Psychological Principles (Classic Reprint)

The author trusts that a brief account of those circumstances may therefore be at least condoned. Just forty years ago, that is in 1878 when I began lecturing on Psychology the plan of the book was laid down. As the lectures proceeded, abstracts of some of them were privately printed for discussion at a Moral Sciences Club, in which some other Cambridge books also took their rise. The first two of these abstracts, written in 1880, were afterwards reproduced without revision in the American Journal of Speculative Philosophy for 1882-3, one corresponding to the present chapter ii, and the other, entitled Objects and their I nteraction, to parts of the present chapters iv-vii. A third on Space and Time, written in 1881, was rejected by the late G. Croom Robertson the editor of Mind, as too difficult and revolutionary for publication as it stood. But afterwards he accepted and published what were to have been the two opening chapters of a book bearing the same title as this. Other chapters were to follow, but circumstances diverted them elsewhere. In 1884 Croom Robertson, who had engaged some years previously to write the article Psychology for the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, was prevented by failing health from proceeding further with it. Professor Sully, who was next appealed to, having declined the task, the editor of the Encyclopaedia, at that time T. Spencer Baynes, chancing to have made my acquaintance, offered it to me. I rashly sacrificed my book to the offer and so, as it has turned out, destroyed one of the dreams of my life.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology.

Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles o