The Story of the Mind | Page 3

and reagents, and blowpipes, etc.;
they constitute his instruments, and by using them, under certain
constant rules, he keeps to a consistent method. So with the
physiologist; he has his microscope, his staining fluids, his means of
stimulating the tissues of the body, etc. The physicist also makes much
of his lenses, and membranes, and electrical batteries, and X-ray
apparatus. In like manner it is necessary that the psychologist should
have a recognised way of investigating the mind, which he can lay
before anybody saying: "There, you see my results, you can get them
for yourself by the same method that I used."

In fulfilling this requirement the psychologist resorts to two methods of
procedure. He is able to investigate the mind in two ways, which are of
such general application that anybody of sufficient training to make
scientific observations at all can repeat them and so confirm the results.
One of these is what is called Introspection. It consists in taking note of
one's own mind, as all sorts of changes are produced in it, such as
emotions, memories, associations of events now gone, etc., and
describing everything that takes place. Other persons can repeat the
observations with their own minds, and see that what the first reports is
true. This results in a body of knowledge which is put together and
called "Introspective Psychology," and one chapter of the story should
be devoted to that.
Then the other way we have is that of experimenting on some one else's
mind. We can act on our friends and neighbours in various ways,
making them feel, think, accept, refuse this and that, and then observe
how they act. The differences in their action will show the differences
in the feelings, etc., which we have produced. In pursuing this method
the psychologist takes a person--called the "subject" or the
"re-agent"--into his laboratory, asks him to be willing to follow certain
directions carefully, such as holding an electric handle, blowing into a
tube, pushing a button, etc., when he feels, sees, or hears certain things;
this done with sufficient care, the results are found recorded in certain
ways which the psychologist has arranged beforehand. This second
way of proceeding gives results which are gathered under the two
headings "Experimental" and "Physiological Psychology." They should
also have chapters in our story.
3. There is besides another truth which the psychologist nowadays
finds very fruitful for his knowledge of the mind; this is the fact that
minds vary much in different individuals, or classes of individuals.
First, there is the pronounced difference between healthy minds and
diseased minds. The differences are so great that we have to pursue
practically different methods of treating the diseased, not only as a
class apart from the well minds--putting such diseased persons into
institutions--but also as differing from one another. Just as the different
forms of bodily disease teach us a great deal about the body--its degree

of strength, its forms of organization and function, its limitations, its
heredity, the inter-connection of its parts, etc.--so mental diseases teach
us much about the normal mind. This gives another sphere of
information which constitutes "Abnormal Psychology" or "Mental
Pathology."
[Illustration: PLATE I.]
[Illustration: PLATE II.]
There are also very striking variations between individuals even within
normal life; well people are very different from one another. All that is
commonly meant by character or temperament as distinguishing one
person from another is evidence of these differences. But really to
know all about mind we should see what its variations are, and
endeavour to find out why the variations exist. This gives, then, another
topic, "Individual or Variational Psychology." This subject should also
have notice in the story.
4. Allied with this the demand is made upon the psychologist that he
show to the teacher how to train the mind; how to secure its
development in the individual most healthfully and productively, and
with it all in a way to allow the variations of endowment which
individuals show each to bear its ripest fruit. This is "Educational or
Pedagogical Psychology."
5. Besides all these great undertakings of the psychologist, there is
another department of fact which he must some time find very fruitful,
although as yet he has not been able to investigate it thoroughly: he
should ask about the place of the mind in the world at large. If we seek
to know what the mind has done in the world, what a wealth of story
comes to us from the very beginnings of history! Mind has done all that
has been done: it has built human institutions, indited literature, made
science, discovered the laws of Nature, used the forces of the material
world, embodied itself in all the monuments which stand to testify to
the presence of man. What could tell us