It is an acknowledged fact that we perceive errors in the work of others more readily than in our own.—Leonardo da Vinci

In this Beginner’s Psychology I have tried to write, as nearly as might be, the kind of book that I should have found useful when I was beginning my own study of psychology. That was nearly thirty years ago; and I read Bain, and the Mills, and Spencer, and Rabier, and as much of Wundt as a struggling acquaintance with German would allow. Curiously enough, it was a paragraph in James Mill, most unpsychological of psychologists, that set me on the introspective track,—though many years had to pass before I properly understood what had put him off it. A book like this would have saved me a great deal of labour and vexation of spirit. Nowadays, of course, there are many introductions to psychology, and the beginner has a whole library of text-books to choose from. Still, they are of varying merit; and, what is perhaps more important, their temperamental appeal is diverse.

I do not find it easy to relate this new book to the older Primer,—which will not be further revised. There is change all through; every paragraph has been rewritten. The greatest change is, however, a shift of attitude; I now lay less stress than I did upon knowledge and more upon point of view. The beginner in any science is oppressed and sometimes disheartened by the amount he has to learn; so many men have written, and so many are writing; the books say such different things, and the magazine articles are so upsetting! Enviable is the senior who can reply, when some scientific question is on the carpet,—There are three main views, A’s and B’s and C’s, and you will find them here and there and otherwhere! But as time goes by this erstwhile beginner comes to see that knowledge is, after all, a matter of time itself. If he keeps on working, knowledge is added unto him; and not only knowledge, but also what is just as valuable as knowledge, the power of expert assimilation; so that presently, when some special point is in debate, he is not ashamed of the plea of ignorance. He has learned that one man cannot compass the full range of a science, and he is assured that so-many hours of expert attention will make him master of the new matter. He comes in this way not, surely, to underestimate knowledge, but to be less anxious about it; and as that preoccupation goes, the point of view seems to be more and more important. Why is it that beginners in science are so often disjointed in their thinking, so often superficial, unable to correlate what they know, logically all at sea? There is no doubt that they are, whether they study physics or chemistry, biology or psychology. I think the main reason is that they have never got the scientific point of view; they are taught Physics or Biology, but not Science. Hence I have, in this book, written an inordinately long introduction, and have kept continually harping on the difference between fact and meaning. I try to make the reader see clearly what I take Science to be. It does not matter whether he agrees with me; that is a detail; I shall be fully satisfied if he learns to be clear and definite in his objections, realizes his own point of view, and sticks to it in working out later his own psychological system. Muddlement is the enemy; and there is a good deal of muddled thinking even in modern books.

Not that I offer this little essay as a model of clear thought! The ideas of current psychology and the words in which they find expression are still, in very large measure, an affair of tradition and compromise; and even if a writer has fought through to clarity,—past experience forbids me to hope that: but even if one had,—a book meant for beginners may not be too consistently radical; some touch must be maintained with the past, and some too with the multifarious trends of the present. There is something turbid in the very atmosphere of an elementary psychology (is the air much clearer elsewhere?), and it is difficult to see things in perspective. So the critic who will soon be saying that the ideal text-book of psychology has yet to be written will be heartily in the right, even if he is not particularly helpful. The present work has its due share of the mistakes and minor contradictions that are inevitable to a first writing; at many points it falls short of my intention,—l’oeuvre qu’on porte en soi paraÎt toujours plus belle que celle qu’on a faite; and I daresay that the intention itself is not within measureable distance of the ideal. It is, nevertheless, the best I can do at the time; and it is also, I repeat, the kind of book that I should have liked to have when I began psychologising.

Psychological text-books usually contain a chapter on the physiology of the central nervous system. The reader will find no such chapter here; for I hold, and have always held, that the student should get his elementary knowledge of neurology, not at second hand from the psychologist, but at first hand from the physiologist. I have added to every chapter a list of Questions, looking partly to increase of knowledge, but especially to a test of the reader’s understanding of what he has just read. I have also added a list of References for further reading. It depends upon the maturity and general mental habit of the student whether these references—made as they are, in many cases, to authors who do not agree either with one another or with the text of the book—should be followed up at once, or only after the text itself has been digested. The decision must be left to the instructor. My own opinion is that beginners are best given one thing at a time, and that the knowledge-questions and the references should therefore, in the ordinary run of teaching, be postponed until some ‘feeling’ for psychology, some steadiness of psychological attitude, has become apparent.

I have avoided the term ‘consciousness.’ Experimental psychology made a serious effort to give it a scientific meaning; but the attempt has failed; the word is too slippery, and so is better discarded. The term ‘introspection’ is, I have no doubt, travelling the same road; and I could easily have avoided it, too; but the time is, perhaps, not quite ripe. I have said nothing of the ‘thought-element’, which seems to me to be a psychological pretender, supported only by the logicising tendencies of the day; and if I am wrong no great harm has been done, since a description of this alleged elementary process, by positive characters, is not yet forthcoming. My references are confined to works available in the English language; I think it unlikely that the students for whom this book is intended will have attained to any considerable knowledge of French or German. Lastly,—I believe that this is my last major omission,—I have referred only incidentally to the ‘application’ of psychology; for science is not technology, though history goes to show that any the least fact of science may, some day or other, find its sphere of practical usefulness.

Two of my illustrations are borrowed: the swallow-figure on p. 138 from Professor Ebbinghaus, and the cut on p. 282 from Dr. A. A. GrÜnbaum.

I am sorry to confess that a few of the quotations which head the chapters are mosaics, pieced together from different paragraphs of the original. Even great writers are, at times, more diffuse than one could wish; or perhaps it would be fairer to say that they did not write with a view to chapter-headings. I hope, in any case, that no injustice has been done.

It is a very pleasant duty to acknowledge the assistance that I have received from my Cornell colleagues, Prof. H. P. Weld and Drs. W. S. Foster and E. G. Boring, and from Dr. L. D. Boring of Wells College. I am indebted to all for many points of valid criticism, and I wish to express to all my sincere thanks for much self-sacrificing labour.

I have retained the late Professor Huxley’s name in the forefront of this new primer, partly as an act of homage to the master in Science,—the brilliant investigator, the fearless critic, the lucid expositor; and partly, also, as a personal tribute to the man it was my earlier privilege to know.

Cornell Heights, Ithaca, N.Y.

July, 1915.