To "physiological psychology," the author devotes twelve pages of his introduction, at the end of which he quotes approvingly Ladd's dictum in regard to the final validity of the introspective method, and closes with saying, " Let us then pass on to the study of the pure psychology, . . . fully persuaded . . . that it can never be superseded so long as there are subjective facts to be investigated, so long as consciousness is the ultimate ground of all science."
It is, in many respects, unfortunate that the name "objective method" should have attached itself to experimental psychology, and that it should have thus been set over against "introspection," regarded as the "subjective method." For, indeed, experiment simply gives an enormous increase of reach and accuracy to introspection, making it, what unassisted it rarely is, trustworthy. The real contrast in method is between subjective psychology, on one hand, whether carried on with or without instrumental aid, and objective psychology, on the other hand, embracing child, animal, and folk psychology. "I assert," says Wundt [Phil. Stud., IV, 307], "that the application of the experimental method not only makes possible a relatively exact self-observation, but that it is the very best kind of exercise — and a kind which can be replaced by no other — for sharpening the attention in observing the objects of inner experience." And again [ibid. 307], "Experiment not only requires of us self-observation, but it is in truth the only way that is fitted for making self-observation exact, because it permits us to repeat at will not merely the more or less changed memory pictures of psychological processes, but the very processes themselves."
In devoting but a small space — nine pages — to the Nervous Organism, and in referring students for a more extended knowledge of the subject to text-books on physiology, the author sets an example which may be profitably followed by future writers of text- books on psychology. The time has come, or is fast coining, when a text-book of psychology will devote itself wholly to psychological problems, and will not be loaded down with elementary physics and nerve-physiology. But a glance at the table of contents of the book before us does not seem to indicate that it is for the sake of limiting himself to purely psychological questions that Professor Davis has so little to say about nerves, and ether-waves, and sound-waves. The comparatively long chapters on "Pure Intuition," "Origin of Pure Truth," "Mind and Matter," are, as the titles indicate, epistemological and metaphysical, and the right which the author reserves (p. 49) to "freely transgress the limits of empirical psychology and touch upon metaphysical inquiries" is freely exercised throughout the book. The chapter on "Thought" is for the most part logical in its treatment, as indeed the standpoint throughout is logical rather than psychological.
