December 9, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



795 



tinuations of work already begun than as 

 gaps and lacunse in our system of knowl- 

 edge. I could wish that it had fallen to 

 my lot to address you in this positive way, 

 to show what experimental psychology has 

 done, how in the past few decades it has 

 changed the face of systematic psychology, 

 'rather than to insist upon the tasks that 

 still lie before it. I have, however, tried 

 to be eutirelj'' honest; I have, I think, rath- 

 er exaggerated than concealed our deficien- 

 cies; and I would have you remember that 

 this definite formulation of things to do 

 presupposes and implies that much has 

 been done. When Wundt wrote his fa- 

 mous essay 'Ueber die Aufgaben der ex- 

 perimentellen Psychologic,' the problems 

 that loomed before him were the psycho- 

 physics of sensation, the analysis of per- 

 ception, the time-relations of the higher 

 processes. To-day, the list is longer and 

 the range wider. But it is only because 

 we already possess that we can say, in such 

 detail, what still needs to be added to our 

 possessions : in which fact let us take en- 

 couragement. 



I pass, with some diffidence, to a consid- 

 eration of wider issues — of those extensions 

 of the experimental method, proposed or 

 attempted, of which I spoke at the begin- 

 ning of this address. Most psychologists, 

 I take it, would agree that the picture I 

 have drawn of experimental psychology in 

 what has preceded is drawn too narrowly. 

 The title of psychologist is, indeed, given 

 at the present day to two distinct types of 

 scholar. On the one hand, we have the 

 psychologist as I have represented him: 

 a man keenly interested in mind, with no 

 purpose beyond mind ; a man enamored of 

 introspection ; a man to whom the most 

 fascinating thing in the universe is the 

 human consciousness; a man to whom suc- 

 cessful analysis of an unresolved mental 

 complex is as the discovery of a new genus 



to the zoologist or a new river to the ex- 

 plorer; a man who lives in direct com- 

 panionship with his mental processes as the 

 naturalist lives with the creatures that are 

 ordinarily shunned or ignored; a man to 

 whom the facts and laws of mind are, if 

 I may so put it, the most real things that 

 the world can show. On the other hand, 

 we have men to whom mind appeals either 

 as a datum or problem, or both, to be dealt 

 with by philosophy, by theory of knowledge 

 and theory of being; or as a natural phe- 

 nomenon, something that must be taken 

 account of whenever life is taken account 

 of, in evolutionary biology, in anthropol- 

 ogy, in medicine, and where not. Of the 

 psychologists of this second order, the phi- 

 losophers, you will say, do not concern us. 

 Yet they do, somewhat. I suppose that all 

 sciences — certainly, all young sciences — are 

 liable to be told by well-wishers that they 

 have mistaken their work ; that they would 

 advance more quicklj'-, and more solidly, if 

 they would put off their present business, 

 and settle down to this or that suggested 

 problem. At any rate, experimental psy- 

 chology has always received such hortation 

 from friendly philosophers. If, now, I 

 have ignored this advice, it is not from lack 

 of gratitude, but simply because, after con^ 

 sideration, I have come to believe that ex- 

 perimental psychology knows what she is 

 about, and can walk without assistance. 

 Outsiders, we are told, see most of the 

 game. I venture to iirge that the insider 

 better Imows how the game is to be played. 



We are left with the two opposed types : 

 what shall I term them? — the inner and 

 the outer, the subjective and the objective, 

 the narrower and the broader. What, 

 then, of the outer, wider, objective prob- 

 lems of experimental psychology? 



Let us be clear, first of all— the matter 

 admits of no hesitation or compromise — 

 that the experimental psychology of the 

 normal, adult, human mind must take the 



