rows into an instinctive fear
of coming into contact at all with practical life. To be sure, in any
single case there may be a difference of opinion as to when the right
time has come and when the inner consolidation of a new science is
sufficiently advanced for the technical service, but it ought to be
clear that it is not wise to wait until the scientists have settled
all the theoretical problems involved. True progress in every
scientific field means that the problems become multiplied and that
ever new questions keep coming to the surface. If the psychologists
were to refrain from practical application until the theoretical
results of their laboratories need no supplement, the time for applied
psychology would never come. Whoever looks without prejudice on the
development of modern psychology ought to acknowledge that the
hesitancy which was justified in the beginning would to-day be
inexcusable lack of initiative. For the sciences of the mind too, the
time has come when theory and practice must support each other. An
exceedingly large mass of facts has been gathered, the methods have
become refined and differentiated, and however much may still be under
discussion, the ground common to all is ample enough to build upon.

Another important reason for the slowness of practical progress was
probably this. When the psychologists began to work with the new
experimental methods, their most immediate concern was to get rid of
mere speculation and to take hold of actual facts. Hence they regarded
the natural sciences as their model, and, together with the
experimental method which distinguishes scientific work, the
characteristic goal of the sciences was accepted too. This scientific
goal is always the attainment of general laws; and so it happened that
in the first decades after the foundation of psychological
laboratories the general laws of the mind absorbed the entire
attention and interest of the investigators. The result of such an
attitude was, that we learned to understand the working of the typical
mind, but that all the individual variations were almost neglected.
When the various individuals differed in their mental behavior, these
differences appeared almost as disturbances which the psychologists
had to eliminate in order to find the general laws which hold for
every mind. The studies were accordingly confined to the general
averages of mental experience, while the variations from such averages
were hardly in