598 PSYCHOLOGY 



and Wundt's Physiologische Psychologic, with such additional sub- 

 jects as other psychologists have included or might have included 

 in their treatises. 



When the introspective purist says that the treatises of Wundt 

 and James are potpourris of sciences, or that the kind of work that 

 some of us have attempted to do belongs to physiology or to an- 

 thropometry or nowhere in particular, there is a natural temptation 

 to reply that much of introspective and analytic psychology belongs 

 to art rather than to science. Such things may be ingenious and 

 interesting, like the personae of Bernard Shaw or the mermaids of 

 Burne-Jones, but we don't expect to meet them in the street. An 

 attitude of this kind would, however, be as partial as that which it 

 seeks to controvert. Let us take a broad outlook and be liberal 

 in our appreciation ; let us welcome variations and sports ; if birth is 

 given to monstrosities on occasion, we may be sure that they will 

 not survive. 



Any attempt at a priori limitation of the field of a science is futile. 

 Even if, for example, consciousness and matter in motion were 

 distinct and distinguishable, this would be no argument against a 

 science of physiological psychology. Cerebral and psychical phe- 

 nomena form one series, and if we have at present no adequate 

 science which concerns itself with this series, it is owing to ignorance 

 of facts, not at all to logical limitations. Matter, time, space, and 

 the differential calculus may be as disparate as possible, but are 

 brought together in the science of physics. If the psychologist can- 

 not be shut out of the physical world, still less can he be excluded 

 from the sphere of the so-called normative sciences. If any one 

 takes a modern work on ethics or esthetics and tries to separate the 

 treatment of " what is " from that of " what ought to be," he will 

 find himself engaged in an idle task. 



It appears that the limits of a science are set largely by a psycho- 

 logical constant. A single science has practically the range that can 

 be covered by a single mind or man. From Aristotle to Hobbes and 

 Descartes there were philosophers who could master nearly the 

 whole range of knowledge and advance it in whatever direction they 

 cared to turn. But even in this period, as knowledge accumulated, 

 specialization began, and we find astronomers, anatomists, and 

 other students of particular sciences. After Galileo and Newton 

 the physico-mathematical sciences became completely divorced 

 from the descriptive natural sciences, while psychology remained 

 under the shelter of philosophy. It was only in the second half of 

 the nineteenth century that the accumulation of certain facts and 

 theories warranted their becoming the chief interest of a psych- 

 ologist, and even yet it is more usual for a man to pass through 

 a psychological period than to be a permanent psephologist. 



