A man’s personality is that of which he has cognizance under the concept of “self”. It is that entity, substantial, permanent, unitary, which is the subject of all the states and acts that constitute his complete life. An appeal to self-consciousness shows us that there is such a subject, of which thought, will, and feeling are modifications. It is substantial, i.e. not one or all of the changing states but the reality underlying them, for our self-consciousness testifies that, besides perceiving the thought, it has immediate perception in the same act of the subject to whom the thought belongs. Just as no motion can be apprehended without some sort of apprehension of the object moved, so the perception of thought carries with it perception of the thinker. The changing states are recognized as determinations of the “self”, and the very concept of a determination involves the presence of something determined, something not itself a determination, i.e. a substance. It is permanent, in that though one may say, “I am completely changed”, when referring to a former state, still one knows that the “I” in question is still the same numerically and essentially, though with certain superadded differences.

This permanence is evident from a consideration of our mental processes. Every act of intellectual memory implies a recognition of the fact that I, thinking now, am the “self” as the one who had the experience which is being recalled. My former experiences are referred to something which has not passed as they have passed, to my own self or personality. From this permanence springs the consciousness of self as a unitary principle. The one to whom all the variations of state belong is perceived as an entity complete in itself and distinguished from all others. Unity of consciousness does not constitute but manifests unity of being. The physical principle of this permanence and unity is the simple, spiritual, unchanging substance of the rational soul. This does not mean, however, that the soul is identical with the personal self. There are recognized as modifications of the self not merely acts of thought and volition, but also sensations, of which the immediate subject is the animated body. Even in its own peculiar sphere the soul works in conjunction with the body; intellectual reasoning is accompanied and conditioned by sensory images. A man’s personality, then, consists physically of soul and body. Of these the body is what is termed in scholastic language the “matter” the determinable principle, the soul is the “form”, the determining principle. The soul is not merely the seat of the chief functions of man — thought and will; it also determines the nature and functioning of the body. To its permanence is due the abiding unity of the whole personality in spite of the constant disintegration and rebuilding of the body. Though not therefore the only constituent of personality, the soul is its formal principle. Finally, for the complete constitution of personality this compositum must exist in such a way as to be “subsistent”.

Many modern schools of philosophy hold that personality is constituted not by any underlying reality which self-consciousness reveals to us, but by the self-consciousness itself or by intellectual operations, Locke held that personality is determined and constituted by identity of consciousness. Without denying the existence of the soul as the substantial principle underlying the state of consciousness, he denied that this identity of substance had any concern with personal identity. From what has been said above it is clear that consciousness is a manifestation not the principle, of that unity of being which constitutes personality. It is a state, and presupposes something of which it is a state. Locke’s view and kindred theories are in conflict with the Christian revelation, in that, as in the Incarnate Word there are two intellects and two “operations”, there are therefore two consciousnesses. Hence accepting Locke’s definition of personality there would be two persons.

From Locke’s theory it was but a step to the denial of any permanent substance underlying the perceived states. For Hume the only knowable reality consists in the succession of conscious thoughts and feelings. As these are constantly changing it follows that there is no such thing as permanence of the Ego. Consequently, the impression of abiding identity is a mere fiction. Subsequent theorists however, could not acquiesce in this absolute demolition; an explanation of the consciousness of unity had somehow to be found. Mill therefore held personality to consist in the series of states “aware of itself as a series”. According to James, personality is a thing of the moment, consisting in the thought of the moment: “The passing thought is itself the thinker”. But each thought transmits itself and all its content to its immediate successor, which thus knows and includes all that went before. Thus is established the “stream of consciousness” which in his view constitutes the unity of the Ego. Besides the fundamental difficulties they share in common, each of these theories is open to objections peculiar to itself. How can a number of states, i.e. of events ex hypothesi entitatively distinct from one another, be collectively conscious of themselves as a unity? Similarly, in the theory of James, successive thoughts are distinct entities. As therefore no thought is ever present to the one preceding it, how does it know it without some underlying principle of unity connecting them?

Again, James does not believe in unconscious states of mind. In what sense then does every thought “know” all its predecessors? It is certainly not conscious of doing so. But the objection fundamental to all these theories is that, while pretending to account for all the phenomena of self-consciousness, its most important testimony, namely that to a self who is not the thought, who owns the thought, and who is immediately perceived in the act of reflexion upon the thought, is treated as a mere fiction. Against any such position may be urged all the arguments for the permanent and unitary nature of the self. The modern school of empirical psychologists shows a certain reaction against systems which deny to personality a foundation in substance. Thus Ribot: “Let us set aside the hypothesis which makes of the Ego ‘a bundle of sensations’, or states of consciousness, as is frequently repeated after Hume. This is . . . to take effects for their cause” (Diseases of Personality, 85). For them the unity of the Ego rests merely on the unity of the organism. “The organism, and the brain, as its highest representation, constitute the real personality” (op. cit., 154). A system which ignores the existence of the human soul fails to account for the purely intellectual phenomena of consciousness, abstract ideas, judgment, and inference. These require a simple, i.e. non-extended, and therefore immaterial principle. The various theories we have been considering make the whole personality consist in what is really some part of it. Its substantial constituents are soul and body, its accidental constituents are all the sensations, emotions, thoughts, volitions, in fact all the experiences, of this compositum.

We may here review briefly some forms of what are known as “disintegrations of personality”, and consider to what extent they affect the scholastic theory of the constitution of the person. In double or multiple personality there are manifested in the same individual two or more apparently distinct series of conscious states. There is a break not merely of character and habit, but of memory also. Thus in 1887 a certain Ansel Bourne disappeared from his home at Coventry, Rhode Island, and two weeks later set up business as A. J. Browne, a baker, at Norristown, Pennsylvania. This new “personality” had no knowledge of Ansel Bourne. After eight weeks he one morning woke up to find himself again Ansel Bourne. The adventures, even the existence, of A. J. Browne were a vanished episode. Subsequently under hypnotic influence the latter “personality” was recalled, and recounted its adventures. The phenomena of double personality may also be recurrent apart from hypnosis. In such cases the two states reappear alternately, each having the chain of memories proper to itself. The instance most frequently cited is that of “Felida X”, observed for many years by Dr. Azam. Two states of consciousness alternated. In state II she retained memory of what happened in state I, but not vice versa. Her character in the two states was widely different. Frequently in such cases the character in the second state tends to become more like the character in the original state, appearing finally as a blend of the two, as in the case of Mary Reynolds (cf. “Harper’s Magazine”, May, 1860).

In “multiple personality” the most extraordinary abnormalities of memory and character occur. In the case of “Miss Beauchamp” (Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, xv, 466 sq.), besides the original personality, there were no less than four other states periodically reappearing, different from one another in temperament, and each with a continuous memory. Owing to a mental shock in 1893 Miss Beauchamp’s character changed, though memory remained continuous. This state was afterwards called B I. Under hypnotism two other states manifested themselves B II, and B III. Of these B III (“Sally”) practically developed an independent existence, and continually manifested itself apart from hypnotic suggestion. B I had no memory of B II or B III. B II knew B I, but not B III, while B III knew both the others. Eventually in 1899 after another mental shock there appeared a fourth “personality” B IV, whose memory presented a complete blank from the “disappearance” of the original Miss Beauchamp after the first shock till the appearance of B IV after the second, six years later. Her character was, however, very unlike that of the original personality. B III had memory of all that happened to B IV, but did not know her thoughts. Furthermore, B III was exceedingly jealous both of her and of B I, and played spiteful tricks on them. In connexion with these phenomena, the theory has been proposed that the original personality became “disintegrated” after the first shock, and that B I and B IV are its components, while B II and B III are varying manifestations of the “subliminal self”.

Sometimes again the phenomena of “double personality” are manifested in an individual, not in alternating periods, but simultaneously. Thus M. Taine cites the case of a lady who while continuing a conversation would write a whole page of intelligent and connected matter on some quite alien subject. She had no notion of what she had been writing, and was frequently surprised, sometimes even alarmed, on reading what she had written.

In dealing with the problems suggested by such phenomena, one must first of all be sure that the facts are well attested and that fraud is excluded. It should also be noted that these are abnormal conditions, whereas the nature of personality must be determined by a study of the normal individual. Nor is it permissible even in these exceptional cases to infer a “multiple” personality, so long as the phenomena can be explained as symptoms of disease in one and the same personality.

The various groups of phenomena enumerated above would merit the title of different “personalities”, if it could be shown;

• that personality is constituted by functioning as such, and not by an underlying substantial principle, or
• that, granted that there be a formal principle of unity, such cases showed the presence in the individual, successively or simultaneously, of two or more such principles, or
• that the principle was not simple and spiritual but capable of division into several separately functioning components.

The hypothesis that functioning, as such, constitutes personality has already been shown insufficient to account for the facts of normal consciousness, while the other theories are opposed to the permanence and simplicity of the human soul. Nor are any of these theories necessary to account for the facts. The soul not being a pure spirit but the “form” of the body, it follows that while it performs acts in which the body has no share as a cause, still the soul is conditioned in its activity by the state of the physical organism. Now, in the case of non-simultaneous double personality, the essential feature is the break of memory. Some experiences are not referred to the same “self” as other experiences; in fact, the memory of that former self disappears for the time being. Concerning this one may remark that such failures of memory are exaggerated; there is no complete loss of all that has been acquired in the former state. Apart from the memory of definite facts about oneself there remains always much of the ordinary intellectual possession. Thus the baker “A. J. Browne” was able to keep his accounts and use the language intelligently. That he could do so shows the permanence of the same intellectual and therefore non-composite principle. The disappearance from his memory of most of his experiences merely shows that his physical organism, by the state of which the action of his soul is conditioned, was not working in the normal way.

In other words, while the presence of any form of intellectual memory shows the continuance of a permanent spiritual principle, the loss of memory does not prove the contrary; it is merely absence of evidence either way. Thus the theory that the soul acts as the “form” of the body explains the two partially dissevered chains of memory. What sort of change in the nervous organism would be necessary to account for the calling up of two completely different sets of experiences, as occurs in double personality, no psychologists, even those who consider the physical organism the sole principle of unity, pretend to explain satisfactorily. It may be remarked that such manifestations are almost always found in hysterical subjects, whose nervous organization is highly unstable, and that frequently there are indications which point to definite lesion or disease in the brain.

The alleged cases of simultaneous double personality, manifested usually by speech in the case of one and writing in the case of the other, present special difficulty, in that there is question not of loss of memory of an action performed, but of want of consciousness of the action during its actual performance. There are certainly degrees of consciousness, even of intellectual operation. The doubt therefore always remains as to whether the so-called unconscious writing, if really indicative of mental operation, be literally unconscious or only very faintly conscious. But there is a further doubt, namely, as to whether the writing of the “secondary personality” is intellectual at all at the moment. The nervous processes of the brain being set in motion may run their course without any demand arising for the intellectual action of the soul. In the case of such highly nervous subjects, it is at least possible that images imprinted on the nervous organism are committed to writing by purely automatic and reflex action.

Finally, there remains a sense in which phenomena. of the same nature as those we have been considering may be indicative of the presence of a second personality, e.g. when the body is under the influence of an alien spirit. Possession is something the possibility of which the Church takes for granted. This, however, would not imply a true double personality in one individual. The invading being would not enter into composition with the body to form one person with it, but would be an extrinsic agent communicating local motion to a bodily frame which it did not “inform”.

In the most general sense, psychology is the science which treats of the soul and its operations. During the past century, however, the term has come to be frequently employed to denote the latter branch of knowledge — the science of the phenomena of the mind, of the processes or states of human consciousness. Moreover, the increasing differentiation, characteristic of the advance of all departments of knowledge in recent years, has manifested itself in so marked a manner in psychological investigation that there are already severe distinct fields of psychological work, each putting forward claims to be recognized as a separate science. The term psychologia seems to have first come into use about the end of the sixteenth century (Goclenius, 1590, Casmann’s “Psychologia Anthropologica”, 1594). But the popularization of the name dates from Ch. Wolff in the eighteenth century.

Aristotle may well be deemed the founder of this as of so many other sciences, though by him it is not distinguished from general biology, which is itself part of physics, or the study of nature. His treatise peri psyches (“De Anima”) was during two thousand years virtually the universal textbook of psychology, and it still well repays study. In the investigation of vital phenomena Aristotle employed to some extent all the methods of modern science: observation, internal and external; comparison; experiment; hypothesis; and induction; as well as deduction and speculative reasoning. He defines the soul as the “Entelechy or form of a natural body potentially possessing life”. He distinguishes three kinds of souls, or grades of life, the vegetative, the sensitive, and the intellectual or rational. In man the higher virtually includes the lower. He investigates the several functions of nutrition, appetency, locomotion, sensuous perception, and intellect or reason. The last is confined to man. The working of the senses is discussed by him in detail; and diligent anatomical and physiological study, as well as careful introspective observation of our conscious processes, is manifested. Knowledge starts from sensation, but sense only apprehends the concrete and singular thing. It is the function of the intellect to abstract the universal essence. There is a radical distinction between thought and sentiency. The intellect or reason (nous) is separate from sense and immortal, though how precisely we are to conceive this nous and its “separateness” is one of the most puzzling problems in Aristotle’s psychology. Indeed, the doctrines of free will and personal immortality are not easily reconciled with parts of Aristotle’s teaching.

There is little effort at systematic treatment of psychology from Aristotle to the medieval philosophers. For Epicurus, psychology was a branch of physics in subordination to a theory of hedonistic ethics. With the introduction of Christianity certain psychological problems such as the immortality and the origin of the soul, free will and moral habits at once assumed a vastly increased importance and raised the treatise “De Anima”, to one of the most important branches of philosophy. Moreover, the angels being assumed to be spirits in many ways resembling the human soul conceived as separate from the human body, a speculative theory of the nature, attributes, and operations of the angelic beings, partly based on Scriptural texts, partly deduced by analogical reasoning from human psychology, gradually grew up and received its final elaboration in the Middle Ages in the metaphysical theology of the Schoolmen. The Christian mystics were naturally led to consider the character of the soul’s knowledge of God. But their treatment of psychological questions is generally vague and obscure, whilst their language indulges much in allegory and symbolism. Indeed, the greatest of the mystics were not sympathetic with the employment of Scholastic or scientific methods in the handling of mystic experience. The great controversy between Realism and Nominalism from the early Middle Ages directed much attention to the theory of knowledge and the problem of the origin of ideas. However, although psychological observation was appealed to, the epistemological discussions were largely metaphysical in character during this period. To Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas the popularization of the psychology of Aristotle throughout Europe during the thirteenth century was mainly due. In Questions lxxv to xc of part I of the “Summa Theologica”, St. Thomas gives a very fairly complete and systematic account of the leading topics connected with the soul. However, questions of biology, general metaphysics, and theology were constantly interwoven with psychology for many centuries afterwards. Indeed, the liberal use made of physiological evidence in psychological discussions is a marked feature in the treatment of this branch of philosophy throughout the entire history of scholastic philosophy. But although there is plenty of proof of acute observation of mental activities, the usual appeal in discussion is rather to metaphysical analysis and deductive argument than to systematic introspective observation and induction, so characteristic of modern psychology. The treatise “De Anima” of Francisco Suárez is a very good example of scholastic psychology at the close of the Middle Ages. The treatise, containing six books, starts in book I with an inquiry into the essence of the soul. Recalling Aristotle’s definition of the soul as the form of the body, the author proceeds to examine the relations of the vegetative, sensitive, and rational soul. Next, in book II he treats of the faculties of the soul in general and their relation to the soul as an essence. In book III he investigates the nature and working of the cognitive faculties, and especially of the senses. In book IV he inquires into the character of the activity of the intellect. In book V he deals with faculties of appetency and free will. Book VI is devoted to a speculative consideration of the condition and mode of operation of the soul in a future life. In each question he begins with a summary of previous opinions and then puts forward his own solution. The order of treatment starting from the essence and passing thence to the faculties and their operations is characteristic of the scholastic treatises generally. The method is mainly deductive and the argument metaphysical, though in dealing with the senses there is constant appeal to recognized physiological authorities from Aristotle to Vesalius.

In psychology as well as in other branches of philosophy the influence of Descartes was considerable though indirect. His subjective starting-point, cogito, ergo sum, his insistence on methodic doubt, his advocacy of reflection on thought and close scrutiny of our fundamental ideas, all tended to encourage the method of internal observation, whilst the mechanical explanation of the “Traité des Passions” favoured the advent of physiological psychology. It was probably, however, John Locke’s “Essay on the Human Understanding” (1690) which did most to foster the method of analytic introspection which constitutes the principal feature of modern psychological method. Notwithstanding the confused and inconsistent metaphysics and the many grave psychological blunders with which that work abounds, yet his frequent appeal to inner experience, his honest efforts to describe mental processes, and the quantity of acute observations scattered throughout the work, coming also at an age when the inductive method was rapidly rising in popularity, achieved a speedy and wide success for his book, and gave a marked empirical bent to all future English psychology.

Psychological observation and analysis were still more skilfully used by Bishop Berkeley as a principle of explanation in his “Theory of Vision”, and then employed by him to establish his psychological creed of Idealism. Finally, David Hume, the true founder of the Associationist school of psychology, still further increased the importance of the method of introspective analysis by the daring sceptical conclusions he claimed to establish by its means. The subsequent British adherents of the Associationist school Hartley, the two Mills, Bain, and Herbert Spencer, continued this method and tradition along the same lines. There is constant direct appeal to inner experience combined with systematic effort to trace the genesis of the highest, most spiritual, and most complex mental conceptions back to elementary atomic states of sensuous consciousness. Universal ideas, necessary truths, the ideas of self, time, space, causality as well as the conviction of an external material world were all explained as the outcome of sensations and association. The reality of any higher activities or faculties essentially different from the lower sensuous powers was denied, and all the chief data formerly employed in establishing the simplicity, spirituality, and substantiality of the soul were rejected. Rational or metaphysical psychology was thus virtually extinguished and erased from English philosophical literature during the nineteenth century. Even the more orthodox representatives of the Scotch school, Reid and Dugald Stewart, who avoided all metaphysical argument and endeavoured to controvert Hume with his own weapons of appeal exclusively to experience and observation, had only further confirmed the tendency in the direction of a purely empirical psychology. The great need in English psychological literature throughout most of the nineteenth century, on the side of those defending a spiritual doctrine of the human mind, was a systematic and thorough treatment of empirical psychology. Excellent pieces of work on particular questions were done by Martineau, W.G. Ward, and other writers, but nearly all the systematic treatises on psychology were produced by the disciples of the Sensationist or Materialistic schools. Yet, if philosophy is to be based on experience, then assuredly it is on the carefully-scrutinized and well-established results of empirical psychology that any satisfactory rational metaphysical doctrine respecting the nature of the soul, its origin, and its destiny must be built. It was in their faulty though often plausible analysis and interpretation of our states of consciousness that the greatest errors in philosophy and psychology of Bain, the two Mills, Spencer, and their disciples had their source; it is only by more careful introspective observation and a more searching analysis of the same mental facts that these errors can be exposed and solid foundations laid for a true metaphysical psychology of the soul.

In France, Condillac, La Mettrie, Holbach, and Bonnet developed the Sensationalism of Locke’s psychology into an increasingly crude Materialism. To oppose this school later on, Royer-Collard, Cousin, Jouffroy, and Maine de Biran turned to the work of Reid and the “common sense” Scotch school, appropriating their method and results in empirical psychology. Some of these writers, moreover, sought to carry their reasoning beyond the mere inductions of empirical psychology, in order to construct on this enlarged experience a genuine philosophy of the soul, as “principle” and subject of the states and activities immediately revealed to introspective observation.

In Germany the purely empirical tendency which had reduced psychology in England to a mere positivistic science of mental facts did not meet with quite the same success. Metaphysics and philosophy proper never fell there into the degradation which they experienced in England in the beginning of the nineteenth century. And although the old conception of a philosophical science of the nature and attributes of the soul was rejected by Kant, and abandoned in the systems of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, yet mere Phenomenalism was never completely triumphant in Germany. Herbart, whilst denying the reality of faculties, postulates a simple soul as the underlying subject of the presentations or ideas which form our conscious life. Hermann Lotze, laying similar stress on the importance of scientific observation of our mental states, insists even more strongly that our introspective experience correctly interpreted affords abundant metaphysical justification for the doctrine of an immaterial soul. Meanwhile the earlier attempts of Herbart to express mental activities in mathematical formulæ led to a more successful line of experimental research in the hands of Weber, Fechner, Wundt, and others. The aim of this school is to attain the possible quantitative measurement of conscious states. As this is ordinarily not directly possible, much industry and ingenuity have been devoted to measuring quantitatively, by the aid of skilfully devised instruments, the immediate physical antecedents and effects of sundry mental activities, by which it is hoped to secure accurate quantitative descriptions of the mental states themselves. Psychological laboratories devoted to research of this kind have been set up in several countries, especially in Germany and America. One of the most successful so far is that at the Catholic University of Louvain, and another has lately been established at that of Washington. In Great Britain, however, the special home of empirical psychology since Locke, the new movement in favour of experimental psychology has not, at all events down to the present time, met with much success. The advance of physiological science, and especially of that of the brain and nervous system, has also reacted on psychology, stimulating closer inquiry into the relations between mental and bodily processes. It cannot, however, be maintained that the progress of physiological knowledge, considerable though it is, has brought us appreciably nearer to the solution of the great problem, how body and mind act on each other. The study of nervous pathology, of mental disease and of abnormal mental states, such as those of hypnotism and double-consciousness, has also opened up new fields of psychological research, constantly widening with the last thirty years.

As we have already observed, recent writers commonly confine the term psychology to the science of the phenomena of the mind. Thus William James, probably the psychologist of widest influence during the past twenty years, defines psychology as “The Science of Mental Life, both of its phenomena and their conditions”. (“Principles”, I, 1). Wundt’s definition is: “the science which investigates the whole content of Experience in its relations to the Subject”. (“Outlines”, 3rd ed., 3). Other writers describe it as, “the science of the facts apprehended by our internal sense”, or again, “the science of our states of consciousness, their laws of succession and concomitancy”. The common feature of all these definitions is the limitation of the scope of psychology to the phenomena of the mind directly observable by introspection. In this view it is a purely positivist science from which all philosophical problems are to be excluded, as rigorously as from chemistry or geology. It is, in fact; la psychologie sans âme. If such questions as the nature, origin, or destiny of the soul are to be discussed at all, it must be, according to these writers, not in psychology, but in some branch of speculation to be styled the metaphysics or ontology of the human mind, and to be completely isolated from science.

In direct contrast with this view is that ordinarily adopted by Catholic writers hitherto. By them, psychology has usually been conceived as one of the most important branches of philosophy. In their view it may be best described as the philosophical science, which investigates the nature, attributes, and activities of the soul or mind of man. By soul, or mind, is understood the ultimate principle within me by which I think, feel, will, and by which my body is animated. Whilst the soul and the mind are conceived as fundamentally one, the latter term is usually employed to designate the animating principle viewed as subject of my conscious or mental operations; the former denotes it as the root of all vital activities. By terming their branch of knowledge a philosophical science, it is implied that psychology ought to include not only a doctrine of the laws of succession and concomitance of our conscious states, but an inquiry into their ultimate cause. Any adequate study of the human mind, it is contended, naturally presents itself in two stages, empirical or phenomenal psychology, and rational or metaphysical psychology. Though conveniently separated for didactic treatment the two are organically connected. Our metaphysical conclusions as to the nature of the soul must rest on the evidence supplied by our experience of the character of its activities. On the other hand, any effort at thorough treatment of our mental operations, and especially any attempt at explanation of the higher forms or products of consciousness, it is urged, is quite impossible without the adoption of some metaphysical theory as to the nature of the underlying subject or agents of these states. Professor Dewey has justly observed: “The philosophic implications embedded in the very heart of psychology are not got rid of when they are kept out of sight. Some opinion regarding the nature of the mind and its relations to reality will show itself on almost every page, and the fact that this opinion is introduced without the conscious intention of the writer, may serve to confuse both the author and his reader” (“Psychology”, IV). Ladd, and others also, recognize the evil of “clandestine” metaphysics when smuggled into what claims to be purely “scientific” non-philosophical treatments of psychology.

Psychology is not in the same position as the physical sciences here. Whilst investigating a question in geology, chemistry, or mechanics, we may, at least temporarily, prescind from our metaphysical creed, but not so — judging from the past history — when giving our psychological accounts and explanations of mental products, such as universal concepts, the notions of moral obligation, responsibility, personal identity, time, or the perception of an external material world, or the simple judgment, two and two must make four. The view, therefore, of those philosophers who maintain that the intrinsic connexions between many of the questions of empirical and rational psychology are so indissoluble that they cannot be divorced, seems to have solid justification. Of course we can call the study of the phenomena of the mind, “Psychology”, and that of its inner nature, the “Philosophy of the Mind”; and we may treat each in a separate volume. That is merely a matter of terminology and convenience. But the important point is that in the explanatory treatment of the higher intellectual and rational processes, it will practically be impossible for the psychologist to preserve a philosophically neutral attitude. A truly scientific psychology, therefore, should comprise:

• a thorough investigation by introspective observation and analysis of our various mental activities — cognitive and appetitive, sensuous and rational — seeking to resolve all products of the mind back to their original elements, determining as far as possible their organic conditions, and tracing the laws of their growth;
• based on the results of this study, a rational theory or explanatory account of the nature of the agent or subject of these activities, with its chief properties.

The primary method of investigation in empirical or phenomenal psychology is introspection or reflective observation of our own mental states. This is the ultimate source of all knowledge of mental facts; even the information gathered immediately from other quarters has finally to be interpreted in terms of our own subjective experience. Introspection is, however, liable to error; consequently, it has to be employed with care and helped and corrected by all the supplementary sources of psychological knowledge available. Among the chief of these are: the internal experience of other observers communicated through language; the study of the human mind as exhibited in different periods of life from infancy to old age, and in different races and grades of civilization; as embodied in various languages and literatures; and as revealed in the absence of particular senses, and in abnormal or pathological conditions such as dreams, hypnotism, and forms of insanity. Moreover, the anatomy, physiology, and pathology of the brain and nervous system supply valuable data as to the organic conditions of conscious states. Experimental psychology, psychophysics, and psychometry help towards accuracy and precision in the description of certain forms of mental activity. And the comparative study of the lower animals may also afford useful assistance in regard to some questions of human psychology. By the utilization of these several sources of information the data furnished to the psychologist by the introspective observation of his own individual mind may be enlarged, tested and corrected, and may thus acquire in a certain degree the objective and universal character of the observations on which the physical sciences are built. Introspection is frequently spoken of as the subjective method, these other sources of information as supplementary objective methods of psychological study.

Indeed some of them have rapidly grown to be such large and important fields of research that they now claim to be recognized as special departments of psychology, or even sciences in their own right. Thus we have comparative psychology including animal psychology, child psychology, and race psychology. Again psychiatry or psychopathology, the science of mental disease, also physiological psychology, which, in a broad sense, includes all systematic study of the organic conditions of mental life, or, as Ladd defines it, “psychology approached and studied from the physiological side”.

A special department of physiological psychology which has recently risen rapidly into favour in some countries is experimental psychology, alluded to above in our historical sketch. It is at times styled the “New Psychology” by its more enthusiastic supporters. It seeks to secure precision and an objective standard in the description of mental states by controlling their conditions by skilful devices and ingenious apparatus. Its chief success so far has been in its efforts to measure the varying intensity of sensations, the delicacy of sense-organs and “reaction-time” or the rapidity of a faculty’s response to stimulation. Certain properties of memory have also been made the subject of measuring experiments and more recently considerable industry has been devoted, especially by Külpe and the Würzburg school, to bring some aspects of the higher activities of intellect and will within the range of the laboratory apparatus. Opinions still differ much as to both the present value and future prospects of experimental psychology. Whilst Wundt, the leader of the new movement for the past fifty years, places the only hope of psychological progress in the experimental method, William James’s judgment on the entire literature of the subject since Fechner (1840) was that “its proper psychological outcome is just nothing at all” (“Principles”, I, 534). Apart, however from the very modest positive results, especially in the higher forms of mental life, which the experimental method has achieved or may achieve in the future, its exercise may nevertheless prove a valuable agency in the training of the psychological specialist, both in increasing his appreciation of the value of the most minute accuracy in descriptions of mental states, and also by fostering in him habits of precision and skill in systematic introspection.

In empirical psychology, with modern writers, the next step after determining the method of the science is to attempt a classification of the phenomena of mental life. In the scholastic philosophy the equivalent operation was the systematic division of the faculties of the soul. Apart from vegetative and locomotive powers the Schoolmen, following Aristotle, adopted a bipartite division of faculties into those of cognition and appetency. The former they subdivided into sensuous, and intellectual or rational. The sensuous faculties they again subdivided into the five external senses and the internal activities of imagination, sensuous memory, sensus communis, and vis cogitativa. But there was much disagreement as to the number, character, and boundary lines of these internal forms of sensuous cognition. There were also divergences of opinion as to the nature of the faculties in general in themselves and to what extent there was a distinctio realis between faculties and the essence of the soul. But, on the other hand, there was general agreement as to an essential difference between all sensuous and intellectual or spiritual powers of the mind. The possession of the latter constitutes the differentia which separates man from the irrational animals.

The psychologist naturally begins with the treatment of the phenomena of sentiency. The several senses, their organic structure and functions, the various forms of sentient activity with their cognitive, hedonic and appetitive properties and their special characteristics have to be carefully analyzed, compared, and described. Next, imagination and memory are similarly studied, and the laws of their operation, growth, and development diligently traced. The discussion of the organic appetites springing from sensations, and the investigation of the nature and conditions of the most elementary forms of pleasure and pain may also appropriately come here. Intellect follows. The consideration of this faculty includes the study of the processes of conception, judgment, reasoning, rational attention, and selfconscious reflection. These, however, are all merely different functions of the same spiritual cognitive power — the intellect. Psychology inquires into their modes of operation, their special features, and the general conditions of their growth and development. From the higher power of cognition it proceeds to the study of spiritual appetency, rational desire, and free volition. The relations of will to knowledge, the qualities of conative activity, and the effects of repeated volitions in the production of habit, constitute the chief subjects of investigation here. In connexion with these higher forms of cognition and desire, there will naturally be undertaken the study of conscience and the phenomena of the emotions.

The constant aim of modern psychology is to analyse all complex mental operations into their simplest elements and to trace back to their first beginning all acquired or composite habits and faculties, and to show how they have been generated or could have been generated from the fewest original aptitudes or fundamental activities of the mind. This is sound scientific procedure — recognized in the Scholastic aphorism, Entia non sunt multiplicanda prœter necessitatem. We may not postulate a special faculty for any mental state which can be accounted for by the co-operation of already recognized activities of the soul. But the labour and skill devoted during the past century and a half to this combined analytic and synthetic procedure has developed one feature of modern psychology by which it is differentiated in a most marked manner from that of the Middle Ages and of Aristotle. The present-day treatment is pronouncedly genetic. Thus, whilst the Schoolmen in their account of mental operations, such as perception, conception, or desire, considered these processes almost solely as elicited by the normal adult human being already in full possession and control of matured mental powers, the chief interest of the modern psychologist is to trace the growth of these powers from their first and simplest manifestations in infancy, and to discriminate what is the product of experience and acquired habits from that which is the immediate outcome of the innate capabilities of the soul. This is particularly noticeable if we compare the treatment of the mental operation of perception as given in most Scholastic textbooks with that to be found in any modern handbook of psychology. The point of view is usually quite different. Since much of the most plausible modern attacks on Scholastic psychological doctrine has been made in this manner, the genetic treatment from the Thomist standpoint of many psychological questions seems to us to be among the most urgent tasks imposed nowadays on the neo-Scholastic psychologist. The value of such work from a philosophical standpoint would seem to be distinctly greater than that of any results likely to be achieved in quantitative experimental psychology. Obviously there is nothing in the Thomistic conception of the soul and its operations incompatible with a diligent investigation into the unfolding of its various aptitudes and powers.

From the study of the character of the activities of the mind in experimental psychology, the student now passes on to inquire into the nature of the principle from which they proceed. This constitutes the more philosophical or metaphysical division of the science. For, as we have indicated, the analysis and explanatory accounts of the higher forms and products of mental activity, which the scientific psychologist is compelled to undertake even in phenomenal psychology, involve metaphysical assumption and conclusions which he cannot escape — certainly not by merely ignoring them. Still, it is in this second stage that he will formally evolve the logical consequences to which his previous study of the several forms of mental activity lead up. His method here will be both inductive and deductive; both analytic and synthetic. He argues from effect to cause. From the character of the mental activities already scrutinized with so much care, he now concludes as to the nature of the subject to which they belong. From what the mind does, he seeks to learn what it is. In particular, from the simple spiritual nature of the higher activities of intellect and will, he infers that the being, the ultimate principle from which they proceed, must be of a simple and spiritual nature. Consequently, it cannot be the brain or any corporeal substance. Having established the simplicity and spirituality of the soul, he then goes on to deduce further conclusions as to its origin, the nature of its union with the body, and its future destiny. In this way by rational arguments the Scholastic thinkers claim to prove that the human soul can only have arisen by creation, that it is naturally incorruptible, and that the boundless aspirations of the intellect, the insatiable yearnings of the will, and the deepest convictions of the moral reason all combine to establish a future life of the soul after death.

Psychotherapy is that branch of therapeutics which uses the mind to influence the body; first, for the prevention of disease by keeping worry from lowering resistive vitality; secondly, for reaction against disease during progress by freeing the mind from solicitude and tapping latent energies; thirdly, after the ailment retrogrades, to help convalescence through the removal of discouragement during weakness by inspiring suggestion. Psychotherapy is sometimes regarded as a comparatively new development consequent upon our recent advance in psychology and especially in physiological psychology; it is, however, as old as the history of humanity, and the priests in ancient Egypt used it effectively. Wherever men have had confidence in other men for their physical good there has always been a large element of psychic influence over disease. The first physician of whom we have any record in history was I-Em-Hetep, “The Bringer of Peace”; we know that it was much more the confidence that men had in him than anything which he did by physical means that brought him this complimentary title and enabled him to do so much good. He was so highly esteemed that the famous step pyramid at Sakkara, near Memphis, is called by his name, and after his death he was worshipped as a god. The Eastern nations always employed mental influences in medicine, and we have abundant evidence of its effectiveness among them.

Among the Greeks the influence of the mind on the body was recognized very clearly. Plato says in the “Charmides”: “Neither ought you to attempt to cure the body without the soul. . . . You begin by curing the soul [or mind].” These expressions occur in a well-known passage in which Socrates tells of curing a young man of headache by suggestion. He pretended to have a remedy that had been used at the court of an Eastern king to cure headache; though it was really indifferent in its effect, the employment of it produced the desired result. In this story we have the essence of psychotherapy at all times. The patient must trust the suggestor and must be persuaded that the suggestion has already been efficient on others, and then the cure results. There are many passages of Plato in which he discusses the influence of the mind in lessening physical ills and also in increasing them, and even creating them, so that he says in the “Republic” that in his generation men were educating themselves in disease instead of in health, and this was making many very miserable.

A special form of psychotherapy is by hypnotism. This consists in suggestion made to the patient while he is in a state of concentration of attention that may be so deep as to resemble sleep. We find traces of this from the early days in Egypt, and especially in the temple hospitals. The Eastern nations paid much attention to it and succeeded in producing many manifestations that we are likely to think of as quite modern. As the result of more careful investigation in modern times we have come to realize that whatever there is in hypnotism is due entirely to the subject and not to the operator. It is not the power of the operator’s will, but the influence of the subject on himself that produces the condition. Hypnotism may be useful at the beginning of certain neurotic cases, but it depends for its efficiency on the patient’s will. If repeated frequently it always does harm. The recurrence of attention to it in each succeeding generation is one of the most interesting phenomena in the history of the use of the mind to influence the body.

Besides deliberate psychotherapy, there is not a little unconscious psychotherapeutics in the history of medicine. Many remedies have been introduced, have seemed to benefit patients, have then had considerable vogue, and subsequently proved to be, quite without effect. The patients were helped by the confidence aroused by the new remedy. Such therapeutic incidents make it difficult to determine the real value of new remedies. Remedies of comparatively slight efficiency acquire a reputation because of their recommendation by someone who commands confidence; only after this loses its effect can the true value of the remedy be estimated.

Nearly every branch of science has furnished medicine with supposed remedies which have been of benefit for a time and have subsequently proved to be of little or no avail. In the later Middle Ages magnets were supposed to draw diseases out of people and actually affected many patients favourably. As electricity developed, each new phase of it found applications in medicine that were very promising at first, but afterwards proved to be of little therapeutic value. The supposed effect of the Leyden jar shortly after its discovery is ludicrous reading. Galvani’s work gave new impetus to electrical therapy. A wandering quack from America, Perkins, made a fortune in Europe by means of two metal instruments about the size of lead pencils with which he stroked patients. They were supposed somehow to make an application of Galvani’s discovery of animal electricity to the human body. After a time, of course, “Perkins tractors” failed to produce any such results. In spite of disappointments, each new development has had the same results. When the stronger electrical machines, and then the methods of producing high-frequency currents, were invented, these were announced as having wonderful curative powers and actually cured many patients, until the suggestive value of the new discovery failed to act favourably on the mind. When the Röntgen rays attracted attention, they too were used with the most promising results in nearly every disease, though now their range of therapeutic value is known to be very limited.

Faith has always been a strong therapeutic agent. Science, or the supposed application of scientific principles, has probably been the responsible cause of more faith cures than anything else. The reason why astrology maintained its influence in medicine was because of faith in scientific knowledge transferred to the realm of human affairs. When light was studied, it too came into therapeutics. With the discovery of the ultra-violet rays and their actinic value, blueglass therapy became a fad, thousands of tons of blue glass were sold, and people sat beneath it and were cured of all kinds of pains and aches. Each new development of chemistry and of physics led to new applications to therapeutics, though after a time most of them have proved to be nugatory. The faith in the scientific discovery had acted through the mind of the patient so as to bring about an amelioration of symptoms, if not a cure of the disease. The patients who are cured are usually sufferers from chronic diseases, who either have only a persuasion that they are ill or, having some physical ailment, inhibit through solicitude and worry the natural forces that would bring about a cure. This inhibition cannot be lifted until the mind is relieved by confidence in some wonderful remedy or scientific discovery that gives them a conviction of cure.

The history of quackery is really a chapter of psychotherapy. The quack’s best remedy is always his promise to cure. This he does for all diseases. As a consequence he benefits people very much through their minds. Such patients have never before fully trusted that they could be cured, and, without having much the matter with them, they have suffered, or at least complained. When they lift the burden of solicitude from themselves, nature cures them by very simple means, but the cure is attributed to the last remedy employed. We have no remedies in medicine that have come to us from quacks: their wonderful cures have been obtained from simple well-known remedies plus mental influence. The same power over the mind helps nostrums, or special medicines, sold with the promise of cure. At times such remedies have worked so many cures that governments have purchased the special secret from its inventor and published it to the world. The secret has always proved to be some ordinary remedy known before, and just as soon as its secrecy was lost it failed to cure. The spread of popular education, instead of making such faith cures by nostrums less common, has rather served to give them wider diffusion. The ability to read leaves people open to the suggestive influence of print, though it does not necessarily supply the judgment requisite for a proper appreciation of what is thus presented. As a consequence our generation is nostrum-ridden and spends millions of money for remedies which are quite indifferent or, at most, trivially helpful, and sometimes are absolutely noxious. Government analysis of a score of the most popular remedies widely consumed throughout the country five years ago showed that the only active ingredient was alcohol and that a dose of the medicine was about equivalent to a drink of whiskey. This lessened the sale of these remedies, however, only for the time being, and most of them have regained their old popularity. The most popular present source of scientific superstition concerns electricity. All sorts of rings, medals, and electrodes are bought at high prices with the confidence that they will produce wonderful results. Rheumatic rings and wristlets, foot electrodes, one of copper and the other of zinc, electric belts, shields worn in the front and back of the chest — these are modern examples of superstitious practices.

Ordinarily, it is presumed that psychotherapy is only efficient in affections that are due to mental persuasions, so-called imaginary diseases, and that it cannot benefit organic affections. In recent years, however, abundant proof has been forthcoming that favourable influence upon the mind can modify even very serious physical conditions. It is not unusual for a cancer patient who has lost some twenty or thirty pounds in weight to regain this and more after an exploratory incision which has shown the condition to be inoperable. The patient, to save solicitude, is given to understand that now he ought to get better and he proceeds to do so. In one such case a gain of seventy pounds was recorded. The patient eventually died of cancer, but there had been months of strength and efficiency that would not otherwise have been secured. There are affections, too, in which unfavourable mental persuasion produces serious physical changes that may even prove fatal if any other cause intervenes. It is now very well known that a great many cases of so-called dyspepsia are really due to over-solicitude about food and the elimination from the diet of so many articles supposed to be indigestible that the patient’s nutrition is seriously interfered with. Occupation of mind with the stomach is particularly likely to interfere with its activity. Certain thoughts bring a sense of nausea. Delicate people may reject a meal if they are reminded of something nauseating, or if a particular smell or some untoward incident disturbs them. Food eaten with relish and in process of satisfactory digestion may be rejected if something deterrent is heard in reference to its origin or mode of preparation, and rejection occurs whether the disgusting statement be true or false. A conviction that certain articles of food will disagree with us is almost sure to make them difficult of digestion: a great many people are quite sure that they cannot digest milk or eggs, but prove thoroughly capable of digesting those articles of diet without difficulty when, as in tuberculosis sanatoria, they are required to take them regularly.

The heart might be presumed free from the influence of the mind, because of its great importance. It is probably through this organ, however, that most of the favourable and unfavourable influence of the mind on the body is exerted. The heart begins to beat in the embryo long before the nervous system is formed, but it very soon comes to have the most intimate relations with the nervous system. In excitement and joy the heart beats fast; in fright and depression it beats slowly; and any vehement emotion seriously affects its action. This is true in health, but is particularly true in disease of the heart itself. Sufferers from heart-disease die from joy as well as from fright. The state of mind may influence the heart favourably or unfavourably in the course of disease, and the physician must recognize this and use his understanding of it to good purpose. Many of our heart remedies are rather slow to act, taking twelve hours or more for their effect. An hour or two after the visit of a physician, however, most heart patients will be ever so much better than they were before, and their improvement may be attributed to the physician’s remedies, though it is only due to confidence aroused by his presence and the feeling of relief afforded by his careful examination and assurance that there is no danger. By the time this feeling would begin to lose its effect, his remedies take hold and the patient continues to improve.

Great physicians have at all times recognized the strong influence that the mind has over the heart. Lancisi [De subit. morte, I (Geneva, 1718), xix, § 3] tells of cases in which over-solicitude about the heart was the cause of the symptoms. Morgagni, in “The Seats and Causes of Diseases”, I (London, 1769), Letter xxiv, tells of a physician who, from worrying about his heart, caused it to miss beats. Sydenham and Boerhaave both note the unfavourable effect which the mind may have on the heart [Brown, “Academical Lectures”, VI (London, 1757)]. In our own times Oppenheim (“Letters to Nervous Patients”, tr. Edinburgh, 1907) tells one patient that whenever he feels the pulse, the patient being conscious of it, beats are missed; whenever he feels it without advertence on the part of the patient, it is quite regular in its actions. He insists that the heart resents surveillance, “which not only accelerates, but may even inhibit its action and render it irregular”. He adds: “And so it is with all the organs of the body which act spontaneously; they get out of order and become functionally defective, if, as the result of the attention and self-observation directed towards them, impulses flow to them from the centres of consciousness and will in the same way as they flow to the organs [e.g. the muscles] which are normally under the control of the will.” Prof. Broadbent, whose experience with heart disease was perhaps the greatest in our generation, frequently dwells, in “The Action of the Heart” (“The Writings of Sir Win. Broadbent”, Oxford, 1910), on the necessity for setting the mind at rest. MacKenzie, whose work on the mechanics of the heart was in a contrary direction, has been quite as emphatic in recognizing mental influence (“Diseases of the Heart”, Oxford, 1910). Psychotherapy means more in heart disease than anywhere else, and in other diseases its effect upon the circulation through the heart is very important.

The absolutely automatic action of the lungs might seem to indicate that these were free from any emotional or mental influence. Most of the asthmatic conditions characterized by difficulty of breathing have large mental elements in them. Neurotic asthma is more dependent on the mental state than anything else. Most of the remedies that affect it have a distinct action on the mind as well as the lungs. Even tuberculosis is very largely influenced by the state of the patient’s mind. A patient who gives up the struggle will succumb. “Consumption takes the quitters” is an axiom. Patients who bravely face the danger and the difficulties usually live on much longer and sometimes live their lives out, and in spite of serious invasion of the lungs die from other intercurrent disease. In all the functional nervous diseases — that is, those nervous affections not dependent on some organic change in the nervous system, yet often accompanied by pains and palsies — the conditions known as hysterical-treatment through the mind is most essential. Even when other remedies are used it is only if they affect the patient’s mind that they do good. The ill-smelling remedies, the bread pills, the stronger cathartics and emetics formerly used in these cases produced their effect through the mind.

Even in organic nervous disease, however, there is a distinct place for mental healing. Patients become depressed when they learn that they are sufferers from some incurable nervous disease, the appetite is disturbed, the digestion impaired, constipation sets in, they go out less in the air and take insufficient exercise, and then many adventitious symptoms develop. The patient attributes these to the underlying nervous disease, though they are really due to the mental state and to confinement. The promise of a cure lifts up the despondent mind, tempts the patient to go out; the appetite will be improved, many symptoms will disappear, and the patient thinks that the underlying disease is being helped. Hence the many advertised remedies for even such absolutely incurable diseases as locomotor ataxia, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, and the like.

Psychotherapy is of course most important in the treatment of such affections as depend on mental influence. We have a whole series of dreads, of anxieties, of exaggerations and sensations, and then of habits and of lack of will power, that can only be properly treated through the mind. The dreads, or phobias, constitute a rather large class of nervous affections; perhaps the most common is mysophobia, or dread of dirt, sometimes under the form of bacteriophobia; acrophobia, the dread of heights, which may become so poignant as to make it impossible for a person to sit in the front row of a gallery or even to say Mass on a high altar; alurophobia, or the dread of cats, which may make life miserable. Then there is dread of the dark, the dread of wide open places, the dread of narrow spaces, the dread of walking beneath anything overhanging, and numbers of others. There is always a certain mental element in these, yet they occur in persons of intellect and character. Only suggestion and training will cure them. Usually they are worse when the patient is run down.

After the dreads come the tremors, the tics or habits, and then the conscious surveillance of actions usually automatic, such as talking, writing, even walking, which interfere with the accomplishment of them. Under emotional stress, as after a panic, men sometimes find themselves unable to sign their names when anyone is watching them. Some men cannot drink a glass of water at a strange table without spilling it. These are psychic rather than nervous conditions, and must be treated as such. There are a number of tremors that occur as a consequence of fright which can only be bettered in the same way. Many of the tics — as winking, head-nodding, slight convulsive movements of the arms, movements of the lips, and nose — must be looked on in this same way. Children must be watched and prevented from contracting them. They have a tendency to run in families by imitation. If noted early, they can be removed by the formation of a contrary habit. Some habits of children, especially certain sucking habits and tongue movements, lead to ugly deformities of the mouth when the jaws are in the plastic stage. Thumb-sucking is a habit that must be taken seriously, or the results on the mouth will be very marked. Biting the nails in older people is a corresponding affection. Such habits develop, as a rule, only in those with some psychasthenic condition, but the individuals may be very useful members of society.

The greatest usefulness of psychotherapy is in alcoholism and in the drug habits. There is no remedy that will cure alcoholism. We have had, during the past half century, hundreds of advertised cures: we know now that all of them owed their success to influence on the patient’s mind. When a new cure is first announced many are benefited by it. Afterwards it sinks to the ordinary level and comes to be recognized as only a helpful physical treatment with a strong mental factor attached. When the patients are in the midst of the attacks of alcoholism, their physical state makes them crave some stimulation. At this time they must be given other than alcoholic stimulants, and must be under such surveillance as shall help them to keep away from liquor. After a variable time — from a week to two or three weeks — they are quite capable of resisting the craving by themselves, if they really want to. The cure of alcoholism is easy, but relapses are easier still, because the patients think that they can take a glass and go no further. When they are tired or chilled, or fear that they are going to catch a cold, or when friends suggest it to them, they indulge in a glass and then in the second and third, and the old habit has to be broken again. We have any number of examples, however, of men who have not drawn a sober breath for ten, twenty, or thirty years who have resolved to drink no more and have kept their resolutions. If a man inclined to alcoholism is put in the way of temptation, he will almost surely fall; he is more susceptible than others; he must be kept from contact with it in every way, and then it is comparatively easy for him not to relapse into the habit.

Probably the most helpful factor in the treatment of alcoholism is for the patient to have some friend, physician or clergyman, whom he thoroughly respects, to whom he turns with confidence in moments of trial. There is no reason, except in case of distinct deterioration, why he should not be completely cured; but not drugs, but mental influence and will power is the important remedy. The same is true of drug addictions, now grown so common in the United States. That country uses more than ten times as much opium and cocaine as is required in medicine. The special victims of the habits are those who can easily procure the drugs — druggists, physicians, and nurses. It is quite easy to cure a drug habit. It is even easier to resume it. Relapses take place because the patients persuade themselves that for this once they need a dose of their favourite remedy. One dose leads to another, and so the habit is resumed. After a time a habit of relapse into the habit develops and is most difficult to break. If the patients themselves want to, however, it is not hard as a rule to correct these habits. Moral factors mean much more than physical. Patients must have someone whom they take into their confidence, they must live normal, regular lives, with long hours in the open air and good hours of sleep, and must not be subjected to emotional strains. It is almost impossible to break up the habit in an actor or a broker, or a gambler, because every now and then he feels the need of the stimulant to enable him to accomplish some sudden call in his work. The same thing is true of a doctor or a nurse with many emergency calls to answer. Often the change of life necessary may be difficult, but as the wages of the drug habit is premature death, it should not be difficult to make patients understand the necessity.

Other habits — dietary, sexual, and the like — must be met in just the same way. The patient can be helped in the beginning by means of drugs. After that it depends on his will. His will may be helped very much, however, by having a confidant, a confessor, or a physician to whom he goes in relapses, and who advises him so that his surroundings may be made more favourable.

It is often said that the cures at shrines and during pilgrimages are mainly due to psychotherapy — partly to confident trust in Providence, and partly to the strong expectancy of cure that comes over suggestible persons at these times and places. Undoubtedly many of the cures reported at shrines and during pilgrimages are of this character. An analysis of the records of cures carefully kept — as, for instance, at Lourdes — shows, however, that the majority of accepted cures have been in patients suffering not from mental persuasions of disease, nor from neurosis, nor from symptoms exaggerated by anxiety, but from such very concrete affections as tuberculosis, diagnosed by one or more physicians of standing, ulcers of various kinds, broken bones that have long failed to heal, and other readily demonstrable organic affections. When cures are worked in such cases, some force beyond that of nature as we know it must be at work. The physicians who have been most closely in touch with the patients at such shrines are those most confident in their expression that they have seen miracles take place. A visit to a shrine like Lourdes is sufficient to convince any physician that there is something more than psychotherapy, though he can see also abundant evidence of psychotherapy at work.

Our time has seen a revival of psychotherapy in many forms. Interest in it runs in cycles. It is always most intense just after a period of such devotion to physical science as produces a general impression that at last the mystery of life has been discovered. In the reaction that follows disillusionment mental healing becomes a centre of attention. Our phase will lose significance as preceding phases have done, and a juster estimation of the place of bodily and mental factors as coordinate influences for health will recur.