Mary Whiton Calkins

“ For pressing into the crowded ranks of psychological text-books, this volume has one practical excuse to offer,—the convenience of the students to whom its author lectures. The book is written in the conviction that psychology should study consciousness, both as a series of complex mental processes, or ideas, and as a relation of conscious selves to each other. ”

“ One of the distinctive theories of the book—the existence of elements of consciousness which are neither sensational nor affective—is simply a developed and systematized statement of the teaching of James, and the frequent quotations from the “Principles of Psychology” are better reading than any original paragraph in the book. The second fundamental theory of this book, the conception of psychology as a science of related selves, is closely affiliated with Münsterberg’s conception of history as science of the relations of willing subjects ”

“ References to psychological literature and formulations of conflicting theories are included, in the belief that, in the use of textbooks, “a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,” and with the conviction that excessively simplified statements, unsupported by reference to different writers, tend to breed in the student a dogmatic or an unduly docile habit of thought, The references, like the supplementary discussions of the Appendix, are meant also for the use of the more advanced student. ”