RELATIONS OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 663 



of the most important groups which the investigator has to ex- 

 amine in his systematic analysis of the physical conditions of con- 

 sciousness; and an elaborate mass of literature has accumulated 

 in regard to it. Nevertheless the relations embraced under physi- 

 ological psychology form but a fragment of the whole set of problems 

 with which the investigator is concerned. Nay, more, an experi- 

 mental science of mind of no mean proportions might exist in the 

 absence of all consideration or knowledge of that mediating series 

 of events which we call physiological action. 



Experimental psychology embraces within its field the whole 

 system of conditions under which consciousness works, whether 

 intensive or qualitative, whether physiological or mechanical, 

 whether functional or formal, whether occasional or predispos- 

 ing. By experimental psychology, therefore, we shall mean the 

 systematic investigation by inductive methods of all the internal 

 connections of mental action, whether characteristic or pre-deter- 

 mining; and all its external conditions, both proximate, or physi- 

 ological, and remote, or physical. 



In contrast to the assertion that psychology is philosophy, it has 

 been charged that the work done under that name is really physi- 

 ology, that the subject-matter is properly described not as mental 

 phenomena, but as physical events, and that the laws discovered 

 are those of change within the processes of the nervous system. 

 The name is a misnomer, and all the physiological psychologists 

 are physiologists who have been mislabeled. 



It is true that there is much in common between the two fields 

 of investigation. The experimental psychologist must in so many 

 instances be familiar not only with true general truths qf physiology, 

 but also with the mechanics of physiological experimentation, if he 

 is successfully to pursue his investigations, that a working know- 

 ledge of the latter science may fairly be called an indispensable 

 element in his preparation. The strongest confirmation of this is 

 perhaps to be found in the number of eminent names which are 

 common to both sciences. Much work of the highest rank in psych- 

 ology, and perhaps its largest bulk, has been done by those who 

 were either still primarily concerned with physiology or had come 

 to an interest in the psychological aspect of their investigations 

 through an earlier interest in their physiological significance alone. 



It is also true that in methods the two sciences have much in 

 common. The same things are measured in the two cases, namely, 

 nervous change, glandular activity, muscular contraction, and their 

 time-relations. In the one case, however, these measurements are 

 final, while in the other they are purely instrumental. The physio- 

 logist is interested in the immediate facts which the measurements 

 reveal, in the modes of action, the interrelation of processes, and 



