E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION. 205 



apace, and psychotechnics has come to the forefront of discussion. 

 It does not follow, however, that my criticism is out of date. For 

 field-psychology is still in its first beginnings. Something, no doubt, 

 has been learned ; and an expedition that we should organize today 

 would hardly be content to repeat the programme laid out for Mur- 

 ray Island. The labor and ingenuity spent upon mental tests have 

 not been simply thrown away. I doubt, nevertheless, whether the 

 new expedition could be certain of improving, in any material way, 

 upon the work of its predecessor; and if this doubt is well founded 

 — nay, if there is any doubt in the matter at all — then a detailed criti- 

 cism of the older tests, supported as mine is by collateral experiment, 

 ought to be of service. 



It is, perhaps, not out of place to add that I am criticizing experi- 

 ments with which I have the greatest sympathy. My own lifelong in- 

 terest in psychology came by way of anthropology; and if I chose the 

 laboratory in preference to the field, that was only because I was 

 convinced that the first necessity of experimental psychology, as a 

 science, was the standardizing of instruments and procedures. I 

 realize that time presses ; the primitive stocks are fast changing or 

 disappearing. I realize, too, the difficulties of work in the field : the 

 unaccustomed mode of life, the lowering of health, the indifiference 

 and trickiness of the native, the frequent breakage or failure of ap- 

 paratus and the impossibility of replacement or of proper repair. 

 My criticisms are thus offered in the friendliest spirit ; and my aim 

 is to lead up to positive suggestion rather than to conclude with a 

 merely negative result. 



One further point, and these introductory remarks may be ended. 

 The critic of tests performed in the field is at a serious though un- 

 avoidable disadvantage, in that he has nothing more to go upon than 

 what the field-workers include in their report. When an experi- 

 mental study is published by a laboratory, it is open to any other 

 laboratory to repeat the work with observers of the same order of 

 intelligence and training, by the same methods, with similar instru- 

 ments. Tests made in Torres Straits cannot be thus controlled ; the 

 printed pages are all that we have. I have tried, nevertheless, to 

 make parallel and illustrative experiments of my own. If the reader 



