Edward Franklin Buchner
A QUARTER CENTURY OF PSYCHOLOGY IN AMERICA: 1878-1903
By Edward Franklin Buchner
University of Alabama.
First published in American Journal of Psychology, 14, 666-680.[*]
It was almost a century before the beginning of the period we wish to review
that Kant, supported by all the machinery of his critical analysis, declared
psychology to be forever an impossible science. The facts of the mind being
given in time alone, and in no wise under the conditions of space, and therefore
existing without the pale of exact measurement, was the reason upon which he
based his assertion and his prophecy. This ideal of a scientific psychology was
far more worthy than the prophecy to which it led. The century that has just
passed possesses no greater merit in the changes of human thought and
achievement than that which rendered this prophecy inert, while cherishing and
realizing this ideal. American scholarship and energy have in part reflected,
and In part contributed to, these great changes, to review which is fitting on
this anniversary occasion.
There were two lines of constructive influence which operated directly in
shaping the trend of psychology in America during the first three quarters of
the nineteenth century. These may be summarized in terms of the speculative and
the empirical aspects of thought which prevailed in the eighteenth and the early
part of the nineteenth centuries. The former mould of belief and endeavor was
derived from Germany; the latter, from England. The former was the descendant
chiefly of the reasonings of Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Herbart. The latter
represented the best efforts of Locke, Hume, Reid, James Mill and his son. The
one mode of psychologizing was to apply the fundamental tenets of "reason" to
consciousness, principally as found in man. A priori conceptions were given
application through persistent deductions. The other mode reveled in the endless
sport of an individualistic analysis of human consciousness. Both of these
developments in psychology were [p. 667] extremely individualistic, than which
no quality can be more baneful to any attempted science. Still another line of
psychological development was characteristic of French science. Here the human
mind was approached through medicine and special interest in certain types of
abnormal consciousness. Mental pathology was variously exploited in extreme
ways. These three national tendencies have severally and collectively been
influential in awakening and guiding American efforts at different times and
into different directions in the total field of consciousness. The chief item in
this historical glance is to be noted in that unique speculative preparation for
a scientific psychology which was made by Herbart's elaborate and involved
efforts at a "mechanic" and "static" of mind.
Prior to the beginning of our special period, psychology in America, borrowing
heavily from British and German sources, predominated in the theological turn
given to its speculative type. Universal hypotheses concerning the soul were
turned to account chiefly by the theologians. Religious interests profoundly
stirred our colonial forefathers in both a philosophical and an academic sense.
Edwards, for example, was the chief theological psychologist we had produced.
Closely identified with this union of psychology with theology, there also
appeared the educational aspects of the "philosophy" of mind. Education and
psychology became closely related very early in American development, but in a
manner radically different from that which, as we shall see later, is actively
contemplated and practiced in the present day. Psychology was taught in the
higher schools then existing, -- not by psychologists, -- but by pastors. The
Puritan traditions in favor of religious education absorbed soul fore with a
peculiar appetite. Men spoke unblushingly of "the soul." And they meant by it
the same thing in their theology as in their philosophy. The object of study
flourished under the somewhat dubious terms of "mental philosophy" and "moral
philosophy." Psychological knowledge, as this has since become distinctly
recognized, occupied but a small, unnamed portion of the entire field of
philosophy. The abiding result of this dogmatic naivete was an enlarging credit
to, and confidence in, consciousness -- chiefly human -- which has practically
saved it from [p. 668] shattering under the repeated attacks of a later
scientific scepticism. Men thought of the mind as of a thing. They gave it a
primal reality. The language they applied to it was profoundly more than a mere
symbolism. "Fundamental beliefs" and "intuitions" could be drawn from its depths
with the grappling hooks of speculative analysis as readily and as inexhaustibly
to suit the needs of any peculiar occasion, as water could be drawn with the old
well-sweeps. One can say all this without being pledged to support the common
sense realism of Scottish thinkers, which was the philosophical background of
most, if not all, the adapted psychology which became current in American
educational and theological circles.
Some typical books, which may be mentioned as evidence in this connection, were
Tappan's "Doctrine of the Will determined by an Appeal to Consciousness" (1840),
Hickok's "Rational Psychology" (1848) and "Empirical Psychology" (1854), and
Porter's "Human Intellect" (1868). (The last volume contained some progressive
departures from the early prevailing type, having been written in acquaintance
with the then growing knowledge of physiological facts.) Another striking
feature of this early type of American psychology is the fact that its books
were written by men who were primarily theologians and educators, authors whose
profession combined in one person the functions of the chair of mental and moral
philosophy and of the president of the college, and of a preacher. In these and
many other books "the mind" was treated in terms of "faculties," distinct and
separable "powers."
Consciousness was "ready-made," a sort of "hand-me-down" affair, which could be
had for the studious and persistent asking. The power and authority of
authorship were far more current and important in those days than the power and
authority of free, independent investigation of mental facts and their
correlated conditions. Fichte had quite a modern inspiration when he critically
declared that men were prone to believe some old book rather than their own
consciousness!
How can psychology become a science! No question of the intellect has been
approached with more persistent gropings since the time when Descartes and Locke
attempted to answer it. At first men seemed to think that the content of the
science authors whose profession [p. 669] had to be made in order to be able to
respond to the query. It was not until the beginning of the third quarter of the
last century that the question radically appeared to be one of method rather
than of conception. The world-old veneration for Reality, Being, Becoming, the
Absolute, slowly gave way before a growing regard for the facts in consciousness
and for the facts about consciousness. The revolution inherent in this
iconoclastic change resulted in, and is well chronicled by, the labor which
produced such works as Lotze's "Medicinische Psychologie" (1852), Fechner' s
"Elemente der Psychophysic" (1860), Helmholtz's monumental inquiries into vision
and audition, and Wundt's "Grundzüge der Physiologische Psychologie" (1874). A
wider philosophical platform for the development of the newly explorable
psychological interests was provided in the beginnings of the "Revue
Philosophique" by Th. Ribot (1876), and ''Mind'' by G. Croom Robertson (1876).
The active and established possession of the new field was effected by the
Psychological Institute at Leipzig, founded by Wundt in 1879· This brings us
within the beginnings of our quarter-century, and the "new" psychology is well
secured, awaiting its extension over the whole domain of human activity as
relating to psychological instruction and research. The most striking feature in
all this is, that psychology, distressed by the buffetings from philosophical
systems and the scourgings of those intellectual vandals who had ruthlessly
employed it to destroy the very experience which it, above all other
disciplines, supremely validates, secures both peace of mind and a
non-forfeitable lease upon life by appealing to the physical and physiological
sciences, and adapting the suggestions in their methods and conclusions to its
own special problems.
Facts, however, never stand alone before the human intellect. Almost
simultaneously with this revolution in scientific attitudes towards the content
of daily psychical experience, there swept another revolution over human
interests, which, -- like-wise affecting psychology, but more slowly, -- left
its reconstructing effects upon all science, as, indeed, upon all practical
activity. Facts soon become related, or attached, to hypotheses; and this second
revolution consisted in a construction of a universal hypothesis for all
science. Spencer's "Principles of [p. 670] Psychology" appeared in 1855,
applying an interpretation of evolution to consciousness. No greater
intellectual infusion into psychology has saturated the labors and constructions
of the last twenty-five years. Spencer's views as to mind may not have been
acceptable to his contemporaries of the 70's and 80's, for it is probably true
that Darwin has exercised the greater influence upon scientific views and
activity; but the demand that the data of experience should be viewed as ...
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