J.— PSYCHOLOGY 175 



distinction is that in reproduction the relata have already been related 

 in past experience, the organisation is old, whereas in eduction of 

 correlates the educed correlate is new. It is this aspect of his third 

 principle in creating new knowledge that Prof. Spearman wishes to 

 stress, and it is just this stress that differentiates his principle from tha 

 of relative suggestion advocated by Thomas Brown in his Philosophy of 

 the Human Mind, 1820. Whether such a distinction of ' old ' and ' new ' 

 is one that can be drawn in any absolute sense is a question that need 

 not be raised in this connection. 



Locke left us with unreconciled methods and principles, and in con- 

 necting these with differing schools in contemporary psychology I may 

 seem to be emphasising divergencies of doctrine. Indeed, I may seem 

 to be giving support to the gibe that to-day there is no psychology, only 

 a collection of psychologies. By many this is thought to be a sure sign 

 of decadence. At first sight there is much in the present situation which 

 may give rise to a sense of disappointment to those of us who belong 

 to the older generation. The present century opened full of hope — 

 psychology was emerging as a new science. It was being recognised as 

 something distinct both from philosophy and from physiology. It was 

 rapidly developing a technique of its own. All was ' set fair * for the 

 growth of the ' new * psychology. It is true there were schools in a very 

 limited sense. There was Leipzig, Gottingen, Paris, Harvard, Cornell, 

 etc., but the lines of cleavage represented, say, at the Paris Congress of 

 1900 were but deep furrows in a common experimental field. To-day 

 the schools appear to be separated by unbridged gulfs. Yet it is little 

 more than fifty years since Wundt opened his laboratory in Leipzig, and 

 fifty years is a brief interval in historical retrospect. Is the present 

 division of theory really a bad sign ? Does it indicate the petering out 

 of the spirit which animated the workers from 1879 to 1900, or is it a sign 

 of vigour ? I believe there are good grounds for believing the latter 

 alternative. Prof. Woodworth, in his book Contemporary Schools of 

 Psychology, declares, ' all the schools are emphasising something that 

 demands emphasis and serve a useful function in the progress of psy- 

 chology.' The methods and principles which find a place in Locke's 

 Essay may demand for their reconciliation, not resolution but increase 

 of knowledge to enable us to mark out their respective spheres. 



II. 



If Prof. Woodworth is right, we need reject no * psychology ' as false, 

 but rather consider how far its particular teaching serves to explain 

 certain aspects of complex human phenomena. It is as a concrete 

 exemplification of this view that I wish to use data from my recent 

 studies of memory. 



Experiments A. 



Last year I had the honour of laying before this Section the results of 



some experiments on recall. The material used was pictorial, British 



Museum postcards depicting the occupations and pastimes of the months, 



copies from a sixteenth-century Flemish MS. Six of these cards were 



