The primer of psychology

Front matter

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Preface To Second Edition

The text of this second edition has been thoroughly revised, and, I hope, considerably improved. Sections 23, 37, 85, 87, 92, and iii have been modified or rewritten; several new exercises have been added ; a large number of minor changes have been introduced in all the chapters ; and, for the benefit of those who do not read German, a second Appendix, dealing with Flechsig*s scheme of the cortical centres, has been inserted.

As regards the use of *the book, I may quote from the Preface to the first edition : —

No experiment should be undertaken whose meaning the teacher does not thoroughly understand; none should be performed in class until he has thoroughly tested and familiarised himself with the instruments. So far as time allows, pupils should be encouraged to put their own apparatus together : to cut their own colour-discs, calculate their own pendulum-units, etc. They should also be instructed that the object of a psychological experiment is not to * get things right,' to arrive at some prescribed result ; but to get things as they are, to arrive at the truth. All idea of competition should be eliminated from the work. It will probably be found that Chapters VI., IX., and XIII. are somewhat more difficult than the rest; more time

- vii viii Preface to Second Edition

should therefore be allotted to their study. Sections 76 and 108 should be omitted if reaction-experiments cannot be carried out, and carried out in some detail. Sections 121 and 122, and the greater part of § 123, should be omitted from a high-school course. For the benefit of teachers who may desire to extend the brief account of the brain and nervous system given in § 6 and Appendix II., I have included brain models in the list of apparatus. It would be well to consult the Index (under Physiology) before determining the form which this extension shall assume. Throughout the book I have referred, where reference seemed useful, to Professor Huxley's Elementary Lessons in Physiology (reprint of 1897: The MacmiUan Co.) and to Professor Nichols' The Outlines of Physics (1897: The Macmillan Co.). These works are cited as H, and N. respectively. A few citations of F, refer the reader to Professor Foster's Text-book of Physiology (single vol. ed., 1897: The Macmillan Co.). Answers to the * Questions ' appended to the chapters can always be worked out, if not from the text, from the * References ' that follow.

It is a very pleasant duty to acknowledge the assistance that I have recei\;ed from Professor E. C. Sanford, of Clark University, and from Dr. I. M. Bentley, my colleague in the Sage School of Philosophy, in the preparation of the revised text. To both I am indebted for many points of valid criticism ; to both I desire to express my sincere thanks for much self-sacrificing labour. I wish also to thank my wife, and my former pupil. Dr. E. B. Talbot, for numerous suggestions and corrections.

I have set the late Professor Huxley's name in the forefront of this second edition, partly as an act of homage to the Master in Science, — the brilliant investigator, the fearless critic, the lucid expositor ;

Preface to Second Edition ix

but partly, also, as a personal tribute to one who showed himself a good friend and wise counsellor at a time when friendship and counsel were sorely needed.

Cornell Uniyersfty, Ithaca, N.Y^ June, 1899.

CHAPTER I Psychology: What it Is and What it Does PAGE

§1. The Meaning of* Psychology * i

§ 2. Science i

§ 3. Mind 4

§ 4. Thing and Process 6

§ 5. Mental Process 9

§ 6. Mind and Body . .12

§ 7. Psychology and Physiology 17

§ 8. The Divisions of Mind 19

§ 9. The Problem of Psychology 22

Additional Questions and Exercises 22

References for Further Reading 23

Chapter II

§ 10. Observation . • 24

§ II. Experiment 26

§ 12. Psychological Observation 27

§ 13. The Psychological Experiment 29

§ 15. General Rules for Introspection 33 xi xii Contents

CHAPTER III Sensation PACK

§ 1 6. Sensations and their Classification 37

§ 17. Sensations from the Eye 38

§ 18. Sensations from the Ear 42

§ 19. Sensations from the Skin 45

§ 20. Sensations from the Mouth and Nose .... 46

§ 21. Sensations from Internal Organs 47

§ 22. Intensity of Sensations 49

§ 23. Weber*s Law 50

CHAPTER IV Affection and Feeling

§ 24. The Two Kinds of Affection 57

§ 25. Feeling 59

§ 26. The Bodily Signs of Affection 62

§ 27. Affection and Sensation 64

§ 28. Are there More than Two Kinds of Affection ? . . .68

CHAPTER V Attention

§ 29. The Problem of Attention 73

§ 30. Attention as a State of Consciousness . ... 74

§ 31. The Three Forms of Attention 76

§ 32. Bodily Tendency and Mental Constitution • • • 78

§ '^'^, Attention and Affection 81

§ 34. The Bodily Attitude in Attention 84

§ 35* Apperception 85

§ 36. The Working of Attention 88

§ 37. The Physiological Conditions of Attention . . ,90

Contents xiii

CHAPTER VI Perception PACK

§ 38. The Formation of Perceptions and Ideas .... 94

§ 39. The Difference between Perception and Idea . . • . 95 § 40. The Three Qasses of Perceptions . . . . .98

§ 41. The Development of Perception loi

§ 42. Perceptions of Quality : Taste, Resistance, Musical Note . 103

§ 43. Perceptions of Space : Place or Locality upon the Skin . 106

§ 44. Perceptions of Space : Position 107

§ 45. Perceptions of Space : Bodily Posture .... 109

§46. Perceptions of Space : Movement iio

§47. Perceptions of Time : Rhythm 112

§ 48. What Perception Means 114

§49. Illusions of Perception 115

CHAPTER VII Idea and the Association of Ideas

§50. The Development of Ideas 122

§51. The Four Chief Memory-types 123

§52. The Three Verbal Sub-types 126

§ 53. The Minor Memory-types 128

§ 54. The Association of Ideas 130

§ 55. Simultaneous Association .132

§ 56. Successive Association 134

§57. The Physiological Conditions of Association . . .136

CHAPTER VIII Emotion

§ 58. Feeling, Emotion and Mood 141

§ 59. How Emotions are Formed 143

§ 60. The Bodily Expression of Emotion : Trunk and Limbs . 144 xiv Contents

PACE

§ 6l. The Bodily Expression of Emotion : Face . . . 146 §62. The Gassification of the Emotions . . . - . .150

§ 63. Qualitative Emotions 150

§ 64. Temporal Emotions 153

§ 65. Mixed Feelings 155

§ 66. Temperament 157

CHAPTER IX The Simpler Forms ov Action

§ 67. Movement and Action 161

§ 68. The Conscious Condition of Primitive Action . . . 163 §69. Impulse: The Idea of Own Movement . . . .165 §70. Impulse: The Idea of Result . . » . . .167

§ 71. Psychomotor Action 170

§ 72. Reflex Movement 171

§ 73. Instinctive Action . 173

§ 74. The Physiology and the Psychology of Movement . • '75 §75. The Qassification of Impulses and Instincts . . .177

§76. The Simple Reaction 179

CHAPTER X Memory and iMAGiNArioN

§ 77. The Two Kinds of Memory and Imagination

§ 78. Recognition and Memory : Passive .

§ 79. The Mark of Familiarity ....

§ 80. The Degrees of Recognition and of Memory

§81. Recognition and Memory : Active .

§ 82. The Physiology of Memory and Forgetfulness

§ 83. The 'Three Stages * in Remembering

§ 84. Direct Apprehension • , , .

Contents xv

PACK

§ 85. Mental Imagery 201

§ 86. Passive Imagination 203

§ 87. Active Imagination 204

CHAPTER XI Thought and Self-consciousness

§88. Language 21 1

§ 89. Thought 213

§ 90. Judgment and Reasoning 215

§ 91. Aggregate Ideas and Concepts 218

§ 92. Comparison, Relation and Abstraction . . . .221

§ 93. The Concept of Self 224

§ 94. Self-consciuusness 227

CHAPTER XII Sentiment

§ 96. The Forms of Sentiment 231

§ 97. The Intellectual Sentiments 234

§ 98. The Social and the Religious Sentiments . . . 236 § 99. The iEsthetic Sentiments . . . . . .238

§ 100. The Practical Utility of ^Esthetics 240

CHAPTER XIII The Complex Forms of Achon

§ loi. The Development of Action beyond the Impulse . . 245

§ 102. Selective Action 246

§ 103. Volitional Action 249

§ 104. Choice and Resolve 251 xvi Contents

PAGB

§ 105. The Freedom of the Will 254

§ 106. Psychomotor Action and Automatic Movement . . 256

§ 107. The Gassification of Action 258

§ 108. The Compound Reaction 258

CHAPTER XIV Abnormal Psychology

§ 109. Sleep and Dreaihs 266

§ 1 10. The Origin and Composition of Dreams .... 267

§111. The Characteristics of the Dream Consciousness . . 268

§ 112. Hypnotism 271

§113. The Conditions of Hypnosis 272

§ 1 14. Some Debated Questions of Hypnosis .... 275

§115. Insanity and its Conditions 278

§116. The Chief Forms of Insanity 281

CHAPTER XV The Province and the Relations of Psychology

§117. The Scope of Psychology 286

§118. Child Psychology 288

§ 1 19. Animal Psychology 290

§ 120. Ethnic Psychology 292

§ 121. The Relation of Psychology to Ethics and Logic . . 295

§122. The Relation of Psychology to Pedagogy . . . 298

Appendix I.: Apparatus and Materials . . . .305

Appendix II. : The Cortical Centres (Flechsig's Scheme) . 308

Index of Names and Subjects 311

A PRIMER OF PSYCHOLOGY

Chapter I

§ I. The Meaning of * Psychology.* — The word *psy- Psychology chology* comes from the two Greek words psyche ^ of mini ^"*^ *mind/ and logos ^ 'word/ Psychology therefore means, by derivation, 'words* or 'talk about mind/ But it is understood among scientific men that when the word logos forms the last part of a compound English word it shall mean not simply ' talk about ' a subject, but the science of that subject. Hence we sometimes speak of the sciences as the ' ologies.' Biology, for instance, which is derived from the Greek bios^ * life,' and logoSy means the science of life ; and oology, which comes from oon^ * egg,' and logos^ is the science of birds* eggs. It would not be quite true to say, then, that psychology means * talk about mind ' ; it rather means * science of mind * or * mental science.'

§ 2. Science. — But what is the difference between Science u *.talk about ' a thing and the * science ' of the thing } and me-* The sciences can all be put into words; they are t^odicai

* '' knowledge.

written down in books, and courses of lectures are given upon them. After all, therefore, science is talk. Is there any real difference between them.?

The answer might be put in this way : all science is talk, but not all talk is science. Science is a particular kind of writing or talking. Talk may be random, scrappy, sketchy ; we may talk about a thing when we do not know much about it, so that our talk deals only with one side of it or is patched out with guesswork; or we may talk only for a little time ( together, so that we do not at all exhaust the subject. Science, on the other hand, is orderly and methodical talk, talk that gives a complete and exhaustive account of the subject, talk in which no details are left out which can help us to explain the things talked about. Hence to say that psychology is the science of mind is very different from saying that it is simply talk about mind. We all talk about mind : we * make up our mind,* or we * have half a mind ' to do something : but we are not all psychologists. The science of mind must give a complete account and an orderly, well-arranged account of its subject, keeping the facts steadily in view and never running oflf into mere speculation.

The science Let US look for a moment at the two sciences mentioned of biology. jyg^ jjQ^ . biology and oology. Biology is one of the largest and widest, oology one of the smallest of the sciences : but' in calling each of them a science we mean precisely th^ same thing. Biology is an orderly and methodical account of life. It has to ask and answer definite questions : how life is distributed over the earth, what animals and plants are found in what places, and why ; how life came to be so different in its forms as it now is, how species of plants and animals arose ; how it is that our own life shows certain characteristics and peculiarities which we have inherited from our parents, as they did from their parents ; etc. All

§ 2. Science 3

these questions are approached carefully and worked upon by accurate methods; and the answers are all brought together and compared with each other. If they disagree, the questions are tried again : until at last the answers harmonise. When this is the case, when we have a complete account of life (complete, that is, so far as the fects are known) with no contradictions between one part of it and another, we have a * system * of knowledge about life, or a ' science of biology.'

So it is with oology. Every schoolboy can say something The science about birds' eggs. But the science of oology deals with them ^^^syin an orderly and methodical way. It tries to find out the meaning of all the different colours and markings ; it compares the shapes and sizes of eggs; it asks whether the colour of the place where the eggs are laid has anything to do with their colour, and whether the nature of the nest or lock or soil has anything to do with their shape. The oologist knows at once, when he sees the eggs of the English robin and the American robin, that the birds must be quite different : the one is the egg of a Sylviine bird, the other that of a thrush \Turdus). His knowledge is arranged, systematic ; not haphazard and scrappy. It is ' scientific*

It should be said, perhaps, that science, as we have defined it, is rather the ideal of knowledge than its actual state As a matter of fact, none of the * sciences' is a complete and perfectly harmonious system ; new facts are constantly being discovered, and new explanations adopted. But the ideal which is aimed at, and which is slowly being realised, is that of the complete system. • We may, therefore, rightly give the name of science to any body of knowledge which has been gained by scientific methods and is approximating to the scientific ideal.

That psychology really is a science, as it professes to be. The science is something that we must take for granted here. We can- ^^psyc^oinot prove it until we have found out what psychology has to say about mind. Then, at the end of our enquiry, we shall be able to look back over what has been said, and see that psychology, sg for m it has gone, makes up au orcierly and

What is mind?

The popular notion of mind.

systematic body of knowledge. We shall not, indeed, find that it is a finished science : there are yet many problems for the psychologist to solve. But we shall see that it is a science, in the sense in which biology and oology are sciences.

§ 3. Hind. — The subject that psychology treats of is mind. Plainly, then, it is the psychologist who can best answer the question what mind is. We, who are now beginning to study psychology, cannot be expected to know what mind is ; we shall not know it till later on, when we have worked over the field of the science. Still, it would be unwise to begin to read without having any idea of what we are going to read about. It will be worth while, therefore, to try to find out in a general way what mind is, even if we cannot at present give a complete answer to the question. And we can find out most easily, perhaps, if we ask, first, what people say who are not psychologists, and then compare their answer with what the psychologist himself says.

If we ask someone who is not a psychologist, — someone, that is, who has not made a scientific study of mind, — what mind is, he will probably say this : " Mind is something inside of you which thinks and imagines and remembers. A stone does not know whether it is in one place or another; that is because it has no mind. A young oak sapling does not feel sorry when we cut down the parent oak: but we feel sorry when our parents die, because our minds can understand what death means. I have never been to Africa; but I can imagine what an African forest looks like, because my mind has imagination. Just as your body eats and drinks and

§ 3. Mind 5

walks and sleeps, so your mind thinks and feels and imagines and remembers. All these things that go on inside of you are done by your mind; they are the way in which your mind works.** And then, if we press him further, and ask again what the mind really is that works in these ways, he will say : " We do not know much about that. We can only say that mind is not made up of matter, as the body is ; it is immaterial. It lives inside the body, but does not take up any space : just as a room is full of air, but you can walk through it without knowing that it is not empty. Very possibly it has the same shape as the body, like a sort of ghost. But we do not know much about it; we only know its workings.'*

Now there is a part of this answer that the psychologist will be quite ready to accept ; but there is a part of it which he will say is wrong. That is not surprising ; we should not expect a man who had not made a scientific study of a subject to be able to give a description of it that would satisfy others who had done so. Let us see, then, what is right in the answer and what is wrong.

It is true that thoughts and memories and imagi- Really, mind nations and feelings are parts of mind. It is true, J^'ou^htrand too, in a sense, that they *go on inside of* us. But feelings; the psychologist does not think it true that they are *done by* the mind or are the 'workings* of the mind, — that the mind is something separate from them. He believes that they are the mind ; that the mind is just the sum of them all: so that when he says * mind * he is simply using a sort of short-hand phrase for ' all my thoughts and feelings.'

as the chair It is a little difficult at first to understand this use of the sea"°*d"' word *mind*; but it is important that the use should be bock, etc understood. To make it clearer we will take an illustration. Suppose we were asked to describe a chair. We might say : '' A chair is a piece of furniture that has a seat, and four legs, and bars, and a back, and sometimes arms and rockers." That seems true enough. But if we look at the description closely we find a difficulty. Does the chair 'have* these parts? Is there any chair there if you take the legs and back and seat and arms away? It is more nearly true to say that the chair is all these things than that it has them. When we speak of the Megs of a chair,* we do not mean that the chair is complete without its legs ; we ought really to say

* the legs of the rest of a chair ' or ' the legs of back and seat and arms.' Now it is precisely the same with mind. We must not say that the mind *has' thoughts and feelings ; but that the mind is thoughts and feelings. Take, away the thoughts and feelings and you take away the mind.

" But we are constantly losing thoughts ; we forget things. Yet the mind remains." So may the chair-seat lose straws or bits of cloth or parts of its hair-padding ; yet the chair remains. And the mind is renewed as the chair is; we learn new things, to make up for what we have forgotten. Take away a great group of thoughts, and the mind is an

* insane ' mind, a fragment that is of little use, — like the chair without its legs. Take away thoughts and feelings altogether, and you take away the whole mind.

§ 4. Thing and Process. — Mind, then, is the sum of thoughts, feelings, etc. They are the material, the stuflf, so to speak, of which mind is made ; and they are accordingly the matters with which psychology deals.

Things and The objects of which science treats are of two difprocesses. fej-gnt kinds. They may be things^ or they may be processes. If we were arranging fossil specimens or

§ 4» Thing and Process J

shells or minerals, or if we were experimenting in the physical laboratory with the wedge and the inclined plane and falling bodies, we should be handling things. Things are, for all practical purposes, lasting and unchanging; they are there, on the table before us, and they do not alter as we look at them. On the other hand, if we were watching the course of a chemical change as it occurred in the test-tube, or observing the growth of a tadpole into a frog, we should be dealing with processes. Processes are always changing ; they are different now from what they were a moment ago and from what they will be a moment later ; they go on there, in the test-tube or the aquarium before us. — Psychology is a science that treats exclusively of matters of the second sort, i.e,, of processes. In psychology we observe events, occurrences, happenings, goings on, processes : never things. There is no part of mind, no thought or feeling or memory or imagination, that we can catch at rest and watch unchanged; thought and feeling are changing, moving, shifting from instant to instant. Mind, then, as the sum of thoughts and feelings and Mind is a the rest, is a sum of processes. The objects of the pr^^ses. ' science of mind ' are the processes of mind ; the objects of ' mental science ' are mental processes.

To be able to convince oneself of the fact that the objects of psychology are always processes, one must have had some amount of training and practice in psychological observation. But a rough experiment here will be of some assistance.

( I ) As you sit reading, shut your eyes and try to think The idea of steadily of the chair in which you sit. You will probably * ^^^^^' have, at first, a memory of the printed word 'chair* which you have just read. This you will see in the * mind's eye.' Perhaps, too, you will hear the word * chair ' spoken in the mind's ear. Then will come a somewhat vague and shadowy picture of the chair, as it looks when your eyes are open, ' only that it will very likely seem to be inside your head, — as if you turned your eyes inward to see it. All this occurs with great rapidity, the changes coming in less time than it takes to write them down. Now try to hold the idea steadily. Your mind will suddenly * become a blank * ; then the idea will crop up again, not just as it was at first, but with some part of the picture more prominent than the rest, or with some new picture of another chair blended in with it ; then comes the blank again ; and so on. Now look at the blank for a moment : you will find that it was not really nothings no mind at all, but that it was made up of the black field before your eyes, of the pressure from your chair as you sat, of the sensations set up by the movements of the chest and abdomen in breathing, etc. And the various processes in the blank shift and change as inevitably as the processes in the idea of the chair. Here, then, is a flow, a passage, a going on : not anything like a ' thing.' The percep- (2) Close the book and look steadily at the table in front *^ hi °^* ^^ y^^' ^^^^ *^y *^ think continuously of that. You will find that steadiness now is even more impossible than it was when the eyes were shut. There is a tendency to let the eyes wander, to let them follow the grain and pattern of the wood, or to travel over the various objects lying on the table. If you withstand this temptation, your mind becomes a blank very soon indeed : the table gets to be quite meaningless to you. Presently the blank ends : you remember that you * ought * to have thought of the table, and resolve to do so ; the eyes try to wander again ; and so the whole history is repeated. Now look at the blank : it is filled up with pressures from your chair, sensations from breathing, sensations of strain about the eyes, etc. Here too, therefore, there is a flow of processes ; the picture of the table, the feeling of 'ought/ the resolve, the pressure, the strain, all these arc

§ 5- Mental Process g

mental processes ; they are, or they make up, your mind during the experiment. Mind 'goes on' from moment to moment ; it is never still.

§ 5. Mental Process. — We must now ask how it is that a mental process differs from the other processes that we have mentioned. If the mental process were in all respects the same as the chemical and the biological process, we should not be able to put the three into three different sciences: chemical decomposition, and the growth of the frog, and the course of an idea would all have to be treated by some one science. What, then, does the word * mental ' mean }

We said just now that mental processes go on Mental 'inside of us.' The process in the test-tube and the onTiSd^ethc process in the aquarium are, clearly, going on outside ^^^y* of us. Here, then, is one difference between the mental and the other processes. Still, it does not take us very far. For there are chemical processes also going on inside of us : processes of digestion, e,g. And biological processes of growth and decay are also going on inside of us ; yet we do not speak of them as mental. The difference cannot, therefore, be merely a difference of inside and outside.

What we have to do is to distinguish somehow between the inside processes which are mental and the inside processes which are not mental. We had a similar task in § 2 : all science is talk, we found, but not all talk is science. So here : all mental processes are processes going on inside the body, but not all inside processes are mental. What is the difference between them t The characteristics that made talk into science were those of method and

X completeness. What are the characteristics that

make a process within the body a mental process?

and can be This is a question that has been answered in a

one TCrson great many ways. The simplest answer to it, per-

only haps, is this. A mental process is a process which

can form part of the experience of one person only ;

the processes dealt with by other sciences can form

part of everybody's experience. Not only does the

mental process go on inside of you ; it is so entirely

inside of you that you are the only person who can

ever get at it and observe it.

Illustrations will help us again. And as we have settled

the point that psychology deals always with processes, and

always too with processes within the body, we will take two

of these processes as our illustrations.

(which is not We said that the process of digestion, going on inside the

trae of other living bodv, is a chemical process. Under ordinary circumprocesses) \

Stances, no one, neither yourself nor anyone else, can watch

your digestive processes. But cases are known in which the wall of the stomach has been torn through, say, by a gunshot wound ; so that digestion could be followed by the eye, just as the reaction in a test-tube can be followed. Now it is plain that, in such a case, other people could trace the process as well as you could : better, indeed, for you could watch your own digestion only by means of a mirror, whereas the onlooker could watch it directly. The mental processes, on the other hand, — the pain of the wound, the feelings of hunger and of satiety, — form part of your experience only ; they can never enter into the experience of the onlooker.