The Story of the Mind | Page 4

more of what mind is than this
record of what mind has done? The ethnologists are patiently tracing
the records left by early man in his utensils, weapons, clothing,

religious rites, architectural remains, etc., and the anthropologists are
seeking to distinguish the general and essential from the accidental and
temporary in all the history of culture and civilization. They are making
progress very slowly, and it is only here and there that principles are
being discovered which reveal to the psychologist the necessary modes
of action and development of the mind. All this comes under the head
of "Race Psychology."
6. Finally, another department, the newest of all, investigates the action
of minds when they are thrown together in crowds. The animals herd,
the insects swarm, most creatures live in companies; they are
gregarious, and man no less is social in his nature. So there is a
psychology of herds, crowds, mobs, etc., all put under the heading of
"Social Psychology." It asks the question, What new phases of the mind
do we find when individuals unite in common action?--or, on the other
hand, when they are artificially separated?
We now have with all this a fairly complete idea of what The Story of
the Mind should include, when it is all told. Many men are spending
their lives each at one or two of these great questions. But it is only as
the results are all brought together in a consistent view of that
wonderful thing, the mind, that we may hope to find out all that it is.
We must think of it as a growing, developing thing, showing its stages
of evolution in the ascending animal scale, and also in the unfolding of
the child; as revealing its nature in every change of our daily lives
which we experience and tell to one another or find ourselves unable to
tell; as allowing itself to be discovered in the laboratory, and as willing
to leave the marks of its activity on the scientist's blackened drum and
the dial of the chronoscope; as subject to the limitations of health and
disease, needing to be handled with all the resources of the asylum, the
reformatory, the jail, as well as with the delicacy needed to rear the
sensitive girl or to win the love of the bashful maid; as manifesting
itself in the development of humanity from the first rude contrivances
for the use of fire, the first organizations for defence, and the first
inscriptions of picture writing, up to the modern inventions in
electricity, the complex constitutions of government, and the classic
productions of literary art; and as revealing its possibilities finally in

the brutal acts of the mob, the crimes of a lynching party, and the deeds
of collective righteousness performed by our humane and religious
societies.
It would be impossible, of course, within the limits of this little volume,
to give even the main results in so many great chapters of this
ambitious and growing science. I shall not attempt that; but the rather
select from the various departments certain outstanding results and
principles. From these as elevations the reader may see the mountains
on the horizon, so to speak, which at his leisure, and with better guides,
he may explore. The choice of materials from so rich a store has
depended also, as the preface states, on the writer's individual judgment,
and it is quite probable that no one will find the matters altogether
wisely chosen. All the great departments now thus briefly described,
however, are represented in the following chapters.
CHAPTER II.
WHAT OUR MINDS HAVE IN COMMON--INTROSPECTIVE
PSYCHOLOGY.
Of all the sources now indicated from which the psychologist may
draw, that of so-called Introspective Psychology--the actual reports of
what we find going on in our minds from time to time--is the most
important. This is true for two great reasons, which make Psychology
different from all the other sciences. The first claim which the
introspective method has upon us arises from the fact that it is only by
it that we can examine the mind directly, and get its events in their
purity. Each of us knows himself better than he knows any one else. So
this department, in which we deal each with his own consciousness at
first hand, is more reliable, if free from error, than any of those spheres
in which we examine other persons, so long as we are dealing with the
psychology of the individual. The second reason that this method of
procedure is most important is found in the fact that all the other
departments of psychology--and with them all the other sciences--have
to use introspection, after all, to make sure of the results which they get
by other methods. For example, the natural scientist, the botanist, let us

say, and