472 



PSORALEA 



PSYCHOLOGY 



broad), by rail 188 miles NK. of Riga ami 160 

 SSW. of St Petersburg. Like Novgorod it was 

 celebrated fur it.s republican in-iitutions after the 

 12th century. During tin- Mill iiml l.'ith centuries 

 it was one of the Hans* towns, and had then 

 a population three times as large as at present. 

 In l.MO it was annexed to Moscow. During tin- 

 wars with Lithuania Pskov wa.s a stronghold of 

 great ini|H)rtance. It contains a cathedral and 

 numerous venerable churches and monasteries. 

 Fish, olitaincd from tin- Ink.-, and flax are the 

 principal articles of commerce. Pop. 21,684. The 

 forrrnmtnt has an atea of 17.<Mi! s<|. in. and a pop. 

 (1885)of 948,071 ; (1891) 1,029,053. 



I'soralea. a genus of plants of the natural 

 order Leguminosic, sub-order Papilionacea'. The 



Mowers are blue, purple, or white. S e of the 



species are natives of India, oilier* of other warm 

 countries. P. rm-iilnitit, the Oread-runt of North 

 America, ami I'ntirif .!///</< of the Canadian boat- 

 men, is a herbaceous perennial, aliout a foot high, 

 with a carrot-like root, swollen aliove the middle, 

 and abounding in farinaceous matter. It is used 

 as an article of food, both boiled and raw. 



Pspri'asis (from the Creek wonl /<, which 

 signifies a cutaneous eruption. supposed by some to 

 be the itch) is now employed lo signify a disease 

 characterised by slight elevations of the surface of 

 the skin covered with whitish scales. The erup- 

 tion liegins in small rounded spots, which may 

 remain small, or may enlarge indefinitely, the 

 centre becoming more normal while the inflamed 

 margin continues to extend. The spots are covered 

 by white silvery scales, not easily detached from 

 the skin, which, however, when they are removed, 

 is seen to IK' red and dry. The parts most often 

 affected are the front'- of the knees and backs of 

 the elbows ; whatever other parts may be attacked, 

 these are rarely free from the eruption, and the 

 distribution is always nearly the same on the two 

 sides of the body. Itching is often alisent alto- 

 gether, and very seldom severe. The disease may 

 occur at any age, but usually first manifests itself 

 in youth, rarely liefnre the age of six. It is 

 extremely apt to recur : it is rare for a person to 

 suffer from it only once. 



Numerous causes have been assigned for the 

 disease; it has been attributed to scrofula, gout, 

 and many other constitutional states; and doubt- 

 less it may be associated with them. But, with the 

 exception of heredity, no cause has l>een satis- 

 factorily shown to lead to its development. It 

 frequently occurs in persons otherwise in perfect 

 health, and, except in very severe cases, does not 

 interfere in any way with their employ incuts. 



If left to itself, "the disease generally tends to 

 persist indefinitely. Hut in the great majority of 

 M it is very amenable to treatment, both local 

 and constitutional. Locally, ointments containing 

 tar, resorcin, pyrogallic acid, Vc. are most in use; 

 internally, arsenic is far the most, valuable remedy. 

 Where it has failed, iodide of potassium in large' 

 doses, liquor pot a-s;e, and carbolic acid have some- 

 times succeeded. Hut some cases resist the mo~t 

 varied and persevering efforts for their cure ; and 

 nothing has yet U-en discovered which will prevent 

 the tendency to recurrence of the di-> 



l*Vtch<$ (<ir. , 'the soul'), an exquisite creation 

 of the later mythology of Greece. She was the 

 voungest of the three daughter* of a kin;;, and so 

 MMMtifal that mortals mistook her for Aphrodite 

 (Venus) herself, and did not dare to love, lint only 

 to worship her. This excited the jealousy of the 

 goddess, who sent Eros (Cupid) to inspire I'M die 

 with a passion for the most contemptible of all 

 in. -n ; but Eros was himself wounded as deeply )>v 

 her glances as ever he had wounded others with 



his ilaits. He accordingly caused her to )>e carried 

 to a beautiful palace of pleasure, ami here every 

 nielli he vi>itcd her, unseen and unknown, and 

 left her before morning broke. Thus Psyche might 

 have enjoyed perpetual delight had she reniein- 

 1-ered the advice of her unknown lover, who warned 

 her not to seek to know who he was. Hut her 

 jealous sisters, whom against her lover's injunc- 

 tion she had allowed to visit her, played ii|Mm her 

 curiosity, and jicrsmuled her that she was embrac- 

 ing a monster in the darkness of night. Lighting 

 a lamp when Eros was asleep, she saw with rapture 

 that she was the mistress of the most handsome of 

 the gods, but in her excitement she let a drop of 

 hot oil fall on the sleepers shoulder. This awoke 

 El-os, who upbraided her for her mistrust, and 

 vanished. Psyche gateway to the most passion 

 ate grief ; she tried in vain to throw herself into a 

 river, then wandered aliout from temple to temple, 

 inquiring for her lover. At length she came to tin- 

 palace of Venus, where she was seized by the god 

 dess, and kept as a slave. Eros, however, \vho 

 still loved her, invisibly hel|n'd and comforted the 

 hapless maiden, reconciled her to his mother, and 

 was linally united to her in immortal wedlock. In 

 works of art Psyche is represented as a beautiful 

 maiden with the wings of a butterfly. Her story 

 was considered as an allegory of the progress of 

 the human soul through earthly passion and mis 

 fortune to pure celestial felicity ; but it must not 

 be forgotten that it is merely a version of one of 

 the most widespread folk-tales in the world. s> < 

 CUPID, and Zingow's Psyclie und Eros (1881 ). 



Psychic Forces. See THKOSOPHY ; and for 



the Psychical Ite-earch Society, see APPARITIONS. 



Psychology may be briefly defined as the 

 science of mental phenomena. After having long 

 occupied a doubtful place as a department of meta- 

 physics, supplemented by many empirical ol>serva- 

 tions, its character as a science dealing with a 

 special order of facts, and many of the laws of 

 occurrence of these facts, may now lie said to be 

 established. At the same time opinion is still far 

 from unanimous on many of the most important 

 points of psychological doctrine, especially on such 

 points as involve a philosophical view of the nature 

 of mind. 



The chief different wavs of conceiving and defin- 

 ing the mental facts with which psychology has to 

 do may l>e traced to the influence of rival philo- 

 sophical hypotheses as to the nature of mind. 

 Thus, in the first place, we have the view that 

 psychology deals with the facts of the conscious 

 mind which, when knowing, feeling, or striving, is 

 always conscious of itself as knowing, feeling, or 

 striving i.e. is self-conscious. This is the view, 

 for instance, of Sir \V. Hamilton. But it has many 

 difficulties. We can hardly ascribe self-conscious 

 ness to the lower animals or to very young children, 

 and yet some kind of mental life clearly belongs to 

 them : so that it would seem that mental life and 

 self-consciousness cannot lie Identified. Further, 

 many psychologists (including Hamilton) are of 

 opinion that there are mental phenomena un- 

 accompanied by self-consciousness even in mature 

 human life. And if self consciousness is thus 

 recognised as liclonging to mental life only under 

 certain conditions and at a comparatively developed 

 stage, it will le one of the main pin poses of psycho- 

 logy to examine these conditions and trace its 

 growth. In the second place, a materialistic view 

 of mind is connected with the attempt to make 

 brain physiology play the part of a psychology. 

 It is plain, however, that a sensation or a feeling 

 of pleasure or pain is a fact of an entirely different 

 order from a neural disturbance. The one may 

 accompany or even cause the other (or both may 



