When we read how one mediæval saint stood erect in his cell for a week
without sleep or food, merely chewing a plantain-leaf out of humility,
so as not to be too perfect; how another remained all night up to his
neck in a pond that was freezing over; and how others still performed
for the glory of God feats no less tasking to their energies, we are
inclined to think, that, with the gods of yore, the men, too, have
departed, and that the earth is handed over to a race whose will has
become as feeble as its faith. But we ought not to yield to these
instigations, by which the evil one tempts us to disparage our own
generation. The gods have somewhat changed their shape, 'tis true, and
the men their minds; but both are still alive and vigorous as ever for
an eye that can look under superficial disguises. The human energy no
longer freezes itself in fish-ponds, and starves itself in cells; but
near the north pole, in central Africa, on Alpine "couloirs," and
especially in what are nowadays called "psycho-physical laboratories,"
it maybe found as invincible as ever, and ready for every fresh
demand. To most people a north pole expedition would be an easy task
compared with those ineffably tedious measurements of simple mental
processes of which Ernst Heinrich Weber set the fashion some forty
years ago, and the necessity of extending which in every possible
direction becomes more and more apparent to students of the mind.
Think of making forty thousand estimates of which is the heavier of
two weights, or seventy thousand answers as to whether your skin is
touched at two points or at one, and then tabulating and
mathematically discussing your results! Insight is to be gained at no
less price than this. The new sort of study of the mind bears the same
relation to the older psychology that the microscopic anatomy of the
body does to the anatomy of its visible form, and the one will