SENSES. Sight.—Light.—Five minutes after birth, slight sensibility to light (2). Second day, sensitiveness to light of candle (3). Sixth and seventh days, pleasure in moderately bright daylight (3, 4). Ninth and tenth days, sensitiveness greater at waking than soon afterward (3). Sleeping babes close the eyes more tightly when light falls on the eyes (4). Eleventh day, pleasure in light of candle and in bright object (3).... more...

THE MIND AND ITS EDUCATION CHAPTER I THE MIND, OR CONSCIOUSNESS We are to study the mind and its education; but how? It is easy to understand how we may investigate the great world of material things about us; for we can see it, touch it, weigh it, or measure it. But how are we to discover the nature of the mind, or come to know the processes by which consciousness works? For mind is intangible; we cannot see it, feel it, taste it, or handle... more...

The Senses in the Lower Animals The sense of touch—The senses of taste and smell—Actinophryans having taste—The sense of sight—Modification of sight organs by surroundings—Sight in Actinophryans—Blind fish sensitive to light—Blind spiders—Blind man—Primitive eyes in Cymothoe—In the jelly-fish, sea-urchin, Alciope, Myrianida—The sight organs of the snail—Power of vision in... more...

CHAPTER I THE ADJECTIVE "BEAUTIFUL" THIS little book, like the great branch of mental science to which it is an introduction, makes no attempt to "form the taste" of the public and still less to direct the doings of the artist. It deals not with ought but with is, leaving to Criticism the inference from the latter to the former. It does not pretend to tell how things can be made beautiful or even how we can recognise that things are beautiful.... more...

When, in 1810, Franz Joseph Gall said: “The measure of culpability and the measure of punishment can not be determined by a study of the illegal act, but only by a study of the individual committing it,” he expressed an idea which has, in late years, come to be regarded as a trite truism. This called forth as an unavoidable consequence a more lively interest on the part of various social agencies in the personality of the criminal,... more...

SEX UNIVERSAL AND ETERNAL The fundamental basis of the universe is Sex. Sex is the fulcrum upon which our life-activities turn. It is the life of Man and of planets, and ignorance of the laws of Sex is the cause of death of both. It is the conjunction of the forces of attraction and repulsion; the positive and negative; the centripetal and centrifugal forces which hold stars and planets in their orbits—or rather, it is the two expressions... more...

ORGANIC DIFFERENCES IN THE SEXES A grand difference between plant and animal life lies in the fact that the plant is concerned chiefly with storing energy, and the animal with consuming it. The plant by a very slow process converts lifeless into living matter, expending little energy and living at a profit. The animal is unable to change lifeless into living matter, but has developed organs of locomotion, ingestion, and digestion which enable it... more...

PREFACE It has always seemed to me a particular duty of the psychologist from time to time to leave his laboratory and with his little contribution to serve the outside interests of the community. Our practical life is filled with psychological problems which have to be solved somehow, and if everything is left to commonsense and to unscientific fancies about the mind, confusion must result, and the psychologist who stands aloof will be to... more...

CHAPTER IATTAINMENT OF MIND CONTROL The Man of Tomorrow The men of the nineteenth century have harnessed the forces of the outer world. The age is now at hand that shall harness the energies of mind, new-found in the psychological laboratory, and shall put them at the service of humanity. Are you fully equipped to take a valiant part in the work of the coming years? The Dollars and Cents of Mental Waste The greatest of all eras is at hand!... more...

PREFACE. The publishers of this work offer no apology for presenting it to the reading public, since the wide prevalence of the evils which it exposes is sufficient warrant for its publication. The subjects with which it deals are of vital consequence to the human race; and it is of the utmost importance that every effort should be made to dispel the gross ignorance which almost universally prevails, by the wide diffusion, in a proper manner,... more...