Psychology : an introductory study of the structure and function of human consciousness / by James Rowland Angell.

Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Psychology : an introductory study of the structure and function of human consciousness / by James Rowland Angell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    constitution and operation of consciousness itself. We may question whether ultimately there are any hard and fast lines severing these philosophical inquiries from one another and from psychology. The distinctions are perhaps rather practical than ultimate. One inquiry inevitably shades off into the others. Psychology and Education.—Psychology is related to educational theory in much the way that it is to ethics. It may be said to be related to actual educational procedure as theory is to practice. Education has as its function the symmetrical development of the powers of the individual. What the natural relation may be among these faculties, what are the laM^s of their unfolding, what the judicious methods for their cultivation or repression—these and a thousand similar praetical questions can be answered by the assistance of psychological observation, or else not at all. The result which we desire to attain in our educational system must be, in a considerable measure, determined by the social and ethical ideals we have in view. But the securing of the re- sults, the realising of the ideals which we have set up, through our educational machinery—this must be accomplished, if we would work with true insight and not by blind experi- ment, through a real knowledge of human mental processes. We shall keep constantly before us in this book the facts of growth and the facts of adaptation to the demands of the environment. Clearly these are the facts of practical signifi- cance for educational procedure.