time has come when theory and practice must support each other. An
exceedingly large mass of facts has been gathered, the methods have
become refined and differentiated, and however much may still be under
discussion, the ground common to all is ample enough to build upon.

Another important reason for the slowness of practical progress was
probably this. When the psychologists began to work with the new
experimental methods, their most immediate concern was to get rid of
mere speculation and to take hold of actual facts. Hence they regarded
the natural sciences as their model, and, together with the
experimental method which distinguishes scientific work, the
characteristic goal of the sciences was accepted too. This scientific
goal is always the attainment of general laws; and so it happened that
in the first decades after the foundation of psychological
laboratories the general laws of the mind absorbed the entire
attention and interest of the investigators. The result of such an
attitude was, that we learned to understand the working of the typical
mind, but that all the individual variations were almost neglected.
When the various individuals differed in their mental behavior, these
differences appeared almost as disturbances which the psychologists
had to eliminate in order to find the general laws which hold for
every mind. The studies were accordingly confined to the general
averages of mental experience, while the variations from such averages
were hardly included in the scientific account. In earlier centuries,
to be sure, the interest of the psychological observers had been given
almost entirely to the rich manifoldness of human characters and
intelligences and talents. In the new period of experimental work,
this interest was taken as an indication of the unscientific fancies
of the earlier age, in which the curious and the anecdotal attracted
the view. The new science which was to seek the laws was to overcome