194 PSYCHOLOGT. 



spective and experimeutal methods. This method pre- 

 supposes a normal psychology of introspection to be estab- 

 lished in its main features. But where the origin of these 

 features, or their dependence ui3on one another, is in ques- 

 tion, it is of the utmost importance to trace the phenom- 

 enon considered through all its possible variations of type 

 and combination. So it has come to pass that instincts of 

 animals are ransacked to throw light on our own ; and that 

 the reasoning faculties of bees and ants, the minds of savages, 

 infants, madmen, idiots, the deaf and blind, criminals, and 

 eccentrics, are all invoked in support of this or that special 

 theory about some part of our own mental life. The history 

 of sciences, moral and political institutions, and languages, 

 as tvpes of mental product, are pressed into the same ser- 

 vice. Messrs. Darwin and Galton have set the example of 

 circulars of questions sent out by the hundred to those 

 supposed able to reply. The custom has spread, and it 

 will be well for us in the next generation if such cir- 

 culars be not ranked among the common pests of life. 

 Meanwhile information grows, and results emerge. There 

 are great sources of error in the comparative method. 

 The interpretation of the ' psychoses ' of animals, savages, 

 and infants is necessarily wild work, in which the per- 

 sonal equation of the investigator has things very much 

 its own wa3\ A savage will be reported to have no 

 moral or religious feeling if his actions shock the ob- 

 server unduly. A child will be assumed without self-con- 

 sciousness because he talks of himself in the third person, 

 etc., etc. No rules can be laid down in advance. Com- 

 Darative observations, to be definite, must usually be made 

 to test some pre-existing hypothesis ; and the only thing 

 then is to use as much sagacity as you possess, and to be 

 as candid as you can. 



THE SOURCES OF ERROR IN PSYCHOLOGT. 



The first of them arises from the Misleading Influence of 

 Speech. Language was originally made by men who were 

 not psychologists, and most men to-day employ almost 

 exclusively the vocabulaiy of outward things. The car- 

 dinal passions of our hfe, anger, love, fear, hate, hope, 



