METHODS OF PSYCHOLOGY. 179 



If clarified experience is subverted by logic, we can of course be- 

 come sceptics; but it is safer and wiser to wait awhile. Experience 

 may become more clarified, our premises may prove to be at fault, even 

 our syllogisms may be false. When it is said that a psychologist must 

 be either an interactionist of a parallelist, and we find insurmountable 

 difficulties in the way of his being either, the trouble may be with the 

 original assumptions. Matter and consciousness may not be two en- 

 tities set over against each other. A perception may be both a part of 

 my consciousness and a part of the physical world; an object may be 

 at the same time in a world of matter in motion and in the microcosm 

 of my individual mind. As my colleague, Professor Dewey, starting 

 from an idealistic standpoint, claims, we may simply be giving differ- 

 ent names to activity when it is tensional and when it is relatively 

 stable; or as my colleague, Professor Woodbridge, starting from a 

 realistic standpoint, suggests, the relation of consciousness to objects 

 may be analogous to that of space to objects. 



As I have said, the relations of mind to body and the distinction 

 between consciousness and matter are the last word of a philosophy 

 that is not yet written, and I have no competence or wish to discuss 

 them here. But the task has been assigned to me of considering the 

 scope, conceptions and methods of psychology, and it is my business 

 to define the field of psychology or to acknowledge my inability to do 

 so. I must choose the latter alternative. I can only say that psy- 

 chology is what the psychologist is interested in qua psychologist. If 

 it is said that this is tautological, it may be replied" that tautology is 

 characteristic of definitions. If psychology is defined as the ' science 

 of mind ' or, what in my opinion is better, ' the science of minds ' the 

 tautology is equal, and it appears to be more possible to determine by 

 an inductive study the professional interests of psychologists than to 

 define the nature of mind or consciousness. Further, I am not con- 

 vinced that psychology should be limited to the study of consciousness 

 as such, in so far as this can be set off from the physical world. Psy- 

 chology apart from consciousness is doubtless an absurdity, but so also 

 is mathematics or botany. I admire the products of the Herbartian 

 school and the ever-increasing acuteness of introspective analysis from 

 Locke to Ward. All this forms an important chapter in modern psy- 

 chology; but the positive scientific results are small in quantity when 

 compared with the objective experimental work accomplished in the 

 past fifty years. There is no conflict between introspective analysis 

 and objective experiment — on the contrary, they should and do con- 

 tinually cooperate. But the rather widespread notion that there is no 

 psychology apart from introspection is refuted by the brute argument 

 of accomplished fact. 



