Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/61

 50 j. JACOBS : want by encouraging the compilation of classified bibli- ographies on special problems. It might aid in settling the technical terminology of the science, which is at present largely arbitrary. All these functions could be performed by a Psychological Society with advantage to the science and its students. But a Psychological Society could be made to advance the progress of the science in a manner peculiar to this branch of study. The minds of the members could be utilised so as to form, as it were, a living laboratory ; and it is to this mode of investigation that I wish here especially to call attention. Mr. Galton has shown in his varied re- searches the practicability of getting answers from edu- cated persons as to the contents of their own minds. What he has done prirutiin and accidentally could be done on an organised scale by a society such as that here pro- posed. Membership of it might be held to imply willingness to answer questions on psychological subjects issued by properly constituted officers of the society. Any member studying a particular problem in which introspection was needed could rely on obtaining a mass of materials from persons who, by being members of the society, might be expected to be specially skilled in examining the contents of their own minds. The process might be somewhat as follows. The investigator would apply to the executive committee, stating his problem and the data he wished to collect. The committee, if they thought the matter pro- mising enough, could then appoint a sub-committee autho- rised to issue pertinent queries to the members or other persons, as e.g., schoolmasters, qualified to give information. To this sub-committee the inquirer would ex officio act as honorary secretary, and it would be his privilege to draw up the report on the subject. Something like this is pro- bably done by all societies or clubs, sporadically and on special occasions ; but the peculiar nature of psychological investigation renders it specially fitted for periodical and organised inquiries of this kind. I remember hearing of a number of French physicians who styled themselves a Society for Mutual Autopsy, because each of them, like Bentham, agreed to leave his body to be dissected by the surviving members. What they did with their bodies, I prop* ise should be done with living minds. Whether done by a society or by individual efforts like those of Mr. (lalton, it is only by such 'mutual autopsy' or collective investigation that the science can be freed from its fundamental and inherent defect of subjectivity. Only by this means can we clear it from the