Some of my colleagues may possibly shake their heads at this; but in
taking my cue from what has seemed to me to be the feeling of the
audiences I believe that I am shaping my book so as to satisfy the more
genuine public need.

Teachers, of course, will miss the minute divisions, subdivisions, and
definitions, the lettered and numbered headings, the variations of type,
and all the other mechanical artifices on which they are accustomed to
prop their minds. But my main desire has been to make them conceive,
and, if possible, reproduce sympathetically in their imagination, the
mental life of their pupil as the sort of active unity which he himself
feels it to be. _He_ doesn't chop himself into distinct processes and
compartments; and it would have frustrated this deeper purpose of my
book to make it look, when printed, like a Baedeker's handbook of travel
or a text-book of arithmetic. So far as books printed like this book
force the fluidity of the facts upon the young teacher's attention, so
far I am sure they tend to do his intellect a service, even though they
may leave unsatisfied a craving (not altogether without its legitimate
grounds) for more nomenclature, head-lines, and subdivisions.

Readers acquainted with my larger books on Psychology will meet much
familiar phraseology. In the chapters on habit and memory I have even
copied several pages verbatim, but I do not know that apology is needed
for such plagiarism as this.

The talks to students, which conclude the volume, were written in
response to invitations to deliver 'addresses' to students at women's
colleges. The first one was to the graduating class of the Boston Normal
School of Gymnastics. Properly, it continues the series of talks to
teachers. The second and the third address belong together, and continue