Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 16.djvu/587

* PSYCHOLOGY. 513 PSYCHOLOGY. that this list is merely selective, even for the quite recent period which it covers. PSYCHOLOGY, Ethnic, or Ethnopsychol- OOY. A (lepnrtiiient of psychology as yet hardly susceptible of exact definition. We may describe it, provisionally, as the individual psychology of races, tribes, or peoples. While it seeLs to analyze and depict the mental peculiarities of societies of communities, still it is not euncerned, as is social psychology ( q.v. ), with the mental products of the common life of man ; it seeks rather, by methods of statistical comparison and averaging, to construct the typical individual of the tribe or people under consideration, and thus to make clear his I'esemblances to and difterence from the typical individual of the text-books of descriptive and experimental psychology. Ethno- psycliolog;s- thus attempts the same problem in the sphere of racial types that ethology (in Mill's sense of the science of character) attempts in the sphere of the individual variations of human tendency and entlowment ( Wundt ) . It stands to the physical and physiological parts of ethnology (ethnogeography, anthropometry, etc.) as psychophysics stands to physiology. Ethno- psychology, as thus defined, forms, together with the histories of language, myth, and custom, the necessary pi-opiKdeutic to social psychology. Under its province would fall, e.g. an investiga- tion of the keenness of perception ( sight, smell ), or the aesthetic tastes, or the superstitious be- liefs of the savage; a study of the relative parts played by reason and emotion in the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin minds; a comparison of the minds of the Oriental and of the Occidental: inquiries varying in scope from the cleanly formulated questions of normal psychology to the widest generalizations of which the science of mind is capable, but all aiming at a single end — the indi- vidual characterization of the mentality of a racial group. It nuist, however, be repeated that the term ethnops3-ehology has not hitherto found general acceptance, and that many authors dis- cuss topics like those just mentioned luider the headings of anthropology, ethnology, and soci- ology (qq.v.). Bibliography. For definition, Wundt, Yiilker- psi/chologie (Leipzig, 1901); for comparison of hunter, nomad, and agriculturist, Wundt, Ethics (London, 1897) ; for a comparison of the Anglo- Saxon and French minds, Le Bon, The Psychology of Peoples (Eng. trans., London, 1898) ; for an- alysis of the love consciousness at diti'erent levels of mental development, Finck, Primitice Love and Love Stories (New York, 1899). Consult also: Tylor, Anthropology (New York, 188.5) : Spencer, Sociology (ib., 1885) ; id.. Essays (ib., 1891). PSYCHOLOGY, Experimental. A compre- hensive term lor those phases of mental science which are variously called 'the new psychology,' 'psychophysiology,' 'physiological psychology,' and 'psychophysics.' It maj' be defined as the exact science of mind (see Psychology'), and as such is not a department of psychology, coordi- nate with other departments, but rather a psy- chology dominated by a certain method. Kant said, in his Metaphi/sische Anfangsgriinde der Naturtvissenschafi. that psychology could never be a science : ( 1 ) Because mental process has but one dimension ( time ), and where you have but one dimension you eaiuiot apply mathematics to your subject-matter, i.e, cannot handle it scientifically; (2) because no sane person would sulimit himself to your psychological experi- ments, even if you devised them; and (3) because the employment of psychological method, or in- trospection (q.v.), changes the objects upon which it is directed, and so precludes the possi- bility of uniform results. Kant was, however, blinded by his a priori assumptions; he shared with the great German pliilosophers since Leib- nitz (q.v.) a hearty contempt for the 'lower faculty of knowledge' or sense-perception (see Faculty) ; and he was unduly impressed by the worthlessness for science of the 'empirical' psy- chologies of his own day. Hence he could not see, as we do. that wherever in the past there had been scientific discussion of the facts and laws of perception, and of the [ihysics and physiidogj- of voluntary action, important contributions had been made to a future science of experimental psychology. Indeed, it is only in the latter half of the nineteenth century that the three Kantian objections have been finally answered, and that psychology has taken rank as a science among 'the sciences. The argument that mathematics is inapplicable to mental processes was brilliantly met by Her- bart (q.v.), who pointed out that our inner experience shows ditt'erences not only of duration, but also of intensity, and expressed the course of ideation, as a functi(m of these two variables, in a series of mathematical formuhe. Herbart's 'mathematical psychology' is now out of date; the method that he, as a pioneer, followed has not stood the test of time. But his seiwice to the cause of mental science is none the less real and enduring. The second and third objections have been overcome by the work of Fechner and Wundt (qq.v.), whose Elemente der Psycho- physik (Leipzig, 1860) and Grundziige der physi- ologischcn Psychologic (4th ed., Leipzig, 1893) mark epochs in the development of the new psy- chology. No one could urge, after the publication of the PsychophysiJ,', that psychological experi- mentation with human subjects was impossible. Fechner experimented, systematically and suc- cessfully, with himself and with others, upon a long list of special problems, and the methods which he prescribed are those employed to-day in psychophysical investigations. Wundt put the matter beyond the reach of controversy by his foundation of the first psychological laboratory (q.v.) at Leipzig in 1879. Wundt appears, fur- ther, to have been the first to use the phrase 'experimental psychology.' which occurs in his Beitriigc zur Theorie der Sinnesivahrnehmiing (1802). His services both to psychology proper and to psychophysics can hardly be overestimat- ed. We have to note here, in particular, his in- sistence that the psychological experiment con- sists simply in a carefully guided and rigidly controlled introspection, i.e. his refutation of Kant's third objection. A single instance must suflice. "The sensation," says Wundt. ''contains in it no reference to the organs by whose exter- nal or internal stimulation it lias been aroused; it tells us nothing of the character of its stimuli; it comes to vis as a simple quality, giving no hint of any means whereliy we miglit define that qual- ity more nearly." In other words, the sensation is its bare qualitative self, devoid of all objective reference. When we remember that the sensation of the faculty psychology', as of the Eng- lish empirical psychologists, has always been a