psychology was
established in 1860 by Fechner, who was a physicist accustomed to
experiment on _things_, not on living creatures, and who merely
adapted the methods employed in physics to psychical measurements,
thus founding psycho-physics. The instruments specially invented for
esthesiometric measurements were of extreme precision; but the results
obtained showed such variations that by mathematical law they could
not be attributed to "errors of measurement," but were obviously due
to "errors of method." Indeed, for the measurement of liquids it is
necessary to have an instrument different from that which we use in
measuring solids, although we are still in the domain of physics; we
cannot measure a stuff by the quart, nor wine by the yard; how much
more then must the methods of measuring physical substances and
spiritual energy differ?

After psycho-physics, psycho-physiology was introduced by Wundt.
Wundt, being a physiologist, applied the methods of study proper to
physiological functions to psychical study. He did not make the exact
metrical instrument his aim; but he measured nervous reactions exactly
in _time_. Fechner's primitive researches made it possible to produce
instruments so exact that they can measure the sound made by a drop of
water falling from the height of a meter, while Wundt's researches
have resulted in chronometers which can measure the thousandth part of
a second. But the spirit did not correspond to the exactness of
research--the results showed by their oscillations that nothing was
being measured--that the object to be measured escaped. It will
suffice to mention that in measuring the nervous currents in rate of
transmission of impulse along the nerves and also in the ganglion
cells of the spinal marrow, Exner arrived at a rapidity of eight
meters, and Bloch at a rapidity of 194 meters, in the same unit of
time.

In spite of this startling contrast between the precision of the means
of research and the huge variations in the results, which were shown
by mathematical law to be absurd, experimental psychology carried on
extensive studies, under the illusion that it rested upon a
mathematical basis.

It is from this science that a branch has been detached with which to
penetrate into the school, for the purpose of giving spiritual help to
the scholar, and fresh vigor to pedagogy.

Methods of research are no longer merely those antiquated
psycho-physical and psycho-physiological methods f