The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1901-10-01
WHAT PSYCHOLOGY IS PROVING.

Harper's Magazine
Inc study of attention slowly pivoted
psychology over to the study of the will
OF which the muscles are the organ. and
now we are passing to the study of the
feelings and instincts, which are so much
deeper and larger than the intellect or
even the will. A group of interesting
facts now attracting great attention is
connected with the changes of BLOOD
pressure which accompany effort and all
emotional states. A man lies exactly bal
anced on knife edges, SO that he oscil-
lates freely or in equilibrium. He is then
given some problem requiring mental eff
fort, when the blood is SO drawn to the
brain that it tips the end of the balance
on which his head rests downward and
lifts his feet in the air just in propor-
ton to the effort he makes. Strong emo
ton or strain even causes the blood to
leave the arm or even the finger in a
measurable way.
The sentence sense, or the strange car
rying power of the mind by which after
we begin sentence like t'of mans first
d1Sobedlence," we sustain the tension
started by the word "of'' through several
lines to the word ''sing, heavenly muse,'
is studied, and found to be very impor-
tant Cor cadencing the soul. Love, war,
and religion seem largely dependent upon
rhythm, which is the mother of music
and of poetry, as the latter is of prose.
Thus beginning with touch, the ex-
perimental method has slowly come to in
clude almost every kind of physical acttv-
ity. Imagination sentiment, reason, voli-
ton and all the rest are taken into the
laboratory, and its instruments and meth
DDS have taught US a sharpness and re-
hnement of introspeetion and self-knowI-
edge which make these methods almost
comparable with a microscope for the
soul. Thus the So-called old psychology
Which taught self-knoWledge, is compelI-
ed to these methods to reach it's own goal,
and the forty or fifty laboratories of this
country have an ever widening field and
an increasing influence upon our concep-
lions of the soul
But the new methods are expanding to
new fields and making new affiliations
The study of nerve and brain makes a
neurological laboratory an almost indis-
pensable adjunct, where all who are to
teach these or related topics must learn
something of the wondrous new knoWI.
edge of localization of brain function,
where the speech, eye, ear and motor
centers are, and what is the structure of
the neurons and dendrites, more closely
connected with thought than any other
material in the universe.
The brain is the mouthpiece of God. or
SeNSOAN|S
haps the most highly organized of all
substances, anatomical or chemical, and
the changes which take place in cells. are
perhaps most rapid here. The fatigued
brain cell-e. g., at nights dark with
a ragged nucleus, cloudy with products
OF decomposition. and always on the way
toward neurasthenia and collapse; but in
the normal brain it is cleared out, re-
freshed, and, as it were, wound up by
sleep each night in way clearly seen
under the microscope. Thus sleep is our
safeguard against fatigue, in which so
many nervous diseases have their origin.
Every good course in psychology must
now include some acquaintance with the
insane, the blind, the idiots, where nature
has made her sad experiments of which.
however, the expert must carefully study
the lesson. Hence we lecture on the chief
forms of mental alienation, and demon
strate them in the asylum. Especially
suggestive are the border-line phenom-
ena, slightly abnormal, but not yet NOR
bid, with which perhaps everyone has
some experience in his own person And
to this We must now add hypnotism,
which has its own literature and jour
nails