PROBLEMS OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 689 



commonplaces; but even a commonplace may be true and it 

 makes a difference, too, whether the truth be urged with polemical 

 or with friendly intent. I should like to see more cooperation be- 

 tween the alienist, or the student of comparative psychology, and 

 the laboratory psychologist; quite apart from practical results, 

 such cooperation would be of great advantage to the psychological 

 system. We can hardly hope this point should be borne in mind 

 that the two interests, the objective and the subjective, will be 

 combined in the same person. When one has once stepped inside 

 the ring of the normal, adult consciousness, there is very little 

 temptation to step out again; the problems that I listed a little 

 while ago are enough to occupy several generations of workers, and 

 the fascination of the work is like the fascination of the mountains 

 or the sea. And if one begins from the outside, with the child or the 

 animal or the abnormal mind, there is little likelihood that one can 

 breathe the confining air of the laboratory, or that one will pre- 

 sently limit one's range of interests to one's self. Partly it is a mat- 

 ter of temperament, partly a matter of chance introduction or of 

 continued occupation. The two types of psychologist are distinct: all 

 the more reason that they should work in harmonious cooperation. 



I hope that, in this latter portion of my address, I have not 

 traveled too far out of the record. Some men have problems thrust 

 upon them. And, after all, if what I have said contributes ever so 

 little to the furtherance of mutual aid and the increase of mutual 

 esteem, as between psychologists of different camps, I may hope 

 for forgiveness, even though I have exceeded the letter of my in- 

 structions. Now let me briefly summarize what I have said. I began, 

 you will remember, by pointing out that, above and apart from the 

 many special problems of experimental psychology, there lies the 

 great problem of self-definition, of the range and scope of the experi- 

 mental method in psychology. Then, under the headings of psycho- 

 logy proper and of psycho-physics, I called your attention to a 

 series of laboratory problems that, more or less insistently, more 

 or less immediately, call for solution. Whatever else experimental 

 psychology may be, I said, these issues are issues of experimental 

 psychology. Incidentally, I deprecated any departure, at the 

 bidding of philosophy, from the straight path of psychological 

 investigation; and I deprecated also that neglect of introspective 

 control in psychology which has been the besetting sin of many 

 whose direct interest lies in psycho-physics. I then went on to 

 include in experimental psychology the more objective applications 

 of the experimental method in child psychology, in animal psycho- 

 logy, in abnormal psychology. It was not my province to detail 

 the special questions in these fields; they form the topic of other 



