I909] FULLERTON— DARWIX AND MENTAL SCIENXES. xxix 



have touched so briefly must be evident to anyone acquainted with 

 what is going on in those fields at the present time. The dominant 

 idea which has controlled the progress which has been made, we owe 

 to the genius of Darwin. That dominant idea is that the mind of 

 man as well as the body of man must be treated as a natural phe- 

 nomenon, making its appearance under given physical conditions ; 

 to be accounted for, as physical peculiarities are to be accounted 

 for, by a reference to heredity and environment; a thing so inti- 

 mately related to the body, that it must be looked upon as a function, 

 an instrument significant in the struggle for existence, a something 

 full of meaning, if accepted in its setting, but, torn from that 

 setting, a riddle, a document in cipher, an unfruitful fact for 

 science. 



He who would be a psychologist today is compelled at the outset 

 to realize that he is not studying that traditional abstraction, the 

 human mind, with its traditional endowment of abstract faculties, 

 but is studying mental phenomena as they are revealed in connection 

 with a variety of organisms. He is forced to acquaint himself with 

 anatomy and physiology, to study wuth especial care the senses and 

 the nervous system of man. He is impressed with the necessity of 

 supplementing the deficiencies of observation by an appeal to experi- 

 ment, and he is introduced into a laboratory fitted out with an 

 arsenal of apparatus, that would have inspired the psychologist of 

 an earlier time with dismay. Moreover, it is dinned into his ears 

 that no manifestation of mind must be neglected. He hears of 

 animal psycholog)^ child psychology, race psychology, pathological 

 psycholog}-, and the rest, until the magnitude of his task looms 

 up before him and oppresses him with the boundlessness of his 

 ignorance. 



No man is more conscious of his shortcomings of the science of 

 psychology today than is the psychologist himself. The air is full 

 of strife, we are pressed upon on all sides by unsolved problems for 

 which rival solutions are oflfered. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied 

 that this science is gradually taking its place among other sciences 

 which study the phenomena of nature, following with patient and 

 painstaking eflfort the ofttimes weary road of observation, experi- 

 ment, sober hypothesis and verification. He whose science may lead 



