76 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



COMPABATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 



By Pkofrssor C. JUDSON HERR1CK 



DENISON UNIVERSITY 



/~] OMPAEATIVE psychology has arrived. We have had our Des- 

 ^-^ cartes and our psychic epiphenomenalists ; and their descendants, 

 the vital mechanicians, are still with us. And no Luther has arisen 

 to shatter at a stroke their gods (of tin and other artificers' materials) 

 and proclaim the reformation of psychology in a single revolutionary 

 coup. No Darwin has struck off a hypothesis of psychogenesis full 

 grown and puissant to drive its decadent rivals from the field by virtue 

 of its own all-assimilating vitality. But the leaven of Darwinism 

 has been slowly permeating, even into the dusty meal bins of specula- 

 tive psychology. In spite of fervid anathemas from the citadels of 

 the categorical intuitionalists, the steady growth of genetic ideas has 

 by natural process begun to corrode the very foundations of these 

 strongholds of conservatism ; for have we not already begun our natural 

 history of the intuitions and their genesis ? 



It has been pointed out as a most hopeful sign that this new 

 psychology (unlike that sometimes falsely so called) does not come 

 bearing as its ikons a glittering array of brass instruments of precision 

 and tomes of statistics; but, like the kingdom of Heaven, it cometh 

 not with observation, as a change of mental attitude among both 

 psychologists and naturalists. 



There is apparently no general recognition of the revolutionary 

 character of this feature, which is implicit in many movements now 

 current in science and philosophy — movements bearing as diverse labels 

 in the philosophical vernacular of the day as ' experimental evolution/ 

 'genetic psychology' (in a score of mutually antagonistic forms), 

 ' pragmatism,' ' functional philosophy,' ' paidology,' ' dynamic monism/ 

 etc., etc. So far as the genetic element in these systems is true, it is 

 destined to outlive its ephemeral and sometimes bizarre setting, and 

 the day when we shall have a generally accepted doctrine of psycho- 

 genesis and psychic evolution is certainly not far off, though it would 

 be folly to assert that this day has yet dawned. 



One of the most valuable features of the remarkable book by 

 Stanley Hall on the psychology of adolescence is the emphasis which 

 he places on the study of the past of mind as a corrective to the 

 morbid speculations on its future which comprise the larger part of 



