184 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
making systematic observations under conditions which others can repeat, 
by inventing explanations, and by testing these explanations thoroughly 
and impersonally. 
An appreciation of this need for objectivity was doubtless in Fechner’s 
mind when he dreamed of measuring sensory experiences and making 
psychology as mathematical as the physical sciences : it certainly underlies 
the activities of the experimental and statistical psychologists. Fechner’s 
hopes have not been realised. Psychology has had to develop methods 
suitable to the solution of its own problems, and these have not been the . 
classical methods of the physical sciences: they are more like those of 
the biological sciences. They are essentially systematic methods of 
describing and analysing the experiences and bodily activities of representa- 
tive samples of the population under specified conditions. This is the 
logic of psychological inquiry : it is a slow, laborious business, not nearly 
so exhilarating nor so impressive as the invention of sweeping generalisa- 
tions supported only by rhetoric and casual observation; but it is necessary, 
and, in the end, satisfying. 
Though the need for objectivity is recognised in the experimental 
laboratory, where information is laboriously collected and analysed, and 
where theories are thoroughly tested, it has not been so clearly recognised 
in the treatment of the psychological aspects of social problems. The 
social psychologist seems to be drawn to those branches of his subject 
which are the most obscure and the least amenable to objective co-opera- 
tive testing and to those methods of inquiry which are the least exact : 
he maintains, for example, that the departmént of psychology that is of 
first importance for the social sciences is that which deals with instinctive 
impulses, and for his knowledge of these impulses he relies largely on 
casual observation. ‘There has been much speculation regarding the 
number and nature of the innate human tendencies and their operation 
in social life, and there are fascinating theories regarding the ways in 
which individual personal experience affects behaviour. Unfortunately, 
much of this lacks the precision and objectivity which science demands ; 
it is in the old philosophical tradition, being characterised by wide 
generalisations based on casual observation, subtle analyses and fine dis- 
tinctions that are often merely verbal ; it is not based on that controlled 
and repeatable observation which makes science. It is none the less useful, 
for it provides working hypotheses and it is perhaps inevitable ; but it has 
to be tested : so long as its main support is general impression and opinion, 
no matter how respectable, it is not science. 
Much of the text-book psychology of behaviour falls into this category. 
Casual observation suggests that there are forms of behaviour which are 
common to all the members of a species, unlearned and grounded in 
inherited structure and disposition, and, as McDougall, Drever, Bartlett 
and others have shown so clearly, such innate dispositions explain much 
of human behaviour ; but we still lack methods of assessing the strengths 
of these tendencies: few people doubt that there is an innate tendency 
to remove more or less violently obstacles to one’s activities and that it 
varies in strength from one person to another and from one race to another, 
but until satisfactory objective methods of assessing it have been devised, 
