March 12, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



373 



man is interested primarily in the mind of 

 others rather than in his own. He is inter- 

 ested in furnishing stimuli of various sorts 

 to other men that shall lead or compel them 

 to act in certain ways rather than in how 

 he himself or his fellow feels as he acts. 

 The advertiser is content if his copy in- 

 duces men to buy, the orator if his dis- 

 course brings him votes or changes the 

 mind of his audience to his own opinion. 

 The salesman is content with his knowledge 

 of practical psychology if his patter leads 

 the buyer to part with his money, the gen- 

 eral or statesman if he can divine how his 

 opponent is likely to act under the con- 

 ditions he presents to him. In the simplest 

 as in the most complex and important 

 affairs of life the practical man is concerned 

 not with mental states, but with behavior. 

 He usually assumes mental states to account 

 for behavior, but they are purely hypothet- 

 ical, not the result of introspection, how- 

 ever crude. Good temper and bad temper, 

 conceit and modesty, weak will and strong 

 will, are all names for qualities that can 

 be recognized through behavior alone, or 

 at least can be no more easily recognized 

 through introspection than by observation. 

 The bad-tempered man is as little aware of 

 it and can give as little explanation for it 

 as his friends or enemies. He knows of 

 his weakness only by observation of his 

 actions rather than by any mental process 

 that precedes or accompanies his acts, and 

 is probably, through his prejudices, even 

 less likely to recognize the quality than are 

 others. To turn in upon one's self, to have 

 "too much contemplation in one's eye," is 

 for the average man a sign of weakness, a 

 forerunner of mental disintegration. The 

 mental states of the uninitiated are not 

 known through watching himself, but as- 

 sumed to explain the behavior of another 

 man. 



On the theoretical side, behavior has the 



advantage over the more subjective terms 

 as a designation of the subject-matter of 

 psychology that it includes many processes 

 that are treated by practically all of us. 

 Very much of the active life bears very 

 little ascertainable relation to conscious- 

 ness when closely analyzed. It is not put- 

 ting the matter too strongly to say that the 

 more the voluntary processes are analyzed, 

 the smaller part does consciousness seem 

 to play in them. The less voluntary proc- 

 esses, habit, instinct and the various im- 

 pulses are also included in the list of 

 psychological processes, although little or 

 no consciousness accompanies them. They 

 are quite as easily predicted from without 

 as from within. Even the learning proc- 

 esses and the recognition processes are 

 studied quite as easily by observation as 

 by introspection. One knows that one recog- 

 nizes through observation of his mental 

 states, but sees very little of how he recog- 

 nizes. One can be almost as sure that an- 

 other has recognized him as he can that 

 he has recognized the other. Neither can 

 determine i«|iiediately how the recogni- 

 tion has taiih place. Thinking by the 

 most recent workers would be put on much 

 the same level. Even the self or personal- 

 ity, if one is to use the more familiar and 

 objective term is quite as much removed 

 from introspection as from observation. 

 On the whole, if one were compelled to 

 choose between behavior and consciousness 

 as a designation of the subject-matter of 

 psychology and then should apply the term 

 in all logical strictness, it would be found 

 that more of the actual content of the aver- 

 age text-book on human psychology would 

 need to be eliminated if one deleted the 

 portions that applied to consciousness than 

 if one omitted those sections that were de- 

 voted to behavior. 



If we leave human psychology and turn 

 to animal psychology, no one would deny 



