and these for the most can be examined in the reproduced images (p. 168).
The author's theory of attention is familiar to the readers of his article on the "Time-sense"; but the observation of the process of attention would, as Mr. Titchener points out in Mind (vol. xvi, p. 524), be equivalent to setting a series of tensions and strains, to interpreting another series. It is assuredly something more than theoretical conclusions in regard to the constitution of mind, which has led to the limiting of self-observation; it is the familiar fact that as soon as we apply direct attention to a mental process, the latter either fades away or becomes distorted, and observation of it has to take place through its reproduction in memory. As James says, it is not alive, but only in the post mortem that it becomes the prey of the psychologist.
The complement of the introspective method lies in mediate observation of the state of mind shown in the play of passion in the normal man, in the acts of the child, of the savage, of the maniac, and of animals. As regards observations on animals, Dr. Münsterberg says (p. 104) that the empirical proof for the existence of consciousness in them rests on a fallacy; but, as Huxley points out, the evidence is the same as that which leads one to believe that one's fellow-man feels; in both cases it is the evidence of a similarity of structure and action.
In the chapter on immediate psychical observation under artificial conditions the problems of Psychology are brought under the headings of the psychopetal, psychofugal, and psychocentral processes: of these the psychopetal processes, usually called forth by stimulation of the special senses, have been far more investigated than what Dr. Münsterberg considers the more important psychofugal, — as, for instance, muscle and joint sensations; and he promises, in a forthcoming fourth Beitrag, to give us results of investigations in this neglected field.
It is, of course, useful to accent the distinction between a mere difference of sensation and a recognition of the direction of this difference, — whether one sound be higher than another, or louder than another, and so on; but it is doubtful if Psychology has anything to gain by calling those recognitions of the direction of difference a 'distance judgment': the word implies a quantitative difference, but the recognition of kind of difference may be qualitative, as in judging between tones. The addition of the so-called chain reaction to the psycho-physic methods seems to me of very dubious value. Ten people, say, sit in a circle, and a stimulus is passed from one to another as soon as it is discriminated: the time is measured by the first reacter starting the chronoscope, when he stimulates the second, and stopping it as soon as the stimulus travels back to him. Dividing by ten we get a reaction time for each reacter, in which the error of the chronoscope is to be reduced to one-tenth.
