July 26, 1901.] 



SCIENCE. 



131 



progress of the race depends not on the 

 products of pure reason ; did it so depend 

 Plato and Kant would be more than names 

 to the millions of our countrymen, and this 

 splendid Greek of so long ago would be the 

 world's idol in the place of the men who 

 have clone things and who do. Men at large 

 desire science rather than philosophy, for to 

 them rightly the sciences mean progress in 

 living ever better and more easily. Utility, 

 is and must remain the unchanging standard 

 by which a science, like all other things in 

 the last resort, is measured. This fact 

 many psychologists apparently have over- 

 looked, so brief at present has been the time 

 since their science freed itself, by working 

 out the outlines of its proper sphere, from 

 the conservatism of philosophy. Eight well 

 and exceedingly is psychology fitted by its 

 subject-matter to demonstrate and then to 

 enlarge its human usefulness. By necessity 

 of the ' struggle for existence ' (so inevita- 

 bly often emphasized in every sociological 

 discussion), all men are psychologists and 

 not less so that only one in a million thinks 

 of himself as such. Somewhat in propor- 

 tion to his practical success as a psycholo- 

 gist, consciously or unconsciously, in pro- 

 portion, that is, to his knowledge of his 

 fellow-men and of himself, does a man or 

 woman succeed in life. It means more than 

 anything else this wisdom in human na- 

 ture. The schoolboy knows his teacher 

 more or less well as he recites to him or 

 seeks to win his favor ; the candidate for 

 the doctorate very likely has studied the 

 faculty only less than his research, and at 

 the time when each word counts he uses 

 well his information. The merchant studies 

 the man from whom he buys his stock, and 

 doubtless still more carefully the 'market,' 

 which is only a convenient term for the 

 balance of the hour between merchandise 

 and men's desire therefor. The business 

 man depends even more largely on his 

 knowledge of human nature in his dealings 



with a public which is always more or less 

 suggestible. The actor studies humanity 

 that he may imitate it, the conjurer that he 

 may deceive it. The judge in court is pre- 

 eminently a practical psychologist, th©. 

 policeman less so, while the value of the- 

 jury system and the virtue of a particular 

 juror often depends directly on the jury's 

 rightly weighing the human probabilities 

 of motive and of action. Such values are- 

 practical and real. 



But more than others, if possible, ' pro- 

 fessional men ' should be good, that is, 

 practical, psychologists. They should un- 

 derstand completely the psychophysical 

 nature of men and women to be successful. 

 The clergyman must preach the Gospel, but 

 he must preach it both in the spirit of the 

 times and in the spirit of his hearers — not 

 preaching hell-fire when the advancing 

 rationality has put hell-fire forever out and 

 named it cruelty ; not preaching sermons 

 two hours long when men in general might 

 fairly be satisfied with half-an-hour. So 

 too the lawyer (and in a perhaps even larger 

 degree) must be a psj'chologist, whether he 

 knows it or not, if he is to please his client 

 and enlarge his practice. He must know 

 well the relative value in a particular man of 

 feeling and of cognition, must value rightly 

 his client's strength of will and perhaps his 

 cleverness under cross-examination. In 

 every phase almost of the lawyer's profes- 

 sional life his knowledge of himself and of 

 man in general forms his chief stock-in- 

 trade. The lawyer's success largely de- 

 pends on his acquaintance with man's mind 

 and how it works — his science above all is 

 the ' science of the soul.' 



To medicine, the third of those pursuits 

 long classed as professions, we now turn to 

 see how, in a moi'e immediate way than has 

 so far been considered, psychology is natu- 

 rally related to it. Like other men, the 

 physician is of course a practical psycholo- 

 gist so far as his native instincts lead him 



