THE LIMITS OF GENETIC AND OF COMPARATIVE 

 PSYCHOLOGY 



BY MARY WHITON CALKINS 



[Mary Whiton Calkins, Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, Wellesley College, 

 since 1897. b. Hartford, Connecticut, March 30, 1863. A.B. Smith College, 

 1885; A.M. ibid. 1887. Student by special permission in Graduate Seminaries 

 and Psychological Laboratory, Harvard University, 1890-91, 1893-95. In- 

 structor in Greek, Wellesley College, 1887-90; Instructor in Psychology, ibid. 

 1891-93; Associate Professor, ibid. 1893-94,1895^-97. Member of the American 

 Psychological Association; American Philosophical Association. Author of 

 Association; An Introduction to Psychology; and contributions to psychological 

 and philosophical journals.] 



As a mere student of general and of adult psychology, and no 

 first-hand investigator of the consciousness of animals, little chil- 

 dren, and primitive men, I have no especial right to treat of this 

 topic. I have been induced to do so by the conviction that com- 

 parative and genetic psychology, even more than other branches 

 of the science, urgently need to-day a fresh survey of their bound- 

 aries, a definite formulation of their basal conceptions. 



For such a critical consideration of fundamental problems, the 

 general psychologist has, perhaps, a peculiar fitness. He may not, 

 it is true, penetrate, as the specialist can, into the thicket of the 

 phenomena of animal behavior, infant activity, and primitive cus- 

 toms, but he may yet avoid the specialist's danger of failing to 

 see the forest for the trees, of entangling general considerations 

 with irrelevant details. 



The terms " genetic" and "comparative psj^chology" are com- 

 monly employed without discrimination. 1 This, however, is an un- 

 justifiable confusion, for genetic psychology is a mixture of com- 

 parative, or inferential, with direct, or introspective, psychology. 

 Its study of the consciousness of animals and of primitive men, and 

 most of its studies of the child consciousness are, it is true, pur- 

 sued by the indirect or comparative method, the comparison of 

 their behavior and their bodily structure with the conduct and 

 the structure of the normal human adult. But an introspective, 

 yet genetic, study of successive phases of the conscious life of the 

 adult may be made; and such a study, though genetic, obviously 

 need not be comparative. The distinctive feature of genetic psych- 

 ology is, in truth, not its method that may be direct or indirect 

 - but a certain character of its subject-matter. The material 



1 Cf. for an example of this frequent misuse, D. G. Brinton, The Basis of 

 Social Relations, p. 3, in which he describes comparative psychology in terms 

 applicable to genetic psychology only: "Its province," he says, "is to trace the 

 evolution of human mental powers to their earlier phases in the inferior animals." 



