STUDY OF OTHER MINDS.

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of inquiry is especially valuable as bringing us face to face with a much simpler state of things than we meet with when we observe our own developed minds. The careful objective observation of the early stages of individual mental development is now coming to be recognised as an essential condition of any adequate scientific theory of the nature and laws of this process. And though this sphere of observation has only just begun to be taken possession of by the psychologist, the results already reached are full of promise.1

It

§ 4c. Abnormal States of Mind. Lastly, the external study of mind should include abnormal instances, that is to say, those which deviate most widely from the normal and average type. Thus, for example, cases of irregular mental development caused by a defective organisation at birth or acquired in early life, as of those born blind, are of special use as throwing light on the connexion of our intellectual products with the senses. The absence of a sense simplifies matters for the psychologist. satisfies one of the main conditions of scientific inquiry, "varying the circumstances," and enables us to understand the effect of a particular class of sense-impressions by supplying a 'negative instance,' that is, a case in which the antecedent whose effect we are studying is removed. Thus the now famous case of Laura Bridgman who, at the age of 26 months, lost sight, hearing, and to a large extent taste and smell also, and who nevertheless reached, by the aid of a scientifically conceived and carefully carried out plan of education, a fair intellectual and moral development, is perhaps the most instructive instance that has ever been brought under the notice of psychologists.2

Similarly the disturbed and irregular forms of mental life. arising from diseases of the nervous system are full of instruction to the psychologist. Such cases of abnormal psychosis often supply the place of experiment by varying the circumstances, breaking up fixed psychical combinations, and displaying the action of psychical forces in a much clearer because

1 The most important contributions to the observation of childhood are those of Taine, Mind, vol. ii. p. 252; Darwin, Mind, vol. ii. p. 285; Preyer, Die Seele des Kindes, and Perez's First Three Years of Childhood.

"The case of Laura Bridgman is carefully described by Prof. G. S. Hall in Mind, vol. iv. p. 149. Compare the account of a somewhat similar case in Mind, vol. xiii. p. 314.

much freer form. The phenomena of mental disease, by showing the effect of certain tendencies of normal mental life, e.g., the mastery of the thoughts by a feeling as terror or selfesteem, when unchecked or uncontrolled by other forces (the will), substitute for the complexity of normal consciousness a relative simplicity.1

The study of abnormal mental activity belongs to a distinct branch of inquiry known as Mental Pathology. As such mental aberrations are studied in connexion with diseased conditions of the nerve centres of which they are at once the effect and the symptom, this branch of inquiry connects itself very closely with physiological psychology, and forms one main branch of the modern science of Neurology.

$5. The Collective Mind. In addition to such wide and varied observation of individual minds, the objective study of psychical phenomena should include manifestations or products of the collective mind, that is to say, of the mind of the community or society, as, for example, traditional religious and other ideas, works of art, and so forth. More particularly, the psychologist may gain valuable material from the results of recent anthropological research into the early manifestations of mind among the lower races and in the beginnings of human history, such as the rudimentary forms of language, primitive beliefs (myths), sentiments, customs, etc. This study of the infancy of the race connects itself closely with that of the infancy of the individual.

This branch of psychological research has not received a special name in this country, but is included under the general head of Anthropology (see Tylor's Introduction to Anthropology). In Germany it has been developed by Lazarus and other psychologists into a separate branch of psychological study under the name Völker-psychologie (psychology of peoples), which, while it includes the study of myths, customs, etc., has specially concerned itself with the problems of the origin and early forms of language.

§ 6. Study of Animal Mind. Although the main concern of the psychologist is with the developed consciousness in man, he must, in order to understand and account for this, view mind in all the various stages of its development. And the attempt to observe and interpret animal actions, habits, etc., has received a new impetus of late years from the growing interest in the

1 The value of this investigation to the psychologist is well brought out by Brentano, Psychologie, p. 51.

HUMAN AND ANIMAL MIND.

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question of man's descent from an animal ancestry. In truth, Animal or Comparative Psychology has now begun to assume the form of a distinct branch of research. 1 It is evident that the observation of the animal mind, owing to its points of dissimilarity to our own, is attended with peculiar difficulty. While in the case of the higher animals we find points of community between their experience and our own, e.g., similar senses and impulses, we also find well-marked points of contrast. The region of animal instinct still remains, to a large extent, a psychological puzzle. When to this is added the fact that we have in the case of animals very imperfect outward manifestations, language being wholly wanting, and emotional expression being often unlike our own and highly ambiguous, it will be seen that our knowledge of the animal mind must always be largely a matter of precarious inference.

The scientific observation of the animal mind has been carried out with great energy during the last half century, mainly under the stimulus of the problem of man's descent. In our own country it is Charles Darwin, and next to him his disciple, Mr. Romanes, who have done most to elucidate animal ways. The general tendency of this modern research has been to bring the animal nearer the human mind, and so to favour the theory of kinship between the two. See especially Darwin's Descent of Man, and Romanes' Animal Intelligence and Mental Evolution in Animals. The difficulties in the way of certain knowledge of the animal consciousness have been pointed out by myself, Sensation and Intuition, p. 15, etc.; G. H. Lewes, Study of Psychology, p. 131, etc.; and more recently by Prof. Lloyd Morgan, Mind, vol. xi. p. 174, etc. (Cf., however, his later publication, Animal Life and Intelligence.)

§ 7. Value of Objective Study of Mind. As already remarked, the objective study of mind can never have the directness and the certainty that belongs to subjective observation. As Kant pointed out, others' mental states are not accessible to direct investigation. Whenever we are studying another mind, we are carrying out a process of interpreting signs which is always to some extent precarious. It has been noticed by more than one writer that there is special danger of reading into the mind observed our own peculiar modes of thought, etc.2 Even in

1 Strictly speaking, Comparative Psychology is wider than Animal. It includes not only the comparative study of the human and the animal mind, but also of different varieties of the human mind itself, e.g., the mind of the adult and of the child, and of the civilised and the uncivilised man,

2 This danger is well brought out by W. James in his account of the "Psychological Fallacy". See his Principles of Psychology, i. p. 196 ff.

the examination of minds similar in their constitution and their expression to our own we are aware of an element of uncertainty. We cannot be certain that similar outward manifestations, e.g., facial and bodily movements, indicate perfectly similar feelings in the case of two individuals. We have to make a careful study of a person before we can tell the worth of such expression in his particular case. And even when others describe their feelings in words we are exposed, if not to the risk of simulation. and dissimulation, at least to that of unconscious misleading through the vagueness, ambiguities, and fluctuations of meaning of words. These sources of error become much more serious when we try to interpret minds widely unlike our own, as those of children and of members of lower races, and in the case of animals they are, as we have seen, almost fatal to true knowledge. It follows that the objective study of mind, though of immense value by reason of its wide range of phenomena, can never become the chief source of our knowledge of mind, but must be resorted to merely in order to widen and complete the view gained by self-scrutiny.1

§ 8. Observation and Experiment in Psychology. We have thus far assumed that our only way of getting at psychical facts is by passive observation as distinguished from active observation or experiment. The biological sciences are not experimental to the extent to which the "experimental sciences," e.g., physics and chemistry, are so, and it is the absence of experiment on a wide scale that accounts for the backward. condition of these sciences. This drawback psychology shares with the biological sciences. Experiment has only a very limited range in the science.

A beginning has, however, recently been made at psychological experiment which may possibly mark an epoch in the history of the science. Thus attempts have been made and with a considerable measure of success to experiment on the inquirer's own mind, and still better on other minds, by finding out what ideas are called up by words and what modes of intellectual association they illustrate. In addition to this purely psychological experiment a whole new branch of inquiry has lately been opened up in 1 On the scientific value of this study of others' minds see Volkmann, Lehrbuch der Psychologie, i. § 7; Brentano, Psychologie, p. 45 seq.; cf. my volume Illusions, p. 217 and following.

EXPERIMENT IN PSYCHOLOGY.

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the experimental measurement of simple psychical phenomena, and especially sensation, and also the estimation of the rapidity of mental processes in connexion with the accompanying physiological processes, and by the help of special physical apparatus. This domain of psycho-physical experiment will be referred to later on. Lastly, a bare reference may be made to that new and curious branch of psychological experiment, which has come to be marked off as Hypnotism. This line of inquiry directs itself to the experimental production and examination of a peculiar cerebro-psychical condition (hypnotic sleep or trance), the precise nature of which is as yet but imperfectly understood.

§ 9. Method of Psychology-Subjective Analysis. Having now considered the means at our disposal for ascertaining mental facts, we have to inquire what method we are to pursue in arranging and explaining these facts.

As already pointed out, the special aim of the psychologist is to resolve the complex facts of our mental life into their elements, and to show, by the help of properly psychological laws, how these elements group themselves into the variety of complex forms which we find in the human consciousness. This suggests at once that we start with a complex state of things, and have to find our way back to a more elementary. Scientific knowledge of mind necessarily begins with selfinspection, and at an age when the mental life has reached a high degree of complexity. Hence the method which all psychologists agree to be the first and main method of the science, is known as Psychological Analysis.

When we talk of analysing mental phenomena, we are, it is obvious, using the word in another sense than that in which it is employed by the chemist. In chemical analysis a compound substance is actually separated into its elementary constituents so that these can be viewed apart. Such actual separation is not possible and is not aimed at in psychological analysis. What the psychologist attempts is an ideal or logical separation only, such as is carried out in physical observation when we limit our attention to the form of a flower, or the odour of a chemical substance. That is to say, the psychologist analyses a thought or a feeling when he is able to discriminatively attend to its several features or elements.

1 The importance of experimental psychology as a means of exact research is dwelt on by Wundt, Essays, v. (Problems of Experimental Psychology); W. James. Principles of Psychology, i. p. 192 ff.