PROBLEMS OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 681 



What holds in this regard of the attention seems to me to hold 

 also (4) for that mixed medley of formations which we include under 

 the general term perception. I wish that we could banish the word 

 perception to the special limbo reserved for unregenerate concepts, 

 and could put in its place a round dozen of concrete and descriptive 

 terms! But it has, so far, held its own, and I can hardly avoid its 

 use. We know, now, a great deal about tonal fusion, about space- 

 perception, about rhythm, if rhythm be a perception; we know 

 something about time-perception. You will, however, agree with 

 me that no one of these topics is a closed chapter. I see no very 

 pressing problem, as I look over the field; but I see, in every quarter 

 of it, good work that needs doing. I am sorry if this opinion appears 

 indefinite; it is the opinion that I have come to after a study of 

 more than a hundred and fifty articles that deal with perception in 

 the five journals referred to just now: and I cannot make it more 

 definite without going so deeply into detail as far to exceed the time 

 allotted to me. 



We can speak a little more concretely of (5) recognition, memory, 

 and association. Association was, at first, handled in rather step- 

 motherly fashion by experimental psychology. Of late years, how- 

 ever, we have come to see the importance of detailed analyses of 

 th'e associative, as also of the recognitive consciousness; we have, 

 I think, finally broken free from the traditional schemata, and are 

 approaching the problem with open minds. Something has already 

 been done; much more remains to do. The experimental study of 

 memory was begun, by Ebbinghaus, rather in a practical or psycho- 

 physical than in a psychological spirit. In the development of 

 the work since Ebbinghaus, we can trace two tendencies: a tend- 

 ency towards psychological analysis of the memory-consciousness 

 and the explication of the psychological laws of memory; that on 

 the one hand; and on the other, a tendency towards the application 

 in practice of psychological results. While, now, I take the recent 

 experimental work on memory and the associations involved in 

 memory to be work of a high order; and while I believe, in particular, 

 that certain of the methods employed are a valuable addition to our 

 psychological repertory, I cannot but think that the two tendencies 

 just mentioned have not been kept as distinct as they should have 

 been, and that experimental psychology has suffered in consequence. 

 We can hardly hope to get a psychology of memory and association 

 on the ground of Reproduktionstendenz and Perseverationstendenz; 

 we can hardly hope to get practical rules, if they are what we want, 

 out of the published studies on economy of learning. , The Tendenz- 

 concepts are psycho-physical, and tend to cover up the complexity 

 of actual experience; the practical studies are made under condi- 

 tions widely remote from those that obtain in ordinary practice. 



