THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION 259 



reacting to physical impressions, and to look upon 

 the brain as the organ for the production of mind. 

 He soon, however, withdrew from this extreme posi- 

 tion and expressed his conviction of the existence of 

 an immortal spirit apart from the body. One might 

 say that the brain is the instrument through which 

 the mind manifests itself rather than the organ by 

 which mind is excreted. Even so, it must be agreed 

 that the relation between the psychic agent and the 

 physical instrument is so close that physiology must 

 take heed of mental phenomena and that psychology 

 must not ignore the physical concomitants of mental 

 processes. Hence arises a new branch of natural 

 science, physiological psychology, or, as Fechner 

 (1860), the disciple of Weber, called it, psycho- 

 physics. 



Through this alliance between the study of the 

 mind and the study of bodily functions the intelli- 

 gence of the lower animals and its survival value, the 

 mental growth of the child, mental deterioration in 

 age and disease, and the psychological endowments 

 of special classes or of individuals, became subjects 

 for investigation. Now human psychology is recog- 

 nized as contributing to various branches of anthro- 

 pology, or the general study of man. 



\Vilhelm Wundt, who, as already implied, had ap- 

 proached the study of the mind from the side of the 

 natural sciences, established in 1875 at the University 

 of Leipzig the first psycho-physical institute for the 

 experimental study of mental phenomena. His express 

 purpose was to analyze the content of consciousness 

 into its elements, to examine these elements in their 

 qualitative and quantitative differences, and to deter- 



