Part 4

The upshot, then, of this matter is to show that our whole mind--our notions of space, number, time, and all else--is but a bundle of lawful habits, formed in relation with the things and occurrences around us. Ordinarily we have right ideas, because on the whole our mind has formed right habits. We have the right idea of an inch of skin, because the proper idea of an "inch long" has become habitually joined to each inch of skin, or in so far as this has been done. When a wrong idea gets joined, then we have an illusion; that is, the stretch of skin, or, as well, the pin-point of skin, seems a fraction of an inch in length; or, again, like three inches.

"TIME REACTIONS:" METHODS OF MEASURING THE TIME REQUIRED FOR PERFORMING VARIOUS MENTAL ACTS.

A sketch like this would be incomplete without a word about time reactions--a subject that historically was almost the first in the field, and has occupied more workers than any other. A generation ago "as quick as thought" was our extreme limit of expression. It outran "quicker than lightning." The great physiologist, Johannes Mueller, wrote, in 1844:

"We shall probably never secure the means of ascertaining the speed of nerve activities, because we lack the comparative distances from which the speed of a movement, in this respect analogous to light, could be calculated."

We now know that sensory processes travel along the nerves on an average only about one hundred and ten feet per second, and often less than twenty-six feet. While you are performing the commonest judgment, electricity or light would have shot from continent to continent. The time-measurement of different mental processes is now one of the chief means which the psychologist uses for getting at mental laws. When certain measures are once determined, he uses these as the chemist does his familiar reagents, to dissolve the unfamiliar and more complicated combinations.

The following table shows in decimals of a second about the average length of time which our commonest judgments occupy:

SECONDS

To recognize the direction of a ray of light .011

To recognize a color when one of two, as red and blue, .012 and expected to be seen

To recognize the direction of ordinary sounds .015

To localize mentally, when blindfolded, any place on .021 our body, touched by another person

Mentally to judge a distance when seen .022

To recognize the direction of loud sounds .062

To recognize capital letters .180

To recognize short English words .214

To recognize pictures of objects .163

To add single figures .170

Given a month, to name its season .164 to .354

To answer such questions as "Who wrote Hamlet?" .900 and over

Such then, are a few out of the many problems which have been experimented upon in the Harvard Laboratory during the last year--problems in perception, association, attention, "reaction times," psycho-physic law, kinesthetics, esthetics, memory, will, and so on, covering nearly the whole range of mental phenomena. I have selected these few for presentation here, not for their importance over others, but because they could be simply described in these pages. The general aim of all the work is, however, very simple. As in the other sciences, it seeks to establish fact after fact, in orderly manner, along the whole line of mental nature; and by unifying these to work ever to a larger knowledge of the whole.

FACILITIES FOR TEACHING.

But the university laboratory is for teaching as well as for discovering. It is equipped for the undergraduate, as well as for the advanced investigator. The elementary or demonstrational courses are designed to impress upon the student the facts, the methods, and the spirit of his science. There is now furnished for these, at Harvard, nearly every kind of apparatus commonly used in physical and physiological laboratories, for the study of neurology, optics, acoustics, kinesthetics, esthetics, anthropology, and so on. The electrical department is a miniature laboratory in itself. And the various models in wax, wire, and plaster--of eyes, ears, brains, fishes, reptiles, monkeys, children, adults, idiots, insane people, and people of genius--is a veritable museum.[3]

[3] How interesting these things are to a thoughtful man may be told to the readers of MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE in an anecdote which they have a peculiar right to hear. Its founder, a few months ago, stood before a shelf full of the very pedagogic images which his illustrations now present to you. I pointed out a series of dainty models, showing, comparatively, the various evolutionary stages of brain development in the animal kingdom. His eyes fastened on them and--there they stayed.

The same part of each brain was tinted in the same color. I showed him the olfactory lobes; in man, two little insignificant yellow streaks; in the shark, two big bulbs larger than all the rest of the brain together. I thus made visible to him how small a sphere "smell" plays in our mental life, while pretty nearly the whole life of the shark must be a world of smells. I showed him the optic lobes in the brain of a blind mole, and then in that of a carrier pigeon, which sees its way over dizzy leagues to familiar places. I showed him the cerebellum of the rabbit that hops, the fish that swims, and the alligator that crawls. I say, he stood still, almost. I could get him to look at nothing else. He seemed to see, projecting down future volumes of MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, pages after pages of comparative mental menageries--pink infundibula swimming in blue Gulf Streams; green cerebra flying through gorgeous sunsets; oceans of terrific shark-smells diagrammatically printed in blood red; and Kipling poems of adventure sent to press in surprising variegations of color, the more scientifically to express their psychological emotions. He stood till he murmured, "We must have an article on this," and rushed to the train or to the telegraph office, and secured, I suspect, from Professor Drummond, his now famous article, "Where Man Got His Ears."--H. N.

The laboratory workshop is provided with the common implements and facilities required for working in wood, glass, and metal. Both for original research and for demonstration, this laboratory is the most unique, the richest, and the most complete in any country; and in witness of the fame and genius of its present director, and of the rapidly spreading interest in experimental psychology, particularly in America, there are already gathered here, under Professor Muensterberg's administration, a larger number of students specially devoted to mental science than ever previously studied together in any one place.

THE FUTURE AND INFLUENCE OF THE NEW SCIENCE.

So much for the place and what is done there. Now, what is expected to come from this new psychology? "Do you fellows expect to invent patent ways of thinking?" was once asked me. Who can tell? Who, before Galileo, would have prophesied that man should weigh the stars or know their chemistry? Yet there is much ground for comparison between the position of physical science then and that of mental science now. The popular opinion of to-day is perhaps even less awake to the fact that the world of mental phenomena is a world of laws, susceptible to scientific experimentation, than was the day of Galileo to the similar conception regarding physical phenomena. Have the physical sciences changed aught for man since the sixteenth century? Then we must not forget how slow was the growth, and how long it took to arrive at the laws of gravity and of conservation, not to mention those of evolution. Experimental psychology, as a systematic science, is almost younger than its youngest students. The mental laws are as fixed and as determinable as the laws of physics. Who then shall say what man shall come to know of mental composition, of the great mental universe, and of ourselves, its wandering planets, since minds _may_ be known as well as stars!

But psychology will not have to wait till its greater laws shall be wholly established before she becomes of practical influence in common affairs. He who reads most thoughtfully to-day will most appreciate this truth. He who reads at all, reads of "individualism" as opposed to "socialism." The Pope of Rome has declared that the "preoccupying" problem for active Christianity must now be the industrial problem. Every important treatise on the subject, appearing at present, admits that the crucial question of the industrial problem is an ethical problem, and every ethical treatise, that every ethical problem is a psychological problem. Two years ago the Roman Catholic Church established a psychological laboratory in its leading American college.

The Presbyterians the coming year will follow with a laboratory at Princeton. Psychology is no longer feared by religion, but is accepted, though in places yet too timidly, as a source of its further and unending revelation.

But psychology is coming close to affairs of church and state in more than one way. One of the greatest crimes of modern society is its conception of criminal jurisprudence. Between the foetal period and adult life man passes through, in abridged series, all the degrees of evolution that have led up through the lower animal stages to his own. In early infancy, and even in childhood, he is not yet wholly man; not yet safely over the brute period of his lineal development. If the domestic calf and chicken spend their first days wild in the woods, this pre-domestic environment will seize upon and develop their pre-domestic traits; and these once set, no amount of domestic training will, thereafter, make calf or chicken anything else than a wild, untamable creature. The early instinctive periods of man's progeny are more prolonged, more delicate, and more susceptible than those of lower animals, yet are of the same nature. If left to evil environment in early years the latent brute within him will surely lay hold of its own, and ripen the yet innocent child to a creature bearing the same relation to the moral and civilized man that the wild wolf does to the house-dog.

On the other hand, the wolf whose first lair is the hunter's hearth, grows to share it lovingly with the hunter's children. The government that ignores the hordes of children which crowd to-day the criminal quarters of its great cities, and abandons them to ripen their pre-civilized propensities under such evil influences, becomes itself the foster-father of its own crimes; nurses its own children to fill its poorhouses, and raises its own youths to fill its prisons. Psychology, if on mere ground of financial economy alone, will yet force criminal jurisprudence to begin its work before, rather than after, this early period of "unalterable penalty."

The benefits of a psychological training to the medical man are now so obvious as to make a knowledge of psychology imperative for every first-class physician. The nervous activities are the regulating activities of every part of the body; and the brain embodies an ever-meddling three-fourths of the body's whole neural energy. The mind is a play-house wherein the skilful physician now looks to observe the condition of the general system, and with growing precision even to read the working of such specific organs as the heart, the stomach, the bladder, and the liver.

The relation of our science to modern education has long passed from novelty to a recognized principle. A chair of psychology and a chair of pedagogy, side by side and hand in hand, is now the requisite of every institution of advanced learning. "To get up more 'fads'? More patent methods?" It is only the ignorant now who ask these questions. Galton has shown that some men do their thinking in visual pictures--in memories of what they see; others, in memories of what they hear; others, in the memories of their own speaking. There is reason to suspect that the lightning-calculator's speed is largely due to peculiar "image processes" used in his thinking, and that these could be taught if science could but catch his unconscious secrets. This in time will be done, and is but an instance of innumerable things that are sure to be accomplished. In the face of all present pedagogical fads and blunders we may yet say with confidence, of the mind, the instincts, the emotions, the conduct of man, individual and social, all is lawful; and the laws may be discovered. They are difficult--more difficult than all the physical laws achieved from Ptolemy to Darwin. But they can be scientifically determined and mastered, and modern methods, swift with gathering impetus, shall make of this no lingering matter.

HISTORY OF MENTAL LABORATORIES.

The psychological laboratory sprang first from no single mind; not wholly from science nor yet from philosophy, but from an age. In 1860 Gustave Theodore Fechner, the godfather of experimental psychology, published his famous Law. Fechner was as much a mystic as a scientist. His Law was, perhaps, the first great impetus to active psycho-physical experimentation. The prospects now are, however, that this Law will stand, a halfway truth, beside Newton's erroneous theory of light, rather than, as was at first claimed for it, beside the Law of Gravity, a great primary law of nature.

The spirit of Fechner, of evolution, and of our times joined to fall upon Wilhelm Wundt, who founded at Leipsic, in 1878, the first laboratory in the world for regular scientific mental experimentation. Professor Wundt is the greatest psychologist now living in Europe, and a majority of the noted psychological experts, both of Germany and of America, have been his pupils.

One of these pupils, G. Stanley Hall, now President of Clark University, opened the first American laboratory at Johns Hopkins in 1883, and the larger laboratory at Worcester in 1889. To him must be credited the founding of experimental psychology in this country, and an eminent share of its present successful growth.

A foremost figure in modern psychology is Professor William James, of Harvard, whose great text-book, the product of twelve years of labor, appeared in 1890. In 1891 he opened the present Harvard Laboratory, or, at least, expanded a previously slow growth to important dimensions.

In 1892 Harvard established a new chair of Experimental Psychology, and elected to the same, and to direct its new laboratory, Professor Hugo Muensterberg, previously Professor of Philosophy at Freyburg, Germany. Professor Muensterberg was at one time a pupil of Wundt, but is much more a man of original inspiration; and in his genius the hopes and destiny of experimental psychology at Harvard are now centred.

Some twenty laboratories are now actively at work in America, and about half that number in Europe. The twentieth century will be to mental what the sixteenth century was to physical science, and the central field of its development is likely to be America.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY, _July, 1893_.

THE SPIRE OF ST. STEPHEN'S.

BY EMMA W. DEMERITT.

"It needs but a steady head and a clear conscience and the thing is done." Those were old Jacob's words.

"The clear conscience is not lacking, thank God! but all these weeks of watching by a sick bed, and the scanty meals, have made the head anything but steady. If it were but three months ago, my courage would not fail me, but now----"

The boy broke off abruptly, and, stepping back several feet, stood looking up at the stately spire that towered above him. Fair and shapely it rose, with gradually receding buttress and arch, until it terminated at a point over four hundred feet from the pavement.

All day long little groups of men had straggled across the Platz and gathered in front of the great cathedral, elbowing one another, and stretching upon tiptoe to read the notice nailed to the massive door. Many were the jests passed around.

"Does the old sexton think men are flies, to creep along yonder dizzy height?" asked one.

"The prize is indeed worth winning," said another, "but"--he turned away with an expressive shrug of the shoulder--"life is sweet."

"When I try to reach heaven 'twill be by some less steep and dangerous way," laughed a third, with an upward glance at the spire.

"It makes a strong man feel a bit queer to go up inside as far as the great bell and look up at the network of crossing ladders; but to stand _outside_ and wave a flag!--why, the mere thought of it is enough to make one's head swim," said the first speaker.

"Jacob Wirtig is the only man in all Vienna who has the nerve for such a part."

"But he served a good apprenticeship! He learned the knack of keeping a steady head during his early days of chamois-hunting in the Tyrol. But why does he seek to draw others into danger? For so much gold many a man would risk his life."

"I can understand it, Caspar. Twice before, on some grand occasion, has old Jacob stood on the spire and waved a flag as the emperor passed in the streets below. And now, after all the fighting and the victory, when there is to be a triumphal entry into the city and a grand review, and such rejoicing as was never known before, he feels in honor bound to supply the customary salute from the cathedral. And since this miserable fever, which has stricken down so many in the city, has left him too weak to attempt it, he is trying, as you see by this notice, to get some one to take his place. He offers all the money which the emperor never fails to send as a reward, to say nothing of the glory. I'll wager a florin that he'll offer in vain! But come, let us be going. There's too much work to be done, to be loitering here."

Twice before on that day, once in the early morning, and again at noon, had the boy stood as if spellbound, with his eyes riveted on the beautiful spire. And now the setting of the sun had found him a third time at his post. The Platz was deserted, but the streets beyond were thronged with people hurrying to their homes. Was it fear, or the chill of the night air, that sent a shiver over the slender figure of the boy as he stood, letting his eyes slowly wander from the top of the spire to the base of the tower beneath, as if measuring the frightful distance? But as he turned away with a little gesture of despair, there rose before him the vision of a wan and weary face, as white as the pillow against which it rested, and he heard the physician's voice as he gently replaced the wasted hand on the coverlet: "The fever has gone, my boy, and all that your mother needs now to make her well and strong is good care and plenty of nourishing food." The money offered by old Jacob would do all that, and much more. It would mean comfort for two or three years for both mother and son, with their simple way of living.

When the lad again faced the cathedral it was with an involuntary straightening of the shrinking figure. "With God's help I will try," he said aloud, with a determined ring to his voice, "and I must go at once to let Master Wirtig know. Now that I have finally decided, it is strange how the fear has flown. It is the hesitating that takes the courage out of one. After all"--he paced back, back, back, until he was far enough from the cathedral to get a good view of the noble structure--"who knows? It may look more difficult than it really is. 'Tis but a foothold of a few inches, but 'tis enough. If it were near the ground I should feel as safe as if I were on the floor of the great hall in the Stadt Haus. Why, then, should I fear up yonder?"

The flush in the western sky suddenly deepened to a vivid crimson. The clouds above the horizon, which a moment before had shone like waves of gold, became a sea of flame. The ruddy glow illumined the old cathedral, touching rich carving and lace-like tracery with a new splendor, while far over sculptured dome and stately tower rose the lofty spire, bathed from finial to base in the radiant light.

The boy made a step forward, and, slipping back the little cap from his locks, stretched out his clasped hands toward the sky. "O Mary, tender mother!" he cried, "plead thou for me in my time of need to-morrow! O Jesu! be near to help and save!"

He replaced the cap, and hurried across the Platz to the crowded thoroughfare beyond. At the end of three blocks he turned into a narrow street, and stopped in front of a high house with steep, tiled roof. The lamp in the swinging iron bracket above the door gave such a feeble light that he was obliged to grope his way through the hall to the stairs.

At the second landing he paused for a moment, fancying that he heard a light footfall behind him, but all was still, and he hastened on to the next floor. Again he stopped, thinking that he caught the sound of a stealthy, cat-like tread on the steps below. "Who's there?" he called out boldly, but the lingering echo of his own voice was the only answer.

"How foolish I am!" he exclaimed. "It is but the clatter of my shoes on the stone stairs." Up another flight and down the long, narrow entry he went, and still he could not shake off the feeling that he was being followed.

At that moment a door opened and a woman peered out, holding a candle high above her head. "Is that you, Franz?" she said. "My brother has been expecting you this half hour." By the flickering light of the candle Franz could see that there was no one in the entry. He turned, impelled by a strong desire to search the tall cupboard near the stairs and see if any one had concealed himself within, but the dread of being laughed at kept him back, and he followed the woman into a room where a gray-haired man sat, leaning wearily against the back of his chair.

"You may go now, Katrina," said the man, motioning to an adjoining room; and when the door closed he turned to Franz, trembling with eagerness. "Well, have you decided?"

"I will try, Master Wirtig."

The old sexton wrung his thin hands nervously. "But if you should fail?"

"In God is my trust," answered the boy, calmly. "But one 'if' is as good as another. Why not say, if you succeed? It sounds more cheery."

"God grant it!" answered the man, sinking back in his chair. "I had thought that it would be some hardy young sprig who should accept my offer--some sailor or stone-mason, whose calling had taught him to carry a steady head. I never dreamed that it would be a mere lad like thyself, and worn out, too, with the care of thy sick mother! Even now I feel I do thee a grievous wrong to listen to thy entreaties."

"Think not of _me_, Master Wirtig; think rather of my mother. Shall we let her die, when a few moments on yonder spire would furnish the means to make her well? The kind physician who would have helped me was smitten with the fever yesterday, and there is no one to whom I can go."