directed toward another person, but most of us could stand a good deal
of ingrowing impersonality without any harm.

The fact that the human machine can run itself without a hitch in the
majority of cases is witness to its inherent tendency toward health.
People were living and living well through all the centuries before
the science of psychology was formulated. But not with all people do
things run so smoothly. There were demoniacs in Bible times and
neurotics in the Middle Ages, as there are nervous invalids and
half-well people to-day. Psychology has a real contribution to make,
and in recent years its lessons have been put into language which the
average man can understand.

Psychology is not merely interested in abstract terms with long names.
It is no longer absorbed merely in states of consciousness taken
separately and analyzed abstractly. The newer functional psychology is
increasingly interested in the study of real persons, their purposes
and interests, what they feel and value, and how they may learn to
realize their highest aspirations. It is about ordinary people, as
they think and act, in the kitchen, on the street cars, at the
bargain-counter, people in crowds and alone, mothers and their babies,
little children at play, young girls with their lovers, and all the
rest of human life. It is the science of _you_, and as such it can
hardly help being interesting.

While psychology deals with such topics as the subconscious mind, the
instincts, the laws of habit, and association of ideas and suggestion,
it is after all not so much an academic as a practical question. These
forces govern the thought you are thinking at this moment, the way you
will feel a half-hour from now, the mood you will be in to-morrow, the