Laboratory Practice. 
35 
psychology as if there were some uncertainty as to its being an in¬ 
ductive science. It would be salutary as a mental alterative if we 
would often really recur to Francis Bacon, a man as much abused by 
modern science as Aristotle was abused by him. It is hard to see why 
the facts of mental science, which lie within the horizon, of conscious¬ 
ness as truly as those of the heavens lie within the range of the eye 
may not be induced into general concepts, and by still further in¬ 
duction constituted into a hierarchy of principles so as to make psy¬ 
chology an inductive science of observation. Certainly any possible 
science of physiological psychology is conditioned upon the authenticity 
of consciousness, for its “cortical irritations” are only disjecta membra, 
to whose disclosure consciousness holds the key of witness. 
2 . I would like to express a suspicion I have felt in regard to the 
prevailing conception of laboratory practice as applied to the study of 
psychology. What I have in mind does not primarily concern the 
laboratory practice 1 which is made so much of in investigating psychical 
processes by the aid of physiological experiments. No objection can be 
made to such adjuvant processes for throwing light upon the occult 
phenomena of volition, thought and feeling. I can see no reason, how¬ 
ever, why such laboratory practice should not in honesty be designated 
as physiological. Is it not physiological practice? No doubt much 
curious light has been thrown upon mental processes by such experi¬ 
ments, though perhaps their value has been relatively overestimated, 
particularly in the inferences they have been supposed to justify. At 
all events, of the two inferences, spiritism and materialism, the former 
is more likely to be the ultimate one than the latter. 
What I have in mind is rather the unduly restricted conception of 
laboratory practice, which makes it inapplicable to the immediate inves¬ 
tigation of mental phenomena by consciousness. What is a laboratory? 
Is it anything more than a place where the student proceeds to explore, 
by experimental methods of scrutiny adapted to the theorem in ques¬ 
tion, any conceived phenomena ? And laboratory practice is such 
personal beleaguerment of the field of fact, is it not? Is there any rea¬ 
son why it should be prosecuted exclusively with the eye unarmed, or 
armed with the microscope and knife ? The phrase, “laboratory practice,” 
is freely used in respect to the corresponding method of studying 
history. It is not insisted on that history should be elaborated with the 
•eye or the ear, or literature. And so, in psychology, for the eye and the 
hand consciousness may as well be substituted, and under the scruti¬ 
nizing eye of introspection the procession of mental states may be made 
to pass and give account of itself. It may very likely be more difficult 
to differentiate and diagnose the elements of the theorem in mind than 
in matter, so that the student is more likely to need a mentor, and it is 
not probably as safe to leave the tyro to himself, because he is not so 
used to moving in realms of mental facts as in realms of sense. Accord 
