March 23, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



279 



mental work, exceeding Great Britain in 

 a ratio of 10 to 1, that in theoretical con- 

 tributions we were about equal to Great 

 Britain, but were doubled by France and 

 tripled by Germany. In contributions of a 

 physiological and pathological character 

 we fell far below these nations and below 

 Italy, Germany surpassing us in a ratio of 

 nearly 10 to 1. I have found no convenient 

 way of making a similar comparison for the 

 more recent period, and all contemporary 

 international comparisons are now impos- 

 sible. ' ' Who 's Who in Science, ' ' published 

 in England in 1913, attributed 84 of the 

 world's leading psychologists to the United 

 States, as compared with 31 to Germany, 27 

 to England and 13 to France. This is a 

 predominance which according to the book 

 the United States holds in no other science. 

 We may wonder whether the importance 

 of the work accomplished in this country 

 for psychology has increased in the same 

 ratio as the number of those engaged in it. 

 It would not be fair to expect to see ten 

 Jameses in this room, just as it would be 

 unreasonable to look for five Darwins in 

 England, because its biologists may have 

 increased five-fold in a generation ; or 

 twenty Newtons, because the physicists 

 may have increased twenty-fold since his 

 time. But do we have a hundred members 

 doing work as valuable as that of the more 

 productive ten of those whose names I have 

 recalled among our first members? Prob- 

 ably we have; in so far as it may seem 

 otherwise, this may be because there are in 

 the earlier days of a science more oppor- 

 tujiities for original departures, but more 

 especially to the fact that the relation of 

 eminence to numbers follows a psycho- 

 physic law of its own. The number in a 

 group who become eminent tends to be a 

 constant, dependent on the limitations of 

 the attention and the interest of the mem- 

 bers. Thus a savage tribe may have as 



many distinguished chiefs and warriors as 

 a nation of a hundred million. We may be 

 unable to see the trees for the forest. 



It would be impossible in the time 

 allotted to me to give a history of the devel- 

 opment of psychology during the past 

 twenty-five years or an account of Amer- 

 ican contributions. It seems to me that the 

 lines of development, especially in this 

 country, have been in the directions which 

 from the beginning I have followed, though 

 my advocacy and example have doubtless 

 been epiphenomenal. These are to ally 

 psychology and its methods with the nat- 

 ural and exact sciences rather than with 

 philosophy; to replace introspection and 

 verbal descriptions by experiments and 

 measurements; to investigate behavior and 

 conduct rather than mind and conscious- 

 ness ; to study individual and group differ- 

 ences; to make practical applications and 

 develop a profession of applied psychology. 



Mr. Dean R. Brimhall has counted up for 

 me — so my own prejudices are eliminated 

 — the papers presented at the twenty-five 

 meetings of the association. The reports 

 have been printed in The Psychological Be- 

 vietv and Bulletin, except those of the first 

 two annual meetings, which were printed 

 in a brochure which was edited by me as 

 secretary. On the chart is shown for five- 

 year periods the percentages of papers in 

 accordance with their character. Applied 

 psychology and individual psychology are 

 cross classes, the same papers being listed 

 for a second time and also largely in both 

 classes. Only a, rough subdivision is feasi- 

 ble, but it serves to show the distribution of 

 our interests and the changes that have 

 taken place in the course of twenty-five 

 years. 



In order to obtain information concern- 

 ing present work, I have used the method 

 of the questionnaire — ^a psychological tool 

 which we owe in large measure to Stanley 



