By Joseph Jastrow THE SUBCONSCIOUS. Large crown 8vo, $2.50, _net_. Postage 16 cents. FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY. Large crown 8vo, gilt top, $2.00. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. BOSTON AND NEW YORK FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY BY JOSEPH JASTROW PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN [Logo] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY JOSEPH JASTROW ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TO MY HELPMATE PREFACE A group of problems that appears conspicuously in the present volume, and in so far contributes to the fitness of its title, has obtained a considerable interest on the part of the public at large. Such interest seems prone to take its clue from the activity of those who herald startling revelations on the basis of unusual psychic experiences, and who give promise of disclosing other worlds than the one with which common sense and common sensation acquaint us, rather than from the cautious and consistent results of serious and professional students in study or in laboratory. The fascination of the unusual over the popular mind is familiar and intelligible, and seems in no direction more pronounced than in matters psychological. So long as this interest is properly subordinated to a comprehensive and illuminating general view of the phenomena in question, it is not likely to be harmful and may prove to be helpful. But when the conception of the nature of our mental endowment and the interest in the understanding thereof are derived from the unusual, the abnormal, and the obscure, instead of from the normal, law-abiding observations systematized and illuminated by long and successful research, there is danger that the interest will become unwholesome and the conception misleading. It is quite natural that the plain man should be interested in the experiences of the world of mind which form an intrinsic part of his common humanity; and it is equally natural that he should find attraction in less commonplace and seemingly anomalous mental phenomena. If thunderstorms were as rare as total eclipses of the sun, it is likely that they would attract equal attention, be looked upon as terrifying and portentous by superstitious humanity, and be invested by tradition with mysterious significance, under the influence of the interest in the unusual. The existence of this interest is itself a distinctive trait meriting a psychological interpretation, and one not likely to be overlooked. Its direction and regulation become the care of the several departments of science that deal with the respective subject-matters involved. And yet in a special way, as expressions of the popular _esprit_, such