appears to open up subjects of great interest and having important 

 practical applications. 



The question of the practical applications of psychology is the 

 last which I shall touch. There are those who hold that there is 

 something particularly noble in art for art's sake, or in science 

 divorced from any possible application. We are told of the mathe- 

 matician who boasted that his science was a virgin that had never 

 been prostituted by being put to any use. It is doubtless true that 

 science justifies itself if it satisfies mental needs. It may also be 

 true that pure science should precede the applications of science. 

 But of this I am not sure; it appears to me that the conditions 

 are most healthful when science and its applications proceed hand 

 in hand, as is now the case in engineering, electricity, chemistry, 

 medicine, etc. If I did not believe that psychology affected conduct 

 and could be applied in useful ways, I should regard my occupation 

 as nearer to that of the professional chessplayer or sword-swallower 

 than to that of the engineer or scientific physician. 



It seems quite obvious that such knowledge as each of us has 

 of his own perceptions, mental processes, and motor responses, and 

 of the reactions and activities of others, is being continually used, 

 more continually, indeed, than any other knowledge whatever. 

 This knowledge is partly organized into reflexes and instincts; it 

 is in part acquired by each individual. Control of the physical 

 w r orld is secondary to the control of ourselves and of our fellow 

 men. The child must observe and experiment to fit itself into the 

 social order, and we are always experimenting on it and trying to 

 make it different from what it is. All our systems of education, 

 our churches, our legal systems, our governments, and the rest are 

 applied psychology. It may be at present pseudo-science, in the 

 sense that we have drawn conclusions without adequate knowledge, 

 but it is none the less the best we can do in the way of the appli- 

 cation of systematized knowledge to the control of human nature. 



It certainly is not essential, and perhaps it is not desirable, for 

 every mother, for every teacher, for every statesman, to study 

 psychology, especially the kind of psychology at present avail- 

 able. It is not necessary for a man to be either a psychologist or 

 a fool at forty; he may, for example, be both. But surely it is pos- 

 sible to discover whether or not it is desirable to feed a baby every 

 time it cries, to whip a boy when he disobeys, or to put a man in 

 prison when he breaks a law. If each man were given the work 

 he is most competent to do, and were prepared for this work in 

 the best way, the work of the world, all the way from the highest 

 manifestations of genius to the humblest daily labor, would be 

 more than doubled. I see no reason why the application of sys- 

 tematized knowledge to the control of human nature may not in 



