Theories of Development 237 



right, truth, beauty, existence, number, resemblance, 

 spontaneity, and the infinite. The brain and nervous 

 system were given little or no attention in these dis- 

 cussions. It is perhaps safe to say that not a few of 

 the authors who thus laid claim to authority in these 

 metaphysical speculations had never seen a nerve; 

 nor would they have been able to distinguish, visually, 

 between the pineal gland and the vermiform appendix. 



The general idea being given at birth, particular 

 ideas, arising later in experience, were thought to 

 be only special manifestations of the general. Thus a 

 horse was thought to be recognized before the horse; 

 the genus before the species. In many cases this 

 was carried so far as to assert that only the general 

 idea, as existing in the mind, was real, all external 

 phenomena being mere illusions. 



The distinguishing characteristic of the old psychol- 

 ogy was neither modesty nor common sense. Indeed, 

 the audacity of the intuitive psychologist in dogmatic- 

 ally affirming direct knowledge of the ultimate ele- 

 ments of existence by a mind professing no material 

 connection with that existence, and independently of 

 any external experience through the senses, suggests 

 that arrested development which isolation invariably 

 produces. A professor in one of our foremost univer- 

 sities has somewhat caustically characterized it as the 

 "arm-chair psychology." The laboratory, and the 

 labor involved in sifting truth from falsehood, are both 

 equally conspicuous for their absence. It eschews 

 alike the efforts of the practical world, the common 

 sense of humanity, and the accumulated experience of 

 the race, as embodied in organic changes, social evo- 

 lution, and systematized knowledge or science. 



Although the old psychology did not distinctly 

 recognize the evolution principle, it is logically the 

 counterpart of that .view of development which regards 

 things as performed evolution, in its restricted form 



