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
such popular curiosity. In this sign experimental psychology has
conquered. The fundamental laws of the ideas and of the attention, of
the memory and of the will, of the feeling and of the emotions, have
been elaborated. Yet it slowly became evident that such one-sidedness,
however necessary it may have been at the beginning, would make any
practical application impossible. In practical life we never have to
do with what is common to all human beings, even when we are to
influence large masses; we have to deal with personalities whose
mental life is characterized by particular traits of nationality, or
race, or vocation, or sex, or age, or special interests, or other
features by which they differ from the average mind which the
theoretical psychologist may construct as a type. Still more
frequently we have to act with reference to smaller groups or to
single individuals whose mental physiognomy demands careful
consideration.
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