RELATIONS OF COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 697 



faithful appeal to the facts of observation and a rigid adherence to 

 the canons of scientific interpretation. If we undertake our work 

 in this spirit and with no narrower aim, the whole psychological 

 brotherhood will gladly admit that such research is indispensable 

 and of lasting value. In any case it should be our aim, in this 

 section, to contribute to the basal principles of psychology by em- 

 ploying comprehensively the comparative method, and by special 

 inquiries in the field of development and evolution. 



My own studies, as some of my hearers may know, have lain 

 in close relation to certain aspects of biological investigation, and 

 I may perhaps assume that I shall be expected to respond to the 

 honor done me by the invitation to speak on this occasion, by in- 

 dicating in broad outlines some of the conclusions to which I have 

 been led in so far as they bear upon psychological genesis. If, then, 

 I be asked to give expression to one or two of the most salient points 

 which strike one who approaches psychology from the biological 

 side as of cardinal importance, I should perhaps place first and 

 foremost as genetically fundamental the way in which, in the lower 

 ranges of mental development and evolution, everything hinges 

 on practical behavior and activity. Psychological process is in- 

 deed a middle term between the results of complex stimuli from 

 the environment on the one hand, and the results of complex reac- 

 tions to that environment on the other hand. But in the earlier 

 stages of genetic process this middle term is wholly subservient 

 to the practical needs of an eminently active and practical life. 

 It does not attain a position of relative independence. It is never 

 divorced from its natural outcome in behavior. It does not assume 

 that peculiar, and, from the purely biological standpoint, abnormal 

 preeminence which it is apt to assume in the treatment of a pre- 

 dominantly intellectualist psychology of the earlier school founded 

 mainly on the mental processes and products of philosophers and 

 sages. 



A second point which comparative and genetic study brings 

 out with almost equal clearness is the complexity of the biolog- 

 ical foundations on which the beginnings of the psychology of 

 the individual are laid, and the consequent fact that, in individual 

 genesis, the initial data are already grouped wholes and not sporadic 

 and isolated sensation-elements. One of the problems which the 

 earlier psychology essayed to solve is by what process of coal- 

 escence and elaboration isolated sensations could build themselves 

 up into the complex wholes of perception and how these could 

 relate themselves with the similarly-built complex wholes pre- 

 sented to consciousness when active movements were carried out. 

 It assumed that the several sensations which may be distinguished 

 through the application of a difficult and prolonged process of 



