Now the word-symbols of conceptual ideas have passed so long from hand to hand in the service of the understanding, that they have gradually lost all such fanciful reference.

On the other hand, ethnic psychology must always come to the assistance of individual psychology, when the developmental forms of the complex mental processes are in question.

Hence, even in the domain of natural science the aid of the experimental method becomes indispensable whenever the problem set is the analysis of transient and impermanent phenomena, and not merely the observation of persistent and relatively constant objects.

We speak of virtue, honour, reason; but our thought does not translate any one of these concepts into a substance.

Some say that everything that is called a psychical law is nothing but the psychological reflex of physical combinations, which is made up of sensations joined to certain central cerebral processes... It is contradicted by the fact of consciousness itself, which cannot possibly be derived from any physical qualities of material molecules or atoms.

We know, from ordinary life, that we are not able to direct our attention perfectly steadily and uniformly to one and the same object... At times the attention turns towards the object most intensely, and at times the energy flags.

The results of ethnic psychology constitute, at the same time, our chief source of information regarding the general psychology of the complex mental processes.