the preacher sing a tune.
It may not be easy to make men good psychologists, but it is certainly
not difficult to make them understand what the psychologist is doing
and to make them realize the value of his work. He, like the workers
in the other natural sciences, takes for granted the world of the plain
man, the world of material things in space and time and of minds
related to those material things. But when it is a question of
introducing the student to the reflections of the philosophers the case
is very different. We seem to be enticing him into a new and a strange
world, and he is apt to be filled with suspicion and distrust. The
most familiar things take on an unfamiliar aspect, and questions are
raised which it strikes the unreflective man as highly absurd even to
propose. Of this world of reflective thought I shall say just a word
in what follows.
11. REFLECTIVE THOUGHT.--If we ask our neighbor to meet us somewhere at
a given hour, he has no difficulty in understanding what we have
requested him to do. If he wishes to do so, he can be on the spot at
the proper moment. He may never have asked himself in his whole life
what he means by space and by time. He may be quite ignorant that
thoughtful men have disputed concerning the nature of these for
centuries past.
And a man may go through the world avoiding disaster year after year by
distinguishing with some success between what is real and what is not
real, and yet he may be quite unable to tell us what, in general, it
means for a thing to be real. Some things are real and some are not;
as a rule he seems to be able to discover the difference; of his method
of procedure he has never tried to give an account to himself.
That he has a mind he cannot doubt, and he has some idea of the
difference between it and certain other minds; but even the most ardent
champion of the plain man must admit that he has the most hazy of
notions touching the nature of his mind. He seems to be more doubtful
concerning the nature of the mind and its knowledge than he is
concerning the nature of external things. Certainly he appears to be
more willing to admit his ignorance in this realm.
And yet the man can hold his own in the world of real things. He can
distinguish between this thing and that, this place and that, this time
and that. He can think out a plan and carry it into execution; he can
guess at the contents of other minds and allow this knowledge to fin
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