SHAKESPEARE AND PSYCHOGNOSIS 



ESSAY I. MINOR CHARACTERS OF "THE TEMPEST" 

 By Melanchthon F. Libby 



Introduction 



The following essays are intended as a humble contribution, not to 

 literary criticism, but to what may be called concrete ethics. Psychology, 

 as has been pointed out by Professor Dessoir, has very Httle to tell us 

 about human nature. Plutarch, Montaigne and Franklin have in- 

 sight into human motive and character, but it is idle to call them psy- 

 chologists. Bismarck, a consummate judge of men, or rather of certain 

 kinds of men, may have been unable to pass a college examination in 

 psychology. Let us call this insight into human nature psychognosis , 

 as Professor Dessoir has suggested, and let us keep the word psychology 

 for the designation of that special disciphne which claims it. The 

 names characterology and ethology have been used in the same sense as 

 that in which we use psychognosis. 



John Stuart Mill thinks that ethics can not become an exact science 

 until we can estimate the moral or social reactions of individual men 

 to given stimuh. In other words, we must be able to tell what any 

 given man will do in any given situation, just as we tell what mercury 

 will do on a hot day or a cold day. This correct estimate of a scientific 

 ethics has proved pedantic and depressing. Ribot and others have 

 attempted to classify human nature by tests in psychological labora- 

 tories. 



Charlatans have attempted for money to advise parents regarding 

 vocations for children. The more exact in appearance their methods 

 have been, the less substantial truth they have possessed. A pretence 

 of mathematically scientific method in estimating character is either 

 ignorant or fraudulent in our present knowledge of physiology and 

 neurology. Yet the history of civilization reveals a great thirst for 

 this kind of knowledge. Astrology, palmistry, phrenology, physiognomy, 



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