October 21, 1898.] 



SCmNGE. 



535 



officer, no longer chosen as a matter of 

 course from the clergy, having neither time 

 nor training for the teaching of mental 

 science. There was thus an empty place 

 which the modern psychologist was pre- 

 pared to fill. Further, the rapid develop- 

 ment of the college into the university with 

 elective courses permitted psychology to 

 compete on equal terms with the older 

 sciences, and the result has been its secure 

 establishment in the university. Indeed, 

 psychology, touching with one hand phil- 

 osophy, the humanities and the historical 

 and political sciences, while with the other 

 hand it reaches toward the natural and ex- 

 act sciences, bids fair to become central. 

 Thus, at Harvard, Professor Miinsterberg's 

 elective course in empirical psychology was 

 this year followed by 365 students. At 

 Yale Dr. Scripture's course in physiological 

 and experimental psychology was elected 

 by 138 students. There were last year 

 given by American universities 18 doctor- 

 ates with psychology as the major subject 

 — more than in any science except chemis- 

 try, six times as many as in astronomy 

 and nine times as many as in anthropology. 

 Psychology, though its recent develop- 

 ment has been so rapid, is not a new science ; 

 it should rather be regarded as one of the 

 oldest of the sciences. Under the great 

 dynasty of philosophers — founded in Greece, 

 not extinct even during the Dark Ages, re- 

 established after the Renaissance — all the 

 sciences were developed . From Aristotle to 

 Kant the history of philosophy is in large 

 measure the history of science. But as the 

 domain of knowledge became too great to 

 be ruled by a single mind it must needs be 

 divided into the principalities that we call 

 the sciences. From the beginning psychol- 

 ogy has been the favored nursling of phil- 

 osophy, and, as the other sciences were 

 taken from it, all the more did it cherish 

 that which was left. In Great Britain 

 Locke, Berkeley and Hume and their Eng- 



lish and Scottish successors to the present 

 time have been at once students of philos- 

 ophy, and of psychology. The same may be 

 said of Herbart, Lotze, Wundt and many 

 more in Germany and in France. In our 

 own country to-day we find many of our 

 leaders— James, Ladd, Royce, Dewey, Ful- 

 lerton and others — professing equally phil- 

 osophy and psychology. 



Psychology, under the guidance of phil- 

 osophy, became at times somewhat sche- 

 matic and unreal, though never I think un- 

 fruitful or regressive. It needed, however, 

 to be cross-fertilized with the natural 

 sciences. These sciences, in their develop- 

 ment, could not ignore the senses and the 

 mind. Perceptions are parts of a physical 

 system, but they are also parts of an indi- 

 vidual consciousness. Newton not only 

 analyzed light, but also named seven colors; 

 Dalton found that he was blind to certain 

 of them ; Young invented a theory to ac- 

 count for their combinations ; von Helm- 

 holtz reviewed the phenomena in one of the 

 greatest of books. Physiology on its side 

 could not study the senses and brain while 

 ignoring the functions that they subserve, 

 and it was found that the methods of nat- 

 ural science could be applied in psychology. 

 The zoologist could not neglect the mental 

 life of animals and the place of conscious- 

 ness in evolution. Darwin wrote not only 

 The Origin of Species, but also The Descent of 

 Man and The Expression of the Emotions, and 

 was the first to study the development of 

 the child's mind. 



The subject-matter having been supplied 

 by philosophy and the methods by natural 

 science, the way was made ready for the es- 

 tablishment of a science of psychology. This 

 we owe largely to the intellectual patience of 

 Germany, tired at last of the Hegelian 

 metaphysics. Lotze published his Medi- 

 zinische Psychologic in 1852 ; Fechner his 

 Elemente der Fsychophysik in 1860; Wundt 

 his Menschen und Thierseele in 1863, and his 



