HPB-SB-10-114: Difference between revisions

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{{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued |The Progress of Psychology|10-114}}

The promulgation of this definition of psychology was in itself a great step in the path of progress, for hitherto the name had been very vaguely used. We now know precisely what we mean by psychology, and we are enabled to convey that meaning distinctly to others. No adversary can now pretend that he does not understand what psychology is, nor can any now deny that it has a very real ''something ''to investigate, and that the subjects of it demand investigation.

The second forward step has been the severance of psychology from metaphysics. This has been the triumph of very recent years. Many among us can remember the time when psychology was looked upon as a purely metaphysical study, and was so held and treated even by its votaries. Most of those who, with myself, are declining in the vale of years, and on whose brows, to use the beautiful Welsh metaphor the flowers of the grave are blooming, will remember with what eagerness they plunged into that which was called “Philosophy;” how they revelled in diverging theories of mind, its powers and capacities, as imagined by the ingenuity of such thinkers as Reid, and Stewart, and Hamilton, and Browne——theories evolved from their inner consciousness, and moulded entirely from introspection instead of observation; how they rose from these studies charmed but not enlightened; their intellects, indeed, refined and strengthened by exercise, but nothing added to their positive knowledge. The first conception of a real psychology, based upon observation and experiment—as ''a science founded upon facts — ''was undoubtedly duo to Gall and his fellow-labourer Spurzheim, who taught that mind must be explored, like the body, by noting its various developments in various persons, and then seeking if there be in the structure of those individuals any and what peculiarities apparently associated with these developments. If they were successful in their researches, if the coincidences they noted were actual or only accidental, is still a subject of dispute. But not the less to them is due the merit of having removed psychology from the realms of fancy to the region of fact. They taught the right method of pursuit, even if they failed to secure its object, and from that moment we may date a new departure in mental and psychical science. The influence of that method was manifest in the works even of its opponents.  Gradually it grew in favour, while its authors were disowned and discredited. The most notable of its acknowledged disciples were George and Andrew Combo, whose works will live to benefit future generations. They acknowledged the obligation and''' '''boasted themselves disciples. Others less scrupulous, as the manner is, learned the lesson and ignored the master. Abercrombie, in his ''Intellectual'' ''Powers, ''Dr. Moore, in his ''Duality of the Mind, ''and many of lesser fame, made practical application of the new and true method of psychological science. They proved what might be accomplished for menial science by noting phenomena and facts, and now they are but few who venture to treat of psychology on any other basis. Although dissenting from many of his conclusions, and protesting against the unfairness, because onesidedness, of many of his judgments, and lamenting that so keen a mind should be so much the victim of prepossession and dominant idea, it would be unjust not to recognise the service done to psychology by Dr. Carpenter by accepting the new conditions of study, by the valuable collection of observed facts he has stored up in his books, and by the popularity which he has thus given to a science which had been formerly the property of but few, when in truth it is the science that more than any other ought to be the possession of every man, because it is the knowledge of himself.

But more than to any other is psychology indebted to Mr. Herbert Spencer for its present position. He has fully accepted the method es investigation by observation and of study by fact rather than by fancy. He has examined mind as he would have examined body, noting its operations—that is to say, what it ''doth ''under various conditions, and have the forces that move and direct the body manifest themselves in action; but his great achievement—that winch will make his works for ever valuable, if only as museums of psychological facts—is the bold endeavour to apply to mind the Darwinian theory of evolution. Accepting that now basis of philosophy as indisputably true, he contends that, if it be true, it must be applicable to mind as to body. If man is a development so must be the mind if man. If the law of “the survival of the fittest,” which is the necessary accompaniment of evolution, be a reality, and not a magnificent dream, traces of it will be found in the mental condition of man as exhibited in the actions and thoughts of men under the various conditions of their being—their present and past histories, and the environments of climatic and other influences. With enormous labour he has gathered together a vast mass of these facts, materials to be hereafter classified, compared, and examined. It is much to be lamented that this great student of psychology should have neglected that which, more than any other, must supply material for the investigation of the forces by which the mechanism of man is moved and directed—namely, the action of those forces when the mechanism is disordered; the observation of mind in its abnormal conditions—in sleep, in dream, in insanity, in somnambulism. If Mr. Herbert Spenser would apply the same laborious industry to collection of the facts and phenomena thus exhibited by mind itself, he would lay deep and broad the foundation which at present is only a partial one.

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