PROBLEMS OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 679 



suppose. But, with these problems in mind, I insist that the im- 

 mediate demand in psycho-physics is for careful, straightforward 

 work by the approved methods. We shall gain more from such 

 work than from anything else. 



(2) Affection. When we turn to the affective processes, we 

 have no such difficulty in selecting our problems. This whole 

 chapter in experimental psychology is one single problem. Will 

 you believe I had myself not realized it before that in all 

 the five and thirty volumes of the Zeitschrift there is not a solitary 

 experimental article on the feelings? This, although the same 

 volumes contain, roughly, two hundred contributions to experi- 

 mental psychology! The Studien has about one hundred and forty 

 experimental papers, of which nine deal with affective psycho- 

 logy or experimental esthetics: that is the best record I have 

 found. Now look at the problems. We are not at one as regards 

 the nature and number of the elementary affections; there are 

 experimental psychologists who reduce all the elements of con- 

 sciousness to sensations. We are not agreed whether the divers- 

 ity of feelings is to be referred to a diversity of affective process 

 proper or to a diversity of organic sensation. Some of us think 

 that a given affective process is coextensive with consciousness; 

 others maintain that consciousness may be a mosaic of affections. 

 Some assert that the feeling-element is effective for association; 

 others deny it this effectiveness. Some find the best illustrations 

 of the law of contrast in the sphere of feeling; to others, contrast 

 may itself be a feeling. Our facts are few, our laws dubious. Surely, 

 it is time to gird up our loins and make serious business of these 

 affective problems. 



I have insisted on the paucity of the experimental articles upon 

 feeling. I do not, by this, mean to accuse experimental psycho- 

 logy of idleness or neglect: Lehmann's two books would save us 

 from such a charge, if we had nothing else to offer. But these two 

 books are characterized by their reliance upon the expressive 

 method, a method which, as you are aware, has stood in the 

 forefront of many recent discussions. I have been at the pains to 

 make out a complete table complete, that is, so far as I was 

 able to make it complete of the results obtained by the method 

 of expression. There is much to be learned from them. But I can- 

 not believe that the method will help us very greatly towards an 

 affective psychology. The organic reactions which the expressive 

 method registers are closely interwoven and interdependent, arid 

 the task of differentiation presents difficulties which, if not insur- 

 mountable, have at least not yet been surmounted. I am disposed 

 to think, e. g., that the plethysmograph, as a differential instru- 

 ment, is doomed to disappear from our laboratories. The sphyg- 



