business college as it should be on an equal footing with the literary college as it is and has ever been,-the bulwark of American citizenship. I thank you for the privilege which has been given me to present this subject, and I trust that in the near future the Business Teachers' Federation may come to be recognized in the fullest and broadest sense in the platform of the National Educational Association,-of which the S. E. A. is a counterpart.

EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY IN THE NORMAL SCHOOL AND THE COLLEGE.

BY MISS CELESTIA S. PARRISH, RANDOLPH-MACON COLLEGE FOR

WOMEN.

To those of us who, in our fourteenth or fifteenth year, memorized and recited whole chapters from Upham's Mental Philosophy, or from an equally learned treatise, in which a profound discussion of the primary truths of personal existence and personal identity was prefaced by a consideration of the nature of primary truth itself; in which fine distinctions were made between mental identity, bodily identity and personal identity, in which was offered a scholarly argument for the immateriality of the soul, a learned exposition of the laws of belief, the origin of knowledge, the doctrine of the non-existence of matter, together with quite a fairsounding presentation of the points at issue between the realist. and nominalist, convincing arguments, on one side, concerning the freedom of the will, and, at least, very strong presuppositions regarding the immortality of the soul,-to us, it has been a little hard to separate our conceptions of psychology from metaphysical preconception, and in judging of the fitness of the subject for any grade of school to shape our judgments in harmony with later thought and adapt our decisions to the new psychology. The professor of psychology, for instance, if he is a disciple of the new order and knows the scientific training and valuable knowledge to be gotten from the study of psychology; if he knows its far-reaching implications and connections with almost everything else taught in the school, ordinarily insists that some psychology should be given the student not later than the sophomore year. The president or dean, if he has himself been trained or tortured, as the case may have been, after the older fashion, usually insists

that it shall not come earlier than the senior year, if, indeed, so very abstract a subject should be in a college curriculum at all.

All this is quite natural, but it is a little astonishing sometimes to learn what a large number of people, educated along recent lines though they may be, make another mistake, which is a survival of the earliest phase of the new movement. When, in 1878, Wundt established at Leipsic the first laboratory of experimental psychology in the world, physiologists had not yet supplied all the neurological information the psychologist needed. Yet, he had done some work which we now claim to be the province of psychology. The boundary line between physiology and a field unexplored except for accidental incursions of the psychologist could not be very well established until after some more systematic exploration, and it happened for a while that the psychologist did a sort of work which he was glad to return to the physiologists as soon as enough lines of investigation opened to him to make a division of labor necessary,-a thing which very soon happened. In this way it came about that the first laboratories which were called psychological were really psycho-physiological. That stage of the development of the science has its survivals still, at least in certain conceptions of it. I am afraid it is the rule rather than the exception when the new psychology is spoken of by an outsider, that physiological psychology is in his mind, and that he is confusing lines of work which are now sharply separated.

Modern psychology has adopted the scientific method, and therefore must leave to ethics, logic, ontology, epistemology, etc., the problems mentioned as discussed by Professors Upham, Haven and their contemporaries. This is but saying that they ought not be studied. It would perhaps be better for our students if pure philosophy had much more place in our college curricula than it is getting, but then it cannot be studied as psychology in our present use of the term. The new psychology relies upon introspection as its ultimate court of appeal, hence it is useless to include in it questions to which consciousness is absolutely deaf and for any answer to which it is a very sphinx.

Introspection occupies the same position with regard to the new mental science that has long been assigned to observation with regard to physical science. The objects of introspection and of observation are also analogous. We can say that we are studying mind only if we define mind as mental process, just as

the physicist can claim that he studies matter only on the condition that he means physical energy and material process. It is a behavior, not a thing, with which the scientist is concerned, whether his work lie in the mental or the physical world. But the chemist or the physicist finds that mere observation is too elusive a process. He wants to study behavior under certain conditions, and instead of waiting until nature has brought about a happy combination of energies which will give him the conditions he asks, he establishes the desired conditions at his own time and pleasure and then observes. He calls his work an experiment. In a precisely similar manner, the psychologist, not finding favorable conditions for introspection existent at his pleasure, creates them, and then, stimulating his subject to introspect under these conditions, he interprets the result from his own observations and from the subject's account of his introspection. This work he calls a psychological experiment. Of course, in many cases he can be both experimenter and subject, and then he interprets from his own introspection.

An outsider always wonders that any sane person should be willing to be the subject of such experimentation and observation by another. One of the pioneers of the new psychology said, not forty years ago, that experimental psychology would be forever impossible, for this very reason-no intelligent subject could be found. Yet, for twenty years persons, both sane and intelligent, have been willing subjects, and they are becoming so in increasingly larger numbers.

Before entering fully upon a discussion of the function and place of this sort of work in the normal school and the college, it is quite necessary to have a clear idea of what we mean to include under the term psychology. Two years ago there appeared an article in the Atlantic Monthly on "The Dangers of Experimental Psychology," and when under the article appeared so distinguished a name as that of Professor Hugo Münsterberg, there was a tumult of rejoicing on one side and some wonder and indignation on the other. He certainly seemed to mean that experimental psychology ought not to be undertaken outside the university, and, not content with that iconoclastic statement, proceeded to aver that any psychology is absolutely valueless for the teacher. Of course, the advocates of the older order rejoiced. They said: "Here is one of your leaders, a man who has tried it, giving it up and saying it is useless." Prof. Münsterberg, himself, said that

he was applauded by sympathizers who did not care for his argument at all and who hailed his side only because it was more convenient to them not to study psychology and education. "They cried naively," he says, "of course the man is right; all experimental psychology is nonsense, and all study of education is superfluous; let the teachers do what they like. Our grandfathers did that." When a storm of protest arose from certain friends of experimental psychology (the leading ones as a rule, remained silent) Professor Münsterberg said it was hard to tell whether he differed most from his sympathizers or his opponents, and finally he announced that he meant very little of what had been understood. In an article published in the Educational Review of September, 1898, he explained himself. So far as I can make out his meaning, it is that he wishes to warn against an abuse of experimental psychology, to give clearer ideas of certain technical terms, and to plead for a fine discrimination among things which he believed ought not to be confused. The whole thing was unfortunate. Experimental psychology had not been sufficiently abused to make such a warning necessary. The extravagance of Dr. Scripture's book, an attack on which was the main point of the first article, had not done any harm. The hair splitting distinctions which the learned professor insisted on making are bewildering to the uninitiated, and at present our scientific terminology is not quite equal to the expression of these distinctions. Of course people who understood Professor Münsterberg knew that he favored certain forms of experimental psychology, not only in the college but in the high school and even in the primary school. They knew that he did not oppose the training of teachers or the study of education. He was only anxious to call things by names which he considered the right ones. But people who did not understand him went on quoting him in defense of their conservatism and indolence. As a matter of course very little good and some harm was done. I must confess to both the inability and unwillingness to make any practical use of Professor Münsterberg's fine distinction, and must beg that, when the word psychology is used in this paper, you will understand it to mean a study of mental processes, not merely in their analysis or synthesis, but in the laws of their operations. When the term experimental psychology is used it is intended to denote that form of scientific laboratory work in which mental processes, either of the observer himself or of some one else, are subjected to as favorable condi

tions as possible and then observed, this being done by the investigator in order to gain a fuller knowledge of their nature and the laws of their workings; by the immature student for the purpose of gaining accuracy, skill and efficiency in such observation and of making first-hand a knowledge which if acquired in any other way would be second-hand and unreal.

It has become a recognized educational truth that, while mental discipline is both valuable and necessary, it can always be gotten in sufficient degree from content studies, and that, but for the necessity of using some of the merely formal studies as tools in the acquisition of content, they might be dispensed with altogether. Educators would probably be of one accord in saying that, the disciplinary value of the studies being equal, those would be selected which contain most of what is worth knowing for its own sake. This being granted it follows as a mere matter of course that when experimental psychology is well understood it must have a place in the college curriculum at least equal to that now accorded to chemistry, physics or biology. It cannot displace any one of these, for it uses them all as tools. Chemistry to a small extent, physics and biology as essential prerequisites. It gives in its laboratory work, a training in as purely scientific method as is obtained in any other laboratory; its disciplinary value is quite equal to that of any other science, and, at the same time, it gives a knowledge which is connected more directly with human experience, touches more closely human affairs, and yields higher results in the enrichment of human life than any of the others. Having its own foundations in biology and physics, it forms at least one of the corner stones of modern logic, ethics, pedagogy and sociology. Without it, the last two would lose their claims to be called scientific and would become mere dogma.

The history of the movement is too well known to need more than a passing remark here. It has been said, the first laboratory was establised by Wundt in 1878. At present there are laboratories in all the great universities of Germany and England and in nearly all the larger ones in this country, Johns Hopkins, I think, being the only exception. The smaller colleges are rapidly opening them, quite a large number in the North and West and a few in the South having them already. I am always afraid to make any statements as to the exact colleges which have them; for it is always probable that after my inquiry into the matter, so many