Chapter I: Preface

It is an acknowledged fact that we perceive errors in the work of others more readily than in our own.—LEONARDO DA VINCI

IN this Beginner’s Psychology I have tried to write, as nearly as might be, the kind of book that I should have found useful when I was beginning my own study of psychology. That was nearly thirty years ago; and I read Bain, and the Mills, and Spencer, and Rabier, and as much of Wundt as a struggling acquaintance with German would allow. Curiously enough, it was a paragraph in James Mill, most unpsychological of psychologists, that set me on the introspective track,—though many years had to pass before I properly understood what had put him off it. A book like this would have saved me a great deal of labour and vexation of spirit. Nowadays, of course, there are many introductions to psychology, and the beginner has a whole library of text-books to choose from. Still, they are of varying merit; and, what is perhaps more important, their temperamental appeal is diverse.

I do not find it easy to relate this new book to the older Primer,—which will not be further revised. There is change all through; every paragraph has been rewritten. The greatest change is, however, a shift of attitude; I now lay less stress than I did upon knowledge and more upon point of view. The beginner in any science is oppressed and sometimes disheartened by the amount he has to learn; so many men have written, and so many are writing; the books say such different things, and the magazine articles are so upsetting! Enviable is the senior who can reply, when some scientific question is on the carpet,—There are three main views, A’s and B’s and C’s, and you will find them here and there and otherwhere! But as time goes by this erstwhile beginner comes to see that knowledge is, after all, a matter of time itself. If he keeps on working, knowledge is added unto him; and not only knowledge, but also what is just as valuable as knowledge, the power of expert assimilation; so that presently, when some special point is in debate, he is not ashamed of the plea of ignorance. He has learned that one man cannot compass the full range of a science, and he is assured that so-many hours of expert attention will make him master of the new matter. He comes in this way not, surely, to underestimate knowledge, but to be less anxious about it; and as that preoccupation goes, the point of view seems to be more and more important. Why is it that beginners in science are so often disjointed in their thinking, so often superficial, unable to correlate what they know, logically all at sea? There is no doubt that they are, whether they study physics or chemistry, biology or psychology. I think the main reason is that they have never got the scientific point of view; they are taught Physics or Biology, but not Science. Hence I have, in this book, written an inordinately long introduction, and have kept continually harping on the difference between fact and meaning. I try to make the reader see clearly what I take Science to be. It does not matter whether he agrees with me; that is a detail; I shall be fully satisfied if he learns to be clear and definite in his objections, realizes his own point of view, and sticks to it in working out later his own psychological system. Muddlement is the enemy; and there is a good deal of muddled thinking even in modern books.

Not that I offer this little essay as a model of clear thought! The ideas of current psychology and the words in which they find expression are still, in very large measure, an affair of tradition and compromise; and even if a writer has fought through to clarity,—past experience forbids me to hope that: but even if one had,—a book meant for beginners may not be too consistently radical; some touch must be maintained with the past, and some too with the multifarious trends of the present. There is something turbid in the very atmosphere of an elementary psychology (is the air much clearer elsewhere?), and it is difficult to see things in perspective. So the critic who will soon be saying that the ideal text-book of psychology has yet to be written will be heartily in the right, even if he is not particularly helpful. The present work has its due share of the mistakes and minor contradictions that are inevitable to a first writing; at many points it falls short of my intention,—_l’œuvre qu’on porte en soi paraît toujours plus belle que celle qu’on a faite_; and I daresay that the intention itself is not within measureable distance of the ideal. It is, nevertheless, the best I can do at the time; and it is also, I repeat, the kind of book that I should have liked to have when I began psychologising.

Psychological text-books usually contain a chapter on the physiology of the central nervous system. The reader will find no such chapter here; for I hold, and have always held, that the student should get his elementary knowledge of neurology, not at second hand from the psychologist, but at first hand from the physiologist. I have added to every chapter a list of Questions, looking partly to increase of knowledge, but especially to a test of the reader’s understanding of what he has just read. I have also added a list of References for further reading. It depends upon the maturity and general mental habit of the student whether these references—made as they are, in many cases, to authors who do not agree either with one another or with the text of the book—should be followed up at once, or only after the text itself has been digested. The decision must be left to the instructor. My own opinion is that beginners are best given one thing at a time, and that the knowledge-questions and the references should therefore, in the ordinary run of teaching, be postponed until some ‘feeling’ for psychology, some steadiness of psychological attitude, has become apparent.

I have avoided the term ‘consciousness.’ Experimental psychology made a serious effort to give it a scientific meaning; but the attempt has failed; the word is too slippery, and so is better discarded. The term ‘introspection’ is, I have no doubt, travelling the same road; and I could easily have avoided it, too; but the time is, perhaps, not quite ripe. I have said nothing of the ‘thought-element’, which seems to me to be a psychological pretender, supported only by the logicising tendencies of the day; and if I am wrong no great harm has been done, since a description of this alleged elementary process, by positive characters, is not yet forthcoming. My references are confined to works available in the English language; I think it unlikely that the students for whom this book is intended will have attained to any considerable knowledge of French or German. Lastly,—I believe that this is my last major omission,—I have referred only incidentally to the ‘application’ of psychology; for science is not technology, though history goes to show that any the least fact of science may, some day or other, find its sphere of practical usefulness.

Two of my illustrations are borrowed: the swallow-figure on p. 138 from Professor Ebbinghaus, and the cut on p. 282 from Dr. A. A. Grünbaum.

I am sorry to confess that a few of the quotations which head the chapters are mosaics, pieced together from different paragraphs of the original. Even great writers are, at times, more diffuse than one could wish; or perhaps it would be fairer to say that they did not write with a view to chapter-headings. I hope, in any case, that no injustice has been done.

* * * * *

It is a very pleasant duty to acknowledge the assistance that I have received from my Cornell colleagues, Prof. H. P. Weld and Drs. W. S. Foster and E. G. Boring, and from Dr. L. D. Boring of Wells College. I am indebted to all for many points of valid criticism, and I wish to express to all my sincere thanks for much self-sacrificing labour.

I have retained the late Professor Huxley’s name in the forefront of this new primer, partly as an act of homage to the master in Science,—the brilliant investigator, the fearless critic, the lucid expositor; and partly, also, as a personal tribute to the man it was my earlier privilege to know.

CORNELL HEIGHTS, ITHACA, N.Y.
July, 1915.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PSYCHOLOGY: WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT DOES

SECTION PAGE

1. Common Sense and Science 1

2. The Subject-matter of Psychology 5

3. Mind and Body 10

4. The Problem of Psychology 14

5. The Method of Psychology 18

6. Process and Meaning 26

7. The Scope of Psychology 30

8. A Personal Word to the Reader 34

Questions and Exercises 37

References for Further Reading 40

CHAPTER II

SENSATION

9. Sensations from the Skin 43

10. Kinæsthetic Sensations 45

11. Taste and Smell 48

12. Sensations from the Ear 51

13. Sensations from the Eye 56

14. Organic Sensations 64

15. Sensation and Attribute 65

16. The Intensity of Sensation 67

Questions and Exercises 70

References 72

CHAPTER III

SIMPLE IMAGE AND FEELING

17. Simple Images 73

18. Simple Feelings and Sense-feelings 79

Questions and Exercises 87

References 88

CHAPTER IV

ATTENTION

19. The Problem of Attention 90

20. The Development of Attention 93

21. The Nature of Attention 99

22. The Experimental Study of Attention 103

23. The Nervous Correlate of Attention 106

Questions and Exercises 110

References 111

CHAPTER V

PERCEPTION AND IDEA

24. The Problem in General 112

25. The Analysis of Perception and Idea 114

26. Meaning in Perception and Idea 117

27. The Types of Perception 121

28. The Perception of Distance 125

29. The Problem in Detail 131

30. The Types of Idea 138

Questions and Exercises 142

References 143

CHAPTER VI

ASSOCIATION

31. The Association of Ideas 145

32. Associative Tendencies: Material of Study 149

33. The Establishment of Associative Tendencies 152

34. The Interference and Decay of Associative Tendencies 156

35. The Connections of Mental Processes 159

36. The Law of Mental Connection 162

37. Practice, Habit, Fatigue 169

Questions and Exercises 174

References 176

CHAPTER VII

MEMORY AND IMAGINATION

38. Recognition 177

39. Direct Apprehension 181

40. The Memory-idea 184

41. Illusions of Recognition and Memory 187

42. The Pattern of Memory 189

43. Mnemonics 192

44. The Idea of Imagination 194

45. The Pattern of Imagination 197

Questions and Exercises 201

References 202

CHAPTER VIII

INSTINCT AND EMOTION

46. The Nature of Instinct 203

47. The Two Sides of Instinct 207

48. Determining Tendencies 212

49. The Nature of Emotion 215

50. The James-Lange Theory of Emotion 218

51. The Expression of Emotion 222

52. Mood, Passion, Temperament 225

Questions and Exercises 228

References 229

CHAPTER IX

ACTION

53. The Psychology of Action 230

54. The Typical Action 233

55. The Reaction Experiment 236

56. Sensory and Motor Reaction 239

57. The Degeneration of Action: From Impulsive to Reflex 242

58. The Development of Action: From Impulsive to Selective
and Volitional 246

59. The Compound Reaction 252

60. Will, Wish, and Desire 255

Questions and Exercises 259

References 260

CHAPTER X

THOUGHT

61. The Nature of Thought 261

62. Imaginal Processes in Thought: The Abstract Idea 263

63. Thought and Language 267

64. Mental Attitudes 271

65. The Pattern of Thought 275

66. Abstraction and Generalisation 280

67. Comparison and Discrimination 283

Questions and Exercises 287

References 288

CHAPTER XI

SENTIMENT

68. The Nature of Sentiment 290

69. The Variety of Feeling-attitude 293

70. The Forms of Sentiment 297

71. The Situations and their Appeal 300

72. Mood, Passion, Temperament 304

Questions and Exercises 305

References 306

CHAPTER XII

SELF AND CONSCIOUSNESS

73. The Concept of Self 307

74. The Persistence of the Self 312

75. The Self in Experience 315

76. The Snares of Language 321

77. Consciousness and the Subconscious 323

78. Conclusion 328

Questions and Exercises 332

References 334

APPENDIX

DREAMING AND HYPNOSIS

79. Sleep and Dream 335

80. Hypnosis 341

References 349

INDEX OF NAMES 351

INDEX OF SUBJECTS 353

A BEGINNER’S PSYCHOLOGY

A BEGINNER’S PSYCHOLOGY