1895.] Psychology. 998 
found necessary to the successful prosecution of research. Many con- 
fine themselves to working over and over again all that the thinkers of 
the past have said, and are ambitious of nothing more. Others, having 
trained themselves with care in the methods which, after more than 
two thousand years’ trial, have been found wanting, laboriously evolve 
volume after volume, the contents of which is destined to be forgotten 
before the printer’s ink is dry. Their only instrument is introspection ; 
_ what the observer sees in his own consciousness he ascribes to his fel- 
low, and if his fellow, using a similar method, maintains the contrary, 
assuredly, thinks he, his fellow is either a liar or a fool. 
Psychology was one of the first of the mental sciences to feel the in- 
fluence of the new spirit. Descartes and Leibniz, Hobbes, Locke, 
Hume and Hartley and many others, have faithfully endeavored to 
record the facts of mental life as they saw them, and to give a satis- 
factory explanation of them. Nor has their work proved fruitless, 
although its results are far from satisfactory. In the first place, all 
used introspection as their chief, or only, method. In thesecond place, 
the hypostatizing method of the old Greek psychology still persisted. 
Instead of recognizing that mental facts, like all facts, must be supposed 
to conform to laws the discovery of which is the chief end of science, 
we find a tendency to refer the facts observed to half personified 
“ faculties.” In the third place, the kindred science of physiology was, 
and indeed still is, in an imperfect condition, and it was not possible 
for the psychologist to bring his results into harmony with it. Until 
this js done, it is safe to say, the foundations of the science of psychol- 
ogy have not been firmly laid. 
Within the last twenty years, psychology has entered upon a new 
era. Fechner, Weber and Wundt, and a host of followers, have under- 
taken a thorough examination into the simplest phenomena of mental 
life, especially into the relation of stimulus to sensation. This school , 
uses, wherever possible, the method of direct experiment, and its ideal 
is to make psychology a science of determinate quantities. ‘These are 
the psychophysicists in the narrower sense, and the psychophysical 
laboratory, with its elaborate apparatus for the regulation of stimulus- 
intensities and measurement of time-intervals, has come, within the last 
ten years, to be regarded as a necessary part of every great University. 
Yet it is openly claimed that the net result to the science of psychol- 
ogy of all this outlay is very small; that the analogy between physi- 
cal and mental facts and laws has been pressed too far; that the results 
obtained are, for the most part, of physiological significance only ; and, 
in some quarters the cry is heard, “ Back to introspection.” But we 
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