http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/2335359

Thinking, feeling, doing

"A fellow psychologist said to me one day, "Are you not afraid that all this accurate and fine work in the laboratory public?" This book is the answer. You, my dear reader, and I, have no time, inclination, or means to spend years in studying the details of the physical laboratory or the observatory, yet we both enjoy an account of the latest advances of electricity by a specialist in physics or a series of new photographs of the moon by an astronomer. Life is so short that a man can learn only one thing well, whether it be the best method of dyeing cambric or the most efficient construction of locomotives. The botanist is quite at home with the plants but is ordinarily as ignorant of psychology as a stock-broker--if not more so. The mathematician learns some section of mathematics, but would be just as awkward at a chemical analysis as any other outsider. We all belong to the great public except in regard to the particular handiwork, trade, or science that each knows something about. And yet we are all interested in hearing about a new science. There is nothing too good for the public--for you and for me; the fine the work, the more novel the invention of the more important the discovery, the greater the duty of telling it to the public in language that can be understood. This is the first book on the new, or experimental, psychology written in the English language. That it has been written expressly for the people will, I hope, be taken as evidence of the attitude of the science in its desire to serve humanity. In one respect I have departed widely from the usual writers on psychology; I have written plain, every-day English and have not tried to clothe my ignorance in the "multitudinous syllabifications and frangomaxillary combinations" that pass as philosophic English"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

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