218 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
survey of his mental condition at the present time. Viewing his whole 
life’s story as a growing tree with ramifying roots and boughs, we 
take, as it were, first, a longitudinal section, and then one or more 
cross-sections, of the main trunk. 
I. Case-History. 
The historical retrospect should embrace, first of all, a personal 
history, based upon reports. supplied by parents, teachers, and medical 
attendants, and reviewing such developmental features as conditions 
of birth, mental and bodily growth, past physical ailments, and early 
mental shocks and disorders, and general moral and intellectual pro- 
gress both at home and at school. 
The procedure of the modern psycho-analyst consists in little more 
than the taking of an elaborate mental case-history by means of a 
special technique. The discovery of early repressions and infantile 
complexes often sheds a bright flood of light upon the present mental 
make-up of an adult, person. Think, for example, what numerous 
characteristics may be explained when it is reported that a neurotic 
bachelor of thirty was the only son of his mother, and that she was 
a widow. Mill, who in this country was the first to raise the science 
of character to a level of philosophical respectability, regarded 
‘ethology,’ as he named it, as consisting principally in the deduction 
of present mental features from past encircling influences. 
But the inquiring psychologist must go further back still. He must 
pass behind birth to ancestry ; and to the personal history of his subject 
prefix an account (where he can get it) of the family history. Here 
he obeys the lead of Galton rather than the logic of Mill; and is seeking, 
by a study of pedigrees, to infer the presence of hereditary factors. 
Of these the ultimate significance will be presently apparent. 
IL. Personal Examination. 
What I have termed taking a cross-section must include an exami- 
nation of the person’s present condition by the two chief instruments 
of all scientific inquiry—namely, observation and experiment. By 
whichever method they are reached the facts established will be brought 
together synoptically under a convenient system of tabulated heads. 
These headings will embrace external conditions as well as internal, and 
physical conditions as well as mental. 
A. Environment. 
The psychologist must never be content to look at nothing but the 
mind before him. It is his task to extend his survey to the surrounding 
influences that are making that mind what it is; he must ascertain the 
current situations and the crucial problems which that mind is called 
upon to meet. To study a mind without knowing its miliew is to study 
fishes without seeing water. 
Accordingly, as he turns from the past to the present, the human 
naturalist will commence with a review of the person’s present environ- 
ment, of his material, physical, and moral circumstances, at home, at 
school, and at business. Recent research upon milder abnormal states 
