236 Education through Nature 



gested the idea that the human mind is originally a 

 tabula rasa, i.e., a tablet on which anything can be 

 written, through the influence of the external world 

 acting on the sense-organs. With the further develop- 

 ment of scientific methods, the new psychology made 

 its appearance. 



THE OLD PSYCHOLOGY was the product of human- 

 ism. As studied in schools fifteen or twenty years ago, 

 it consisted in committing to memory some one'so pin- 

 ions about things in general, so far as those opinions 

 could be gathered from a book. In fact, nothing was 

 worth the while which had not been incorporated into 

 a book. Bookishness was a necessary concomitant 

 of slavish reliance on authority. The authority might 

 have had some just claims to recognition, as such, if 

 the conclusions reached had been based on a syste- 

 matic study of even human history; but that was not, 

 then, the method of psychological study. Mere intro- 

 spection, an examination of an individual conscious- 

 ness, could give, at best, the candid personal conviction 

 of any individual who had the courage to assert his 

 opinions as ultimate truths. Thus we had this man's 

 psychology and that man's psychology, not a psychol- 

 ogy as we have a science. 



The idea of growth and development in mind or 

 in nature was not a part of the old scheme. Things 

 were taken for granted as having always been as they 

 now are. The psychologist, finding certain general 

 conceptions already in his mind, did not stop to in- 

 quire how those ideas had originated, or whether they 

 had originated; but assumed, without further inquiry 

 or comparison with other living beings, that they have 

 always been present and are, in fact, innate or inborn. 

 These ideas were supposed to belong to certain facul- 

 ties of the mind. Thus, reason was considered one 

 separate department of the mind, and was supposed 

 to supply the general notions of time, space, cause, 



