IBF 141 S7 Copy 1 SECOND COPY, 1899. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. #^ ■ Chap..V...... Copyright No. Shelf_„_jk7_. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. OTHER WORKS ON PSYCHOLOGY THE PSYCHOLOGY OF REASONING. By Dr. Alfred Binet. Pages, 193. Cloth, 75 cents. (3s. 6d.) THE SOUL OF MAN. By Dr. Paul Carus. With 152 cuts and diagrams. Pages, xvi, 458. Cloth, $3.00. (15s.) CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ANALYSIS OF THE SENSATIONS. By Prof. Ernst Mach. Pages, xi, 208. Cuts, 37. Cloth, $1.25. (6s. 6d.) THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ATTENTION. By Prof. Th. Ribot. Fourth edition. Pages, 121. Cloth, 75 cents. (3s. 6d.) THE DISEASES OF PERSONALITY. By Prof. Th. Ribot. Third edition. Pages, 157. Cloth, 75 cents. (3s. 6d.) THE DISEASES OF THE WILL. By Prof. Th. Ribot. Second edition. Pages, vi, 121. Cloth, 75 cents. (3s. 6d.) THE EVOLUTION OF GENERAL IDEAS. By Prof. Th. Ribot. (In prep- aration.) Pages, circa 250. Cloth, $1.00. (5s.) ON MEMORY, AND THE SPECIFIC ENERGIES OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. By Ewald Hering. Second edition. 50 pp. Paper, 15 cents. THREE INTRODUCTORY LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF THOUGHT. By Prof. F. Max Muller. Pages, vi, 128. Cloth, 75 cents. (3s. 6d.) THE PSYCHIC LIFE OF MICRO-ORGANISMS. By Dr. Alfred Binet. Pages xii, 120. Cloth, 75 cents. (3s. 6d.) ON DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS. By Dr. Alfred Binet. Third Edition. Pages 93. Paper, 15 cents, (gd.) THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY 324 Dearborn St., Chicago, III. London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Company AN OUTLINE SKETCH PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS by y HIRAM M. STANLEY Member American Psychological Association, Author of "Evolutionary- Psychology of Feeling," and "Essays on literary Art." » CHICAGO THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY (London Agents : Kkgan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.) 1899 t \ ^ 38231 Copyright, 1899 BY The Open Court Publishing Co. Chicago (Wi)COHif;a K£C£IV£D f |&*fcr of Wf 3 CONTENTS PAGE Preface i Definition of Psychology 3 Knowing . x 4-29 Sensation and Perception 4-14 Sight 4-10 Touch . 10-13 Hearing 13-14 Smell, Taste, Etc. 14 Memory 14-22 Image . 14-20 Knowledge 16 Name 17 Forgetting 18-19 Illusion and Recognition 20 Association 20-21 Imagination 21 Ideation a?id Introspection 20-28 Idea 22-24 Class and Definition . . 24-25 Introspection . . . 25-26 Induction — Deduction 26-28 Summary of Knowing 28-29 Feeling and Will 29-36 Emotion 29-32 Pain and Pleasure 30 Will 32-36 Effort 32 Work, Play, Habit 32 Instinct 32 Freedom of the Will 33-35 Reflex and Idea — Motor Action ..... 35-36 Special Psychology 36-44 Biological 37 Psychophysical 37 Physiological 38 Pathological 39 _ 4o Psychical Research 41 Evolutionary 41-42 Social 4 2 Higher 43 Practical . 43-44 PREFACE. The main object of a beginner in Psychology is to acquire psychic insight and familiarity with method, and I have tried to keep this end in view in this little book. The student from the very beginning should be told as little as possi- ble, but should learn and conclude for himself from the simplest observations and experiments. Hence the teacher should see that the scholar in all cases does the original exercises at the point indicated in his own reading, writing them in the blank pages provided at the end of the book; and the teacher should to some extent repeat and expand these exercises in the class. I have given no references to other books, and outside reading I consider to be confusing to the begin- ner; though, of course, the teacher should be familiar with the standard literature of the sub- ject. In my opinion Psychology should be a subject for the high school, academy and second- ary school, and this sketch is particularly designed for such work, but will, I hope, be found useful with beginners of any age, especially with those PREFACE. studying without a teacher, and in summer schools. As will be obvious, my method has been to give complete continuity to the treatment, and to proceed from the known to the unknown, the particular to the general, and to incite con- stant original and vigorous activity on the part of the student. The teacher in assigning lessons should bear in mind that each original exercise is equal to at least one page of text, and that the main work of the recitation period should be the ascertaining that each student has practical mastery of the subject as evinced in the original exercises. I am indebted to Miss S. L. Sargent of Ferry Hall Seminary for many practical sug- gestions. PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. Sensation and Perception. AFIRE gives out heat and light, and we study exactly and specially about such things as fire, heat, light in the fire and sunbeam, etc., and we call the knowledge we attain a science, and name it Physics. But some things have not merely heat, light, etc., but life, as we say the cat is a live thing, but the flaming coal is not a live thing. The results of exact and special study of living things we call the science of Biology. Now Biology may study the living being in its bodily parts by which it maintains its life, as in its legs, heart, lungs, and this division we term Physiology; or Biology may study the living being for its mental parts or processes, that is for its consciousness by which it maintains its life, as seeing, making an effort, fearing, and this division we call Psychology. You are crossing a railroad track, and you see an engine coming, you are afraid of being run over, and you make 4 PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. an effort to get out of the way; by such mental states you save your life many times a day. Write down in the pages at the end of this book three recent examples, perhaps in to-day's experience, of advantage to your life from your mental states. As our own mental states or states of con- sciousness are to help us adapt ourselves to the world about us, those states which specially give us information of our surroundings, like seeing, for example, are very useful. We all know at what a disadvantage a blind person is in getting along in the world; and we know how hard it is to walk safely home on a pitch dark night, unless we see lights to guide us. But in returning home at night you look out for the light in your home, and are guided by this consciousness of BRIGHTNESS. Write down three instances in your recent experience where your sense of brightness was of value to you. On awakening this morning you noticed that it was light, and you distinguished between the pure white light streaming in the window, and dim greyness near the window, and black shadows in the corners of the room. Thus the three most noticeable intensities of brightness we call white, grey, and black, though a sharp eye can distinguish about 700 different degrees of PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. 5 brightness between dead black to dazzling white. But what else do we see in this room besides various intensities of brightness? We see colors, as in the chair, table and wall; and we depend largely upon our sense of color to distinguish things apart. If a stranger asks you the way to a certain man's house, you may say, "A brown house on the right." Write down three instances of the use of perceiving colors, if possible out of your recent experience. Name and enumerate what you think the principal colors. We have about twenty common names for colors, but experiment shows that we can distin- guish about 30,000 colors. This, of course, includes all mixed colors, like greenish-blues, and all shades, like dark reds. You notice that a dress or coat is of a different color by lamp- light than by daylight, and if you turn down the lamp to a certain point all colors appear black. Black, grey, and white are not real colors, but degrees of brightness. Some people are blind to all colors, and see objects as only black, grey and white, and some see only certain colors. Many of the lower animals are partly or wholly color blind. Red as the color of blood and flesh, and green as the color of vegetation, are proba- bly the first colors to attract the attention of 6 PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. animals because they are the usual colors of their food. How faint a color or brightness can we per- ceive? Does this depend upon what we may now be perceiving? Ask some one to bring a lighted candle or a small lamp into a sun-lit room, and standing with your back to the door try to perceive the additional light. Grad- ually darken the room till you perceive the increase of illumination. You know that there is more light in the room when the candle is lit, but you say you cannot perceive the increase, because it is so small. How small an increase can you perceive? The necessary increase has been measured, and in the case of light, it is i-ioo So if the light in the room is 200 candle power you would not perceive one candle, but must have at least 2 lighted can- dles brought in to perceive an increase in the illumination of the room. Now within a wide range of light intensity this proportion of 1-100 is the necessary increase or decrease in order to note a least perceptible difference in the light, and this definite proportion is called after its dis- coverer, Weber's (Vaber's) law. Why do we not see the stars in the daytime? Why does the sunlight make red-hot coals look black? PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. 7 Do we see anything besides brightness and colors? You say, " I see a table which is brown, a light brown, and I see also that it is quite long and broad and high." You have then a conscious- ness of space in three dimensions, length, breadth and thickness. Take the measure of the nearest table with your eye, and set your estimate down in feet and inches. You see the length by running your eye over the table. Of course you do not mean that your eye actually runs on the table, which would be ridiculous, but that you take account of the changes of feeling in the eye when you adjust to see the near and then the farther end. Try this again and notice particularly how you notice the length through changing the focus of the eye. If you are asked how many feet long the table is you measure it with your eye, that is, you make a number of regular focusings which you have before learned answer for feet. Merely through feeling the movement of the eye you perceive the length of the table, but to see the length of the street in front of your house you must move head and body to enable the eye to " run over the street," that is, for the picture of the street to run over the eye. Breadth we appreciate 8 PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. through feeling of focusing and sidewise move- ment of the eyes. Can we see any length or breadth except by such feelings of eye adjustment? Have you not often been looking out of the window and a tree was in your field of vision, yet you, thinking of something else, did not definitely see the tree? You merely had a sense of patch of green indefi- nite in length and breadth, but not till you focused the eye on the tree did you see it as an object of definite length and breadth. So when you are looking straight ahead of you, you are aware of certain patches of color at the right and left, which you may turn and look at, and really perceive in their real dimensions. Thus in a very vague and limited way we are aware of length and breadth before we focus the eye; but it is in the adjusting and focusing that we get the real and full perception of space in its dimensions. Now in looking absentmindedly out of the win- dow and being barely aware of patches of green, brown, etc., we call these states sensations of sight, as distinguished from perceptions when we really see things by adjusting the eyes. We get a sensation of light the moment we wake in the morning, but we see the light by directing our eyes to the window. A baby a few days old does not seem to fix its eyes on anything, but gets for the most part mere passing indefinite sensa- PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. 9. tions. But it gradually learns to fix its eyes on things, and thus turns its sensations into percep- tions. Older people turn their sight sensations into perceptions so rapidly and easily that they can hardly catch the sensation by itself as a sin- gle state of consciousness. Yet lying in a ham- mock on a summer's day and half dozing, our consciousness seems to be mostly mere sensa- tions, not only of sights, but sounds, odors, etc* We perceive nothing, we feel everything. We have thus far found how we see the di- mensions of length and breadth, but how do we see the table as standing out from and above other objects, as being more than a flat surface, that is as being a solid body? Set a table, perhaps better a chair, a foot or two from the bare wall of the room, and going to the other side look at it with both eyes, and note how it stands out from the wall, and then with one eye, and note if it does not seem to close up and flatten against the wall. If again you look with both eyes, the space between the wall and chair quickly enlarges and the chair seems to move toward you. We conclude then that seeing things as not flat but solid comes from our using both eyes, and is the result of combining the two pictures, one from the right eye and the one from the left eye, into one picture. We have all looked through a IO PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. stereoscope by which we see by means of lenses two flat pictures combined into one, where the objects appear solid and before and behind each other. So we use our eyes stereoscopically in seeing the solid chair set out from the wall; each eye gets a picture of the chair from a slightly different point of view, but we see only one chair. Our eyes are then a sort of double camera with which we take every day thousands of colored stereoscopic photographs. It was seeing in this way that we came to school this morning, through noting brightness, color, and distance of the school building as a solid object before and behind other solid objects. If all mankind were suddenly struck blind, civilization would cease, and man would probably lose his superiority to the wild beast, who would come in and drive him from his homes. But though sight is so useful, if you had no other sense of things than the images which sight gives, it would be of no real value. Suppose you had never been able to perceive anything except by sight, and standing on the railway track you saw an engine coming. The visual image would get bigger and bigger, yet though the engine touched you, struck you and hurt you, you would feel no touch and might be killed. You would gaze at the engine with the same ignorance as a little child. But you have had contact with PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. II things, you have touched them, felt them hard, and so what were mere pictures become real things. Thus we know that the panorama which sight gives, means possible touch experiences. When you see a cnair, you know you could sit in it. Sight is plainly most useful in enabling us to recall the touch value of things far beyond our body. By the skin, especially the skin of the hand, you feel things as hard and soft, rough and smooth, sharp and blunt. By touching you also notice warmth and cold; also in a limited way you notice distance, as when you span with your hands, or pace with your feet. The world of the blind is a world of touch, just as if we were always shut up in a dark room, and could only feel our way. When a blind person has his sight restored by a surgical oper- ation does he see things at once as we do? Here is a case of a boy : " When he saw he was so far from making any judgment about distances that he thought all objects whatever touched his eyes (as he expressed it) as what he felt did his skin, and thought no Qbjects so agreeable as those which were smooth and regular. He knew not the shape of anything nor any one thing from another, however different in shape or magni- tude : but upon being told what things were, whose form he before knew from feeling, he would carefully observe, that he might know 12 PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. them again. But, having too many objects to learn at once, he forgot many of them, and (as he said) at first he learned to know and again forgot a thousand things in a day. Having often forgot which was the cat and which was the dog, he was ashamed to ask ; but catching the cat (which he knew by feeling), he was observed to look at her steadfastly, and then, setting her down, said: * So, puss, I shall know you another time.' " We notice that, though the boy per- ceives the cat, he does not know it at once as the cat of his touch world, but by feeling of the cat at the same time that he looks at it, he con- nects the two sensations, he learns the cat so that the next time he sees the cat he will know what it is, will know how it will feel without hav- ing to touch it. Now you when very young learned in the same way, chair, table, tree, grass, etc., to know their touch value when you saw them ; and you can watch infants engaged in learning things, grasping and handling whatever they see. Even now if a strange object is shown to you, you touch it and feel of it so that you may really know it, and if you touch a strange object in the dark, you bring it to the light to see if you can recognize it. Again, you say that you saw a man sitting in that chair, but you make yourself absolutely sure that you were not dreaming or mistaken by going up and touching PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. 1 3 him. If we see something, but by touch find nothing, we say we have an illusion or hallucina- tion of sight. When we " cannot believe our eyes," we find tl\e final proof of reality with our hands. In what other ways do we become acquainted with the world about us beside sight and touch? This morning you were called to breakfast by the bell ringing ; the clapper jarred the metal, and this the air, and those waves of air you were acquainted with by the sense of hearing. If you had not heard the bell, you might have missed your breakfast. Mention three instances in your recent experience where hearing was of great life value. When a fine bell rings you say, " What a good tone the bell has ! " When a firecracker explodes you say, " What a noise ! " Noises we call by such names as hiss, crack, pop, etc.; tones are pitched high or low from shrillest treble to lowest bass. We can hear some 11,000 different tones and some 500 different noises. Many people are deaf to very high notes, as the squeak of a mouse, or the very low notes, as the tremu- lous deep bass of a locomotive exhausting into the stack. Besides classifying sounds as noisy or tuneful, we also note them as loud or soft, and as short or prolonged. If you whirl round a few 14 PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. times you feel giddy, which feeling probably comes from a disturbance of the delicately poised organs of the ear. You heard the bell, and came to breakfast; you saw what there was to eat, bread, etc.; you touched it with the hand and lips. But did you not have some other kind of acquaintance with the food? Did you not smell and taste, and did not this help you to decide what was best to eat? You ate what smelled and tasted good. Though smell and taste are useful to us, they are much more useful to many of the lower animals. Give five instances of this use. We can taste four kinds, sour, sweet, bitter and salt; but we smell a large variety of odors. Besides the sensations we get from eye, skin, ear, nose and mouth, we get from other parts of the body other sensations, as strain, pressure, hunger and thirst. Memory. We have briefly surveyed the chief ways in which we become acquainted with our own bodies and the world of things about us. But if we had only these bare immediate perceptions of things, these would not help us much ; with- out memory of our past experience we would be PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. 15 run over at the first street crossing, because we did not remember that a horse could harm us. We would be like infants, all things would be ever new and strange, and we would not know at to-morrow's breakfast table when we see bread that it is bread and has its peculiar tastes. With- out memory the bread would be an entirely strange object, as it would be to a savage or child who should see bread for the first time. But let us see just what memory is. Suppose while you are eating breakfast some one moves a strange object, say an orange, just into your range of vision on one side, your first impression is a mere sensation of an indefinite colored mass, but directing your eyes to it, you have a percep- tion of it as definite color and brightness. You then touch, smell and taste and thus become further acquainted with it. You put it back on the table, and looking at it again, you say: " That is a thing which feels, smells and tastes in a peculiar way which I have just experienced." That is, what you see in looking at it a second time is not merely what you saw the first time, but the object as possibly to be re-experienced. You have retained or remembered your touch, etc., experience and interpret your second vision of orange by this. Thus to the sight the orange has by memory a meaning as something which has been once experienced and may be re- 1 6 PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS- experienced. So the next morning when you see the orange on the table you know what it is, at once know how it tastes, feels and smells without having to go through the experience of the first morning. The usefulness of the memory is thus not barely connecting a certain past experience with a certain sight, as of orange, but in anticipating. We anticipate that what has been, will be ; and thus really know what things are, as we know what an orange is after one experience. Thus we do interpret the future by the past ; we expect the orange to have its own taste, and not taste like an onion or potato, which is the law of uniformity in mind which is brought about by the uniformity of all nature- We say we perceive bread, butter or orange on the table, that is in perceiving the thing we perceive what it is, and so memory enters into our perception. We really remember the bread and the butter every time, as truly as we remem- ber the orange the second morning we see it. In asking what it is we are appealing to past expe- rience and implying future experience. We thus have knowledge, know bread, butter, orange, recognize and identify them for their real value in experience, and such knowledge is plainly of the utmost value to us in every act of daily life, at the table, on the street, etc. PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. 1J When you see a strange thing and test it by other senses you ask, "What do you call it?" and are told its name, orange. That is, a certain order of sounds is made, which has a meaning for you as indicating a certain visible, tactual, odoriferous, tasteful thing, and if I say, "Come to my room and I will give you the orange," you urfderstand. So the name is a great help to knowledge, as denoting what may be experi- enced, and thus we use not merely our own past experience, but that of others. So when a friend says, " Here is a fresh orange, sweet, juicy, delicious," you try it with confidence. While animals have not such definite articulate sounds as words to denote the experience which things give, yet they have cries and other vocal signs which answer the purpose. Thus a hen by its cluck tells its chicks, " Here is food t" But civil- ized men not merely have a spoken language, but a written language. The certain lines next you see on the page, ORANGE, are stamped on the paper and they are a sign to you of the vocal sound, orange, which is a sign for the object itself. So when you read the printed word, orange, you understand what is meant. By writ- ing and printing you can tell about the orange and other things to people far beyond the sound of your voice. In this way also persons who lived hundreds and thousands of years ago tell 1 8 PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. us their experience, and we can profit by what they learned. But though the word, spoken and written, is of the utmost importance in convey- ing our experience to others, it is by itself of no real value to us. Thus if I say, " An orange is sweet," but you never have tasted a sweet thing, though you hear the word " sweet" plainly enough, you will not understand any more than the blind man would understand the word " yellow," when I tell him, "An orange is yellow." Hence it is plain we do not increase our knowl- edge by merely repeating words. So though you were able to repeat the words of this book per- fectly, you would not learn any psychology, unless you understand, that is connect with your own experience, test, observe, and recall by your own experience. Words can not do away with experience on our part, and we should never be deceived into thinking that being able to repeat mere words makes knowledge. We have now the object, orange, sensed and perceived in five ways, remembered and named. But we know that memory is imperfect, that the orange can be forgotten. If I did not see an orange till ten years after my first experience, I might then not recognize the orange at all, it might seem as strange as the first time I saw it, and I might have to learn it all over again, either by others telling me or by testing it for PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. 1 9 myself. But I might have some dim, confused remembrance that I had once eaten an orange, and try to recall it. As trying to see, hear, etc., is called attention, trying to remember, we speak of as recalling or recollection. Let us now study memory a little closer. When you see the orange the second morning you see it as being yellow, round, etc., just as you did the first morning, but there comes up also another image seen with " the mind's eye," the yesterday's morning vision. You see many things in memory almost as plainly as if they were before you, as when you think of your room at home or of your mother or father. But in general the memory image is fainter than the perception; as time goes by, unless there is some renewal by perception or else a constant brood- ing in the mind, the memory image becomes fainter and fainter till it practically fades away. We say then that we have forgotten, as a man might easily forget the orange if he saw it but once in his lifetime. Many believe that we never absolutely forget any experience, but that some occasion may revive it. When on the second morning you have the two images of the orange, the visual and the memory, you do not see two oranges, you see one and the same orange. That is you feel that the memory image is a mere memory image 20 PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. derived from the past experience. Sometimes images of the past come up before us so strongly, that we may really think we are seeing the object with our eyes. This taking the memory for a perception we call an illusion. But for the most part in remembering, we not only have the image of orange but know it to be mere image, and related to past experience of orange, and which we may apply in knowing the meaning and value of present experience. Thus recognizing the orange involves all these four steps. Recall the orange or the bread you had for breakfast. Does anything else beside orange or bread appear in the representation? You say you remember tablecloth, dishes, persons at table, and so on. That these repre- sentations come up naturally in association in memory, is the law of association in perception, and in general mental states once connected together tend to revive together. If I mention orange or bread you will be reminded of the table, the persons eating, perhaps also what was said, and even how things smelt and tasted. Thus every memory image we have is sug- gested, or called up in some way, and this image may call up another image, and so on for an indefinite train of images. So I say " Winter," PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. 21 it suggests snow, sleigh-bells, tinkling, skat- ing, etc. A dream is a train of images we have when asleep, and so not perceiving our real sur- roundings, we take the images for real percep- tions. Dream images may be suggested by some internal stimulus, as too much mince pie eaten late at night, or there may be external stimulus, as a young man smelling heliotrope perfume dreamed he was in a bed of flowers. Write down two trains of association suggested by the word cat. Write down some recent dream, and note the connections of association. Are our memory images always exact dupli- cates of our perception, or do they sometimes get changed? You remember an orange as about the size of an apple, but you can think of it as being as small as a pea or big as a pumpkin. When in any way our memory image is changed we call the representation imagination or fancy. I never saw an orange as big as a pumpkin, but I can imagine it. But even with Alice in Won- derland imagination is merely changing the materials of memory, and must rely on them. So if the giant goes seven leagues at a step, he must still put one foot before the other. Write down one instance in your recent experience of imagination, and write one which you have heard or 22 PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. read, and show in each how much is derived from the memory and how much from the fancy. Ideation and Introspection. From our studies so far we now understand how our experience of the world is built up by a vast deal of connecting perceptions and of past experiences as implying future experiences. Each one of us has thus constructed his own world, his house, family, street, city, and other places he has visited, and from what he has heard and read, he imagines a vast world beyond more or less like what he has already expe- rienced. We have thus far been able to sense and per- ceive the thing, as the orange, in Various ways, to remember it, to imagine it, name it, to associate it, but so far we have dealt only with particular things, as the orange, the single identical orange. And it is probable that the knowledge of a young child reaches no further. Thus, if a child eats an orange one day, and you offer him another orange the next day, he will not recognize it as another orange, but as the same particular orange. The child does not see any reason why his eating the orange should cause it to disap- pear as orange. But you, if you eat an orange PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. 23 one morning, and the next morning see a yellow- ish round object on the table, do not think it the same you had yesterday, but another like object, and applying the same name, orange, it becomes more than a particular name, that is, it becomes a common name for any one of a class of objects. From repeated experiences you group all round, yellowish, smooth, fragrant, sweet things into one group, and call any one an orange, and then you say that is your idea of what an orange is like, that is, round, yellowish, smooth, fragant, sweet. An idea is thus a gen- eral image or representation, and is often called concept. And the process of getting ideas we call THINKING. Write down your idea of a house, that is, what makes any house, also your memory-image of your house. Write two other ideas of common objects. The use of ideas in life is plain, and it is one great object of education to give us clear and true ideas of things. So in studying physics, botany, zoology, we are getting ideas. We are guided by our ideas in what we do in every-day life, by our ideas as to good and bad things. If we had no idea of things in classes, we could never think of an orange, it would always be the orange, and hence if we saw the orange de- stroyed, we would not think of another or look 24 PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. for it or call for it. Your idea of house enables you to know a house when you see it. To have an idea is, as we say, to make a class, as oranges. Now under what class do we put the class, orange? Fruits, you say. And this class we may put under vegetable kingdom, and this again under living things, and this under every- thing. And what higher class have we for everything? We find no higher class; this is the most general, includes in its widest sense all that we can perceive or think of, only we set opposite another class, nothing. Everything and nothing are thus our most general ideas, or concepts as we sometimes call them. Suppose I ask you to tell me your idea of a dog, and you say, " My idea of a dog is: an ani- mal with four legs, having a tail, is covered with hair, is from one to three feet high, and has a rather sharp-pointed nose." To anything you saw with these qualities you would give the name of dog. This definite setting out your idea of anything, as dog, we call defining. And notice how your definition of dog is made : You give the next higher class " animal," and then you give the qualities which distinguish it from other animals. Now the definition of dog which you have given answers very well for animals you commonly see, but if you go to a menagerie you see wolves and other animals which come under PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. 25 your definition of dog. A specially trained man of very careful and wide observation is required to make a correct definition of a dog, and such a man we call a scientist. Science is a knowledge of things set out*in definite form by trained men who have made long and thorough and special investigations. Psychology is a science not as the common knowledge and belief about con- sciousness, but so far as it is a body of knowledge about consciousness gained by specialists. How do we gain a knowledge of consciousness? Can we see our mental acts with our eyes? Sup- pose that when you are looking at the orange on the table I ask, "What are you doing?" You answer, "I am looking at the orange." That is, you are aware of the orange and aware of aware- ness and that it isyour awareness; you are directly aware of your own consciousness, which is in this case a seeing and perceiving the orange. So also when you hear, or remember, or imagine, or think, you are conscious of it; and if interrupted in your mental operation by some one asking what you are doing, you can at once reply, / am imagining, etc., as the case may be. This being conscious of consciousness and of self we call introspec- tion, and Psychology, which is the special knowl- edge of consciousness, is an introspective science. And it is plain that introspection is of the greatest service to us, especially as it is implied both in / 26 PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. remembering our experience and in anticipating experience, as the second morning on remem- bering what the orange looked like, etc., and in expecting how it would feel, taste, etc. That is, consciousness of consciousness present, past, and future is implied in knowledge in general. While it is the usual case that persons know their own mental operations, yet sometimes we see very uneducated people who seem largely unconscious of their consciousness. Thus they seem often to be angry without being aware that they are angry and they have no memory of their anger. Now the anticipation of experience which is so constantly useful to us and which involves in- trospection, as when we expect an orange to taste sweet for we know what a sweet taste is, in- volves another mental process which must be mentioned. You see and taste round-yellows (that is, oranges) several times, and you conclude that all round-yellows are sweet Suppose the first time you saw oranges there were several on the plate. You taste the first and find it sweet, the second, and find it sweet, and so on. Now when you come to the seventh orange you will confidently expect this to be sweet. But even because the first tastes sweet you may ex- pect the second to be sweet also, but the more experiences of sweet you have, the more cer- PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. 27 tain you will feel about it. This concluding from one instance or more to all instances of a kind is called induction. Orange number i is sweet, Therefore all round-yellow things, which we name oranges, are sweet. The more often we find certain sight quali- ties, as round, associated with certain tastes, as sweet, the more confident will we be in our expectation when we next see a round-yellow thing, that it will taste sweet. If we make an induction from one or a few experiences we make a hasty induction, for we have often found such induction to be not trustworthy: Point out the induction in the last clause of the pre- ceding sentence. Why do you expect the sun to rise to-morrow morning? Writedown three expectations or inductions you have made to-day, for example, as regards affairs at breakfast, school, etc. Were these founded on many experiences or few? This process of induction is merely a process of forming ideas, in this case the idea of orange, as being round-yellow-sweet thing. You also notice that you proceed from this orange to all oranges as sweet, from particular instances to 28 PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. universal statement. Now having once the idea of round-yellow-sweet, as called orange, we may conclude from it, if we see a round-yellow, that it is sweet. All round-yellows are sweet; This is a round-yellow; Therefore this is sweet. We are constantly appealing in this way to our general ideas to interpret our particular experi- ences, and we call this process from general to particular deduction. We say we are reason- ing when we are making inductions or deduc- tions. If a friend offers you an orange and you then without hesitation take and eat it, what process of reasoning does this imply? Write it out in full. Knowing. - We have thus got four important methods of appreciating and understanding our surround- ings, by sensation, perception, memory and idea- ation, and ourselves by introspection, all which forms of consciousness we call knowing. Standing outside your house, but not looking directly at it but sidewise, you will notice how you have a dim awareness, a sensation of a blotch PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. 29 of color which is the paint of your house; turn- ing and looking directly at it you will perceive your house; shutting your eyes, you call up your house in memory* and you can form an idea of any house. Carry this four-fold exercise out in the same way for some other convenient object, as dog, locomotive. Can you have an image of something you never perceived? Can you have an idea of anything which cannot be perceived ? Feeling and Will. A little child is walking along the railway track, it sees the engine coming as plainly as you do, yet it does not know that harm and maybe death is coming, and fearlessly toddles on to destruction ; but you on seeing the engine are afraid, and jump aside. If we had no emotions like fear to come after the seeing and prompt the quick action, the mere seeing would be of no use. And so no amount of mere perception or memory or ideation by itself is in general useful unless it stirs what we call emotion, fear for example. Give four other examples of the use of emotion. This mentaTprocess we call emotion follows on mere knowledge as awareness, or we often speak of the two kinds of mental process as the 30 PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. intellect and feelings. When we have an emo- tion about what we perceive or what we think of, we say we are interested in it ; on the other hand unless we have some interest we will not per- ceive or think, that is emotion and knowledge are not separate, but act together and rely on each other. Thus in plain daylight you walk along the street without noticing things in par- ticular, but at night you look sharply for fear of holes or thieves. You merely think of possible harm from a thief, and you have slight fear, and if you remember that some one was robbed here a few days ago your fear is much stronger, and if you see what you take to be a robber coming, you have intense fear and run hastily in the other direction. Now we note that in all this experience the basis of fear is the memory of harm or pain. When we see a thing and have a memory of pain in connection with it we fear it, if memory of pleasure, we desire it. These seem the fundamental emotion reactions from memories of pain and pleasure, and so also from anticipation of pain and pleasure. If you threaten a boy with a stick he may show fear or be angry — anger is almost as fundamental as fear — if you offer him an orange he will show desire. Describe three fears you have lately had. How did your regard for pain come in? Analyze your experience this morning for complex of emotion-knowledge, as PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. 31 thus: "I awoke, saw it was late, was afraid of missing breakfast, etc., etc." Give three instances of fear you have noticed among animals. Our perceiving^and our thinking of things and persons start in us many other emotions than fear, anger and desire, and emotions of great use in life, but psychologists have not as yet made a thorough study of the emotion side of conscious- ness, and little is scientifically known here. But the expression of the emotions has been a good deal studied by the great naturalist, Charles Darwin, and by other scientists. You say you know when a person is afraid by the way he looks and acts. Give the signs of fear you have noticed. Now why should these signs appear? Darwin showed that many of them while not now of use might once have been of use and have been con- tinued as mere survivals till this time. Thus the heart beating rapidly in fear is probably con- nected with the fact that for thousands of years men in fear have fled from the object of their fear as rapidly as possible, and this running, of course, caused the heart to beat very rapidly. So even now when we are much afraid the heart beats rapidly even though we are not running away. But do we find consciousness to be only kinds 32 PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. of emotion with pain or pleasure and kinds of knowledge? Can you suggest any mental state which does not come under these heads? You see the orange, you desire it, but if you are too lazy to put out your hand and take it, you may go without. We constantly have emotions which do not result at once in actions because we do not put forth the effort. This making an effort we call the will state of consciousness. Write three recent cases of effort in your experience, with their emotion and knowledge states. To be sure, we certainly do many things, walking, for instance, without making an effort, but in walking fast and racing we make great efforts. Actions with effort we call work, actions without effort, play, as when walking for pleas- ure, or habit, as in walking to school. Mention three instances each of work, play and habit, in to-day's experience. The first time a duck is in the water it swims, and we say it swims instinctively. It did not practice and so get the habit of swimming, as a boy learns to swim. Action which happens at once on the first sensation, perception, etc., and so does not need to be learned, we call instinctive. Name five instinctive actions you have noticed in men or animals. PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. 33 Emotion as moving us to action we call motive, as in the case of intellect we call it interest. The motive becoming very strong we are led to make an effort to attain the end, we exercise will-power. If an orange were hung from the ceiling much above my head, I might want it bad enough to make a very severe effort in jumping to reach it. Now, in activity of this kind we say we are doing as we please, we can jump or not. I may decide or choose to jump or the contrary. The will is free when it has an alternative, and in adopting or carrying out our choice we are exercising will, and there is effort as against the contrary motive which is still felt. Thus, though it may be perfectly easy for me to put out my hand and take the orange on the table when I want it, yet if I feel it may make me sick, or that some one else should have it, it requires a real mental effort as against these motives which lead me to leave the orange alone. Thus will is action going against some opposition ; and, when feeling we can go in some other direction, we say our wills are free. Even the slave is free though he has the hardest alternative, either to do his master's will or to kill himself. Now although we feel so free in our will activ- ities, we may be told by some that we are not free, but the strongest motive at the time con- 34 PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. trols our act, and we act of necessity as this moves us. You do not take the orange as you choose, but because your desire, being stronger than other motives at the moment, forces you. Now how should forces act? If you remain quietly standing, and one person pushes you from one side, and another pushes stronger from the other side, will you be moved in the direction of the stronger push? No. You find, when you are pushed by both, that both influence the direction, and if the pushes are equally strong and not in exactly opposite direc- tions you move in a path midway between the two directions. So if motives are merely forces we should expect the same law to hold. If your desire for the orange just equals in force your feeling that your sick brother should have the orange, you give him half, if greater you give him less, and it should only be when the feeling for the brother goes down to zero, that you would take the whole orange, or when your desire goes down to zero point in force, that you would give him the whole. But it is a fact, is it not, that you often desire a thing very strongly and yet give it away, or yet keep it? That is in many instances the law of forces does not apply. But in all cases you feel free whether to take the whole or part of the orange. And the real reason that we feel forced when some PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. 35 one pushes us, but in the case of motives feel perfectly free in what we are doing, is that our motives are part of ourselves. The motive is not something outside of us, but is our own conscious- ness in its activity. We act necessarily yet freely to ourselves according to what we are. With regard to the old puzzle of the freedom of the will psychology does not pronounce, but merely seeks to understand how we feel and act as free. Action includes any form of will, and even knowing is a form of action moved by feeling. You learn the lesson because you have some interest either in the lesson itself, or in getting a good mark, or some other similar emotion impels you. But while most actions are impelled by your feelings, some are not. When some one thrusts his hand toward your eye, you wink involuntarily, and such action which is so im- mediate on sensation and without emotion, is called reflex action. So when the duck swims instinctively or the boy by habit, the sensation of the water immediately starts the action, and little if any emotion seems to come in. So images and ideas may also start action without emotion, as when we are writing a letter and some one speaks to us we are almost sure to mechanically put down the words we hear in the letter, though often entirely inappropriate. Action controlled in this way directly by percept or 36 PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. image or idea is called ideo-motor action. A great deal of imitation and of action by sugges- tion is of this sort. It must also be borne in mind that many psychologists do not now regard actions as in general impelled by emotions, but that the emotion merely expresses the action, that you strike not because you are angry, but you are angry because you strike. According to this school of scientists our actions control our emotions, or at most our emotions merely accompany our actions. The kinds of consciousness we have found may be thus set down: fSensation "Object \ Perception f Image [_ Representation < Knowing-! ( Idea Subject or self. i. Consciousness of self, and, 2, of consciousness. Feeling. Will-acts. Special Forms of Psychology. We have thus far studied consciousness merely in its main forms which are of direct use in our daily life, the forms which are of use in the struggle of existence, and we have PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. 37 observed the order of consciousness from sensation to will and given some simple analysis. We have been concerned with an introduction to the Biological Psychology of human beings, adolescent or adult, as observed in others, or noted by introspection in ourselves. But there are other forms of consciousness and other ways of studying consciousness. One way of studying consciousness which has been carried out of late years is from the point of view of Physics, and hence this department is called Psychophysics. Weber's law is an example of psychophysical study of consciousness, for here we study the relation of physical intensities to psychical. The measurement of the time of the mental processes is another instance of psycho- physics. We all know that it takes time to think, that some people see quicker than others, and in all their mental operations are more rapid than others. If a wheel half-black and half-white is turned rapidly it is found that at a certain rapid- ity the colors fuse into grey, and that it must be turned slow enough to give about 1-40 of a second between the black and white sides to notice the black or the white. What word do you supply when I say black and ? To give the word white or some simple association takes about half a second with most persons. As Psychophysics deals with the relation of 38 PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. consciousness to physical measures of intensity, time, space, and so on, Physiological Psychology deals with the relation of mental processes to the bodily processes, particularly to nervous proc- ess. It is now believed that every conscious- ness is connected with nervous process, some scientists thinking that the nerve change causes the consciousness, others that the consciousness causes the nervous process; and others think that neither is the effect of the other, but both are parallel processes, the one merely going along with the other. The relation of mind to nerve is popularly recognized when a man of great mind is called a man of brains. Particu- lar parts of the brain have by experiment and observation been connected with particular forms of mental action. In general, we may say that the back portions have been connected with sensory activity, the middle portion with motor, and the forward portion with higher modes like thought. Physiological Psychology also investi- gates the particular part which the different elements of the sense organs contribute to sen- sation; for example, by what elements in the eye vision of color is brought about. So also Physi- ological Psychology studies the relation of men- tal activity to all organs of the body; for example, of thought to the lung action, of fear to the heart action. PSYCHOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. 39 Pathological Psychology is the division which deals with forms of consciousness which are not useful to life and are often directly harmful, as in mental diseases or insanity. The most com- mon form of such consciousness is the dream. Dreams are associations of images, thoughts, and other kinds of consciousness which, happen- ing when we are asleep, seem to us to be real perceptions and activities in a real world. But when we awake we see that they were mere illusions and have no significance for the real world of our life. Thus, though some people think there is a value in dreams, yet scientists now regard them as being of no real value to life. Dreams are occasioned either by some disturbance within the body, as a difficulty in breathing, or by some external stimulus, as heliotrope perfume smelled when asleep leads one to dream of flowers. Another form of abnormal consciousness which has been much studied by scientists of late years is artificial sleep, or hypnosis. Here is a typical case: " Mr. X., forty-one years old, seats himself on a chair. I tell him that he must try to sleep; 'Think of nothing but that you are to go to sleep.' After some seconds I continue: * Now your eyelids are beginning to close; your eyes are growing more and more fatigued ; the eye- lids quiver more and more. You feel tired all 4