[v8 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
In the last quarter century we have had a vast amount of work in 
experimental psychology. The bibliography of the subject is growing at 
the rate of much more than one thousand titles each year. More than a 
dozen laboratories have been established in the United States within the 
last half dozen years. We are, in brief, on the crest of a great social 
movement for the regeneration of psychology. 
It is a fact, however, that, from the highest scientific standards, the vast 
and invaluable work so far done has been largely of a preliminary charac- 
er. This is, in part, matter of course and a necessity. Questions must 
be discovered ; one sagacious question—one reasonably definite ignorance 
—is worth more than a World’s Fair full of blind ‘¢ Outlines for Child- 
Study.” 
The laboratories of the world are engaged almost exclusively in this 
kind of work. It does not turn out tracts for popular enlightenment. It 
furnishes few recipes for teachers or preachers or mothers. It supplies 
few satisfying generalities to philosophy. Its outlay of published results 
.00k to the uninitiated like a mass of tedious scraps. From the standpoint 
of those engaged in it, this planning of questions, apparatus and methods 
is for the most part not intended to furnish general laws of conscious life. 
Such work is essentially preliminary. The ingathering of results must 
‘ollow after. 
But those who have been working at the foundations in experimental 
psychology have not been blameless, or at least their accomplishment is 
not blameless. I think experimental psychology has been peculiarly free 
‘rom this danger. 
But I cannot disguise my fear that the preliminary part of the work of 
which 1 have spoken has engrossed too large a share of attention, to the 
peril of our scientific and educational standing. 
We promise a science of conscious life. As other sciences have traced 
the development of the physical world, we promise to supplement this by 
giving the natural history of conscious life from its darkest beginning to 
the highest achievements of man. But we shall be false to all our promise, 
and we shall turn the confidence and sympathy which has endowed chairs 
and built laboratories, into derision and rejection, if we confine our science 
0 a little round of test in the laboratory. 
I believe that the time is fully ripe for a rapid advance in the ingather- 
ng of results. The most important things are ready, the things that can- 
not be hurried. There are many plans scientifically developed. There 
are men who have that knowledge and training which cannot be extem- 
porized, and who are eager to work. But there must be organization, 
and there must be money. The thing most in demand is endowed re- 
search in the field of child-study. What we want is a millionaire. Or, 
perhaps, it can come without the millionaire. The people of this country 
love their children. If the scientists and educational leaders whose repre-