672 EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 



material. The will works under conditions which may inhibit or 

 transform the original impulse as well as provide material for its 

 incarnation. It is by the control of these modifying objective con- 

 ditions that the educator characteristically proceeds in his work of 

 molding the will itself. All, therefore, that experimental science 

 has determined concerning the influence either of remote physical 

 conditions or of specific physiological states upon mental function 

 and quality is thus part of the mechanism which the technique of 

 the teacher involves. 



Among the sciences which so contribute to educational method 

 is experimental psychology. It is not because psychology investi- 

 gates those things which constitute the object of the teacher's 

 activity that its results are of value in the latter profession. That 

 which experimental psychology studies is a fiction similar to the 

 wage-earner of the economist, and the results which he arrives at 

 can no more be interpolated in the series of real experiences which 

 constitutes the life of each person than the living man can be ex- 

 pected to fulfill the laws of competition in independence of the 

 innumerable other motives which affect his conduct. The life of 

 the child is indescribable in the terms of experimental psychology, 

 or indeed in that of any science whatever. 



The availability of laboratory results rests upon an altogether 

 different basis, which it possesses in common with all sciences treat- 

 ing of our humano-naturalistic environment. It is because psycho- 

 logy, in its study of mental processes, necessarily expresses its con- 

 clusions in terms of those general physical relations which constitute 

 at once our sole means of social communication and the conditions 

 under which our wills find expression for their activity. Whatever 

 bearing hygiene and sanitation, climatology and physiology, patho- 

 logy and anthropology have upon the mechanics of education, the 

 same has experimental psychology in a yet more intimate sense. 

 Its determination of the system of norms which characterize the 

 successive stages of development, a work which as yet is scarcely 

 begun, and its formulation of the relations between varying 

 physical conditions and fluctuations in the mental activity enable 

 the teacher to provide more fit and healthy conditions under which 

 the development of the child shall take place, to adapt the technique 

 of instruction to the irreversible relations which exist between the 

 personality of the child and his material environment, and to treat 

 in a more rational manner the conduct and accomplishment of 

 those under his charge. 



It is not only consistent with this relation, but also a logical 

 result of its existence that the deductions of experimental psycho- 

 logy can be applied only in the mass. The individual soul is un- 

 quantifiable, and- can be treated only intuitively. Its education is the 



