practical school interests. We may notice in the movement a slow but
most important shifting. At first the results of theoretical
psychology were simply transplanted into the pedagogical field.
Experiments which were carried on in the interest of pure theoretical
science were made practical use of, but their application remained a
mere chance by-product. Only slowly did the pedagogical problems
themselves begin to determine the experimental investigation. The
methods of laboratory psychology were applied for the solving of those
problems which originated in the school experience, and only when this
point was reached could a truly experimental pedagogy be built on a
psychological foundation. We stand in the midst of this vigorous and
healthy movement, which has had a stimulating effect on theoretical
psychology itself.

We find a similar situation in the sphere of the physician. He could
not pass by the new science of the mind without instinctively feeling
that his medical diagnosis and therapy could be furthered in many
directions by the experimental method. Not only the psychiatrist and
nerve specialist, but in a certain sense every physician had made use
of a certain amount of psychology in his professional work. He had
always had to make clear to himself the mental experiences of the
patient, to study his pain sensations and his feelings of comfort,
his fears and his hopes, his perceptions and his volitions, and to a
certain degree he had always tried to influence the mental life of the
patient, to work on him by suggestion and to help him by stimulating
his mind. But as far as a real description and explanation of such
mental experiences came in question, all remained a dilettantic
semi-psychology which worked with the most trivial conceptions of
popular thinking. The medical men recognized the disproportion between
the exactitude of their anatomical, physiological, and pathological