TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.
—The transcriber of this project created the book coverimage using the title page of the original book. The imageis placed in the public domain.
A BEGINNER’S PSYCHOLOGY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
A BEGINNER’S PSYCHOLOGY
BY
EDWARD BRADFORD TITCHENER
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1915
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1915,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1915.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
To
THE MEMORY OF
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
PREFACE
It is an acknowledged fact that we perceive errors in the work ofothers more readily than in our own.—Leonardo da Vinci
In this Beginner’s Psychology I have tried to write,as nearly as might be, the kind of book that I shouldhave found useful when I was beginning my own studyof psychology. That was nearly thirty years ago;and I read Bain, and the Mills, and Spencer, andRabier, and as much of Wundt as a struggling acquaintancewith German would allow. Curiouslyenough, it was a paragraph in James Mill, most unpsychologicalof psychologists, that set me on the introspectivetrack,—though many years had to passbefore I properly understood what had put him off it.A book like this would have saved me a great deal oflabour and vexation of spirit. Nowadays, of course,there are many introductions to psychology, and thebeginner has a whole library of text-books to choosefrom. Still, they are of varying merit; and, what isperhaps more important, their temperamental appeal isdiverse.
I do not find it easy to relate this new book to theolder Primer,—which will not be further revised.There is change all through; every paragraph hasbeen rewritten. The greatest change is, however, ashift of attitude; I now lay less stress than I didupon knowledge and more upon point of view. Thebeginner in any science is oppressed and sometimes[viii]disheartened by the amount he has to learn; so manymen have written, and so many are writing; the bookssay such different things, and the magazine articl