Page:Outlines of Psychology (Wundt) 1907.djvu/12

 to bring the means employed by the natural sciences, especially by physiology, into the service of psychology, and to give a critical presentation of the experimental methods of psychology, which have developed in the last few decades, together with their chief results. This special problem rendered necessary a relative subordination of the general psychological points of view. The second, revised edition of the “Vorlesungen über die Menschen- und Tierseele” ) (the first edition has long been out of date) seeks to give a more popular account of the character and purpose of experimental psychology, and to discuss from the position thus defined those psychological questions which are also of more general philosophical importance. While the treatment in the “Grundzüge” is, accordingly, determined in the main by the relations of psychology to physiology, and the treatment in the “Vorlesungen” by philosophical interests, this Outlines aims to present psychology in its own proper coherency, and in the systematic order which the nature of the subject-matter seems to me to require. In doing this, however, it takes up only what is most important and essential. It is my hope that this book will not be an entirely unwelcome addition even for those readers who are familiar with my earlier works as well as with the discussion of the “Logik der Psychologie” in my “Logik der Geisteswissenschaften” (Logik, 2. Aufl., II, 2. Abt.).


 * Leipzig, January 1896.

W. Wundt.