A Primer of Psychology

The Primer stands in the closest relation to my previously published OtUline of Psychology. It has, indeed, been written in response to requests, urged from many quarters by correspondents who approved the teaching of the earlier work, that I should prepare for use in high schools and normal schools a text-book conceived from the same general standpoint. Nevertheless, the two are distinct books. The exposition of the Primer is simpler, and its range wider. I have here followed current usage in treating of Perception and Idea as different processes, and in restricting the application of the phrase ' association of ideas ' ; while I have added chapters on Abnormal Psychology and on the Province and the Relations of Psychology. I have throughout laid greater emphasis upon the fact of mental evolution ; vi Preface and have availed myself of the progress of the science to improve certain of the Sections that deal with Sensation and Perception. I have, further, made free use of literary illustrations. On points of systematic psychology — in method and order of presentment, in advocacy of the experimental control of introspection, in ascription of the highest value to analysis — the Primer and the Outline are, naturally, in entire agreement. The writing of an Elementary Psychology is, in the present state of our knowledge, no easy matter. One must needs be systematic ; a volume of detached * lessons in psychology ' would be of little value : yet it is difficult to be systematic and to be simple at one and the same time. Again, one may introduce one's readers to psychology either by the way of a general account of scientific method or by the way of brain anatomy and brain physiology.…