GENERAL OBSERVATIONS: ON SEEING THINGS 637 



what the master had in mind, but this was the very last thing the 

 student thought of.^ Why? 



Learn then to see, and to think upon what you have seen! 

 And look again and again lest you should miss something. 



By seeing I mean not loose general observations such as 

 would enable you to distinguish a man from a tree (Smile, if you 

 will, but this is the common way of seeing. I have exaggerated 

 it only a little) but patient, long-continued discriminating 

 observation. In this way, gradually, all the hidden details of an 

 object become visible. When they are clear enough to be drawn 

 or to be reflected upon as separate entities then only can you 

 be said to know them. By thinking I mean prolonged log- 

 ical reflection leading to clarity of view, not mere hap-hazard 

 dreaming. 



''Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without 

 learning is perilous." 



ON EXPERIMENTATION 



Observations and reflections, however extensive and pro- 

 found, are not sufficient guides in pathology. These might serve 

 to make a statesman or a philosopher but not a scientist. 

 Things observed are to be questioned — and this questioning is 

 done by means of well-planned experiments. These experi- 

 ments lead necessarily to many new observations and often to a 

 materially changed point of view, so that the imperfect frame- 

 work of a discovery, which may have been nine-tenths insight 

 at first, is gradually filled in and worked over experimentally 

 until it becomes a substantial and lasting structure. In path- 

 <)logy, as in all subjects dealing with phenomena, experimental 

 tests of the validity of one's ideas are necessary at every step 

 and the term ''scientist" is a misnomer when applied to any 

 one who does not try his hypotheses in the reducing fire of 

 experiment. The world is full of shouting theorists who have 

 never made an experiment in all their lives, certainly not 

 pne worthy of the name, and yet they are asking all men to 

 follow them. This is why most politics, economics, socialism, 

 spiritualism, psychic research, psychology, philosophy and 



^ Doubtless, Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) tried this on many students, but Dr. 

 W. J. Beal is the one who told it to me. 



