Not that I offer this little essay as a model of clear thought! The ideas of current psychology and the words in which they find expression are still, in very large measure, an affair of tradition and compromise; and even if a writer has fought through to clarity,—past experience forbids me to hope that: but even if one had,—a book meant for beginners may not be too consistently radical; some touch must be maintained with the past, and some too with the multifarious trends of the present. There is something turbid in the very atmosphere of an elementary psychology (is the air much clearer elsewhere?), and it is difficult to see things in perspective. So the critic who will soon be saying that the ideal text-book of psychology has yet to be written will be heartily in the right, even if he is not particularly helpful. The present work has its due share of the mistakes and minor contradictions that are inevitable to a first writing; at many points it falls short of my intention,—_l’œuvre qu’on porte en soi paraît toujours plus belle que celle qu’on a faite_; and I daresay that the intention itself is not within measureable distance of the ideal. It is, nevertheless, the best I can do at the time; and it is also, I repeat, the kind of book that I should have liked to have when I began psychologising. Psychological text-books usually contain a chapter on the physiology of the central nervous system. The reader will find no such chapter here; for I hold, and have always held, that the student should get his elementary knowledge of neurology, not at second hand from the psychologist, but at first hand from the physiologist. I have added to every chapter a list of Questions, looking partly to increase of knowledge, but especially to a test of the reader’s understanding of what he has just read. I have also added a list of References for further reading. It depends upon the maturity and general mental habit of the student whether these references—made as they are, in many cases, to authors who do not agree either with one another or with the text of the book—should be followed up at once, or only after the text itself has been digested. The decision must be left to the instructor. My own opinion is that beginners are best given one thing at a time, and that the knowledge-questions and the references should therefore, in the ordinary run of teaching, be postponed until some ‘feeling’ for psychology, some steadiness of psychological attitude, has become apparent.