Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/206

192 explaining the purpose of the instruments, and tabulating the results obtained with them, emphasis being laid throughout on the psychological value of the experimentation. These guide-books, one of which would be taken away by every visitor, would probably do more than the laboratory exhibits to spread a knowledge of the aims and achievements of the new psychology. As for actual experimentation, the influence of direction of the attention on reaction time, qualitative association, optical illusions, tonal fusion, the phenomena of contrast, and similar subjects might be illustrated by a typical experiment; it being made clear that the experiment has, in most cases, no more than an illustrative value, while a statement of the present position of the science as regards the various departments of investigation is found in the guide-book.

Only in some such way as this does it seem possible to give a tolerably adequate representation of experimental psychology in a popular manner. The success of the undertaking would be mainly dependent on the intelligibility and completeness of the guide-book. As a matter of fact, it is as impossible to show a psychological laboratory at work, in expositional surroundings, as it would be to repeat Hertz' experiments in a drawing-room.

It is, I hope, unnecessary to add that these remarks are not in any way intended to disparage anthropometry. It is as unfair to her to rob her of experiments and dub them psychological, as it is to psychology to conceal the difficulty of her own experimentation by substituting the simpler anthropometrical for it. Let psychology maintain the closest relations with anthropology; the benefit will be mutual. But, if we identify them, we put the seal of scientific approval on a popular belief which is no more true, though it may be less irritating, than the view which confuses psychology with 'psychical science.'

E. B. Titchener.