, bk. iv., chs.

xviii., xix.; E. B. Titchener, Prolegomena to a Study of Introspection,

in American Journal of Psychology, xxiii., 1912, 427 ff.; O. Kuelpe,

Outlines of Psychology, 1909, § 2; W. A. Hammond, Aristotle’s

Psychology, 1902; C. A. F. Rhys Davids, A Buddhist Manual of

Psychological Ethics, 1900.

§ 6. M. Howe and F. H. Hall, Laura Bridgman, 1903, 49 f.; G. Stoerring,

Mental Pathology in its Relation to Normal Psychology, 1907 (the

quotations from this work are sometimes condensed in the text); S. I.

Franz, Handbook of Mental Examination Methods, 1912, 68, 80.

§ 7. Add, as typical, to works already cited: W. Preyer, The Mind of

the Child, 1888-9 (human special); J. M. Baldwin, Mental Development

in the Child and the Race, 1906 (human genetic); _id._, Social and

Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development, 1906 (social); G. Le

Bon, The Psychology of Peoples, 1898 (ethnic); A. Moll, Hypnotism,

1891 (derangement); G. Le Bon, The Crowd, 1910; J. Jastrow, Fact and

Fable in Psychology, 1900 (collective derangement); E. L. Thorndike,

The Principles of Teaching Based on Psychology, 1906; H. Münsterberg,

Psychology, General and Applied, 1914. For the history of psychology,

see O. Klemm, A History of Psychology, 1914; M. Dessoir, Outlines of

the History of Psychology, 1912.