world.

We may fairly say that all this is merely a development of and an
improvement upon the plain man's knowledge of minds and of bodies.
There is no normal man who does not know that his mind is more
intimately related to his body than it is to other bodies. We all
distinguish between our ideas of things and the external things they
represent, and we believe that our knowledge of things comes to us
through the avenues of the senses. Must we not open our eyes to see,
and unstop our ears to hear? We all know that we do not perceive other
minds directly, but must infer their contents from what takes place in
the bodies to which they are referred--from words and actions.
Moreover, we know that a knowledge of the outer world and of other
minds is built up gradually, and we never think of an infant as knowing
what a man knows, much as we are inclined to overrate the minds of
infants.

The fact that the plain man and the psychologist do not greatly differ
in their point of view must impress every one who is charged with the
task of introducing students to the study of psychology and philosophy.
It is rather an easy thing to make them follow the reasonings of the
psychologist, so long as he avoids metaphysical reflections. The
assumptions which he makes seem to them not unreasonable; and, as for
his methods of investigation, there is no one of them which they have
not already employed themselves in a more or less blundering way. They
have had recourse to _introspection_, _i.e._ they have noticed the
phenomena of their own minds; they have made use of the _objective
method_, i.e. they have observed the signs of mind exhibited by other
persons and by the brutes; they have sometimes _experimented_--this is
done by the schoolgirl who tries to find out how best to tease her