AlGlST 14, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



195 



ctfort on. this side of the Atlantic to 

 ri'iininu-e mir former mode of intellectual 

 dependence upon some foreign system, or 

 upon some old-world thinker. At the 

 same time, no one can be more ready than 

 ourselves loudly to decry jingoism in sci- 

 ence. For science, happily, knows no 

 nationality. It is the common heritage, 

 in sharing which no form of social prej- 

 udice can despoil us. It is fully possible, 

 however, for the development of a science 

 within a national border to give a definite 

 contribution to the type of life therein 

 growing, and especially is this a hopeful 

 probability the nearer the science ap- 

 proaches the needs of a complete science 

 of man. 



The chief justification for our speaking 

 of American psychology is to be found in 

 the fact that our association is just ten 

 years old, and resides in the desire to con- 

 tribute modestly to the celebration of the 

 decennium by passing in review the work 

 of the association and its influences upon 

 the situation of psychologj- presented in 

 the Ignited States. Accept the name of 

 (■ur organization, and the adjective in our 

 theme follows as an appropriate sequence. 

 Moreover, it ought to be a good tonic to 

 insist on the value of psychology accruing 

 through the use of the adjective marking 

 nationality. 



Inasmuch as the appearance of the 

 American Psychological Association was 

 not a Minerva-like birth, it is proper that 

 a glance should be given to the stock in 

 trade po.ssessed by psychology ten years 

 ago. The state of the science during the 

 decenniinu preceding the one under review 

 was very satisfactory and encouraging. 

 The gradual influx of its European de- 

 velopments into American thinking took 

 form in a number of definite achievements, 

 which rapidly multiplied in the years to 

 follow. The perfection of exact methods. 



the adaptation of instruments to test re- 

 actions of the simpler order, and the close 

 correlation between the data of cerebral 

 physiology and well-established groups of 

 mental phenomena, tended at first to bring 

 psychological advances into disrepute 

 among those outside its own domain who 

 might have a care for its fortunes, and 

 til gain for these results, in the mouths of 

 theologians and other convenient idealists, 

 the opprobrious epithet of 'materialistic.' 

 The helpfulness of man's self-study for 

 his own development was dangerously 

 neglected in these criticisms, and even the 

 pittance of a culture value to the pursuit 

 of this subject was barely allowed to its 

 chief defendei-s. 



Nevertheless, the decade brought forth 

 noteworthy achievements, both in American 

 scholarship and in American educational 

 institutions. The first American attempt 

 at exact psychological demonstration prob- 

 ably occurred at Harvard in our centennial 

 yeai'. The first laboratory for psychology 

 in America was opened in 1883 by Presi- 

 dT»nt (1. Stanley Hall, as professor of psy- 

 chology and pedagogy in the Johns Hop- 

 kins University. The same year witnessed 

 sporadic efforts here and there to study 

 and to teach something of ph3^siological 

 p.sychology. The waning of the old and 

 the dawning of the new modes of psychol- 

 ogizing were interestingly marked in three 

 hooks which appeared in 1886 and 1887: 

 ;\IeCosh's ' Psychologj' : The Cognitive 

 Powers,' Bowne's 'Introduction to Psy- 

 chological Theory' and Dewey's 'Psychol- 

 ogy.' The first tried in a well-intentioned 

 way, at least, to realize the shifting of the 

 center of psyehologj' ; the second fought the 

 one-sided materialistic issues of forty years 

 earlier; and the third seriously welded 

 the newer facts of science into the system 

 of absolutism and made psychology a mu- 

 seum of well-balanced definitions. These 



