200 president's address — section J. 



is a danger even for cultivated minds of attaching an exaggerated 

 importance to puzzling phenomena, and of over-credulity ; and 

 the risk is greater when inquiries are undertaken by those who are 

 devoid of the requisite knowledge of nature, and of human nature, 

 and of the resources of the prestidigitateur. But yet it must be 

 recorded with satisfaction that attempts are being made to verify 

 and classify the facts in the spirit of exact science, with a view to 

 their ultimate explanation. We are entitled to set aside as un- 

 worthy of credence every statement which shuns the light of 

 scientific inquiry ; the carefully guarded circle and the darkened 

 room may be left unentered ; but, on the other hand. Science must 

 not shrink from the task of examining all alleged phenomena, 

 whether physical or psychical, which challenge her verdict. 

 Imposture may thus be mitigated, and any residual phenomena 

 which remain must be worthy of attention on their own account, 

 as well as in their bearing on other facts of mind. 



Psychology, in its crudest form, has always contained some 

 reference to the bodily organism. The reflective separation of 

 mind from body was, indeed, the beginnmg of mental S' ience. 

 And it is clearly impossible, in classifying sensations as states of 

 consciousness, to describe the sensations of vision without reference 

 to the eye, or the sensations of sound without reference to the ear. 

 Such obvious connections as these led to more minute inquiries into 

 the connection of mind wdth the mechanism of the body ; but it is 

 only within the lifetime of the present generation that physio- 

 logical psychology has assumed much scientific importance. 

 Phrenology having been s^t aside as an ambitious, but inadequite, 

 attempt to exhibit the correlations of mental and cerebral facts, 

 a new beginning has been patiently made. How, and to what 

 extent, do organic changes condition the facts of mind ? In this 

 inqviirj' all the available resources of observation and experiment 

 have been brought to bear; but when we consider the vast com- 

 plexity of the nervous system, and especially the complex inter- 

 connection of the cells and fibres of the brain, and, further, the 

 difficulty of experiment on the living body, it is not surprising 

 that wdth all the industry and ingenuity that have been shown 

 progress has been sIoav. The problems of the neural conditions 

 of sensation and voluntary motion have been attacked with a large 

 measure of sucess ; but in other respects the study is still in its 

 infancy, and abounds with hypotheses to be verified or disproved. 

 It is of little consequence whether we regard neuro-psychology as a 

 special branch of psychology, or whether, with Herbert Spencer, 

 we describe it as a unique science lying midway between subjective 

 psychology and physiology, taking a term from each, but not to be 

 identified with either. The place which it occupies in a classifica- 

 tion of the sciences must be dictated by our convenience. In any 

 case modern psychology cannot leave it untouched, and we may 

 certainly lay claim to it as falling under the jurisdiction of the 



