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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IX. No. 212. 



beyond a sophomoric mind, and wliich are 

 not simplified by avoiding the difficulties, 

 but trivialized and falsified. Theoretical 

 psychology is an advanced course for seniors 

 and graduates. On the other hand, I think 

 that experimental psychology can never be 

 the object of a really advanced treatment 

 in a lecture course. In physics or physiology 

 the lecturer can reach the most advanced 

 points because he can follow up the most 

 difficult problems under scientiiic discussion 

 with his experiments ; not so in psychology. 

 We must not forget that a psychological ex- 

 periment is nothing but self- observation 

 under artificial conditions. The lecture 

 room cannot produce the conditions for any 

 careful self-observation of every student be- 

 yond the most elementary questions. We 

 can produce tone-sensations or color-sensa- 

 tions, or associations and space judgments, 

 in a rough way for the whole class. If we 

 try more we can do two things. Either we 

 make demonstrations on one subject — for 

 instance, reactions; then the whole class 

 may see the person on whom the experiment 

 is made, but the one person is really the 

 only one who goes through the experience 

 of the experiment ; it is an illusion to think 

 that the others get the advantage of the ex- 

 periment too because they are in the same 

 room. Or we choose experiments which every 

 one can make individually at the same time 

 — for instance, touch sensations ; but it is 

 clear that here only the most elementary 

 problems are in question. Thus, wherever 

 we come to a more complicated experimen- 

 tal question, the possibilities of the lecture 

 room are at an end, and we have either to 

 talk about experiments without making 

 them — certainly a very bad scheme — or we 

 have to shift them over to the laboratory 

 courses, the only correct way. JSTo other 

 experimental science can come into this 

 troublesome situation, because no other 

 deals with self- observation, but we psychol- 

 ogists ought to confess that the experimental 



work of the lecture room cannot go beyond 

 the first elements of psychology, and is of a 

 simplicity that every high school boy can un- 

 derstand. We must give up the pose that our 

 psychological work becomes difficult on the 

 introduction of a chronoscope and a kymo- 

 graph and a color wheel. It is logically 

 endlessly simpler than even the -slightest 

 serious discussion of theoretical psychology. 



Of course, I am speaking of experimental 

 psychology, which must not be confused 

 with physiological psychology. The latter, 

 in its narrower sense dealing with mind 

 and brain, is either a theoretical discussion 

 of the psycho physical parallelism, and as 

 such fully dependent upon philosophical 

 arguments and independent of empirical 

 observations, or it is a study of the special 

 localizations and functions of the brain 

 parts. The first belongs to advanced theo- 

 retical psychology ; the second does not be- 

 long to a student's course on psychology at 

 all, but to physiology. It is mere coquetry 

 if we decorate our real psychological courses 

 with physiological bric-a-brac. 



My method of teaching psychology in 

 Harvard is as follows : I give a large ele- 

 mentary course in psychology which hardly 

 mentions the brain, but which is from the 

 beginning to the end an experimental 

 course, and it is our special aim to con- 

 struct instruments on a large scale, allow- 

 ing every student in the audience to go 

 through the self-observational experience 

 of the simjjle experiments. Theoretical 

 problems are there not discussed, but only 

 touched. Those who have passed this ele- 

 mentary course have now no opportunity 

 to cover the same experimental ground 

 once more in advanced lecture courses, 

 hearing three decimals where at first only 

 one was given. No, they have two alterna- 

 tives before them. They either enter the 

 laboratory or they go on with lectures 

 called ' advanced psychology,' hearing there 

 hardly a single word about experiments, 



