SULLY, JAMES (1842–), English psychologist, was born on the 3rd of March 1842 at Bridgwater, and was educated at the Independent College, Taunton, the Regent’s Park College, Göttingen and Berlin. He was originally destined for the Nonconformist ministry, but in 1871 adopted a literary and philosophic career. He was Grote professor of the philosophy of mind logic at University College, London, from 1892 to 1903, when he was succeeded by Carveth Read. An adherent of the associationist school of psychology, his views had great affinity with those of Alexander Bain. His monographs, as that on pessimism, are ably and readably written, and his textbooks, of which The Human Mind (1892) is the most important, are models of sound exposition.
Works.—Sensation and Intuition (1874), Pessimism (1877), Illusions (1881; 4th ed., 1895), Outlines of Psychology (1884; many editions), Teacher’s Handbook of Psychology (1886), Studies of Childhood (1895), Children’s Ways (1897), and An Essay on Laughter (1902).