uoted on p. 184 from Ribot (op. cit., p. 32), viz. that
intelligence progresses from the indefinite to the definite, and that
the vague appears earlier than either the particular or the general.

I think the view which I have been advocating, to the effect that a
general idea is distinguished from a vague one by the presence of a
judgment, is also that intended by Ribot when he says (op. cit., p. 92):
"The generic image is never, the concept is always, a judgment. We know
that for logicians (formerly at any rate) the concept is the simple
and primitive element; next comes the judgment, uniting two or several
concepts; then ratiocination, combining two or several judgments. For
the psychologists, on the contrary, affirmation is the fundamental
act; the concept is the result of judgment (explicit or implicit), of
similarities with exclusion of differences."

A great deal of work professing to be experimental has been done in
recent years on the psychology of thought. A good summary of such
work up to the year agog is contained in Titchener's "Lectures on the
Experimental Psychology of the Thought Processes" (1909). Three articles
in the "Archiv fur die gesammte Psychologie" by Watt,* Messer** and
Buhler*** contain a great deal of the material amassed by the methods
which Titchener calls experimental.

* Henry J. Watt, "Experimentelle Beitrage zu einer Theorie
des Denkens," vol. iv (1905) pp. 289-436.

** August Messer, "Experimentell-psychologische Untersuchu
gen uber das Denken," vol. iii (1906), pp. 1-224.

*** Karl Buhler, "Uber Gedanken," vol. ix (1907), pp. 297-365.

For my part I am unable to attach as much importance to this work as
many psychologists do. The method employed appears to me hardly to
fulfil the conditions of scientific experiment. Broadly speaking, what
is done is, that a set of questions are asked of various people, their
answers are recorded, and likewise their own accounts, based upon
introspection, of the processes of thought which led them to give
those answers. Much too much reliance seems to me to be placed upon the
correctness of their introspection. On introspection as a method I have
spoken earlier (Lecture VI). I am not prepared, like Professor Watson,
to reject it wholly, but I do consider that it is exceedingly fallible
and quite peculiarly liable to falsification in accordance with
preconceived theory. It is like depending upon the report of a
shortsighted