Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/205

No. 2.] pometrical laboratories. Certain experiments, as we saw, belong exclusively to the latter. Are there not others, which would serve to throw light upon the working of consciousness, the course of mental processes, without presupposing a special training of the subject? The first themes to suggest themselves are undoubtedly those which find representation on the list made out for the World's Fair Laboratory: association, memory, illusions. Even here, however, the path is not free from difficulty. The psychological experiment upon association should be carried out under conditions which ensure, so far as this is possible, entire absence of preoccupation on the part of the experimentee. Experiments on memory demand a continuance of the interest of visitors, outside of the laboratory. The facts of optical illusion are patent enough, but their explanation is not so easy.

The foregoing criticism has been wholly destructive. I would suggest something like the following plan, – very diffidently, for no one is less inclined to underestimate the difficulty of the problem, – by way of reconstruction. All or nearly all of the experiments already quoted should be carried out in the anthropometric laboratory. This latter should have two exits, one of them being the entrance to the psychological laboratory. Only those persons would enter this latter, therefore, to whom the anthropometric tests had been applied, and who had thus gained some knowledge of the methods and instruments which anthropometry shares with psychology in their simpler forms. Such an arrangement would, without doubt, mean a great reduction in the total number of visitors to the laboratory; but those who entered it would be evincing a more serious interest in the questions of the science, and their comparative fewness would enable the attendants to devote more time to them individually. The laboratory itself should contain a series of psychological apparatus, – as much as possible of it being demonstrated in action, – and, in addition to charts and diagrams, there should be a very full