* » \ Vol. XXX No. 3 PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW PUBLICATIONS Whole No. 138 1921 Psychological Monographs EDITED BY JAMES ROWLAND ANGELL, Yale University. HOWARD C. WARREN, Princeton University ( Review ) JOHN B. WATSON, New York (/. of Exp. Psychol .) SHEPHERD I. FRANZ, Govt. Hosp. for Insane ( Bulletin ) and MADISON BENTLEY, University of Illinois (Index) Critical and Experimental Studies in Psychology From the University of Illinois EDITED BY MADISON BENTLEY PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW COMPANY PRINCETON, N. J. and LANCASTER, PA. Agents: G. E. STECHERT & CO., London (2 Star Yard, Carey St., W. C.) Paris (16, rue de Conde) * TABLE OF CONTENTS i. Dynamical principles in recent psychology. By Madison Bentley. ii. Some neglected aspects of a history of psychology. By Coleman R. Griffith. iii. A preliminary study of the emotions. C. A. Ruckmick. iv. A comment upon the psychology of the audience. By Coleman R. Griffith. v. Leading and legibility. By Madison Bentley. vi. The printing of backbone titles on thin books and magazines. By P. N. Gould, L. C. Raines, and C. A. Ruckmick. vii. Experiments in sound localization. By C. A. Ruckmick. viii. The intensive summation of thermal sensations. By An¬ nette Baron and Madison Bentley. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/criticalexperime00bent_0 DYNAMICAL PRINCIPLES IN RECENT PSYCHOLOGY By Madison Bentley and Members of the Psychological Seminary I. Man’s earliest conception of mind appears to have been that of an intangible and inscrutable substance which was at once an active personal agent, a private possession, and a unique source of power and authority. The more detached and less emotional accounts of mind, accounts which have put description before possession and understanding before use, arose, as a natural sequence, very much later. But the two views once established be¬ came enduring and persistent rivals. To this day they have con¬ tended together.1 The earlier view has been generally represented in the “doctrine of the soul,” — a doctrine encouraged by philoso¬ phy, theology, and the unreflective opinion of common sense and uncritical knowledge. The strongest support of the later view has come from the natural sciences, which have lent it both a pat¬ tern and a methodological background. The development of the physical sciences has, it is true, laid stress upon a description of the world in terms of the transfer of energy within and between systems, — a description which has seemed to leave mind out of account. At the same time, the insistence of these sciences upon controlled and verifiable observation of events has been carried over to the mental facts and thus has indirectly promoted a descriptive psychology of process. 1 Writers who look upon the dynamical conceptions as new and mod¬ ern display a distorted perspective. H. W. Carr, e.g., declares in the Preface to his English translation of Bergson’s L’energie spirituelle ; “In recent years we have witnessed the opening up of a new and long-unsus¬ pected realm of fact to scientific investigation, the unconscious mind. The very term seemed to the older philosophy to imply a latent contradiction, today it is a simple general description of recognized phenomena.” 2 MADISON BENTLEY The older, active or dynamic view of the “soul” has not, in spite of the scientific trend of our own generation, been given up. All sorts of extra-psychological sanctions — philosophical, biological, medical, etc.,' — have sustained it. With these latter sanctions we are not here concerned. But psychology itself has found, and it continues to find, reasons for conceiving mind as a power or force, as an agent which originates, directs and controls. These reasons are many and varied; nothing less than a history of modern psychology could expound and inter¬ pret them. Our own study is much less ambitious. It proposes to examine a few outstanding accounts of mind which have been substantially based upon dynamical principles. These accounts represent many schools and various traditions, and they sustain unlike interests in the facts and laws of mind. By “dynamical” we mean that they consider mind under the category of activity: that they represent mind as being or possessing a central force or power which is causally related to other forms of existence and to physical events. Our examination of these chosen systems has made it appear that the dynamical elements in recent psychology are of at least four kinds; i.e., mind is regarded as a creator, an initiator, a selector and repressor, and an organizer. Possibly these forms of activity differ only in degree and in shading, and some writers pass easily in their expositions from one of them to another; but they seem to represent logical differences as well as differences in point of view and perspective which have not been carefully defined. We have chosen men who have either exemplified important historical doctrines or who have represented an aspect or phase of psychology of serious import to the developing and expanding science. Their own distinct contributions to psychology have been by no means equivalent. The writers chosen for critical study in the seminary are James, Woodworth, Janet, Bergson, Freud and McDougall. CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 3 II. William James (C. A. Ruckmick) There seems to be no ambiguity concerning the general type of mind that James describes in his Principles of Psychology. It is always an active, energetic, dynamic agent of the psycho¬ physical organism. Statements illustrative of his point of view, taken from various contexts, are: “Consciousness is in its very nature impulsive ” (II, 526). “The impulsive quality of mental states is an attribute behind which we cannot go” (II, 551). “This dynamic (I had almost written dynamitic) way of representing knowledge has the merit of not being tame” (I, 369). “To my brain, however, I am dynamically present, inasmuch as my thoughts and feelings seem to react upon the processes thereof” (I, 214). When we proceed, however, we find here and there points that are not so clearly made and distinctions that are not so sharply drawn. But the primary descriptions, even in detail, are em¬ phatic. First of all consciousness in its several phases is a selecting agent. “Consciousness is at all times primarily a selecting agency. Whether we take it in the lowest sphere of sense, or in the highest of intellection, we find it always doing one thing, choosing one out of several of the materials so presented to its notice, em¬ phasizing and accentuating that and suppressing as far as possible all the rest” (I, 139). Selection goes on specifically on all planes of mental activity. “To begin at the bottom, what are our very senses themselves but organs of selection” (I, 284). “The mind- selects again. It chooses certain of the sensations to represent the thing most truly, and considers the rest as its appearances, modified by the conditions of the moment” (I, 285; cf. I, 78). “Out of all present sensations we notice mainly such as are significant of absent ones; and out of the absent associates which these sug¬ gest, we again pick out a few to stand for the objective reality par excellence r (I, 286). “It [thought] is interested in some parts of these objects to the exclusion of others, and welcomes 4 MADISON BENTLEY or rejects — chooses from among them, in a word — all the while” (I, 225; cf. I, 284). Again aesthetic unity is said to be due to the mental elimination of discordant effects and “ascending still higher, we reach the plane of Ethics where choice reigns notoriously supreme. An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible” (I, 287). All of this is nothing more than an elaboration of James’s original thesis, that mind can be detected by two tendencies, (1) the pursuance of future ends, and (2) the choice of means for their attainment (I, 8, 11). Consciousness is efficient in these offices throughout: it is a fighter for ends and is endowed with causal efficacy in the fight (I, 141-143). There seems to be no doubt in James’s opinion of the mind’s purposive character as a background for the operations of choosing just described or of the mind’s power to enact what it chooses to select. The point at which consciousness makes itself directly felt as a power is in volition and attention. Here there seems to be some systematic ambiguity, however, for we learn at one place that attention is not a new or mechanical force, but an effect produced by the environment (I, 450-454), and at another that it is in part a force, spiritual in its essence (I, 454, 468). And so with voli¬ tion; for we read that “will is nothing but attention” (I, 447), and that volition involves an effort to attend and a consent (II, 568). As a matter of stern fact James admits that psychology, the empirical science, must yield the question of conscious initiation of process through the will to the realm of speculation. It is more satisfactory to hypothecate, says James, a consciousness that can step in, through the will to attend, and regulate the flow of the mental life, even if it “could only be to hold some one ideal object, or part of an object, a little longer or a little more intensely before the mind” (II, 576). By a faith grounded in other than empirical or even logical considerations, then, con¬ sciousness is also an initiative agent. It is capable of adding impetus out of its storehouse of reserve energy whenever the odds are against it. In detail, “nerve-currents .... must in this CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 5 case be supposed strengthened by the fact of their awaking one consciousness and dampened by awaking another. How such reaction of the consciousness upon the currents may occur must remain at present unsolved” (I, 142). Consciousness is, then, primarily an actively directing agent. It continually selects both among its own processes and in¬ directly, through its supposed influence on the nervous system, among physiological processes. This form of initiation, however, is more regulative in action than it is wholly creative. R. S. Woodworth (Mary A. Henry) Professor Woodworth has recently written an outline of “Dynamic Psychology”2 The book is, as the author says, a study in the “workings of the mind" (43). It regards in an active and energetic way the causal relations of mind and be¬ havior. Those bodily instruments and organs which are in¬ volved in the neural and motor functions it conceives as “mechan¬ isms” while the causes of neural discharge and the motives and springs of action, on the other hand, it calls “drives.” The drive in a machine, the author describes as “the power applied to make the mechanism go” (37). Stimulus is drive; one part of the nervous system may drive another; the “inner tendency” toward reaching a goal is a drive; mental processes possess an “inner dynamics” (38-43) ; willing is the development of fresh motive power (149) ; reasoning implies an “access of energy” in an “ob¬ structed tendency” (147), and the “higher and more inclusive self” is capable of resolving inner conflict and so of making the individual free (152). So many forms has the “drive.” At times it is obviously physiological, representing the release or the initiation of energy in some part of the nervous system; but in other contexts it appears to bear a direct reference to mind, — as in the motive to selective action, curiosity in learning, in¬ terest sustained in objects and pursuits, and impulses directed toward the conquest of obstacles. This dynamical factor, represented in Woodworth’s “drives,” 2 Woodworth, R. S., Dynamic Psychology, New York, 1918. 6 MADISON BENTLEY is not easy to define. Often it appears to be little more than a faculty to which, as a cause, observed facts are referred; — so the “motive forces” of the native ecjuipment of men and animals, the “innate tendencies,” “instincts,” and “special capacities.” Observed facts are referred to unknown forces, tendencies and potentialities, which then become hypostatised as drives, not un¬ like the traditional faculties and the mental powers and capacities of Gall and Spurzheim. Because of their conceptual and hypo¬ thetical origin, it is difficult to say whether, or just when, they belong to “consciousness” and when to bodily function. So far as mind is implied, Woodworth's use of dynamic principles ap¬ pears to suggest initiation and selection , very much as we have found these things in the writings of William James.3 Pierre Janet (Elizabeth Rutherford) A characteristic type of mental activity, a type which has appeared in various psychological — and especially psychopatho- logical — contexts in the last generation, is represented in the writings of Dr. Pierre Janet, a pupil of Charcot’s. It appears in Janet's works as early as the 8o’s, where the French physician seeks a psychological basis for the symptoms of hysteria and allied disorders; i.e., for the “automatic” phenomena of catalepsy, somnambulism, anaesthesia, and the like.4 Janet’s temper, as well as his training and traditions, has disposed him to reject the physiological or “reflex” explanation of these disorders, as proposed by Haidenhain, Maudsley, and Despine ( L’autom p. 21 ). He prefers a “psychological” explanation. It is, as he 3 The influence of James is everywhere apparent in Woodworth’s little book. It may also be that the author’s association with Ladd in the “Ele¬ ments of Physiological Psychology,” — where the causal efficacy of mind had received a liberal interpretation, — inclined Woodworth toward this form of dynamic doctrine. Again, it appears that this and many other “genetic” accounts of mind, especially those prepared for educational purposes, easily turn to account the biologist’s dynamic faculties of innate and inherited capacities, instincts, and powers. 4 L’automatisme psychologique ; essai de psychologie experimentale sur les formes inferieures de I’activite humaine, Paris, 1889. CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 7 thinks, just in these abnormal states that the simplest and most rudimentary facts of mind come to light; and for the under¬ standing of them, he appeals to a distinction many times recog¬ nized in the history of philosophy, and specifically formulated by Maine de Miran;5 the distinction, namely, between bare sen¬ sation (‘da sensation sans conscience, san moi capable de l'aper- cevoir”) and the self or person (“une personne, un moi constitue un, simple, identique .... la conscience complete”). Now it is this “conscience complete,” the “personal conscious¬ ness,” and its defects in disease and disorder which form the basis of Janet’s psychology of the abnormal.6 That is the active thing which unifies and organizes experience. When the organ¬ izer is absent or disturbed, the morbid features of hysteria, hyp¬ nosis, catalepsy, and the like, appear. In such grave states as catalepsy, the personality is wholly wanting; mind is reduced to a state “purement affective, aux sensations et aux images.” From this total “automatism” of catalepsy, Janet proceeds to build up the organized mind through the incomplete syntheses dis¬ played in somnambulistic and suggestible states, and in the par¬ tial automatism of subconscious acts and local anaesthesias. As the exposition proceeds, the antithesis grows between automatism, the sheer existence of sensations and images, and the synthetizing operation of personality. The latter is not a mere principle of association ; it is “an activity which synthetizes at each instant of life the various psychological phenomena and which forms our personalized apprehension (perception personnelle) of things” ( L’autom ., 307). More and more the notion of a power or faculty, as opposed to the passivity of “mere sensation,” de- velopes in the exposition, and more and more it appears that the mental disorders are not primarily disorders of process or of 5 In Anthropologie ( CEuvres inedites, 1859, iii), 362, 405. 6 Janet acknowledges (L’autom., 399) an anticipation of his general doc¬ trine of ruptured personality in an anonymous brochure of 1855: Seconde lettre de gros Jean d son eveque au sujet des tables parlantes, des possessions et autres diableries. Spiritistic exhibitions are here explained by the as¬ sumption that the organism is directed “par intelligence sans Intervention de la volonte. In his acknowledgment Janet suggests, — perhaps more point¬ edly than he realizes, — the derivation of his dynamic principle from the Wolffian faculties. 8 MADISON BENTLEY the automatic ligation or “association” of processes, but rather defects or “lesions” of a power (puissance), “la faculte de syn- thetiser les sensations en perception personnelle {ibid., 314), which lead to a real disorganization or “dis-assembling” (des- agregation) of mind. In his later works7 Janet applies in various directions this central notion of a synthetizing activity which is weakened, dis¬ turbed, divided or broken down in hysteria, “double personality,” psychaesthenic states, neurotic conditions, and so on. There is apparent a tendency, as time goes on, to increase the emphasis up¬ on neurological descriptions, — as in the inception of hysteria, which is defined as a “depression, an exhaustion of the higher functions of the encephalon”' ( Major S., 333) and in the use of such vitalistic terms as “nervous strength,” “nervous tension,” anatomical “system” and “associations’ (ibid. 180). Moreover, the frequent use of “dissociation,” “mental depression,” “tension” and changing “mental levels” has a less dynamic sound than the older expositions. Nevertheless, the main conception of “per¬ sonal synthesis’ remains. It is a dynamic concept which is now very widely used in the pathological literature, where it stands closely related to the notions of “dissociation” and of the “sub¬ conscious.” It is in its essence a faculty of organization; though it inclines here and there (as when related to the will) to assume the role of a creator. Henry Bergson (Coleman R. Griffith) When we turn to Bergson we pass, of course, beyond em¬ pirical psychology to a general, voluntaristic account of the uni¬ verse; but Bergson’s philosophy is so intimately bound up with historical trends in psychology and in the science of life that his exposition of “creative evolution” falls naturally under our pres¬ ent process of sampling. We may leave aside the philosophical 7 The mental state of hystericals, etc., (Corson, C. R., trans.), New York, 1901, pp. 492, 502, 527; Nevroses et idees fixes (2 vols.), Paris, 1904, 1908; Les obsessions et la psychasthenie (2 vols.), Paris, 1903; The major symp¬ toms of hysteria, New York, 1907, 31 1, 332; Subconscious phenomena, Boston, 1910, 53-70. CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 9 antecedents and implications of Bergson’s theories; but we shall have to consider the relations of his system, first, to that psychol¬ ogy of the abnormal which has for many years in France capital¬ ized the unconscious and the automatic and, secondly, to the cur¬ rent vitalistic doctrines of the biologists. In Bergson’s conception of mind we seem to see Janet’s funda¬ mental antithesis of “personal consciousness” and “automatism” spread out upon the whole wide canvas of the universe. At the centre of things is life, the creative impulse, which integrates, organizes, constructs, constantly creates. Life is also mind : it is will : it is struggle : it is opposed to matter. “Consciousness has had a narrow escape from being itself ensnared. Matter, enfolding it, bends it to its own automatism, lulls it to sleep in its own unconsciousness,” The history of life is the history of the struggle of consciousness to free itself from “automatism and unconsciousness.” “Freedom is riveted in a chain. . . . With man alone a sudden bound is made; the chain is broken.”8 But mind does more than struggle: it produces the novel. “How can we distinguish the force of mind, if it exists, from other forces save in this, that it has the faculty of drawing from itself more than it contains.”9 “Notre volonte fait deja ce miracle. Toute oeuvre humaine qui renferme une part d’invention, tout acte volon- taire qui renferme une part de liberte, tout mouvement d’un organisme qui manifeste de la spontaneite, apporte quelque chose nouveau dans le monde.”10 There is no doubt that, for Bergson, creation is the primary and the chief function of mind. The dynamical principle in con¬ sciousness, however, also selects and organizes. In both forms of expression of the elan vital instinct and intelligence, materials used by the creative energy are selected to a given end and also organized. “L’instinet acheve est une faculte d’utiliser et meme de construire des instruments organises; Intelligence achevee 8 Bergson, H., Mind-energy ; lectures and essays, N. Y., 1920, pp. 25, 26. 9 Ibid., 27; cf. devolution creatrice, 4th ed., Paris, 1908, p. 273; Time and free will: an essay on the immediate data of consciousness, London, 1910, 1 40- 143. 10 devolution creatrice, 260. 10 MADISON BENTLEY ' y ^ est la faculte de fabriquer et d'employer des instruments inor- ganises.”11 Especially as regards intelligence, Bergson explains that “la fonction essentielle . . . sera done de demeler, dans des circonstances quelconques, le moyen de se tirer d’affaire. Elle cherchera ce qui peut le mieux servir, e’est-a-dire s’inserer dans le cadre propose.”12 Bergson’s relation to vitalism has been much discussed. Here it calls for only a comment. To “mechanism” the philosopher of creative evolution opposes “dynamism,” a principle which is allied to vitalism so soon as it suggests a creative force in life. Dynamism is, however, more ambitious than most forms of vitalistic doctrine because it is based upon a dialectic of mind and matter. This dialectic leads it straight toward the problems of knowledge and reality. It seeks, that is to say, to interpret the whole universe in terms of vital, — i.e., conscious, — creation.13 Sigmund Freud (Annette Baron) The dynamical principles of Freud are of the same general character as those which we have found in Janet and Bergson. The main emphasis, to be sure, is differently placed. Bergson’s chief force is the vital principle, Janet’s the personal conscious¬ ness, while Freud’s may be said to be the “vital, personal un¬ conscious.” The main spring of Freud’s unconscious is the vital impulse, the libido , a force which virtually becomes personalized, even personified, under repression. So are performed the tasks of selecting, condensing, translating, symbolizing and censoring. “The unconscious is the real psychic. ... It must be accepted as the general basis of the psychic life. . . . Everything psychic exists as unconscious.”14 This “real psychic” Freud constantly describes in terms of “psychic force,” “psychic energy,” and 11 Ibid, 152. 12 Ibid., 1 63. 13 A competent and informing review and critcism of the psychological im¬ plications of vitalism, in its various classical forms, may be found in H. C. Warren’s article “Mechanism versus vitalism, in the domain of psychology,” Philos. Rev., 1918, xxvii, 597-615. 14 Freud, S., The interpretation of dreams, N. Y., 1913, 486, 487. CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES ii “psychic effort.” The dynamic characteristics are applied to two “kinds” or “systems” of the unconscious; (i) to the “Unc. sys¬ tem” where wishes press for fulfillment, and (2) to the “Forec. system,” which stands like a “screen’1 or censor between the exigent wish and its conscious discharge. The second system not only “bars access to consciousness” but also controls bodily move¬ ment and emits “mobile energy,” a part of which is attention.15 Thus we find in Freud an exceedingly elaborate and exceeding¬ ly hypothetical account of mind written in terms of force. The account was first designed for the understanding and the relief of certain mental disorders; but later it was variously applied to dreams, humor, myth, lapses of speech and thought, the origin and development of society, and the springs of human action. As regards the use of dynamic agencies, Freud’s system lays more stress upon the conflict of forces16 than we find in the ex¬ positions of the French philosophers and physicians. The minds of Janet and Bergson, e.g., are, as we have seen, essentially con¬ structive; while Freud’s mind is set against itself. It is torn by strife between the individual and society. In the great works of genius, to be sure, mind is creative; but even here creation ap¬ pears as a release, almost a by-product, of conflict. William McDougall (Carl Rahn) When we turn from Janet and Bergson to McDougall17 to discover in what respects his conception of “soul” partakes of a “dynamic” character, we note that his notion of mental activity developes in a fairly definite way toward “creation” and toward “organization.” By applying the method of immanent criticism to his presentation, we find that there runs throughout an im- 15 Ibid., 488. 16 “We explain it [the psychic fission] dynamically by the conflict of op¬ posing mental forces, we recognize in it the result of an active striving of each mental complex against the other.” Amer. J. of Psychol., 1910, xxi, 194. Cf. Vorlesungen zur Einfiihrung in die Psychoanalyse, Leipzig und Wien, 1918, 64. 17 McDougall, W., Body and mind; a history and a defense of animism, New York, 1911. 12 MADISON BENTLEY plicit distinction between the physical conditions for the occur¬ rence, rise and subsidence of mental processes and the physical correlates of the same processes. As to the physical conditions , McDougall implies that it is when bodily processes come to a “stasis” that the “corresponding” meanings, belonging to the psychical order, arise as conscious perception, thought, and striv¬ ing. As to the physical correlates , we learn that “meaning has no immediate physical correlate in the brain that could serve as its substitute and discharge its functions.” Meanings are “products in consciousness of a purely psychical activity” (31 1), and they are the factors which awaken within us the appropriate emotions and psychical impulses or conations. Under the condition, then, of stasis there becomes operative a “psychical activity” that has no immediate physical correlates; and the “products” of this psychical activity are meanings, values and conations. It is in this sense that mind is “creative” for McDougall. This creative activity is conceived to operate in ac¬ cordance with “psychical dispositions that have been built up in the course of the experience of the race.” Being built up, they determine further development and — may we infer? — would thus constitute, collectively, a psychical entelechy with an histor¬ ical development. With respect to McDougall’s conception of mind as organizer, we find first, that the soul is invoked, after the manner of Lotze, because “the fact of the unity of consciousness correlated with the physical manifold of brain-processes cannot be rendered in¬ telligible without the postulation of some ground of unity other than the brain or material organism” (356). As organizer, the function of the soul is two-fold : ( 1 ) it gives unity to the manifold of sensation-processes and (2) it “plays an essential role in the building up of the organization of the brain” (279). Concerning (1), the organization of sensations, it is simply to be noted that the independent sensory processes are unified by their integration into “meaning,” which is the product of “psychical activity.” Concerning the manner in which (2), the “organiza¬ tion of the brain,” is affected by psychical activity, we are told that “the product of this psychical activity” (the meanings) CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 13 “stirs up” the psychic impulses or conation “without which no action is initiated or sustained” (31 1). The facts, then, are said to point directly toward the view that conation or psychical effort really intervenes in the course of the psychical processes of the brain. And it may be plausibly maintained that all other modes of consciousness serve but to guide or to determine the incidence of conation, the primary and most fundamental form of psychical activity. This organizing of physical processes in the brain by psychical conations is conceived to be a process of “guidance without work,” consisting essentially in a “concentration of nervous energy from places of low potential into one system of neurons where the potential is raised to a high level (278), — though McDougall admits that the concentration occurs “in a way which we cannot clearly define.” III. We find, then, dynamical principles conceived and applied in a variety of ways in current psychologies. For Bergson and for McDougall mind is a creator; for James and for Woodworth it initiates and it drives toward a conclusion. The conception of mental powers held by James and by Bergson also includes choice and selection in a prominent way; while McDougall joins Janet in regarding organization and unification as essential func¬ tions of a dynamical mind. Freud’s libido is also a driving, initiating force, to which is added the active government of thought and behavior by the repressing and selecting power of the censor. Mind, therefore, in our writers is active and dynamic in so far as it creates, initiates, organizes, selects and governs.18 When we consider the wide adoption throughout psychology of one or another of the forms and direction of force, as por¬ trayed in these writings, we are led to acknowledge that dynamism has in our own generation exerted a profound influence upon the science. There seem to be two or three special reasons for the psychologist’s recent appeal to force. The first lies in mental 18 These same dynamical principles have also been used in systematic set¬ tings by Lotze, Brentano, Lipps, Stumpf, Fouillee and Wundt, and more casually by G. S. Hall, J. R. Angell, E. L. Thorndike, and many others. 14 MADISON BENTLEY pathology, which stood for a long time in a stagnating condition. Its neurological basis was well nigh sterile, and its psychology was jejune and unproductive. There is no doubt that its specu¬ lative use of mind as a theatre of forces, producing, organizing, and repressing, has injected into it new life. Its present state suggests the quickening in the sciences of life induced by the principle of natural selection. It may be that now, as then, a long period of speculative fervor will be followed by serious empirical studies. The next subject after medicine to profit from dynamism is the humanistic interpretation of the facts of mind. A unitary, enduring and creative mind has always — since its “discovery” — been a solace to mankind. McDougalfs eager sup¬ port of the psychical researchers and Bergson’s sanction of moral “freedom” are significant indications. Neither can we pass over the interest of the student of behavior in the fruits of dynamism. There is no doubt that an account of bodily performance, whether of the animal or of man, of the child or of the adult, of the normal or of the deranged, is rendered vastly more simple and convincing by the admission of a principle of creation, organization and direction. Much that would otherwise fall to observation and to logic is more elegantly done by a force or power. “Instincts,” “capacities,” and “intelligences” can thus be hypostatized and made to serve as surrogates for facts. The temptation toward dynamism in psychology bears more than a superficial resemblance to the lure of vitalistic “causes” in biology. It is the same tempta¬ tion under slightly different guises. It is, however, curious to observe that it has become especially attractive in both forms just at the moment when physics is inclined to reject dynamical concepts. To separate fact and hypothesis is not always easy. I be¬ lieve, however, that it is possible to distinguish, in a general way, those properties and offices of mind which are subject to observation from our explanatory principles which involve force and which are causally used to account for the facts. Let us start with the psychology of process, — a persistent at¬ tempt to discover by direct inspection mental factors in the flux of experience. This kind of inspection has, as it appears to me, CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 15 brought to light four significant facts regarding the constitution and the offices of mind. ( i ) There are mental processes which are amenable to description, to arrangement in systems, and to classification. They belong to a unique order, not reducible to the objects and processes of physics and physiology. Again (2) these processes stand organized in unique constellations, and they follow each other in sequences which are not duplicated in the physical orders. (3) The organized processes carry a meaning, i.e., they make reference to existence of other orders. As McDougall says, they are in this aspect unique. (4) These or¬ ganized processes which bear meanings do, when conjoined with bodily processes, accomplish various ends , they operate in various directions, they fulfil functions. So far, as I think, we are on the level of empirical observa¬ tion; and so far we seem to stand in no need of any dynamic principle to be imported into mind. For the accomplishment, the operation, the function, whether it be the production of knowledge, the preservation of life, internal or environmental adjustment, or the valuation of objects and of conduct, the only contribution which mind is observed to make is meaning, — memo¬ rial meaning or perceptual meaning, existence meaning, or value meaning, anticipation or reflection. If the accomplishment is to be regarded as a function or a performance, then it is always, as it appears, a psychosomatic function, a performance which involves bodily terms and mental terms. The term “mental" function (unless it refers to- the fact of meaning) seems to me to be with¬ out significance. Nothing like energy is observed in mental processes or in their organization; and meaning belongs to a wholly different category from force. On the other hand, the nervous system and the muscles are obviously designed for the reception, concentration, storage, and discharge of energy. If dynamical factors are required for the explanation of the facts of growth, derangement and behavior, the bodily parts and pro¬ cesses involved in the psychosomatic functions would seem to offer the appropriate vehicle for an active or dynamical cause. The dynamists are obviously right in their contention that i6 MADISON BENTLEY mind is centrally and essentially concerned in disease, in organic performance and adjustment, and in the development of the in¬ dividual and of the race. But to say that it is dynamically in¬ volved, is to go beyond the facts. The contribution of meaning or of reference appears to me to be the great and unique con¬ tribution of mind, the contribution which makes the psychoso¬ matic functions different both in kind and in range from the physiological performances of the body. At any rate, if a mental force is to be postulated and is to be used to explain the observations of the pathologist and of the stu¬ dent of behavior, it should be recognized that such a postulate is a sheer hypothesis, proposed only for the temporary purposes of explanation. So Freud seems to regard his elaborate “uncon¬ scious.” To look upon such a principle phenomenologically would be like looking into the ether for the lines of force of a magnetic field or for elastic fingers reaching out from the sun to hold the earth in the clutches of gravity. This confusion of hypothesis with observed and verifiable fact is extremely common within psychology today. It has led to an illegitimate substitution of forces and faculties for the empirical existences of mind and in so doing it has impaired the methodology of the science. SOME NEGLECTED ASPECTS OF A HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY By Coleman R. Griffith Psychology stands in a peculiar relation to the sciences of life and to the physical sciences, for it is one of the youngest of Philosophy’s children and, on that account, has fallen heir, as do the successive members of any growing family, to a number of family treasures, some good, some bad, and some indifferent. Among other things, it has inherited from the physical sciences a well-rounded methodology and a refined laboratory technique; and from the sciences of life, a “genetic” way of regarding mind in its relation to life. Moreover, in the near future, some one will write a history of the development of scientific concepts and it will then be discovered that psychology has fallen heir, also, to scien¬ tific ways of regarding the world at large, ways that became established a hundred years or so before mind was brought into the laboratory. Now when psychology began to use these methodological and other heritages from the physical and the biological sciences in an attempt to understand mind, the opportunities for research became so great and the problems so insistent that the investi¬ gators of mind have been urged on to the present movement by nothing save the enchantment of their own productivity. Psy¬ chology became, over night, a realm of laboratory adventure. And within forty years of the founding of the first laboratory, general science is presented with the spectacle of a discipline whose facts already extend beyond the compass of encyclopedic volumes. So rapid, in fact, has been the growth of the science, and so absorbing are its demands for the immediate future, that an adequate account of its genesis, a serious historical survey of the path by which it has come, is not a part of its immediate program. The psychologist who is at all historically-minded, i8 MADISON BENTLEY when trying to gain a perspective in his science, finds himself in the peculiar position of the man who wakes in a strange place and endeavors to comprehend his situation by taking a careful inventory of the furnishings of his room. If the science has come, by virtue of its achievements, to maturity, it must begin to realize that even scientific adventure is hedged about with his¬ torical restrictions to be understood and accepted before the adventure itself becomes of real significance.1 Psychology is not merely the accumulation of fact in monthly journals; it is rather a product of the liberal past and a starting point for a productive future. The historian of psychology must tell us what psycholo¬ gy is, in its largest aspects, by telling us whence its methods and concepts have come and what these mean for its further devel¬ opment. We have, at the present time, no history of psychology. That is to say, there is no written record of the genesis and develop¬ ment of the discipline as it stands.2 Our historical researches are limited to the introductory pages of doctoral theses and other major pieces of research.3 There are, of course, histories of 1 An expanding interest in the history of science, in this country as well as in Europe, is a token of growth and maturity. It may be traced in the following papers: Science, 1915, 41, 358-360; 1915, 42, 746-760; 1919, 49, 330-331; 1919, 49, 447-448; 1919, 49, 49 7; 1919, 49, 66-68; 1920, 52, 496; 1920, 52, 559,562; 1921, 53, 122; 1921, 53, 163-164; 1921, 53, 257-258. That the move¬ ment is being taken seriously is further shown by several papers appearing in The Scientific Monthly. See, e.g., Gregory, H. E., History of geology, The Sci. Mo., 1921, 12, 97-126; Woodruff, L. L., History of biology, ibid., 289- 309; Bumstead, H. R., The history of physics, ibid., 289-309; Brown, E. W., The history of mathematics, ibid., 385-413. 2 We are, of course, using the term “history” in the sense of a written account and not by way of reference to the events of which an account can be written. 3 A very few illustrations from a single source will show the temper of such historical surveys ; Sharp, S. E., Individual psychology : a study in psychological method, Amer. J. of Psychol., 1899, 10, 1-20; Whipple, G. M., An analytic study of the memory image, etc., ibid., 1901, 12, 409ft ; Murray, E., A qualitative analysis of tickling, ibid., 1908, 19, 32off ; Geissler, L. R., The measurement of attention, ibid., 1909, 20, 473-502; Ruckmick, C. A., The role of kinaesthesis in the perception of rhythm, ibid., 1913, 24, 305-314; Boring, E. G., The sensations of the alimentary canal, ibid., 1915, 26, 2-5; Dallenbach, K. M., The history and derivation of the word “Function” as a CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 19 philosophy in which the central theme is mind or sense-percep¬ tion or mental activity. One cannot neglect such accounts and neither can one forget altogether certain other historical surveys of the life and work of men who may, under protest, be desig¬ nated psychologists ; but the discipline has at present no searching and sympathetic survey of the events and ways of thinking that have led up to and that have grown into our present conception of psychology, its problems, and its methods. Of 254 pages which Dessoir4 devotes to an outline of the his¬ tory of psychology, 148 describe events prior to 1800, and the remainder of the book barely takes us beyond Herbart. Brett5 gets as far as Fechner at the end of 900 pages. Villa6 de¬ votes some 50 pages to a diary of the 17th, 18th and 19th cen¬ turies, while the rest of the book, — nearly 350 pages, — draws upon the history of philosophy for a large part of its discussion. The first volume of Baldwin's7 history goes as far as Hobbes, while the second volume barely enters into the days of “mental chronometry" and the “James-Lange theory." Klemm8 has done better than some of the others; but even so close a follower of Wundt as he has hardly entered into modern psychology and then has looked back by way of retrospection. Aside from the Wundtian bias, Klemm has written useful prolegomena to a his¬ tory of psychology. Histories grow and the past changes as it is seen in the light of new achievements. The cosmopolitan interest of the present- day psychologist is evidence enough that the science is broader than any existing account of its origin and of its growth. Who, for example, would attempt to describe, in advance of serious his- systematic term in psychology, ibid., 1915, 26, 473-484; Woods, E. L., An experimental analysis of the process of recognizing, ibid., 1915, 26, 314-317; Rogers, A. S., An analytic study of visual perception, ibid., 1917, 28, 519-538. 4 Dessoir, M., Outlines of the history of psychology, (tr., D. Fisher), 1912. 5 Brett, G. S., A history of psychology, ancient and patristic, 3 vols., London, 1912-1921. 6 Villa, G., Contemporary psychology, (tr., H. Manacorda), London, 1903. 7 Baldwin, J. M., History of psychology, 2 vols., London, 1913. 8 Klemm, O., A history of psychology, (tr., C. Wilm and R. Pintner), New York, 1914. 20 MADISON BENTLEY torieal research, the mental and physical matrix which has stamped in so curious a fashion that current explanatory psy¬ chology known as Freudianism? Of the ways of regarding the social mind, of behaviorism and functionalism, of the renewed interest in a “psychology of the soul,” and of scores of small problems, we are inclined to speak retrospectively with a super¬ ficial knowledge only of the historical facts. In all of these mat¬ ters, we frequently refer, of course, by way of historical per¬ spective to men and to events; but we have, as yet, no historical research in the field at large comparable in spirit to a recent small but choice example from Titehener.9 If, as we have already said, the science is to assume the re¬ sponsibilities of maturity, it must turn seriously to its history, for such a quest usually tempers the ardor of youth but at the same time saves from stolidity. Now, if there is to be a history of psychology and if we are to speak intelligently of it, we must know upon what principles it is to be established. What sig¬ nificance, for example, will a different interpretation of the two terms “psychology” and “history” have for any statement of the problem and course of historical research in the mental sciences? Obviously, a history adequate to the science need not be three- fourths philosophy and neither must it be a history for purposes of propaganda in favor of any particular school of psychologists. What, then, do we mean by “history” and by “psychology”? Let us first come to terms with “history.” We are not here proposing a philosophy of history and we shall, therefore, be brief and somewhat schematic in describing at least two possible conceptions of the nature of history.10 The first, which is the more venerable of the two, maintains that history is a chrono¬ logical account of all that has occurred. That is to say, men sit down and, assuming a temporal sequence, proceed to write 9 Titehener, E. B., Bretano and Wundt: Empirical and experimental psychol¬ ogy, Amer. J. of Psychol., 1921, 32, 108-120. 10 We do not care to have it appear that we are dealing lightly or too naively with a question that has for years vexed the historian. He is, ap¬ parently, as sensitive to a statement of the problem of history as the psycholo¬ gist is to a statement of the problem of psychology. This part of the science of history can be traced in the various historical journals. CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 21 a diary of the affairs of the world. Such an account proceeds as if one stood at the end of a street and described the succession of houses in adjoining blocks. An example of this static sort of description is taken from a current history of Italy i11 “Robert the Wise (of Anjou) (1309-1343), the successor of Charles II of Naples, and the champion of the Guelphs, could not extend his power over Sicily where Frederick II (1296-1337) the son of Peter of Aragon, reigned. Robert’s grand-daughter, Joan I, after a career of crime and misfortune, was strangled in prison by Charles Durazzo, the last male descendant of the house of Anjou in lower Italy (1382) who seized the government. Joan II, the last heir of Durazzo (1414- 143 5), first adopted Alfonso V, of Aragon, and then Louis III, of Anjou, and his brother Rene. Alfonso, who inherited the crown of Sicily, united both kingdoms (1435), after a war with Rene and the Visconti of Milan.” It has been urged that this method is the only scientific method of dealing with historical data. Static historians point out that interpretation and elaboration in history are as open to objec¬ tions as is interpretation in any of the sciences. As a matter of fact, the static method does escape the great danger besetting the second conception of history, the conception that history con¬ sists mainly of an exegesis or an expounding of discrete facts in the light of some ligating principle or principles. In this re¬ spect, history as we look back upon it seems to be an unfolding, an efflorescence, an explication, providing we can use such terms without implying teleology. It is a curious fact that this second sort of history, genetic history, was largely supported by the bio¬ logical sciences. Within a decade men began to realize that the whole earth and everything in it had a history, a genesis, a growth, an evolution. They realized that only a part of the story had been told by their static description of events. The main problem had been to state history “wie es eigentlich ge- wesen.” The genetic point of view made as its quest history “wie es eigentlich geworden.”12 This second type of history, 11 Quoted by Robinson, S. N., The new history, 1912, p. 3. 12 Robinson, S. N., op. cit., p. 78. 22 MADISON BENTLEY then, involves a high degree of ligation between facts, and the quest of the geneticist is directed primarily toward the principles of ligation, the bonds that give his bare temporal successions a unity and onward-moving significance. There are, then, at least two ways of regarding history. The historian can be “ultra-scientific”; that is to say, merely descrip¬ tive or static, and so put down his facts in orderly temporal succession; or he can enrich and enliven his account by reading into them the culmination of tendencies, the inception of move¬ ments, the mental-like stream of pregnant and forward-tending events. Let us turn now for a moment to psychology. The answer to our query: How are we to write a history of psychology? de¬ pends quite as fully upon the meanings of the word psychology as upon those of history. For our present purposes we can dis¬ tinguish two meanings of the word. In the first sense and at the same time the broadest sense psychology refers, in a general way, to all the events or facts issuing from the existence in the world of minds or of anything mental. That is to say, psychology is a blanket term to cover almost anything from the alleged ap¬ pearance of dead friends or of the latest achievement of a su¬ perior dog to an abstruse discussion of the problem of knowing or of the immortality of the soul. In the second place, psychology may be defined rigidly so as to include only a scientific description of mind, of mental activity, or of mental products. There have arisen, of late, a number of such statements regarding the nature of psychology, statements that definitely exclude a large amount of material popularly known as mental. Moreover, many of these recent descriptions of psychology take the psychologist farther away than ever from certain borderland problems which have in the popular mind formed the central province of psy¬ chology. Finally, scientific accounts of mind have eliminated a large number of philosophical problems concerning the nature of mind, of knowing, of the reliability of sense-perception, the origin and significance of the self, and so on. With these distinctions before us, then, can we state the rele- CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 23 vant features of a history of psychology? Our answer must fall under four headings. If history is to be regarded as a diary and psychology as the accumulation of common sense and re¬ flective thinking, we shall derive an account considerably at variance with the account issuing from a chronological descrip¬ tion of psychology as a science. On the other hand, if history is an interpretation of the diary, a genetic, dynamic account of a growing thing, our psychological history will depend upon our choice of psychology as a general popular discipline or as a specific scientific discipline. Since much depends upon our choice of a method of writing our history, we shall briefly illustrate the kinds of history fall¬ ing under each of these conditions. Suppose, for the moment, that history is a diary and that psychology is a general name for the study or observation of anything mental. Our historical chronicle would begin, then, with the first written records we have of man’s dealings with mind, either by way of examina¬ tion or of superstition or by way of reflection on the problem of knowledge. Such a history would take us back to the life and supposed work of Thales and then hasten us through the births and deaths and the date of the principal works of Pythagoras, Heraclitus, the Eleatics, Democritus, Plato and Aristotle, and fin¬ ally, after many chapters, would give us a breathing spell among the chuch fathers. In these early chapters we should have become acquainted with the numerical relations of the typical Pythago¬ rean, the cosmic and mental elements of Heraclitus or of Em¬ pedocles, the sieve-like theory of sense-perception from Democritus, the tripartite world of Plato or the realization of the potential in Aristotle. The chief emphasis in such an ac¬ count, as is evidenced by most of the text-books on the history of psychology, is the contribution of each individual to a grow¬ ing body of knowledge regarding mind and the world in which it lives. At least, the emphasis is certainly not on the spirit of the time or the factors in the lives of the men that made their contributions possible. In writing the chapters on the psychological contributions of 24 MADISON BENTLEY the church fathers, some genetic reference must be made, at the least, to Plato and Aristotle. All that the patristic leaders did was in a large measure colored by the writings of Plato and Aristotle. But even so, the other factors that existed in the political and social conditions of the times find no part in a description of the conditions that made patristic psychology what it was. Our daily chronicle would take us through Marcus Aurelius, Tertullian, Origen, Plotinus, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. The history of psychology, regarded from the point of view here considered would still mention births and deaths and the principal contributions of each to our knowledge of the functions of the soul and of the intellect and the respective importance of divinity and of the will in the con¬ trol of conduct. Two hundred fifty years later we should sud¬ denly find ourselves at the inception of a large empirical move¬ ment of which Bacon was the first representative and Hobbes and Locke worthy followers. These men formulated doctrines of the nature of mind and of the problem of knowledge that dominated English thought for nearly three centuries, but if the psycholo¬ gist knows the origin and significance of this movement, it is by way of general history and general literature and not by way of historical research in psychology. In the meantime, under an impetus from Descartes in France and Locke in England, Male- branche crystallizes French thought for a short time and then the record becomes discontinuous, with a number of contending movements of different value. The whole of Germany falls under the spell of Kant and while the chapters of the text run on with the details of the diary, we suddenly find ourselves in the midst of a psychological laboratory with a conception of mind that is scientifically possible and with a method that begins to produce results with amazing rapidity, but with small apprecia¬ tion of why we have arrived and where we may expect to go. The whole account from this point of view is just a chronological sequence, the noting of the appearance of new movements and of the men responsible for them. This general situation is similar if we take history as a diary CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 25 and psychology as a science, save that our history of psychology begins, not with Thales or early Arabian thought, but with some such time as the publication of the Beitrdge zur Theorie der Sin- neswahrnehmung in 1862. The spirit of the account, however, is not different from that just given. The Grundzuge is followed by the Tonpsychologie, the Zeitschrift fiir Volkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft by the Volkerpsychologie , while Hermann’s Handbuch provides an appropriate sense physiology. The locus of the history is largely in Germany until the late years of the 19th century, when several of Wundt’s pupils returned to this country, established their own laboratories and continued the scientific productivity of the German universities. Now let us turn for a moment to the conception of history as interpretation and to psychology regarded first as accumulated common sense and secondly as science. In this second type of history a new spirit guides the account. We find that men have not only lived and contributed but that they have reflected; they have absorbed from their forefathers and from their contem¬ poraries, and their work is alive with meaning and reference. Thales becomes the spokesman of his day and reflects the type of thought about him. The record from him to Aristotle is not discrete but continuous, and Aristotle is what he is because of the contributions of those who have lived before him. The task of the interpretative psychologist is to discover what there was in the lives of men and in the political and social organiza¬ tion of the time that made the contribution of Aristotle pos¬ sible. The patristic psychologists are not isolated commentators on the functions of reason but they are rather the reflectors of profound religious, social and political tendencies in the lives of the people. In this history of psychology we do not find our¬ selves suddenly in the midst of an empirical movement but we find instead a number of tendencies leading for years toward the formulation of just the problems with which Bacon struggled. In the nineteenth century psychology does not come suddenly upon a scientific conception of mind and of psychological method. These are things that have come out of the lives and work of men 26 MADISON BENTLEY who were sometimes remote in place and in thought from the events to which they unwittingly contributed. As is the case in the first type of history, the account is con¬ siderably shortened if psychology is considered a science. As a matter of fact, we have now come upon what seems to be a real basis for writing a history of psychology. From this point of view, we no longer need to take up half or three-fourths of our text with an account, either chronological or interpretative, of the problems that are essentially philosophical and not psycho¬ logical. They become of significance and of interest only in so far as they furnish the basis for the interpretative account that must, for the sake of convenience, begin at some arbitrary date, as for example, the founding of the Leipzig laboratory. In this account of the history of psychology, Meumann and Kiilpe and Helmholtz and Stump f and Ach and Messer and others do not stand apart from one another but they are creatures with unique historical backgrounds. The work that they did falls into order and assumes significance only in so far as it represents or re¬ flects tendencies which have their roots in the past, some tem¬ porally near and some temporally far away. In answer to our question, then, we can say that a significant history of psychology can be written with the most of it falling within the last fifty years and but little of it in the preceding twenty centuries. Ebbinghaus’s remark that psychology has had a long past and a short history emphasizes the fact that the long past is only a mold in which were cast the essential features of the science. The past, that is, the past prior to some such arbitrary date as we have named, becomes significant only in so far as we need it to interpret the facts and tendencies with which we are now dealing. If this conception of the history of psychology is acceptable, certain other aspects of the problem become immediately in¬ sistent. The histories we have at the present time are but pro- logomena to a real history. They are concerned, for the most part, with the pre-psychological facts. It is true that they can be supplemented by the introductory chapters of a good many CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 27 doctoral theses, but even so we come upon the fact that the science stands in need of much serious historical research, the results of which will form the body of theses instead of brief introduc¬ tions. We have buried ourselves so deeply in our laboratories and dissipated our energies so prematurely in the fields of psycho¬ technics that we are, to judge from the tenor of a large part of current periodical literature, losing contact with the real prob¬ lem of psychology. It is true that psychology has become a com¬ plicated discipline. We have said before that it includes a large number of tendencies. The histories that have usually led up to sensationalism have missed altogether the tendencies issuing in functionalism and behaviorism to say nothing of borderland groups of facts that, out of scientific fairness, must be taken into account. The historian of the science must, then, as soon as time reduces and properly valuates our facts, put them together in an organic whole and see what they mean as history. The science needs the impetus to healthy growth that comes from a knowledge of the contributing factors to its existence. One of the chief ways of properly estimating the overnight development of mushroom “psychologies” is to examine critically the kind of soil out of which they have appeared. All the world loves a good problem and a sound method, but neither of these comes from sterile ground. They are generally the results of long incu¬ bation or simmering, and their real value to the development of the discipine as a whole falls under the scrutiny of the historian who can place them in proper perspective. The historian of the science of psychology stands in a pe¬ culiar relation to his fellow historians. He is dealing with ma¬ terial that is more like mind in its fluent character than any other process. The nature of mind is such that it must be viewed in the light of its own organization and function. The psychologist, by virtue of his knowledge of the subject-matter with which he deals, is peculiarly fitted to exhibit the conditions under which points of view develop and the ways in which our present achievements are related to the past. Mind in its own develop¬ ment is cumulative in a peculiar sense, and as the historian of mind views the facts of his science he finds that they too are, as 28 MADISON BENTLEY mental monuments or products of mind, also cumulative. By virtue of his training and his knowledge, the psychologist is committed to the type of historical research we are urging. He has stripped his science of its meaning if he contents himself with a chronology. He is bound to regard the past as a promise of the future and the present as the natural outgrowth of the past. It appears, then, from our discussion thus far that a history of psychology should consist of an interpretative account of psychology taken as a science. This makes the historical account short in the time covered but long in the developments included. We have found also that the proper valuation of the field as it is rests first of all upon sound historical research, and that the psychologist was peculiarly fitted to be a historian. We have now to ask what should be the central factors in a history of psychology? About what central theme should the account be written? Too often histories are colored by the de¬ sire to show that events are leading naturally to some favored system of interpretation of fact or are useful for purposes of propa¬ ganda. But, viewing the science in the large, is there a central theme about which the history can be written, a theme which will not at the same time be an excuse for propaganda. There are a number of possibilities appearing at once. Psychology has de¬ pended largely upon the formulation of its methods. But it has also developed a scientific statement of its problem and it has dis¬ covered certain vital relations with other scientific disciplines. Let us propose, however, in order to bring the matter to a focus, that the history of psychology should have as its central theme the tracing of the stages in the development of a scientific conception of mind. Method and problem have waited upon a conception of what the subject-matter of psychology really is. If the history of psychology means anything, it means that all that men have done or are now doing in the field rests essentially on this one problem, viz., what is mind? This kind of difficulty did not materially hinder the development of the physical and the biological sciences ; although they had to outgrow the belief that life was a manifes¬ tation of some immaterial force or power and that events in the CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 29 physical world were controlled, not by natural laws, but by resident spirits of one kind and another. The development of a scientific conception of mind, however, has been a serious prob¬ lem. Indeed, it appears to be one of the most serious problems with which the history of psychology has to deal. If mind is a form of energy, then our method and the statement of our problem are to a certain extent already established. If mind is the manifestation of the soul in the body, other methods and other problems are presupposed. Now, as a matter of fact, two generations of psychologists have been working on an empirical level with just such a concept. As a result of centuries of reflection, and by virtue of inheritances from the related sciences, psychology turns out to be neither the study of the activities of a soul nor the study of a subtle kind of energy. On the other hand, the science consists of an ac¬ cumulating series of observations directed toward mental ex¬ periences. The laboratory has gone to work on the assumption that if it takes a small bit of human experience and repeats it over and over again under conditions that are carefully con¬ trolled and undertakes to reduce the experience to its smallest constituents, it has made a scientific description of the event. When all such experiences are thus scrutinized from the point of view of composition, of organization, and of function, and the facts are then moulded into a system, the task of the psychol¬ ogist is done. His labors have been fruitful beyond his early anticipation. It is obvious, then, that a history of the science of psychology must be written on the empirical level which the discipline has attained. A history of the functions of the soul or of the prob¬ lem of knowledge or of the nature of the ego is no longer ade¬ quate to the mature dignity of the science. A substantial and adequate history will, according to our analysis, consist, in part, of a genetic account of the development of the scientific concept of mind, and, in part, of a survey of the products of the labora¬ tory and the growth of empirically organized systems of psy¬ chology. A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF THE EMOTIONS1 By C. A. Ruckmick For several years we have made an attempt to investigate the emotions and, to some extent, the affective processes in general in accordance with the experimental procedure followed in con¬ nection with other processes. It has long been recognized that an empirical study of the affective dispositions was bound to meet with almost insuperable obstacles. For one thing, it was difficult to plan a series of experiments that would keep the ob¬ servers naive. If an observer has been once or twice tricked into an emotion, he will not only guard against a future repetition but he may actively set himself against the arousal or, — what amounts to the same thing, — he will not meet the attempt seri¬ ously. In another respect difficulties appear on the side of the process itself. If the charges of Herbart and of some of his predecessors concerning the distortion of the process under in¬ vestigation have any weight, it is certain that they will have special significance in connection with the emotional experiences of the human mind. It has been a common practice to attack the emotional life either from the side of its physiological expression or through its effects on other mental processes. A considerable amount of material is to be found in the literature concerning the physio¬ logical effects in the psychophysical organism, and latterly em¬ phasis has been placed upon the secretions of the ductless glands. So far as we are aware, there has been very little work done 1 The author is grateful first of all to Miss Merle Turner who posed for the photographs and eagerly took part in the long process of making, se¬ lecting, and often discarding the expressions obtained. Various divisions of the composite study were assigned to students who elected a major course in the Department of Psychology. Among them are Miss Harriet Anderson, Miss Marion Louise Smith, Miss Zeniar Kizer, and Miss Esther E. Kinsey. To this list ought to be added a long roll of observers. To all of these the author wishes hereby to give credit for work faithfully undertaken and done. Plate I CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 3i on the facial expression of emotion. The studies of Langfeld at the Harvard laboratories and some previous investigations of Feleky have brought once more to our attention what can be done with the human face. I The collections2 of facial expressions so far published and available for general use are made up of line drawings of a heavily bearded face that was obviously “touched up” by some artist. Outside of the Columbia studies later to be mentioned, little or nothing had been done with the female face. We were curious, for example, to see what range of expression we could obtain without such accentuating accessories as a moustache and beard. We therefore arranged for a series of sittings with one of the talented women students in the University who had had considerable training in dramatic performances. The plan con¬ sisted in drawing up a list of expressions that we desired to photograph and in selecting for each day three or four of these for practice. During her spare time in the morning, the student would practice the expression before a mirror, frequently with the assistance of some classical quotation which she had recalled in connection with this particular emotion. She would then come at an appointed hour in the afternoon to one of the dark rooms in the laboratory which was illuminated by a high candle- power incandescent light. The camera was placed within three or four feet of the face and to one side, as close as possible to the camera, a mirror was hung in which she could observe her ex¬ pression until the desired exposure was made. The experi¬ menter, too, frequently criticized the expression, and sometimes, when the attempt proved to be unsuccessful, deferred that particular expression for a more opportune time. There was, of course, a suitable neutral background and the student was uni¬ formly draped in black velvet so that all but the face fell into the background. At this point it must be remarked that the expression of the 2 Rudolph, H., Der Ausdruck der G e milt sb ewe g ungen des Menschen, (2 vols.), Dresden, 1903. 32 MADISON BENTLEY emotion was necessarily confined to the face. The voice, for instance, played absolutely no part in the depiction of the emo¬ tion. In one or two instances only were the hands or other por¬ tions of the body permitted to take part and then merely to assist the portrayer in her efforts to express her emotion. Since this part of the body was not photographed, it could not enter into the interpretation of the expression. The exposure was made for some five seconds and then both the student and the photographer repaired to the dark room to see whether the negative was satisfactory. If unsuccessful, that particular expression was repeated until it had been properly reproduced. Thirty-four negatives were retained when the pro¬ cess was completed. Examples of these expressions are shown in Plates I and II. II Our first attempts lay in the direction of determining how successfully the emotions were portrayed as judged from the in¬ terpretations independently made by over a score of observers. Some of these observers were left to their own choice of names, after being instructed to be as concise as possible. Other ob¬ servers were given a condensed list of names from which to choose the corresponding photographic expression of the emo¬ tion, much in the same fashion as was done in the study of emo¬ tion at the Columbia laboratories.3 The series of thirty-four photographs were submitted to each of the four observers with the following instructions: “You will be shown the photograph of a face. Please note first what meaning you read into the face, and second, any change in your own affective reaction as a result of viewing the picture.” Each observer was asked at the beginning of the series to de¬ scribe his emotional state. After viewing the picture, he was further instructed to write down (i) the name of a brief de¬ scription of the emotion portrayed in the photograph and (2) a descriptive commentary upon his own inspection and interpreta¬ tion of the picture. 3 Feleky, A. M., Expression of emotions, Psychol. Rev., 1914, xxi, 33-41. Plate II CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 33 The attached list shows the variety of expressions used to de¬ signate the interpretation of the photograph. Some allowance must be made for inadequacy of verbal expression, as when an observer gropes about to find a word that will carry his meaning. Some emotional expressions, especially when the emotion be¬ comes intellectualized, give a much less uniform response on the part of the observer than others, as will be seen by comparing, for example (see accompanying list), No. 14 or No. 20 with No. 21 or No. 30. As a rule, the “primary” emotions, as love and hate, joy and sorrow, are much more uniformly interpreted than the “secondary” ones, like repulsiveness, surprise, distrust and defiance. In all these cases, the observers were asked to set down their interpretations without suggestions from the experimenter. The problem that suggested itself was the question regarding the role of the several facial features in suggesting the interpretation. Our photographs were so taken, as we have before noted, that the expression was confined to the face. The point now raised was : do the eyes furnish a better cue than the mouth, or the lines about the nose? In a preliminary study with some fifteen copies from the Rudolph collection, the face was divided up into three sections showing only the eyes in one case, the nose and lines about the nose in another, and the mouth in the third. In still another series the face was divided into upper and lower half. In this preliminary experiment it was found that next to the whole face the lower half of the face gave the best cues for interpretation; then in order came the eyes, the lower half, the mouth, and finally the nose and the lines about the nose. This series was repeated with our collection of thirty-five portraits with the same results. In order to avoid the observer's memory of the picture giving him the necessary suggestions, the series was so arranged that in each series of ten presentations each day one-half of the number were always new for that week. The results indicated, with only a few exceptions, that memory played comparatively little part in the interpretation of the par¬ tially covered face. 34 MADISON BENTLEY III In still another experiment we attempted to show, on the basis of introspective evidence, what were the mental processes which conveyed the meaning of the portrait and to what extent there were individual differences in this procedure. We had casually noticed before, in previous studies, that some observers would visualize the entire person who portrait was shown and idea- tionally integrate the position of the hands, posture of the body, and occasionally relevant objects about the room; others could hear the words spoken ; still others would call up memory pictures of their own similar experiences; and some would take the pic¬ ture quite passively as a picture without going interpretatively behind it. There seemed to be in the last case comparatively little elaboration. The author has found the same difference in individuals attending cinematographic performances. To illustrate the dramatization of these portraits and also the individual differences in the manner of their interpretation, a few statements from the observers will be quoted: “She has been crying, but when another person enters the room she becomes defiant. She refuses to be dictated to. Hither¬ to she has been quiet but on the entrance of the second person she calls out angrily.” “The rather stary eyes give the idea of interest but of a per¬ son who is ill and has not physical strength or else is tired. I remember feeling the same way the subject looked when I have been tired.” “Someone for whom the girl feels responsible has gotten into difficulties and the subject of the picture is more or less terrified and searching anxiously for a solution of the problem.” “I noticed that my own eyes seemed to hurt when I looked at the picture and I felt a sagging of the muscles above the mouth.” “I feel a contraction of the muscles in the throat and tongue. My teeth are set and there is a feeling of strain.” “Terribly unpleasant visual perception of a drunken man and his children in the room.” IV It appeared that the mood of the observer changing from day to day had some effect on the interpretation of the face. We INTERPRETATIONS BY OBSERVERS Expression Intended (Obs.) A B C D E F G I Bodily pain Pain Pain Bodily distress Suffering Anguish Pain Pain 2 Resentment Fear Sadness Surprise, resentment Retrospection Given up hope Thought Endurance 3 Scorn Scorn Contempt Contempt, disdain Disgust Sneering Scorn Doubt 4 Sulkiness Disappointment Dejection Sullen, rebellion Sulkiness Moroseness Sulky Disappointment 5 Thoughtfulness Contemplation Thought Angry resistance Memories Reproving Attention Interest 6 Grief Pleading As one persecuted Sorrow, hope of relief Expectancy Poverty-stricken Pleading Sight of pain 7 Amusement Happiness Amused Humor Welcome Happiness Contentment Amusement 8 Laughter Joy ? Gay laughter Raillery Joyousness Merry Enjoyment 9 Interested amusement Amused interest ? Interested inquiry Interest Admiration Happy Entertainment 10 Vindictive rage Repulsion, anger Anger Gross fun Fright Insane, drugged Hate Terror ii Surprise Pleasant surprise Surprise Surprise, pleasant Wonder Surprise Surprise Enlightenment 12 Extreme anger Disappointment Discouraged Surprise, apprehension Apprehension Intense thought Dismay Fright 13 Tearful sorrow Sorrow Disillusion Stupefied grief Dejection Grief Sorrow Grief 14 Terror (inch fear) Astonishment Fear Horror Startled Sudden fear Astonishment Horror IS Horror (inch suspense) Pained surprise Fear Apprehension, painful sight Agitation Torture Shock Suspense 16 Hopelessness Wistful p Rueful meditation Sadness Resigned-to-fate Wistful Pity 17 Worship Inspired ? Mild, passive elation Hope Spiritual Inspiration Awe 18 Apprehending an idea Amused questioning p Suspended anguish Interest Oh! Questioning Inspiration 19 Interested observation Love ? Pleasing observation Attention Interest Interest Convinced 20 Anger Angered fright Hate Anger Vindictiveness Anger Anger Disagreement 21 Distrustful hate Distrust Mean Critical disapproval Sulkiness Peevishness Distrust Dissatisfaction 22 Begging entreaty Pleading p Sentimental admiration Mild resignation Assumed happiness Pleading Wistful 23 Distrust Suspicion Distrust Critical reserve Doubt Distrust Doubtful Suspicion 24 Dumb surprise Wonder Incredulous Wonder and fascination Surprise Disputing air Wonder Revelation 25 Haughtiness Haughtiness Firm Rebuke Flaughtiness Haughtiness Haughty Defiance 26 Defiance Angry defiance Defiant Repressed inquiry Reproach Stubborness Defiant Challenge 27 Curiosity Interest ? Rapturous contemplation Faith Look of inquiry Attention Convincement 28 Sympathy Sympathy p Mild, wistful rebuke Indifference Pleading Sympathy Wonderment 29 Screaming pain Anguish ? Agony Hysteria Terrible suffering Anguish Past endurance 30 Contemptuous smile Cynical humor ? Mischievous Amusement and contempt Worldliness Sarcastic Mild, forced interest 31 Suffering, not bodily, pain Ill, faint Surprise Dull, pain Pain Tired, pain Intense pain Agony 32 Tearful laughter Sympathetic love ? Mild gaiety Reconciliation Content Love Relief 33 Violent laughter Mirth ? Explosive enjoyment Amusement Joking Mirth Happiness 34 35 Shocked surprise Skeptical smile Surprise Surprise Consternation Horrified Astonishment Awe Awe H Bodily anguish Hopeless suffering Disgusted scorn Reproving Thoughtfulness Dejected anxiety Cheerful, good humor Heartfelt joy Snippy pleasantry Maniacal fear Surprise and joy Dread Sorrow Fright Bodily pain Longing Peaceful contemplation Quizzical contemplation Interested observation Excited Earnest critical superiority Pathetic, appealing Keen, questioning Surprised fear Superiority Commandeerng snobbishness Interested, non-hearted Hurt surprise Great bodily anguish Foolish, simple-minded gaiety Hopeless pain “After sorrow comes joy” Vivacious youthfulness ? I J Despair Pain Haughtiness Despair Contempt Disgust Poverty Forlornness Thinking Defiant fear Questioning Plea for mercy Happy Care-free Amused Joyousness Expectant Amused interest Contemptible Evil Surprise Surprise Disappointed Discouraged fear Sorrowful Grief Startled Fright Hurt Horror Dreaming Pity Adoration Adoration Whimsical Cynical interest Pleasant Superiority Angry Hate Scorn Rebellion Slight pleading Don’t care Revengeful Sneaking deceit Astonishment Astonishment Haughty Pride Indignant Defiance Interested Love Coaxing Pleading Pain Fear and pain Leering Sneering Wounded Pain Yearning Frivolous Laughing Joy ? ' ? . ■ CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 35 undertook therefore another series of investigations using four observers of markedly different temperaments, depending in some instances on daily changes in their moods and in other instances contriving means, either by showing unusual pictures or by making various statements to them, to change from time to time their affective disposition while looking at the pictures. For instance, photographs of starving Viennese children were available at the time. These were shown quite suddenly to ob¬ servers, and the effect on their subsequent judgment of the facial expressions was noted as compared with normal series. Intro¬ spections revealed whether or not the desired effect was actually experienced. On another occasion, the observer would be scolded in the presence of others, and sometimes by the instructor, for being habitually late to his appointments or for failing to hand in required work. Series were obtained also in order to ascertain variations in the interpretations, made from day to day, that were due to other than emotional disturbances. Our results show, in agreement with Langfeld,4 that individuals vary not only with regard to suggestions from without but also in accordance with emotional experiences often concealed from another in interpreting the same facial expression on different occasions. Three of our observers allowed these experiences to color their judgment; one observer was apparently immune to all influences even of a highly emo¬ tional nature by way of changing his judgment. Often the change in interpretation is slight, as, for instance “pain” on one occa¬ sion, and “agony” on the other, or “amazement” at one time and “horror” at another. In going over our detailed accounts, it is noticeable that fewer changes are made under suggestion in those emotions that are usually classed as “primary”; while more radical changes of judgment occur in those that are not so easily named. 4 Langfeld, H. S., Judgments of emotions from facial expressions, /. of Abnormal Psychol., 1918, xiii, 172-184; Judgment of facial expression and suggestion, Psychol. Rev., 1918, xxv, 448-494. A COMMENT UPON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE AUDIENCE By Coleman R. Griffith A group of university students registered in a given course and assembled for the lecture-hour displays in a unique manner the typical characteristics of an audience of the polarized sort.1 The chief social relations obtaining between the speaker and such an audience are of the all-to-one and one-to-all types.2 The auditors, so far as general dispositions are concerned, are in a receptive, expectant mood, with a homogeneity of interest which serves to carry the lecture-topic at a fairly high level of attention. Such an audience is characterized by a sophisticated attitude that eliminates the distress and disturbance of unfamiliarity; by a general cortical set which determines in advance of the lecture the general apprehensive and affective patterns ; by a preliminary tuning induced by familiar faces, significant apparatus, drawings, charts and so on; and finally, by associative tendencies which focus the attention of the group upon a single topic. It is under these conditions that the all-to-one and one-to-all relations de¬ velop; but it is not at all evident that the bonds from every part of an audience are equally effective in drawing individual mem¬ bers into social contact with the speaker. There is no reason to suppose that, in the all-to-one relations, an individual in the peri¬ phery of the group is as definitely polarized as individuals nearer the speaker. It might, on the other hand, be conjectured that such an individual was much less an integral part of the group, for the perceptual and affective patterns from nearby neighbors must certainly contribute to the maintenance of the all-to-one relations. Frequently an outlying member of a group does not have just these clues to social integration and the lack may, as 1 See Bentley, M., A preface to social psychology, Psychol. Monog., 1916, xcii, ( vol. 21 , No. 4), 2off; Woolbert, C. H., The audience, ibid,, pp. 37-54. 2 Woolbert, C. H., op. cit., pp. 44ff. CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 37 has been recently suggested,3 make a difference in the level of performance of such members of the group. On the other hand, it is a common complaint among students who sit at the rear of large lecture-rooms that they can neither hear the lecturer nor see his demonstrations. If this complaint is well founded, the fact ought to be reflected in the accomplish¬ ment of such students. Now academic grades are a measure of accomplishment in both of the situations we have mentioned, and it follows that a critical analysis of the distribution of such grades in lecture-halls ought to betray differences in performance that cannot be attributed to differences, either in mental ability or in physical well-being.4 If it can be determined, other things being constant, that the performance of students at the rear of a large room is actually less than the performance of those at or near the front, the students are partially justified in their complaint. We are not here interested in the complaint, however; instead, our inquiry touches the question as to whether a difference does actually exist between grades in different parts of a room, and if it does, for what reasons. The answer to our query was sought by a tabulation, according to the seat-numbers in five large audience-rooms at the University of Illinois, of the grades of students registered in several large courses. In every case the students were alphabetically seated. Mid-semestral, class, laboratory and final examination grades, as well as the final semestral grades, were considered. Courses were sought which, at the one extreme, were conducted with the 3 For example, Allport (Allport, F. H., The influence of the group upon association and thought, /. of Exper. Psychol 1920, 3, 159-182) has shown that performance in association and thought depends to a certain extent upon social factors. 4 Recent experimental education has, as we all know, been deeply con¬ cerned with differences of performance which parallel differences of mental ability. A great deal of attention has been given also to the influence of health and of other physical factors on the degree of performance. We are not here concerned with intelligence ratings, however, but are assuming that mental ability, physical well-being, and similar factors are evenly dis¬ tributed, under the conditions which we have chosen, throughout a given auditorium. 38 MADISON BENTLEY minimal amount of lecturing and a maximal amount of quiz and laboratory, and, at the other extreme, were conducted with a maximal amount of lectures and a minimal amount of quiz and laboratory work. Now the tabulation of something like twenty thousand such TABLE I Showing 1st and 2nd Quiz grades, final examination grade, and final semestral grade of all students in Course - , 2nd semester, 1916-1917. ROWS GRADES THE OCCUPIED SEATS AVER. M.V. AVER. (all GRDS.) AV. OF M.V. 1st Quiz 18 80 60 5i 52.2 1 77 8 2nd Quiz 50 77 60 65 63-0 8.0 60.1 12.6 Final Ex. 53 8l 79 50 65-7 14.2 Final 60 78 75 50 657 10.7 1st Quiz 77 44 94 36 71 75 48 69 32 79 62.5 18.1 7 2nd Quiz 83 90 98 51 91 76 75 74 55 93 78.6 12.4 75-6 12.0 Final Ex. 85 79 95 85 99 84 73 84 39 86 80.9 10.3 Final 86 81 9i 71 90 87 76 78 60 86 80.6 7-3 1st Quiz 40 69 6l 50 93 84 79 42 7 1 654 15-6 6 2nd Quiz 66 90 73 83 95 851 84 64 75 794 8.8 76.8 10.0 Final Ex. 80 89 81 61 98 81 96 83 80 83.2 8.2 Final 65 80 78 72 92 83 87 71 82 79.0 74 1st Quiz 69 67 93 69 44 55 92 69.8 12.9 5 2nd Quiz 74 76 84 7 1 5i 78 89 747 8.0 75-9 8.1 Final Ex. 77 83 88 80 80 64 89 80.1 5-6 Final 75 80 87 77 70 73 9i 79-0 6.0 1st Quiz 65 66 95 37 82 69 80 61 76 70.1 9-5 4 2nd Quiz 70 76 84 59 76 75 95 70 99 78.2 8.1 78.8 7.i Final Ex. 81 90 93 77 85 86 93 73 93 857 6.1 Final 80 82 86 72 82 80 98 73 90 82.5 57 1st Quiz 72 94 63 60 70 69 89 56 71.6 10.7 3 2nd Quiz 59 80 77 77 82 80 80 71 757 54 76.0 6.3 Final Ex. 73 85 87 85 79 68 73 90 80.0 6.7 Final 73 78 80 74 80 75 75 78 76.6 24 1st Quiz 83 35 80 56 60 89 88 62 66 66 68.5 13.2 2 2nd Quiz 68 55 55 61 60 96 71 63 88 60 677 II-5 740 9-5 Final Ex. 70 58 79 85 88 94 90 85 90 85 82.4 7-9 Final 75 65 78 74 71 92 84 77 85 73 774 5-3 1st Quiz 81 88 62 69 86 95 30 21 66.5 21.6 1 2nd Quiz 76 67 58 69 74 98 52 46 67.5 10.5 72.3 12.8 Final Ex. 96 86 7 1 54 76 91 85 73 79-0 10.5 Final 86 86 70 65 77 93 71 62 76.2 8.6 SPEAKER’S PLATFORM CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 39 grades does make it evident that, with the significant exceptions to be noted below, the accomplishment of students’ in the front rows is from 3% to 8% less than that of students in the middle of the room. The results indicate, further, that there is a still more marked difference, — approximately 10%, — between the grades in the middle of the room and the grades found in one or two rows at the rear. We shall appeal by way of illustration, to a lecture-group which bears out these facts in a distinctive man¬ ner. In Table I are put down the actual grades received by students in a course in - given during the first semester of 1916-17. Two preliminary quiz grades, the final examination grade, and the final grade for the course are included. The averages show clearly enough that the individuals occupying front seats have lower grades than those in the second and third rows, the difference being greatest between the first and fourth rows. In like manner, the individuals at the back of the room (row 8) are 18.7% lower than the average of the fourth row. This striking difference varies during the course of the semes¬ ter, as can be discerned in Table II, which is a further analysis of Table I. For example, the average grades at the time of the TABLE II Av. Av. Av. Av. Row 1st Quiz 2nd Quiz Final Exam. Sem. Grade 8 52.2 63.0 657 65-7 7 62.5 78.6 80.9 80.6 6 654 794 83.2 79-0 5 69.8 747 80.1 79.0 4 70.1 78.2 857 82.5 3 71.6 75-7 80.0 76.6 2 68.5 67.7 82.4 774 I 66.5 67.5 79.0 76.2 first written quiz decrease from the third row in the following manner: 71.6, 70.1, 69.8, 65.4, 62.5, 62.2, giving a maximal difference of 19.4% It will be observed that 10.3% of this dif¬ ference falls between the seventh and eighth rows, so that the seventh row is 9.1% lower than the third row. As the semester proceeds, however, the individuals in the sixth and seventh rows improve with respect to the central group, with the result that, at the time of the final examination, the average from the sev- 40 MADISON BENTLEY enth row is but 4.9% lower than the highest average, which falls at the fourth row. It is obvious that some factor, partly over¬ come during the semester, serves to act as a handicap to the individuals at the back of the room. The large initial differ¬ ence between the seventh and eighth rows and its persistence during the semester is characteristic of many of our tabulations, and the cause is to be sought, apparently, in some disadvantageous condition which especially hampers these students in the eighth row for the entire semester. Occasionally, however, the back row does recover and then no appreciable difference in distribution is observable in the final grades. That there is still a difference in the degree of accomplishment within the group at large, however, may be seen from the fact (cf. Table III) that more students TABLE III % % Row Below 40 40-49 50-59 60-69 70-79 80-89 90-99 Below 70 Above 8 1 0 5 4 3 2 0 66 34 7 3 2 2 2 13 9 9 23 77 6 0 2 1 6 7 14 6 25 75 5 0 1 2 4 9 8 4 25 75 4 1 0 1 4 10 12 8 1 7 83 3 0 0 2 4 14 10 2 19 81 2 1 0 3 10 9 11 5 36 64 1 2 1 3 6 7 7 5 39 61 in the front than in the middle receive grades below 70%, while over twice as many in the back rows are graded below 70%. There is a tendency, therefore, more marked at first, for high grades to be grouped in the middle of the room. The significance of this distribution is made clearer by the fact that, at the front of the room, a little over a quarter of the students advance in their grades as the semester goes on, while, at the back of the room, more than one-half of the grades improve during the se¬ mester. In other words, the poor accomplishment of students at the front and at the back, at the time of the first written quiz, seems to act as an incentive to greater efforts and the improve¬ ment that is shown during the semester is not at all equaled by the improvement of students in the middle group, for whom there is, presumably, no such incentive. The large difference between grades from the middle and from the front and rear sections of a room, at the time of the first CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 4i written quiz, with the somewhat smaller difference at the end of the course, is more significant than at first appears. It has been found, for example, that the difference is more pronounced in courses where relatively greater emphasis is placed on the material given in lectures. Students who are quizzed but once a week on two lectures show about twice as great a difference as appears where one lecture furnishes material for one or more quizzes and one or more laboratory hours. Furthermore, an informal lec¬ ture method (adopted most frequently with small groups) shows on the average a still smaller degree of difference, the variation in this case being but three or four per cent. That is to say, there is not here so large a difference between the number of students who receive exceptionally low or high grades in various parts of the room. There are other peculiarities to be noticed. If a group of students is removed from the main body by an aisle or by a group of empty seats, their grades are on the average 5-10% lower than the grades of students sitting in the main section. For example, in Lecture Group C an aisle running parallel with the platform separated about fifty students from the main group of approximately 400. The final average of the students just in front of the aisle and belonging to the main group was 68.0. The average of the 50 students just behind the aisle was 61.0. In Lecture Group D the two aisles ran at right angles to the plat¬ form. The main body of students sat in the area directly in front of the lecture platform. Some 25 students sat across the aisle to the right and an equal number across the aisle to the left. The average performance of the central group was 80.3 and of the lateral groups, 76.0. In this later case the difference is materially increased if the grades of students at the rear of the rooms are omitted. Again, within the range of the rooms here included, which seat from 70 to 500 students, the difference does not seem, — as one might expect, — to be a function of the absolute size of the room. Again, the fact that practically all of our groups have shown the decrease in question indicates that the difference is not essentially dependent on the lecturer; al¬ though we have seen that an informal method with small groups 42 MADISON BENTLEY may result in a smaller difference. And, finally, an area of low grades at the rear of a small group in a large lecture room may coincide with the area of maximal grades for a large group in the same room. That is to say, the region of low grades so moves with the periphery of an audience as that low (peripheral grades of a small group actually fall in the very same seats as do the high (central) grades of a large group.5 This fact can be seen to advantage in Figure I, where the curves represent the average grades of different rows in classes occupying seven, eight, and ten rows. To summarize: The statistical treatment of student’s grades suggests that there is an appreciable difference between the work and the accomplishment of individuals who occupy a central position in a lecture room and the work and accomplishment of those who occupy the outlying sections. This difference, which is greater at the time of the first quiz than at a later time, is also influenced by a natural division between groups, such as an aisle or a few empty seats or by pillars, and by the degree in which the course is dependent on lectures. Frequent small sec¬ tional and laboratory meetings tend to reduce the difference, which appars to be dependent upon the position of the student with reference to the rest of the group. Now there are three factors directly related to the distance between auditor and speaker which might tend, in a large group, to bring about the differences of performance which we have found. In the first place, there is a difference in the perceptual 5 In all the averages we have given, the m. v. is, as a rule, nearly if not quite as large as the differences we have cited as existing between the center and the periphery of a room. It must be remembered, however, that the one factor of differences in mental ability accounts for a large part of the m. v. When proper allowance for this factor is made by discovering the performance of the same or similar students in groups of thirty or less, the m. v. of the middle group is negligible; but at the front and especially at the rear the m. v. is still large and must be accounted for. We are in¬ clined to urge that the large m. v. in these regions is not an indication of unreliability or of inadequate sampling but that it is further evidence that the individuals in these areas are working under some kind of a handicap. A few overcome the handicap and obtain average or exceptional grades, while the remainder succumb and receive exceptionally low grades. CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 43 1 " = 11 4:-t4f 1 r :::: 1 ft TTV 4 :rH: M 5H± M L4 4-4- m Ippilili 1 I mm pjx : : * 1 44 44 r— - jjjt ~ _ PPPBSS: • $ -1 - r-1- t+lr Tf4 ■ : : : :~r l-j-j-p "T+ff m }■:. 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T " ::: : Mm tJtt Tttr In \T M i : ..... . ir :: St Egilill 44-4+1 ftrj- ttlf m m rah TTtT ira 1 1 } i mm Sir iii| VS Tpi 111 lit : 1 1 111: It fM § ±n± $$ 1 44 w ::: ft +FH- if ’-t-mrt ■ ; : 1 4=4 I 1 I 1 St I ■ TTm m f mt 1 1 m $ ■■■■■ • ■■■■it iiiaru «i*i ■■ ■■■■i ■■ |P ijf m II i ; 3 1 tm I}! 1 1 r gp mm S si Pi _ ± — T l 44-4- m ppppplp ! 4 rf: :: ■ - - t4 — f- u M . . . . .... jjjff i _-r m Bp 4 : M Sil. yi w aiB Pi 111 H 4 m H p "T ii'" TTr 44-# “ Ii 4 : m 44ffl i § - 4 ' 4~ 4 1 1 f,{, — 444 t" <444 44 4+ TTFf SfT +TTT +W ' 144 I® II 1 r-4 + — - MT rat 4444, PPPPi&s 65 44j4 l' - 1 £4 — J m p m 1 ej+P ii m | m m if IS 4 Si mm " ±4 i xl 1 I ft 1 Ii 1 44- . • l • *• • i — 4 T4 ri ■- rt Fig. I. — Distribution of grades by rows in four lecture groups in different subjects but meeting in the same room. factors dependent upon the distance of the student from the lec¬ ture-desk. It is apparent, of course, that while the acoustic prop¬ erties of lecture-halls widely differ, in any one of them students sitting moderately near a lecturer have better opportunities for hearing. The same is true of visual factors, for frequently the success of a lecture depends largely upon demonstrations involv¬ ing small objects and delicate manipulations, upon charts having inadequate size or illumination, and upon the facial expression and movements of the speaker. Moreover, lecturers differ in their ability to enunciate clearly as well as in the intensity and in the carrying power of their voices. In the second place, there is a difference in the direction of attention resulting from the distance of the student from the lecture-desk. Our results suggest that there are three zones in which the direction of attention changes. We have found, for 44 MADISON BENTLEY example, that, on the whole, individuals sitting very near the lecturer have lower averages than those a little further removed. In these cases, it is not at all impossible that the attention of the student is taken up with a variety of irrelevant details. That is to say, there are facial changes in the speaker, idiosyncrasies of clothing and of gesture, and a host of other items that thrust themselves upon the attention of those near at hand. Unessential details of the apparatus are also a source of distraction. Further back, these details are lost and here, curiously enough, the highest averages are generally to be found. This group is in the best position for attention to the meaning and the sequence of the discourse. At the rear, still another situation appears. We have already indicated that here the perceptual processes may be at fault. This undoubtedly leads to a frequent shifting of atten¬ tion from the lecture. It seems, then, that there may be an op¬ timal distance at which the perceptual and attentive factors are the very best. In addition to these facts, lecturers differ in the amount of perceptual detail presented which is apt to draw attention. Lecture-rooms differ, also, in the distance between the lecture platform and the first row of seats. Furthermore, some lecture sections make a practice of leaving two or three vacant rows at the front. All of these factors would bear a direct relation to the steadiness and the direction of the attention elicited. There is still another factor which may account for the dis¬ crepancy of performance between groups near to and remote from the lecturer. This factor is a result of the kind of instruction which students directly or indirectly give themselves and it is doubtless dependent, in large measure, upon the factors which we have already discussed. Among students sitting near a lec¬ turer, this instruction may take either of two forms. The student may, in a large course, congratulate himself on having a fortunate location and so make it a means of getting all that goes on; or he may be subject to a negative instruction expressed in the words: “I am near the front. It will be so easy to get everything that I need not exert myself.” As regards the group in the center, we find that it is again in an optimal position; these individuals CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 45 are not near enough to be cognizant of everything, relevant and irrelevant, that is going on; and neither are they so far away as to be in doubt. At the extreme rear, however, there are, again, two kinds of instruction. Some individuals, appreciating the fact that they are working under a handicap, realize that they must give special attention, if they are to maintain their standard of work. The statistical fact that there are about as many high grades at the rear as there are low grades suggests not only that perceptual and attentional factors need not be de¬ terminative; but that this kind of instruction plays a major part, especially after the first quiz, when a low grade adds an in¬ centive to improvement. On the other hand, there is a group of individuals who take the negative instruction that since they have been placed where they cannot well see or hear they will give up the effort. Once again, the statistical fact that the low averages in the rear are due not so much to a general lowering of the grades as to a larger number of excessively low grades suggests that this instruction is too often taken.6 But when we have made due allowance for such physical factors as distance and intervening objects, factors which directly bear upon the adequacy of perception and the degree and steadi¬ ness of attention, there still remains a difference in performance to be accounted for. The fact that the low grades of a small group may exactly coincide in place with the high grades of a large group in the same lecture-room suggests that there is a factor directly dependent upon the group itself. Now it is a commonplace observation that individuals in the periphery of a large crowd are apt to be restless and inattentive to whatever may be attracting the interest of the main group. That is to say, physical compactness and the interests and activities of a group polarized toward the speaker tend to knit together the 6 For example, note the following quotations taken directly from students. When asked what the trouble was, one replied: “Well, I’ll tell you. It was just like this. In all my other courses I sit near the rear and I have to pay attention in order to know what’s going on. But in this course I was right up at the front, and it seemed a cinch so I didn’t care much what notes I took.” Or, again, “Well, one thing, I think, is this. They put me away back in the rear. I couldn’t see or hear very well and I just lost interest.” 46 MADISON BENTLEY main body of an audience in a way that is not possible for indi¬ viduals seated near the borders of the group. That this factor of social integration plays a large part is indicated by the effect of aisles or other marks of separation, by the effect of a dialectic or informal mode of address, by the decrease in the differences between the optimal region and the peripheral regions as the semester goes on and as social integration becomes presumably greater, and finally, by the fact that relatively low grades always come from the periphery of a group, no matter how small or how large, — within the limits of the audiences here investigated, — the lecture group may be. Fig. II — Topographic chart representing the approximate lines of per¬ formance of an audience early in the semester. Aisles or other obstructions would materially affect the “social gradients.” CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 47 We are justified, it seems, in speaking of the topography of the audience where heights and depths are measured by degrees of social integration and hence amounts of individual achieve¬ ment. If our tabulations represent the facts, a typical audience could be represented as in Figure II, where the lines represent levels of performance or degrees of achievement (expressed in numerical grades) and thus degrees of social integration. That is to say, a lecture audience is a polarized audience with reference to the speaker; but it is also integrated with respect to itself. Our investigation has shown, in fine, that there is a well-marked variation in academic grades which is not due to a difference in mental ability or to other factors referable to the individual auditors. Neither is the variation due entirely to the distance of the auditors from the speaker. On the other hand, it does seem to be directly dependent upon position with reference to the total group. That is to say, when due allowance has been made for the factors mentioned above, and for the resulting mental organizations, a residual variation seems essentially to rest upon the varying degrees of social integration among the members of the group. LEADING AND LEGIBILITY By Madison Bentley In the literate adult, reading is a rapid, smooth-running, and highly automatized performance, which may go on for a long time without noteworthy lapse or hesitation. It appears to be a simple operation, but it is not. Even in highly practiced subjects it can scarcely be called “simple,” because it depends upon the cooperation of a large number of heterogeneous condi¬ tions. In the first place, the constant readjustment of the eyes to the page is complicated. The leaps and pauses which the eyes make in reading involve a complex and delicate mechanism. Again, the total state of the central organ and its functional tendencies, taken together with the mental concomitants of at¬ tention, associability, and the touching off of meaning, form a second set of conditions upon which reading depends. And, finally, the apprehension of the written or printed characters rests upon a large number of local factors which may retard or facilitate the process. In the reading of print, for example, the color and lighting of the page and of the print, the size and form of the type, the length of the line and the spacing of the letters, all have their effect upon the rapidity and the ease of reading. These three sets of conditions, which we may roughly distin¬ guish as peripheral, central and mental, and typographical, have suggested to psychology a great many problems. The conditions are all closely interrelated; but experimental progress has been made only when one factor or another has been isolated for study.1 In our present small investigation, we have tried to isolate one of the “typographical” conditions;2 the factor of 1 The psychology of reading has already acquired a large bibliography. Most of the older titles may be found in Huey, E. B., The psychology and pedagogy of reading , etc., New York, 1912. A number of recent pedagogical studies of reading are exemplified by the monograph, Gray, C. T., Types of reading ability , Chicago, 1917. 2 A partial list of “typographical” conditions, naming twelve factors of this sort, is given by Legros, L. A., and Grant, J. C., in their large work on Typographical printing surfaces, etc., London, 1916, pp. 156-157. CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 49 “leading” or — more accurately — of the vertical distance between printed lines. The “leaded page” is a page in which the type¬ setter has inserted one or more thin metal strips (the thinnest, I -point, lead is about 1/72 inch thick), called “leads,” between the successive lines.3 We do not here directly consider the type¬ written page, where only two spaces between lines, single-space and double-space, are commonly used. In Roethlein’s study4 of the relation between legibility and the characteristics of the type-face, it appeared that the rate and the ease of reading were affected — among other factors — by the amount and disposition of the blank space around each letter. This fact, taken together with the obvious difficulty of reading a crowded and close-set page, suggests that the open space between succeeding lines may be an important condition of legibility. The study, then, of this condition is our present problem. Materials and procedure. The type-face used was of the style “monotype,”5 a close approximation to “news gothic,” a style which Roethlein found to stand relatively high in legibility. Figure I reproduces samples of our reading texts set in 12-point face and body, without leads (a) and with 7-point leading (b). At first we used a large type (thicker and cleaner than the reproduction in Fig. I) in order that the sheets might be presented through a wide range of distances, and so offer to the reader varying degrees of difficulty. The type (12-point) was impressed on fine heavy paper, exactly ten full lines on each sheet. The line was 3 5/16 inches long, and the sheet was 3 The printers’ unit of linear size is the “point” = 0.013837 in., approx. 1/72 in. Twelve points make the “pica,” approx. 1/6 in. The interlinear space is not necessarily equivalent to the leading, since the type-face is sometimes smaller than the type-body. Thus a io-point face upon a 13-point body would give the appearance upon the page of 3-point leading. We shall use “interlinear space” as the distance between the extreme projections (ascend¬ ers and descenders) of the small letters in succeeding lines. In our case, it will be the equivalent of the points of leading. 4 Roethlein, B. E., The relative legibility of different faces of printing types, Amer. J. of Psychol., 1912, xxiii, 1-36, esp. p. 28. 5 The printing was done with great care and pains by Messrs. R. R. Don¬ nelley & Sons Company, Chicago, to whom the Laboratory stands under a heavy debt. It was arranged for and followed through the press by Dr. Carl Rahn. 50 MADISON BENTLEY I once knew an unworldly-minded man down in Maryland who built himself a house. The desire of his heart was to have a spacious entrance hall, one that would sound a key¬ note of hospitality and give an air of spacious¬ ness and taste. When he got to planning the house, he found that he would have to build a large living-room to justify this much-desired hall. He had never a thought of a library until he saw that one was needed Fig. Ia According to a well authenticated report, they have no serious objections to entering the republican caucus if they are invited prop¬ erly and joining in naming a candidate for speaker and otherwise participating in the framing of the republican legislative policy. The full political significance of such possible action carries with it the idea that, for the first time since the 1912 smash-up, there would be a real working agreement between Fig. Ib x 7^4 inches. The sheets were set upon an exposure- frame which was movable along an optical bench in the dark-room. The whole was surrounded by a rectangular wire frame covered the black cloth, making a long rectangular tunnel, 9 in x 12 in. The subject was adjusted to a head-rest and looked into the black tunnel down which he could see the printed sheet. The printing was evenly illuminated by concealed electric lamps and by reflectors. After a warning signal, the field was suddenly exposed by the experimenter, and the subject read aloud the ten CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 5i lines at top speed. An indicator showed the subject in advance just where the first line would begain, and he recorded his be¬ ginning and ending times by means of a finger key and an elec¬ trically controlled stop-watch. In order to ascertain the visual angle ordinarily subtended by the length of the line as printed in books, magazines, and news¬ papers, and also to procure variety in the substance of the ex¬ cerpts to be read by our subjects, we took extracts from eight books, written upon a variety of topics, eight magazines, serious and popular, and eight newspapers, representative of this country and England. We gathered in this way materials for 90 extracts, each 10 lines long. Thus we had 9 excerpts for each of 10 lead¬ ings (o and 1, 2, 3 ... . 9-point), and the whole 90 were exposed in a mixed order to each of our readers. We took care that the order observed should equally distribute the variable error of practice to all the 10 degrees of leadings used at a given reading- distance. The effects of practice which may have been cumulative as the experiments passed from one reading-distance to another are not wholly eliminated because we did not at first anticipate the exceedingly wide range of distances which we were to use. These effects were practically cancelled by carrying 2-4 distances on together. They have no special significance for our problems. Fatigue was avoided by short periods of reading and frequent intervals of rest. We kept, so far as we could, to the same hour in the day for a given subject; although our whole series of experiments, running through four years, covered nearly the entire day from 8 a. m. to 5 p. m. Before the reading began for the hour, the following instruc¬ tions were read to the subject : “At a signal ‘ready’ you will be shown a grey exposure field. Fixate the white pointer. At a second signal, ‘now,’ the grey field will be removed, disclosing a block of printed matter. Be¬ gin immediately to read aloud and at the same time press the key at your right hand. Read as clearly and as rapidly as you can. Do not correct errors. If a strange or an unclear word appears, say ‘blank’ and continue reading. As you read the last word press the key a second time. After the reading, report the num¬ ber of mistakes made.” 52 MADISON BENTLEY We at first proposed to include an introspective study of the processes involved in reading and especially those affecting the rate ; but we later discovered that such a study properly belonged to a separate inquiry.0 According to a well authenticated report, they have no serious objections to entering the republican caucus if they are invited prop¬ erly and joining in naming a candidate for speaker and otherwise participating in the framing of the republican legislative policy. The full political significance of such possible action carries with it the idea that, for the first time since the 1912 smash-up, there would be a real working agreement between Fig. I la According to a well authenticated report, they have no serious objections to entering the republican caucus if they are invited prop¬ erly and joining in naming a candidate for speaker and otherwise participating in the framing of the republican legislative policy. The full political significance of such possible action carries with it the idea that, for the first time since the 1912 smash-up, there would be a real working agreement between Fig. lib We drew our readers, 18 in all, from the departmental staff, from graduate students of psychology and from advanced under- 6 In the first four thousand and more readings, the experimenter carefully followed the reading, with a duplicate copy of the excerpt before him, and set down on a prepared blank the errors committed. The errors consisted of hesitations, blanks, wrong words, new insertions, attempts at corrections, breaks in the voice, nervous laughter and ejaculations. We had hoped to relate these lapses, as well as the mental processes which underlay them, to the time of reading the ten lines ; but that also proved to be impracticable because of the variable factors of sense, meaning, and degree of familiarity. The introspective study still lies before us to be completed. CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 53 graduates, most of whom were pursuing experimental problems.7 It was soon found that the subjects best adapted to the problem were those who maintained a steady and constant reading “set” which kept them under pressure to do their best and to complete the reading in the shortest possible time. In a comparative study of reading-times much depends upon the steadiness of this psycho¬ physical determination. All the readers save R read without knowledge of the problem. The substance of the excerpts had, of course, its influence upon the rate of reading; but our wide choice (90 extracts from a wide variety of topics, ranging from epistemology to light fiction and the fashions) was designed to distribute to the various leadings the influence of the meaning- substance upon rate. The results seem to justify our assump¬ tion.8 The whole number of readings was 6640. As the ex¬ periment progressed, it seemed advisable to secure a wider range of the size of type and also of reading distances. To this end, we procured from the University’s photographer photographic reductions of our sheets set in 12-point type. These reductions were made on the scales of 1.0 to 0.72 and 1.0 to 0.60, and they represent approximately 9-point and 6-point types. In the re- 7 The experiments are the work of many hands. A large part of the earlier work of planning, devising, and overseeing fell to Dr. Carl Rahn, who also served as observer. One whole division fell under the guidance of Professor C. A. Ruckmick. The experiments were placed in the competent hands of Mr. W. T. Doe, B.A., and Mr. L. C. Raines, B.A. Some of the later series were carried through by Miss M. Jones. The readers who were good enough to give their time and their enthusiastic effort were Broom (Br), Bentley, Dr. R. C. (B), Cuthbert (C), Carman (Ca), Carlsen (Cl), Fluke (F), Fera (Fe), Griffith (G), Goebel (Gb), Gould (Go), Greene (Gn), Gross (Gr), Knapheide (Kn), Kohl (K), McKinney (Me), Rahn (R), Raines (Ra), and Rutherford (Ru). The graphs have been drawn by Dr. C. A. Griffith. 8 The Laboratory is to carry through another study which makes use of nonsense syllables and nonsense words. That sort of reading will, of course, be very different (in character and mechanism) from the perusal of the ordinary sense page. 9 An independent variation of type-size and leading would have been preferable to our photographic reductions, but the expense of the typesetting was formidable. We shall speak of o-lead, of 7-leads, etc. in the photo¬ graphic reductions, for the sake of simplicity; although the actual interlinear distances have been changed. 54 MADISON BENTLEY ductions, the thickness of the single lead (1/72 inch) became approximately 1/100 inch and 1/120 inch.9 We might have kept to our large type and regarded only retinal size, but we did not care to assume that a large type at a great distance would be read with the same facility as a small type at a smaller dis¬ tance, provided only the visual angles subtended by the two types (and, of course, the two line-lengths) were the same. The conditions of reading are too complex to warrant such an assump¬ tion. Habitual reading, e.g., at a given distance (as the “normal reading-distance” for the emmotropic eye) might favor that distance from the eyes. So we used the three sizes of text at many distances. In general, the 6-point and the 9-point were Fig. Ill CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 55 read at the smaller distances. Figure II shows samples (7-point leading) of these two blocks of type, while Figure III displays the distances at which each type (at the various leadings) was read. The readings taken at a distance of 25-35 cm. call for a special description. It seemed advisable to compare our results acquired in the dark room under somewhat unusual conditions with printing which should be presented to the subject as he or¬ dinarily reads. To this end we arranged a reading desk at an optimal inclination and with good indirect light derived from a large window obliquely behind the subject. We used the same care as elsewhere in the exposure. The reader made his own finer adjustment to distance by moving his .head backward and for¬ ward while a preliminary card rested upon the reading desk. The distance chosen was read off (cornea to plane of printed sheet) just before beginning and just after finishing a set of excerpts. With our 9-point types, all the distances fall within the limits of 25-35 cm. (ca. 10 — 14 in.) The range was fairly narrow for any single reader. Results: The general trend of the reading-times at the various distances and with the ten leadings, 0-9, is shown upon our graphs. Here the number of leads (separation of the lines) is set down at the bottom of the sheet and the time (sec.) expended on reading the ten lines of printed matter is set upon the line of ordinates. After a careful inspection of results we decided to include in the graphs only leads o, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9. The others appeared to have no special significance. All the times for any one size of type (6-, 9-, or 12-point) are gathered together in one place, each graph standing for all readings at a given distance. Above each group is a compound graph which combines all those beneath it, i.e., all 12-pt., or 9-pt., or 6-pt. results. The unbroken lines in each group represent one and the same set of observers, the broken lines another set, and so on. The times of the indi¬ vidual subjects (ave. of each reader’s trials at a given distance) are given in figures in Table I. As regards the reading-times for different distances and for different type-sizes, the inspection of the graphs will make it 56 MADISON BENTLEY apparent that, in general, the greater the distance of the page from the eye the longer the reading-time. This rule obtains where the group of observers is the same for different graphs and also,' — usually, not always, — where different observers read at Graph III CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 57 TABLE I 12-Point Type Distance — 176 cm. Distance = 136 cm. Subj. o 3 6 7 8 9 Lowest Subj. 036789 Lowest B 23-4 22.9 22.5 20.8 21.3 22.8 7 B 19.4 19.2 18.2 17.9 18.2 19.5 7 C 26.8 26.5 26.4 25.2 26.6 28.3 7 C 29.8 28.2 28.5 26.7 27.9 30.1 7 F 30.6 30.2 29-3 29.1 28.9 30.7 5(28.5) F 23.0 23.2 237 22.3 23.1 25.0 7 G 18.0 17.0 16.1 16.0 17.1 17.3 4(i5.9) G 174 16.4 16.3 16.6 16.7 17.8 4(i5.9) R 43-1 36.6 36.9 34-8 36.1 35-9 7 R 33-2 3i. 1 27.4 26.7 254 28.5 8(254) Ave. 28.4 26.6 26.2 25.2 26.0 27.0 Ave. 24.6 23.6 22.8 22.0 22.7 24.2 Distance — 156 cm. Distance = 1 16 cm. Ca 26.6 25-1 25.6 23-7 25-5 29.5 7 Ca 21. 1 22.3 23.1 21.3 24.2 26.9 1(21.1) Gr 3i. 1 25.0 27-3 25.6 28.4 30.1 3 Gr 25.6 23.2 24.8 22.3 24-5 25.2 7 Me 31-5 28.5 27.6 26.1 30.0 29.9 7 Me 26.6 23-7 24.0 22.8 24.4 26.2 7 Ra 19.7 17.8 17.6 16.5 174 18.2 7 Ra 25.2 24.9 25.6 22.6 26.5 26.2 7 Ave. 27.2 24.1 24.5 23.0 25.3 26.9 Ave. 24.6 23-5 244 22.2 24.9 26.1 Distance — 88 cm. Distance — : 96 m. Ca 24.7 24.2 24.2 21.8 24.9 24-5 7 Cl 22.8 22.1 21.5 20.1 20 .7 22.8 7 Gr 18.7 17.3 18.7 17.2 18.5 18.5 7 Go 18.2 18.7 17.2 18.3 18.9 20.5 6 Me 23.6 22.4 21.7 19-3 22.4 23.3 7 K 17.5 17.1 17.3 15.6 17.5 18.7 7 Ra 15.9 15.3 16.0 14. 1 16.3 16. 1 7 Ra 154 15-6 i5-i 151 I7.I 17.6 6&7 Ave. 20.7 19.8 20.1 18.1 20.5 20.6 Ave. 18.5 18.4 17.8 17.3 18.5 19.9 g-Point Type Distance > = . 132 cm. Distance — 72 cm. Subj. 0 3 6 7 8 9 Lowest Subj . 0 3 6 7 8 9 Lowest Fe 22.8 19.1 18.8 16.0 17-5 21.3 7 Fe 14.4 13.6 13.8 12.7 14. 1 15-2 7 Gn 28.4 21.2 24.0 20.6 25.2 26.4 7 18.0 16.9 18.8 Ru 24.0 21.4 20.9 19-3 21.4 22.0 7 Ru 17.0 1 7-7 17.9 7 Ave. 247 20.6 21.2 18.6 21.4 23.2 Ave. 16.2 15-3 15-7 14.8 16.0 17.0 Distance = 06 cm. Distance — : 88 cm. 2(20.3) Cl 30.0 234 23.8 20.6 24.0 24.4 7 Cl 26.7 22.4 22.1 21.6 24 -3 25.0 Gn 20.4 19.0 19.2 18.0 19.6 21.8 7 Gn 21.5 20.0 21.2 19.4 20.5 21.8 7 Ave. 25.2 21.2 21.5 19.3 21.8 23.1 Ave. 24.1 21.2 21.6 20.5 22.4 234 Distance = 25-35 cm. Br 1 1.9 12.1 11.9 10.7 1 1.9 13.0 7 Cl 11.8 11.4 1 1.4 11.0 11 -7 14.0 7 Kn 15-8 15.6 154 14.6 16.2 I7.I 7 Ru 15-3 15-5 15.5 14.6 16.2 16.9 7 Ave. 137 13-6 13.5 12.7 14.0 152 58 MADISON BENTLEY TABLE I (Continued) 6-Point Type Distance = 96 cm. Distance = 58 cm. Subj. 036789 Lowest Subj. 036789 Lowest Gr. 27.1 24.7 25-3 234 24.4 26.4 5(22.4) Gr 19.0 17.6 1 7.2 17.2 17.8 19.0 5(i6.7) Me 30.7 27.8 29.8 27.4 27.5 29-5 7 Me 24.0 24.1 24.0 21.2 244 25-3 7 Ra 16.4 15-9 16.4 15-6 16.5 17.2 7 Ra 15.9 16.5 16.4 15.2 17.8 18.2 7 Ave. 24.7 22.8 °o 4 22.1 22.8 24.4 Ave. 19.6 19.4 19.2 17.9 20.0 20.8 Distance — 68 cm. Distance = = 48 cm. Cl 28.8 25-5 23.9 22.7 251 24.8 7 Cl 22.3 20.7 20.1 20.5 20.5 23.2 4(18.8) Gb 18.6 17. 1 1 7.6 15.3 17.0 19.0 7 Gb Go 21. 1 20.1 20.3 19.2 21.5 22.5 7 Go 17.2 17.5 17.6 17.3 18.3 19.5 0&2( I7.2) K 17.0 20.7 19.6 19.5 20.4 21.3 1(17.1) K 17-3 16.3 15.8 15-8 15.8 18.2 i, 2, 6, 7&8 Ra 16.8 18.1 16.6 16.2 17.6 19.4 7 Ra 16.6 16.8 15.9 15-7 17.3 17.8 7 Ave. 20.5 20.3 19.6 18.6 20.3 21.4 Ave. 18.3 1— 1 VJ bo 17.3 17.3 18.0 197 Distance — 88 cm. Distance — : 7 w w m < i w m m < I w w m < i w i < I w w w m < I w w m i > i w m • • 1 1 > i w m m i > w w m i i > i w m m i i > I m i > w w i I > i m i > i m m < i m i < I m m • 1 > i w m — i m i > I In 8 of the 20 cases in Table IV we find exceptions to Sie- brand’s rule that thermal intensity is a function of the number of organs excited, i.e., in these 8 cases the more intensive sensation is produced by the stimulation of a single organ of higher tuning when compared with an area which includes a plurality of spots of lower sensitivity; and in 9 of the 12 remaining cases the “stronger” group contained an organ at least equal in tuning to the single organ. Although we find but little support for Siebrand’s contention, there does here again appear a slight intimation that the number of components does exert an influence upon the judgment of in¬ tensity. Let us further refine our method to discover, if it is possible, whether, and under what conditions, the influence of number does obtain. Method C. In the second part of their fourth method, Barnholt and Bentley have observed the effect of adding an organ of unlike CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 9i tuning to one already under stimulation. We have adopted the same procedure, but for another purpose. We wished to discover whether the slight tendency to connect number and intensity was due to the lack of analysis of fused or colligated members. To this end we have distinguished between “total-impression” and “analysis.” With the same application of stimulus, we have varied the instruction to our observers. Under (i) below we give our results where the Obs. was instructed to report any in¬ tensive change or difference which might appear, without analy¬ sis, under stimulation. Under (ii) the instructions were to attend only to the initial cold, reporting any alteration which might occur in that particular sensation. i. Total-impression judgments. First a “moderate” cold organ (m) was stimulated for 2-3 sec. by a blunt temperature cylinder brought immediately after drying with cotton wool from an ice-bath at o° C. After an interval of 2-3 sec., the same stimulus was repeated, this time with the addition of a like stimulus applied to an “intensive” (i) or a “weak” (w) organ lying within the radius of 1 cm. The results in Table V include no comparisons for Obs. A, B, and C, and 72 comparisons for a highly trained Obs., M. The figures are percentages. The letters MI and MW give the tuning of the second member in the comparison. TABLE V Total impression: with interval: Obs. A, B, C, and M. M with MI or with MW G L — ? T’ls Obs. A, B. and C MI 58 0 40 2 100 “ M MI 70 2 14 14 100 Obs. A, B, and C MW 21 3 67 9 100 “ M MW 14 33 42 11 100 The results agree with those in Table II. The addition of “I” leads to a large number of “greater” judgments, and the addition of W to more “less” and “equal” reports. The reduction of “M” under repetition, due to physiological adaptation, doubt¬ less tends to change the whole distribution of cases; but this factor should be constant in both halves of the table. In order to make still more decided the difference between 92 MADISON BENTLEY total impression and analysis, we repeated the last experiment, except that now we continued the M-sensation by holding the temperature cylinder in place throughout the interval and also as long as the second member (MI or MW) endured. See Table VI, which includes 162 cases for A, B, and C, and 72 for M. TABLE VI Total impression: without interval: Obs. A, B, C, and M. G L — ? T’ls Obs. A, B, and C MI 70 0 26 4 100 “ M MI 75 3 16 6 100 Obs. A, B, and C MW 8 1 85 6 100 “ M MW 14 19 53 14 100 The results are similar to the last preceding, save that now MI gives more G-cases and MW more equal-cases. ii. Analytical judgments. The instructions to attend only to the initial cold (M) and to report only an intensive change which might occur in this sensation when I or W was added led to a new distribution in the judgments. Table VII is based upon 90 comparisons for A, B, and C, and 144 for M, under this in¬ struction. TABLE VII Analysis : without interval : Obs. A, B, C, and M. G L — ? T’ls Obs. A, B, and C MI 35 0 62 3 100 “ M MI 15 0 77 8 100 Obs. A, B, and C, MW 2 0 94 4 100 “ M MW 6 1 92 I 100 It appears that, under analysis, the equal- judgments notably increase. Intensive increases are still reported (though less fre¬ quently) when the organ of high tuning (I) is added; but almost never when the organ of low tuning (W) is added. The de¬ creases almost entirely disappear. The tendency is for M to re¬ main unchanged. Obs. M, whose results are most significant on account of his long training in analysis, was encouraged to make as full an introspective report as he could. A closer scrutiny of his equal-cases will throw further light upon the in¬ tegrity of the cold sensation.0 This Obs. found that these cases 6 Cf . Pieron, H., De la discrimination spatiale des sensations thermiques. Son importance pour la theorie generate de la discrimination cutanee, C. r. CRITICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 93 fell into four classes, to-wit: (i) equal-without-change under addition of I or W (tabulated below as (e), (2) equal-with-an- undefined-addition (e+?), (3) equal-in-the-presence-of-a- stronger cold sensation (e+str.), and (4) equal-in-the-presence- of-a-weaker cold (e+w). The distribution (percentages as be¬ fore) for Obs. M into these four equal-classes is indicated in Table VIII. TABLE VIII Equal-cases (121) : Obs. M e e+ ? e+str. e+w T’ls MI 27 13 53 7 100 MW 60 21 9 10 100 Thus it appears that although adequate analysis usually (121 in 144 cases) reveals the unchanged initial cold, the addition of a stronger thermal quality is more frequently (53%) noted (Be- merkt is Stumpf’s term, loc. cit. p. 278) than is the addition of a weaker cold (10%), and that a corresponding excess of plain “equals” is shown where the second (added) stimulus excites an organ of low sensitivity (60% and 27%). It seems likely (though the matter calls for more explicit treatment) that this result simply exemplifies the fact that the intensive attribute is so closely bound up with attributive clearness that the addition of a stronger member has a more profound effect — other things equal — upon a complex than the addition of a weaker member.7 The especial significance for our study of the analytic judgments is that the slight tendency to judge as “greater” the temperature (cold) from plural organs is due almost wholly to the tendency to judge in terms of the total impression (as Stumpf found in Soc. de biol., 1919, lxxxii, 61-65. By dropping water upon the skin, P. excited “pure” thermal sensations ( i.e ., without pressure). He found the limen for discrimination of locality to be relatively small, 10-15 mm. Most of our added stimuli (I or W) fell at approximately this distance from the initial stimulus (M). 7 The reader will recall that Wundt’s doctrine of the “intensive fusions” accords the chief role to the most intensive component. The classical in¬ stance is the fundamental in the simple clang or musical note. (Wundt, W., G. d. physiol. Psychol., 5th ed., vol. ii, 1902, 418). Cf. the experiments of Bentley upon clearness and intensity in Titchener, E. B., Lectures on the elementary psychology of feeling and attention, 1908, 36iff. 94 MADISON BENTLEY the case of tonal complexes, Tonpsychol. , ii, 424 f). But we can¬ not solve the problem of thermal increments by reference to total impression alone; and when we analyze, we discover that the thermal quality carries its own intensity in spite of the presence in mind of other sensations of the same mode. Summary I. Our experiments support the view that no fixed dependence obtains between thermal intensity and the size of the stimulated area. The apparent and alleged dependence is chiefly explained by reference to the fact of “tuning” of the receptor-organs. Siebrand’s contention that thermal sensations are “summated” within the area of stimulation is not substantial because he neg¬ lected this cardinal fact. II. The question of summation demands a more refined method than has yet been used. Barnholt and Bentley have called attention to obscurity and confusion in the statement of the problem and also to various misleading forms of the stimulus error. We have added the distinction between analytic judg¬ ments and judgments of total impression, apprehending the ne¬ cessity of instructing the observer. III. Aside from the factor of tuning, we have referred the tendency to report as “greater” the cold from two or more or¬ gans when compared with one, first, to the judgment of total- impression, as opposed to the judgment based upon explicit analysis, and secondly, to the fact that the most prominent mem¬ ber in a fusion occupies a special prominence, which tends to obscure the other members. Our experiments furnish no evi¬ dence of a true summation of sensational elements. ■ V