330 



SCIENCE. 



N. S. Vol. XI. No. 270. 



mark of the obverse side of the situation. 

 The difficulties of psychological observation 

 and interpretation are great enough in any 

 case. We cannot afford to neglect any pos- 

 sible auxiliary. The great advantage of 

 the psychological laboratory is paid for 

 by certain obvious defects. The completer 

 control of conditions, with resulting greater 

 accuracy of determination, demands an iso- 

 lation, a ruling out of the usual media of 

 thought and action, which leads to a cer- 

 tain remoteness, and easily to a certain 

 artificiality. When the result of laboratory 

 experiment informs us, for example, that 

 repetition is the chief factor influencing re- 

 call, we must bear in mind that the result 

 is obtained with nonsense material — i. e. , 

 by excluding the conditions of ordinary 

 memory. The result is pertinent if we 

 state it thus : The more we exclude the 

 usual environmental adaptations of memory 

 the greater importance attaches to sheer 

 repetition. It is dubious (and probably 

 perverse) if we say : Repetition is the 

 prime influence in memory. 



Now this illustrates a general principle. 

 Unless our laboratory results are to give 

 us artificialities, mere scientific curiosities, 

 they must be subjected to interpretation by 

 gradual reapproximation to conditions of 

 life. The results may be very accurate, 

 very definitive in form ; but the task of re- 

 viewing them so as to see their actual im- 

 port is clearly one of great delicacy and 

 liability to error. The laboratory, in a 

 word, affords no final refuge that enables 

 us to avoid the ordinary scientific difficul- 

 ties of forming hypotheses, interpreting re- 

 sults, etc. In some sense (from the very 

 accuracy and limitations of its results) it 

 adds to our responsibilities in this direction. 

 Now the school, for psychological purposes, 

 stands in many respects midway between 

 the extreme simplifications of the labora- 

 tory and the confused complexities of ordi- 

 nary life. Its conditions are those of life 



at large ; they are social and practical. 

 But it approaches the laboratory in so far 

 as the ends aimed at are reduced in number, 

 are definite, and thus simplify the condi- 

 tions ; and their psychological phase is up- 

 permost — the formation of habits of atten- 

 tion, observation, memory, etc. — while in 

 ordinary life these are secondary and swal- 

 lowed up. 



If the biological and evolutionary atti- 

 tude is right in looking at mind as funda- 

 mentally an instrument of adaptation, there 

 are certainly advantages in any mode of ap- 

 proach which brings us near to its various 

 adaptations while they are still forming, 

 and under conditions selected with special 

 reference to promoting these adaptations 

 (or faculties). And this is precisely the 

 situation we should have in a properly 

 organized system of education. While the 

 psychological theory would guide and illu- 

 minate the practice, acting upon the theory 

 would immediately test it, and thus criticise 

 it, bringing about its revision and growth. 

 In the large and open sense of the words 

 psychology becomes a working hypothesis, 

 instruction is the experimental test and 

 demonstration of the hypothesis ; the result 

 is both greater practical control and con- 

 tinued growth in theory. 



II. 



I must remind myself that my purpose 

 does not conclude with a statement of the 

 auxiliary relation of psychology to educa- 

 tion ; but that we are concerned with this 

 as a type case of a wider problem — the rela- 

 tion of psychology to social practice in gen- 

 eral. So far I have tried to show that it is 

 not in spite of its statement of personal 

 aims and social relations in terms of 

 mechanism that psychology is useful, but 

 because of this transformation and abstrac- 

 tion. Through reduction of ethical rela- 

 tions to presented objects, we are enabled 

 to get outside of the existing situation ; to 



