Library of - Van I lew OC.Van Liew PRACTICAL, LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY BY WILLIAM 0. KROHN, PH.D. (ALE), PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, CHAMPAIGN, ILL. CHICAGO THE WERNER COMPANY 1895 v COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY THE WERNER COMPANY, CHICAGO. PKACT'L I.ES. PSYC'Y. .!: - - ^ PEEFAOE. WITHIN the past year the author has, at various institutes and other gatherings of teachers, delivered lectures on Psychology, nhiefly on those phases that must and do come in for a large share of consideration on the part of every successful teacher. The speculative form which Psychology sometimes assumes found no place in those discussions, but only such features as are quite in touch with the ordinary experience of the average teacher in our common schools. The writer was surprised, and at the same time very much gratified, at the intense interest they /evoked. At the solicitation of a large number of these same teachers, the lectures have accordingly been gathered together, /ind, with slight modifications and the advantage of much addi- tional material, are now presented in book form. The style has not been changed from that employed in the lectures, viz., simple, direct discourse, because the author desires that the teachers whom he has already addressed will feel that he had them in mind in preparing this book, as he had when writ- ing the original lectures, and also that the friendly acquaintance which was thereby established shall in no wise be dampered by the high-sounding phrases that are sometimes manufactured into book language. The terms " Mental Science " and " Psychology " are vague to the person who has not been schooled in the discussions of the purely speculative branches. But here we shall dispense with all metaphysical language and get along without technical terms. 543 1t8 (3) 4 PREFACE. The writer has avoided "pedagogical consciousness," " icy cogni- tions of thought," " primordial elements," and the like, simply because he cherishes the desire that the book shall be character- ized by a practical ring rather than a scholastic rattle. It is hoped that all who read this book, and especially the common school teacher, will consider it nothing more nor less than a collection of personal letters in which only the more im- portant mental facts are discussed; the object and aim being to create and develop tact on the part of the teacher, that he may be able to read the child's mind aright and thus be better quali- fied to minister to the wants of the growing child-nature as this unfolds itself day by day. The greatest pedagogical need of our times is child study, and if the author only quickens the interest of teachers in this line he shall be more than satisfied and fully repaid for every effort he has made. WILLIAM 0. KROHN. CHAMPAIGN, ILL., January 15, 1894. CONTENTS. PAGE PREFACE, .... .... 3 LESSON I. THE SERVICE OF PSYCHOLOGY TO THE TEACHER, .... 9 LESSON II. PSYCHOLOGY DEFINED AND DESCRIBED, 15 LESSON III. THE METHODS OF PSYCHOLOGY, ... ... 21 LESSON IV. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN BODY AND MIND, .... 35 LESSON V. THE NERVOUS SYSTEM, 40 LESSON VI. THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS, 57 LESSON VII. THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS (Continued), .... 74 LESSON VIII. SENSATION, GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS SENSATIONS OF TASTE AND SMELL, 95 VI CONTENTS. LESSON IX. SENSATION (Continued"). PAGE THE TEMPERATURE SENSE SENSATIONS OF PRESSURE AND SENSATIONS OF CONTACT, . .... . . 107 LESSON X. SENSATION (Continued'). THE MUSCLE SENSE THE ORGANIC SENSATIONS THE JOINT AND TENDON SENSATIONS SENSATIONS OF THE POSITION OF THE BODY AS A WHOLE SENSATIONS OF ROTATION, .... 117 LESSON XI. SENSATION (Continued}. VISION, 124 LESSON XII. SENSATION (Continued}. HEARING, .......... 136 LESSON XIII. DEVELOPMENT OP THE SENSES, 150 LESSON XIV. DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSES (Continued), ' 164 LESSON XV. THE CONTENTS OF A CHILD'S MIND ON ENTERING SCHOOL, . . 177 LESSON xyi. THE ILLUSIONS OF SENSE, 188 LESSON XVII. HABIT, .... 207 LESSON XVIII. ATTENTION, ,,,,,,,, 221 CONTENTS. vii LESSON XIX. PAGE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS, .... 244 LESSON XX. MEMORY, .... . .256 LESSON XXI. IMAGINATION, . . ... 276 LESSON XXII. REASONING, . ... 306 LESSON XXIII. THE DEVELOPMENT OF WILL, . ..... 337 LESSON XXIV. THE TIME RELATIONS OF MENTAL PHENOMENA, .... 357 LESSON XXV. METHODS OF TESTING AND MEASURING THE MENTAL FACULTIES, ESPECIALLY MEMORY AND ATTENTION IN SCHOOL CHILDREN, 370 LESSON XXVI. CHILD-STUDY: THE BASIS OF EXACT PEDAGOGICAL METHODS, . 381 APPENDIX. THE KINDERGARTEN AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT, .... 392 " That former age in which every one thought that trades must be established by bounties and prohibitions; that manufacturers needed their materials and qualities and prices to be prescribed; and that the value of money could be determined by law; was an age which unavoidably cherished the notions that a child's mind could be made to order; that its powers were to be imparted by the school- master; that it was a receptacle into which knowledge was to be put and there built up after its teacher's ideal. In this broader era, however, we are beginning to see that there is a natural process of mental evolution which is not to be disturbed without injury; that we may not force upon the unfolding mind our artificial forms ; but that Psychology, also, discloses to us a law of supply and demand, to which if we would not do harm, we must conform." HERBERT SPENCER. PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. LESSON I. THE SERVICE OF PSYCHOLOGY TO THE TEACHER. You have often heard it said that the teacher needs to know Psychology because it is his business to educate the mind, and yet this mere statement has not convinced you of the real value of Psychology. It can not convince anyone. Sometimes we are told by those older and wiser than we, that we should pursue certain studies because of their value as mental drill. We were taught geometry, portions of arithmetic like permutation, alligation, and many meaningless definitions, because they induced mental discipline rather than for their prac- tical value. Some may have told you that this is one reason why you should study Psychology. I believe I have seen this stated in many books myself. Let me tell you that if Psychology is to be of no practical value to you, you should by all means leave it alone. Steer clear of it or anything else that will not appeal to your practical interests as a teacher and student. The chief ob- ject of instruction is knowledge, and you can not acquire knowl- edge of any sort without gaining the mental drill as well. The " mental drill " comes of itself. But it is one of the chief articles of my creed that Psychology is a study of immense practical value, that it necessarily hinges on and joins itself to every question con- nected with daily life. It can be made of the greatest practical value to the teacher, and that is the only sort of Psychology we want as teachers. Nineteenth century teachers need and demand nineteenth century Psychology and not the scholastic discussions that smack of the dark ages. The Psychology of the teacher of (9) 10 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. to-day is not made up from old musty manuscripts that have been found buried in ancient copper cylinders; its data are gained from observing the child's living, growing, active mind in all its phases as it presents itself to the teacher from day to day the year through. So, then, let me insist that you study Psychology for practical reasons. A man who intends becoming a high-class architect studies descriptive geometry, not merely because it will develop his mind but because of the use it will be to him ; so you should study Psychology because you are persuaded that the knowledge gained thereby will make you a more successful teacher, i. e. , a more tactful teacher. But you at once ask How will it do this? How can Psychol- ogy make me a better teacher? Let us first answer the question, What is teaching? In the first place we will agree that to teach is not to impart instruction, for there is no way by means of which the smallest scrap of knowledge can be conveyed from the mind of the teacher to that of the pupil. Cramming facts and hearing recitations is not teaching. We all know that all educa- tion is self-education, that the child's mind must be aroused by the teacher to act in and- for itself. To teach is to excite the child's mind to activity i. e.,into activity which would not have taken place without being thus evoked. The object and aim of all education, in home or school, is to make the best citizen possible. I mean, only that education suffices which makes a maw a perfected individual rounded out, full and complete mentally, physically, morally. Any system of education which neglects this in any respect is, just in that far, defective. We know, then, what we want the child to become the ideal citizen. We know he is not this when he comes to school the first day, nor the second, nor the next. Indeed some of us despair of ever making ideal citizens of some of our pupils but why should we? Right here is one of the many places where Psychology helps the teacher. By adopting the methods of modern Psychology the teacher can learn just what are the contents of the child's mind on entering school, He can also, by the aid of this same SERVICE OF PSYCHOLOGY TO THE TEACHER. 11 experimental Psychology, ascertain the child's capacities in all the more important lines such as the memory power, and its power of attention. The teacher, then, has two things before him (1) the pattern, i. e., the ideal citizen which he wishes the child to become, and (2) the actual child before him, j. e., the raw material. But the most important matter is the third point, viz. : What methods of teaching can be best employed to convert this untutored child this raw, crude material into the finished prod- uct the ideal citizen? This is the most difficult question of all. This is the question that requires the most tact and skill on the part of the teacher in effecting the proper solution. But at the same time it is the question toward the solution of which Psy- chology contributes the most readily and furnishes the largest amount of help. Even the most crude and undeveloped Psychol- ogy will tell us to select those subjects for study that will be of the most practical use. We would hardly teach the child to sing Italian opera before we would teach it to read and spell and count. We would not insist upon it making a Delsartian bow or knowing how to waltz before teaching it some of the first princi- ples of hygiene. Even the Indian teaches his child to bend the bow before allowing him to be adorned with feathers and paint. Humboldt tells us that an Orinoco Indian, though quite regard- less of bodily comfort, will yet labor for a fortnight to purchase pigment wherewith to make himself admired ; and that the same woman who would not hesitate to leave her hut without a fragment of clothing on, would not dare to commit such a breach of deco- rum as to go out unpainted. It is a well-known fact that colored beads and trinkets are much more prized by wild tribes than cal- icos or broadcloths. Captain Speke tells us of his African at- tendants that they strutted about in goat-skin mantles when the weather was fine; but when it was wet took them off, folded them up, and went about naked, shivering in the rain. So it is in a less degree with the young " aborigine" who presents himself at the school-room door in all parts of our broad land. He must be taught the useful, practical things. It is only thus that his mind can become better developed. It is only thus that he can be made 12 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. to become what we desire him to be the ideal man. But would you develop him in only one direction? No indeed. You are seeking for a general development of all his powers not a single one which is to' be developed at the expense of the others. Pitch- ing baseball gives a trained eye and obedient arm and hand, and yet you want your pupil to be more than a baseball pitcher. So, then, the real teacher, who has a true conception of his work and mission, turns to Psychology, and with its aid, and by means of its conclusions, settles three things: (1) What is this child pupil as he presents himself to me ? What are the contents of his young growing mind? What are his powers and capaci- ties as he now stands before me? (2) What do I desire him to become? Into what product should I conscientiously labor to fashion and mold him? and (3) What method must be employed in order that these aims and ideas may be realized? What knowledge is of most worth in developing the child mind into the perfected type of mental life and action? You will find that Psychology, in its modern experimental form, will be your chief help. By it you can observe the precise effect which the acquir- ing of this or that piece of knowledge will have on the mind, and in this way be enabled to estimate its value as an agency in un- folding the child's latent mental powers. It is, of course, very important to have an aim. You must know what you are aim- ing at as a teacher. Unless you have settled this you can never succeed. You may just as well tear your certificate, or other credentials, to shreds and scatter the bits to the winds, if you have not a definite purpose in mind with reference to your pupils. How could an architect build an attractive house if he began to construct it without a plan, and worked from day to day without having in mind a picture of the house he was going to build. If the blacksmith or wheelwright must have in mind an image of the thing he is about to make, how can you, as teachers, hope to succeed with the children, unless you have the clearest conception of what you wish them to become as a result of your leadership ? Of course no fixed plan can be given that will serve all teachers in all cases and circumstances, You must SERVICE OF PSYCHOLOGY TO THE TEACHER. 13 make your own plan, and besides your plan you must have practical ability, i. e., the ability that is gained as a result of close study and observation. When a noted general was on a famous campaign, he desired to bridge a certain swollen stream. He called his engineering corps together and told them what he wanted. They retired and were occupied many hours drawing the plans, delaying the entire army, and thus endangering the fate of the whole of that brilliant campaign. While the engineers were still at work draughting the plans, a sturdy carpenter approached the now impatient General and said, as he doffed his cap, " Gen- eral, the bridge is built [and, referring to the plans], but the picter isn't drawed yet." You see the application. It is the old, well-tried principle, safe always : " Learn to do by doing." As teachers you will often find yourselves handicapped by text-books which are apt to be very inefficient. Here, as else- where, Psychology will come to your aid in selecting the material that will be of the most value to your pupils. We must, within limitations, draw up our own curriculum as soon as we know the mental make-up of our pupils. The order of studies that is best fitted to develop the pupils of one school may not be at all suita ble in another. "Life is short" and school life is shorter so we are under moral obligations to so arrange the studies that the time of each pupil may be employed to the greatest advantage. To do this we must settle the relative value of different kinds of knowledge. Spencer has clearly shown that much that is called " History" in our schools is of little or no value. The law of mental progress is always from the concrete to the abstract, and yet in spite of this, highly abstract subjects, as grammar, which should come quite late, are begun very early. Political geogra- phy, with its countless definitions, dead and uninteresting to the child, is also begun in the primary grades, while physical geogra- phy, naturally attractive to the child, is in a great part passed over. The teacher must in a measure throw out those parts of the average text-book that are unimportant and supply additions to those parts that are important and useful, for the purpose of bringing about the most rapid, most healthful, child develop- 14 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. ment. It is a settled fact that mind is a real, existing thing. It is also just as much an undisputed fact that the mind develops according to certain immutable laws just as the body develops in accord with certain immutable laws. If, then, the evolution of intelligence in the child conforms to laws, does it not follow inevi- tably that education can be rightly guided only by a knowledge of these laws? It is the height of absurdity for us to suppose that we can properly regulate the process of mental growth and development without understanding the nature of the process. The teacher who " keeps school " and is ignorant of the truths of Psychology will often withhold that class of facts that would do his pupils the most good, and at the same time forcibly adminis- ter those that are distasteful, and therefore harmful, or give them the proper subjects in the wrong way and in the wrong order. No man should pilot a boat unless he knows the nature of his craft and is familiar with the waters in which he sails. Who would ride on a railroad train if he knew its engineer to be a novice who had never before had his hand on the throttle and knew not the func- tion of the safety valve ? Or, if he were ever so skilled in the princi- ples of steam would you trust your life to him if he knew not the system of train signals nor the rules of the road with reference to meeting and passing trains and had no "time card" before his eye? Much more might a parent trust a physician who knows nothing either of anatomy or physiology to care for his child, than to trust a so-called teacher who knows absolutely nothing of the principles according to which the mind unfolds and develops. Remember then The development of children, in mind as well as in body, always obeys certain great laws ; that unless these laws are in some measure conformed to by parents and teachers, mental defects will occur, and that only when these laws are con- scientiously followed and completely conformed to, can the child- mind be developed to its full capacity a mind rich in its strength and supreme power. Judge then for yourself whether all teachers should or should not strive assiduously to learn what these laws of the best mental growth actually are. LESSON II. PSYCHOLOGY DEFINED AND DESCRIBED. IN the last lesson I sought to make clear to you that Psychol- ogy will help you, as teachers, along three different lines. It will help you to learn just what the average child actually is as he enters your school ; it will help you to decide just what is best for this child to become, just what aim you ought to have in mind with re- spect to his development; and it will also help you to decide upon the best method of realizing this aim. But we have not yet an- swered the question What is Psychology? To give answer to this question shall be my endeavor in this chapter. Every text-book you pick up will, somewhere between its covers, define Psychology as the " Science of the Mind." That is the shortest definition that can be given. In fact, I think it has little else besides its shortness to commend it as a definition. For it is at once found to be insufficient in that it immediately provokes another question, viz : What is mind? And this is an exceedingly difficult question to answer clearly and in few words. You remember the story of the old philosopher who was asked, "What is matter?" and answered "Never mind." And when asked, " What is mind? " replied " No matter." But the question, "What is mind?" must not be hedged in any such way. Of course, it can not be formally defined any more than matter can be formally defined. But it can be described, and that is much better than a formal definition. We can best tell what a thing is by relating what it d oes. This is, in a sense, the whole business of Psychology to describe the mind by telling what it does, and for that reason we shall be better able at the close of this treatise to define mind than at the beginning. But we can give a tenta- tive definition that will certainly help us. (15) 16 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. By the term " mind " we mean anything and everything that is comprehended under the little word "I," when we say "I think," "I desire this or that," "I feel," "I see," and the like- that is, by mind is meant the subject of the mental states. When you describe the orange you say it is yellow, round, juicy, luscious, has weight, etc.; but what is the orange? Why, the thing that has the qualities the thing that is yellow, round, juicy, etc. So we find the mind is that real existing thing that feels, thinks, knows, perceives, desires and chooses. We know it is a non-material thing and has no existence in space as material things have. You can not touch a thought or feeling as you can the orange, but you can have just as certain, yes more certain, evidence of the real existence of mind, than you have of the existence of material things outside of us. It is indeed the business of Psychology to tell us what the mind is to tell us what the mind does; how it is that the mind has sensations of taste, smelling, seeing, hearing and the like; how it behaves under different conditions and surrounding cir- cumstances ; how it is affected by the different conditions and states of the body, and how it in turn affects the body. Psy- chology must tell us whether or not the mind acts during sleep, and if it does act during sleep, does it do so under the same con- ditions as in the wakeful state? Can the mind become fatigued, and if it does become tired, under what conditions can it best recover from this fatigue? Are there periods when the mind can accomplish more than at other times ? Which is the best time of day for hard mental work? In how far is mind affected in its ac- tivity by the conditions of the weather, by the season of the year, by the food supply? And then, according to what laws does the mind develop are there times of rapid growth ? Does the mind develop more rapidly at six years of age than at thirteen? Which is capable of the greatest mental effort the child whose body is growing rapidly the overgrown child or the child whose body is growing slowly? In which do the mental pow- ers develop more rapidly in the boy or girl? What are the laws of memory? Why do some people have better memories PSYCHOLOGY DEFINED AND DESCRIBED. 17 than others ? Why is it that some can remember names and can not remember faces, while others can remember faces and not remember names? Why is it that some have a good memory of the eye for objects once seen, while they have no memory at all of the ear can not remember sounds; for example, the com- monest musical airs ? How does it come that many children at a certain age have an inherent tendency, amounting almost to a mania, for lying? Why does corporal punishment do a few chil- dren good and injure beyond recall the mental habits and mental {ife of others? Why is it that the child at three years will have no feelings of fear, and will play with snakes, toads and caterpillars, while at six the same child will shrink and shudder at the very mention of such objects? Why is it that at certain ages the child has a mania for making collections of objects, e. g., the boy collects arrowheads, rocks, tobacco tags and animal pets; and the girl collects remnants of gay ribbons, sea shells and buttons; while both pester their friends in endeavoring to secure a collec- tion of foreign postage stamps ? Why does it occur that a child longs to do a thing that he is told not to do, and is not particu- larly anxious about the task he is asked to perform? These are just a few of the questions that Psychology, in one of its depart- ments, must answer. There are still larger questions with which Psychology has to deal. Have animals mind? If so, is their mental life similar to ours? Do they reason, judge, compare and think as we do? These are questions that appeal for their solution to Coinpara- ti^e Psychology. What is the delirium which is induced by fever or alcoholic drink? What are dreams? What are mesmerism and hypno- tism? What is insanity? These are questions that belong to Morbid Psychology. What is the relation of mental power to the size of the brain, the number and depth of its convolutions? How do the amount and quality of the blood supply affect the mental pro- cesses? Why does a sudden blow on the head make us uncon- scious? Why do drugs, coffee, quinine and chloroform affect the L. P. 2 18 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. flow of the mental states ? These are indicative of the questions with which Physiological Psychology is concerned. And then there are a large class of mental activities of which we are unconscious indeed this, I sometimes think, is the largest class. To illustrate I am seated reading an exceedingly inter- esting book. I cross my legs, run my fingers through my hair or pull my handkerchief out of my pocket, and do not seem to know it, for if you should ask me a moment later if I had done these things I would say I had not, since the activities mentioned had made no impression upon me. And yet each one of these was a voluntary act. My legs did not really cross themselves /crossed them. My hand did not go to my head of itself, nor did the handkerchief get from my pocket to my nose of itself /did these things, and yet they were sub-conscious activities. I am at the theater and am intensely interested in the play, but to see it well I am compelled to sit in an uncomfortable seat I am obliged to peer to the left of a pillar or to the right of a big hat, but I do not feel these discomforts till the play is over. The " bleachers" of the average baseball ground do not seem to be hard seats until the ninth inning of the game closes, when our interest sub- sides. You have perhaps noticed the German Hausfrau as she knits; it appears to be purely a mechanical action, and the knit- ter keeps up her knitting even when she gossips or reads. But you know, and she knows, that the knitting does not go on of itself. Notice how quickly she observes that she has " dropped a stitch." How slowly one must at first proceed while he is learning to manipulate the typewriter. How the pupil, when learning to play on the organ, while he gives attention to the " one, two, three, four" that he is counting, forgets to press the proper key or work the pedals. After a time all these things become auto- matic, i. e., they are done sub-consciously. You or I may not be able to sleep in yonder mill, amid the din and noise of its whirring machinery, and yet the miller is able to do so. But let one of the bearings become dry and make the slightest noise, a noise such that you and I would pay no attention to, yet it will awaken the miller, while the much greater noise to which he is accustomed PSYCHOLOGY DEFINED AND DESCRIBED. 19 would not in the least disturb or arouse him. Psychology, then, must also treat of all the sub-conscious activities and endeavor to explain them. And then have you not noticed how the blind man feels with the end of his cane and how the wood-carver traces with the point of his chisel, just as you or I feel with our hands and fingers? Furthermore, have you not observed the professional manner- isms displayed by men of different avocations? You can gen- erally pick out the lawyer, the physician, the clergyman, the busi- ness man, by these professional mannerisms, which settle upon one even before he is thirty. And there is also the Psychology of prejudice. We like cer- tain people better if they are Democrats or Republicans, Congre- gationalists or Baptists. A certain college in one of the States of the Central West catered to the prejudices of its constituency when its officers sought throughout the country for a professor of mathematics who should be at the same time a Methodist and a Democrat. The very hope of aristocracy, indeed of the " Four Hundred " itself, lies in the Psychology of prejudice. Some people will not fraternize with us unless we can boast of "blue blood," or are the burdened possessor of a "Van," or some other Hol- landish or "outlandish" prefix. Suppose that for some whim- sical, fanciful reason you have taken a dislike to some name, e.g., Ethel, or Bridget, or Marie. When you meet a person bearing any one of these names you at first, perhaps unconsciously, form a dislike for the person herself. The Bostonian must live on Beacon street or Commonwealth avenue if he wishes to gain an entree into a certain social "set." The Dartmouth student ran never be quite so friendly with the man from Amherst as he can with the man from Williams. In fact, all sorts of clannishness finds its basis in the Psychology of prejudice. I think now it is entirely clear that the scope of Psychology is very broad that it touches every branch of our daily life and activity. And how much better is such Psychology than the nar- row sort which restricts itself to the merely speculative form and discusses the faculties and "categories of thought" in a hazy, 20 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. vague sort of way. But let us as students, if possible, enter this broad field before us without preconceived notions. I hope we have no cherished theories which we wish to substantiate. Let us first inquire into all the facts before framing our theories. " First describe, then explain," is ever the true order of the scientific procedure. Of all persons, the psychologist must have an unbiased mind. He must be thoroughly imbued with the spirit of investigation the true scientific spirit. But when once he discovers that the facts support a certain principle, and that that principle alone is compatible with the discovered facts, then he is morally bound to adhere to a position that is in harmony with this established principle. The psychologist must have clear mental vision, with no cataract over the eye of judgment, and must have command of a wide range of thought. I have in my laboratory an instrument invented by Wheatstone, called the pseud oscope, in which the mirrors are so arranged that each eye sees the image which the other eye ought to see and would see under normal conditions. By means of this a solid object, as a pyramid, will appear hollow and vice versa. From propositions advanced by certain would-be psychologists, who have ha d neither special training nor possess very great natural ability, it would seem that some sort of mental pseudoscope had been employed. At the close of his investigations the psychologist must have for his conclusions clearly established principles, in the light of which he may interpret new experiences as they arise. When these principles are clear-cut, definite and thoroughly established he must " hew to the line " and not vacillate to and fro, a mere rud- derless bark moved about by the wind of other men's breath. He must settle all the more important questions of Psychology for himself, on an independent basis. When this is done we shall never become "hewers of wood or drawers of water" for any particular school of thinkers. With a clean, well-trained eye and the mind's "retinal field" cleared of all floating specks, the stu- dent of Psychology must ever seek for the truth, and the truth alone, if he would not be handicapped, for in this as in all other lines of investigation " the Truth shall make you free." LESSON III. THE METHODS OF PSYCHOLOGY. IN the previous chapters we were occupied (1) in indicating the real service of Psychology to the average teacher, and (2) with the query, What is Psychology? which suggested some of the many questions with which the psychologist has to deal, thus giving us an idea of the province of Psychology in the realm of the sciences. We must now allude to some of the methods em- ployed by the psychologists in order to learn just how they gain their conclusions ; for, if we know the several methods thoroughly well, we will be able to decide which one is the best for our pur- pose, therefore the one we should employ as teachers in our own investigations into the many interesting mental phenomena that present themselves from day to day. An acquaintance with these methods is exceedingly important. We can never take a scien- tist's conclusions as valid unless he tells us how these conclusions were reached. W 7 e must know his modus operand! before we per- mit his deductions to pass muster. It is not sufficient for the astronomer to tell us that he has discovered a new star he must tell us just how, and under what conditions he came to observe it, and is obliged to designate in mathematical terms the exact location it occupies in the heavens. The histologist may an- nounce that in a particular portion of the brain he has observed certain peculiarly shaped nerve cells. Before this announcement is of any value at all, he must submit a detailed description, among other things, of the way in which the brain tissue was prepared for examination, stating what reagents were employed in hardening and staining the specimen, and the thickness of the sections he examined, as well as the kind of microscope and objec- tive he used in his observations. In fact, all truly scientific work must be frank, open and " above board." Hypocrisy and decep- (21) 22 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. tion are quickly discovered in the scientific field. A knowledge of methods is necessary before accepting conclusions. You have noticed that all methods of investigation are becom- ing more and more exact. The scientific laboratory is quite a modern innovation. There was a time when about all the appa ratus needed by the chemist consisted of a "spoon and a bottle. 7 Even more recently has the physical laboratory been established with its essentially large, extensive, and indispensable equipment. And nearly all of us can remember the time when such a thing as a general biological laboratory was but little thought of and comparatively unknown, while special laboratories devoted to anatomy, physiology and bacteriology were not considered pos- sibilities, but were regarded as phantasms of fanciful dreamers. Formerly all investigation took the speculative turn. In fact, they were not real bona fide investigations at all. The old scho- lastic philosophers were oftentimes busily engaged with utterly senseless questions, waxing warm, and hurling anathemas at each other, in their discussions with reference to the number of angels that could stand on the point of a cambric needle. Yet these same men, renowned for their learning, imprisoned and martyred others who sought by means of practical experiments to find a key with which they might be enabled to read the book of nature. Aristotle was the son of a renowned physician, and yet he knew of no function that could possibly be assigned to the brain, unless it be that of lubricating the eyes. The principle of lifewab discussed, and a "vital fluid " was resorted to as an explanation, but no one was permitted to study the living organism itself. The true scientific spirit, wherever it manifested itself and lifted up its voice of inquiry, was stifled, and the man who dared to experiment within the world of nature and delve into her secrets was soon proscribed by the church and disowned by his country- men (who should have hailed him as a benefactor), and then ried off to the dread inquisition "Theirs not to make reply Theirs not to reason why Theirs but to do and die." THE METHODS OF PSYCHOLOGY. 23 But we have nothing of the kind at the present day. The sci- entific spirit is "in the air." It can never again be throttled. How glad we are that science studies are being introduced into all our schools; even if it is coming slowly, the era is near at hand when every child will be brought face to face with nature, and the purely mechanical, artificial methods of teaching will be aban- doned for all time. You ought to felicitate yourselves as teachers that you live in this eventful and auspicious epoch at the begin- ning of a new era in education with its natural methods its kindergartens, its science studies, its natural history and travel readers. While it is very evident that the methods of all the other sciences have in these latter days assumed more and more the character of exactness, can the same be said of the science of Psychology? Is it a more exact science than formerly? Are its conclusions to-day more trustworthy than the metaphysical guesses of the old-time Psychology? You will say at once that you can easily see that the physicist is able to assiduously pur- sue exact methods and apply them to his subject-matter; that surely the histologist should have a trained eye, a good memory, superior powers of comparison and an excellent microscope; that it goes without question that the anatomist must make use of the scalpel and microtome ; that the botanist and the bacteri- ologist should by all means have abundant laboratory facilities; that the astronomer is morally bound to use the largest availa- ble equipment, but you seriously question whether there can ever be any considerable exactness within the domain of psycho- logical study. Many people question this, and are anxiously asking, How can Psychology be brought out from under the clouds of never-ending speculation, and be placed upon a solid bais, after the manner of the other sciences? Do the phenomena of mind admit of treatment by the modern inductive scientific method? Are there such things as mental facts, and can they be subjected to close analysis, well planned tests, ingeniously de- vised experiments and accurate measurement? These inquiries are often made, and being made seriously, are therefore entitled 24 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. to the most respectful attention. But will you hold these ques- tions "in solution " for a moment while we briefly pass in review the method pr methods generally employed in lieu of the modern experimental methods of laboratory Psychology. When we see the insufficiency of these methods, in that there are many ques- tions which they are wholly unable to solve, then we will be better prepared to outline the field and functions of the experimental and more scientific method. Remember that as psychological students we are seeking to discover what mind is, what it does, how and under what conditions it acts, and the laws according to which it unfolds and develops. The method which is the oldest the one that has been em- ployed (though at times in a crude, crass way), ever since Psy- chology began to take form is that of introspection, which sig- nifies looking into, and the adjective, introspective, is the name given to the methods of that large group of psychologists who believe all the questions concerning mind can be answered by the mind undergoing a sort of rigorous self-examination. The intro- spective method is sometimes called the "subjective" method. This comes from the fact that the mind, as that which knows, thinks, feels, wills, and desires, is called the " subject " of the mental states in order to distinguish it from the u object," as that which is known or felt or affects the mind in any way. The tree I see, the river I delight in, the flower I admire, are objects to myself, who am the subject that admires them. By means of the subjec- tive or introspective method, we look within and take an inven- tory of our thoughts and ideas just as the merchant takes stock of the goods in his store. By this method we direct our atten- tion to what is going on in our own mind at the time of its occur- rence or after it has taken place. We have no power of turning our attention inward and focusing upon the mental states them- selves as they pass along the " stream of consciousness." Some psychologists, as Sully for example, say that we can attend to a certain particular feeling, such as emulation or sympathy, in order to see what its nature is, of what elementary parts it con- sists, and how it is induced. This is true only to a certain extent, THE METHODS OF PSYCHOLOGY. 25 for the great difficulty of the subjective method is that a mental fact vanishes as soon as you begin to examine it introspectively. Suppose you are at the theater and the play is a melodrama. There are touches of sadness which call forth deep emotions and bring tears to your eyes. Attend closely to the feeling with a view to noting its constituent elements and it vanishes. The next time you are thoroughly angry, make use of the introspective method and focus your attention "in order to see what itsnature is, and of what elementary parts it consists," and at once your muscles begin to relax, your teeth are not set quite so firmly, your fist is no longer so tightly clenched, and before you are aware of it, you are in a perfectly placid state, with no emotion of anger to analyze. On the other hand, as you well know, a sensation of pain when closely attended to becomes more intense. Take it all in all, you are in something of the same position as the entomologist, who, as he attempts to examine a small living insect under the microscope, finds that it is always crawling away from the objective and getting out of focus. If a flower that the botanist has in his hand were to vanish the moment he began to examine it closely, he would meet a difficulty quite analogous to that of the student of mind using the introspective method. In fact, a psychologist in his endeavor to "catch up" with his mental states in order to examine them more closely, is like a greyhound trying to outrun his own shadow, for the mental facts disappear the moment he seeks to examine them he has the deliverances of memory as his only data ; in fact, " his introspec- tion becomes retrospection." Certain it is, that errors of the purely introspective method and there are many bald errors arising from the deranging effects of close, scrutinizing attention can only be remedied by an appeal to memory. Like the cerebral anatomist, the purely introspective psychologist must examine " dead tissue" instead of the living organism, and as dead tissue is widely different from living tissue, so a mental state is sadly distorted when viewed in retrospect. Mental states that are always escaping direct examination may be reproduced in the form of memory images, and in this way be analyzed. 26 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. Far be it from me to deny the utility and value of the intro- spective method, and yet no one can help but see that, good as it is, it has many limitations. There are many questions in Psy- chology which. are raised by the introspective method which it cannot answer of itself, and cannot be answered but by appeal to experiment and the external aids. To begin with, the intro- spective method inverts the order of actual experience and mind development. Reflection is not attained until the higher mental powers are mature, and by it alone there can be no knowledge gained with reference to the rise and growth of the intellectual powers in childhood. Child-study, the most fruitful line of inves- tigation for the teacher, can find no raison d'etre, if Psychology be restricted to the introspective method. And then, if this sub- jective method alone be used, the science becomes purely descrip- tive. Now, the fact is, that science demands explanations, causes and sufficient reasons more than descriptions. How then, you ask, can the introspective method be best sup- plemented in order that Psychology may become more useful to the teacher? The subjective method represents but a half truth and must be supplemented by an appeal to what we shall desig- nate in a general way as the objective method, in order that the whole sphere of psychological truth may be ours. Rather we should say objective methods, for we mean to signify by this term all those ways of studying mental phenomena, aside from the scrutinizing self-examination which occurs when we "take stock" of the ideas and thoughts of our own individual minds. One form which this objective method takes is the study of the minds of others who are of "like passions as we are," that is, be- long to the same order of society. In this we reason by analogy. We note the looks, gestures, bodily posture of others, and we conclude these are manifestations of feelings similar to those we ourselves often experience. I give the boy a new, gaily-colored kite ; his countenance brightens up, he becomes so demonstrative that he can hardly contain himself, and I say he is grateful because I acted in the same manner under the same circumstances when I was a boy. After a few hours I see him again. His face has a, THE METHODS OF PSYCHOLOGY. 27 woe-begone expression, quite different from the joyous counte- nance with which he left me. Tears following the lines of least resistance, have made valleys on his begrimed face, and as he comes sobbing to me I pity him, and say he is suffering acutely just as you or I suffered when years ago our kites landed in tree- tops or became entangled in the telegraph wires. If at a public gathering you see a person sitting back in his chair, his legs ex- tended at full length, his arms hanging limply at his side and his head resting against a convenient pillar, you conclude that he is not so deeply interested as the listener who sits bolt upright in his seat, or leans slightly forward and has his eyes riveted upon the speaker. By means of such outer signs as these we are en- abled to determine the mental states of others. We proceed on the principle that mind, in a general way, is the same in all persons. If a certain object produces in one the sensation of red, and another object produces the sensation of heat, and another the sensation of taste, and still another arouses the feeling of in- tense pity, I argue that they would produce similar sensations in another person. We feel warranted in taking the manifesta- tions of others at their "face" value, and we interpret them in the light of the facts of our own experience. As teachers you must do this continually. Of course, the minds that are the most im- portant for you to study are the minds of children under your immediate direction, and you must and can study them only in light of your own experiences. To succeed as a teacher you must know what is passing through their minds, and this you can gain only by observation of countless external signs. You must notice their amusements and games, the kind of books they enjoy reading, the manner in which they take punishment, the studies they delight in and those they detest ; whether their sen- sations are keen or obtuse, whether their memories are good or bad; in fact, you must notice everything that will help you to know the nature of their minds. In another chapter I shall out- line for you certain tests that every teacher may employ in any schoolroom tests that will enable the teacher to discern the 28 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. exact stage of development his pupils may have attained along any special line; for example, his powers of observation, memory and attention. And as you interpret the experience of those living minds with which you are in daily contact, you must also interpret the character of men who have lived years agone. You must gather all the facts you can about Napoleon, from every available source, and thus get the truest possible picture of his mind and its activities, before you are in the leakt degree able to interpret the historical events in which he played so im- portant a part. When I desire to clearly understand the rites and orgies of the savage tribes I must, with the aid of the imagi- nation, orientate myself into their experiences as nearly as pos- sible in order to understand the significance of these experiences. Cannibalism is quite inconceivable until, by investigation and in- quiry, we gain the point of view of the savage himself, and then we discover that it is in obedience to a religious impulse rather than a physical appetite, that he commits his revolting crime. From the standpoint of an American mother, it is impossible to conceive how the Hindoo woman can throw her infant into the Ganges. To understand this seemingly cruel action, we must know the mental operations of the mind of the Hindoo mother. Could you but know the mental make-up of Benedict Arnold you would have more charity for him, and would paint his traitorous deed in kindlier colors. We must as nearly as possible place our- selves in the same position as others, both as to surrounding conditions and temperament, in order to understand the actions that have caused them to be remembered in history. When you tell your school children how the great and immortal Lincoln behaved toward soldiers sentenced to be shot, they say he was a man with a big sympathetic heart, just as if they had seen him and known him all their lives. The school boy enthuses over William Tell, and admires his sturdy qualities just as if he were a real, historical character, instead of a fictitious personage. In exploring an Aztec treasure house we gain an idea of the mental life of this prehistoric people as true a picture, so far as it goes as if they lived and moved and had their being at the present THE METHODS OF PSYCHOLOGY. 29 time. Thus you see that whatever you learn concerning the mind of others, you learn by means of the objective method in one of its phases. Another invaluable form which the objective method takes, gives us what is known as " animal" or "comparative" Psy- chology. The study of animals is of the utmost importance to the psychologist. The study of the mental life of animals is as important to human Psychology as the study of comparative anatomy is to human physiology. The mental states of animals are simpler than those of man, and are therefore easier to treat than the more complex processes of our adult mental life. Many forms of memory, for example, are in certain animals much better developed than in man. We also have some few emotional ex- periences in common, such as fear arid the like. You are in a car- riage driving a lazy horse and take the whip from the socket; he hears you do so and starts on at a lively gait. Is the mental process in this case unlike that which goes on in the min'd of a boy who is doing some overt act sub rosa, oblivious of having been discovered by the teacher, until he hears her reach for the ferule, when, quick as a flash, he straightens up, his face assuming a serious and studious air as he becomes deeply engrossed in his studies for the time being? I remember, when yet a boy, of strolling one morning along the banks of White River at Indianapolis. Soon I noticed that a blind horse had wandered into the river, and, getting beyond his depth, was in danger of drowning, for he could not tell in which direction the shore lay. Men planning to save him were seeking for boats and a rope with which to go to his rescue. At this juncture a saddle horse which had been left standing in front of a store near the bank, having heard the piteous sounds of the blind horse, galloped to the water's edge, and then swam to the bewildered and struggling animal, taking hold of the nmne with his teeth, led the sinking horse to the opposite bank where it was easier to land than at the one whence he had come. This seems to me a mental process very akin to reasoning in man. The mental states of animals are more naive and not so inter- 30 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. related and complex as our own, and can therefore be traced to their origin and sources much better and more readily than is possible with our own activities. But even more important than animal Psychology is the study of infants. The significance of the important facts gained by the study of mind in its earliest stages has already been insisted upon. By means of infant Psychology, mental facts are reached as far as they ever can be, in their simplest, most primitive and original form. You must know what the mind is before you can know what it becomes. You must know its actualities before you can know its possibilities. The growing child is continually giving us object lessons in the development of mind. And do you not know that every great educational reform has been the direct result of close personal relations with .children and youth, and more thoroughgoing insight into their needs, experiences and modes of thought and feeling? The greatest teachers of the world have actually lived with their child pupils, and studied them continually. Froebel recommended that when a child was born, each parent should open a life-book in which should be re- corded the stages of its physical and mental growth, good and bad influences and qualities; all striking incidents, experiences and peculiarities; and their own endeavors and motives in rear ing the child. This book should be kept without the child's knowl- edge, to be given him at maturity as a guide to aid hirn in his choice of a profession or calling. A sound knowledge of the early manifestations of mind is a necessary prerequisite for the scientific explanation and interpre- tation of later mental development. In the matter of child study the psychologist is dependent upon the special educators of the young, both teachers and parents, and from them he does receive much valuable aid. There is much that can be done by parents in the way of recording the course of development of indi- vidual children. The work already done in this line by Dr. Preyer and M. Perez with reference to the first three years of childhood, is stimulating and suggestive. Every school-teacher, to be worthy of his place, should be eager to compile statistics, especially with THE METHODS OF PSYCHOLOGY. 31 reference to the times at which certain faculties manifest them- selves. In so doing he would magnify his office in the best sense, for he would place every psychologist under obligation to him, because of the valuable fund of facts supplied. Whatever you may think of this, certain it is that there never has been a period when careful, painstaking study of the nature of children was so much needed as now, and nowhere so much as in our own coun- try. Small beginnings, however, have already been made, and scientific child study is making most hopeful progress. The most important development of the objective method of psychological investigation finds its expression in what is usually called "laboratory" or "experimental" Psychology. I shall not stop at this juncture to argue with reference to the necessity of well-selected apparatus to the psychologist. I will state, however, that there are some of the most weighty ques- tions of Psychology which were thrown overboard by the intro- spective school as unanswerable, that have been answered by experimental Psychology alone. And this is a most remarkable fact when you recall that twenty years ago there was no such thing as a psychological laboratory. Until very recently, the psy- chologist was compelled to gain his material and especially the leading facts concerning sensation, from among the crumbs that fell from the tables of neurology and physiology. The first labora- tory was founded at Leipzig in 1878, by William Wundt. From this little workshop went forth an influence that has been gaining in strength and volume each succeeding year. The leading German universities all have psychological laboratories more or less pretentious, the best being at Leipzig, Freiburg, Gottingen and Bonn, while Heidelberg, Berlin and Munich have made excellent beginnings. There are also good laboratories at Prague, Rome, Geneva, Copenhagen, Paris and Groningen. In this country the first beginnings were made in 1885 by G. Stanley Hall and Dr. Cattell, at Johns Hopkins University. The University of Penn- sylvania soon followed suit. We now have at this writing six- teen laboratories in this country with an equipment of apparatus valued at |40,000, which is devoted entirely to psychological 32 PRACTICAL LESSONS TN PSYCHOLOGY. investigations. Harvard has the one largest and best equipped, with Clark University a close second. Yale has just begun its work in this line and Columbia is among the very best in this as she is in other'fields of investigation. Cornell has a largeendow- ment for this especial purpose and a magnificent equipment of apparatus. The University of Indiana, has excellent facilities and offers good courses in this line. Likewise Wisconsin and Chicago Universities. The movement has gained a good foothold in the State University of Iowa and also that of Nebraska. Brown University has a model laboratory, and Stanford Univer- sity is making some excellent beginnings in this direction. The Catholic University at Washington has shown an admir- able spirit of progression in providing so liberally for such a laboratory. The University of Illinois, located at Champaign, has also a special laboratory for psychological investigations, which is devoted particularly to the study of those departments of child study that will furnish results of the greatest value to the common school-teacher. These things are mentioned merely to show that the exact methods of the laboratory as applied to Psychology have gained a strong foothold in the institutions of our great American commonwealth. We hope it may prove a mustard seed of inextinguishable vitality. But what are some of the problems that this department of Psychology has to solve? These problems can, I think, be best indicated by an allusion to the different groups of apparatus employed : I. Apparatus used to represent the brain, nerves and organs of sense (such as the eye, ear, tactile corpuscles and taste bulbs), illustrating the intimate connection between mind and body, as well as the physical basis of the psychical activities. II. Apparatus used to investigate the Psychology of the senses. This is the largest group, but the apparatus is comparatively in- expensive. Color mixers of various types, prisms, apparatus for after images and color blindness (used in testing accuracy of color perception), as well as a dark room, are needed for experi- menting upon the visual sense. Also a full equipment for experi- THE METHODS OF PSYCHOLOGY. 33 ments upon the senses of hearing, temperature, touch, taste, smell, rotation, effort, etc., is essential. III. An expensive but absolutely indispensable collection of in- struments used in the time measurement of mental processes, from the very simplest psychical acts to the more complicated forms of comparison and association. These useful instruments serve a function to the psychologist similar to that supplied to the anatomist by the micrometer eye-piece. He measures the thousandth part of a millimeter the psychologist with his chronoscope measures the ten thousandth part of a second . IV. A complicated group of apparatus for the investigation of the higher mental processes, such as attention, memory, percep- tion of time, position and distance. V. There must also be a set of devices for the purpose of in- vestigating the nature and content of the child's mind at the various stages of its development. This gives an indication of the immense service experimental Psychology can render to pedagogy. Experimental Psychology has justified itself in offer- ing a sure and exact method of investigation into the child's mind with a, view to ascertaining the best path of development rather than longer traveling along the hard-beaten roads of traditional educational customs. If the teacher will but make use of the facts and conclusions of the never-failing "new" Psy- chology, he will be enabled to give the world, for each pupil sent to his school, a rounded out, well developed citizen one in whom "the length, breadth and height thereof are equal." I have but meagerly indicated the methods and functions of the various objective forms which Psychology must take in order to successfully deal with the facts of mental life.* It will be seen that the old introspective method when used alone is unsatisfactory, because it leads Psychology to become more and more speculative, impractical and visionary. As sim- ple observation cannot suffice for the science of physics, it can- not possibly suffice for the science of Psychology. Observations *For an excellent and most valuable detailed statement, see A LABORATORY COURSE IN PSYCHOLOGY, by Prof. E. C. Sanford. L. P. 3 34 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. in Psychology, as in other sciences, must be confirmed and modi' fied by experiment. Psychology must be treated as a natural science. The old speculative Psychology has been abandoned by those whose methods of thought are scientific, and empirical Psychology has taken its place. And this is the correct thing, for Psychology is really a science of fact and its questions are ques- tions of fact, and the psychologist must treat theories and hypo- theses as rigorously and with the same impartial criticism as is demanded in other departments of research. The old Psychology in its speculative form was incomplete and failed because it ig- nored the body. The new Psychology cannot afford to ignore the subject of mental states. But Psychology which is purely introspective in its nature must ever be sterile; and no wonder is it that, in some quarters, Psychology has borne the reputation of being the driest and least interesting of all the sciences. Fur- thermore, it is certainly true that exclusive attention to the contents of our own individual minds can never give us a general knowledge of mind. In order to relieve our methods of these, defects we must at every stage of inquiry compare our own thoughts, ideas and feelings with those of other minds, even if it should result in the removal of some of those "ancient land- marks which our fathers have set." The true Psychology wilf ignore neither the facts gained by introspection nor those sup- plied by the objective method, but gathers from every possible source the established facts of mind. When you study physical science you observe physical phenomena and work up by careful methods of procedure to physical laws; so in your study of the science of mind you must begin with the simplest mental facts and work up to the general laws of mind . Psychology, therefore, is under obligation to study every sort of mental activity by the inductive process, and then submit these discovered facts of the conscious life to rigorous and systematic treatment. As the out- come of this painstaking research we will be able to see clearly that the mind is a real unit being, non-material in its nature, un folding and developing according to certain laws of its own. LESSON IV. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN BODY AND MIND. FROM the very earliest times it has been recognized that an intimate interrelation obtains between mind and body. Alcohol in some of its forms, tobacco, coffee, opium, and many other drugs have been used for ages for their supposed mental effects. These vague notions have been borne out by numberless scien- tific investigations of the past few years. These scientific obser- vations are rendering more precise and extending the application of what has always been known in the commonest experiences of man. It is an indisputable fact that mind and body are closely related, and that each modifies the activities of the other. It is a dictum of psychological science that mental facts can never be properly studied apart from the bodily conditions and physical environment amid which they take place. On the other hand, all mental states are followed by bodily activity of some sort. Thus, you see, the relation between mind and body is a recipro- cal one mind affects body and body influences mind. I do not wish you to take this statement " on faith " at all; on the other hand, I very much prefer that you draw your own inferences after a survey of the following facts. You well know that if the amount of the blood supply is in any way interfered with, modifications of the mental processes are certain to take place. Notice, for example, the sudden rush- ing of blood to the head. In such a condition total unconscious- ness frequently results. And then strong coffee will keep some people awake because its stimulating qualities cause the blood to circulate more freely over the brain, and increased mental activity results, which is too intense to be inhibited in order that sleep may ensue. Of the greatest importance, then, is the quality of the blood supply. The quality of the blood may be impure (35) 36 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. from some error in the processes of digestion, assimilation or excretion. To take the common instance of dyspepsia or even ordinary indigestion, we find that such disorders are invariably followed by melancholia or at least by a bad temper. The pres- ence of bile in the blood even in healthy, strong individuals gives rise to gloomy forebodings and a feeling of "blueness." The presence of uric acid in the blood of a gouty patient causes an irritability of temper which at times is so severe as to make him for the time being a maniac. Knowing, as we do, the effect of certain drugs, such as chloroform producing anesthesia, nitrous oxide gas producing laughter and alcohol causing hilar- ity and excitement, we are forced to admit that the mental pro- cesses are affected by changes in the quality of the blood from which the brain receives its nutrition. And then, consider the delirium of fevers. The poisons present in the blood in febrile diseases gives rise to confusion of the mental states. The deli- rium which is present in typhoid fever is different from the de- lirium which is manifested in rheumatic fever. The insanity which results from influenza, or "la grippe," is very different from other post-febrile insanities. The child, and, for that mat- ter, you yourself can think better if the head is rested upon the hand or the forehead rubbed with the fingers. The posture of the body plays an exceedingly important function in its relation to the mental processes. You cannot imagine an angry man with his arms hanging loosely at his side, with his fingers spread apart, and his muscles relaxed. No, indeed; the angry man stiffens every muscle, clenches his fist and sets his teeth firmly. A person can never conduct an argument when languidly sitting in a chair ; he must lean forward or stand up and throw his arms about, or indulge in other gestures equally emphatic. And in this same connection, I am reminded to speak of the effect of tobacco upon the mental processes. Of course these dis- turbances are much more pronounced in the case of the young growing person than in that of the confirmed smoker. It is not within my province to speak of the physiological disturbances due to the two poisons, nicotine and pyridine, which tobacco CONNECTION BETWEEN BODY AND MIND. 37 always contains. I shall not speak of the especial diseases of smokers, nor of the particular disorders which afflict the laborers in tobacco manufactories. I only desire, in passing, to refer to the mental disorders which result from the use of tobacco, es- pecially on the part of the young, such as hallucinations of vision, anxiety, loss of memory and general mental depression. You will find an interesting commentary on this point by refer- ring to the investigations made a couple of years ago upon the students of Yale College, where it was found to be true beyond a possibility of contradiction that " tobacco inhibits the physical growth, and causes a loss of mental power in those addicted to its use." The vigorous action that college students themselves have taken in this matter is more potent for good results than anything that any " old fogy " outsider could say or do. I refer to the well-known fact that no body of college students will give a place on any of the athletic teams, be it the foot-ball eleven, the base ball nine, the boat crew, or in track athletics, to a man who uses tobacco in any form. And as any observer of college sports will tell you, this is not because it injures muscle alone. Men whose only recommendation is their muscle are not the ones who gain a place on the athletic teams, for it is very evi- dent that the "heady" player is the one most in demand, and college games are won by "gray matter" rather than beefy tissue; by means of brain rather than brawn. Attention ought also be called to the connection of the bodily condition with the phenomena of memory. Ribot and others have shown that in a general way reproduction of impressions seems to depend upon the circulation of the blood, especially in the brain. Related to this is the familiar fact that bodily injury will disturb the memory, as the case reported by Dr. Winslow so well illustrates : "A clergyman of rare talent and energy, of sound education, was thrown from his carriage and received a violent concussion of the brain. For several days he remained utterly un- conscious, and when restored his intellect was observed to be in a state similar to that of a naturally intelligent child. Although in middle life, he re-commenced his English and classical studies 38 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. under tutors, and was progressing satisfactorily, when, after several months successful study, his memory gradually returned, and his mind resumed all its wonted vigor and its former wealth and polish of culture." Actual experiments with reference to the influence of drugs, stimulants and narcotics upon the psychical processes have been undertaken, and with some interesting facts well established as a result. During the fall of 1891, 1 was located at Freiburg, Ger- many, where Professor Miinsterberg's excellent laboratory was then in operation. While there I took part in some interesting experiments in this very line. The description of these experi- ments with their results has recently been published in Germany ; but I shall give you in brief outline an account of the methods employed and the facts gained as conclusions. As stated above, these experiments were for the purpose of determining the influ- ence of certain materials upon the psychical processes. Three groups of substances were used. In the first group tea, coffee and alcohol in various forms (beer, Rhine wine, Bordeaux red wine and brandy) are included ; while the second embraces opium and sodium bromide; and the third quinine, anti-pyrine and phenacetine. Medium doses only were given so that no possible danger could ensue. The various psychical processes upon which the effects of these different substances were tried, were four in num- ber (1) the memory of certain figures, letters and sounds (similar to the test I outline in my chapter on memory) ; (2) the simple addition of numbers; (3) the naming of colors; (4) the count- ing of letters on a printed page. The effect of the different nerv- ines was tested at regular intervals for two hours after partak- ing of them. I will first take up the simplest of the experiments, viz., the counting of letters on a printed page. The problem was merely to count the greatest number possible in a given time two minutes. I shall designate the four persons taking part in the experiment as A, B, C, and D. The experiments were tried at three different intervals (one-quarter of an hour, one hour, and two hours) after partaking of the alcohol, drugs, etc. The results are shown more clearly in the following tables; the sign+, CONNECTION BETWEEN BODY AND MIND. 39 before a number means that so many letters more, and the sign , that so many letters less could be counted under the different influences, in two minutes, than in the normal condition i. e., without having partaken of the various nervines. Table showing number of printed letters, more or less, that could be counted in two minutes, after partaking of liquors in- dicated : Person. Agent. % hour after partaking. 1 hour after partaking. 2 hours after partaking. A Normal record 406 letters. B Normal record 390 letters. C Normal record 472 letters. D Normal record 454 letters. (Beer 74 67 40 8 60 + 5 8 4-2 45 21 70 4 22 56 24 2 23 47 12 +20 2 +36 +20 +26 30 11 23 4-20 +12 + 2 +36 20 +14 +52 +51 +53 +36 +26 + 3 11 27 +24 +48 +26 +14 +15 I Brandy 1 Rhine wine .. . iBordeaux (Beer 1 Brandy . . . 1 Rhine wine .. . iBordeaux {Beer Brandy Rhine wine .. . Bordeaux {Beer Brandy Rhine wine .. . Bordeaux .... The effect of tea in this experiment (counting printed letters) is quite remarkable. These are, of course, to be compared with the normal records given in the preceding table : Persons. % hour after. 1 hour after. 2 hours after. A + 4 -27 r- 32 B 16 -71 -100 O -22 - 43 D +12 -20 - 15 40 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. Coffee has a similar effect in assisting this simple mental pro- cess, but the accelerating influence is not nearly so pronounced as in the case of tea. The effect ^of drugs is clearly shown in the following table. As in the other tables, + or signs indicate the number of letters more or less than the normal record that the person could count in two minutes after having partaken of the drugs : Person. Drugs. % hour after partaking. 1 hour after partaking. 2 hours after partaking. A Normal record 406 letters. ( Antipyrine. . . < Quinine ( Phenacetine . 20 36 +40 17 27 +62 32 +21 +60 B Normal record 390 letters. ( Antipyrine. . . j Quinine ( Phenacetine . 16 12 5 29 +15 +20 24 +35 +27 O Normal record 472 letters. {Antipyrine. . . Quinine Phenacetine . 38 40 + 6 45 30 + 6 35 2 +14 D Normal record 454 letters. ! Antipyrine. . . Quinine Phenacetine . 80 25 + 7 72 + 3 -56 + 8 +12 You can readily see that the most harmful of the three is anti- pyrine, and that phenacetine is by long odds the most beneficial. The depression of the psychical processes after taking antipyrine was so constant that one is tempted to give warning against the use of such a remedy (?) whose disturbing effects are so far- reaching and thoroughgoing. Similar effects follow upon par- taking of even small doses of opium and sodium bromide. I shall refer to only one other set of experiments that go to show the influence of these nervines upon the mental processes. This is in simple addition where there was a single column of ten figures (1 and being left out) to be added, and the time occu- pied was measured in hundredths of a second. The folio wing table will, I am sure, explain itself: CONNECTION BETWEEN BODY AND MIND. 41 Person. Agent. Number of T&T seconds longer or shorter % hour after. Number of ita seconds longer or shorter 1 hour after. A Normal record {Beer Cognac White wine 0.30 1.49 10 0.53 1.87 14 6.02 sec. Red wine f Beer 0.12 40 92 0.68 -|-1 10 B 1 Cognac +0 42 +2 34 Normal record | White wine +0 62 4-0 87 7 . 56 sec. vRed wine fBeer +0.73 21 4-0.48 66 O Normal record 5.26 sec. 1 Cognac 1 White wine iRed wine {Beer 0.09 0.15 0.19 '4-0 91 -f 25 0.83 0.29 +0 42 D Cognac --0 15 --1 02 Normal record White wine .... --0 53 4-0 42 6 . 72 sec. Red wine 0.81 --0.65 You will readily see that almost without exception A and C could add the single column of ten figures more quickly, while B and D had to take a longer time for the same work, after partak- ing of these alcoholic beverages. Both tea and coffee were found to be great aids to mental quickness in performing this simple arithmetical process. I have given you so many of these tabu- lated results because I am anxious that you see for yourself that the mental processes are always modified by the use of the com- mon nervines either helped or hindered, either accelerated or retarded. If these exceedingly simple mental activities are so perceptibly affected by these various agents, what great changes can be wrought by therein the more complex mental activities of comparison, association, reflection and reasoning. But you will perhaps say "I readily concede that the bodily condition may affect the mind, but you have as yet given no evi- dence that the mind in any way influences and modifies the bod- ily conditions." Well, then, let us observe the following. I told 42 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. you in one place that indigestion and dyspepsia will cause irrita- bility of temper and melancholia. It is just as true that melan- cholia will cause loss of appetite and indigestion. The person who is deeply grieving cannot eat, try he ever so hard. Notice also the outburst of tears or the "lump in the throat" caused by intense grief or sorrow. Mental excitement or anxiety affect the heart beats and the circulation of the blood. A violent emo- tion inhibits the circulation and so causes fainting. Great dread may prevent the secretion of saliva, a circumstance which lay at the basis of the old-time " ordeal of God" in which the accused person would be held guilty if he could hold rice in his mouth without wetting it. Fear will make one's hair stand on end. I know of no better statement of the bodily changes induced by fear than that of Darwin, which I quote at considerable length, because it so well illustrates the general points under discussion. "In fear, the eyes and mouth are widely opened and the eyebrows raised. The frightened man at first stands like a statue, motion- less and breathless, or crouches down as if instinctively to escape observation. The heart beats quickly and violently so that it palpitates or knocks against the ribs; but it is very doubtful if it then acts m ore efficiently than usual, so as to send a greater supply of blood to all parts of the body, for the skin instantly becomes pale as during incipient faintness. That the skin is much affected under the sense of great fear is shown in the marvelous manner in which perspiration exudes from it. This exudation is all the more remarkable as the surface is then cold, and hence the term *a cold sweat.' The hairs on the skin also stand erect and the superficial muscles shiver. In connection with the disturbed ac- tion of the heart the breathing is hurried. The salivary glands act imperfectly, the mouth becomes dry and is often opened and shut. I have also noticed that under slight fear there is a strong tendency to yawn. One of the best marked symptoms is the trembling of all the muscles of the body, and this is often first seen in the lips. From this cause and from the dryness of the mouth, the voice becomes husky and indistinct and may alto- gether fail. As fear increases into an agony of terror, we behold, CONNECTION BETWEEN BODY AND MIND. 43 as under all violent emotions, diversified results. The heart beats wildly, or fails to act and faintness ensues; there is a death-like pallor, the breathing is labored, the wings of the nos- trils are widely dilated, there is a gasping and convulsive motion of the lips, a tremor on the hollow cheek, a gulping and catching of the throat, the uncovered and protruding eyeballs are fixed on the object of terror, or they may roll restlessly from side to side. The pupils are said to be enormously dilated. All the mus- cles of the body may become rigid or may be thrown into con- vulsive movements. The hands are alternately clenched and opened, often with a twitching movement. The arms may be protruded as if to avert some dreadful danger, or may be thrown wildly over the head. In other cases there is a sudden and un- controllable tendency to headlong flight ; and so strong is this that the boldest soldiers may be seized with a sudden panic." " Trembling with fear," an "aching heart," " shuddering with terror," are not mere figurative expressions by any means. Men- tal fatigue will induce bodily fatigue. A few weeks ago I made some experiments that demonstrate this very clearly. The ex- periments were performed upon fifty grammar school children who were about to take an examination in general history. Before they took the examination I had each one endeavor to lift with the dynamometer all he could with his right hand (all the pupils were right-handed). I then put down the records for each pupil. After their examination (which lasted 2-J- hours) with its severe mental strain, I had them do the same thing again, that is lift their best. They were all, with two exceptions, unable to lift as much as they had before entering upon the intense mental activity of the examination. Then, too prolonged mental exercise draws off the blood from the rest of the body in too large quantities, in order to supply the demands of the wearied brain. Thus a nervous, excited, brain-weary person always suffers from cold feet and fingers. After these persons fall asleep, when the demands for blood on the part of the brain are not so great, the mind being less active, the extremities again become warm. Mental activity always 44 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. causes a rise of temperature in the brain. Over eighty localities on the brain have been examined with regard to the effect of in- tellectual work on its temperature, and every space thus exam- ined has shown that an actual rise of temperature followed each mental exertion. In right-handed persons the rise of temperature is greater on the left side of the brain, and in left-handed persons the rise of temperature is greater on the right side of the brain. This is because of the fact that right-handed persons are all left- brained and all left-handed persons are right-brained due to the fact that the fibers cross at the base of the brain, as I shall make clear to you in the lesson on "The Brain and its Functions." Not long ago I myself undertook some interesting experiments with reference to the effect of mental activity upon the tempera- ture of the brain. The experiments were made upon living dogs. I inserted thermometric needles into the substance of their brains. After a few hours of rest and sleep I tested the animals by means of exciting the various senses. For example, I held a piece of meat to the dog's nose, and, as soon as he smelled of it, the ther- mometric needle indicated a rise of temperature amounting to a little less than one degree. When I called to it playfully, there were similar results in the way of rise in temperature. This shows that the activity induced by stimulating the different senses ac- tually heated the brain mass itself. Mosso's observations on three persons whose brains had been laid bare by injury to the skull gives us the best direct evidence of the fact that mental activity, either intellectual or emotional, causes a sudden rush of blood to the brain, increasing the heat thereof. I should like to have you notice the tracing herewith appended, that was made with Mosso's Sphygmograph. By means of this little instrument the pulse beats are recorded in the form of tracings on smoked paper. The tracing, A (see opposite page), was made by the pulse dur- ing intellectual activity, while B was made by the pulse during mental repose. Each sort of mental activity produces its own particular pulse tracing. You get a different tracing when the mind is occupied in adding numbers from what you get when CONNECTION BETWEEN BODY AND MIND. 45 the mind is engaged in interpreting the difficult passages of a scientific work. This intimate causal relation between body and mind shows itself again with reference to the special question as to the con- nection between mental effort and one's diet. While you cannot measure the activities of thought in terms of beef and bread, you are more than warranted in maintaining that a strong rich mind cannot be the tenant of a poorly-fed body. I know that there are some isolated chapters in history which abound in sen- timental gush concerning this or that eminent writer and thinker who lived in an attic, subsisting on little besides cold potatoes. If such statements are ever authenticated, they will certainly prove very rare exceptions ; and even if it be true that these men B could do a considerable amount of mental work on a diet of cold potatoes and white beans, we are still led to inquire as to whether or no these particular men could not have done a great deal more work and lived longer had they varied their rations occasionally, or even semi-occasionally, with porter-house steak. It is a dictum of mental as well as physical hygiene that it is far better to stint one's self along any other line rather than deprive ourselves of food of needed quality and quantity. I say stint, for it is not economy. Poor food means poor blood and not enough of it, and this in turn means a brain starving for oxygen. Such a brain is always a weary brain, slow to respond and erratic in its activities; and this fatigued, poisoned brain can never sustain mental processes of high character or strict integrity. Therefore, I say, that in treating of the reciprocal 46 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. influence that obtains between body and mind, the question of diet is one of special importance to those having the care of children, and should be discussed at great length by educators in order that it may receive in every quarter the attention it so richly deserves. A locomotive, capable of drawing a train of 1,000 tons one mile in three minutes cannot make the same time with a heavier load. It is manifestly impossible. So in the case of the child, a given task requires a certain amount of brain em ergy, and without sufficient physical nourishment to sustain the brain, the task must be more or less incomplete. Almost univer- sally wrong impressions prevail as to the proper nourishment of children. As a rule they are underfed. Too little variety is given them, while the food lacks the nourishing qualities which the child's system demands. It would seem to most mothers an absurd rule to lay down for their guidance that children should be given whatever their appetite demands. Yet, if the natural cravings of a child's appetite have always been satisfied, the most judicious mother need not fear yielding to its request. Let us go slightly outside of our province and look a little more carefully into the physiological side of the question in the way Herbert Spencer so excellently presents it, and I think we may answer some of the objections which my statement may have aroused. What does a child ask for most frequently ? Sweets, you say, candy or sugar ; fruits, possibly unripe preferred, meats, etc. Any physi- ology will tell you that sugar is a necessary element to the vita] processes, and that many other compounds are converted within the body into that very sugar which the system demands as a heat making power. Almost as universally, children dislike fatty food, which is another heat maker; so an extra amount of saccha- rine matter is called for in order to produce the required heat. The craving for fruit is a normal one, and the acids of fruit form a natural and healthful tonic when taken in moderation. It is the fact that these kinds of food are denied them, and that this crav- ing is so long repressed, that leads to the immoderate indul- gence of the appetite when the usual restraints are removed. Then the question of giving children the full allowance of meat is a dis- CONNECTION BETWEEN BODY AND MIND. 47 puted one. In many cases economy suggests that " very much meat is not good for little boys and girls," and this statement has largely come to be regarded as a gastronomical fact. Relia- ble statistics have already proven conclusively that the child brought up on a bread and potato diet lacks that physical strength and activity, even though the weight and size be equal, which the meat-fed child possesses. This does not apply to the very young child, but to those beyond the age of three who manifest considerable vigor. Even more than adults in propor- tion to their size they need strengthening food, so that not only the daily waste may be supplied, but the extra nourishment demanded for growth may also be furnished in abundance, if full and healthy development is to be attained. Another usually faulty point in children's diet is its monotony too little variety, essential to secure the needed elements, is given. The child's weariness of a cereal food for breakfast, or a bread-and-milk supper, suggests that a different variety of food is demanded in order to meet the needs of the system, and the distaste for the customary articles of food is not a meaningless " freak of appetite." The required amount of brain energy can of course be supplied by a greater quantity of less nourishing food, but economy of the forces of the stomach would require that the food supply be a less quantity of the most nourish- ing substances, rather than a greater quantity of those contain- ing less nutriment. As good digestion is an aid to cheerfulness, so cheerfulness always induces good digestion. How important is it, then, that the child under your care be kept in a happy frame of mind. " Laugh and grow fat" is not a meaningless jumble of words, and this common go-to-mill expression may seem crude, but it really indicates something that should be a tenet of psycholog- ical doctrine, incorporated as a part of the "creed" of every individual. Besides, the habits of mind surely mould the bodily form just as single thoughts cause the facial expression to change temporarily. The animal expression, the beefy neck, the bleared eyes, and other characteristics of the dissipated, are not 48 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. alone physical effects of the indulgence in alcohol or the gratifi- cation of the lower appetites. No, indeed ; the habits of thinking continually upon these fleshly indulgences and vices plays a very prominent part in thus permanently modifying the contour of the head and face. I need not go further into this question of the reciprocal action of mind and body. I simply submit to you such facts as those above given. They are only a few of the large number that might be adduced, and I am sure that each one of you could sup- plement these that I have given with many, even more interesting, from your large fund of observation and experience. LESSON V. THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. AN inanimate thing never responds to external impressions. If you handle a piece of iron, a slab of marble or a lump of coal there is no movement by way of answer to your touch. These and all other inanimate objects are utterly incapable of respond- ing in any active or visible manner, either to natural changes in the environment or to modifications brought about by the hand of man. However, in the world of animate things, even among the very lowest forms, we observe a marked difference. We know that all life is growth and all growth is movement of some sort. A thing which does not grow you say no longer lives; it is dead. You know that to live a thing must grow and all species of growth are merely forms of movement. So the tree differs from the piece of iron, the slab of marble or lump of coal, in that it responds to its environment. When the warmth and moisture of spring follow the wintry snows, the tree puts forth its leaves, covers itself with the bloom of flowers, yields us fruit, and so on. The pond-lily, the "four o'clock," or M. Jalapa, will open and shut at regular hours of the day. The " sensitive plant " will curl and withdraw its leaves at the slightest touch. It is, however, admitted by all that many of the lowest forms of life cannot be assigned to either the vegetable or animal king- doms with any degree of assurance. Take, for instance, the Vol- vox Globator; the botanist regards it as a plant, while the zoologist assigns it to the animal kingdom. Somewhat similar are the Gregarini, which are found in the intestinal tracts of ani- mals. But there is no difficulty in finding a line of demarkation between the higher animals and other forms of existence. If, in hurrying through the crowded and busy streets of a great city, a man jostles against a barber pole, or lamp post, or collides with L. P.-4 (49) 50 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. a tree or the wooden Indian sign in front of a cigar store, we find that none of these objects are in the least disturbed by the occur- rence. They stand as firmly, securely and stolidly as ever. There is no 'response of any sort on their part. On the other hand, the man responds with a sudden start, and, unlike the wooden Indian sign, his face completely changes its expression, while his devotions, which are accompanied by various exclama- tory outbursts, are feelingly directed toward the contused parts of his body. He feels. The barber pole, lamp post, tree and Indian sign do not feel. Or, to express the same thing in equiva- lent terms the man has a nervous system ; the other things have no nervous system. You already realize the fact that the body and mind are closely connected, and that Psychology must always take this connection into account. This and many other facts make at least a general knowledge of the nervous system absolutely essential to the student of Psychology. The nerve elements are capable of being divided into two classes (1) nerve fibers and (2) nerve cells. In addition to these two a third might be men- tioned an intermediate basis tissue called the neuroglia, which exists more abundantly in the larger nerve centers, such as the brain and spinal cord. It has been quite generally regarded as mere connective tissue, and some authors give to it the name "nerve cement." It is highly probable that in all animals the new nerve fibers and new nerve cells are evolved from this inter- mediate substance. What is generally called a "nerve" (as when the dentist speaks of "treating a nerve") appears to the naked eye as a cord of a whitish color. If we closely examine this nerve we soon discover that it is a bundle made up of many smaller strands. Each of these strands is called a nerve fiber, which is in turn composed of elementary fibrils. The nerve fibers vary in thickness from y^o^ to TrnroTo * an mcn - The smaller ones are found at the termination of the nerves in muscles, glands and membranes, as well as near the endings in the skin on the outer surface of the body. Here they are extremely fine and interlace with one another, forming an intricate network. Some- THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. *51 times the fibrils fuse more or less completely, so that the fiber appears either structureless or merely shows signs of fibrillation. The fibers are of two classes, the medullated and non-medullated. The medullated are so named because they consist of a central nerve axis surrounded and enwrapped by a sheath of very thin membrane and a semi-liquid granular substance, called the "me- dullary sheath." The medullated nerve fibers are found only in vertebrate animals, and are especially abundant in the brain and spinal cord. The central portion of the medullated nerve fiber the portion enveloped by the medullary sheath is its most im- portant constituent ; it is almost translucent, and is called the " axis cylinder." The chief characteristic of the non-medullated fibers is that in them there is no sheath or outer membrane pres- ent. In nearly all the visual nerves, as well as the fibers of the olfactory and some others, the sheath is absent. As stated above, both the medullated and the non-medullated nerve fibers tend to group themselves into cords or fascicles of different sizes, tfce individual fibers of which run parallel to one another and are invested by a sheath. These again, in their course toward the center, collect into larger and larger fascicles, the different con- stituents of which are all bound together into one white nerve. These nerves frequently contain within the same fascicles both in- going and outgoing fibers, and are then denominated " mixed " nerves. Others contain only those fibers which carry the cur- rents in and are called sensory or afferent nerves. And a third class is that group of nerves which contains fibers whose function is to convey impulses toward the periphery. They are called the motor or efferent nerves. The nerve cells are very different from each other both in size and shape, as well as in their special functions. In size they range from -^Vfr to ^-^ of an inch in diameter, and in shape they are as varied as the feathery snowflakes of a winter's storm. Thus the brain abounds in cells which are pyra- midal in shape, while the multipolar ganglion cells are char- acteristic of the anterior or motor region of the spinal cord. Nerve cells are more or less granulated bodies, each of which 52 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. contains a large nucleus, and within this is usually a distinct "nucleolus." The substance of the nerve cells gives off two or more pro- cesses which are either much branched (called ramifying pro- cesses) or simple. It is by means of these processes of various sorts that the nerve cells are united to the central extremities of the nerve and to each other. Very frequently, under the micro- scope, fibrillations can be seen passing from one nerve process in a curved line through the body of the cell and into another pro- cess; while in others the same process can be traced through the cell in various directions. Thus it is arranged so that many FIGURE 1. A multipolar nerve-cell, with branching (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) nerve processes, a, nucleus, containing nucleolus. nerve currents can pass through one of these compound nerve fibers just as, by use of the Edison key, one telegraphic message can be received and another can be sent over the same wire and at the same time. The exact manner in which nerve fibers and nerve cells are con- nected is not known as yet. The views of Retzius on that point are certainly the best.* At any rate it is very evident that cells and fibers have no functional existence apart from each other. Whenever and wherever we have nerve fibers we have nerve cells, and vice versa. Viewed in their entirety with reference to their functions and inter dependence, indirect as it may seem to be, it is *Zur Kentniss d. Nerven systems d. Crustaceen, Gustav Retzius, Leipzig, 1890. THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 53 evident that nerve fibers and nerve cells together constitute a system the nervous system. The nervous system of man and the higher animals consists, then, of the folio wing necessary parts : (1) Conducting Nerves, comprising (a) afferent sensory nerves carrying the currents in, (b) efferent motor nerves carrying the currents out, (c) mixed nerves; (2) Central organs, such as the spinal cord and brain; (3) the end organs (a) of sense, as the skin, the eye, the ear and taste bulbs, (b) of motion, such as the attachments which connect the nerves and muscles. The spinal cord and brain are the great cen- ters of the cerebro-spinal system. These great masses of nervous matter are situated in the bony cavity of the skull and spinal column. Both the brain and spinal cord are invested with three coverings or membranes. The outer one is called the dura mater, and is tough, white and fibrous. It adheres very closely to the bones, especially in the skull. The second is called the arachnoid membrane, and is smooth, firm, and is kept very moist by means of an al- kaline fluid. The inner membrane is vascular, and is called the pia. Its network of fine arte- ries and veins are thus in contact with the nerv- showing section of ous tissue itself. The function of these three the spinal cord, membranes is to protect, hold together and nour- a - Anterior fissure. .,..,..,,, . , , , , . , &. Posterior fissure. ish with blood the spinal cord and the brain. c central canal. The spinal cord is a long tube of nervous mat- ter, and extends throughout the entire length of the spinal canal. It is, therefore, from fifteen to eighteen inches long in the adult person. It is nearly cylindrical in shape, its front and back sur- faces being somewhat flattened. The spinal cord is almost com- pletely divided throughout its entire length into right-and-left halves, by two median fissures. The one in front (anterior) is the broader, the one behind (posterior) is narrower but deeper. The two halves of the cord are held together by two bands called commissures, which are situated at the base of each fissure; the FIG. 2 54 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. one in front is the " white commissure," the posterior one is the "gray commissure." The fibers of this posterior gray commis- sure inclose a minute canal which extends the entire length of the cord (central canal). Each half of the spinal cord is subdivided by its nerve roots into three columns. These are (1) the anterior column which lies between the antero-median fissure and anterior roots; (2) the posterior column, which is between the posterior nerve roots and ANTERIOR ROOT 5PINAL GANGLION MOTOR TR/in SENSORY TRACTS FIGURE 3. Section of spinal cord, showing an- terior (motor) and posterior (sensory) roots (after Edinger). FIGURE 4. Transverse sec- tions (schematic) of the spinal cord at different elevations. the poster o-median fissure; (3) the lateral column lying between the anterior and posterior nerve roots. This subdivision of each half of the cord into three columns, as well as the general ar- rangement, is plainly shown in transverse sections at almost any elevation. The cord comprises both white and gray matter, the white being on the outside. The relative amount of white and gray matter varies at different localities of the cord. The gray matter, which is surrounded by the white, takes in each half of the THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 55 cord, the shape of a crescent. The horns of this crescent termi- nate at the nerve roots just where the fibers emerge from the cord. The anterior horn is rounded; the posterior is long and narrow. When looked at in a transverse section it is seen that the gray columns and their commissures form a figure something like the letter H. This can be plainly seen with the naked eye. The cord contains both nerve fibers and nerve cells. The ex- ternal, or white part of the cord, consists chiefly of fibers, to- POSTEKIR PART FIGURE 5. Cross-section of spinal cord (after Edinger). a, b, c, d, sensory fibers entering the posterior horns; v, TV, x, y, z, motor nerves passing out from the anterior horns. The globular (sensory) cells and pyramidal (motor) cells are also shown. gether with connective tissue and blood vessels derived from the pia. The gray portion of the cord contains, besides fibers, con- nective tissue and blood vessels, an infinite number of nerve cells. Almost all the nerve cells are multipolar, and they abound chiefly in the anterior and posterior horns of each crescent. The cells of the anterior horn are large, very distinct and stellate, forming a very well-defined group; those of the posterior horn are smaller in size. The number of nerve elements in the spinal cord has been care- fully counted in the case of some of the lower animals. For ex- 56 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. ample, Birge counted the fibers in the cord of a large number of frogs and found that in the anterior roots they varied from 6, 000 to 12,000, according to the size and age of the animal. Of the longitudinal fibers it can be said that some ascend from below upward, conducting sensory impressions to the brain, while others descend from the brain and higher regions of the cord to the lower, and conduct motor impulse to the muscles. There are also countless horizontal and oblique fibers. Thus the nervous ele- ments of the spinal cord are arranged so as to be both a con- ductor and a center of nervous impressions and impulses. It not only conducts the impressions for example, a touch sensation from the finger upwards to the brain and the motor impulses from the brain downward to the muscles but it is also a great nerve center. It can do a large amount of work by itself, as well as obey the commands of the brain. Many human activities are controlled by the spinal cord alone, without the least assistance from the brain. The decapitated frog is capable of making a considerable series of intelligent movements. The Praying Man- tis will continue to fight its antagonist a long time after its head is severed. Though the human spinal cord is divided into col- umns and ramified by so many tracts running in every conceiv- able direction, it must always be remembered that the cord is anatomically as well as functionally continuous. You see, then, that the spinal cord is a wonderfully ingenious mechanism, made up of nervous elements so combined as to serve two great purposes. Not only do we find it a pathway to and from the brain for those impressions originating at various points on the periphery as well as the impulses which take their rise in the brain, but it is itself a well-organized nervous center yes, more; it is a well-organized group of numberless nervous centers, each one of which maybe capable of, and especially fitted for, performing a certain piece of work. All these centers in the cord are by means of the various nerve fibers bound together up and down, crosswise and obliquely, making them capable of united action either in originating new impulses and processes, or in obeying the behests of the brain. LESSON VI. THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. WE now come to a brief description of the brain which includes all that mass of nervous matter which is contained within the bony cavity of the skull. It comprises four general divisions which are so apparent as to be readily distinguishable, even by the casual observer. These parts are named (1) medulla oblongata, (2)pons, (3) cerebellum or little brain, and (4) cerebrum. The medulla is directly above the spinal cord and continuous with it. It is somewhat pyramidal in shape and is about one and one-fourth inches long. Like the cord, it consists of both white and gray matter. The cerebellum lies above and imme- diately behind the medulla. The pons, or bridge, lies above and in front of the medulla, with which it is also continuous. With reference to the medulla it is also important to add that it is a bilateral organ with its two halves joined together by tough commissural fibers which cross from one side to the other in an oblique direction. The fibers of the spinal cord undergo an important rearrangement in their passage upward into the medulla. Thus you see that each half of the brain is connected with the sensory organs at the periphery of the opposite half of the body, and also with its muscles. The former relation is brought about by the sensory channels decussating at the base of the brain and along the spinal cord ; and the latter is due to the fact that the outgoing nerve channels or motor stimuli pass from each half of the brain to the opposite side of the body, decussat- ing with one another in the medulla. This rearrangement con- sists in the fibers passing through the left half of the cord and coming from the left side of the body, crossing and passing up- ward to the right side of the brain, and vice versa. Thus it is (57) 58 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. FIGURE 6. Side view of the human brain. (Ecker.) F, frontal; P, parietal; O, occipital, and T, temoporo-sphenoidal lobes ; S, fissure of Sylvius ; A, anterior, and B, posterior, central convolutions; R, fissure of Rolando; M, medulla; Cb, cerebellum ; C, cerebrum ; Pn, pons. THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 59 that all persons who are right-handed are "left-brained" i. e., the larger amount of brain work is done by the left hemi- sphere in right-handed individuals. The same relation holds true with reference to the left-handed base-ball pitcher, whether his curved balls be "in-shoots," "high -ins," or "out-drops," they are controlled by the right cerebral hemisphere. You can then readily see what a serious thing it is to correct left-handedness in a child. The left-handed child is not only left-handed but is right-brained as well. He is also left-eyed. I mean by this that his left rather than his right eye controls the movement of his hand, and after a child has been accustomed to use his left hand for the first three years of his childhood, it is by no means a small matter to induce him to give preference to his right when the change in- volves almost a complete transformation within the brain itself. Certain it is that the mental growth is, for the time being, in a measure retarded, and it is a question whether mental development should ever be sacrificed to convenience. It might be add- ed that nearly all blind people read with the left hand, and with many other individuals it is used when fine discriminations are to be made, bearing out the idea of Shakespeare, when he says : FIGURE 7. C, cerebrum; m , , . ,. , , , , , ,, M, medulla; m, crossing The daintier hand hath the finer sense. of fiberg . s> splnal cord In the cerebellum we find that the general arrangement of the white and gray nervous matter is just the opposite of what is found in the medulla; for the white is the interior portion, while the gray is on the outside. Looked at even superficially, it is found that the cerebellum consists of two hemispheres united by a median lobe called the vermiform process. The two hemi- spheres are joined to each other by means of countless transverse 60 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. fibers, and the entire cerebellum is connected with the medulla. The surface of the cerebellum presents a peculiar arrangement due to subdivision of its gray substance into a multitude of thin plates or latnellae, by numerous fissures. These thin plates are penetrated more or less by fine lines of white matter. When a FIGURE 8 (Convolutions Fissures). View of the human brain from aftove, show- ing the two hemispheres as well as principal fissures and convolutions. vertical section is made through the organ it is found that the prolongations of white matter branching off into the interior of the several gray lamellae give to the section an arborescent ap- pearance, known by the fanciful name of arbor-vitse. The fibers that pass in a transverse direction go from one hemisphere of the cerebellum to the opposite side, thus constituting the connecting THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 61 arrangement by means of which the two hemispheres of the cere- bellum become anatomically and functionally one. The pons is commonly called the " bridge of the brain." It is cuboidal in form, and consists of both white and gray matter. The white nerve fibers pass through the substance of the pons, either transversely or longitudinally. The gray matter of the pons is scattered irregularly through its substance, appearing also on the posterior but not on the anterior surface. The nerve cells of the pons are, as a rule, multipolar and stellate. The cerebrum, or great brain, forms much the largest division of the nervous mass inclosed within the bony cavity of the skull. (See Fig. 6). It is an ovoid in shape, and is divided into two great halves, or hemispheres, by means of a great median longitu- dinal fissure. At the bottom of this fissure, when the hemispheres are spread apart, can be seen a broad white band of nervous matter (called the corpus callosum), by means of which the two halves of the cerebrum are held firmly together. The surface of the two hemispheres is traversed by many fissures of varying depth. It might be said that the external surface of the cerebral hemispheres appears like a tract of land traversed by many crooked brooks and rivers producing numberless furrows, which are named sulci or fissures, and the ridges between them are called convolutions. Between these various fissures are the folds of tissue known as convolutions, or gyri. No two brains are alike in the number and depth of the fissures, or in the num- ber and prominence of the convolutions; indeed, the two halves of the same brain are not exactly alike in this respect. By means of the various principal fissures it is an easy matter to map out the two hemispheres of the cerebrum into five lobes. These are called the Frontal, Parietal, Temporal, Occipital, and Island of Reil. All but the Island of Reil are shown in Fig. 6 and Fig. 8. It is concealed beneath the frontal, parietal, and tem- poral lobes. In all parts of the cerebral cortex, the gray matter is found on the outside, while the white matter is within. The thickness of the gray matter on the brain surface undergoes a gradual increase 62 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. among vertebrate animals. This gray layer is so thin in fishes that the surface of the cerebrum appears almost white to the naked eye. But the form and distribution of the nerve cells is not the same at different layers of the cortex even in the same locality. The thickness of this gray cortex varies from one-thirteenth to more than one-eighth of an inch, and in it five layers of cells are usually distinguishable. There are about eighteen million of nerve ,-C c FIGURE 9. Schematic drawing of coronal section across both hemispheres of the brain, cc, outer gray layer or condex; a, corpus callosum. cells to every cubic inch of gray brain matter. A large number of these cells are pyramidal in shape, so as to admit of close packing together. The human brain is relatively larger than that of any other animal, except the smaller birds, such as the canary. It is also absolutely larger and heavier than the brain of any known animal save the elephant (8 1-2 to 10 Ibs.), and the largest whales (6 Ibs.). Exner has compiled the following table, which shows the relation that obtains between the weight of the brain and the weight of the body. This table also shows that there is THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 63 a sort of general correspondence between the size and weight of the brain of any animal and the rank of this animal in the scale of intelligence. TABLE SHOWING RELATION OF THE WEIGHT OF THE BRAIN TO THE WEIGHT OF THE BODY IN VARIOUS ANIMALS. kand tortoise 1: 2,250 Cat 1:160 Shad 1: 1,837 Eagle 1-156 OTS. 1- 860 Rabbit ! 140 Kangaroo 1: 800 Pigeon 1:104 Tadpole 1 : 720 Rat.. t 1:82 Elephant 1: 500 Gibbon ] : 50 Sheep 1- 345 Sai ape .... 1- 25 Dos: ... 1 : 305 Canary.... . 1:14 You can readily find some discrepancies between the rank as- signed in this table and the animal's actual position in the scale of intelligence. It is obvious enough that the order indicated does not correspond with the intelligence of the respective ani- mals. For example, none of you would regard the elephant a lens intelligent animal than the sheep, notwithstanding the table to the contrary. The fact of the matter is that brain weight has been regarded by too many as an absolute index of the relative position of an animal in the scale of intelligence. The average weight of the adult male European brain is 49 to 50 ounces, that of the adult female 44 to 45 ounces, making the brain of a man weigh, as a rule, 10 per cent, more than that of a woman. The average brain weight of the African, Malay and Mongolian is from one to four and a half ounces less than that of the Caucasian. Dr. Bernard Davis advances four interesting conclusions that have a bearing on this point : 1st, that the average brain weight is considerably higher in the civilized European than in the savage races; 2d, that the range of variation is much greater in the former than in the latter; 3d, that there is an absence, almost complete, of specimens heavier than 54 ounces belonging to the exotic races; 4th, that though the male brains are heavier than 64 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. female there is not the same amount of difference in the average brain between the two sexes in the uncultivated as in the culti- vated people. At birth the brain of the infant weighs about ten ounces. It reaches the maximum size about the eighth year, but keeps on increasing in weight until the person is about 30 or 40. You re- member that Byron's brain is said to have weighed 79 oz., Crom- well's 78 oz.; that of Cuvier 64 oz., that of Agassiz 53.5 oz., and that of Webster 55 oz. But in this connection it must also be re- membered that high-brain weights are oftentimes found in the in- sane. In fact, insanity is sometimes caused by brain enlargement. In the insane asylum of West Riding, out of 375 male brains ex- amined, thirty were found which weighed 55 ounces or upward. Thurnam reports one of an epileptic which weighed 64 1-2 ounces. When yet a boy I remember seeing a brain which weighed 62 ounces. It was the brain of an insane man who had committed suicide near our home by hanging himself. Dr. Langdon Davis examined the brain of a 22-year-old idiot, which weighed 59 1-2 ounces. The heaviest brain of which we have authentic record be- longed to an insane person. The man from whom it was taken was a brick layer 38 years old, who died from pyaemia in the Uni- versity College Hospital in 1849. According to Obersteiner 963 grams is the smallest recorded weight of a male brain compatible with intelligence; likewise 788 is the smallest weight of the female brain that has been found to be compatible with intelligence. It should also be remarked in this connection that no uniform method of removing the brain from the skull has been adopted by the various investigators. Some will, in addition to the brain proper, remove a small portion of the cord, which, of course, adds to the total weight. Many brains cannot be con- veniently weighed until considerable blood or moisture is lost. Thus you see the methods of comparing brains with reference to their weights leave room for improvement so far as accuracy is concerned. Brain weight can never be set down as a criterion of intelligence. A much better basis for such a judgment is found in the amount of brain surface. Wealth of brain surface means, THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 65 15OO Grams O Years 10 Years 20 Years 25 1OOO Grams 5OO Grams \ \/ vv \ FIGURE 10. The above curve indicates the growth of the brain with reference to its absolute weight in both males and females for the first twenty-five years. The curve is based upon the published tables of Vierordt in the Archiv Jiir Anatomic und Physiologic, Band, 1890. The heavy (upper) line indicates the increase in weight of the male brain from year to year, and the light (lower) lines shows the same with reference to the brain of females. The weights are expressed in grams. L. P. 5 66 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. of course, a much- wrinkled, many fissured and very convoluted brain. Of two brains equal in size and weight, the one having the more fissures and deeper convolutions is the more "intelli- gent" brain. Thus the brain of the Hottentot "Venus," when examined by Gratiolet, exhibited very few convolutions, and these were not at all complicated. Compare with this the brain FIGURE 11. Diagram showing the relative amount of brain surface exposed to view and sunken between the gyri. The larger circle (A) represents the entire braiu surface ; the smaller circle (B) represents the portion sunken between the gyri and hidden from view ; the narrow zone or area between the two circum- ferences represents the portion exposed to view. of a journalist, as pictured by Bastian, and you will find that the latter has uniformly more convolutions which are very intricate in their nature. But when the latter is in turn com- pared with the brain of Gauss, the celebrated mathematician, THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 67 you find that the latter brain has not only as many convo- lutions, but they are very much deeper and much more tortu- ous, consequently involving more brain surface hence a brain indicative of greater intelligence. In the average brain much of the surface is sunken between the convolutions or gyri. In fact, but little over one-third of the actual surface of the cortex is ex- posed to view. The average extent of the entire surface of the cerebral hemispheres, including that which is sunken between the gyri, as well as that exposed to view, has been found to be 2,500 square centimeters, or about 388' square inches. The area of the sunken portion is almost exactly twice that of the portion ex- posed to view. It is therefore 677 square centimeters, or 258 square inches. (See Fig. 11.) One of the most notable peculiarities of the human cerebrum is that its two hemispheres are not equally or symmetrically devel- oped. It is not infrequently the fact in the case of right-handed persons (therefore " left-brained ") , that the left hemisphereisnot only more highly convoluted than the right, but it is frequently slightly longer than its fellow, causing the tip of the left occipital lobe to project distinctly behind that of the right side. In such a case the right hemisphere is rather flattened at the tip of the occipital lobe, while the left is sharply conical in its termination. In a large number of brains this is plainly observable, especially in the brains of women. I have a brain lying on my study table now (the brain of a woman) in which the left hemisphere extends more than an inch further back than does the right. Doctor Boyd, a prominent English anatomist, has also made the claim that the brain in the left hemisphere is heavier than the right by about half an ounce. This is denied by some, and would prove nothing if it were so. When, however, you compare the brains of various animals you are soon convinced that the development and expansion (and therefore convolution) of the cerebral hemispheres form a good criterion of the animal's mental life and intelligence. If we look at the matter from a broad and general point of view, we find that the greatest importance must be attached to the great 68 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. convolutional complexity in the brain of man. With respect to convolutional development man stands at the head of the quadrumanous type of animals, just as elephants stand at the head of the' herbivorous type, and just as the great whale holds a similar position with respect to the carnivorous type. Though the bony cavity of the human skull, or brain chamber, is so shaped that the largest possible area is obtained for the superfi- cial gray matter of the brain, yet the increased area thus gained does not prove at all sufficient for the needs of man's intellectual and moral life; it has still to be increased by the occurrence of further secondary foldings in the cerebral convolutions. Further- more, there is always increased convolutional complexity in the cerebral hemispheres in the higher as compared with the lower races of man. The high degree of convolutional development at- tained in the brain of man is a matter of the greatest significance. The fissures are then seemingly for the purpose of economiz- ing space because by means of their presence there can be a con- siderable increase in the amount of brain surf ace without increas- ing the size of the head itself. It may be interesting to know that the brain fissures or " channels" are actually produced by the arteries. The more work the animal has to do with his brain the more blood does his brain require. The network of arteries covering the cortex become stronger and sink deeper producing more and deeper fissures, extending, as it were, the brain system of irrigation. So you see, then, the fact that " the higher the order of any animal's intelligence, the richer is its brain in the number of convolutions" is intimately and directly related to the other fact that the higher the animal's position in the scale of intelligence the greater is the amount of arterial blood needed and used by the brain. The forms of brain found in the adult individuals of tJie lower animal species, e. g., marmoset (Fig. 12,) are very similar indeed to the form found in the human embryo in certain early stages of its development. To sum up the whole matter in the form of a general conclusion, we are led to say that wealth of bi-ain surface, as made possible by the development in size, num- THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 69 her and depth of the cerebral convolutions, is the most charac- teristic feature of the human brain. But far more important than the matter of brain weights, and even more significant than the amount of brain surface, is the question concerning the quantity and quality of the blood sup- ply already mentioned in another chapter of this book. The weight of the entire brain is ordinarily about one-fortyfifth of the body, but the quantity of blood used up in the brain is about one-eighth of that required by the whole body. You can readily see, then, the importance of pure blood and plenty of it. This 1. 4. FIGURE 12. 1, brain of a marmoset ;. 2, brain of a human fetus (5th month); 3, brain of a fox ; 4, brain of a gibbon. leads me to again allude to the main points that came up in a discussion of the influence of the mental states upon bodily con- dition, especially upon the quantity and quality of the blood sup- ply. First, anger and other exciting passions increase the force of the heart's action, sometimes to an alarming extent. There have been instances of the bursting of a blood vessel from a fit of passion, e. g., the recent death of a well-known millionaire. Sec- ond, sorrow and grief cause the blood to move too slowly, making the power to resist disease very much less than what it should be; third, good nature and cheerfulness keep the circula- tion regular, and in this way assist in securing good health to 70 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. the individual. You can also see why it is important that due heed be given to the effects of alcohol, drugs and tobacco upon the blood, since the brain uses such a large per cent, of the entire blood supply. One effect of alcohol is to make the blood too thin, unfitting it for nourishing the body and especially the brain. An- other is to shrink the little blood corpuscles so that they cannot carry the oxygen necessary to purify the blood and keep the body properly warm. It makes the blood impure, inducing fever and inflammation. It is a well-known fact that yellow fever and some other febrile diseases are nearly always fatal to those who drink much liquor. Kraft-Ebbing, the renowned pathological special- ist, asserts that a most intimate relation obtains between alco- holism and insanity that all forms of insanity from melancholia to imbecility are found in alcoholism. Impure blood is the best of soil for the seeds of disease. With reference to tobacco, a very eminent physician says: " Youths are far more affected by the use of tobacco than men are. They accustom themselves to it more slowly, and for a long period it lessens their appetite. Boys who smoke weaken their muscles, are much less disposed to bodily ac- tivity, and are seldom inclined to exercise. Smoking, then, inter- feres with appetite, impairs bodily activity, and in some way damages the circulation and the composition of the blood, which must, of course, affect the brain." All these facts pertaining to the weight of the brain mass, the extent of the cerebral surface, and the influence of the quantity and quality of the blood supply, manifest in a general way the real significance of the brain for the intellectual activities. The deeply convoluted and wrinkled rind of gray matter, which is the covering of the brain, has been shown to be the physical basis of man's highest and profoundest mental life. When we turn to experimental physiology for its deliverances we find that it points in no mistaken lines to the real importance of the different portions of the encephalic mass. If in a frog we sever the spinal cord from the brain by making a section below the medulla, we find that if the flank of the frog be touched a slight twitching of the muscles will result. If one of the hind THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 71 legs be stretched out and severely pinched it will respond by withdrawing itself from the irritating cause. When the irrita- tion is increased the foreleg will also be employed to secure relief, and sometimes the legs on the opposite side of the body, thus showing it to be a purposeful action. If you irritate this " brain- less" frog at different portions of the skin with acid, you find it will perform certain remarkable defensive movements in its en- deavors to wipe away the irritant. Touch the knee with the acid, it will be rubbed with the back of the foot; cut away this foot, the stump will be used ineffectually until after a pause, when the unmutilated foot will be applied to the irritated spot. When the skin over the breast is made the subject of irritation itis vigorously rubbed with both of the f orepaws. This series of precise movements, manifesting purpose and design, are carried on by the spinal cord of itself. These phenomena are not peculiar to the frog alone. Other brainless animals manifest similar move- ments. Decapitate a salamander and pinch one of its sides; it will bend that side into a concave shape. It is said that Robin, on tickling the breast of a criminal an hour after decapitation, saw the arm and hand move directly toward the irritated spot. On passing upward to the medulla, we find that it is given over to certain special functions, particularly those which have to do with the activities of the lowest animal life. These are much more complex and, as we found above, of a higher order than those belonging to the spinal cord. The medulla is directly re- lated in some way to the action of the heart and to the blood vessels. It is the "central organ" for breathing, coughing and sneezing ; for swallowing, hiccoughing and vomiting, as well as laughing, sighing, crying, sobbing and weeping. The breathing center in the medulla was first located by Flourens. It has since been called the "vital knot," because the least injury to it will prove fatal in that it causes cessation of breathing. That these various movements and activities are bound up in one another in their relation to the medulla is shown in ordinary strangulation, however slight. Thus, when a dry cracker crumb lodges in one's "Sunday throat," swallowing, coughing, shedding tears, and 72 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. changes in the breathing and circulation inevitably result. It is quite common to hear one say, " I laughed till I cried." It can, therefore, be said that when we have an animal in which the spinal cord and medulla are united and remain intact, though severed from the superior organs, we have a mechanism that will execute movements of which the spinal cord alone is incap- able. A frog, with its spinal cord and medulla will endeavor to turn over when laid on its back and when placed in the water it will swim. A young rat, in which the medulla and spinal cord are intact, but severed from the organs lying above, will squeal if its legs are pinched, and it is able to swallow ; it will also kick in its endeavor to free itself. We now pass to another question of exceedingly great interest, but one very difficult to answer, and one which is by no means settled, though master minds have struggled with the matter for over two centuries. The question is : What are the functions of the cerebellum? There is a uniform agreement supporting the conclusion that the cerebellum is the center that is most inti- mately associated with the balancing of the body. Thus the staggering of the man who has imbibed too freely of ''Tangle- foot" whisky is due to temporary inflammation produced by congestion of the blood on the surface of the cerebellum. In the disease known as phrenitis, in common vertigo, or "blind stag- gers," which frequently attacks the horse, veterinarians always open the skull at a point directly over the cerebellum until sev- eral quarts of blood are set free. We find, too, in the frog hav-. ing the cerebellum in addition to the spinal cord and medulla, that its locomotion is nearly normal on a level, but it cannot climb up an inclined surface; it will also croak when pinched on the side under the arms. In a recent article* I published the re- sults of an extended series of observations made upon the brain of a cat whose cerebellum was diseased. This cat had suddenly become paralyzed when three months old. For several days he was disinclined to eat, and all attempts * Atrophy of the Cerebellum in a Cat. Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, October, 1892. THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 73 at locomotion were accompanied by spasmodic jerkings. In the act of walking, the hinder parts seemed to get along considerably faster than the fore limbs, and faster than he desired , giving a ludicrous effect. After a time he recovered his appetite and again became cheerful and lively as usual. He continued to improve ; and with the exception of the permanent disability to the limbs, he seemed to be as well as ever, for his development was not re- tarded, since he grew to normal size. When brought to the laboratory the cat was eleven months old. While he could walk and trot his gait was zigzag and stag- gering, since his hind legs spread somewhat laterally in locomo- tion. Incoordination of the limbs was quite marked; the hind- legs were raised very high and placed so far forward as to overstep the forelegs in walking; the movements of the head and neck were spasmodic and jerky. An autopsy revealed the fact that all portions of the brain and spinal cord were in normal condition except the cerebellum. With the aid of a micrometer eye-piece accurate measurements were made of the outer gray cortical layer. Over one thousand of these measurements were made. It was found that the thickness of this outer gray layer was only about half that which was found in the cerebellum of the normal cat. Since no other part of the nervous system ex- cept the cerebellum was found to be at all affected by disease, and since the cat manifested marked disturbances in locomotion, it is very evident, at least with reference to this particular case, that the cerebellum contains within its cortex the centers that are most immediately concerned with coordination of the limbs, balancing of the body, and locomotion itself. All then that is really known about the functions of the cere- bellum might be summed up in a general way in the words of Bastian, who regards it as " a supreme motor center for re-en- forcing and regulating the quantitative and qualitative distribu- tion of outgoing currents in voluntary and automatic movements, respectively." LESSON VII. THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS (CONTINUED). WE now come to speak more particularly of the cerebral hemi- spheres in their relation to man's conscious psychical life. The importance of the cerebrum as the physical basis of mentaJ FIGURE 13. Showing localization of sensory and motor functions on the lateral surface of the monkey's brain. (Left hemisphere.) activity can scarcely be overrated. In fact, we must have somt activity of the cerebral hemispheres in order to make each state of consciousness a possible fact. Unless stimulations that occur at the periphery of the body, are conveyed in some form to the gray rind of the cerebrum giving rise to some sort of neural pro- cess within it, no consciousness or " awareness,'' of the stimu^ tion can possibly result. This same cerebral cortex must also take the initiative in all voluntary motions. It must be remem- bered, therefore, that the physical basis of the conscious mental activities in man is the gray convoluted cerebral cortex. (74) THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 75 Not all parts of the cerebral cortex respond to the same sort of excitations or give birth to the same kind of sensations. Neither are all localities in the convoluted cortex concerned in motor impulses of the same group or class. The cerebral cortex is therefore a very complex organ; or,rather,it is morelikeavery complicated keyboard, the response coming from those parts that are in direct relation to certain specific forms of stimulation. Or, as Prof. E. Bering puts it, "The different parts of the hemi- spheres are like a great tool box with a countless variety of tools. FIGURE 14. Motor and Sensory centers on the Lateral Surface of the Cerebrum. Each single element of the cerebrum is a particular tool. Con- sciousness may be likened to an artisan whose tools gradually become so numerous, so varied and so specialized that he has for every minutest detail of his work a tool which is specially adapted to perform just this precise kind of work very easily and accu- rately. If he loses one of his tools he still possesses a thousand other tools to do the same work, though under disadvantages both with reference to adaptability and the time involved. Should he happen to lose the use of these thousand also, he 76 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. might retain hundreds with which to do the work still, but under greatly increased difficulty. He must needs have lost a very large number of his tools if certain actions become absolutely impossible." ' We know, for example, that a current passing to theback part of the brain gives rise to sensations of vision. It makes but little difference whether this neural current comes through the eye or not, for you know that even a slight mechanical jar or concussion at the back of the head is sufficient to cause one to FIGURE 15. Motor and sensory centers on the mesial (inner) surface of the cerebrum. " see stars " and even comets and other luminaries. If the neural excitation occurs at some other portion of the cortical surf ace we have some other sensation as a result. Despite all conflicting opinions it is now a settled fact that a science of cerebral local- ization is possible. All of the achievements in this line of re search have been made within the last twenty years, and the most noteworthy ones even more recently. The most prominent investigators in this field of research are Munk, Ferrier, Exner, Horsley, Schafer, Goltz, Fritsch and Hitzig. TEE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 77 The first attempt in this direction was made by Gall, who founded the so-called " Science of Phrenology." He started with the presupposition that the skull, being the case containing the brain, ought show the brain formation itself. Such an assump- tion, while partially true, is in the main erroneous, since it over- looks the fact that the skulls of different individuals, or the same skull at different portions, vary greatly in thickness. He also lost sight of the fact that the skull bones can and do sometimes thicken both ways. A prominent "bump," like that of "Vanity," "Ambition," or " Memory for Words," may really be found on the cranium of a person entirely devoid of the qualities suggested. The errors of phrenology are now quite generally admitted, and so bald are these mistakes that in scientific circles it is entirely abandoned, because as a "system" or "science" it is fallacious in every respect. The remarks of the southern colored preacher, with reference to the " efficacy " of phrenology, is certainly to the point; if his thought is not clothed in the most elegant language, his deductions are none the less pertinent "Brudderw and sisters! Do I heah you'n's talk about phrenology? Don't you know dat you can't tell how many hams dey is in de smokehouse by feeling ob de roof?" Certain it is that, altogether defective in its psychological analysis, preeminently unsatisfactory in its localizations, unreliable in its methods, and inconclusive in its results, there is nothing in phrenology that merits the respectful attention of the real student. It is a perfectly well-established fact that the so-called "cen- tral" convolution (situated on either side of the fissure of Ro- lando, see Fig. 6) forms the region from which nearly all the motor impulses pass out from the cerebral cortex. All authori- ties agree that the motor regions do lie around this fissure of Rolando. So certain is this that it is called the " motor zone." More plain and clear than a detailed description are the accom- panying figures, which exhibit the arrangement of the specific centers, more especially those in the motor zone on the surface of the monkey's, as well as the human, cerebrum. (Figs. 13, 14 and 15.) 78 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. One of the most interesting and instructive truths bearing upon the question of localization of cerebral function is based upon evi- dence supplied by the disease known as aphasia. Aphasia is a gen- eral name given to the disease which involvesa partial or complete loss of the faculty of intelligent speech. It is not caused by any structural impairment of the vocal organs, but by some lesion in the cortex. The cortical area generally affected in this pathological state is the posterior third of the third frontal (or Broca's) con- volution. (See " Speech " center, Fig. 14.) Aphasia is neither the loss of the voice nor paralysis of the tongue or lips. The phe- nomena of this disease are exceedingly varied. In all true apha- sia the connection between ideas and articulate language is inter- rupted within the cortical areas of the cerebrum itself. Speech processes in the cerebral cortex are both sensory and motor. By means of the sensory, language is received; by means of the mo- tor processes, it is uttered. We have, then, both sensory and motor aphasia. In the aphasic state, though the mental condi- tion may be more or less impaired, it is never so to such an ex- tent as to prevent the formation of ideas. The difficulty lies in the fact that the patient cannot recollect the appropriate words or their meaning, and is thus unable to give his thoughts the proper expression. In other words, he has lost the power of coordinating and arranging the elements of a sentence in a proper manner for the purposes of spoken or written language. The patient is always cognizant of his errors in utterance. To illustrate : A case occurred recently in one of the New York City hospitals. The person afflicted was a man of more than ordi- nary intelligence. He desired a knife with which to eat his food. He had a clear idea of what he wanted ; he wanted a knife. But, mark you, each time he attempted to say " knife" the words "bushel of wheat "would come unbidden from his lips. You see that, notwithstanding his clear idea of the object desired, he could not bring about the appropriate processes of innervation by means of which he might utter the proper word. This is quite similar to another case, that of a young lady of twenty-two, who suddenly became unconscious while straining to THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 79 lift a heavy load. When consciousness returned she showed no signs of paralysis, but it was with difficulty that she found words with which to speak. She would confound or mutilate the com- monest names e. g., she would say "butter" instead of "doc- tor." Not understanding a single word spoken to her, she was at first taken to be deaf, but it was soon discovered tha,t she heard the knock at the door, the tick of the watch, or the hum of a bee as distinctly and clearly as ever before, and she could also distin- guish the pitch and quality of tones. Quite recently, while in Germany, my attention was called to a very interesting case of asphasia in one of the hospitals of Ber- lin. A German army officer had been thrown from his horse in one of the military maneuvers which took place in the celebra- tion of the anniversary of the battle of Sedan. In the fall he received, his head struck the hard concrete pavement; at first he was unconscious. Soon after his return to consciousness it was discovered that he could not articulate a single word. Every at- tempt at utterance resulted in dismal failure. Nothing came of his painful endeavors save a series of unintelligible and incongru- ous sounds. After five weeks an examination of the brain itself was determined upon, for after a careful diagnosis the trouble could be assigned to no other cause than to an injury to the speech center itself. The operation of trephining took place. When a small portion of bone was removed, a little hardened clot of blood was found between the dura mater and the skull bone itself directly over the speech center, as indicated in the figure on page 75. This blood clot was carefully removed by washing with a jet of warm distilled water. Three weeks after the operation was performed, the patient had fully regained his ability to speak and write correctly. A still more interesting case is that reported by Doctors Carson and Bremer, of St. Louis. The patient is a healthy and well-built man of about twenty-one years. Two weeks previous to the doctor's visit he went to a wedding, became intoxicated, and on his way home fell between the joists of a new building. This was his statement subsequent to his recovery after the operation. 80 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. He went home and was found asleep in the kitchen of his parent's house the following morning. Except what appeared to be the effects of the liquor he seemed to be in his usual health. In fact, nothing was nientioned by him with reference to his fall. Being out of work, he stayed at home and rarely left the house, com- plaining off and on of a dull headache on the left side of the fore- head, which became more violent in the afternoon. After about one week he began to stroll about his home. While walking on the street about one block from the house he suddenly became un- conscious and fell. This unconsciousness did not last long, how- ever, and he was assisted home by a person who was near at the time. Soon after, it was discovered by his family that he had some difficulty in speaking. He now for the first time intimated to his family that he met with an accident on the night of the wedding. There was no trace of any injury to his head. He understood every word that was spoken to him, every question that was asked. Unfortunately, although not entirely illiterate, the pa- tient was not possessed of sufficient education to render very profitable the examination with a view to discovering the par- ticular form of aphasia. Only the most elementary questions could be asked of him, the scope of his intellect being limited. In order to test his mental caliber and ascertain the nature of the trouble in his speech a number of questions were asked. The principal ones were : Do you know what this is (showing him a glass) ? Ans. Zer. Q. Is it a glass ? Ans. Yes. When a pitcher is shown him he calls it a "tipper;" a pen he calls " riglah ; " a spittoon " sempen," a hat " sem." Q. Do you call this (the hat) " sem ? " Ans. No. Q. Is it a hat? Ans. Yes. Q. What is this (showing him a match)? Ans. "Ses." THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 81 In order to demonstrate that he knows what it is, he makes the movement of striking a match. A book he calls "pok," handkerchief, "sempence;" suspender also "sempence;" for pocket-knife he gives the correct name; but when shown a bunch of keys, he also says "pocket knife." After this he calls every- thing that is shown him " pocket; " for example, a watch and a button. When requested to repeat a word spoken to him he is un- able to do so. He understands perfectly what he reads. He is handed a newspaper with an advertisement of an entertain- ment in the St. Louis Exposition Building. By putting a great variety of questions, some of them misleading, one becomes aware that he is familiar with the location of the building and the purposes for which it is built. He is asked to read an adver- tisement of a boxing match, the name of the prize fighter is pointed out to him and the inquiry is made, What is he? Is he a preacher? This causes him to laugh. In short, there is no flaw in his perceptive and reasoning powers as far as can be as- certained by a necessarily limited conversation, and as far as short acquaintance will allow. On being told to write, he holds the pen in an awkward manner and drops it repeatedly. He never has been much of a penman, but has been able to write simple letters. It is now utterly impossible for him to express his thoughts in writing, and even the most commonplace and everyday expressions, when dictated, he fails to fix by letters. An operation was agreed upon, a portion of the bone was tre- phined and when the dura mater was exposed it presented a dark cloudy appearance with all evidence of pulsation wanting. Upon raising the dura, a stream of dark, thick blood forced itself through the opening. With a dull-edged curette the greater part of the clot was removed and smaller portions subsequently taken away by means of saturation with a very fine sponge. The ex- tent of this blood clot is outlined in the accompanying figure. (See next page.) The patient soon Returned to consciousness, apparently none the worse for the operation. On the next day after the operation the patient was stupid and unable to speak, L.P.-6 82 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. his condition being that of complete motor-aphasia. On the second day after the operation, in all efforts to speak, he prefixed " shay " to words. He could, however, answer " yes " and " no " correctly, */ yes " having the " sh " sound very marked. A watch was pronounced " swat," keys "shkeys," half-dollar " shalf-dol- lar." On the third day, in answer to questions, he said that he "felt well" and that he "liked the hospital." He could speak words without the sibilant sound. On the fourth day all words were spoken correctly, and reply made to all questions with clear FIGURE 16. answers. Three months after the operation finds the patient hard at his daily tasks in a brickyard. He is now in his usual health, with all his faculties intact and a steady worker. Dr. Laplace, of Philadelphia, reports in one of the recent jour- nals* a singular aphasic case of surpassing interest. The person, in this instance, suffered from a gun-shot wound in the brain, causing a form of aphasia, in which the loss of names was the striking feature. The report reads something as follows : * Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, March, 1893. THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 83 August 4, 1892, Lizzie Albert, aged nineteen, received a gun- shot wound in the forehead at the apex of the glabella ; there was a fracture of the skull, and penetration of the bullet, accord- ing to the testimony of the physician who saw her immediately after the accident. She became unconscious and remained so during three weeks. Meanwhile several splinters of bone were removed from the seat of the penetration of the bullet. The wound gradually healed, leaving a slight depression. As she recovered consciousness, she complained of a severe pain, con- stant and almost unbearable, the seat of which was in the left occipital region, keeping her mind always fixed upon that point; she suffered no pain otherwise about the cranium. The patient is a strong young woman. As a result of the injury most interest- ing intellectual symptoms occurred, her physical condition, how- ever, remaining entirely unimpaired. When complaining of the pain at the back of her head, she says that she " sees it ; " when asked what? she answers "Yes." If asked "What hurts?" she says "It hurts." When asked if the bullet hurts, she says "Yes." It seems that the various organs of sense refer their impres- sion to the same centers. For instance, if asked if she hears a particular sound, such as a tuning fork, she will answer, " Yes ; I see it." If given anything to take and asked whether she likes it, she answers, " Yes, I see it." Likewise if anything is given her to smell, she says she also " sees " the sensation of smell. It seems to her an impossibility to repeat a word spoken to her, though she fully understands everything. ID her conversation she uses no names of persons or things, but knows every person and recog- nizes everything. For instance, if shown a hat and asked what that is, fehe will say, " It is yes ;" but asked the name of it she will say, "I do not know." If asked, "Is this a book?" she will say, "No." "Is it a hat? " she will say "Yes." Should we write on paper the word cap, in presenting her the hat, she will say, " That is not it." If changing the word slightly we make it "coat," showing her the hat, she will say, " That is not it." If, changing the word slightly and writing the word hat, and asked whether 84 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. that was it, she will say, "Yes." If asked her name, she will answer, "I do not know." If asked whether her name is Katie, she will say " No." If asked whether it is Lizzie, she will answer "Yes." Asking her to write her name, although she says she does not know her name, she will write it correctly Lizzie Albert. If asked whether that is her name, she will say, " Yes." If asked what her name is, " I do not know," " I cannot tell you." Should I write her name, misspelling it in any manner, she will say immediately, "That is wrong." If asked, "What is wrong?" she will point out the letter in the word which makes it mis- spelled, and until the name is properly spelled she will insist on its being wrong. Her judgment seems to be perfectly clear; that is, she says or does nothing which would in the least compromise the condition of her intelligence. There seems, however, to be a destruction of such fibers as lead to those portions of the frontal lobe as consti- tute the center of memory for names of persons and things. Another disorder very similar to aphasia is that known as agraphiathe loss of the power to write. Such persons can speak correctly, can read writing and understand it clearly, but it is impossible for them to use the pen at all, or, in partial cases of agraphia, many errors are made. I happen to be acquainted with a well-educated woman living in Cleveland who is partially agraphic. With two exceptions she can make every letter with facility; indeed, she writes a very legible hand. But the two letters k and r, which, by the way, occur in her own name, present insuperable difficulties. Try hard as she may she cannot possibly write these two letters. She knows exactly what letters she desires to make and how they ought to be made ; she knows just what movement of the fingers is required in each case, but she cannot bring about the proper movements themselves. There is no paralysis of the fingers or hand, she simply finds it impossible to bring to pass those central processes of innerva- tion that are necessary in the formation of these two letters. In writing her own name she makes instead of the k and r two characters which are more like some of the forms included in the THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 85 Chinese alphabet than they are like the letters she endeavors so hard to make. There are some cases recorded in which highly cultivated per- sons are unable to make a single letter with a pen. Others will arrange the letters improperly, making a meaningless jumble, in- stead of words clear in their meaning. The following interesting case is recorded by Dr. Jackson : "An elderly, healthy-looking woman suddenly became ill five weeks before admission to the hospital. She lost the entire power of speech for a week, and was also paralyzed on the right side. When examined there was no apparent hemiplegia, but she complained of weakness in the right side. She could then talk but made mistakes. For instance, when I was trying her sense of smell, which was very defective since the paralysis, she said in answer to a question, I can't say it so much,' meaning she could not smell so well. She frequently made mistakes in spelling and called her children by wrong names. This was never very evident when she came to the hospital, and might have easily been over- looked, but her friends complained much of it. She seemed very intelligent. Her power of expression by writing, however, was very bad, although her penmanship was pretty good, consider- ing that she wrote with her weakened right hand. She wrote the following at the hospital. I first asked her to write her name. I do not like, for obvious reasons, to give her real name for com- parison: it had not, however, the slightest resemblance to the following in sound or spelling : * Sunnil Siclaa Satreni.' When I asked her to write her address, she wrote 1 Sunese nut ts mer tinn-lain.' Thinking she might have been nervous when she wrote at the hospital, she was asked to bring something she had written at home. She did so, but the specimen was not the least bit better than what she had previously given. It is a perfectly meaning- 86 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. less assemblage of letters, notable only for the frequent repeti- tion of small groups of them in a fashion which is frequently the case in agraphic persons. The center immediately concerned in these agraphic disorders is quite definitely located, being, of course (in all right-handed persons), on the left side of the brain, and within the finger, thumb and wrist region indicated in the figure. (See Fig. 14.) In case this center when diseased does not get well the patient usually educates his right hemisphere, j. e., learns to write with his left hand." In the same way that the understanding for spoken and writ- ten words can be lost to the patient, so can the power of under- standing and comprehending figures. A case has been recorded of an accountant who was perfectly a,ble to read the number 766 a digit at a time, but had no comprehension of the value of a group of these figures. In all cases of aphasia the patient is somewhat in the position of the intelligent animal who hears well enough the language addressed to him, but cannot make re- ply or fully understand its deepest meaning. Or perhaps a better analogy would be the case of the Irishman who, when looking in the window of a tea shop at an advertisement with its array of Chinese characters, being asked if he could read these arbitrary signs, replied that he could not read such "spalpeen" characters, but that he could play them on his flute. The classical case of the patient Le Long, recorded by Broca, serves well to illustrate the condition in incomplete aphasia. " Le Long had command of only five words which he would add by way of supplement to the expressive gestures he usually em- ployed ; they were oui, non, tois (for trois), toujours, and Le Lo (for Le Long), three complete words accordingly, and two mu- tilated ones. With his oui he expressed affirmation, with 72012 negation; with tois he expressed numerical concepts of all de- grees, being able to indicate by a dextrous employment of his fingers the numbers he had in mind; with Le Lo he denoted him- self ; toujours he used when he was unable to express his thoughts by aid of the other words at his command. Le Long pronounced the r in toujours correctly, but omitted it in trois, as children do THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 87 that have not yet overcome the difficulty of uniting the r with the preceding tfs; he had lost beyond recall this knack of articu- lation. The nasal sound which he correctly articulated in Don he could not give to the last letters of his own name." The remarkable fact that in the function of speech the left hemisphere is more directly concerned than the right, is now well established. Seguin found from a collection of two hundred and sixty reports of cases of this type, that the number of instances in which aphasia arises from lesion on the left side, stands in proportion to the number of those in which impairment occurs on tne right side, as 14.3 : 1; with reference to which it must be re- marked that as has been shown by other calculations no de- ception is here caused by the possible circumstance that in gen- eral more injuries occur on the left side than on the right. As Exuer relates : " In this connection a case reported by Schwarzis of interest. In a well-developed three-year old girl, during con- valescence from measles, speechlessness with partial paralysis of the right arm suddenly set in. The lesion accordingly lay in the left hemisphere. The condition of the patient improved, yet the girl had to learn to talk again from the very beginning, and in so doing acted like the normal child that is learning to speak." The analogy is still further applicable. It appears that so- called left-handed individuals, who, as contrasted with the ma- jority of men, have trained their right and not their left hem- ispheres to perform mechanical work, also employ their right hemispheres in speech. Pye Smith, Jackson, and John Ogle, Mongie, Russel, and William Ogle have observed cases that ap- pear to substantiate this. Left-handed people had become aphasic through lesions on the right side of the brain, and a fact which proves more in a collection which William Ogle made of one hundred cases of aphasia, there were three left- handed men, and in the case of each of these, the lesion affected the right hemisphere." The center of hearing lies in the temporal lobes. We know this because artificial stimulation of these portions of the cerebral cortex causes hallucinations of hearing. The " roaring ' in the 88 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. ears which so frequently follows an overdose of quinine may also be instanced in this connection. In post mortem examinations the temporal lobes of deaf patients are generally found to be in an atrophied condition. Seppili reported a few months ago two interesting cases in this connection. The first was that of an autopsy on a deaf mute, a wound of long standing being ob- served in both temporal lobes. The second was the case of a left- handed person, whose left temporal lobe showed an old wound, no difficulty in hearing or speech having been experienced. From this and analogous cases Seppili concludes that in a left-handed person the auditive center of language is situated within the right hemisphere. His results form an interesting contribution with reference to the well-established principle that right-handed persons are left-brained (and vice versa), even with reference to such functions as speech and hearing, of which right and left handedness cannot be directly predicated. The visual center in the human brain is in the occipital lobes. The most interesting pathological case in support of this view is that of the blind deaf-mute, Laura Bridgeman, the structure of whose brain has been studied with such painstaking thorough- ness by Professor H. H. Donaldson.* From a paper read by Dr. Donaldson before the Congress in Experimental Psychology which met in London, August 1892, we make the folio wing excerpt : " Laura Bridgeman was born in 1829. She was a normal child and her development was undisturbed up to the end of her second year. At this age she suffered from an attack of scarlet fever which was very severe and from which the convalescence was tedious. It was then found that her senses of taste and smell had been much blunted, and that hearing had been entirely de- stroyed. Vision in the left eye had been completely lost, but was retained in the right to a very slight extent. In her eighth year this remnant of vision was also lost. It was at this time that Dr. Howe undertook to educate her through her dermal senses alone. The remarkable results of his undertaking have now become * American Journal of Psychology, Vol. Ill, No. 3; Vol. IV, Nos. 2 and 4. THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 89 classic, not only because it required first-rate qualities in the teacher, and also it was the first time that an attempt had been successfully made to give an adequate means of expression to one thus defective. Laura died at the Perkins' Institute for the Blind at Boston in 1889, being in the sixtieth year of her age, and still mentally vigorous. Among other things the anatomi- cal study of the brain revealed the following facts : "The thickness of the cortex was determined by the examina- tion of fourteen localities in each hemisphere. From these ob- servations an average thickness for the cortex was deduced, and this was compared with an average similarly obtained from a number of normal brains. The figure of the average thickness of the cortex of the Bridgeman brain was 2.62 mm., that for the normal brains 2.91 mm. The Bridgeman brain was therefore thinner by 0.3 mm., or about 11%. In this connection it is inter- esting to notice that those parts of the cortex which, according to the current view, were to be associated with the defective sense organs, were also particularly thin. The cause of this thinness was found to be due, at least in part, to the small size of the nerve cells there present. Not only were the large and medium sized nerve cells smaller, but the impression made on the ob- server was that they were also less numerous than in the normal cortex. " Suggestive also was the fact that the cortex in the right occipital region, associated as it must have been with the left eye (the eye in which vision was earliest abolished), was much the thinner. This observation suggested that the case might be used to determine the extent of the visual cortex in man. It was assumed that in this case the earlier loss of vision in the left eye had been the cause of the excess of thinning on the right side and that the extent of this thin area would repre- sent that portion of the cortex directly influenced by the optic radiation." The researches in histology show clearly that in higher ani- mals, more particularly in man, the optic nerve contains one system of fibers which cross over to the opposite side and one 90 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. system which remains uncrossed. The relation is peculiar, how- ever, in that the fibers from the left half of each retina go to the left hemisphere, while those of the right halves of the retinas go to the right hemisphere. The retina of each eye in the case of man appears therefore to be represented on the cortical surface of both hemispheres of the brain. With reference to a cortical center for the sense of smell it can be said that we have anatomical evidence of considerable value. The intimate connection of the olfactory tract with the tip of the temporal lobe certainly furnishes strong grounds for suppos- ing a functional connection between that region and the sense of smell. The experiments of Ferrier* have the most direct bear- ing on this point. So far as known, the frontal lobes do not contain either sen- sory or motor centers. It has been regarded by some as the seat of the higher psychical activities, such as reflection, comparison and judgment. The emotions and affections are also assigned to this region of the brain. When the frontal portion of the hemispheres is removed in animals, e. g., the monkey, no irregu- larities in the exercise of the motor or sensory functions occur ; yet in such cases the animal appears more whimsical and less af- fectionate than before the operation. In connection with what has been said in this chapter with ref- erence to the localization of the cerebral functions and of the importance of these cortical areas in the relation to the motor and sensory life of man, it seems strange that occasionally man may lose much of the cortical gray matter of his brain without exhibiting any serious impairment of his faculties. If perchance any of the motor centers on one hemisphere have experienced an injury, the result will be the impairment of the body, yet the loss of some few of the sensory centers on one hemisphere will not be perceptible so long as the corresponding centers on the other hemisphere remain sound, except in this, that the person with but half a brain in normal condition will tire more easily than the person in whom both hemispheres are completely intact. *See " Functions of the Brain," p. 185 ff. THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 91 There are some interesting though exceedingly rare cases in which man has lost a large quantity of the cortical matter with- out apparent disorganization of his psychic life. The following cases are instanced by Hermann in Vol. II of his Physiologie : "Berenger de Corpi tells of a young man into whose brain a body four finger breadths in width and as many in length had been driven so deep that it lay concealed by the matter of the brain. When it was removed a certain amount of cerebral sub- stance was lost, and thirteen days afterwards a second discharge occurred spontaneously. The man recovered, showed no diseased symptoms, lived for a long time afterwards, and attained high distinction in the church. "Longet knew a general who, through a wound in the skull near the crown of his head, had suffered a considerable loss of brain substance. This defect permanently manifested itself by a depression in the part of the skull affected. The general pre- served his activity of mind; his correct judgment in professional matters exhibited no traces of disease; only he was wont to tire quickly when engaged in intellectual work. " Quesnay tells of an old servant whose right parietal bone was crushed. Every day cerebral matter oozed from the wound and was removed. On the eighteenth day the patient fell out of bed, which resulted in further considerable losses of brain-substance. On the thirty-fifth day he got drunk; a fresh emission of cere- bral matter occurred which was caused by the patient's tearing away, in his intoxication, the bandages about the wound. On the day following it could be seen that the defect reached almost to the corpus callosum. The patient got well; his psychical functions were restored to their complete activity, but he re- mained paralyzed on his left side. "During the blasting of a rock, a crowbar three feet and seven inches long, and one and a quarter inch thick struck a young man, and penetrating the head in the neighborhood of the joint of the left jaw, passed through the skull and came out on the same side in the region of the forehead, having thus run through the hemisphere of the brain. The man got well, lived 92 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. twelve and a half years afterwards, and apart from the blind- ness caused by the injury to the eye, he showed no indications of abnormality, except certain fits of peevishness, caprice, and ob- stinacy. He'also lost the former habit of profanity. "A whole hemisphere may sometimes be removed, without injury to the higher psychical functions. But in such a case dis- turbances of the motor functions on the opposite side appear regularly to set in." It is, however, quite a common occurrence in the case of ani- mals to have large lesions of the cortical matter unattended by serious mental defects. While at Strassburg in 1891, 1 visited Goltz's laboratory. Among other interesting objects a dog was shown me which had^ undergone a lesion of the entire cerebrum. I was told that the operation had been performed two years pre- vious to my visit to the laboratory. The dog was normal in most respects. He manifested much joy at being let out of his cage; masticated and swallowed meat; followed Prof. Ewald and my- self from one room to the other; stood on his hind legs and danced about when meat was held above him and out of his reach. He would jump over a stick and also run and frolic. A second animal shown me in the same laboratory was an ape with a complete lesion of the entire left cerebral hemisphere. The remarkable feature in the case was that the ape reached for his food with the right hand instead of the left, as would naturally be expected. Still when eating he seemed to prefer to hold the food in his left hand. He retained his wonted sauciness and at- tempted to scratch the face of every person who approached his cage. Of course lower animals use their higher cerebral centers less than man, and it is quite natural that they should so well withstand the partial or even complete loss of the cortical area on the hemispheres. You will remember that at the beginning of this chapter we spoke of cerebral localization as if it were an absolute fact, and such it actually is, if we confine our attention to man and mon- keys only. When, however, we study cerebral localization in the vertebrate series, we find that it becomes less perfect as we pass THE BRAIN AND ITS FUNCTIONS. 93 down the animal scale. I have already referred you to instances of animals, which, having lost some of the brain substance, still apparently retain their mental faculties. In addition to the ex- amples already given ,we have still another furnished also by Goltz. The case is that of the brain of a dog with the right hemisphere removed. The animal lived about fourteen months after the last operation. The senses of sight, hearing, smell, and taste were more or less impaired. In the brain of a second dog it was in- tended to remove the frontal portion of both hemispheres. How- ever, in addition to the extended extirpation a secondary degen- eration of the left occipital region took place, leaving as a result scarcely more than one-fourth of the two hemispheres intact. The dog lived two and a half months after the last operation. It did not take food voluntarily, but when food was given it all the mechanical processes of chewing and swallowing were exe- cuted. The so-called "emotional sounds " barking, whining, growling, etc. were evoked in their normal relations, respectively. In ohe case of a third dog, which had undergone a complete re- moval of both hemispheres, we find the animal required to be fed, but would properly masticate and swallow if the food were placed well back in its mouth. It could move spontaneously, would stand upon its hind legs, and walk in a fairly normal manner. It preserved only a remnant of vision, and as far as could be learned, had no sensations of hearing, taste, or smell. A rabbit is less disturbed by the loss of its hemispheres than the dog, a peculiar characteristic being that it retains the sense of hearing. Birds, reptiles, and frogs are each in turn still less disturbed by the re- moval of the cerebral hemispheres. When the hemispheres of the shark are removed the animal can no longer feed; it can see, but this is of no value to it, since it depends entirely upon its sense of smell. An observation of Steiner is in this connection exceedingly interesting. "If the cerebrum of a shark be cut out unsymmet- rically, forced movements occur, the animal swims in a circle. If a shark be beheaded, its trunk swims in a straight line." When we compare the brain in the various vertebrates, we find that man's brain is distinguished by a special development of the 94 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. frontal lobes; in the monkey's brain, a special development of the occipital lobes is to be noticed ; while that of the fox is char- acterized by a striking development of the parietal lobes. There is still one other important modification in the arrange- ment of the different parts of the brain in the vertebrate series. This is the change from the horizontal arrangement, where (e. g., sheep) the cerebellum, pons and medulla lie in one plane with the elongated cerebrum, to the erect position which brings the me- dulla directly underneath the hemispheres, and places the cerebel- lum immediately under the occipital lobes. This modification will seem the more significant when it is remembered that the ele- vation of the head causes an animal to rely more on its eyes and less upon its nose. " The animal of scent becomes an animal of vision. The jaws recede, and the different parts of the brain are piled upon one another so as to shape the hemispheres into a dome-like cupola." LESSON VIII. SENSATION. IN a previous chapter it was stated that the nervous system falls- into three main divisions, (a) the fibers which carry the currents in; (b) the central organs especially the brain; (c) the fibers which carry the currents out. You have also seen that we have sensation, reflection (in the widest meaning of the term), and motion corresponding to these three anatomical and func- tional divisions. Sense-perception, as you know, is the power by which we gain knowledge of material things. Were it not for the impressions objects make upon our senses, we would never know objects. A pure or simple sensation is never ours to experience. Such a thing as a pure, single sensation is abstraction a fiction. Our experiences are always made up of groups of sensations. One cannot see the yellowness of the orange apart from its other qualities its roundness, smoothness, size, and weight. Every adult experience is made up of many sensations and not of sin- gle, simple, isolated sense-impressions. A sensation can scarcely be defined since it is itself so elemen- tary. We can, however, indicate its meaning by saying that a sensation is a simple mental state resulting from any stimula- tion being transmitted to the brain centers. This stimulation can occur in three different ways : First, by reason of some sort of mechanical jarring of the brain itself, as when a boy in his first attempt at skating strikes the back of his head on the ice and as a result " sees stars;" second, the brain centers are stimulated by means of changes in the quantity and quality of the blood supply for example, the sensation of faintness when the blood rushes to the head or the "roaring in the ears" after a heavy dose of quinine; third, and by far the most common, the brain centers are aroused or stimulated by means of the nerve current (95) 96 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. produced by the excitation of an end-organ at the outer extremity of some incarrying or afferent nerve, being transmitted to the brain for example, the sensation produced by touching a point on the skin with a hot iron, or that caused by the ringing of a bell, or the blast of a whistle. The mechanical jars that may happen to the brain mass itself are exceedingly infrequent and like the sensations produced by the changes in the quality and quantity of the blood supply, are very transitory. The nerve currents, however, do play a most important part in our psychic life. ^477 our knowledge of the out- side world comes to the mind via the end organs of sense, afferent nerves and brain centers. We could never know the least iota with reference to objects about us were it not for the fact that in some way these objects do act upon our senses. The person born blind can have no idea at all of color, the one born deaf can have no idea of sound. Imagine how limited your experience would be, if you were simply both color blind and incapable of discriminating pitch and tone among the various sounds. What a cold, gray, monotonous world it would be if we had no appre- ciation of colors or musical tones ! Yet such a limitation is as nothing when compared with absolute insensibility to light and sound. In the asylums and schools for the blind and deaf the pupils are taught as much about light and sound, respectively, as is the normal child in the average grammar or high school. But the best-taught blind pupil, with all his knowledge about the laws of reflection and refraction, the length and intensity of the "light waves' 5 is infinitely far behind the infant that can see. The baby that extends its chubby hand to grasp the red ball or the sickly yellow "jumping jack" is far in advance of the best educated blind person who may be ever so well informed with reference to the Young-Helmholtzian theory of colors. All education must begin with the education of the senses. Not any single sense, but all of them must be developed if you would have an evenly developed pupil as the result of your in- struction. All experience is interpreted and all instruction given on the basis of "sensation-knowledge." You must appeal to SENSATION. 97 something the child has already seen, swelled, beard, tasted, or handled, if you wish to convey to him the knowledge of any new object. To define a new color such as " His Eminence" or " Ele- phant's Breath," you must appeal to color sensations already experienced. In fact, the " new shades " of the fashion books are simply new names given to old-time colors. You cannot describe the zebra to a child without referring to some animal he has al- ready seen for example, the horse. We interpret all our experi- ences in light of our previous sensations. The fictitious Indian who is said to have lassoed the first locomotive he had ever seen as it steamed across the plains, and did so under the impression that it was a gigantic buffalo, evidently interpreted the present sensation by means of previously experienced sensations. The locomotive appeared more like a buffalo than anything else he had ever seen. The little three-year-old child, Gretchen, who, on seeing the deer in the park contentedly lying in the shade of the trees, noticing them more especially in the act of chewing their cud, and asked, "What in the world do deers chew gum for?" evidently interpreted what she saw in light of her own experiences with "tutti-frutti." This same child, until two years old, had been accustomed to sleep with a light burning in the bedcham- ber. Thoughtlessly, the light was extinguished one night, after she had gone to sleep, without anything having been said to her about it. In the night she awakened, and in a frightened way ex- citedly called out "Oh, Papa, I've lost my eyes! My eyes are gone! Oh, do help me find my eyes!" You see the sensation of darkness she experienced could be interpreted only in light of her previous sensations. Before, when she awakened in the night and made an effort to see she was abundantly rewarded with success. This time she made the same effort but could not see, therefore, she concluded that her eyes were gone, since the sense of effort as clearly experienced now as before, was connected with no result- ing sensation of vision. She could not be persuaded that her eyes were intact until the lamp was again lighted and the whole matter explained to her, notwithstanding the unseasonableness of the hour, at least so far as psychological explanations are L. P.-7 98 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. concerned. Another little girl who said she "hugged dolly tight so the cats wouldn't frighten her with their horrid noises " surely remembered something of her own sensations of fright. The boy who bats the' ball and tells by the " feel of the bat " whether it is a fair.hit or a foul, bases his judgment on muscular sensations previously experienced . There is no gainsaying the fact that all education naturally begins with the education of the senses. Of course the child, on entering school is one-sided in his development. For example, his eye may have been developed at the expense of his ear. The child reared in the tenement house could possibly have no such eye development as the child of the same age who has had the advantages of roaming over the hills, along the brooks and through the woods of the country. If, in our educational meth- ods, we would, as teachers, pay especial and almost exclusive attention to the proper development of the senses, we would find that the motor impulses and resulting movements would take care of themselves, developing right in line with the correspond- ing sense development. If the infant experiences no sensations it will never move. The child is right-eyed before it is right-handed. Sensory paralysis will always cause motor paralysis. Educate the senses and the coordinate movements educate themselves. One other point even if it be a diversion, it is an observation that should be given at least a passing thought we all admit that it is worse than a waste of time to read an effusive poem on "The Sunset" to a person always blind; and yet oftentimes in our teaching we do what is worse we use words that convey no definite meaning to the would-be learner because they are not founded on any sensory experience. Children in entirely new ex- periences frequently base their judgment on previous experiences even if they have been gained through some other avenue of sense. The child sees an article of food which it has never seen before. It knows nothing of the taste and judges whether it will like it en- tirely on the basis of whether it is pleasing to the eye or not its judgment being visual judgment rather than a taste judgment. To some children a given dish, such as fruit or berries, will not SENSATION. 09 taste sweet unless the sugar can be seen. The gaily colored striped candy of the corner grocery is more the object of the child's fancy than plainer, more healthful confections would be, for it appeals to his child-eye as well as palate. Whatever at- tractions the red lemonade of the traveling circus has for the average urchin must be based on visual rather than gustatory sensations. A little boy who had never heard the croak of a frog described the sound as " That little round noise." The brain processes with which sensations are always con nected, are produced, then, by nerve currents, coming from the periphery of the body. As already stated, some external object must excite some one of the various end organs of sense before the sensation can possibly arise in consciousness. You see, then, that four antecedents must precede each and every sensation : First. An exciting cause the stimulus producing changes in end organs of the sensory nerves. Second. The action of this cause upon the nerves by means of the end organs. The "ether waves" that never reach the optic nerve, produce no visual sensations. 'Third. Some sort of transmission to the brain centers by means of the nerve fibers. Fourth. Activity of some sort within the brain center itself. In order to have light from the incandescent electric lamp one must turn with his finger the switch or key, in order to allow the current to pass to the platinum wire within the vacuum globe of the lamp. If this could be accomplished in some other way the result would be the same a light of so and so much candle power. So the function of the nerves is really to bring about changes in the brain center. If these brain centers can be incited into activity by any other means (a mechanical jar or changes in the quantity and quality of the blood supply) you have the sensation existing just as truly as if the impulse had originated at some outer end organ and been conveyed by some nerve to the brain. It must be remembered that thenerves as nerves do not differ from other. The nerve whose activity gives rise to a sensation of 100 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. sound, is, as a nerve, not one whit different from the nerve that brings to us the sensation of smeil. The specific differences in the various sensations are not due to any difference in the several nerves conveying the impressions, but due rather to differences in the end organs of sense. That the optic nerve conveys visual, and the ear auditory impressions, is due to the fact that the eye is different from the ear rather than that the optic nerve is in any way different from the auditory nerve. On the other hand, " If," as Professor James says, "we could splice the outer extremity of our optic nerves to our ears, and that of our auditory nerves to our eyes, we should hear the lightning and see the thunder, see the symphony and hear the conductor's movements." Sensations are, as has already been said, the immediate results of nervous excitations entering the brain. Were there no such impressions, no such neural excitations, there would never beany brain activity it would be plunged in deep sleep and midnight darkness, and consciousness could never arise. That we have different kinds of sensations is due to the different kinds of end organs of sense. We shall now discuss the various sorts of sen- sations which we experience in common, beginning with the sen- sations of TASTE. The end organs of taste consist of the so-called "gustatory bulbs," or, as some designate them, the "gustatory knobs" or 1 ' gustatory flasks." The latter term is probably the most suita- ble name, since it best indicates the shape of these minute end- organs of the taste sense. These little flasks are scattered some- what irregularly over the tongue, palate and epiglottis, but are most thickly clustered in the little papillae, or ridges found on the surface of the tongue. Without these little gustatory flasks no sensations of taste are possible, no matter if every nerve lead- ing from the tongue and inner surface of the mouth is in a nor- mal condition. These bulbs or flasks are so constructed that only fluids can be tasted. Solids and gases must first be reduced to a liquid state before sensations of taste can possibly be ex- perienced. Only four qualities of taste can be designated with SENSATION. ' :> > ;- thoroughgoing certainty. They are sweet, sour, bitter, and salt. Some of you may be quick to add a multitude of tastes which we distinguish in bur food e. g., the taste of a banana, pear, onion, peach, and potato. But in such cases what we designate as taste is not taste at all. It is really smell. It is not the sensation of taste that makes the strawberry such an edible fruit but really a sensation of smell. The intimate connec- tion of taste with smell is seen in cases where the impairment of the sense of smell by disease or a bad cold destroys or seriously modifies the ability to taste. Some foods in being masticated or swallowed are vaporized in the back part of the mouth and thence reach the cavity of the nose where this vapor product is smelled. The sense of taste pure and simple, does not admit of many varieties. It is extraordinarily limited in this respect. To take an example, the numberless acids of chemistry all arouse but one sensation of taste sour which varies only in intensity. A solution of quinine in the proportion of 1:100,000 cannot be distinguished from a solution of morphine in the proportion of 1:3,000. The bitterness of the quinine solution is like the bitter- ness of the morphine solution. That much of what is ordinarily called taste is really taste plus smell or touch or both can be substantiated by a very sim- ple experiment. With the eyes closed or blindfolded, and the nostrils held so as to cut off sensations of smell you will find it absolutely impossible to distinguish, by taste alone, the differ- ence between small quantities of scraped apple and scraped potato when placed on the tongue. The minute flask-like organs that perceive the various tastes are in a measure grouped together; those that perceive bitter by themselves, those that perceive sour in another locality by themselves. For example, the sensations of bitter generally, if not always, come from the root of the tongue, while sweet and sour are tasted with the tip of the tongue and the salt at the side edges. Nearly all substances, even sugar, will evoke a bit- ter taste when applied solely to the root of the tongue. It has been found that sensations of the taste may be aroused 1U2, - PRAOTLCAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. by (electrical stimulation at different portions of the tongue and palate as well as at the epiglottis. If you use a constant current and two electrodes one above and the other under the tongue you will observe a sour taste at the positive pole of the current and an alkaline-like taste at the negative pole. The sensitiveness of the organs of taste are much more acute than we are apt to think. The work done a few years ago by Bailey and Nichols in experimenting with reference to the mini- mal tastes that can be perceived, is well known and very interest- ing in this connection. These two investigators made the observa- tions upon 128 persons, whose ages ranged from twelve to fifty years. Of this number 82 were men and 46 women. Bitter, sweet, acid, alkaline and saline were regarded by them as the funda- mental and representative tastes, and solutions of substances were used in order to test the discriminative ability of the taste- organs or, rather, to test the organs with reference to minimal tastes. The substances selected were as follows : 1. Bitter Quinine bisulphate. 2. Sweet Cane sugar. 3. Acid Sulphuric, acid. 4. Alkaline Sodium bicarbonate. 5. Saline Common salt. The results obtained were these : I. QUININE. Men detect one part in 390,000 parts of water. Women detect one part in 456,000 parts of water. II. CANE SUGAR. Men detect one part in 199 parts of water. Women detect one part in 204 parts of water. III. SULPHURIC ACID. Men detect one part in 2,080 parts of water. Women detect one part in 3,280 parts of water. IV. BICARBONATE OF SODA. Men detect one part in 98 parts of water. Women detect one part in 120 parts of water. SENSATION. 103 V. COMMON SALT. Men detect one part in 2,240 parts of water. Women detect one part in 1,980 parts of water. It is seen from the above that as a rule the sense of taste is more finely developed in women than in men. The exception to this rule is the case of common salt. While this is the rule with respect to the sense of taste, Ma'ggiori and Mosso have found that in general the senses are more acute and delicate in men than in women. Of course, you cannot compare extreme sensibility for one sort of taste with that for another taste. From the table given you you might be inclined to argue that the sense organs of taste are better developed for bitter than for sweet; but you can hardly do this because you cannot say the quinine is as bitter as the sugar is sweet, or the lemon is as sour as a particular substance is salt, any more than you can say that the rose is as red as the buttercup is yellow, or that the sky is as blue as a noise is loud. Sensations of taste may be greatly modified or even obliterated when the temperature of the end organ of taste is extremely warm or cold. Fill the mouth with hot water, hold it for a moment, then expel it. Immediately after, place a little salt or sugar on the tongue and you will find that the usual sensations of taste are not experienced. If you take a small piece of ice into the mouth and hold it near the root of the tongue you will find that quinine, if placed in the same locality, will give rise to no sensa- tion of bitter as is ordinarily the case. SMELL. The sense of smell is possessed even by some of the lower ani- mal forms. A blinded starfish can scent a crab (its chosen article of diet) at quite a considerable distance. The shark is largely dependent upon the sense of smell. Destroy this sense and the shark will refuse to eat though he can see ever so well. The feel- ers of many insects are in reality organs of smell. Certain organs of smell exist in the outer extremities of the antennules of crabs. In all vertebrates the end organs of smell are found in the regio 104 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. olfactoria of the nose, which consists of a mucous membrane cov- ered with a layer of cells, and these cells give off certain hair-like processes. The smell apparatus is a very simple contrivance. All that is necessary is that a current of air, in which stimulating particles float, be drawn through the nose over the mucous mem- brane of the regio olfactoria. The strongest substances, such as ammonia and camphor, even when placed directly under the nostrils, have no smell as long as the breath is held, or inhaled through the mouth instead of the nose. We seldom smell in ex- haling, because in expiration the air does not pass so directly over the olfactory regions as in inspiration. The end organs ol the sense of smell are very easily fatigued. If you hold a piece of camphor gum to the nose and smell of it continuously, inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth, you find after a few minutes that a very marked decrease in the intensity of the sensation will be noticed extending even to entire loss of the ability to perceive the odor for the time being. It must be added that fatigue for one substance does not necessarily involve fatigue for all others. Smell of some essence of cloves, then of some ordinary yellow beeswax, and then fatigue for camphor as above. If you then smell of the wax and essence of cloves again, you will in all probability find that the odor of these two sub- stances is unaffected. Smells do not really admit of classification. The classification sometimes made use of namely, pleasant and unpleasant smells has no real basis, for it depends entirely upon individual pecul- iarities; as Professor Ladd remarks, " to some the smell of burn- ing feathers, of assafcetida, of valerian or of rank cheese is pleas- ant." Speaking of the possibility of classifying smells Dr. Por- ter tells us that " Their varieties are almost endless. The odors from flowers, from food, from perfumes, from woods, from earths, from metals and from many other objects, are too numerous to be classed or named except in a very general way. We c/as-s them in a few general and obvious groups, as quickening, refresh- ing, depressing, sickening, aromatic, spicy, etc., etc. We name them usually from the objects which excite them, as the odor of SENSATION. 105 1 he violet and the lilac, of the rose and the tuberose, of the peach and the apple, of cedar and camphor-wood." The minimum stimulus for the end organs of smell is very small for a large number of substances. For example, -^-^^ part of a milligram of an alcoholic solution of musk is perceptible, likewise -j^o--^-^^ of a milligram of mercaptan is sufficient to produce a sensation of smell. In paralytics both the senses of smell and of taste are usually disturbed. Kornfeld and Bikeles have made a large number of experiments in this line, and find that with reference to the sense of smell, it was noticed that certain paralytics could not recognize the odor of onions, caraway-seed, or vinegar. One patient mis- took the odor of an onion for that of a lemon ; and the same patient could not recognize the odor of garlic; while another called the odor of vinegar that of ordinary whisky. The sensations of taste in these paralytics were experimented upon chiefly by means of standard solutions. The folio wing were some of the results : At the tip and sides of the tongue the pa- tients appear in general to have no correct sense of taste. For example, the patient would designate a 4-per cent, solution of salt as sour. "Salty "and "sour" could not be distinguished from each other, for the salt solution above referred to was fre- quently designated as sour, and a citric-acid solution as salty. Even quinine bisulphate was regarded as sweet, sour, or salty interchangeably. At the root of the tongue the followingresults were obtained. A 4-per cent, solution of sugar was perceived as tasteless, while an 8-per cent, salt solution was designated sour. In experiments with this latter solution, if the patient were per- mitted to roll his tongue and draw it back, he would then some- times designate the taste as slightly salty; others would say that the 2-per cent, solution of citric acid tasted the same as the 8- per cent, solution of salt; still another characterized as bitter this same citric-acid solution. When applied to the gums, sour and salty substances were most frequently regarded as bitter; while an 8-per cent, solution of quinine, on the other hand, was not perceived as bitter, but 106 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. rather as acid and astringent. When permitted to swallow this strong solution, they would experience a slightly bitter taste. Much more>important to the Psychologist than the sensation of smell or taste are the various sensations of feeling in the skin. The dermal senses comprise the temperature sense, the pressure sense, the tickle sense and the tactile sense proper. It must be remembered in this connection that sensibility of the skin is the first sense that appears, and the one from which all others have probably been developed by gradual steps and stages in the pro- cess of evolution. The eye, ear, regio olfactoria,, etc., may be regarded as highly differentiated portions of the skin. The sense of sight is at first a generalized property, many Protozoa show- ing themselves sensitive to light. In the Hydroids, even in the fresh-water species, we have a good example in that many single cells with direct muscle connections are. found scattered all over the dermal surface, and are sensitive to light. LESSON IX. SENSATION (CONTINUED). THE TEMPERATURE SENSE. IT is an important fart to remember that the nerves are not different from each other. The sensory nerves as nerves are anatomically, structurally and functionally alike. But some nerves convey to the brain only sensations of heat, others only sensations of cold, while others carry to the brain only sensations of touch or simple contact. These differences are not due to dif- ferences in the nerves themselves, but are due to specific differences in the end organs with which they are connected. Magnus Blix has shown that upon some one spot of the skin only cold may be perceived, upon another only heat, and upon a third spot only sensations of touch or simple contact. This is due to the fact that the different sorts of terminal organs are found in different localities on the skin. One locality may abound in heat spots while another portion may abound in cold spots, as the back of the neck. We have, therefore, as end organs of sense in the skin itself, the "heat spots," "cold spots," "pressure spots" and "tactile corpuscles." Stimulate any one of these end organs and you evoke. a corresponding sensation. You cannot get the sensa- tion of heat by stimulating a cold spot any more than you can get a sensation of sound by stimulating the eye with light. We can easily convince ourselves of this important fact by applying the cold point of a lead pencil, or better, the point of a steel rod here and there on the forearm. After a little such exploration you will find a locality at which no sensation of cold will be re- ceived i'rom the cold point, although a sensation of heat will ap- pear if only the proper stimulus be applied. Close beside this spot you will find other localities that are acutely sensitive to cold, though no sensations to warmth or touch can there be per- (107) 108 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. ceived. You conclude, therefore, and rightly, too, that there are separate spots for perceiving heat, cold and touch, and each nerve fiber leading from these particular spots can transmit but one kind of sensation. The skin can be pretty well mapped out with reference to these end organs of sense, especially with reference to the heat and cold spots. These two kinds of temperature spots respond with their charac- teristic sensations, to both mechanical and electrical stimulation. If you select a well located cold spot, for example, on the back of the hand or the volar side of the index finger, and allow another person to tap it with an ordinary wooden toothpick, you will find that a distinct sensation of cold arises. It is also a singular fact that these temperature spots give no pain when punctured, as may be substantiated by thrusting a needle into a well-located cold spot. These temperature end organs respond also to chemical stimula- tion. Take the temperature of the skin on the back of the hand by allowing a thermometer to remain in contact with it for some little time. Write down the temperature for the purpose of com- parison later. Then take a menthol pencil (such as is used to relieve the headache and which can be purchased at any drug store) and rub the skin with it. You experience marked sensa- tions of cold, because the menthol has chemically stimulated the cold spots, but you find if you again take the tempera- ture of the skin with the thermometer it is actually higher not- withstanding the contrary sensation of cold which you so dis- tinctly feel. Furthermore, the intensity of the temperature sensation de- pends upon the amount of dermal surface that is stimulated. If, for example, you dip a single finger in cold water and immedi- ately afterwards the whole hand, you will observe a marked increase in the intensity of the sensation of cold. The feeling of temperature is relative to the state of the skin. In a comfortable room at no part of the body do you feel heat or cold, although, as physiologists tell us, the different parts of the bodily surface are at different temperatures. Thus the fingers and SENSATION. 109 nose are cooler than the trunk of the body, and the trunk cooler than the interior of the mouth cavity. That degree of tempera- ture at which a given locality has the sensation of neither heat nor cold is called the zero-point f or that locality . This zero-point is not only different at different parts of the body, but is also a vari- able with reference to the same part from time to time. On passing from a room of a given temperature into one whose temperature is higher or lower we experience at first sensations of warnitli or cold while our "zero-point" is becoming adjusted to the new environment. Of course the determination of the exa,ct zero- point of different parts of the body is an exceedingly difficult affair, being purely a relative and not an absolute quantity. It has been shown that if the hand be held for a minute in the water of the temperature of 54 and then in water 64 (Fahrenheit), a sensation of heat will be felt for a few seconds, although the lat- ter would have felt cold to the hand if placed in it at first. You have noticed perhaps, when indulging in fruit ices or ice cream that cold drinks such as ice water and lemonade taste warm be- cause the zero-point of the mouth is for the time being very low. No matter what the zero-point may happen to be, it is always found that the skin is most sensitive to such changes of tem- perature as lie near its own zero-point. SENSATIONS OF PRESSURE AND SENSATIONS OF CONTACT must, from the nature of the case, be treated together. Just as there are heat and cold spots distributed over the skin, so we find that certain nerves terminate in what are called pressure points or pressure spots, meaning those points at which a clear feeling of contact will be perceived when appropriately stimulated. Through these little corpuscles we recognize pres- sure, and the resistance of bodies as well as the softness or hard- ness, the roughness or smoothness of the object causing the sen- sation. We find that the delicacy of the sense of touch varies at different portions of the skin. It is the greatest on the forehead, temples, back of the forearm, and eyelids, where an exceedingly small weight can be distinctly perceived. 110 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. The size of the object, or better, the amount of dermal surface stimulated, plays an important part in our judgment of pressure on the skin. If two bodies of equal weight and unequal size be placed at some convenient locality on the skin, for example, the palm, one after the other, it will be found that the smaller of the two will seem decidedly the heavier. Our sensations of pressure are greatly modified by the tem- perature of the object used as a stimulus. Cold or hot bodies feel heavier than bodies of equal weight at a normal temperature. If, for example, you take two silver dollars, warming one until it has gained the same temperature as the zero-point of the skin, and therefore ceases to seem cold, then cool the other to about 12 centigrade, and apply these one after the other to the palm of the hand, you will find that the cold one will seem much heav- ier, even as heavy as two at the normal temperature. If you take two small wooden cylinders about one inch in diameter and one and one-half inches long, and heat one (keeping it dry) till it is quite hot, the other remaining at the normal temperature, it will be found that the hot one will seem the heavier when the two are placed alternately (standing on end) on the back of the hand. When pressure is evenly distributed over a considerable area of the skin, it is found that it is less strongly felt than pressure upon a small area which is bordered by one that is not pressed. When the hand is immersed, for example, in water, or better, mercury, you will notice that the sensation of pressure is strongest in the ring about the wrists, that is, it is felt only at a line along the surface of the liquid where the immersed and non-immersed por- tions of the skin meet. This ring effect is more pronounced when the hand is moved up and down in the liquid. The fineness of the pressure sense is very remarkable. Scarcely any other sense will educate so rapidly and to such a degree of acuteness. You may judge something of its powers in this direc- tion by observing that the slightest unevennessof surface may be detected by the sense of touch alone. Suppose you try this sim- ple experiment : Place a hair on a plate of glass or an ordinary SENSATION. Ill dinner plate, or any hard, smooth surface, and over it lay ten, twelve, or fifteen sheets of writing paper. The position of thehair on the plate can be easily detected by passing your finger tips back and forth over the surface of the upper sheet of paper. When the eyes are closed and a point on the skin is stimulated we can pretty well indicate the locality which has been touched, yet by no means exactly the same place. Have a friend close his eyes, touch him on the forearm with a pencil-point and require him to touch the sameplace with another pencil-point immediately after. You will find that he will make an error which youcanmeas- ure'with an ordinary graduated ruler, and you will also observe that the errors are generally constant in following a given direc- tion. The accuracy of the localizing power varies widely at differ- ent localities on the skin. Toucan test the localizing power within a given locality by using ordinary compasses or dividers, the points of which are blunted or tipped with small bits of cork to avoid the sharpness and coldness of the metal. Find the least distance apart at which the two points of the dividers can be rec- ognized as two when applied to the skin. The average that must intervene between the two points in order that they may be felt as two is as follows for various localities, the experiments having been made several years ago by Weber : Tip of tongue 04 inch Palm side of the last phalanx of the finger 08 inch Red part of lips 16 inch Tip of nose 25 inch Palm side of the second phalanx of finger 28 inch White of lips 36 inch Cheek 44 inch Heel 88 inch Forehead 92 incli Back of hand 1.23 inch Knee-pan 1.44 inch Forearm and lower leg 1 .58 inch Nape of neck 2.11 inch Middle of back, upper arm and thigh 2.75 inch When several touches occur simultaneously, it is found that there is still more confusion in locating the stimulations of the 112 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. sense of touch. It might be interesting in this connection to sum up the results of about twenty-five hundred experiments, which I recently made on the fifteen different persons at different times.* The endeavor of this study was (1) to discover the relative sen- sitiveness of different portions of the skin; (2) to find the nature and direction of the errors in localization; (3) to study the influ- ence of attention upon the localization and interpretation of sen- sations when they occur simultaneously ; (4) to examine the effect of practice. Can the skin be educated to greater sensitiveness and accuracy in localization? There is not sufficient space to describe in detail the methocl of experiment and apparatus employed . Many interesting results were gained, among which the following are the most important. First. Indubitable evidence as to the relative sensitiveness of the skin. (a) Skin over the joints is much more sensitive than that of other localities on the dermal area. Touches on the joints are always more correctly localized than any other. (b) Touches on the back of the body are more distinctly felt, more clearly located, and therefore better localized than those on the front part of the body. (c) Localization of these touch sensations is better for points not on the median line than for those that are. When touches occur on the median line of the body but 34 per cent, are cor- rectly localized, while at other localities 68 per cent, are accu- rately located. (d) On the left side of the body we do not localize touches so correctly as on the right side, that is if we are right-handed. (e) On hairy portions of the skin the localization is better than on those portions not covered with hair. This is especially noticed when the hairs have been shaven, as in one instance the skin over the thighs and calves (after the shaving of the hairs) was so sensitive as to vitiate the experiment, because the sensa- tions received at these localities were so intense and pronounced * These experiments are described in detail in the Journal of Nervous and Men- tal niseaoc, New York, March, 1893. SENSATIOX. 113 as to cause the mind to lose track of the sensations at the other stimulated portions of the skin. (f) The parts usually covered with clothing do not localize so well as those not usually so covered. Second. The nature and direction of errors in localizing touches. Out of every 100 errors in localizing touches in these experiments 42 per cent, were errors of extension; that is, errors in which the touch was located at a point nearer the extremities of the limbs than where the touch actually occurred. To illustrate, a person is touched on the forearm just below the elbow; if he make a mistake at all he will locate the touch lower down on the arm near the wrist, rather than at some point above the place ac- tually touched. The average amount of such " extension " errors was 4.36 inches. Third. Attention plays a most important part in the locali- zation of these touch stimulations. Fourth. The effect of practice is very marked. Fifth. Fusion of stimulations into one touch sensation. Two or more touches are often fused into one single sensation, and this one sensation localized at a point quite removed from either of those at which the stimulations were actually received. For example, two touches, one at the top of the right shoulder and the other at the tip of the right shoulder blade were quickly fused into one sensation, localized as coming from a single point mid- way between the two places actually touched. Sixth. Diffusion. There were also results diametrically opposed to the case of fusion just cited. Thus one subject, being touched by a single cork at a point directly under the armpit, indicated that he had been touched at two localities about four inches apart, when there was really but one point touched. A general rule might be laid down; it is this: The localizing power is delicate in proportion as the skin covers a, more movable part of the body, andis also more acute when the pressure stimu- lation is just strong enough to cause an appreciable sensation than when it is more powerfully impressed. Mr. H., who, in the fall of 1892, was the "coach" of a univer- L. P.-8 11.4 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. sity foot-ball team, had his left forearm broken in a hotly con- tested game while playingwith his eleven against that of another institution. The surgeon who was called did his work in such a bungling manner that after the bones had begun to knit the arm had to be broken over again in order to set it properly. To keep it in the correct position a plaster cast was made which held it firmly. This plaster-of-paris case extended from the knuckles to a point above the elbow. After three months the case and bandage were removed. Of course during the entire period when incased in the plaster, the forearm had not been moved either at the wrist or elbow. I then endeavored to test the sensibility of the skin on this arm which had not been moved for so long a time. To do this, I applied the points of a pair of dividers or compasses which were separated more or less widely as mentioned in certain experiments above. The forearm was divided into four different areas for purposes of more accurate comparison with the sensibility of the skin on the unin- jured right forearm of the same person. Without going into detail, it should be stated that on the left forearm the one so long immovable, when the two points touching the skin at a given region were separated by as much as 55 millimeters they were felt as one instead of two, while on the right forearm at the same place they would only have to be about 20 millimeters apart in order to be perceived as two. On the back of the "lame" arm at a different locality than that just mentioned, it was found that even when the two points of the dividers were 75 and 80 millimeters apart, they were felt as one, while at a corresponding locality on the right arm the skin was so sensi' tive that points but 17 millimeters apart would be felt as two- It must be also observed that this particular person had always previously been, with reference to a large number of activities, practically ambidextrous indeed, he never had to favor the lefl arm at all. In his position as gymnasium instructor he could (before the accident) manipulate the dumb bells, Indian clubs, play base ball, hand ball, and the like with the left hand just a* well as with the right. It would seem, then, that the sensibility SENSATION. 115 of the skin over the injured forearm was lost simply because that member was for so long a time necessarily immovable. This has an important bearing on the above-mentioned principle, to the effect that " the localizing power is delicate in proportion as the skin covers a movable part of the body." Again, filled space is as a rule underestimated by the skin. A solid line, like the back of a knife-blade, will feel shorter than sev- eral points arranged in a similar straight line of the same length as the solid line. An interesting experiment for you to perform is to take a small wooden rod and stick into it a straight row of five pins separated from each other by one-half of an inch. In another such a wooden rod set up two pins one and one-half inches apart. Apply them to the arm one after the other. You will find that the two inches of space occupied by the five pins will seem less than the one and one-half inches between the two pins. We are also subject to great confusion in our judgment of mo- Mon on the skin. If you select a convenient area on the dermal surface the forearm, for example and move a pencil-point over the skin, you will observe that you can tell that the point is mov- ing before you can tell the direction in which it is moving. A common and persistent illusion somewhat related to the above experiment may be experienced if you touch the forehead with the index finger (keeping the finger motionless) and move the forehead from side to side; you will find that the motion will be attributed to the finger rather than to the forehead. This is an irresistible sensation of which one cannot rid himself. Perhaps you have already tried the old-time experiment of Aristotle, in which you merely cross the middle finger over the index finger in such a way as to bring the middle finger on the thumb side of the index finger. Inserting between the two a pea, bullet, or other small object, you perceive a more or less distinct sensation of two objects instead of the one actually present. Furthermore, you will always find that active touch (touch with movement) gives quite a different sensation thanmeresimple contact or passive touch. It is also more discriminative. The 116 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. carpenter who desires to tell whether the board is planed smoothly or not, does not simply lay his hand on the board, but rubs it over the surface, the smoothness of which he desires to judge. Likewise as to the grinder of lenses for optical instruments. Com- pare for yourself the sensation received from merely resting the tip of the finger on the rough surface of a piece of sandpaper, or even a rough book cover, with the sensation you receive when you move the finger over such a surface. The bank teller cannot tell a counterfeit five-dollar bill or the spurious lead coin by simply touching it passively. He rubs it between his fingers, or rubs his fingers over it. The merchant in buying cloth depends largely upon the "feel of it," as he rubs it between his thumb and finger to determine the quality of its texture. You probably do the same thing in comparing several varieties of writing paper as to their smoothness and thickness. Sergi, the Italian Psychologist, and others have made some extended experiments with reference to ascertaining theacuteness of the skin's power in making time discriminations when a num- ber of stimulations follow in close succession. In other words, his attempt was an endeavor to find how much of an interval there must be between successive touch stimulations to prevent their being fused into one continuous sensation. As apparatus he used six tuning forks, each of which could be set into vibra- tion electrically, and which were, respectively, capable of 30, 100, 250,435,500 and 1,000 vibrations per second. Various locations on the skin are then brought into direct contact with each of these forks after they are set into vibration. After a large number of careful tests, Sergi finds that different portions of the dermal surface are by no means equally capable of perceiving successive stimulations and of making time discriminations. He did find some localities exceedingly sensitive e. g., the tips of the fingers where the beats of the fork do not blend into a continuous sen- sation of touch, even when the vibrations are 1,000 or more a second. LESSON X. SENSATION (CONTINUED). THE MUSCLE SENSE. BY muscular sensations are meant all those sensations which arise from the varying condition of the muscles whether in action or at rest ; therefore they depend upon the contraction and re- laxation of the muscular fibers or the varying relative position of the muscles. When we slowly stretch or violently jerk the arm, when we snap the finger, when we rotate the wrist, when we tread or kick with the foot, when we strain and tug with the whole body to lift a heavy weight or push against a resisting obstacle, we experience a corresponding variety of muscle sensations. The muscle sense is among the first, if not itself the very first, to furnish data by means of which the child becomes able to dis- tinguish himself his body from the rest of the material uni- verse. Through a large variety of movements the infant first explores every part of the organism, and as a result derives that standard by which he measures the material world without. You see, then, by the expression "muscular sensation '^is meant those feelings of which we are conscious when we voluntarily exercise or refrain from exercising our muscles. While the real muscular sensations would comprise those of pain, effort, fatigue and the like, it should be observed that the term " muscle sense " has come to receive a more restricted, defi- niteand special meaning in Psychology, and it is now used to des- ignate more particularly that sense by which lifted weights are per- ceived. For experiments upon sensations belonging to this class, it is necessary to have a series of weights for the purpose of test- ing one's discriminative ability with reference to this special sense. The most available weights for such purposes are made by loading paper gunshells with shot. A convenient series would (117) 118 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. consist of the following weights: 100, 101, 102, 102.2, 102.5, 103 and 103.4 grams. Also a carefully graduated series ol smaller weights beginning with a weight of ten grams, and run- ning as high as fifteen grams. The experiment should be madg something as follows: Let the person whose discriminative abil- ity for lifted weights you wish to test, stand at a table of conven- ient height. He should be blindfolded. Place within easy reach of his right hand and near together two weights, one of which should be the standard weight of 100 grams, and the other a weight to be compared with it, either one that is equal, heavier or lighter. Let the subject lift them one after the other, being careful that he lift them the same way, to the same height and at the same rate, giving a decision as to which of the weights he thinks is the heavier or the lighter. If he thinks the two of equal weight, record this judgment also. The fact of the matter is that when the two are of equal weight he will be apt to say that the second one lifted is the heavier. The difference between the two weights must be considerable if it is to be perceived. If we should close our eyes and a friend should lay a weight of 300 grams, then one of 312 grams, on our hand and we are called upon to state which of the two is the heavier it would be seen that the additional weight of twelve grams more than the orig- inal 300 grams is so small that the difference is not constantly perceived with^ thoroughgoing certainty. Fechner, the first to innovate this test, found that in one hundred such trials as the one just indicated, in which sometimes the lighter and sometimee the heavier weight was first lifted, the correct answer was given sixty times. Therefore the number of correct cases amounted to 60 per cent. Now a second series of trials is made, the initial weight being 600 grams, the additional weight remaining 12 grams for the time being. It is then s.oon found that the number of false esti- mates has been greatly augmented, the number of correct cases being not more than 4.0 percent. In order to attain 60 per cent, of correct cases, as in the case of 300 grams and 312 grams, we have to raise the additional weight to 24 grams if our initial SENSATION. 119 weight remain 600 grams. If the beginning weight is doubled, the additional weight must also be doubled in order that the probability of a correct discriminative judgment remain con- stant. Closely allied with the muscular sensations are what is known as the organic sensations. When the stomach, lungs, heart and other visceral organs are entirely healthy and their functions are normally performed, they are attended with no very positive or distinct sensations. If, however, they be injured or diseased, very clearly recognized disturbing and unpleasant sensations re- sult. The hale, hearty, healthy man does not know that he has a stomach; the dyspeptic person hardly knows that he has any- thing else. These organic sensations are often blended with the muscular, and are experienced in constant connection with nor- mal or abnormal muscular sensations. But more intimately related to the muscular than are these organic sensations are those of the joints and ten dons sensa- tions, which are often experienced in the passive motion of the various bodily members, especially brought into prominence in the flexion of the elbow. 'The surfaces of the joints are organs which become intensely painful when the least bit inflamed. The motion of the articulated joints upon each other gives rise to a peculiar sensation. To this sensation is due the perception we have of the position of our limbs at a given moment. If these joint surfaces are rendered anaesthetic the perception of the movement, and consequently the position of the limbs, becomes exceedingly obtuse. If you place the forearm of a person flat upon a hinged board and raise one end of the board so that the fore- arm is slowly and gradually elevated, and require the person to pronounce when he first perceives the motion of his forearm, it will be found that the chief data upon which he bases his judg- ment is the peculiar sensation of motion which he localizes in the elbow joint. At least this is what happens with healthy persons in normal condition. But when the feelings of such pas- sive movements as well as other sensations which furnish us a clue to the position of our limbs are lacking, we get such results 120 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. as are related by Professor Strumpell of his wonderful ansesthe- sic boy, whose only sources of sensation were the right eye and left ear. The principal features of the case are thus quoted by Professor Jatnes : * " Passive movements could be imprinted on all the extremities to the greatest extent, without attracting the patient's notice. Only in violent forced hyperextension of the joints, especially of the knees, there arose a dull vague feeling of strain, but this was seldom precisely localized. We have often, after bandaging the eyes of the patient, carried him about the room, laid him on a table, given to his arms and legs the most fantastic and apparently the most inconvenient attitudes with- out his having a suspicion of it. The expression of astonishment in his face, when all at once the removal of the handkerchief revealed his situation, is indescribable in words. Only when his head was made to hang away down he immediately spoke of dizziness, but could not assign its ground. Later he sometimes inferred from the sounds connected with the manipulation that something special was being done with him. . . . He had no feelings of muscular fatigue. If, with his eyes shut, we told him to raise his arm and keep it up, he did so without trouble. After one or two minutes, however, the arm began to tremble and sink without his being a ware of it. He asserted still his ability to keep it up. . . . Passively holding still his fingers did not affect him. He thought constantly that he opened and shut his hand, whereas it was really fixed." Goldscheider found that a swing of the arm, amounting to .22 to .42, is sensibly perceived in the shoulder joint. Such small displacements as these can hardly be detected by the eye. Of course the velocity with which the mem- ber is moved plays an important part. The minimum velocity for the shoulder joint has been found to be about .3 in a second of time. All these facts prove that the joint surfaces constitute the chief seat of the impressions by which the movements and posi- tion of our bodily members are immediately perceived. Mention must also be made of the sensations of resistance. To *William James. Psychology Briefer Course. New York, 1892. The Gemma account is not in our possession. SENSATION. 121 demonstrate what is meant let us take a five-pound weight to which is attached a strong piece of ordinary string. With the arm extended hold the weight by the string so that it hangs just a few inches above the floor. Lower the weight rather rapidly until it strikes the floor. Just as it strikes, a sensation of resist- ance to further motion is clearly perceived. We now come to speak of those sensations by means of which we recognize the position of the body as a whole. That there arc such sensations can be very easily verified by a simple experiment. The most clear demonstration occurs in connection with the "tilt- ing board " shown in the cut. (See Fig. 17.) This consists of a board seven feet long and two feet wide balanced over a support somewhat resembling a sawhorse. At one end there is a footboard secure enough to bear the weight of a man when the tilting board is in a vertical position . At the other end should be attached a plumb-line and a semicircular scale so adjusted that the inclina- tion of the tilting board can be read off at any moment. To pre- 122 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. vent the person from falling when the head is downward, shoul- der and body straps are provided which securely bind him to the board. Cause the person who is to serve as subject in this exper- iment to place himself on the tilting board and have him close his eyes. Begin with the board vertical, his head up. On ques- tioning him you will find that he will probably announce that he is leaning slightly forward. Tilt him slowly backward and re- quire him to announce when he is at an angle of 45 from the vertical, when at an angle of 90, and when at an angle of 180. In most cases the subject will probably say that he is vertical, head downward, when he is from 30 to 60 from the designated position. In this connection reference must be made to the sensations of rotation. The nature of these sensations is also best determined by appeal to actual experiment. Some of these experiments can be performed by twisting the rope of an ordinary swing in which a person is seated. It is better, however, to have a board laid across a screw stool or ordinary rotating office chair without a back ; seat the person and rotate him rapidly for about half a turn, then stop him suddenly. A distinct sensation of rotation in the opposite direction will be clearly perceived. This experi- ment must be performed with the eyes closed, for if the eyes be opened, the sensation immediately ceases. Close the eyes again and it returns. When a person is turned in one direction and then in the other for quite a little period of time arid for different distances, he will finally lose all knowledge of direction in which he is subsequently rotated. These totally wrong judgments with reference to the direction of rotation are quite common, and are made use of in a number of children's games. The "donkey game " is a familiar example. A figure of a donkey minus a tail is cut out of colored paper and fastened to a sheet or screen hung up on the wall at one end of a room. Each member of the company is then required to locate the proper place for the tail standing at the opposite end of the room with his eyes open. Then he is blindfolded, turned about by another person, first in one direc- tion, then in the other, and finally told to pin the Detached ta.il ? SENSATION. 123 which has been cut out separately, to the donkey at what he thinks is the proper place. Much merriment is caused by the striking mistakes with reference to direction and locality. It ought also to be mentioned here that deaf and dumb per- sons are, as a rule, quite insusceptible of being made dizzy by ro- tation. The semicircular canals located in the labyrinth of the ear are, as it were, six little spirit levels, which seem calculated to be organs of the sense of rotation. LESSON XI. SENSATION (CONTINUED). VISION. THE organ of vision is the eye. It is not necessary in this place to give a detailed description of the structure of the eye. Such a description can be found in any book on anatomy. It is, however, always an interesting observation for one to verify such descriptions by dissection of the eye of a beef or sheep. For such examination the specimen should be first frozen or hardened in alcohol. The following general points in reference to the eye's structure ought, however, be noticed in passing. With the exception of the ear, the eye is by far the most complicated end organ of sense. The eye is an optical instrument, with a self-adjusting lens, and supporting, on its inner circular wall, a delicate membrane of nervou s matter which acts as the sensitive plate of the camera (for such the eye is) on which the image is formed. On examin- ing the eye you find it to be a flattish sphere formed by an outer tough membrane which incloses a nervous surface and refracting media. The parts of the eye are shown in the schematic draw- ing of Gegenbaur (Fig. 18). Of the three coats of the eye the inner one (retina) is by far the most significant. As stated above, it is the sensitive plate, and is a delicate membrane consisting of ten layers. Of these layers, the structure of the ninth (counting from the inner sur- face) the layer of the rods and cones is the most interesting. It consists of a multitude of elongated bodies arranged side by side in a sort of mosaic. These bodies are of two kinds ; one, the cylindrical "rods," the others, more flask-shaped, are called " cones." The rods are longer than the cones. In the adult human eye they are about g-^ of an inch in length. It is a (124) SENSATION. 125 peculiar fact that these end organs are not pointed forward to- ward the light as it streams through the pupil, but backward toward the outer or sclerotic coat. The cones seem to be the most sensitive to light. Certain it is that in the center of the eye FIGURE 18. Horizontal section through the left eye. Gegenbaur.) TINA HOROID SCLEROTIC (Schematic, from only cones appear, and they are exceedingly numerous, over 1,000,000 being found in a T J 7 inch square. The optic nerve fibers cannot be directly stimulated by light. The place on the retina where the optic nerve enters the eye is in 126 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. fact entirely blind, because nothing but fibers (and no rods and cones) exist there. This spot is wanting in all nervous elements sensitive to light. To prove the existence of the blind spot, close the right eye and look steadily with the left at the cross in Fig. 19, holding the book in front of the face, moving it to and fro. At about one foot from the face the black disk entirely disap- pears ; when nearer than this or farther from the face it is seen. In this simple experiment it is absolutely necessary to keep the left eye focused on the cross. The blind spot is about fa of an inch long in the average human eye. Aside from the blind spot the sensibility of the eye varies greatly. The place of clearest vision is the " yellow spot " which is oval in shape, with a central depression called the fovea. This yellow spot is about 1-16 of an inch in length and lies at a FIGURE 19. tance of 1-6 of ari inch from the middle of the blind spot. As Di . Sanford suggests, the yellow spot may be projected and seen in the following manner : Close the eyes for about thirty seconds and then look with one of them through a flat-sided bottle, con- taining a saturated solution of chrome alum, at the clear sky. In the blue-green solution of the chrome alum a rose-colored spot will be seen which corresponds to the yellow spot of the eye. We see single with two eyes, just as we hear single with two ears and smell single with two nostrils. We can, however, see double under certain conditions, though we can never hear double or smell double. An easy and clear demonstration of this fact is to roll a sheet of paper so as to have a tube an inch or two in diameter and a foot long. Keep both eyes open, and hold with your right hand one end of the tube to your right eye (with SENSATION. 127 which you are to look through the tube) to restrict its field, and leave the left eye unrestricted as to its field of vision. Place the open left hand (palm side toward you) against the left side of the tube directly in the field of vision for the left eye. With both eyes look straight ahead. With your right eye you see the hole of the tube and with the left you see your hand . Your mind super- imposes the image of the one on that of the other, consequently you see your hand with a hole in it just the diameter of the tube. Again, take the same tube an-d hold it over one eye and then with both eyes look at a finely figured wall paper or carpet. To the eye whose retinal field is restricted by the tube the object looked at will appear further away than it does to the other eye. Another FIGURE 20. interesting experiment in this direction would be for the reader to gaze fixedly at Fig. 20 with the black spots directly in front of the right and left eyes, respectively. After looking at it for a little time, as if the paper were at an infinite distance, or as if he were looking through it, the reader will see the two black dots fuse together and combine into one. This combined spot is located directly in front of his nose on a line between the two actual spots. This combined spot results from seeing the two spots in front of each eye with the same part of the fovea. If instead of two identical spots we use two different figures or two differently-colored spots or areas as objects for the same two fovea to focus upon, they cannot appear as a single object but al- ternately displace each other from view. This is the phenomenon 128 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. known as retinal rivalry. If one looks with each eyeupon a differ- ent image, as in Fig. 21, sometimes the one sometimes the other will be perceived. A piece of cardboard or paper ought to be placed in a vertical position on the middle dividing line so as to confine the vision of each eye to the figure or system of lines imme- diately in front of it. As Helmholtz puts it, we find that we are able "to attend voluntarily now to one and now to the other sys- tem of lines ; and then that system remains visible alone for a cer- tain time, while the other entirely vanishes. This happens, for ex- ample, if one attempts to count the lines first of one and then of FIGURE 21. the other system ; but it is extremely difficult to chain the atten- tion down to either one of the systems, for long," etc. That the rods and cones of the retina are arranged in a mosaic is indicated in Bergman's experiment. Place the system of lines in the left portion of Fig. 22 in a good light and gaze fixedly at it from a distance of about 5 feet. You will notice an appar- ent bending of the lines, as shown in the portion A, of the same figure. This is, of course, explicable on the basis of the mosaic arrangement. The retinal elements on which one of the white lines happens to fall are stimulated according as they are more or less touched, giving rise to corresponding sensations. SENSATION. 129 If, after looking intently at any bright object with a reasona- bly clear outline, we close our eyes, it is found that an image of the object remains for some time and only fades out of sight gradually. This phenomenon is known by the name of " after- image." After-images in which the arrangement of light and shade found in the original object is preserved are called posi- tive after-images i. e., the bright and dark parts correspond to those of the original object. Those after-images in which this relation is reversed are called negative after-images. The posi- tive after-image has a color like that of the original object. In the negative the opposite or complementary colors are evoked. FIGUEE 22. If some morning you look steadily for a minute at the win- dow of your room and then direct your eyes so as to look on a whited wall or screen the dark parts of the window will appear light, and vice versa. The arrangement of light and shade are here reversed just as in a photographic negative. If we look at a green surface for some time and then fix the eye upon a white sheet of paper or screen we find that the latter will contain an image of red color corresponding in size and outline to the orig- inal green surface. For example, if you look for a moment at a small green circle and then fix your eyes upon the white surface you will see within the bounds of the white surface a red circle as the negative after-image. Negative after-images are really a L. P. 9 130 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. form of retinal fatigue, but the positive are in all probability due to the inertia of the retina. Bright surfaces are always enlarged at the expense of dark surfaces by which they may happen to be surrounded ; this is called the phenomenon of irradiation. With Fig. 23 in a good light, notice that the white squares seem larger than the black, though they are actually of the same size. In the same connection it should be mentioned that color in- fluences the apparent size of an object. Every woman knows that her hand looks smaller in a black than in a white glove. The so- ciety belle declines to wear a white slipper to the ball or german because it makes her foot appear larger and less dainty than FIGURE 23. would a red slipper. The gray shades of suiting make a man ap- pear larger than when he wears a soft black. You have observed the same thing with reference to the colors of dwellings. A house painted a gray or light stone color will seem larger and nearer to the street (if one is looking at it from that point of view) than it would if painted any other color. We now come to speak of the phenomenon of color blindness. With certain persons certain defects of vision exist of such a na- ture that they are unable to distinguish some of the color shades. Such individuals are said to be "color blind." A little more than one hundred years ago it was discovered that there were persons who could not distinguish certain colors. The first case recorded was that of John Dalton,the celebrated English chemist. The SENSATION. 131 description he made of his defect was widely read and attracted general notice. The defect itself was named " Daltonism." About four per cent, of persons, or one in every twenty-five, are color blind. This phenomenon is quite frequently met with among railroad men, especially locomotive engineers, a number of whom are blind to the red rays. That they are "red blind" is probably due to the fact that in their long apprenticeship as firemen their eyes became over-stimulated by the red rays of the glaring fur- nace grates, so that those elements of the retina whose function it is to perceive red have simply been so fatigued and" worn out" that they cannot " take up the burden of life again." Holmgren's method of testing color blindness is the one ordinarily employed. Spread the variously colored worsteds on a white cloth in good daylight. Select any one distinct color e. g., a light blue and ask the person serving as subject to select from the mass of worsteds all the other skeins that seem to him to be the same in color as the standard you have already laid to one side. If he makes errors in putting pink, gray, green, buff, lavender, lilac, magenta, etc., with the blue skein you selected, he is evidently color blind. Red blindness is most frequently met with, while violet blindness is exceedingly rare. A person red blind sees black and white and their mixture, which makes gray, much the same as others do. He cannot distin- guish correctly the color of any red object. If the object is very bright red, it looks like feeble green, and if feeble red, it appears black. The explanation of this, according to the above theory is that the waves of light from a red object on entering a red-blind eye do not produce the sensation of red, because the red perceiv- ing nerve elements are absent, but they fall on the green and vio- let perceiving elements. The waves of light from green objects are nearest the length of those of red objects, and the waves from bright red objects excite the green perceiving nerve elements slightly, producing the sensation of feeble green, while feeble red is not sufficiently strong to excite them, and the sensation is black or perhaps a brown. 132 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. Yellow, which is a combination of red and green, appears green to the red blind, as the red part of it produces no impression except on the green-perceiving nerve elements. Red and green objects may appear to him of the same color, only differing in intensity. An intense red and feeble green may appear to him to be of the same color. "A color-blind officer once desired to purchase a blue uniform ; he chose a blue coat and waistcoat and red breeches, which he supposed matched." Another case is that of a person who said he could not see any difference between the red ripe fruit on the trees and the leaves ; a boiled lobster and a cucumber were to him of the same color. Another wrote a letter, part with black ink and part with red, without being aware of any difference. Another says a red-brick house and the green lawn on which it is situated are of the same color. A color-blind engraver says his defect is an advantage to him, as he sees colored objects in black and white, just as he desires to engrave them. A color blind person picked up a red-hot coal and asked what that funny green thing was. Another, an artist, painted a landscape with red trees. Another purchased a pair of green pants supposing they were brown. An architect copied a brown house in blue and green and made the sky above it rose color. A post-office clerk, who sold the stamps, found himself in trouble because he did not distinguish the red from the green stamps by their color.* Color blindness is, however, normal at the periphery of the retina. This leads us to make mention of the fact that impor- tant changes in the quality of our sensations are dependent upon the portion of the retina on which the visual image falls. The entire retina can be divided into three belts or zones a central one (the belt immediately surrounding the yellow spot), a middle zone and an outer or peripheral one. In the zone immediately surrounding the fovea, nearly all colors can be recognized. Out- *Many other such examples are found in Superintendent Peckham's interesting article on Color Blindness Wisconsin Board of Health report for 1881. SENSATION. 133 side of this is the second zone, in which blue and yellow can alone be distinguished. Farther out at the periphery, color shades can- not be distinguished at all, the various colors all appearing black, white or gray. In passing from the center to the periphery red changes at first into orange, then into violet and blue in turn, and finally, into grey as it passes out from the field of vision. Have you ever tried this interesting experiment? Require the subject to fix his attention on some designated point di- rectly in front of him. While his eyes are thus fixed on this point, approach him from behind with a pencil or small stick, or, better, a black piece of pasteboard, at the end of which is a small bit of colored paper e. g., yellow. Observe how far forward it must be moved before he will discern its color. You will notice that some colors must be moved much farther forward than others in order that they may be recognized. Furthermore, you will observe that the object is seen, no matter what be its color, long before the color is itself recognized. It is a disputed question as to how many colors are distin- guishable. You remember Newton speaks of the " seven primary colors." Some of the colors he names, however, are not any more primary or fundamental than many he omits. At any rate, it is certain that his classification is very unsatisfactory. Why indigo should be given a place in his list while brown is shut out, is difficult to conceive. We know that the number of color tones discernible by the human eye is very large. In oil the average person can perceive 125 colors. Herschel makes the claim that the worker on the mosaics at Rome must have distinguished at least 30,000 color tones. It has been claimed that certain of the early nations that is, the human race at a certain primitive stage of culture, had no color sensations they were color blind. In one of his earlier writings, Gladstone makes the claim that the ancient Greeks were color blind to blue, and bases this claim on the fact that Homer had no proper terms for blue. Also in describing the rainbow no mention was made of blue. The Bongo negroes of Central Amer- ica designate but two colors red and black. It is interesting 134 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. to note in this connection that some insects have distinct color sensations. If certain colors, for example green and red, are in some way united on the retina, we have a distinct sensation of a new color tone very unlike either of the two thus united. If red and green are~ so united we have the color called " white." Two colors which by their admixture produce white are called complemen- tary colors. For every color there is another which, if mixed with it, will produce a colorless combination. The complementary colors for different persons are not always the same, and the two eyes of the same person may differ in this respect. The sub- joined table of Helmholtz, has some general significance as bear- ing on this subject of complementary colors : Complementary Color. Color. Red Green-blue Orange Blue Yellow Indigo-blue Green-yellow Violet The effect of one color on another when two patches of color are adjacent or are presented to the eye, one directly after the other, is called contrast. You all know that a bright object ap- pears brighter with surroundings darker than itself and darker with surroundings brighter than itself. We have both successive and simultaneous contrast. Select a piece of medium gray paper from which cut four small squares (each about one-half inch square). Then choose four differently colored sheets of paper e. g., bright red, yellow, blue and green, each piece about six inches square. Lay one of your small squares of gray on each of these colored pieces and cover them all with a piece of white tissue paper. Your gray squares that are actually of the same shade now appear to be of different colors. In each case they assume a shade or color tone complementary to that of the large color surf ace on which they lie. Thus the gray square that happens to lie on the blue ground will appear yellow, the one on the green surface will appear a deep pink, the one on the yellow will appear blue, while that on the red will appear green. SENSATION. 135 The retinal image in the human eye is, as you know, always in- verted ; the points that are at the right and upper portion of the object are at the left and lower portion of the image, and vice versa. Still we do not see the object inverted, corresponding to. the image on the retina, but we see it -''right side up" corre- sponding to the object itself. That the image on the retina is inverted is specifically characteristic of the eyes of vertebrates. The composite image in the compound eye of the glowworm or fly is not an inverted but an upright retinal image. Again, how is it, having two eyes and therefore two retinal images, that we do not see objects as double, as we do when we push the side of the eyeball with our finger when gazing fixedly at an object? The customary union of the two retinal images is in the main accounted for by the crossing of the optic nerve fibers, for by this means the excitations produced in the left half of each retina are joined and together conducted to the right hemisphere of the brain, and vice versa. With a single motionless eye we could have no possible percep- tion of solid objects. The retinal images are superficial and plani- form, but the mind sees things as solids. The mind, then, asso- ciates the ideas gained through movement and touch with thoseof simple vision. A person that is blind from birth and receives his eyesight later in life as the gift of supreme surgical skill, conceives all objects to be directly in contact in actual touch with the outer surface of the eyeball. He only learns by degrees to pro- ject his sensations of sight accurately with reference to both dis- tance and solidity. By vision alone a sphere is perceived simply as a delicately shaded disk. A cube is a flat surface bounded by converging lines and abruptly shaded. Ruskin says: "The whole technical power of painting depends on our recovery of what maybe called the innocence of the eye; that is to say, of a sort of childish per- ception of these flat stains of color merely as such, without a con- sciousness of what they signify as a blind man would see them if suddenly gifted with sight." In normal circumstances sight is the leading avenue of percep- 136 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. tion or observation. The superiority of vision to the other senses is due to the fact that by means of this avenue of sense we can apprehend things at a distance as well as those that are near, as well as a great' many things at the same time for example, the variously colored leaves of an autumn tree, or the pattern of a wall paper or carpet. And again the eye calls forth our admira- tion on account of the extreme delicacy with which it acts. It can pass from one object to another with a swiftness which none of the other end organs of sense can imitate. It thus gathers a large amount of data in a very short time. It places these data at the service of the intellect as quick as the intellect can use them. The eye has always been regarded as the noblest of the sense-organs. As all know, we are exceedingly dependent upon the acquired perceptions of sight. Of these acquired perceptions there are sev- eral classes. In the first place we judge of distance by size. Again, if we know the real size of an object we estimate its distance by its apparent magnitude. If we actually know the flying bird to be an eagle, and yet find that it appears exceedingly small we are sure that it is a great distance from us. If we are on the roof of a building and know that the persons walking on the streets be- low are full-grown men, which, however, look to us from our ele- vation like pygmies, we judge, and judge rightly, that we are quite a considerable distance from the ground. Likewise we judge of magnitude by the assumed distance. If we have a correct idea of the distance we perceive them full size. If, however, we are de- ceived as to the distance we always make serious errors with ref- erence to the actual size of the object. A fly skipping across the window-pane may for a moment be regarded as a large bird at a great distance. If, however, the magnitude be unknown we judge of distance by means of the clearness of the color, the sharpness of the outline, and the intensity of the impression which the ob- ject makes upon us. The traveler from the Atlantic Coast States or the smoky Eastern city, who travels across The Plains judges the mountains of Colorado to be far nearer than they actually are. We hear of many laughable experiences of tourists who have at- tempted to walk to a given mountain before breakfast, thinking SENSATION. 137 it to be but a short distance, but discovering that it is actually several miles away. Such an illusion is due to the fact that the atmosphere is much more transparent than that to which the traveler is accustomed. Furthermore, intermediate objects affect our judgments of distance and therefore our judgments of size. This accounts for the fact that the sun and moon appear larger at the horizon than at the zenith. The intensity of the impres- sion also plays an important part in these judgments of distance. If a light makes but a faint impression on us we judge it to be at a considerable distance. When the locomotive engineer, as he speeds his train through the darkness, perceives the lights of the distant station which are therefore at about the same distance from him, he knows which are the red and which are the white lights, though they evoke no color sensations. This is because the red light always gives rise to a more intense sensation than a white light at the same distance. The blind man can have no notion of what we mean when we speak of objects appearing smaller as they move away, because he is compelled to always think of them as of their constant tac- tile size just as he recognizes them by their u tactile names " after he has been made to see. LESSON XII. SENSATION (CONTINUED). HEARING. THE human ear consists of three portions the external ear or concha; the middle ear or tympanum ; and the internal ear or labyrinth. (For a description of the structure of the ear the reader is referred to any good book on anatomy. Space will not permit a detailed description here.)* The internal ear is really the organ of hearing and consists of a complicated and tortuous bony tube or chamber resembling some- what the interior of a snail shell. The function of the external ear (the expansion seen on the exterior of the head, called the concha) is to receive, convey and modify the vibratory action of the air until the tympanum is reached. The tympanum, or "drum of the ear," consists of a parchment-like substance which is con- nected with a chain of bones that play upon a membranous chamber inclosing a liquid substance. Bodies vary in the ability to emit or convey sound. This is the same as saying that their susceptibility to vibration is differ- ent. A stick of timber or bar of iron will convey to the ear in contact with it the sound made by a scratch of a pin, for hun- dreds of feet. Likewise the rudely constructed toy telephone of childhood days will convey a whisper for a long distance, though it consists of nothing but two pasteboard collar boxes connected by a piece of twine from 1,500 to 3,000 feet in length. Waves that are non-periodic produce what is called a " noise;" when these same auditory waves are periodic they constitute a " tone " or " note." What are ordinarily called noises are really accompanied by musical notes. The slamming door is accompa- *The best published work thus far is that on " The Vertebrate Ear," by Dr. Howard Ayers. Published in Journal of Morphology, May, 1892. (138) SENSATION. 139 nied by some music. Likewise all tones are accompanied by noises. For example, the scraping of the violin. Noises may be compounded out of musical notes. Thus, when you strike a sin- gle key on the piano you have a musical tone. Strike all the keys at the same time and you have, instead of several musical notes, a most outrageous non-musical noise. The various efforts made by scientists to determine the lower limit of sound for the human ear, have resulted in disagreement. The difficulty, of course, lies in the fact that the absolute stillness essential to the perfect working of the experiment can never be secured. The best record of which we know up to date gives the result of researches made by Schafhautl who fixed the lower limit of sound as that made by a cork ball weighing one milligram (.0154 grains), falling from a height of one millimeter (.03937 inch). The acuteness of hearing is frequently increased by dis- ease. " Exalted hearing," by which is meant an unduly keen per- ception of sounds, is common to many disturbances of the nervous system, both functional and organic. As a rule, the intoxi- cated person has the experience of " exalted hearing," L e., his sense of hearing is more acute than when he is in a nor- mal or "sober" condition. The test usually employed by railroad corporations to discover the acuteness of the sense of hearing in their employes serves very well as a laboratory test, though crude it may seem, for the purpose of determining the mini- mal sounds that can be heard. The experiment should take place in a large carpeted room, as free as possible from noise. Let the subject be seated with his side toward the experimenter. He should be blindfolded and have the ear opposite to the one being tested plugged with cotton. The experimenter then endeavors to find what is the greatest distance at which the subject can hear the tick of a watch which is held at the level of the ear. The distance at which the sound of the watch-tick can be heard may be found to vary from three to seven yards. Attention has already been called to the fact that by bringing the finger in contact with a cogwheel revolving at agivenrate, or a tuning fork, we may have as many as 1,000 sensations in a single 140 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. second. (See page 116.) But if the rate be increased beyond 1 ,000 per second there results one continuous sensation. The sense of hearing comes closest to the sense of touch. In experiments with one ear the crack of two electric sparks may be heard as distinct when the one sounds .002 of a second before the other; or, to be more accurate, .00205 of a second. When the sounds come as close together as .00198 of a second they are heard as one sound, a little louder than a single spark would make. In experiments with both ears the limit is higher .064 of a second. To recapitulate briefly, we would say that the specific physical stimulus for the organ of hearing consists of simple sound waves that unite sometimes as musical sound waves and sometimes as sound waves of noise. These sound waves act as stimuli upon the peripheral termination of the auditory nerve. Sensations of musical sound can also be produced by electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve. Mechanical stimuli, such as the pressure of tumors on the auditory nerve, also produce sen- sations of hearing. In our psychological investigations of the sensations of sound we must first consider their various qualities. We must, how- ever, exclude the large class of sensations known as noises, since they compose an especial group of sensations hardly accessible to investigation. For our present purpose it is sufficient to de- vote our attention to the simple sensations of tones and of music- al sounds. Your knowledge of physics tells you that the so-called tones of the piano are not simple but complex. Simple sounds are most easily produced by striking a tuning fork. We get compar- atively simple tones by blowing across the neck of an open bottle or from a flute. The only difference in the quality of all really simple tones lies in their pitch, to which the number of vibrations per second on the part of the stimulating medium corresponds. The greater the number of vibrations the higher do we perceive the tone to be. The lowest audible note varies, of course, with different individuals. For the average person the lower limit of pitch is about 40 vibrations per second. Helmholtz puts the limit at 28 vibrations, Preyer at 16, others at 19 and 23, while SENSATION. 141 Wundt claims to have heard even eight vibrations per second. The highest audible note is made up of about 40,000 vibrations per second. Some persons cannot hear the cry of a bat or the chirp of a cricket, which comprise about 37,500 vibrations a second. The sensitiveness of the ear to differences of pitch varies greatly with different individuals and with the same individual for the different octaves of the musical scale. Persons are frequently met with, who are totally insensitive to differences in pitch they do not know one note from another. How terrible it must be to have this world full of beautiful rhythmic sounds reduced to a continuous monotone. By an elaborate series of experiments, it has been found that if we sound a tone of 120 vibrations and then one of 120^ vibra- tions per second, the average person can clearly distinguish the pitch of both tones. If we produce a tone of 960 vibrations per second, it is found that a tone of 960^- vibrations can be distin- guished from it. But if it required i of a vibration when the rate is 120 per second, it ought require 8 times i, or more than one vibration, when the number is 960 per second. Therefore, the relative discriminative ability is not constant. We now come to define timbre. By the timbre of a note we mean its " color tone." To illustrate. The C of the piano sounds quite different from the pure C produced by the flute or tuning fork, despite the absolute sameness of pitch. The C of the violin or human voice would differ still from that of either the piano or flute. Compare the C of different makes of pianos, the same ab- solute number of vibrations are evoked in each case, but there is a difference between the C of the Stein way, Knabe, Chickering or Sohmer pianos, respectively. All these differences of quality in the auditory sensations when the pitch remains the same, are comprehended in the conception of " timbre" or color tone. Bearing upon the discriminative ability of the ear for the intensity of sounds we have the interesting series of experiments by Dr. Merkel and Professor Frank Angell. Merkel permitted the person on whom he was experimenting to hear two stimuli 142 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. of sound that are alike in quality but different in intensity, and then requested him to determine an acoustic stimulus that would give rise to a sensation that could be classified as lying directly between the first two. Experimenting in this way Merkel and others have found that the just perceivable increment of loudness required an increase of three-tenths of the original stimulus be- tween 20 and 5,000 of his arbitrary scale. The discriminative ability of the ear both for differences in pitch and for differences in intensity is largely influenced by rep- etition and by amount of time that elapses between the two stimuli producing the sensations that are to be compared. Two tones so closely related as to be just distinguishable when heard in immediate succession appear to consciousness as one and the same when the interval is over one-half of a minute. We are quite likely to be mistaken with reference to our judg- ments of the direction from which sound comes and the location of its source. When the head is held at rest and a sound stimu- lus occurs, we frequently make mistakes by saying the sound came from before when it really came from behind ; that it came from above when it really came from below. Sound coming from the right and left is also exceedingly difficult to distinguish when the head is kept motionless. Of course we are guided by experi- ence. Weaker sensations of sound are localized at a point re- mote from us, while the stronger sensations are regarded as coming from a point quite near. Seat a person and blindfold him. Snap a telegraph sounder at different localities about two feet from his head and require him to designate the point from which the sound came. You will find that the above statements with reference to errors in judging the distinction of sound, are more than verified by such an experiment. Continuous sounds are more difficult to localize than short, sharp, rapid sounds. In a room heated by steam, blindfold a per- son standing near the center, turn him round and round until he loses all notion of the points of the compass. Open the stopcock of the steam radiator and he will misjudge its location nearly every time. The slight sound made by the breathing of a sleeping SENSATION. 143 child in the next room maybe interpreted to be the wail of a hound in the distant woods. The writer remembers when a boy of being terribly frightened by " ghosts." A noise was heard presumably directly overhead in a vacant attic. The ghost stories and pale face of the servant influenced the childish judgment. On the morrow it was discovered that the aforesaid ghost was nothing more than the noise made by the scraping of a limb of an apple- tree against the side of the house as the wind blew. The sound really came from a point at least forty feet removed from the supposed origin, and from a point almost directly opposite. Did you ever wait for a train at the noisy depot, with the engines passing back and forth ? Have you not at such times at the sound of an approaching engine hurriedly snatched your traveling bag with a view to getting a good seat, rushed to the platform and found, instead of your train, one going in the opposite direction ? If you ever have an opportunity, stand for a minute on State street in Chicago and seek to judge from which direction comes the sound of the gong of the cable car. Just a moment ago while writing the above I was thoroughly deceived by the slight hissing, whistling sound of a disorganized gas jet turned up to its full lighting power. This little annoying sound until just this instant I thought to be the whistle of a locomotive three-quarters of a mile away, instead of comingfrom any part of my " den." Seasickness begins with the ear. In the internal ear or laby- rinth are three little tubes which are placed at right angles to each other, just like the three sides at the corner of a book or cubical box. They are bent circular and filled with a fluid. They are more frequently known as the semicircular canals. You can see if one's head is moved at all the fluid in some one of these three tubes is set in motion. Jutting out from the inner surface of each of these canals are hairs or ciliary processes which connect with nerve cells that are in touch with the auditory nerves, and by this means connected with the auditory center on the brain- surface itself. As the peculiar nerve current caused by the motion of the head is transmitted to the brain it, at one point on its jour- 144 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. ney,runs near the " center " where the nerve controlling the stnv ach has its origin. When the moving and jerking of the head is too prolonged or too violent the stimulus is so great that the center for the nerves of the stomach is excited, causing the poor voyager to give up his dinner, or, to speak in more approved vernacular, he is impelled to " cast his bread upon the waters." Deaf mutes, the semicircular canals of whose ears are affected, are never seasick just as they are never dizzy, and for the same reason. Hearing possesses the highest significance in the development of every human mind. Without the sense of hearing vocal utter- ances would never become language. Sounds are also significant as expressing the emotional life of man. Even simple and articulate tones can express the deepest feeling, though no words are coupled with them. The sigh of distress, the peal of laughter, the whine of a beggar are as clearly understood and sometimes more clearly understood without any accompaniment of words. Mendelssohn's" Songs without Words" cannot fail to touch every person who hears them. Humanity is unanimous in naming one of these musical gems " Consolation." The sense of hearing enables a man to communicate with his fel- low man. The brotherhood of man is directly dependent upon the sense of hearing. The voice is the interpreter of nearly all the emotions. As an intelligent blind man remarked with great emphasis, " The human voice is to me the divinest endowment of man." Certain it is that the dignity of hearing is above that of any of the other senses. A comparatively frequent phenomena is that known as color audition or pseudo-chromesthesia. By these and similar terms it is meant to signify that large class of phenomena in which colors are called up in the mind of the person when certain letters or words are spoken or seen in print or writing. These experiences indicate a peculiar " faculty " by means of which any primary sen- sation can evoke, in the case of some persons, a false visual sensa- tion of color constant in the case of the same stimulus with the same person. SENSATION. 145 A considerable number of cases have been investigated by the writer, but only one is selected on account of limited space. It is that of a young lady, much above the average in intelligence and very accomplished. She is a skillful musician, having taught in a conservatory of music for some years; very well informed as to literature, and is herself a pleasing writer. With her these pseudo- color impressions are produced in three ways: First, and chiefly, when she sees the graphic forms of words and letters; second when she hears letters, words and other sounds; and, third, by means of association of ideas. With this person all the letters are colored and as follows : A = opaque white. N = gray. B =dark cactus green. = black on white ground. C =pale yellow. P = bright yellow. D =tan color. Q =Naples yellow (buff). E = warm gray but pale. R= dark green. F i= very dark brown. S = light green. G = yellowish bright tan. T=red ; less intense than H or K. H = red, crimson. U = gray. 1 = black V= pearl slightly lavender. J = black, sometimes shades into W black. green. X = red ; still less intense. K = red very like H. Y = yellow into green . L=black. Z brown sometimes shading into M = blue. an iridescent purple. The numerical digits are also colored. Thus 1 is black like i; 2 is opaque white, like a; 3 is bright green, slightly yellow; 4 is seal brown; 5, black; 6, gray; 7, yellow; 8, pink; 9, brown, lighter than 4. The colors of numbers are often and even gener- ally more intense than those of letters. In music written in different keys, C, D, etc., the music has a general background of color which is the same as that of the in- dex letter indicating the key. Thus, music written in the key of D is tan color. All "sharp" keys are brighter and "flats" are less brilliant. Words pronounced alike but spelled differently havo different colors. Words generally take their tone of color from the initial L. P. 10 146 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. letter. Thus with the same letters in different combinations we have different color-impressions e. g., deer = tan; reed = green- ish yellow. With this person we find there is an intimate relation between form and color. In grouping several letters of one color we find that H, K, T, and X are red ; B, R, S, and 6 are green; C, G, P, Q, Y and 7 are yellow; Z, F, 4 and 9 are brown; N, U, V, A and E are gray. Furthermore, the membrane of the ear is able to give us, by means of faint and delicate pressure sensations, a pretty good picture of the outside world irrespective of oureyes. Suppose you close your eyes when quietly seated ; have some one bring a large object like a book or block of wood near to your face in a per- fectly noiseless manner; you at once become aware of itspresence and then of its departure. Most persons, when blindfolded, can readily tell by the " feel " in the ear and face whether the object placed near to the face is thick or thin, solid or open, etc. Thus any one can distinguish between a solid board, a perforated board, a piece of wire gauze and an empty frame, respectively. Mr. Dresslar has made some interesting investigations into this subject.* As apparatus he used a light framework of wood four feet long and one foot wide, and divided into four spaces, each one foot square. The first one of these spaces was left open, the second latticed with strips three-quarters of an inch wide, and with spaces of one-half of an inch between them; the first space was closed solidly with a panel of wood, while the fourth was filled with a wire screen. The frame was then suspended from a high ceiling by four strings fastened in pairs (so that it would swing lengthwise easily and without swerving) and made to swing low enough to be opposite the face of the subject. A silk thread was fastened to the ends of the frame, and passed over small pulleys inserted in standards set about ten feet from each end of the frame. The two ends of the strings were then tied to- gether to furnish the operator an easy and noiseless method for shifting the frame so as to bring the different spaces opposite the ear and face of the subject. * American Journal of Psychology, Vol. V, No. 3. SENSATION. 147 The method of experimentation was as follows : The subject with closed eyes was blindfolded in such a way that little or none of the face but the eyes was covered ; he was seated comfortably with his face at a distance of two or three inches from the path of the frame, and asked to judge between two spaces irregularly presented. He was required to indicate his judgment by a pre- arranged system of signs in order to prevent any reverbera- tion of the voice which might vitiate the results. The first set of judgments were thus taken, and were for the purpose of finding the degree of power to distinguish between the three following pairs: Open lattice; lattice solid; solid wire. The accom- panying table shows the discriminative ability thus discovered for three different subjects : SUBJECT. OPEN AND LATTICE. LATTICE AND SOLID. SOLID AND WIRE. R. W. R. W. R. W. R. W. R. W. R. W. J. A. B. . . O C. 65 15 72 47 53 24 59 25 74 46 58 17 58 2 33 13. 69 1 56 28 14 70 4 45 21 4 73 46 2 14 9 77 2 F. B. D. . . Explanation of Table. The figures in the columns marked R indicate the num- ber of correct judgments, those in columns marked W incorrect. For example, when J. A. B. judged between the open and lattice spaces, he made 65 right and 15 wrong judgments in 80 presentations of the open, and 59 right and 25 wrong in 84 presentations of the lattice; while judging between lattice and solid, he made 58 right and 2 wrong judgments in 60 presentations of the lattice, and 56 right and no wrong judgments when the solid was presented, and so on for all the others. Of course in the ordinary routine of daily life the normal per- son makes no use of the feeling of " shut-in-ness " he experiences when a more or less solid object is held near the face. The blind, however, are very dependent upon this peculiar class of sensa- tions. No man enjoys traveling more than the blind man. He can tell whether his train is wending its way through a hilly, un- even country or over the broad plains. The blind man is ever 148 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. aware of the extent of his horizon. In an interesting book, " Blindness and the Blind," its author gives an interesting account of how the blind receive their perceptive images : " Whether within a house or in' the open air, whether walking or standing still, I can tell, although quite blind, when I am opposite an object, and can perceive whether it be tall or short, slender or bulky. I can also detect whether it be a solitary object or a continuous fence ; whether it be a close fence or composed of open rails; and often whether it be a wooden fence, a brick or stonewall, or a quickset hedge. I cannot usually perceive objects if much lower than my shoulder, but sometimes very low objects can be detected. This may depend on the nature of the objects, or on some abnormal state of the atmosphere. The currents of air can have nothing to do with this power, as the state of the wind does not directly af- fect it; the sense of hearing has nothing to do with it, as when snow lies thickly on the ground objects are more distinct, although the footfall cannot be heard. I seem to perceive objects through the skin of my face, and to have the impressions immediately transmitted to the brain. "The only part of my body possessing this power is my face; this I have ascertained by suitable experiments. Stopping my ears does not interfere with it, but covering my face with a thick veil destroys it altogether. None of the five senses have any- thing to do with the existence of this power, and the circumstances above named induce me to call this unrecognized sense by the name of 'facial perception.' When passing along a street I can distin- guish shops from private houses, and even point out the doors and windows, etc., and this whether the doors be shut or open. When a window consists entirely of one entire sheet of glass it is more difficult to discover than one composed of a number of small panes. From this it would appear that glass is a bad con- ductor of sensation, or at any rate, of the sensation specially connected with this sense. When objects below the face are perceived, the sensation seems to come in an oblique line from the object to the upper part of the face. While walking with a friend in Forest Lane, Stratford, I said, pointing to a fence SENSATION. 149 which separated the road from a field, < Those rails are not quite so high as my shoulder.' He looked at them and said they were higher. We, however, measured and found them about three inches lower than my shoulder. At the time of making this ob- servation I was about four feet from the rails. Certainly in this instance facial perception was more accurate than sight. When the lower part of a fence is brickwork and the upper part rails, the fact can be detected, and the line where the two meet easily perceived. Irregularities in height, and projections and indenta- tions in walls can also be discovered." LESSON XIII. DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSES. WE now propose to speak of the early development of the child's intellect. Since all knowledge begins with sensation, this statement means no more and no less than to say that in this chapter our endeavor will be to trace the processes of growth with respect to the sense perceptions of the infant's earliest life. The question we are really occupied with is : By what process of unfolding, in what order, from what germ beginnings, through what steps or stages, does the child mind develop and mature its powers of sense perception ? The difficulty one meets in endeavoring to answer such a ques- tion is almost insuperable, since it is impossible by memory to bring back a single vestige of the experiences of the earliest days of our infant life. As far as memory is concerned, the first days of our childhood are shrouded over with a cloud of impenetrable obscurity. Not a single one of the " first" sensations can be called up in memory. No individual can ever possess memory power so potent as to be rewarded with success in its endeavors to call up to the mind the first experience had with the eyes, ears, fingers, etc. Ask yourself the question : What was the first object I ever saw ? What was the first sound I ever heard? What was the first thing I ever touched? What was my first sensation of temperature, taste, smell, motion and the like ? To even propose such questions seems the height of folly. A little snatch of poetry from Dr. Holland's " Bitter Sweet " does not come amiss when we think of the immense difficulty that confronts every investigator in the realm of Child Psychology : Who can tell what a baby thinks? Who can follow the gossamer links? (150) DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSES. 151 By which the maimikin feels his way Out. from the shore of the great unknown, Blind and wailing and alone, Into the light of day? *''- What does he think of his mother's eyes? What does he think of his mother's hair? What of the cradle-roof, that flies Forward and backward through the air? ***** What does he think when her quick embrace Presses his hand and buries his face Deep where the heart throbs sink and swell With a tenderness she can never tell, Though she murmur the words Of all the birds Words she has learned to murmur well? But we can tell what our infant life must have been by per- forming certain experiments and making certain observations upon children from the very first hour of their existence. How it must have seemed to us as children we cannot possibly tell. Upon the investigations of Child Psychology the introspective methods shed no direct light. Observation and experiment are the only methods by which we learn the content of a child's mind at any stage of its development. Such tests must be so adaptable that they can be applied to any child. Although each child has the same sense organs, and the same fundamental modes of sensibility, we find that striking differences of sense capacity are met with in different individuals. No two children are ex- actly alike in their sense development. It is impossible for them to be so. Each child that enters a school at six years of age is different from, every other child in that school. His eye, ear, hand, and all of his sense organs have been trained differently. The child as he presents himself at the schoolroom door is not a rounded-out normally developed child. He may have had his eye developed at the expense of his ear, or his ear developed at the expense of his tactile sense, etc. Now the function of the teacher is to develop the mind of the child normally. This means 152 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. that the various avenues of sensation must be trained equally well. By the training or cultivation of the senses is meant the even, harmonious, steady exercising of the child's sense organs so that these organs will become efficient and valued instruments, capable of being used in observation and discovery. We all know, if we have observed children at all, that they develop the power of perception by many experiments and many mistakes. By the same principle that the colt is broken into the harness or the dog is trained to know his place and function, does nature educate her dearest child man. If he obeys her laws his life is one of harmony, freedom, delightful satisfaction and joy. If he runs counter to the rough edges of stern law it wounds and pains. Dr. Moebius, professor of zoology at the University of Kiel, relates an interesting experiment performed by Mr. Antsberg of Stralsund. "A pike, who swallowed all small fishes which were put into the aquarium, was separated from them by a pane of glass, so that, whenever he tried to pounce on them, he struck his gills against the glass, and sometimes, so violently , that he remained lying on his back as if dead. Ho recovered, however, and repeated his on- slaughts till they became rarer and rarer, and at last, after three months, ceased altogether. After having been in solitary con- finement for six months, the pane of glass was removed from the aquarium so that the pike could again roam about freely among the other fishes. He at once swam toward them, but he never touched any one of them but always halted at a respectful dis- tance of about an inch, and was satisfied to share with the rest the meat that was thrown into the aquarium. He had therefore been trained so as not to attack the other fishes which he knew as inhabitants of the same tank. As soon, however, as a strange fish was thrown into the aquarium, the pike in nowise respected him but swallowed him at once." In something of the same way as the pike learned his lesson by striking his gills against the glass, the child learns that the fire burns, the knife cuts, the nee- dle pricks, and the like. DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSES. 153 Leaving these more general observations we come to the direct and specific question What is the primary condition in which the mind of the infant exists before the first beginnings of con- scious activity ? We can best answer by saying that it is very closely allied to the state of unbroken sleep undisturbed by dreams. Or it may be likened to a "dead faint" in which little shirnmerings of sensation are experienced in such an indefinite and vague way that they never enter into clear perception. The soul or mind of the infant never has sensations in the fullest sense until there is a keen, clear-cut, positive experience of pain or pleasure. The sensations that are first experienced by the child are the muscular and organic sensations mentioned in a previous chap- ter. While it might be thought that hearing would be one of the earliest senses to develop, such is not the case. Usually several days elapse before the child can be said to actually hear. Pro- fessor Ladd puts the case clearly when he says : "All newly born children are deaf; the temporary deafness is caused by lack of air in the tympanum previous to respiration. Great individual differ- ences exist as respects the age at which children give unmistak- able tokens of having sensations of sound. It was not until the first half of the fourth day that one investigator was satisfied his child could hear." There are, however, some exceptions to this. The writer, in making some experiments on his own little girl, found that she manifested unmistakable and indubitable signs of hearing, within two hours after birth. Though hearing is feebly developed at first it remains the longest of any of the senses. In falling asleep, hearing is probably the last sense we lose. Likewise as death creeps over us we hear to the very last even after the tactile sense is completely benumbed by death's chill hand. As a rule, most persons are more easily awakened by appeal to hearing than if the stimulus were that of any of the other senses. In states of stupefaction, sleep, drunkenness and the like, hearing seems to be the one chief strand that connects the mind with the outside world. The sense of taste is developed still later than hearing. At first 154 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. the little babe will swallow bitter medicine as readily as milk. Nearly four weeks must elapse before it can possibly distinguish the one from ;bhe other. The sense of smell comes even later. Some recent investigators claim that smell is active from the first. Almost all agree that after the general muscular sensations, together with the organic sensations, those of the skin come next in order. Perhaps the first real sensation of pain the infant has is when the air rushes into its little lungs for the first time and by reflex action it is really compelled to cry and thus announces its debut. It is hard to say which is developed first, the hand or the eye. The race between the two is "neck and neck." We believe the evidence of recent investigation is in favor of the eye. The infant sees an object, then reaches for it. Certain it is that the child is " right-eyed " before it is " right-handed." Touch devel- ops more rapidly than vision and its early discriminations are more delicate. From the very conditions of his pre-natal exist- ence we might correctly infer that the sense of contact both with reference to temperature and pressure are well developed in the infant at birth. It is by means of touch that the child learns to distinguish his "me" from the "not-me." By touch he first learns that a portion of the world his body is himself and that another portion of the world of objects is " not-body." By what steps or stages in the progressive unfolding of touch does the child acquire the ability to distinguish between his "me" and the "not-me" between himself and the world? The first step taken, and a most significant and important one it is, is that by which the mind of the child comes to know familiarly that his own body is bounded by a limiting surface. Al- ready certain muscular and tactile sensations have been clearly perceived. The material objects of the outside world which affect the child.'s sensorium come in contact with his bodily surface. These sensations of contact are crudely and vaguely localized in his skin. By coming in touch with these outside objects the child learns to know that his body has a limit. Of this limit he DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSES. 155 is being made constantly aware. His little sense world is for the time being bounded by his skin. A second step takes place when he observes that there is a difference between touching a part of his own body and some other object. When his little baby finger rests on the table or on the window-pane, or on the little piece of Hamburg edging with which his " swaddling clothes" are trimmed, he observes that the experience is different from that which he has when with his finger he picks his toes or touches his dimpled knee. In the lat- ter case the surface that is touched also gives the sensation of being touched ; in the case of the other objects there is no such sensation. He at once distinguishes between those objects which give a sensation of being touched and those which do not. This is the distinguishing mark between objects that are " body "and those that are " not-body." Vision evidently begins at that very early period when the child notices and is attracted by the bright and steady light. The infant's eye is fixed on such an object and follows it for a few degrees from side to side in space. At first the child can only move his eyes laterally i. e., from right to left, or from* left to right. If the object is moved up and down his eye cannot follow it at first, as the muscles which control' the vertical motions of the eye are slow in receiving their training. Statistics seem to show that very few children manifest a pref- erence for a particular color before they are fifty days old. (See Preyer.) My own experiments have not been very extensive so far as the number of subjects is concerned, but they have been very thorough on the one little creature that has kindly lent herself for the purposes of science my own little daughter. When she was but ten days old I began to experiment upon her with reference to her choice of colors. The experiment was very simple. Four diminutive incandescent lights of about one-half candle power each were used. The globes of these lamps were gaily colored, being a bright red, electric blue, bright green and brilliant yel- low respectively. All four of these little lamps were placed directly in front of her, and then each one of them was re- 156 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. moved in turn. The order in which they were removed from her field of vision was varied in each of these experiments. This was done three times each day, for over two weeks with no pref- erence manifested for any one of these four colors. All pleased her child eye equally. On the 27th day, however, a distinct choice of color was manifested. The four lights were placed be- fore her as usual. She looked at them all intently. After one minute elapsed the blue one was removed her eye followed it a short distance and then became fixed on the three remaining ones. The blue lamp was returned to its place and the red one removed ; she followed this one also for but a short distance and then allowed her eyes to again become fastened on the accus- tomed place. The red lamp was returned to its socket, and the yellow one removed. Her eye followed this closely, and when it passed out from her field of vision she made it very evident that she was displeased, as she knitted her brows, stiffened her back, threw back her head as if angry, looked vacantly into space, and would not return her eyes to the place where the other lights re- mained burning as brightly as ever. She evidently wanted the yellow light and the yellow light only. It was again brought within her field of vision. As quick as her eye caught the brilliant glare a marked change came over her face and she showed unmistakable signs of pleasure. The experiment was repeated twenty-three times in five days, and each time yellow was the decided preference. Kindergarten teachers agree quite generally in saying that the majority of children coming under their observation prefer yellow to any other color. The untutored savage also has a decided preference for that color especially the African tribes. There are certainly better reasons for painting a child's toys yellow than there are for coloring them red, at least so far as the pleasure of the child is concerned. Children do not at first see objects as we do one object nearer than an other. At first they have no perception of distance and solidity. This is directly in line with the experiences of blind per- sons on first obtaining the use of their eyes. All objects appear to them at first as touching their eyes. Like the infant they can- DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSES. 157 not, with their eyes, distinguish between a flat drawing and a solid body. The extension which is seen by persons who have recovered from blindness is extension of two dimensions. A solid cube or a solid sphere is taken by them to be simply a plane or a disc. A solid cube and a flat projection of the same are both taken to be flat and in every respect alike. The testimony is unanimous that objects seem very near to the eye. Some of these blind patients who, by a surgical triumph, have been made to see, in attempt- ing to reach objects that are extended to them, grasp behind them when held near to them, and when more remote can only touch them after repeated trials. Some are afraid to move lest they should in some way strike their body against objects which are really quite remote; after using their eyes for some time they acquire the ability to discriminate among objects as near and far. It is by the use of touch and sight together that the perceptions of distance and solidity arise. That the eye and hand cooperate in infancy is a fact borne out by all observation and experiment. Observe the maneuvers of the young child during its first days, and you will be convinced that the eye and the hand soon learn to work together. As the eye of the infant at first rests fixedly in its socket, so his hands and arms at first hang uselessly from his shoulders or dangle helplessly at his side. There are no purposeful movements exe- cuted by the hands or arms just as there are no objects sought out or chosen by the eye upon which to fix its " point of regard." At first the child cannot grasp or hold an object. Notice him as he tries so hard to carry an object to his mouth how clumsily the movements are made and how unsuccessful are his first at- tempts. He must learn to use his hands just as he must learn to direct the movement of his eyes. All these uses of the hand as of the eye are learned by conscious attention. The earliest move- ments are made aimlessly ; after many unsuccessful experiments and trials, at first more failures than successes he finally attains the stage of hand development at which he can be reasonably sure that the movement he desires so much to make can be sue- 158 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. cessfully carried out. When he is finally successful in his attempt, how his every look and expression manifest the gratification he so certainly feels. It is interesting in this connection to note that the earliest ob- jects which attract the eyes of the infant are his hands and fingers. The hands are his first playthings. That they should be the first to receive his visual notice is but natural. They are always flit- ting to and fro, ever before his eyes and constantly passing back and forth in his narrow field of vision. At first, as you know, the infant is very short-sighted and can observe only the nearest objects. It seems that everything conspires to bring his hand under the direct notice of his eye for at least the first one hun- dred days of his life. The growth and development of the mind is marked by three characteristics: (1) There is a gradual but rapid progression from vague unlocalized impressions to distinct definite knowledge. (2) Operations become more perfect and are performed with more facility each time they are performed. There is a general truth underlying all development, either mental or physical, that our powers are improved and strengthened by exercise. (3) There is a progress from the simple to the more complex processes of mental activity. The law of all mental growth is that progress is always from the simple to the complex, from the concrete to the abstract. Not the least valuable of the conclusions of modern experi- mental and observational psychology is that there is a uniform order in which the faculties of the mind unfold or develop. At least four stages are observable. (1) The sensation stage. Be- fore we can know anything about ourselves or the outside world we must have some one of our sense organs acted upon. Sense must supply the raw material which the intellect afterwards assimilates and uses. (2) The perception stage. After a num- ber of sensations have been experienced they are grouped and classified according as they proceed from the same point in space and arise contemporaneously in time. The child gets the sensations of yellow, roundness, etc., and then comes to see DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSES. 159 that they proceed from the same point in space, and decides that they are the properties or qualities of one single object the orange which he now apprehends. (3) The stage of re-presenta- tion. Under this general term are to be included memory, im- agination and fancy. (4) The stage of reflection and reasoning. There is no break in this process of development. It is the same mind that acts in all these stages and finds expression in them. The distinction just made between the various stages of develop- ment must not be interpreted to mean that they are sharply de- fined epochs of growth. We simply mean to say that sensation must precede perception ; perception must precede memory and imagination; and these in turn are developed before the mind's power to reason and reflect. Furthermore, every form of mental activity, and therefore mental growth, includes an act of attention more or less intense. Intellectual growth, as we have seen, is directly attendant upon intellectual activity. It is also directly related to the develop- ment of will power, for without the development of will there can be no prolonged concentrated effort of attention. Thus it is seen that the different phases of mental development are in a way interdependent. All mental development takes place by the cooperation of two sets of agencies. The first may be denomi- nated subjective factors, the second objective influences. By the subjective factors are meant the fundamental characteristics with which each individual mind is endowed at birth; e. g., native quickness, keenness, and the like. Also under these subjective fac- tors must be included the influence of heredity. Just as the child is born with its father's eyes, and mother's nose or lips, so cer- tain intellectual features perdure in the shape of inherited mental tendencies. Under the objective influences must be included all those potencies which can be grouped under the general name of en- vironment. The natural environment would in elude the physical conditions by which the child is surrounded. Social environment is the term by which we designate the group of individuals with which one comes in intimate contact. Differences in one's sur- 160 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. roundings, both physical and social, have a great deal to do with the differences in capacity and disposition which we meet in different persons. It is a fundamental fact that no two individ- uals ever come under exactly the same influences. Even twins, born into the same family at the same time, differ in their envir- onment from the very first. Added to this is the other fact, that owing to differences in their original capacities, the two will react quite differently to the same impressions. As life progresses, each new day presents new external influences which serve to differ- ence the two more and more. The school into which they enter, the different friendships, various commercial interests, and the like, all help to widen the gap between the two as far as their intellectual development is concerned. This is because the mind, just like the body, develops upon the food that is supplied and which it assimilates. Thus it is that no individual is independent of his surroundings. While we cannot claim that circumstances make the man, we are warranted in asserting that one's sur- roundings go a long way in determining the kind of person he is to become. The function of the teacher is to supply just that environment which will evoke the activities most essential to a high standard of mental, moral and physical development. If the child be deficient with respect to his visual powers, the teacher is called upon to stimulate these same powers. If the pupil exercise no imagination this faculty must also be aroused into activity by the teacher. After the teacher has a definite knowledge as to the powers and capacities of the pupil, it is his chief business and we might say, his only function, to surround his pupil with the environment that will best conduce to ideal rounded-out development. The true educator must ever keep before his mind's eye the ideal of a complete, strong and well de- veloped individual. As the first requisite in teaching is to know the child's mind, so the ultimate end of education is to prepare him for citizenship to prepare him physically, intellectually and morally. As the mind unfolds, one of the chief characteristics of its development is the improvement and growth of the individual's DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSES. 161 sense capacity. Of course, the child has the same kind of eye, ear, etc., as is found in the full grown man, but his sensations are more vague, hazy, and less defined than those experienced in adult life. The growth of sense capacity involves two things : First, increased discriminative ability; second, the recognition of sensations by their color, tones or local signs. At first the child exercises no discriminative ability. His sen- sations are all confused with one another. That his discrimina- tive ability can be developed to a high degree is shown by the exceptional delicacy possessed by those who have occasion to employ a certain sense much more than other people. You have observed, no doubt, the fine tactile sensibility of the blind, the delicate muscular discrimination of a wood carver, the acute audi- tory sensitiveness of the skilled musician, and the keen gustatory perceptions of the professional tea taster in the customs serv- ice. The case of Julia Brace is pertinent in this connection. As a pupil of the school for the blind it was her function to sort the clothing of the several hundred inmates as it came from the laundry each week. The stupendous task of properly assorting these garments, numbering into hundreds, was done entirely upon the basis of a discrimination made by the sense of smell alone. As stated above, to train the senses means simply to exercise them so as to make them efficient and accurate in observation and discovery. The first step in this training consists in the development of the discriminative ability of the various senses. By this means, quickness and accuracy of sensation is assured. It must also be remembered that distinct and sharply defined impressions are the first conditions of clear imagination, good memory, and precise thinking. If a child always confuses his sense-impressions his sensations of color, taste, touch, form, etc. his mind will always act in a confused manner whether it be in the function of memory, imagination or reasoning. How magnificently nature has provided for the little child in urging him to use his eyes, his ears, his hands and other observing pow- ers rather than take knowledge second handed from mother, nurse or teacher. L. P. 11 162 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. In this sense knowledge, the child comes face to face with the object. It makes an impression upon him. By this direct face to face contact, the child learns more than canever be " crammed " into him, by, the intervention of another mind. We are fre- quently made decidedly weary by the phrase " to impart instruc- tion" Someuseitin claiming that the teacher's function is "to impart instruction," as if knowledge could be done up in ready made packages and foisted upon the pupils! And yet there are still some persons abroad in the land who, posing as teachers, are actually endeavoring to impart knowledge. What ruination such pseudo-teachers have wrought! How many child minds have been crippled and maimed because of such folly! The function of the teacher is simply to lead the child in his observa- tions and experiments. Teacher=Leader. The true teacher simply supplies the children with suitable objects for the exercise of their sense organs. Can you teach the child how to reason? No more than you can teach the child bow to see. No more than you can teach the bir$ how to fly. You must simply let it fly. Let the child learn to see as you would let the bird learn to fly. . Train the senses of the child and the rest of his mental de- velopment will take care of itself. The child that "senses" well will always reason accurately and remember correctly. A little boy was given four wooden balls in the kindergarten. When asked how manyhe had, he answered "four." Buthowdo youknowyou have four? " Why I see two and I see two more and / thinked four." The successful teacher is the sense teacher I almost said is the sensible teacher. Not that this work must needs be disor- ganized and unsystematic. The kindergarten occupations, such as paper-folding, modeling in clay, stick laying, the "sense" plays, and little science lessons are, if anything, systematic and orderly. The ability to educate the senses of the children whom he is endeavoring to lead, is in fact the true measure of the teacher's power and value as a real instructor. "Educate" What does the word mean? Look at its etymology " educo ". to lead from or out of. So the true teacher leads the child upward and onward in its path of development by training the senses the DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSES. 163 windows of his infant mind to give a true picture of the outside world in which he lives and moves and has his being. You know a good building requires not only good foundations but good materials. Suppose you had a foundation of the best Westerly granite and erected thereon a superstructure of thin, warped cottonwood boards would you have a good building? Now, our knowledge of the outside world is gained through the senses. This is the material from which our world is constructed. If the sense experiences are vague and indefinite, the knowledge based thereon will be vague and hazy. LESSON XIV. DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSES. Continued. A SHORT time ago I visited what to me is very nearly an ideal Kindergarten. I merely give you one of its chapters a very small one culled from the morning exercises. It is simply one of those little stories with which Kindergarten lore abounds. The children had just come from their homes with expectant faces wreathed in gladsome smiles. Of course, the story loses much by being taken out of its local setting, and is reproduced here in merest outline. The eager, delighted expressions of the children as the story progressed cannot be reproduced. The whole group twenty in all are seated in a circle, every eye on the teacher who sits as one of the number. Teacher. "Now, children, how many of you have at home things you are very careful of and very fond of? What is yours, Stuart?" Thechildren give in turn various answers, telling of their favor- ite playthings and keepsakes. When each has been questioned, the teacher continues : Teacher. "Where do you keep these favorite things, these treasures of yours, keepsakes, as they are called, so that they will not be harmed? " Most of the children say in boxes of some sort, kept safe either by covers or by lock and key ; some say theirs have no covers of any kind. Teacher. ' ' These little boxes of yours are your treasure boxes. When I was a little girl I had a treasure box which my father made me." Then follows a lively description in detail of this treasure box of hers, special stress being laid upon the neat, careful way in (164) DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSES. 165 which all the contents were laid in, each thing having a little compartment or corner of its own. "Now, I am going to show you some treasure boxes different from any of yours or mine, some of Mother Nature's treasure boxes." She then shows them two wild cucumber pods, one of which was closed, the other riper and " unlocked " open at one end. Shecalls their attention to the prickly green cover of the box, and shows how tightly and beautifully "locked " it is. Then passing them around that each child might see and handle the pods for themselves, she tells them to notice the soft white lining of the "unlocked" box, and to observe carefully the four brown seeds the "treasures "so neatly and orderly arranged by Mother Na- ture, in their little cells. Then the children are asked to guess other of Mother Nature's treasure boxes. One child has a peach in her lunch basket, and another an apple. These are both ex- amined with a view to discover the hidden treasures the seeds they contained. Then the teacher continues: "Now, if you should ask the tree or the plant what it loves and cares for better than anything else, it would say if it could talk to you its little treasure box, because all through the summer, it has been taking in the sunshine, and drinking in the water only for the sake of this little seed its baby to make it strong and healthy, so that it could grow on after the mother plant had died. Now, I want each one of you to bring me to-morrow one of Mother Nature's treasure boxes." So the talk closed for that morning, but was taken up and car- ried on successive mornings after that, the teacher calling atten- tion to the different kinds of boxes in which the seeds were kept, the variety and the form of the seeds themselves, the part played by the wind in scattering them, as, for example, the milkweed, the dandelion and the clematis, the bird's share in this work, etc. Ever since this story was first told them, and it is now many weeks ago, the children have continued to bring to the teacher " treas- ure boxes" of all sorts and kinds, not even forgetting them when they were told later the stories about the leaves and began their 166 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. collection of those. With the specimens brought in, the teacher has made a chart, and the feathery seeds of thistle, clematis, milkweed and the like make a very ornamental border for the walls of their schoolroom. Now is this not a better method of procedure for both the child's present pleasure and future mental growth, and does it not make him a more valuable man or woman, a better citizen, than the exercise the writer has seen time and again in one of the primary departments of our common schools, viz., where the task prescribed for the child was that the word " cat " should be written neatly on the slate forty times ? At best, with the latter method, the mind will have absolutely no power of expanding from within; it can be no more than a mere passive recipient, able only to discharge the undigested, unassimilated mass of facts which has once been stuffed into it, paralyzing its very spon- taneity in its endeavors to make new discoveries and gain new facts; in other words, no real knowledge is gained. That educa- tion is best which seeks, not to impart knowledge, but to develop mental force. I am reminded in this connection of an interesting little allu- sion made by Thomas Wentworth Higginson in his delightful little essay on " Processes." It is an account of a schoolboy who was found in great distress over his lessons. When asked what the peculiar difficulty was, he stated this arduous problem : " If John has two red apples, and Charlie has two, how many red apples have they both together? " " Is that hard? " was asked. " Very hard," the boy said, sadly. "But surely, my boy, you already know that two and two make four ; there can be no trouble about that ? " "Of course not," was the pathetic response. " Of course I know that well enough. But the process I It's the process that wears me out." And do not the facts which can be observed as we visit the majority of the public schools lend force to this piece of infantine sarcasm ? Hosts of things that come so naturally to the child's DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSES. 167 mind that they might really be taken for granted, are virtually taken from him and then offered to him again in such a cut and dried formal shape, smothered under technical definitions and "processes," that he is almost made unconscious that he ever knew them. Not only is this true of arithmetic, though I believe that this is the worst taught of any subject of the com- mon school curriculum. Is it not true that many children who have grown up under educated influences write better English certainly more idiomatic and often more correct before study- ing English grammar than afterwards? They write as they speak, by ear, and the complex rules confuse more than they help. Of all modern innovations that have grown up, the most im- portant is the systematic culture of the powers of observation. As Herbert Spencer so tersely puts it: "After long ages of blind- ness men are at last seeing that the spontaneous activity of the observing faculties in children has a meaning and a use." To this awakening is attributed the well-conceived but ill-conducted system of object lessons. It can be said without fear of success- ful contradiction that if the education of the senses be neglected, all subsequent education will partake of a vagueness, haziness, drowsiness or inefficiency which will never admit of cure. The systematic development of the senses makes a place for yes, makes absolutely essential the object lesson. By this is meant the simple presentation to the pupil's senses of some natural ob- ject, e.g., a piece of coal, an ear of corn, a hickory nut, some animal or plant, etc. In carrying out the object lesson appeal should be made to more than one sense. You are not "cultivat- ing the observing powers" when you appeal to the eye alone. You must appeal to as many of the senses as possible, for each sense gives to the mind a different picture of the outside world. For example, the cavity left by an extracted tooth feels larger when the tongue touches it than when seen with the eye. Not long ago the writer observed some children cracking hickory nuts on the curbstone. He happened to have in his pocket some hickory nuts which were quite a good deal larger than those pos- sessed by the children. Each child was told to close his eyes and 168 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. one of the large nuts was placed in his hand. Not one of the five children could tell that it was a nut by the sense of touch alone. All had to depend upon vision, though they had all been observ- ing hickory 'nuts with their touch sense. These children were deficient in their powers of tactile observation. To induce in the child a well rounded-out development, it is necessary to train all the senses ; the ear should not be trained at the expense of the eye, or the eye at the expense of the hand, etc., else the child be- comes one-sided in his development. The value of the object les- son depends for its efficiency as a mind developer upon the extent to which all the observing powers of the class are put to use and called into exercise. Above all things the teacher should never tell the pupils about the object, but should ever stimulate them to observe see, touch, taste, hear, smell, etc., for themselves. A daily walk with a good observer will do more to develop the faculties than the most elaborate of school exercises where learn- ing is by rule. Exhaustive, painstaking, thorough observation is an element in all true professional success, be the person a phy- sician, engineer, teacher or preacher ; be he lawyer, merchant or railroad conductor. A wholesome change that has attended the introduction of ob- servational studies in our schools is the growing desire to make the acquisition of knowledge a pleasant rather than a painful ex- ercise. The effort to make all education interesting is indeed a child of the present. As long as the acquisition of knowledge is made to be habitually distasteful, as long as it is a " grind" to use the vernacular of the college campus so long will there be a prevailing tendency to discontinue it when free from the co- ercive restraint of parents and teachers. No man has investigated the subject of educational method with such keen insight, with such excellent tact, and with such a far-seeing, judicial mind as has Mr. Herbert Spencer. His book on " Education" testifies to his right to be called the father of modern educational reform. We cannot forbear making a rather lengthy quotation from him at this point. It should be inefface- ably stereotyped on the brain of every parent and teacher: DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSES. 169 " See the way in which, by this method, the intelligent mother conducts her lessons step by step; she familiarizes her little boy with the names of the simpler attributes, hardness, softness, color, taste, size, etc., in doing which she finds him eagerly help by bringing this to show her that it is red, and the other to make her feel that it is hard, as fast as she gives him words for these properties. Each additional property as she draws his at- tention to it in some fresh thing which he brings to her, she takes care to mention in connection with those he already knows, so that by the natural tendency to imitate he may get into the habit of repeating them one after the other. Gradually as there occur cases in which he omits to name one or more of the proper- ties he has become acquainted with, she introduces the practice of asking him whether there is not something more that he can tell her about the thing he has got. Probably he does not under- stand. After letting him puzzle awhile she tells him, perhaps laughing at him a little for his failure. A few recurrences of this and he perceives what is to be done. When next she says she knows something more about the object than he has told her, his pride is roused; he looks at it intently; he thinks overall that he has heard ; and the problem being easy presently finds it out. He is full of glee at his success, and she sympathizes with him. In common with every child he delights in the discovery of his powers. He wishes for more victories, and goes in quest of more things about which to tell her. As his faculties unfold, she adds quality after quality to his list, progressing from hardness and softness to roughness and smoothness, from color to polish, from simple bodies to composite ones thus constantly complicating the problem as he gains competence; constantly taxing his at- tention and memory to a greater extent; constantly maintaining his interest by supplying him with new impressions such as his mind can assimilate, and constantly gratifying him by conquests over such small difficulties as he can master. In doing this she is manifestly but following out that spontaneous process that was going on during a still earlier period, simply aiding self-evo- lution; and in aiding it in the mode suggested by the boy's in- 170 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. stinctive behavior to her. Manifestly, too, the course she is pursuing is the one best calculated to establish a habit of ex' haustive observation, which is the professed aim of these lessons. To tell a child this and show it the other is not to teach it how to observe, but to make it a mere recipient of another's observa- tions ; a proceeding which weakens rather than strengthens its powers of self-instruction, which deprives it of the pleasures re- sulting from successful activity, which presents this all-attract- ive knowledge under the aspect of formal tuition, and which thus generates that indifference and even disgust with which these object lessons are not infrequently regarded." The object lesson, to serve its true function, should be carried on in quite a different manner from that customarily made use of. The real value of the object lesson depends entirely on the extent to which the observing powers of the pupils have been em- ployed. The teacher must never tell what the object is or of what it consists, but simply stimulate the child to observe for himself. Now in the first place the attention of the child should be directed to the object itself with its manifold qualities, and not to the general truth which the object lesson is intended to illustrate. Remember always that the true order of mental pro- cedure is ever from the concrete to the abstract. The mind must be introduced to principles only through numerous examples. Education can only proceed naturally, therefore most success- fully, when this law is followed. As teachers, then, in using the object lesson, seek first of all an interesting object with many qualities which are reasonably apparent rather than deeply hidden. Then when this is done, seek to interest the child in the object and the object only. Do this by having its qualities named one at a time. Also it is important to use an object in its natural setting so far as possible. Don't use a picture of a cat when you can get a live cat,any more than you would attempt to teach the application of the table of weights and measures in your arithmetic class without using an actual pair of scales such as the grocer or butcher employs. The true teacher will teach by reference to the concrete and the concrete alone as far as possi- DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSES. 171 ble. In " Dry Measure" he will use the actual measures which are employed in daily business transactions. In teaching "Liquid Measure" he will " beg:, borrow or steal" the concrete measuring tins such as his milkman uses, and so on. In every possible manner he will make use of the object lesson in teaching. Who ever heard of a successful teacher of the interesting subject of physics who depended on the text-book alone. It has been attempted by many who aspire to be teachers, but a kind Provi- dence and American practical common sense is rapidly deci- mating the number of this ilk. I can remember when a boy of such a would-be teacher. Our class work in physics consisted chiefly in questions and answers on the text a tedious, dry book called by the very comprehensive and indefinite name of ''Natural Philosophy." The usual order of questions was some- thing as follows: Teacher. Where does the lesson begin, Nellie? Ans. On page 97, near the middle. Teacher. Where does it end, Willie? Ans. I don't remember the page. Teacher. You stupid boy, not to remember the page on which the lesson ends. You may stay in at recess. Edna, you tell where the lesson ends. Ans. At the fourth line from the bottom on page 105. Teacher. The entire class will now repeat in concert the page on which the lesson ends. Loud, now, so Willie Can hear. This is now done and one-third of the time is already gone. Then follows a cut and dried recitation on the interesting subject of electricity on such themes as the induction coil, magnet, elec- tric motor, production of heat by electricity, electric light, with- out a single illustration or piece of apparatus, when the teacher might have constructed a crude electric battery and with glass or sealing wax, a silk handkerchief, or a piece of flannel, or at least with a cheap rubber comb and a black cat, shown us some of the manifestations and phenomena of this force so fascinatingly interesting to every child. But, no ! Every word in the class was utterly unmeaning because divorced from everything practi- 172 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. cal. Furthermore, at the same time that the writer was slowly grinding his way in this treadmill class so distasteful to him, he was engaged at home in studying a book handed to him by a real benefactor the title of the book being "Boys' Own Book of Home Experiments." Portions of the book were read eagerly every night and interesting but simple experiments performed in the order indicated. Oh, how intensely interesting those winter nights were! With what avidity were its treasure pages read and devoured ! How it took preference over and above all to- boggan parties and sleigh rides, while even my new "Barney and Berry " club-skates lost their charm. But do you know that all this time I was doing this supplementary reading and perform- ing these experiments on Light, Heat, Sound and Electricity, the thought never once occurred to me that the subject which oc- cupied me at home so assiduously and industriously was at all related to the course on "Natural Philosophy," which was being given in school. It never, for a single instant, seemed that they belonged to the same regime. And still further, one day the writer, proud and delighted with his success in constructing an electrophorus which worked perfectly, took it to school to show his mates, only to have his so-called teacher not merely ridicule it himself, but take it to his desk and make it the object of ridi- cule on the part of the other pupils, by holding it up before the whole school and sneering at it with words of keen-edged sar- casm. Of course, it was crudely constructedbeing made of two tin pans, surreptitiously secured , together with sealing wax, from the pantry, and insulated with a cheap broken glass pestle kindly supplied by a good-hearted druggist; but it did the work desired and did it well, illustrating some of the most fundamental phe- nomena of electricity. Can you wonder that the writer, from that day had no respect, much less love for that teacher? But you interject" Oh, well, that was fifteen or twenty years ago ! " Well, so it was, but this particular teacher is not dead yet, and is still "imparting instruction" in the same old way. If he were the only one of this class, there would be much cause for congrat- ulation, but sad to say this family of pseudo-teachers is a large DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSES. 173 one and holds to life with exceeding tenacity. Not two weeks ago in a school, which its patrons, like true patriotic citizens, call the ." best in the state," the following occurrence took place un- der the writer's own observation. The class was reciting from some little,inferior work on ''Nat- ural History." The lesson was about the grasshopper. One boy discovered on a live specimen wha,t he thought were the organs of hearing. The book also made the claim that grasshoppers hear. But an enterprising little fellow had read the excellent article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica and found it stated that grasshop- pers do not hear. At the same time he wrote letters to one or two professional entomologists, who concurred in the latter opinion. Thus fortified he approached his teacher in a respectful manner and told her of his discovery. Instead of congratulating him on his "find" and commending him for earnest endeavor, this particular teacher severely reprimanded him for disagreeing with the book used by the class. How refreshing it is to turn from such instances to those schools where the pupils are led in their observations by a skillful, practical teacher to see the essence and meaning of things. Less than a year ago I visited just such a school. It was in a town of 3,000 inha-bitants made up principally of horny handed toilers and their families. The teacher of the high school was a self- made man but had the gift to teach and teach clearly. His class in physics was studying electricity,and the boys would have me, though a stranger, stay after school to see an electric motor which they had themselves constructed with the sympathetic in- terest of their teacher. In the class no text-book was used, though ten or a dozen, by different authors, were on the table of their rudely constructed laboratory. By enlisting the sympathy and enthusiastic interest of his pupils,the teacher had awakened the community so that it was an easy matter to secure for the work in physics alone about $300 worth of apparatus, besides the considerable number of home made instruments constructed by the teacher and his pupils. Is it not better tha,t the average schoolboy know one single concrete fact in physics, e. g., how 174 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. to wire an electric bell, than for him to be able to recite Steele, Gage, Norton, or Quackenbos by the yard and hour in an un- meaning manner? But this may be a digression. It may , however, be pertinent to reiterate that first of all the object itself must attract the atten- tion of the pupils of the class, and not the general relations and principles which the object is supposed to represent,and which can by means of the higher powers of reasoning be deduced from it. To illustrate what is here meant, a case in point is cited. A teacher was using a squirrel as an object lesson. Unfortunately it was not a real living squirrel but a well executed picture instead. The teacher laid especial stress upon the qualities belonging to squir- rels that are similar to certain qualities in children and called atten- tention to similar relationships, but failed to pay any definite atten- tion to the squirrel in and of itself. Consequently when one of the brightest pupils was asked the size of the squirrel, the reply was given: " About so big," holding her hands out almost three feet apart. On further questioning it was found that she seriously thought that a squirrel was "As big as a little boy or girl." It is decidedly better to lay the emphasis upon the object itself in the first stages of this form of teaching. The folio wing is a case right in line with this suggestion. A teacher, who had become thoroughly tired of some of her pupils saying that butter grew on ice, or was made of eggs, or grew on butter cups, took the right method to clear their minds of such notions when with a little toy churn she made a thimbleful of butter at school in the presence of her pupils as an object lesson. The object lesson could be extended to every department of instruction and should cover a wide range of facts. Do not limit yourself to the contents of home or schoolyard, but include the forest and field, the river and brook, the seashore and stone quarry. For the purpose of extending the range of observation for children, we hope that the German custom of school children, accompanied by their teacher, taking long walks into the country, will soon be adopted here in our own land. The trustees and school directors may tell you it is a waste of time DEVELOPMENT OF THE SENSES. 175 for you to take a walk through the woods and across the fields for the purpose of observing and calling the attention of the chil- dren to the birds and insects, flowers and trees, leaves and peb- bles, but by cautious studied effort you may succeed in effecting an arrangement whereby you are enabled to bring the children into face to face contact with Mother Nature at least once a week. If you succeed your pupils will, in the years to come, rise and call you blessed. But if the powers over you insist that it is far bet- ter to read about "Ann's hat," "Ned's top/' and " Tom's nag," then do the best you can by claiming, each year, an outing day, e. g., the first of May to be an annual field day. By and by you will, with the cooperation of other wide awake teachers, convince the patrons that training the powers of observation in early child- hood is more important than a knowledge of all the capitals and their locations, better for both the child's mind and body than their usual problems in primary arithmetic, and infinitely more valuable than their ability to name the presidents in the order of their election, or whether 1111 men were killed in a certain battle, or only 1110. You can, however, do this much and there is no excuse for you if you do not do it. You can insist on your pupils bringing specimens of leaves, flowers, bugs, rocks, fish, and the like to the school for the purpose of making possible a nat- ural history collection of the animal and vegetable life of the community in which they live. Every teacher should have a school museum made up almost entirely of interesting objects that the pupils have collected. The object lesson can possibly aim at nothing other than the training of the observing powers themselves. But as schools are at present constructed, the best training of the observing powers lies outside the range of school exercises. Higgin son again in his own inimitable way speaks to the point here. " In the study of natural history I have heard exercises with < object-lessons ' that seemed to be especially contrived to stultify the human intellect; and this especially in some normal schools, where one young pupil stands up before the others, making believe that she knows everything, and her classmates sit before her making believe that they know 176 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. nothing. It is necessarily all a form and a 'process.' They go through the questions which the children are supposed to ask about the object; and, of course, if the real children do not ask the right questions,they must be taught to ask them. They must wish to know what they ought to wish to know, not what they really desire. When the young teacher faces real children, there- fore, instead of studying their actual minds, she proceeds on a method previously arranged. Perhaps it is a stuffed bird which she holds up before them. She says, as she has been taught to say, ' Children, what is this? ' One boy shouts, 'It's a jay.' Another says, almost simulta- neously, ' It's a blue-jay.' Then the teacher explains to them that this is not the proper answer at all. They must answer first, 'A bird,' and then must go on, with due surprise, to the information that it has two legs and ha.s wings ; and by and by, after plenty of systematic preparation, they may proceed to the fact that the bird is a jay, and even a blue-jay all this being something which they knew perfectly well already, but must not be permitted to recognize in any disorderly or unmethodical form. The con- sequence is that the bright and observing children, who ought to be leaders of the class, are deadened and discouraged, and all the laurels go to the unobservant and stupid, who never noticed a bird in their lives, and would not do anything so unseemly as to pronounce any stuffed object a blue-jay until the teacher had led them up to it by a logical and irresistible process." The training of the child's observing powers is, at least, the chapter in education in which the parent can cooperate with the teacher to the best ad- vantage. In seeking to cultivate the observing powers of your pupil by use of the object lesson and other means, you accomplish four things for him, each one of which is vitally important. (1) You make his knowledge more accurate and clearly defined. (2) You make his knowledge more comprehensive and complete. (3) You develop his mental power and intellectual capacity. (4) You make his acquisition of knowledge pleasant and de- lightful because you follow the natural order ll first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." LESSON XV. THE CONTENTS OF A CHILD'S MIND ON ENTERING SCHOOL. MORE than twenty years ago an association of teachers in Germany, at Berlin, undertook to investigate the stock of ideas which children possess at the time of entering school.* This was done largely with a view to discover the influence of environment upon mental growth and it was actually found that the city children not only differed widely from those of the smaller towns and'country villages, but also that children living in different wards of the same city possessed quite a different stock of ideas, due of course chiefly to environment. For a long time previous to this it was observed that country children who entered the city schools behind the children of the same age, readily caught up with them. This was found to be due chiefly to the fact that the methods of primary instruction were better adapted to country than to city children. It was found that a large mass of children actually go through the world from day to day without observing the most conspicuous objects, such as important monuments, public squares, gardens and parks near their homes and schoolhouse. When asked what mountain (Berg) they had ever seen, all the girls in an upper grammar grade said "Pfeffenberg," the name of a beer hall near by. Everyone thought of a " Berg 7 ' as a place of amusement and not as a nat- ural object. What vague notions their geography lessons must have brought to them. Nearly half the boys and more than half the girls on entering school had never seen, to know by name, any of these three most conspicuous objects in Berlin : Lustgarten, Unter den Linden, the Brandenburg Gate. Space will not permit * For complete report see Vorstellungskreis der Berliner Kinder beim Eintritt in die Schuler (Berlin Stadtisches Jahrbuch 1870, pp. 59-77). L.P.-JS (177) 178 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. of the table being printed here in detail only the more genera} results. Thus, for example, out of ten thousand children, 9,026 had an idea of dwellings what they are and for what used; 7,435 of this number were familiar with the significance of the concept "two;" but only 5,853 (a few more than half) knew what " fish " meant; only 3,646 had any notion of the meaning of the term "forest ; " the "King's Palace " was clear to 2,886 ; 2,078 understood the term "lake," while "river" was known to but 1,122. The names of 75 objects were given in the inquiries made of each pupil. Of three-fourths of these, more girls are ignorant than boys, and those who had not been in Kinder- garten were decidedly more ignorant than those who had. The girls, however, clearly excelled in the following concepts: Name and vocation of the father, the thunder shower, rainbow, hail, potato field, moon, square, circle, oak, dew and Botanical Gar- den. Of the whole group of children (10,000) the sphere was known to 76%, the cube to 69%, the square to 54%, the circle to 49%, the triangle to 41%. It was found that girls excelled in space concepts and boys in numbers. Girls excelled in ideas of family, house and thunder-storms; children inmates of houses of refuge and reform schools had more ideas than children coming from homes; while those from the Kindergarten excelled both the other groups in their fund of information. It is a burning shame that the child's most used and threadbare question a veritable "chestnut " " What is that ? " should be answered less frequently at home than elsewhere. Dr. Karl Lange insists, and not without reason, that a child six years of age has absolutely learned far more than a student learns during his university course. < These six years have been full of advancement like unto the six days of creation." Lange himself made some investigations upon the subject of environ- ment as influencing mental "capital." The subjoined table was based upon observations of 500 children in the city schools of Planen and 300 children in the country schools. The fig- ures given indicate the per cent, of those having the concept mentioned. THE CONTENTS OF A CHILD'S MIND. 179 TABLE SHOWING IN PER CENTS THE NUMBER OF CHILDREN OUT OF 500 THAT POSSESS THE IDEA HERE MENTIONED. The Concept or Idea. City Children. Country Children. 1 Seen the sun rise 18 42 2 3 4 5 Seen the sun set Seen the moon and stars Seen fish swim Been to a pond 23 84 72 51 58 82 83 86 6 Been to a brook or river 71 82 7 8 Been to a high hill or mountain Been in a forest 48 63 74 86 9 Knows an oak 18 57 10 11 Seen a corn or wheat field Knows that bread comes from grain 64 28 92 63 12 Seen a shoemaker at work 79 80 13 Seen a carpenter at work 55 62 14 Seen a mason at work 86 92 15 Been in a church 50 49 Only 43 per cent of the city children had ever been to any town or village. Their knowledge of colors was as follows, be- ginning with those best and ending with those least known : black, white, red, green, blue, yellow. The ignorance of city chil- dren shows the practical utility of frequent school excursions. It is interesting to know that in Germany it is more common than in our country to teach school geography by beginning with the schoolhouse and yard, the streets of the city, and then gradu- ally widen out into the world. Holiday walks conducted by teach- ers for educational purposes are also more common, we are sorry to admit, than here in America. Of much more value than this work of investigation done in Berlin are the painstaking endeavors undertaken in this country by that leader of educational thought and action, President G. Stanley Hall, of Clark University. The work was done in Boston in 1880 with the assistance of Mrs. Quincey Shaw and Miss Pin- gree, aided by four teachers. It is needless to add that this work was carried out with the greatest care and thoroughness.* * For this interesting report in detail see Article III, in " Pedagogical Seminary," June, 1891, edited by G. Stanley Hall, of which our account is a r6sum6. 180 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. The following table was based on observations made upon two hundred Boston children shortly after entering school in the fall. The endeavor was made to select pupils of average capacity neither the prodigy nor the dullard the child of average intelli- gence who came from homes not representing either of the ex- tremes of culture or ignorance. In 1883 Supt. J. M. Greenwood, of the Kansas City Schools, tested 678 children of the lowest primary grade, of whom 47 were colored, with some of the same questions used by Dr. Hall in his Boston tests. It should be observed that the tests on the Kansas City children were made in March, April and May, or after seven months of school life. The comparisons that may be made between the school chil- dren of these two American cities, with respect to their " stock of ideas "their fund of knowledge on entering school, are intensely interesting. An actual basis is here supplied for our discussions with reference to the influence of environment upon children, especially in their earlier days. The Kansas City children have, on the whole, more active observing powers than do the Boston children. Name of the Object of Conception. Per Cent, of Children Ignorant of it. In Boston. In Kansas City. White. Colored. Beehive 80 77 72.5 65.5 63 62 60.5 57.5 54 52 50 47.5 33.5 59.4 47.3 21^5 15 3o"e B.& 7.27 2.7 1.7 .5 66 59 19!i 4.2 i6!<5 '4!a Crow Bluebird : Ant Squirrel Snail Robin. . . Sparrow Sheep Bee Froe Pig Chicken THE CONTENTS OF A CHILD'S MIND. 181 Name of the Object of Conception. Per Cent, of Children Ignorant of it. In Boston. In Kansas City. White. Colored. TVorm . . . . 22 20.5 18.5 92.5 91.5 87 87 83 81.5 78.5 74 71.5 67.5 66 65.5 64 63 61 61 55.5 54 53 90.5 81 80 70.5 65.5 52.5 45 36 25 21.5 18 15 13.5 7 6 78 75.5 73 65 56.5 53.5 35 .5 .5 5.2 23.4 52.4 62.2 65.6 31.2 30.7 26.5 13^6 26 18.5 3 14.1 14 14 2.9 1.5 1 .5 .5 1.1 1.6 27.2 39.1 31.8 13.6 10.3 16.6 19.5 7.3 66" 89.8 58.6 87.2 80.8 42.5 1.1 6.4 44.6 18.1 '4.2 4.2 8.5 10.2 45.'9 70.2 56.1 18.1 2.1 Butterfly Cow . Growing Wheat. Elm Tree Oak Tree Pine . Maple . Growing Moss Growing Strawberries Growing Clover Growing Beans Growing Blueberries.. Growing Blackberries Growing Corn Chestnut Tree Planted a seed Peaches on a tree Growing Potatoes Growing Buttercups Growing Rose Growing Grapes Where are the child's ribs? Where are the child's lungs? Where is the child's heart?. Where is the child's wrist? Where are the child's ankles? Where is the child's waist? . Where are the child's hips? Where are the child's knuckles? Where are the child's elbows? Knows right and left hand . . . Knows cheek Knows forehead Knows throat Knows knee Knows stomach Pew What season it is Seen hail Seen rainbow Seen sun rise Seen sun set Seen clouds 182 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. Name of the Object of Conception. Per Cent, of Children Ignorant of it. In Boston. In Kansas City. White. Colored. Seen stars 14 7 87.5 55.5 53.5 48 . 40 28 15 92 56 35 28.5 17 8 68 65 64.5 62 61 44.5 25 12 15 14 13.5 9 93.4 91.5 90 89 88 81 70 69 67.5 64.5 58 55 50.5 48 47.5 40 39 3 26 30'l 20.8 13.9 7.3 5 10.1 8.7 18.4 50^8 35^7 34.7 33^i 46 55 ISA 23.6 19.3 6.7 8.3 23.4 53 49^7 36.1 8.5 15 10:6 2.1 53" 72'.3- 15" 57.4 53 47 44 i2!7 6.4 127 Seen moon Conception of an island. Conception of a beach Conception of woods Conception of pond .... Conception of hill Conception of brook Conception of triangle . .... Conception of square Conception of circle The number five The number four The number three ' " Seen watchmaker at work. Seen file Seen plow . Seen spade Seen hoe Seen bricklayer at work Seen shoemaker Seen axe Knows green by name Knows blue by name Knows yellow by name. . . Knows red by name That leathern things come from animals Maxim or proverb Origin of cotton things \Vhat flour is made of Ability to knit "What bricks are made of Shape of the world Origin of woolen things Never attended kindergarten Never been in bathing Can tell no rudiment of a story Not know wooden things are from trees. Origin of butter . Origin of meat (from animals) Cannot sew . . . Cannot strike a given musical tone Cannot beat time regularly THE CONTENTS OF A CHILD'S MIND. 183 Name of the Object of Conception. Per Cent, of Children Ignorant of it. In Boston. In Kansas City. White. Colored. Have never saved pennies at home Never been in country 36 35.5 28 20.5 8.2 13.1 20 4 12.7 19 42.5 Can repeat no verse Source of milk Name of the Object of Conception. Per Cent, of Ignor- ance in 150 Girls. Per Cent, of Ignor- ance in 150 Boys. Per Cent, of Ignor- ance in 50 Foreign Children. Per Cent, of Ignor- ance in 50 American Children. Per Cent, of Ignor- ance in 64 Kinder- garten Children. Beehive 81 75 86 70 61 Ant 59 60 74 38 26 Squirrel. . Snail 69 69 50 73 66 92 42 72 43 62 Robin 69 44 64 36 29 Sheep 67 47 62 40 40 Bee 46 32 52 32 26 Froff 53 38 54 35 35 Pig 45 27 38 26 22 Chicken .... 35 21 32 16 22 Worm 21 17 26 16 9 Butterfly 14 16 26 8 9 Hen 15 14 18 2 14 Cow. . 18 12 20 6 10 Growing clover 59 68 84 42 29 Growing corn 58 50 60 68 32 Growing potatoes.. . Growing buttercups. Growing rose Growing dandelion . . Growing apples Ribs 55 50 48 44 16 88 54 51 48 42 16 92 62 66 60 62 18 98 44 40 42 34 12 82 34 31 33 31 5 68 Ankles Waist 58 53 52 52 62 64 40 32 38 36 Hips Knuckles Elbow 50 27 19 47 27 32 72 34 36 31 12 16 24 23 12 Right from left hand Wrist 20 21 8 34 14 44 20 9 4 19 Cheek. 10 12 14 14 4 184 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. Name of the Object of Conceptio^ . Per Cent, of Ignor- ance in 150 Girls. PerCent. of Ignor- ance in 150 Boys. Per Cent, of Ignor- ance in 50 Foreign Children. PerCent. of Ignor- ance in 50 American Children. PerCent. of Ignor- ance in 64 Kinder- garten Children. Forehead ... 10 11 12 10 7 Throat 10 18 14 16 14 Knee 4 5 2 10 2 Dew What season it is. ... Hail 64 59 75 63 50 61 92 68 84 52 48 52 57 41 53 Rainbow 59 61 70 38 38 Sunrise. . . . 71 53 70 36 53 Sunset . . 47 49 52 32 29 Star 15 10 12 4 7 Island 74 - 78 84 64 55 Beach 82 49 60 34 32 Woods 46 36 46 32 27 River 38 44 62 12 13 Pond 31 34 42 24 28 Hill 23 22 30 12 ]9 The number five. . . . The number four. . . . The number three. . . 26 15 7 16 10 6 22 16 12 24 14 8 12 7 The tables speak for themselves and are submitted here with- out comment. Especially noticeable is the fact that Kindergar- ten children without regard to nationality have the advantage over all others. Most of these children came from a charity Kinder- garten, so that superior intelligence and home environments can hardly be assumed. Thirty teachers were questioned as to the dif- ference between children from Kindergartens and other children. Four said no difference was observable, while all the rest thought them better fitted for work, noting especially their better com- mand of language, superior skill with hand and slate, excelling in quickness, power of observation, number work, singing, neat- ness, politeness, freedom from excessive bashfulness and, best of all, love of work. Some thought them more restless and talka- tive, and one complained because " children from the kindergar- tens always want to know the reason why of everything." The high rate of ignorance exhibited in the table is surprising THE CONTENTS OF A CHILD'S MIND. 185 to most readers of the report. But is it not because we take too much for granted with reference to the knowledge possessed by the children in whom we are more especially interested and with whom we come in contact? I was rebuked and made ashamed of my own neglect when I came to test my little five year old girl with the same conceptions as those employed in the tests on the Boston children. Of course, it would be unnatural for me to say anything else than that she is above the average child in intelli- gence. The painful surprise came, when, after she had answered nearly every question of the above table correctly, the inquiry was made as to the origin of butter. The answer she gave was "From buttercups." Some of the Boston children stated that skeins and spools of thread grow on a sheep's back or on bushes, stockings on trees, butter comes from buttercups, flour is made from beans (quite excusable in a Boston child), oats grow on oak trees, bread is swelled yeast, meat is dug from the ground, and potatoes picked from trees. Cheese is squeezed from butter, the cow says 'bow-wow,' the pig purrs, bricks are the same as stones, etc." We cannot do better than to quote at least two of the conclu- sions reached by Dr. Hall to the effect that : 1. There is next to nothing of real educational value, the knowledge of which it is safe to assume at the beginning of school life. Hence, the need of objects and the danger of books, word cramming and rote learning. 2. The best preparation parents can give children for real valuable school learning is to make them acquainted with natu- ral objects, especially with the sights and sounds of the country, and send them to good, common-sense kindergartens. "A coun- try barn or a forest is a great school at that age." In a recent number of the "Outlook" the following pertinent paragraph appears under the caption, "A Public Benefactor: " "A teacher in one of the public schools in Brooklyn has offered a prize for the best collection of leaves made by her pupils. It is said this has created an intense interest in botany in her class, which shows itself in very much better text-book work. Squeers 186 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. forestalled education by a great many years when he taught the boy to spell "horse," and then go and curry one. One of the pathetic things about our system of education, when the teacher is a teacher from necessity and not from choice, is that the pupil literally goes through the world having eyes and seeing not, and having ears and hearing not, because the power that is within himself is not developed. He is too often made a receptacle for words a human phonograph, who is expected to give back just what has been put in, in its original form, not changed by the in- dividual use he has made of those words. The teacher in Brook- lyn may never be known by name, but she certainly will leave her impress on the plastic germ of immortality intrusted to her care. It is safe to say that her boys will not spend their summer vaca- tions playing billiards, nor her girls embroidering purple dogs against a green sky when they reach maturity. The woods will offer them more interesting objects than Broadway." That children at the age of six have ideas of right and wrong was certainly evinced by the Boston tests. Each child was asked to name three things wrong and three things of which right can be predicated. In not a single case were the two confused or inter- changed. Boys say it is wrong to steal, fight, break windows, get drunk, " sass " or " cuss," while girls intimate it is wrong not to comb their hair, to get butter on their dress, to climb trees, to un- fold the hands, or be " Tom boys." Wrong things are more fre- quently specified than right, showing among other things the sad fact that children are more often told what they must not do than they are informed as to what they may do. Another extended inquiry has been made since the attempts in Boston. It was that of Dr. Hartmann undertaken in Annaberg, Germany, in order to gain some light upon the question as to what is the best natural basis of primary school instruction. These tests extended over a period of five years on as many groups of children and the vigor and enthusiasm with which they were prosecuted caused similar tests to be undertaken in other German cities. The course since mapped out at Annaberg for the first two years of school life finds its basis in the results of these THE CONTENTS OF A CHILD'S MIND. 187 experiments. So valuable have these tests been found to be, that they are now undertaken each year in various cities whose eyes are open to the best development of the children's mental life. One Normal School, that of Jena, begins each year with similar investigations into the children's sphere of thought. Who can predict what delightful and beneficial changes would be wrought in the prevailing methods if tests were made in at least 100 rep- resentative localities of our country. What a comment theresults would be! How quick we would be to insist that methods of teaching be adopted which would be better suited to the average child mind and increase his stock of ideas, train his senses and make more possible his final emancipation from the thraldom of ignorance, so that in him there could be realized the ideal, com- plete, well-rounded development which should be the lot of every individual. LESSON XVI. THE ILLUSIONS OF SENSE. THUS far we have considered only the thought processes of the normal person in his wakeful moments. In several of the previ- ous chapters, in which the various sensations have been the sub- ject of discussion, little or nothing has been said of the illusions of sense. By illusion, in the broadest sense of the word, is meant mental deception. In its more restricted meaning, it indicates a mistaken subjective or mental interpretation of an objective im- pression, as when the charred, blackened stump at the roadside, is taken for a crouching highwayman, or the perfectly square, plane figure appears higher than it is wide, or the lady's hand appears smaller clothed in a black than in a white glove. Illusions must be distinguished from hallucinations. In the illusion, there is actually present some objective stimulus which is somehow misinterpreted, in consequence of which, we have a wrong picture of the object as it actually exists. On the other hand, in the hallucination there is no objective stimulus at all. This difference is made more clear and definite by illustration. I am fishing. The trolling line is out, the spoon is twirling, my thumb is on the reel seat with fingers ready to "reel in" all is expectancy. Suddenly, I feel a jerk at the line, the flexible tip of the rod is bending, I cry out exultingly "a strike." I reel in a few feet and reluctantly am compelled to admit that I was de- ceived by a bunch of weeds getting on my hook an illusion of sense. The jerk at the line was an actual objective stimulus, but was misinterpreted to be the bite of a muskellunge instead of a bunch of weed. This is a case of sensory illusion. The voices one hears in his troubled dreams, the monsters one sees in a terrible nightmare, the dagger of Lady Macbeth (" Is this a dagger I (188) THE ILLUSIONS OF SENSE. 189 see before me? ") all these, in that they are products of fancy's creating power and not based upon real objectively existing voices and shapes, are hallucinations. Thus, it is said, the poet, Goethe, was able, when his eyes were closed and his head inclined, to see a flower, out of which other new flowers kept growing for as long a time as he liked. Some writers insist that the treatment of the interesting phe- nomena grouped under the class-names, hallucinations and illu- sions, lie outside of the province of the psychologist. But you will recall that at the outset, in the very first pages of this book, it was claimed that in order to know what mind is we must know what it does. The real work of the student of Psychology is to discover the nature of mind as it unfolds and reveals itself in the activities of daily life. The study of illusions throws much light on the subject of sense perception, showing conclusively that the mental element in every perceptive act, is an important and es- sential factor. No fair-minded student will close his eyes to a single fact that will shed the least ray of light upon the nature of the subject he is investigating. In the present volume we are seeking to discover the nature of mind. We can do this only when we patiently investigate into all the activities through which mind manifests its nature. Illusions of sense are especially characteristic of the child mind in the imaginative period. Of all persons, the teacher and parent ought be acquainted with the fact that all individuals do not see the same object in the same way. Though the same object may make the same image on the retina, this objective stimulus will be differently interpreted by each Individual whose sensorium is affected. The perceptions of no two individuals are exactly alike, be they induced by the same visual, auditory, touch, smell or taste impressions. Two travel- ers, both thoroughly honest, will give quite different accounts of the same object, viewed abroad, because each perceived this ob- ject differently. The beautiful forest with its gigantic trees, dense shade and graceful trunks will make three distinct impressions on as many persons. The lumberman will enter the forest with his cool, commercial eye, calculating the number of logs that could be 190 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. cut from this oak or that hemlock, the number of "board-feet" that each will yield, and so on; the tired, hot, dusty traveler will appreciate most of all its delightful shade, the soft mossy turf that makes such a restful couch upon which to recline little cares he whether the tree over his body is a beech, pine or sycamore; on the other hand, the artist, with his sketching paper, looks at the trees with respect to the blending of color, their outline and general aesthetic effect. Do you not readily see that these three men will carry away in their minds, very different pictures of this same forest ? You are, no doubt, familiar with the old time jingle which relates the story of THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT. It was six men of Indostan To learning much inclined, Who went to see the elephant (Though all of them were blind), That each by observation Might satisfy his mind. The first approached the elephant, And, happening to fall Against his broad and sturdy side, At once began to bawl : "God bless me! but the elephant Is very like a wall!" The second, feeling of the tusk, Cried: "Ho! what have we here, So very round and smooth, and sharp? To me 'tis very clear, This wonder of an elephant Is very like a spear!" The third approached the animal, And, happening to take The squirming trunk within his hands, Thus boldly up he spake: "I see," quoth he, "the elephant Is very like a snake!" THE ILLUSIONS OF SENSE. 191 The fourth reached out his eager hand, And felt about the knee. "What most this wondrous beast is like, Is very plain," quoth he; "Tis clear enough the elephant Is very like a tree!" The fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, Said: "E'en the blindest man Can tell what this resembles most; Deny the fact who can, This marvel of an elephant Is very like a fan ! " The sixth no sooner had begun About the beast to grope, Than, seizing on the swinging tail That fell within his scope, "I see," quoth he, "the elephant Is very like a rope!" And so these men of Indostan Disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was partly in the right, And all were in the wrong! So it is with children in our schools with their organs of sense differently developed, they each look at a new object from a dif- ferent point of view. Teachers and parents are apt to forget this and censure children accordingly. This brings out the other fact that illusions are not all uniform. The illusion that occurs to one person may not be so perceived by another. The most im- portant fact to remember is that illusions do occur, and that teachers and others should accordingly make allowance for them. One of the most humiliating experiences that I have to remember, one which harrows my soul to this day, though it occurred years agone, was due to a quite common optical illu- sion. When less than sixteen years of age, I was given charge 192 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. of alarge, ungraded, district school. One of the twenty-five classes I was compelled to teach each day was Plane Geometry. I had always noticed that the squares drawn by the pupils looked higher than they did wide. This seemed to occur so regularly that I cautioned the pupils that they measure accurately the lines, especially in drawing square figures. The next day the squares drawn by the same pupils still looked higher than wide. This fact so nettled me that I "lectured" the class severely because they did not draw their squares square. Fate seemed to decree that I should learn a lesson then and there, for I was sudden- ly seized with the notion to measure the lines before their very eyes that they might see how serious their mistakes actually were when lo, I discovered that I, myself, was at fault the squares were perfectly drawn and I had to back down as grace- fully as I knew how. This FIGUEE 24. experience is related on the basis of the old trite saying that " an honest confession is good for the soul." When comparing magnitudes in the upper part of the field of vision with those in the lower, one overestimates the former. The upper and lower half of an " S," "B," "X" or a figure "8" appear of nearly the same size, but when they are inverted ("S" "9>" "x"' an< * "fi") *ke difference in the size of the two halves is exaggerated. A vertical line appears longer than a horizontal line of the same length at least to a large majority of persons. (See Fig. 24.) This is because greater effort of the eye is called for in order to see a vertical line than is required to see one that is horizontal. The vertical line seems longer for almost the same reason that a THE ILLUSIONS OF SENSE. 193 mile up hill seems longer to the traveler than a mile over a level stretch of country it takes more effort to get over the ground. A square whose height is diminished by at least one fortieth seems V V V V V / / s ~s s v v V v N \ \ \ X FIGURE 25. N N N perfectly square to the eye of so good and well-trained an observer as Helmholtz. Illusions are of frequent occurrence all persons are subject to them, and they appear in connection with everyone of the senses. The optical illusions are probably the most common and will first FIGURE 26. receive our attention. In Fig. 25 (first described by Zollner, and known as Zollner's lines) the four, long, main (horizontal) lines are actually parallel, though they by no means appear so. They seem to be very far from parallel, each ad joining pair of linee seems to diverge at one end and converge at the other. In Fig. L. P. 13 194 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. 26 we have practically the same illusion in another form ; also in Fig. 27. In Fig. 28 and Fig. 29 we have the optical illusion known commonly ag the illusion of discontinuity. FIGURE 27. In A of Fig. 28, a appears continuous with c, but is really so with b. This is especially emphasized in B (Fig. 28), in which the actually continuous line ab appears to be deflected once in one V B \ FIGURE 28. direction and again in the opposite direction. When two unequal angles together make 180, the acute angle appears relatively larger and the obtuse angle relatively smaller than should be the THE ILLUSIONS OF SENSE. 195 case. Thus in A of Fig. 29, c seems continuous with a, while b is really so ; this is because the lower obtuse angle is made smaller than it really is. We are also greatly deceived by the apparent length of lines. FIGURE 29. We have already referred to the fact that a vertical line appears longer than a horizontal line of the same length. This has beon shown in Fig. 24. In Fig. 30 the horizontal portions of I, II, \ III IV FIGURE 30. Ill and IV are all the same length. The greater the angle at the extremity, the greater is the apparent length of the line. The same influence seems to obtain with reference to the pair 196 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. of horizontal lines a and b in Fig. 31, and the pair of horizontal N A f FIGURE 31. lines x andj in Fig. 32, which are exactly the same in length, though they by no means appear so. FIGURE 32. The presence of the lines themselves has nothing to do with the optical illusion, as is shown in the cut (Fig. 33) where the lines A A FIGURE 33. are omitted. This seems to show conclusively that the illusion is due to the fact that we overestimate small angles and underesti- FIGURE 34. mate large ones. That angular inclination is the decisive factor is shown best of all in Fig. 34, where the continuous line is 777 K ILLUSIONS OF SENSE. 197 bisected, exactly at the middle point, though the two parts do not appear equal. FIGURE 35. With most persons the two areas in Fig. 35 would be judged unequal. To the majority of persons the upper figure in the cut ap- pears larger than the lower one. We judge the two areas by means of their juxtaposed lines. The upper figure seems the larger because 198 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. its longer side (the base line, AB) is brought into contrast with the shorter side, inn, of the lower figure. It is a well-known fact that a square resting on one of its corners is apparently larger than an equal square resting on one of its sides, because we then contrast the side of the one with the diagonal of the other square. The illusion in Fig. 36 rests upon the same underlying principle as that represented in Fig. 35, the lower figure seeming the larger, and quite clearly so. The cut (Fig. 37) repre- sents a gothic arch bisected at one side by a straight col- umn, the apex of the arch being at A. On looking at the two- sides of the arch it will seem impossible that both can be of the same de- gree of curvature, or that the lines of the shorter side, if extended, will join those of the longer one. It can, how- ever, be very easily proved by drawing two lines with a pencil across the straight bisecting lines, when the arch will at once appear in its proper form, although until this is done the eye refuses to perceive the fact, and the appearance of two dissimilar arches persists. This illusion is of practical importance to architects who in planning buildings with arches, should avoid placing col- umns in such a position that the arches will be unsymmetrically divided by them. Drapers, furnishers and decorators in making the ceiling of a room appear higher or lower, or the room itself appear larger or FIGURE 37. AN ARCH UNSYMMETRI- CALLY DIVIDED. THE ILLUSIONS OF SENSE. 199 smaller, take advantage of certain optical illusions. Likewise the dressmaker. No stoutly built woman could be persuaded to wear a striped dress so made, that the stripes run horizontally around her body. Neither will she wear a large figured plaid. "The Proof Header's Illusion" is one of the more common forms of illusion experienced. Printers will read common words aright when spelled wrong simply because of the element of ex- pectancy. The typographical errors occur as a rule in con- nection with common words, and are not found in connection with unfamiliar, unusual or extraordinary words. The familiar words are read as wholes by the proof reader, while the unfa- miliar words are read a letter at a time. Professor James relates an experience which is very pertinent in this connection : " I re- member one night in Boston, whilst waiting for a 'Mount Au- burn' car to bring me to Cambridge, reading most distinctly that name upon the signboard of a car on which (as I afterwards learned) ' North Avenue' was painted. The illusion was so vivid that I could hardly believe my eyes had deceived me. All reading is more or less performed in this way." Professor Lazurus tells us that "practised novel, or newspaper, readers could not possibly get on so fast if they had to see accu- rately every single letter of each word in order to perceive the words. More than half of the words come out of their mind, and hardly half from the printed page. Were this not so, did we perceive each letter by itself, typographic errors in well-known words would never be overlooked. Children, whose ideas are not yet ready enough to perceive words at a glance, read them wrong if they are printed wrong; that is, right according to the print- ing. In a foreign language, although it may be printed with the same letters , we read by so much the more slowly as we do not understand or are unable promptly to perceive the words. But we notice misprints all the more readily. For this reason Latin and Greek, and still better Hebrew works are more correctly printed, because the proofs are better corrected than in German works. Of two friends of mine one knew much Hebrew, the other little, the latter, however, gave instruction in Hebrew in a Gym- 200 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. nasium [as the Germans call their academic schools], and when he called the other to help correct his pupils' exercises, it turned out that he could find out all sorts of little errors better than his friend, because thelatter's perception of the words as totals was too swift." This tendency, so prevalent, of perceiving optical illusions is also made use of in every spiritualistic seance where the "fake" medium deludes the bereft inquirer into believing that he actually sees the spirit of his departed wife, mother, sister or child. The mental picture he has of his loved one, the yearning to catch just one glimpse of her face (in which the "wish is father to the thought " ) , the bewilderment that comes with the semi-mysterious surroundings, the darkened room and the gauze enveloped figure, all conspire in making him clothe the figure that appears with the form of face and quality of expression that his own loved one possessed during her natural life. In other words he sees what he so much desires to see. For something of the same reason criminal courts are very slow to take at face value the testimony of an interested party as to the identity of a person supposed to have committed a crime. This is especially true when the wit- ness is in an excited condition or was, at least, when the crime was committed. So anxious to have the criminal detected and so desirous of having a part in this detection, such a person is liable to error no matter how positively he may swear or affirm with reference to the identity of the suspected person and his con- nection with this or that particular crime. When the writer was a boy of twelve he was a forced spectator at a negro lynching. The victim of the mob's fury was declared guilty of crime simply on the basis of his being identified as the criminal by a little girl of five years of age, who was at the time in a highly excited con- dition. It afterwards transpired that the man was entirely in- nocent of the crime for which he was executed. We are all subject to certain peculiar illusions of movement. If you are seated in a twisted swing and it is made to rotarte and then suddenly stopped you have a sensation of movement in the opposite direction. At a railroad station when seated in a car THE ILLUSIONS OF SENSK 201 expecting the train to start it is difficult to tell, when we see objects move past the car windows, whether it is our train that moves or the one alongside that in which we are seated. Sim- ilar illusions are noted when we take passage in an elevator or are seated in the cabin of a ferry boat. ' In discussing the sense of hearing in a former chapter, your at- tention was called to the fact that we are very apt to misjudge the direction of sound. This illusion is shown very clearly in the "Punch and Judy" exhibitions, so common a few years ago at county fairs, dime museums and street shows, in which the ven- triloquist talks without moving his lips, and at the same time draws our attention to a doll or two whose lips he moves by a little spring. We at once locate the source of the sound within the doll. You have no doubt been present at a play where an actor who is entirely ignorant of music is required in the plot to play on the mandolin or banjo. He simply goes through the motions before our eyes, while some one behind the scenes or in the or- chestra actually does the playing. But because our attention is fixed upon the actor, it is almost impossible not to hear the music as due to him and proceeding from that precise locality of space in which he is standing. The illusions of touch are very frequent. They consist simply of a touch stimulus occurring at one portion of the body being interpreted as arising from an entirely different locality. Besides the mere modification or confusion with reference to locality of the stimulus, there is also oftentimes a change in the quantity and quality or tone of the touch sensation. If some one touch you at any given point on the skin of the forearm and you try to indicate the same identical spot, you miss it by considerable. I remember a peculiar case of translocation of touch stimula- tion that once happened in my own experience. There is nothing more disagreeable to me than to have my face touched with woolen cloth of any kind a piece of flannel or a blanket. Once while watching by the bedside of a sick friend my hand uncon- sciously slipped from off the table by the bed and touched the 202 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. woolen blanket which formed part of the covering. Immediately, I felt the disagreeable touch of the blanket on the left side of my face and not on my hand, where the touch actually occurred. A common illusion is connected with the movement of a point or object on the skin. Of two objects moving on the skin at the same time and at the same rate, the heavier one appears to move the faster. If two points kept equidistant from each other, be drawn over FIGURE 38 (WEBER.) The ctotted lines represent the actual course of the points, while the unbroken curved lines indicate the course as felt. the skin, for example, across the face, so as to describe parallel lines (ad and be in Fig. 38), the person experimented upon will feel the two points diverge nearthemouth,asshownintheaccom- panying figure. Attention has already been called to the fact that we frequently experience secondary sensations that is, a single strong sensation (primary) will be accompanied by another totally different, both as to quality and intensity. The already mentioned phenomenon of color audition in which definite color sensations are evoked by a sound stimulus, also the cases instanced in which letters, words and figures are colored, would naturally be grouped under these THE ILLUSIONS OF SENSE. 203 secondary perceptions. These color sensations can be evoked by taste and smell stimulations as well as by visual and auditory means of arousement. I have a pupil in one of my university classes, who associates colors with taste, and cannot rid himself of these secondary and illusory sensations. For example, to him the taste of melon is " green," that of the apple is "red," while beans taste "brown," etc. I know a German professor who always has an acute sensation of pain in his shoulder every time he sees a yellow light a real pain from which he suffers excru- ciating agony -nevertheless a pseudo-sensation, or better, a sec- ondary perception. And so we might go on, but a sufficient number of facts have been adduced to show that we are all subject to illusions of sense. From your own fund of experiences you can call up many such illusions that illustrate the point under discussion much better than the examples I have here instanced. In hallucination, as distinguished from illusion, all objective stimulus is wanting. In hallucination the mental picture is purely a creation and projection of mind. In normal life perfect hallu- cinations in the strict sense are exceedingly rare. That they do occur is vouched for by the hundreds of well authenticated cases reported to the " Society for Psychical Research," not only in England and Germany, but also in our own country. Illusions are the experiences of most people; hallucinations of compara- tively few. The following case recently came to the knowledge of the writer, and is thoroughly vouched for, but has never been pub- lished as yet. The parties concerned in the narrative are all well known to the writer. Mr. B., a man 45 years of age, utterly de- void of sentiment, very matter-of-fact, cool-headed and business- like, is a large lumber dealer in Ohio. One morning he was talking through a piece of timber which he had purchased a /short time before, and was engaged in directing the lumbermen as to what trees should be cut and how long the logs should be; where the oak, hickory and walnut respectively should be piled, etc. While in the very midst of this work of directing his men lie heard a voice like that of his daughter calling, "Father! 204 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. come, help me ! " He was observed to grow very pale by his fore- man and others standing near, but no one could divine the cause as he himself said nothing. He dropped his work, though it was only in the middle of the forenoon, drove to his home in the neighboring town and lay down from mere exhaustion. His wife noticing his strange appearance, so very unusual, as he had never in his life been ill, sent immediately for the family physician. To the physician Mr. B. confidentially related, for the first time, what had occurred in the woods. A few moments later a messenger boy brought a telegram which stated that his daughter (who had been visiting at Columbus for two weeks, and who was ex- pected home the following Saturday evening) was smitten with typhus fever, and requested that he come at once to her bedside. He did so, finding her delirious, and that she had been calling for her father ever since ten o'clock that morning the very same hour at which he heard the voice so clearly, when in the timber no less than forty miles away. While such hallucinations are very infrequent so far as nor- mal, healthy persons are concerned, they are exceedingly common occurrences with the insane, and like illusions proper, they occur within the realm of each of the senses. With regard to the relative frequency of hallucination of each of the senses as compared with each other, they occur in the fol- lowing order hearing, sight, taste, touch (including muscle sensations), and smell. This is certainly the order of frequency among the insane, though some writers maintain that among the sane, visual hallucinations are more common than those ot hearing. As yet, however, there is not sufficient evidence with which to substantiate any such claim. Among auditory hallucinations the hearing of voices is the most common, and oftentimes these voices assume the character of a mandate, in which case they become exceedingly serious. Many homicidal and suicidal acts perpetrated by the insane can be at- tributed to the commands of these imaginary voices. Some patients will do nothing whatever, even the most inconsequential things, without consulting an imaginary friend of whom ques- THE ILLUSIONS OF SENSE. 205 tions and directions are asked, and replies received, resulting in implicit obedience. Even if the hallucinatory command be to abstain from food, to lacerate the flesh, to commit a crime no matter what it is faithfully carried out and realized in action. These hallucinations of hearing; often occur in deaf people; in- deed, imperfect hearing is sometimes the real cause of the disorder. Among the visual hallucinations, the most frequent forms seen are faces, sometimes horrible, grotesque, and terrible in expres- sion, even so much so as to cause an epileptic seizure. That the retina is not the seat of these visual perceptions is shown by the fact that hallucinations of sight may occur when the optic nerves are atrophied and the person totally blind. The taste hallucinations are of importance since with the in- sane they frequently suggest that the food has been tampered with. Patients often refuse to take food as a result of these hal- lucinations of taste, because they are coupled in their minds with some conspiracy or plot. Hallucinations of smell may be either pleasant or unpleasant, more frequently the latter. Hallucinations of smell may be due to lesions in the brain, or to some disease in the sense organs. Any sort of lesion in the tempero-sphenoidal lobe [in which the hearing center is located], is very apt to produce hallucinations of smell. The pleasant smells are chiefly those of flowers or the artificial odors of colognes and perfume extracts. Among tactile hallucinations must be included those of com- mon feeling the organic and muscular sensations. Some insane patients complain of painful sensations which are totally subjec- tive in their origin. The hypochondriac is familiar to us all. The hallucination sometimes takes the form of a delusion with refer- ence to the transformation of themselves, of their physical organ- ism into some other substance than their body. It is not so very infrequent that a patient claims that he has become petrified, or is transformed into wood or glass. The writer remembers a pa- tient who believed his right arm to be of glass (and he wasn't a base ball pitcher either). Another patient came under my obser- vation who thought her entire body had been transformed into 206 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. glass and she would not turn her head or open her mouth, even absolutely refusing to eat, for fear she would crack her face. An- other patient refused to wash his hands in water, for fear the water would induce decay since his hands were made of wood. He didn't seem to realize that decay was all the more sure if he failed to perform his ablutions. Hallucinations, and illusions also, may be caused in the sane by alcohol, those of sight being the most frequent. Opium, bella- donna, Indian hemp, etc. , are known to produce similar effects. It is exceedingly rare that hallucinations of more than one sense are observed in the same person. LESSON XVII. HABIT. A statement of M. Leon Dumont, expresses a well-known law of nature. It is to this effect : " Every one knows how a garment after having been worn a length of time, clings to the shape of the body better than when new. There has been a change in the fiber and this changeisa new habit of cohesion. A lock works better after having been used for some time. At the outset more force was required to overcome certain roughness in the mech- anism. The overcoming of this resistance is a phenomenon that is met with in every department of nature. It is a phenomenon of habituation. It costs less trouble to fold a paper when it has been folded already; and just so with the nervous system, the impressions of the outer world fashion for themselves more and more appropriate paths, and these vital phenomena recur under similar excitement from without, when they have been uninter- rupted for a certain time." This, then, is a general statement of the philosophy of habit. It touches not only the department of mind, but of body and ex- ternal nature as well. All the recent writers admit the physical principle which lies at the basis of our habitual activities. Thereis no chapter in Psychology that is of more importance to the teacher than that which deals with the habitual activities of the individual, especially of the child. You will remember that in a previous chapter the assertion was made, and clearly demonstrated, that body and mind arein- timately associated, that mind influences the condition of the body, and that the states of body influence the mind in its nature and functions. This is demonstrated with especial clearness when we come to speak of habit. Just as a dislocated finger, a sprained ankle, or a broken limb are (207) 208 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. in danger of being dislocated or broken again; just as a scar is more liable to become inflamed and suffer pain and cold, than are the neighboring parts; just as tissue that has once been attacked by different forms of disease is more subject to a recurrence of the disease than any other; so it is with those activities in which the body has once been engaged under the control of the will, they take place more easily and with greater facility and exactness, than movements that are just newly initiated. This is especially true when we come to speak of the nervous system, that portion of our organism which is more intimately concerned with the mental activities than any other. If a certain one of our sense organs is stimulated, e. g., the eye, ear, or the hand, and that stimulus is carried to the brain to be expressed in terms of sen- sation, by traversing a certain path, a second stimulus is more likely to follow the path of the first, than any other possible path, provided the conditions remain the same. Let us illustrate: The first ray of light that enters the child's eye and passes through the lens and humors, follows its course along the optic nerve to the brain, but pursues the path of least resistance and the nervous impulse terminates in a given brain center. Now the second ray of light that stimulates the child's eye (provided the conditions remain the same) does not evoke a nervous impulse that will take a new route, but the path previously followed will be the one selected in the second case. So in the early life of the child, when the brain is plastic and these sensation impulses are continually coming in from the surface of the body, certain paths are clearly determined beforehand, which become more and more fixed, more clearly de- fined, and more permanent, as the activities of thechild increase, and his age advances. But not only the impulses that are carried in make permanent paths for themselves, but also those impulses that find expres- sion in certain movements of the body (the acts of will) also es- tablish such paths. For example: If my hand is touched with a red-hot iron, as quick as the sensation is experienced, the hand is withdrawn from the painful stimulus. In withdrawing my hand from the hot iron, I make a certain definite movement. If HABIT. 209 at a later time my hand and the red-hot iron should again be brought into close proximity, I am more apt to withdraw my hand in the self-same way that I did before, rather than to initi- ate a new kind of movement. You have noticed the same thing in the practical activities of daily life, not only in man, but in the higher animals. The horse that has occupied a certain stall in a stable for a considerable length of time will, when left to his own free choice, go to the same manger from which he has eaten for so long a time rather than to any other. It is only by great effort, and even severe punish- ment, that he can be taught to occupy other quarters. The dog insists upon sleeping in the same corner and upon the same mat that has been his for so long. A warmer and more comfortable place has no attraction for him. He feels more satisfied with the old set of conditions. If we have made our home in the self-same building for a long period of time, we find ourselves absent-mind- edly walking to the same house, showing that the habit of mak- ing that place our destination is deep-seated and fixed in the or- ganism itself. I know a little child that had been permitted in its early infancy to hold a handkerchief in her hand as she lay in her crib. After having done this for some time, it was noticed that she always asked for that knotted handkerchief before she could go to sleep. She somehow came to consider that that particular handkerchief and the phenomena of sleeping were intimately and directly associated, so that until the time she was eight years of age it was found impossible for her to attain normal sleep with- out holding the handkerchief in her hand. This is an extreme example showing how little things, that take their rise in a purely incidental manner, become registered upon our organism and so deeply seated, that only supreme effort and continual endeavor, at great inconvenience, will eradicate them. As already intimated, the question of habit is one oi great im- portance and deep significance for every teacher as he comes in contact with the child mind. This is more clearly shown when we come to consider the practical effects of habit. (1) Habit always diminishes the amount of conscious atten- L. P. 14 210 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. tion with which our acts are performed. The pianist, in first learning to play his instrument, finds that each movement of the fingers must be closely attended to, that the relative position of the keys musi be closely observed, and even then he is continually making mistakes ; but after a given amount of practice, when these muscular movements have become habitual, he can play while following conversation or attending to something else. He sim- ply glances at the musical score and his fingers perform the nec- essary movements. The hunter, as he stalks the deer through the forest, seeing his game break suddenly into his field of vision and come within rifle range, raises his gun, aims and shoots before he is really aware of having done so. His organism has become trained so that it will respond to such a stimulus invariably, and without a large amount of conscious attention. The sight of a deer always means to him, the raising of the gun, aiming it and the discharge of its load. Even in our simplest and most instinctive activities, we find that we are moro and more facilitated in carrying out these movements when they have become habitual. For example: The child in learning to walk, first attends to each movement that is necessary to locomotion. His eye selects the spot where he wishes to put his foot, and also watches the foot as it is placed forward in the chosen position. Every gentleman tips his hat on meeting a lady, but he does it without thinking just how the nec- essary movements of the hand and the arm are to be made. The modus operandi is not the object of his conscious attention to any extent. He could not describe the exact manner and move- ment in which he has performed this simple action. This and similar examples go to show that the amount of conscious atten- tion that accompanies our habitual movements is very small. This is a very significant fact, for we know that attention means effort, and if habitual movements are performed with little or no conscious attention, it is the same thing as saying that they are done with little or no conscious effort. This brings then to our notice another important consideration. HABIT. 211 (2) Habitual movements are less fatiguing than the other ac- tivities of which we are capable. If certain activities are per- formed through habit, we find that there is leos wea,r and tear than if the movement belonged to another category. This is based in a measure upon what we said at the outset concerning the fact that each successive stimulus of an end-organ of sense tends to follow the same path that was taken by the initial sen- sation, because this is the path of least resistance. As the school- boy's sled goes down the hill with greater ease and speed after the path has been well worn than it did when first broken, so our sensations come to follow accustomed paths with greater facility and directness. It is a, principle of mental economy that as many as possible of our activities should become habitual. To present the matter in a crude way, we may say that a well-ordered system of habits constitutes the greatest labor-saving device that could be furnished the mind. But there is yet another prin- ciple of which, as teachers, we ought to take cognizance. It is this : (3) Habitual actions are performed not only with less effort but in less time than are our other activities. Not only is the at- tention lessened and the feeling of effort diminished, but the act that is performed through habit is performed in a smaller time interval than that required for those activities which result from deliberation and choice. Do you not see then that it is of the utmost value and far-reaching significance that there be insti- tuted in the child's mind certain habitual modes of thought, so that his mental exercises may be done at less expense to the capi- tal invested his developing mind and his body as they together unfold their latent powers? The good, old grand-dame, as she knits in a purely mechanical way, talking continually, seems to knit without any great amount of effort, certainly without any degree of conscious attention ; but if she should happen to drop a stitch she is at once aware of the fact, so you see that after all, the mind is following a seemingly mechanical activity and is aware of each movement, exercising its dominion over these movements with an exceedingly small amount of effort, but with the keenest precision. 212 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. We should also make mention of one other consideration that is exceedingly important : (4) Habitual movements are more precise than are our other activities tliat is, an act that is done through force of habit, as we say, is performed in a more exact manner than if done with a large degree of conscious attention and mental supervision. We now come to some of the more practical considerations that cannot help but have weight with every instructor, for no teacher should be unmindful of the pedagogical importance of the principle of habit. As Professor James so forcibly relates: " Habit is the enormous fly-wheel of society its most precious con- servative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor; it alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein. It keeps the fisherman and deck-hand at sea through the winter; it holds the miner in his darkness, and nails the countryman to his log cabin and to his lonely home through all the months of snow; it protects us from invasion of the desert and the frozen zone. It dooms us to fight out the battle of life upon the lines of our nature or by early choice; or make the best of the pursuit which disagrees, because there is no other for which we are fitted, and it is too late to begin again." You see, then, how this principle of habit keeps those under different social conditions fairly well satisfied. I have seen the miner lying full length on the ground, the water dripping over him from the surface veins above, and in this cold and wet con- dition digging with his pickaxe, the coal from the shallow strata, working not less than fourteen hours a day for the mere pit- tance of eight cents an hour. That same man could have changed his occupation, become an apprentice to a machinist in the large shops of a neighboring city, worked fewer hours, and received much greater remuneration. But no, this he would not do, though he realized that his work was arduous and that it was gradually making such great demands upon his vital energy that his life must needs be shortened thereby, yet he persisted in fol- HABIT. 213 lowing the same line of work, the same old occupation, at greater inconvenience and discomfort simply because he had done so for so long a time. Through the principles of habit, certain impres- sions had become registered upon his organism in an indelible manner and in such a way as to conspire toward making a miner's life his only natural atmosphere. I know an old man who for twenty years had been what is known to railroad men as the "night caller," his work being to simply call those engineers and firemen who were obliged to run the night trains. Reaching an advanced age, after such a long term of faithful service, the railroad official to whom he was re- sponsible and under whose direction he worked, decided to give him more pleasant, and what he thought more congenial employ- ment ; instead of being compelled to work the entire mght,walking through the streets, exposed to all sorts of weather, he was offered a position which would pay him a little better salary and at the same time exact shorter hours of labor, and, best of all, it would be in the daytime rather than at night. At first the old man sig- nified his grateful acceptance, entered upon the new work with all the vigor he could command, and with complete success so far as the requirements of the position were concerned. After a few days he became dissatisfied with this new and better position, and this dissatisfaction grew upon him so that in a short time he came to the railroad official and begged that he might be per- mitted to go back to his old-time night work even at a less salary than he was then receiving. That is, he was desirous of exchang- ing what .ordinarily would be termed comfort for discomfort, simply because he had worked so long at night that he could not feel at home in any other environmenthis world of thought and activity all centered in that employment in which he had been engaged so long. He had learned to sleep better in the daytime than at night, his food did him more good seemingly when eaten at night than the meals of which he partook in the da3 r time, and so his whole scheme of life had become the reverse of that which has always been followed by the majority of men. Military men tell us of riderless cavalry horses which at many 214 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. a battle have been seen to come together and go through their customary evolutions, at the sound of the bugle call. The same thing is shown in the case of many other animals. Most domes- tic beasts beco'me machines pure and simple. A few years ago in a railroad accident in Ohio, the train bearing a portion of a large traveling menagerie was wrecked. The cages containing the tiger and leopard were broken open. The tiger at first emerged from the cage, and the people were awe -stricken to think of such a vicious animal being free to roam at will in the woods. But presently it was seen to creep back again to the cage; be- wildered by its new environment, the tiger sought refuge in a con- dition of things as nearly as possible like that to which it had become accustomed after so many years of close confinement, and could not be forced from the cage to stay. Men who have grown old in prison have asked to be re-admitted after having served their time, and on this simple request being denied, they would commit some crime that would involve their incarceration in the prison again. People like to do things as they have always done them like to live as they have always lived. In other words, the same habits of thought, of activity and of life, have become fixed and permanent. For this reason it is more difficult to elicit the interest of older persons in a new enterprise, than it is to gain the enthusiastic support of those who are younger. Habit makes people conservative, and a conservative man shrinks from new responsibilities and new relations. This accounts for the fact that most of the revolutions of the world have been wrought by young men; but on the other hand, this very conservatism is the salvation of our social institutions, so that the function of the teacher is made plain, namely, to incul- cate those habits of thought, activity and life that will redound to the best interests of the individual himself, as well as of the state in which he is a citizen, and at the same time, promote the highest interests of society in which he is a member. These habits are formed very early in life, and become so reg- istered on the body that they are overcome only with the great- est difficulty. Even at the early age of twenty -five it is not a HABIT. 215 difficult matter to tell the young clergyman from the commercial traveler, or the young doctor from the young lawyer. The pro- fessional mannerisms have already fastened their hold, and one cannot escape them. His chosen profession then becomes the easiest line for him to follow, and contributes a large share towards his remaining in the position he has once chosen. Were it not for the force of habit there would be too much changing of vocation and society would become disorganized into a seething chaos. The law of habit, though often unrecog- nized, is as strong and inexorable as any of the laws of nature. As the gravitation keeps each planet within its own clear and well defined orbit, so man is kept in his proper course through- out all his activities by means of habit. The great thing, -then, in all education is to see to it that the habits of the child are of the right kind. This is the same as saying that it is the duty of every teacher to see to it that every child makes his organism, his body, his nervous system, his ally instead of his enemy. One of the greatest teachers in the Roman Catho- lic church caught this idea when he said, " Give me the first seven years of a child's life and I can tell you what manner of man he will become." If the pupil be kept faithfully at work a certain number of hours of each day in perfecting the development of his mind and the growth of his body, no one need have any fear as to the final result that awaits him. Mere intention is not enough of a basis upon which to judge of one's character. We judge of character by one's actions. We tell what a man is by what he does, just as we tell what any object in nature is by its qualities. Character is abiding choice. It is made up of certain converging lines of activity that have become so deeply engraved upon our organism, that tendencies to act in certain directions when ap- propriate occasions arise, have become established. Mere emo- tional enthusiasm does not count; action, and action only, is the standard by which we form our estimate of individuals. Once while in London on a very cold and bleak February day (one of those dreariest of days which only London can furnish), as I was walking hurriedly through the streets I noticed a coach- 216 PRACTICAL LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. man poorly clad, shivering in his seat, waiting in front of a build- ing quite unique, namely, a Cat Hospital. The lady whose servant he was, had found a stray cat on the street and had this coach- man drive two' miles through the blustering winter's day, poorly clad and shivering with cold, in order that she might give this homeless cat a comfortable place. The comfort of the cat was prized more highly than that of her servant. You excuse her by saying that she meant well that her intentions were good. The same might be said of those persons who are quick to weep over the fictitious personages in the play of a melodrama, while at the same time real persons are allowed to go unclothed, unfed and unsheltered. This same thing shows itself in certain habits of philanthropy. One man will give to charity only when he can become a patron of the charity ball, paying a fabulous price for a box, and in no other way .can he be induced to help the suffer- ing of the lower classes of society. Another individual refrains instinctively (which means habitually) from any such ostenta- tion, not letting his right hand know what his left hand doeth, for some giving is actually " left-handed," i. e., not controlled by the same side of the brain as are the other activities. You have seen people who are merely bundles of emotion, who, instead of being guided by habits of thought are subject only to habits of feeling. The chief element in their makeup is what may be styled, and is commonly known as "sentimental gush." Everything that such a one does, is done from emotional springs of action rather than as the result of cool, clear intellectual choice. I am reminded in this connection of a little story which well illus- trates the point under consideration. Shortly after the war, an Illinois man thought he would build a river steamer from what remained of the several war ships that were used on the Mississippi river during the Civil War, by rebuilding them so as to be used as freight vessels along this great channel of navigation. He took the hull of one vessel, the boiler from another, engines from another, and his various other equip- ment from still other vessels. After this conglomeration was gotten together, the various parts being arranged in order, HABIT. 217 and the reconstructed ship was ready to be launched, he in- vited a party of friends to accompany him on this vessel when it made its first trip. The vessel was gaily decorated and all was auspicious for a delightful run to New Orleans. The vessel started, a full head of steam was on, all was going well when it met another vessel coming up stream. It was decided to salute the approaching vessel by an appropriate blast of the whistle, but on this being done the engines stopped, for it took all the steam to blow the whistle. So it is with some people. All of their energy and vitality goes to feed a certain emotional en- thusiasm which profits no one, unless coupled with intellectual choice. Now the function of the teacher is primarily the training of the habits of the mind. In thus training the habits of the indi- vidual he has before his mind as its highest aim, the completed, rounded out development of the child. Intellect, sensibility and will should each have its due share of attention from the teacher, and this done, the child cannot help but be a force for good in the state and in society. " Nothing succeeds like success " and nothing contributes so much to success as well organized habits, and for the reasons named a