780 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ground continually increasing. The text-books contain specu- 

 lations which are unverifiable, and often have little to do with 

 psychology. They include descriptions of things which no one 

 could understand from the description, but which every one 

 understands without it. There are often anecdotes, which belong 

 to the nursery. Then, in more recent times, we find accounts of 

 the eye and brain, which are sometimes good physiology, but 

 which seldom increase our knowledge of sensation and thought. 

 It may be added that in the popular mind psychology consists 

 largely of ghosts and mesmeric exhibitions. 



But in the midst of confusion there are signs of order. 

 Psychologies are now written which do not range at large 

 through metaphysics, logic, ethics, and aesthetics, or, if they do, 

 the writers at least know where they are wandering. Description 

 and analysis become of greater value as introspection is more 

 careful and words are more exactly defined. When works on 

 physics, physiology, and pathology are sifted, there is found to 

 be a considerable remnant which belongs to psychology. Even 

 "telepathy" and hypnotism contribute their modest quota of 

 facts. Comparative zoology, anthropology, philology, history, 

 and art discover interrelations with psychology. Lastly, the 

 attempt has recently been made to apply the methods of natural 

 science, and even the measurements of exact science, in the study 

 of the mind. 



The backwardness of psychology is not indeed surprising. 

 Certain material needs must be satisfied before there is time for 

 self-observation. Even the lower animals are concerned with 

 the changes of day and night and the return of summer and 

 winter, with the growth of plants on which they feed and the 

 habits of beasts which prey upon them. Astronomy, physical 

 geography, botany, and zoology have their first foundation in 

 remote, prehuman times. When the savage appears, he needs 

 must attend to the external world, whereas self-observation 

 would profit him but little. If his life depend on killing a bird 

 with a stone, he must know the habits of the bird, and even 

 something of the course of projectiles. Should he stop to consider 

 the relation between sensation and movement, he would not sur- 

 vive to tell his thought. Even nowadays, when every one must 

 have exact knowledge of some part, however small, of the mate- 

 rial world, there are but few who have time to study their mental 

 life, which indeed goes on none the better for being watched. 



The elements of physical science are not only more necessary 

 to life than knowledge of the mind they are also more easily 

 obtained. The facts of the material world are comparatively 

 constant and accessible to observation. The stars return daily 

 in their courses, and the plants repeat yearly their monotonous 



