THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY 



BY JAMES MARK BALDWIN 



[James Mark Baldwin, Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, Johns Hopkins 

 University, since 1903. b. Columbia, South Carolina, January 12, 1861. Edu- 

 cated at Princeton, Leipsic, and Berlin Universities; M.A., Ph.D., Princeton, 

 1886; Hon. D.Sc., Oxon, 1899; LL.D. Glasgow, 1900; LL.D. South Carolina 

 College, 1905. Fellow and Instructor, Princeton University, 1885-1887; Pro- 

 fessor of Philosophy, Lake Forest University, 1887-90; Professor of Logic and 

 Metaphysics, Toronto University, 1890-93; Professor of Psychology, Princeton 

 University, 1893-1903. Member of American Philosophical Society; American 

 Society of Naturalists ; London Aristotelian Society ; Paris Institute of Sociology ; 

 Vice-President of the International Psychological Congress, London, 1892, 

 Munich, 1896; Honorary President of Congress of Criminal Anthropology, 

 Geneva, 1896; President of American Psychological Association, 1897, etc.; 

 awarded gold medal of Royal Academy of Science of Denmark, 1897. Author 

 of Hand-book of Psychology; Elements of Psychology; Mental Development in 

 the Child and the Race; Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Develop- 

 ment; Story of the Mind; Development and Evolution; Thought and Things, or 

 Genetic Logic. Editor of Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology; Psychological 

 Review.} 



THE science of psychology essentially reflects in its development 

 the way the human mind has been able at various epochs to appre- 

 hend itself. The thought of any object is simply the conscious 

 construction of that object; and this is as true of the sort of object 

 the mind with which the science of psychology deals as of the 

 object of any other science. As long, for example, as animistic views 

 prevailed, a thorough-going positivistic treatment of the objective 

 world was impossible; for the object constructed was not subject 

 to regular law nor continuity of transformation and change. So, also, 

 as long as the animal body was considered an exception to the posi- 

 tivistic process, biology could not be a thoroughly developed natural 

 science; for its object was a centre of capricious and mystically 

 motived changes. This is true of psychology, and more emphatic- 

 ally. For the object of the science of psychology is the mind, the 

 object which it constructs from its own experience; that is, its 

 object is just its own positive view of itself. We are accordingly 

 led to see that the history of psychology is the history of the stages 

 or modes of the evolution of reflective consciousness of self. 



I. Greek Psychology 



The evolution of psychological views among the Greeks is capable 

 of fruitful interpretation from this point of view. The earliest views 

 were necessarily those possible at a period of which the dualism of 

 mind and body self and external world had not been achieved. 

 The so-called " materialists " of Greece who, just for the reason 

 now given, would better be called " protists," "pro-noists," "project- 



