n its constructions. It explains things by as few principles
as possible and is intolerant of either nondescript facts or clumsy
formulas. The facts must lie in a neat assemblage, and the psychologist
must be enabled to cover them and "tuck them in" as safely under his
system as a mother tucks her babe in under the down coverlet on a winter
night. Until quite recently all psychology, whether animistic or
associationistic, was written on classic-academic lines. The consequence
was that the human mind, as it is figured in this literature, was largely
an abstraction. Its normal adult traits were recognized. A sort of
sun-lit terrace was exhibited on which it took its exercise. But where
that terrace stopped, the mind stopped; and there was nothing farther
left to tell of in this kind of philosophy but the brain and the other
physical facts of nature on the one hand, and the absolute metaphysical
ground of the universe on the other.

But of late years the terrace has been overrun by romantic improvers, and
to pass to their work is like going from classic to gothic architecture,
where few outlines are pure and where uncouth forms lurk in the shadows.
A mass of mental phenomena are now seen in the shrubbery beyond the
parapet. Fantastic, ignoble, hardly human, or frankly non-human are some
of these new candidates for psychological description. The menagerie and
the madhouse, the nursery, the prison, and the hospital, have been made
to deliver up their material. The world of mind is shown as something
infinitely more complex than was suspected; and whatever beauties it may
still possess, it has lost at any rate the beauty of academic neatness.

But despite the triumph of romanticism, psychologists as a rule have
still some lingering prejudice in favor of the nobler simplicities.
Moreover, there are social prejudices which scientific men themselves
obey. The word "hypnotism" has been trailed about in the newspapers so
that even we ourselves rather wince at it, and avoid occasions of its
use. "Mesmerism," "clairvoyance," "medium,"--_horrescimus
referentes_!--and with all these things, infected by their previous
mystery-mongering discoverers, even our best friends had rather avoid
complicity. For instance, I invite eight of my scientific colleagues
severally to come to my house at their own time, and sit with a medium
for whom the evidence already published in our "Proceedings" had been
most noteworthy. Although it