190 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



special sense field, even in the simplest cases of such reaction. It is of no 

 use simply to say that there are these determinants, and then to take 

 refuge in a fruitless hypothetical physiology of the central nervous system. 

 Perhaps the time may come when the bulk of sense psychology will be 

 swallowed up in physiology, but that time has not come yet, and if we 

 act as if it has we gain little but deserved suspicion from other scientists. 



Already there are a few experimental studies of special sense problems 

 from this point of view. They are less frequent and less thorough than 

 they should be, and this is because the psychologist has generally been 

 content to follow his more physically and physiologically minded pre- 

 decessors, instead of envisaging the problems of sensory reaction for him- 

 self. When the psychologist studies a special sense response it is his 

 business to try to show how that response, carried out in its normal organic 

 setting, is being determined directly by facts other than those of the im- 

 mediate sensory mechanisms. Cues other than those of the special sensory 

 stimulus are operating through response systems of a higher, or more 

 complex, order than those of the directly excited sense. For these response 

 systems at present psychological names have to be used, and we have to 

 show how they come into play and what they do. 



It should therefore be particularly interesting to turn to the experi- 

 mental attack upon the higher mental processes. I propose to take as 

 typical the study of the responses called ' remembering ' and ' recog- 

 nising.' 



The experimental investigation of memory is dominated by the work 

 of one man who is commonly supposed to have been a great benefactor of 

 experimental psychology, but who, in spite of his impressive work, seems 

 to me to be the errant leader of a very sheep-like flock. In 1885 Hermann 

 Ebbinghaus published his new programme for experiments on memory 

 processes. Already, since ] 879, he had been studying his own modes of 

 recall by methods which were at that time novel. The publication of his 

 results settled the direction of flow of the main stream of experiments on 

 memorv from that day to this. As everybody now knows, his great innova- 

 tion was the use of nonsense syllables for memorising. He claimed for 

 these four great advantages over any other type of material : they are 

 simple ; they are homogeneous ; they can be indefinitely combined, but 

 in all combinations the material remains essentially on the same level ; 

 they ' admit of quantitative variation which is adequate and certain.' 



It is fairly easy to show that not one of these four claims is in fact 

 sound, but for the present a single, fundamental consideration is enough. 

 It is always urged that nonsense syllables are the best material to use 

 because they are ' simple.' That appears to mean something like this : 



Suppose we are investigating normal taste and smell reactions. We 

 know that generally these two are inextricably combined, so that much 

 that we call taste is really smell. However, if we are interested in finding 

 out how the end organs of taste react, we can experimentally cut ofi all 

 olfactory reactions and see what happens. We then learn something true 

 and important about how the end organs of taste behave when they are 

 subjected to certain specific conditions. It is more than hazardous to 

 assume forthwith that they behave in precisely that manner when the 

 olfactory sense is alive and working. But there is no doubt a sense in 



