THE METHODS AND SNARES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 193 



must submit to a regular siege, in which minute advantages 

 gained night and day by the forces that hem her in must 

 sum themselves up at last into her overthrow. There is 

 little of the grand style about these new prism, pendulum, 

 and chronograph-philosophers. They mean business, not 

 chivalry. What generous divination, and that superiority 

 in virtue which was thought by Cicero to give a man the 

 best insight into nature, have failed to do, their spying 

 and scraping, their deadly tenacity and almost diabolic 

 cunning, Avill doubtless some day bring about. 



No general description of the methods of experimental 

 psychology would be instructive to one unfamiliar with the 

 instances of their apj^lication, so we will waste no words 

 upon the attempt. The principal fields of experimentation 

 so far have been : 1) the connection of conscious states 

 with their physical conditions, including the whole of brain- 

 physiology, and the recent minutely cultivated physiology 

 of the sense-organs, together with what is technically known 

 as 'psycho-physics,' or the laws of correlation between 

 sensations and the outward stimuli by which they are 

 aroused; 2) the analysis of sjjace-perception into its sensa- 

 tional elements ; 3) the measurement of the duration of the 

 simplest mental jDrocesses ; 4) that of the axicuracy of re- 

 production in the memor}- of sensible experiences and of 

 intervals of space and time ; 5) that of the manner in 

 which simple mental states infiuence each other, call each 

 other up, or inhibit each other's reproduction ; 6) that of 

 the number of facts which consciousness can simultaneously 

 discern ; finally, 7) that of the elementary laws of obli- 

 vescence and retention. It must be said that in some of 

 these fields the results have as yet borne little theoretic 

 fruit commensurate with the great labor expended in their 

 acquisition. But facts are facts, and if we only get enough 

 of them they are sure to combine. New ground will from 

 year to year be broken, and theoretic results will grow. 

 Meanwhile the experimental method has quite changed the 

 face of the science so far as the latter is a record of mere 

 work done. 



The comparative method, finally, supplements the intro- 



